Erotica Romana – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – The Roman Elegies (originally published under the title Erotica Romana in Germany, later Römische Elegien) is a cycle of twenty-four poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
They reflect Goethe’s Italian Journey from 1786 to 1788 and celebrate the sensuality and vigour of Italian and Classical culture. Written mainly after his return to Weimar, they contain poems on many sexual themes, and four of them were suppressed from publication during Goethe’s lifetime due to fears of censorship; they were only published in 1914, together with a large body of the Venetian Epigrams, written during his second, shorter travel to Italy in 1790.
The elegies are also a loving tribute to Goethe’s companion, Christiane Vulpius, whom he met in 1788 on his return from Italy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and statesman. His works include: four novels; epic and lyric poetry; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; and treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10, 000 letters, and nearly 3, 000 drawings by him have survived.
Circa l’autore
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer. George Eliot called him ‘Germany’s greatest man of letters… and the last true polymath to walk the earth.’ Goethe’s works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, humanism, and science. Goethe’s magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust. Goethe’s other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours, he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the Privy Councilor (‘Geheimrat’) of the duchy of Weimar.
Goethe is the originator of the concept of Weltliteratur (‘world literature’), having taken great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, Arabic literature, amongst others. His influence on German philosophy is virtually immeasurable, having major impact especially on the generation of Hegel and Schelling, although Goethe himself expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.
Goethe’s influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a major source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Goethe is considered by many to be the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in Western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered whether painting might not be his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that he would ultimately be remembered above all for his work in optics.
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