On 27 March 1815, shortly before the “Final Act” of the Congress of Vienna and not quite two months before Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Goethe sent his publisher a bundle of poems intended for the first volume of a new twelve-volume edition of his collected works. One small section bore the rubric “Gott und Welt” [“God and the World”] and contained only a few aphorisms, which Goethe evidently planned to augment in subsequent years. Then, in volume three of the
Ausgabe letzter Hand(1827-1842), he added to this section, among other poems, “Prooemion”, “Wiederfinden” [“Reunion”], “Dauer im Wechsel” [“Permanence in Change”], “Eins und alles” [“One and All”], “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” [“The Metamorphosis of Plants”], and “Urworte.…
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Citation: Dye, Ellis. "Gott und Welt". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 July 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30668, accessed 21 November 2024.]