As introduced here the term ‘darkness’ comprises the fantastic, the morbid, the horrifying and the uncanny.
6 See especially Crowther 1976 and the detailed discussion about the reception of Parthenius in Rome (.)ģBefore attempting an answer, it is critical to touch upon another complex question, that concerning the literary affinities of Euphorion.5 The first scholar to have analyzed the poetics of Euphorion from this perspective is Crump 1931, p (.).4 For an overview of Euphorion’s Alexandrian models, see Magnelli 2002, p.1 Obviously this is not our Euphorion – but what if we fancied for a moment that Goethe dramatized the emerging, dark Romantic poetry by alluding to the obscure, sensational poet from Hellenistic Chalcis? 9863) – thus paying tribute to the great Romantic poet Byron. Goethe models his own Euphorion upon this mythological figure by adding a subtle detail: he makes him a poet–an allegory of pure poetry, of the heilige Poesie (as explicitly said in l.
According to a rare legend attributed to the grammarian Ptolemy Hephaestion and attested by Photius ( Bibliotheca, 190.149a), Helen bore to Achilles a son called Euphorion on the Isles of the Blessed, who died at an early age struck by Zeus’ thunderbolt. Often considered a drama in itself, Act III from the second part of Goethe’s masterpiece focuses on Helen of Troy in its second scene, symbolically set in a shadowy grove of Arcadia, Helen bears a son to Faust called ‘Euphorion’. A case in point is Euphorion, one of the dramatis personae in the third act of Goethe’s Faust.
1 In one of his conversations with the German poet Johann Peter Eckermann, Goethe confesses: “Euphor (.)ġLiterature is full of enigmas, ambiguous meanings, polysemous symbols.