"[Dictations] will change not only the way we read Goethe, but the way we read". -Rainer Nagele, author of Reading after Freud. Dictations treats the way in which Goethe continues to speak from beyond the grave; not only in the texts of Kafka, Nietzsche, and Freud, but also in the ventriloquised writings of the spiritualist, Johann Peter Eckermann.