Erotica Romana | Page 9

no more than my due.
Jupiter's throne, so dishonestly won, it was I who secured it:
Color and ivory, marble and bronze, not to mention the poems.
Now, all intelligent men look upon me in kindness. They like to
Form their own image of me, just as the poet has done.
Nor do the girls take offense when they see me--by no means the
matrons.
None finds me ugly today, though I am monstrously strong.
Half a foot long, as reward, your glorious rod (dear poet)
Proudly shall strut from your loins, when but your dearest commands,
Nor shall your member grow weary until you've enjoyed the full dozen
Artful positions the great poet Philainis describes.
About the Elegies
Goethe cultivated a special, italianate hand for this portfolio of
twenty-four "elegies," so called because he was emulating the elegiasts
of Imperial Rome, Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus. The Elegies have
never before been published as here, together in the cyclical form of
their original conception. Experts even denied that the two priapeia (I
& XXIV) were by Goethe at all, although they are in the same hand as
the rest. To be sure, these two are not numbered, so that I was long
undecided as to just what their proper position might be. At one time I
imagined they must belong at the middle of the cycle where at the end
of Elegy XIII Priapus' mother summons her son. Obviously Goethe,
just returned north from his two years in Italy (1786-88), and alienated
from prim, courtly friends (especially since he had taken a girlfriend
into his cottage), had no thought of publication when he indited these
remembrances of Ancient Rome. But he did show them to close friends,

one of whom was the wonderful dramatist Friedrich Schiller. In 1795,
Schiller undertook a new periodical, Die Horen. This thoughtful and
responsible man initiated the journal with an essay of his own,
explaining how forms of entertainment are actually at the same time
our primary modes of education. It makes for pretty difficult reading in
our present, less interested epoch. But he did break the essay up with
diversions solicited from the best minds of his era. For a discussion of
all this, see
Professor Worthy's Page
For now, it is enough to say that among Schiller's examples for
"aesthetic education," as he called it, were these Elegies by his much
admired friend, Wolfgang Goethe. Editor and author made substantial
changes for propriety's sake--despite Goethe's having lashed out to the
contrary in the first Elegy (which he now suppressed, along with the
final one). My attempt has been--for the very first time by the way, in
any language--to restore Goethe's cycle to his early conception. Since I
have been unwilling to intrude with learned notes, I must apologize for
Goethe's many classical allusions, which were as familiar to his own
readership as are, in our publications today, the dense references to
media celebrities. Modern editors of what they call the "Roman
Elegies" bring abundant annotation, and often detail Goethe's own
emendations. What I bring here is merely translated from his
manuscript in the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar.
End of Project Gutenberg's Erotica Romana, by Johann Wolfgang
Goethe
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