4 - The Roots of Evil

Summary

GOETHE AND VERGIL SEEMS AN UNPROMISING conjunction, given the received opinions that the former was totally captivated by Homer and that the latter was generally neglected by Germans in the eighteenth century. There can be no doubt that Goethe was able to and did read the Aeneid from an early age. Goethe's father knew that fluency in Latin would be essential for the all-important career as a lawyer he intended for his son. In book 6 of Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe recalled his early facility in the language. Goethe also reports that at one point he had hoped to become a professor of Classical Philology; surely he would have prepared himself with a thorough study of the secondary as well as the primary texts. Not least, he would have followed closely the publication of Christian Gottlob Heyne's Vergil edition in four volumes (Leipzig 1767–75). Of particular interest is his report, with some mischievous undertones, of how his uncle had satisfied a young boy's desire:

Hier lernte ich zuerst den Homer kennen, und zwar in einer prosaischen Übersetzung, wie sie im siebenten Teil der durch Herrn von Loen besorgten “Neuen Sammlung der merkwürdigsten Reisegeschichten,” unter dem Titel “Homers Beschreibung der Eroberung des Trojanischen Reichs,” zu finden ist, mit Kupfern im französischen Theatersinne geziert. Diese Bilder verdarben mir dermaßen die Einbildungskraft, daß ich lange Zeit die Homerischen Helden mir nur unter diesen Gestalten vergegenwärtigen konnte.