'Liegt dir Gestern klar und offen'. 1828

GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832). Autograph poem signed ('Goethe'), 'Liegt dir Gestern klar und offen', Weimar, 15 June 1828.

One page, 81 x 148mm (browned, fragment at upper margin detached). Tipped onto card. Provenance: From the Stammbuch of [the Weimar government official Friedrich Christian August] von Schwendler (annotation to mount).

One of Goethe's best-known quatrains.

'Liegt dir Gestern klar und offen,
Wirkst du heute kräftig treu;
Kannst auch auf ein Morgen hoffen,
Das nicht minder glücklich sey'.

The poem was composed in November 1825, and it seems to have been a favourite subject for Goethe's contributions to albums over the following years – sometimes, as here, with the variant 'treu' for the 'frei' at the end of line 2. It was first collected in 1827 as the concluding poem of group IV in Zahme Xenien, in the final edition of his works. The lines, with their valedictory tone and reflection on the well-lived life, may have seemed particularly appropriate to Goethe on this particular date, as according to his Tagebuch this was the day on which he heard of the death of his great patron, Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach: he received mourning visits from a number of official visitors later in the day as a consequence, and von Schwendler was presumably one of their number.

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