«…denn was ich berühre, / Wird mir unter der Hand gleich ein behendes Gedicht» Textuelle Metamorphosen und poetisches Kalkül in Goethes "Venezianischen Epigrammen"

Among those works by Goethe that have undergone many textual-genetic and textual-historical transformations, his epigrams, most of which were written in Venice, then more or less voluntarily changed, censored, even desecrated by himself, and later brutally altered by the posthumous editors, are a particularly revealing example. On the one hand, the manuscript situation is unusually good, there are two main manuscripts, fair copies and several printings during his lifetime, on the other hand, there were posthumous censorship practices and marginalisations carried out out of scandalous prudery. Recent editions have made the handwritten tradition of the Venetian Epigrams visible in its most important stages of planning and completion, but a critical edition is still lacking. This article will describe the initial philological situation, exemplify the problems of describing textual geneses, and finally ask how Goethe's working method could be adequately reconstructed from an editionological and text-theoretical perspective on the basis of the versions of the Venetian Epigrams. From a textological point of view, scepticism will be expressed as to the extent to which, or whether, Goethe's morphological guiding ideas are consistent with the textual findings.