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his German diligence compared to southern lassitude, and recalls that home is where one was born and experienced one’s childhood and youth: … auch mir kommt das Jenseits der Alpen nun düster vor; doch winken freundliche Gestalten immer aus dem Nebel. Nur das Klima würde mich reizen, diese Gegenden jenen vorzuziehen: denn Geburt und Gewohnheit sind mächtige Fesseln. Ich möchte hier nicht leben, wie überall an keinem Orte, wo ich unbeschäftigt wäre. … and to me too the other side of Alps now seems dark; but friend ly figures keep beckoning from the mist. Only the climate would tempt me to give preference to these regions over those; for birth and custom are strong ties. I would not care to live here or any other place where I would be idle.50 Later on, during his second stay in Rome, he reminds of the close life bond with places of one’s childhood and youth and also emphasizes the material side of such places: Jetzt fangen erst die Bäume, die Felsen, ja Rom selbst an mir lieb zu werden; bisher hab’ ich sie immer nur als fremd gefühlt; dagegen freuten mich geringe Gegenstände, die mit denen ähnlichkeit hatten, die ich in der Jugend sah. Nun muß ich auch erst hier zu Hause werden, und doch kann ich’s nie so innig sein als mit jenen ersten Gegenständen des Lebens. Only now are the trees, the rocks, indeed Rome itself becoming dear to me; heretofore I have always just felt that they were foreign. On the other hand, I was pleased by unimportant objects that were similar to what I saw in my youth. Now I must begin to feel at home here also, and yet it will never be as close to me as those first things in my life.51
50 51
Ibid., p. 104, Den 12. Oktober. Ibid., p. 376, Rom, den 16. Juni.
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4. Arcadia, Utopia, Exile 99 The inclination and spiritual need to see Italy is well described by the passage where Goethe justifies his journey. His aim is to see with his own eyes what he had only been able to read about: Hätte ich nicht den Entschluß gefaßt, den ich jetzt ausführe, so wär’ ich rein zu Grunde gegangen: zu einer solchen Reife war die Begierde, diese Gegenstände mit Augen zu sehen, in meinem Gemüt gestiegen. Die historische Kenntnis fördert’ mich nicht, die Dinge standen nur eine Hand breit von mir ab; aber durch eine undurchdringliche Mauer geschieden. Es ist mir wirklich auch jetzt nicht etwa zu Mute, als wenn ich die Sachen zum erstenmal sähe, sondern als ob ich sie wiedersähe. If I had not made the resolution I am now carrying, I would simply have perished, so ripe had the desire become in my heart to see these sights with my own eyes. Historical knowledge was of no benefit to me, for while the things stood there only a hand’s breadth away, I was separated from them by an impenetrable wall. Even now I really do not feel that I am seeing the objects for the first time, but as if I were seeing them again.52 It is only in Italy that Goethe sees things as they are, stripped of the deposits of obfuscation “diese bin ich nun, Gott sei Dank, auf ewig los!” [thank God I am rid of these now forever!].53 On his terms, it is not about discovering something new, it is about finding something already known, as if he were being reunited with it. Goethe’s goal is to bring this new way of seeing back north: “ich […] habe Hoffnung, auch dereinst in Norden aus meiner Seele Schattenbilder dieser glücklichen Wohnung hervor zu bringen” [and I hope that I shall be able, even someday in the north, to summon up mental images of this happy domain].54 The Italian Journey is not a volume about exile, although exile motifs do play an important role in it and Goethe repeatedly returns to them. For him, it was
52 53 54
Ibid., pp. 105–106, Den 12. Oktober. Ibid., p. 94, Den 8. Oktober. Ibid., p. 249, Palermo, den 3. April 1787.
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primarily a formative journey; he speaks several times of a new life and rebirth during his stay in Italy, “denn ich bin wirklich umgeboren und erneuert und ausgefüllt” [For I really have been recreated and renewed and completed]55 consis tent with the new way of seeing he finds there. So, what then is the significance of the final reference to Ovid and the fact that the whole book ends by quoting his verses about going into exile? While Goethe compares his departure from Rome to Ovid’s expulsion, returning home is firmly part of his plans from the very beginning of the journey, as he reminds us every so often. Ovid’s verses serve to express the mood of a weighty moment, though not a twist of fate, an uplift, not harking back in nostalgia. In an earlier version of the Italian Journey, Goethe writes about a ‘pain of a singular kind’: Bei meinem Abschied aus Rom empfand ich Schmerzen einer eignen Art. Diese Hauptstadt der Welt, deren Bürger man eine Zeitlang gewesen, ohne Hoffnung der Rückkehr zu verlassen, giebt ein Gefühl, das sich durch Worte nicht überliefern läßt. Niemand vermag es zu theilen als wer es empfunden. Upon my departure from Rome, I experienced pain of a singular kind. This capital city of the world that one became a citizen of for a while, without giving up all hope of return, evokes a feeling one cannot put into words. No-one has managed to describe the way it felt.56 In the later, definitive form of the text, he describes the mood of the moment as sublime and refers to it as heroic-elegiac (eine Stimmung, die ich heroisch elegisch nennen darf). This hyphenation only reinforces the inner contradiction of the moment, full of mixed feelings, not just elegiac melancholy. Goethe does not manage to find just the right words, and the unique mood is marked by a compound adjective that combines the sadness of farewell with the hope of return. The exile motifs and topology reminiscent of Ovid serves Goethe to emphasize the ground-breaking and formative importance of his ‘Italian Journey’ a fundamental change within oneself, which he refers to as a new
55 56
Ibid., p. 413, Rom, den 23. August 1787, cf similar motifs pp. 157, 158, 160, 421. J. W. Goethe: Italienische Reise II, p. 1156, variant conclusion completed 31. 8. 1817.
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