West-östlicher Divan. Munich, Hans von Weber, 1910.

Chancery folio (275 × 187 mm). Brown-red original morocco master binding with rich spine gilding, signed Carl Sonntag Jr., Leipzig (paper and binding in excellent preservation).

Goethe's West-östlicher Divan is the most concrete poetic embodiment of his idea of Weltliteratur. To Eckermann in 1827 he declared that the epoch of world literature was at hand [Eckermann, 31 January 1827]; in the Divan itself he wrote that Orient and Occident were no longer to be separated. The book grew from his encounter with Hafiz through Hammer-Purgstall and turned German poetry outward toward Persian and Islamic lyric. This Hans von Weber edition gives that idea a refined bibliophile form, from the Munich luxury-publishing culture that made canonical texts into ceremonial objects.

PROVENANCE

The Heribert Tenschert Collection.

REFERENCES

Hans von Weber, Drucke für die Hundert; Julius Rodenberg, Deutsche Pressen (Zürich, 1925), which records Carl Sonntag Jr. among the binders of the finest German press books; Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe, 31 January 1827; Goethe, West-östlicher Divan (Moganni Nameh; Gingo Biloba); Hendrik Birus (ed.), West-östlicher Divan (Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1994).