The Reception of Propertius in the Modern Age: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s Römische Elegien and Ezra Pound’s Homage to Sextus Propertius

Abstract

Three aspects of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Romische Elegien have attracted most attention in scholarship: first and most important, the question if there is a Roman Urschicht; second, the search for the mistress Faustine, who is referred to by name only in 18.9; and third, the identification of Goethe's sources which did not even in the twentieth century stop producing monumental collections of parallels. The productive dialogue with antiquity is provoked and made possible by Amor. While Goethe's Romische Elegien are the expression of a revived antiquity, Ezra Pound's Homage to Sextus Propertius marks the gap between the vanishing ancient tradition and the present. It is the privilege of the lector doctus to fully understand the work of the poeta doctus ; only he can enjoy the net of allusions, irony, and parody and grasps the subtle play with the cultural memory that Propertius and Pound are playing. Keywords: Amor; Ezra Pound; Faustine; Homage to Sextus Propertius ; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Romische Elegien