Goethe: Poetry
Goethe’s poems include:
Willkommen und Abschied; Welcome and Farewell (written 1771, published 1775, revised 1789)
Mahomets Gesang; Muhammad’s Song (written 1772-73, published 1774)
Ganymed (written 1774, published 1789)
Prometheus (written 1774, unauthorised publication 1785, authorised publication 1789)
Der König in Thule; The King in Thule (written 1774, published 1800)
Auf dem See; On the Lake (written 1775, published 1789)
Warum gabst du uns die tiefen Blicke; Why did you give us deep insights (written 1776, published 1848)
Wandrers Nachtlied; Wanderer’s Night Song (written 1776, published 1780)
Ein Gleiches; Another One [Wandrers Nachtlied II] (inscribed 1780; published 1815)
Der Erlkönig; The Erl King (written and published 1782)
Das Göttliche; The Divine (written 1783, published 1785)
Römische Elegien; Roman Elegies (written 1788-90, published 1795)
Venezianische Epigramme; Venetian Epigrams (written 1790, published 1796)
Reineke Fuchs; Reynard the Fox (1794)
Hermann und Dorothea (1798)
Dauer im Wechsel; Permanence in Change (written 1803, published 1804)
Urworte. Orphisch; Primordial Words. Orphic (written 1817, published 1820)
West-östlicher Divan; West-Eastern Divan (1819)
Eins wie’s andre; One like the other (undated, first published 1832-1842)
Please click on the above titles for further information.
English Translations
Goethe, Selected Verse, trans. by David Luke (London: Penguin, 1986)
Goethe, Erotic Poems, trans. by David Luke, intro. by Hans Rudolf Vaget (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Further Reading
Goethe, Selected Poems, ed. by T. J. Reed (London: Bristol Classical Presss, 1999), includes a useful ‘Note on metre’ and good notes on individual poems
Eric Blackall, The Emergence of German as a Literary Language 1700-1775 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), Chapter 15: ‘The Golden Touch’, pp. 482-585
Barker Fairley, Goethe as Revealed in His Poetry (London: Dent, 1932)
Charlie Louth, 'Goethe's Sonnets', Publications of the English Goethe Society 72 (2003), 15-24
T. J. Reed, ‘Poetry and the Shape of Experience: The Poet as Nature’, Oxford German Studies 15 (1984), 3-25
T. J. Reed, ‘Rhyme and Reason: Enlightenment by other means’, Publications of the English Goethe Society 67 (1998), 1-16
T. J. Reed, ‘Replacing Ancient Gods. Weimar Classicism and After’ in The Reception of Classical Antiquity in German Literature, ed. by Anne Simon and Katie Fleming, London German Studies XIV (Munich: Iudicium, 2013), pp. 64-81
David E. Wellbery, The Specular Moment: Goethe’s Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996)
Elizabeth M. Wilkinson, ‘Goethe’s Poetry’, German Life and Letters 2 (1949), 316-29
Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, Goethe: Poet and Thinker (London: Edward Arnold, 1962)