Italian Journey

Appraisal

Et in Arcadia ego

Italian Journey initially takes the form of a diary, with events and descriptions written up apparently quite soon after they were experienced. The impression is in one sense true, since Goethe was clearly working from journals and letters he composed at the time — and by the end of the book he is openly distinguishing between his old correspondence and what he calls reporting. But there is also a strong and indeed elegant sense of fiction about the whole, a sort of composed immediacy. Goethe said in a letter that the work was "both entirely truthful and a graceful fairy-tale". It had to be something of a fairy-tale, since it was written between thirty and more than forty years after the journey, in 1816 and 1828-29.

The work begins with a famous Latin tag, Et in Arcadia ego, although originally Goethe used the German translation, Auch ich in Arkadien, which alters the meaning. The Latin phrase is usually imagined as spoken by Death — this is its sense, for example, in W. H. Auden's poem called "Et in Arcadia ego" — suggesting that every paradise is afflicted by mortality. Conversely, what Goethe's Auch ich in Arkadien says is "Even I managed to get to paradise", with the implication that we could all get there if we chose. If death is universal, the possibility of paradise might be universal too. This possibility wouldn't preclude its loss, and might even require it, or at least require that some of us should lose it. The book ends with a quotation from Ovid's Tristia, regretting his expulsion from Rome. Cum repeto noctem, Goethe writes in the middle of his own German, as well as citing a whole passage: "When I remember the night..." He is already storing up not only plentiful nostalgia and regret, but also a more complicated treasure: the certainty that he didn't merely imagine the land where others live happily ever after.

Content

"We are all pilgrims who seek Italy", Goethe wrote in a poem two years after his return to Germany from his almost two-year spell in the land he had long dreamed of. For Goethe, Italy was the warm passionate south as opposed to the dank cautious north; the place where the classical past was still alive, although in ruins; a sequence of landscapes, colours, trees, manners, cities, monuments he had so far seen only in his writing. He described himself as "the mortal enemy of mere words" or what he also called "empty names". He needed to fill the names with meaning and, as he rather strangely put it, "to discover myself in the objects I see", literally "to learn to know myself by or through the objects". He also writes of his old habit of "clinging to the objects", which pays off in the new location. He wanted to know that what he thought might be paradise actually existed, even if it wasn't entirely paradise, and even if he didn't in the end want to stay there.

While in Italy, Goethe aspired to witness and to breathe the conditions and milieu of a once highly — and in certain respects still — cultured area endowed with many significant works of art. Apart from the impetus to study the Mediterranean's natural qualities, he was first and foremost interested in the remains of classical antiquity and in contemporary art. During his stay in Assisi, he did not visit the famous Giotto frescoes in the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. Many critics have questioned this strange choice. In Verona, where he enthusiastically commends the harmony and fine proportions of the city amphitheater; he asserts this is the first true piece of Classical art he has witnessed. Venice, too, holds treasures for his artistic education, and he soon becomes fascinated by the Italian style of living. After a very short stop in Florence, he arrives in Rome. It was here that he met several respected German artists, and made friends with Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein and notable Neoclassical painter, Angelica Kauffman. Tischbein painted one of the most famous portraits of Goethe, Goethe in the Roman Campagna, and accompanied him to Naples. During the journey, the two later separated due to their "incompatible" interests. After leaving Rome and entering Palermo, Goethe searched for what he called "Urpflanze", a plant that would be the archetype of all plants.

In his journal, Goethe shows a marked interest in the geology of Europe's southern regions. He demonstrates a depth and breadth of knowledge in each subject. Most frequently, he pens descriptions of mineral and rock samples that he retrieves from the mountains, crags, and riverbeds of Italy. He also undertakes several dangerous hikes to the summit of Mount Vesuvius, where he catalogues the nature and qualities of various lava flows and tephra. He is similarly adept at recognizing species of plant and flora, which stimulate thought and research into his botanical theories.

While more credibility can be attributed to his scientific investigations, Goethe maintains a thoughtful and admiring interest in art. Using Palladio and Johann Joachim Winkelmann as touchstones for his artistic growth, Goethe expands his scope of thought in regards to Classical concepts of beauty and the characteristics of good architecture. Indeed, in his letters he periodically comments on the growth and good that Rome has caused in him. The profusion of high-quality objects of art proves critical in his transformation during these two years away from his hometown in Germany.

Rome and Naples

Goethe stayed almost three months in Rome, which he described as "the First City of the World". His company was a group of young German painters; he sketched and did watercolours, visited famous sites, rewrote his play Iphigenia, and thought about his Collected Works, already in progress back home. He could look back now on what he called his "salto mortale" (somersault), his bid for freedom, and he had explained himself in letters to his mistress and friends. But he couldn't settle. Rome was full of remains, but too much was gone. "Architecture rises out of its grave like a ghost." All he could do was "revere in silence the noble existence of past epochs which have perished for ever." It is at this point, as Nicholas Boyle puts it clearly in the first volume of his biography, Goethe began to think of turning his "flight to Rome... into an Italian journey".

From February to May 1787 he was in Naples and Sicily. He climbed Vesuvius, visited Pompeii, found himself contrasting Neapolitan gaiety with Roman solemnity. He was amazed that people could actually live in the way he had only imagined living and in an emotional passage he wrote:

Naples is a paradise; everyone lives in a state of intoxicated self-forgetfulness, myself included. I seem to be a completely different person whom I hardly recognise. Yesterday I thought to myself: Either you were mad before, or you are mad now.

and about the sights:

One may write or paint as much as one likes, but this place, the shore, the gulf, Vesuvius, the citadels, the villas, everything, defies description.

I can't begin to tell you of the glory of a night by full moon when we strolled through the streets and squares to the endless promenade of the Chiaia, and then walked up and down the seashore. I was quite overwhelmed by the feeling of infinite space. To be able to dream like this is certainly worth the trouble it took to get here.

Epigraph

Some journeys – Goethe's was one – really are quests. Italian Journey is not only a description of places, persons and things, but also a psychological document of the first importance.

Itinerary

The Italian Journey is divided sequentially as follows:

Part One Part Two Part Three: June 1787-April 1788: second Roman visit.