Erotica Romana

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe spent two years in Italy, from 1786 to 1788, and after his return to Weimar wrote a cycle of elegies in classical couplets about a love affair in Rome. The poet wanders among ruins and churches, learns the city by day and his mistress Faustina by night, argues with Amor and reads Ovid and Propertius in the light of his own happiness. Twenty of the poems were published in 1795 and caused a scandal for their frankness; four more, including two addressed to the garden god Priapus, were held back and circulated only much later. This edition presents all twenty-four in English verse, with a note on the elegies. The content is explicitly erotic in places and was intended for adult readers. Read it online in your browser on Vinteuil; the first poems are free.