A long-lost translation of Iphigenia has been found in Goethe’s personal library after 200 years. As Klassik Stiftung Weimar reveals, the ‘discovery’ is made by an Italian, the art historian Francesca Fabbri, who identified an Italian manuscript of Goethe’s play “Iphigenia in Tauris”, preserved in the Library of Duchess Anna Amalia of Weimar as a long-sought translation of the poet Alessandro Poerio, donated to Goethe in 1826. The work, coming from Goethe’s private library, was considered lost for about 200 years and offers new perspectives on Italian-German relations during the period of Weimar Classicism. The manuscript, written anonymously, bears the title “Iphigenia in Tauride: Tragedia di Göthe translated into Italian” (Iphigenia in Tauride: Tragedia di Goethe translated into Italian). It is cataloged online at the Library of Duchess Anna Amalia with the shelfmark “Ruppert 1852”. Thanks to a watermark on one of the pages, the translation could be dated to around 1825, but its author remained unknown. Fabbri has now discovered that the translator and copyist was the Neapolitan poet Alessandro Poerio (1802-1848), who stayed in Weimar between 1825 and 1826 and frequented Ottilie von Goethe’s salon. Poerio translated two of Goethe’s works into Italian: the ballad “Die Braut von Korinth” (The Bride of Corinth) and the comedy “Iphigenia in Tauris”. He personally presented both translations to Goethe, who is said to have been enthusiastic about them. While “The Bride of Corinth” was published years later in the magazine “Chaos”, the translation of Iphigenia, sought after by generations of scholars, including Benedetto Croce, Poerio’s biographer, was never found.
The decisive impetus for the identification of the manuscript of Iphigenia in Weimar came from Reinhold Köhler, who worked as a librarian at the Grand Ducal Library (now the Library of Duchess Anna Amalia) from 1856 and as its director from 1881. Thanks to his friendship with Poerio’s nephew, Vittorio Imbriani, he reconstructed Ksw, Köhler published in 1882 a fundamental study on the period spent by Poerio in Weimar and on his relationship with Goethe. Francesca Fabbri has taken up this trend and managed to definitively attribute the manuscript to Poerio. Parallel to his research in Weimar, Fabbri made another discovery: he found the autograph manuscript of “The Bride of Corinth” among the papers of Ottilie von Goethe in the Newberry Library in Chicago. This means that both translations that Poerio gave to Goethe can now be documented for the first time.
The discovery will give rise to a series of initiatives also in Italy, at the University of Tor Vergata, Goethe’s house and the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies. A fruitful collaboration in view of other Goethean projects and the bicentenary of 2032. In particular, after the stage reading carried out by the Zip Zine association (with Barbara Giordano in the role of Iphigenia) on 24 and 25 September on the terrace of the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies, we continue on 1 December with the exhibition of Poerio’s manuscript at the House of Goethe (for the exhibition ‘Et in Arcadia ego. Goethe in dialogue with Guercino, Raphael and Poerio’). A meeting follows on 9 December, again at Goethe’s house, attended by a group of scholars coordinated by Gabriella Catalano, Francesca Fabbri, Mario Marino and Valerio Camarotto. It will be the occasion in which the work will be presented in the annotated edition, to be published in 2027 by the editions of the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies. Here, in February 2027, a conference will be held, ‘Translating Goethe in Italy’, curated by Gabriella Catalano and Giovanni Sampaolo. On December 15th it will be the turn of Tor Vergata where the director Cesare Lievi will be present: together with Lucia Mor he will talk about his translation of Goethe’s Iphigenia, the last one made in Italy.