Happy Birthday, Goethe!

It seems like only yesterday that I wrote a long post on the above subject, but it was actually last year. That is a sign of how fast the years roll around. I notice that I also wrote a post on Goethe's birthday in 2009: thirteen years ago!!!! Since that long ago day, I have been working pretty extensively on Goethe's autobiography, and in connection with 2009 post I would only add that I recently came upon some information concerning that astrological account mentioned at the beginning of Goethe's autobiography This is how the account goes:

It was on the 28th of August 1749, at the stroke of twelve noon, that I came into the world in Frankfurt on the Main. The constellation was auspicious: the Sun was in Virgo and at its culmination for the day. Jupiter and Venus looked amicably upon it, and Mercury was not hostile. Saturn and Mars maintained indifference. Only the Moon, just then becoming full, was in a position to exert averse force, because its planetary hour had begun. It did, indeed, resist my birth, which did not take place until this hour had passed.

These good aspects, which astrologers in later years taught me to value very highly, were probably responsible for my survival, for the midwife was so unskilled that I was brought into the world as good as dead, and only with great difficulty could I be made to open my eyes and see the light.

Ernst Beutler, in his notes on Dichtung und Wahrheit, writes that the seeming originality of the opening actually draws on the autobiography of Geralomo Cardano. That reminded me that I actually wrote a post on Goethe and Cardano back in 2020. Cardano's work appears in English as The Book of My Life, and appears as a New York Review of Books Classic. Here is the Amazon description of the work:

"Whether discussing his sex life or his diet, the plots of academic rivals or meetings with supernatural beings, or his deep sorrow when his beloved son was executed for murder, Cardano displays the same unbounded curiosity that made him a scientific pioneer. At once picaresque adventure and campus comedy, curriculum vitae, and last will, The Book of My Life is an extraordinary Renaissance self-portrait—a book to set beside Montaigne's Essays and Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography."

Obviously, with Goethe there is always something new to investigate. The image at the top of this post is from Etsy. I receive no commission for mentioning this, but the card can be purchased.

Image: Etsy