Гётенің «Италия саяхаты» туралы естеліктері

1816–17 book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Italian Journey (in the German original: Italienische Reise ) is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's report on his travels to Italy from 1786 to 1788 that was published in 1816 & 1817. The book is based on Goethe's diaries and is smoothed in style, lacks the spontaneity of his diary report and is augmented with the addition of afterthoughts and reminiscences. At the beginning of September 1786, when Goethe had just turned 37, he "slipped away," in his words, from his duties as Privy Councillor in the Duchy of Weimar, from a long platonic affair with a court lady and from his immense fame as the author of the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther and the stormy play Götz von Berlichingen, and he took what became a licensed leave of absence. He was able to persuade his employer, Duke Karl August, to agree to a paid absence. By May 1788 he had travelled to Italy via Innsbruck and the Brenner Pass and visited Lake Garda, Verona, Vicenza, Venice, Bologna, Rome and Alban Hills, Naples and Sicily. He wrote many letters to a number of friends in Germany, which he later used as the basis for Italian Journey.

"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, furthermore in Renaissance, but much less in the then predominant Baroque art. Medieval art he treated with complete contempt. 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. He acquires Andrea Palladio's printed works and studies them intensively. After a longer stop in Venice and 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. He visited the famous art collections of Rome with her and her husband Antonio Zucchi. Other artists he frequently met were the painter Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein and the writer Karl Philipp Moritz. Goethe lived with Tischbein in his flat in Via del Corso 18, Rome, today Casa di Goethe, a museum on the Italian Journey. He stayed there from October 1786 until February 1787 when they travelled together to Naples and Goethe went on to Sicily, and again from June 1787 until April 1788. Tischbein shared the house with a number of other German and Swiss painters. He painted one of the most famous portraits of Goethe, Goethe in the Roman Campagna. Goethe looked everywhere for ancient works of art, in museums and private collections, travelled twice to the Royal Palace of Portici where the excavations from Pompeii and Herculaneum were exhibited, he visited the Greek temples in Paestum several times. While Tischbein stayed in Naples looking for commissions, Goethe went on to Sicily with the German painter Christoph Heinrich Kniep. There he devoted himself intensively to the then largely unknown Greek ruins in Agrigento. In 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.

The reception of Goethe's Italian journey did not begin with the much later publication of his travel diaries from 1813 to 1817. It begins on the journey itself, especially since Goethe tried to let his friends in Weimar share his experiences by means of numerous letters, not least Duke Carl August, who ultimately continued to pay him his salary as a privy councilor and thus made the journey economically possible in the first place. Goethe repeatedly emphasized in his letters how much the artistic impressions of Italy inspired his own artistic work, repeatedly spoke of a "rebirth", a "new youth" and tried to justify the increasing length of his absence. He regularly sends home newly made manuscripts to demonstrate his continued production. The Italian journey was also the subject of correspondence with friends in Italy after Goethe's return to Weimar (published in 1890 by Otto Harnack). The journey to Italy by Duchess Anna Amalia from 1788 to 1790 was also inspired by Goethe's letters. One result of his trip was that after his return to Weimar he separated his poetic from his political existence by asking the duke to release him from many of his previous duties so that he could do “what no one but I can do, and let other people do the rest". The poet himself remained inspired by his travel impressions throughout his life. Goethe's house in Weimar is filled with antique works of art and pictures that allude to Italy, as was his parents' house in Frankfurt, since his father Johann Caspar Goethe had brought numerous copper engravings back from a trip to Italy between 1740 and 1741; the father had also written a travel book (in Italian). The Weimar staircase is modeled on Italian palazzi with antique plaster casts and reliefs, as well as charcoal drawings of the Elgin Marbles. The Park an der Ilm is filled with a staffage building based on a Roman country house drawn by Goethe, a pompeian bench or the cast of a sacrificial altar from Herculaneum. What does not appear in the book are the numerous erotic experiences that Goethe was able to have in Italy, for example with his Roman lover Faustina. However, a few weeks after his return, on July 12, 1788, in Weimar, Goethe made the acquaintance of the 23 year old milliner Christiane Vulpius, whom he made his lover, and soon afterwards his partner (and eventually his wife). However, his Roman Elegies with numerous erotic allusions were written at that time.