A Surprisingly Welcome Companion

In preparation for my brief trip back to Venice, I looked through Deborah Howard's history of Venetian architecture.  Goethe's letters from his Italian journey were frequently cited, and with enough interested content that I thought I should check them out.  (I had previously tried, briefly, to engage myself with "Sorrows of Young Werther" but eventually threw it down in disgust.  Apparently Goethe shared my disdain for the youthful novel that had made him famous, which makes me feel much more kindly toward him).  He's no Mark Twain, but there is a surprising undercurrent of humor in some of his observations, particularly regarding his German social circle in Rome.  He was also travelling incognito, so that polite people were constrained to pretend they didn't really know his identity, even though he was a celebrity among his countrymen.  That's pretty unthinkable today.

When it comes to something like 18th-century German, the quality of the translation also really matters, which is a point made in the introduction to this edition, translated by W.H. Auden.  In fact, rather than transcribe all the below quotations that I wanted to save, I tried to Google them, and almost every one came from a more antiquated translation which struck me with none of the force of Auden's.  I still wound up using them for the longer quotations, as a kind of shorthand--they're highlighted in white, an effect of copy-pasting that I've never figured out how to get rid of.

On a French gentleman who feels out of place in Venice, not having troubled to learn any Italian: "it was amazing to me that a man who, in this way, was well educated, brave and decent could travel without noticing anything in the world outside himself."

Inspired by Raphael's Saint Cecilia: "But in order to understand Raphael aright, and to form a just appreciation of him, and not to praise him as a god, or as Melchisedec, "without descent" or pedigree, it is necessary to study his masters and his predecessors. These, too, had a standing on the firm soil of truth. Diligently, not to say anxiously, they had laid the foundation, and vied with each other in raising, step by step, the pyramid aloft, until at last, profiting by all their labours, and enlightened by a heavenly genius, Raphael set the last stone on the summit, above which, or even at which, no one else can ever stand." Initially reading this I was impressed by his willingness to consider historical context and precedence rather than pure genius, but after thinking about this, his view isn't really much different than Vasari's biological/teleological notion of artistic development.  For example, where can one go when Raphael has already hit the summit?  Art must plunge again I suppose.  
Despite his Vasarian leaning above, Goethe wasn't very well-educated in art history; for example, he was apparently unaware of the long Italian tradition of the "sacred conversation" altarpiece, including holy figures separated in both time space space.  As he wrote after seeing Titian's Vatican altarpiece:  "We said to ourselves, "Some ancient holy legend must have furnished the subject of this picture in order that these various and ill-assorted personages should have been brought together so artistically and so significantly." We ask not, however, why and wherefore: we take it all for granted, and only wonder at the inestimable piece of art."  
On experiencing Rome: "The most important monuments I take very slowly; I do nothing except look, go away, and come back and look again.  Only in Rome can one educate oneself for Rome."
And again later: "Rome is a world, and it would take years to become a true citizen of it.  How lucky those travelers are who take one look and leave."
On the lack of serendipity in Rome's location: "...I am convinced that no inhabited site among the peoples of old was as badly placed as Rome.  In the end, when they had swallowed up everything, in order to live and enjoy life, the Romans had to move out again and build their country villas on the sites of the cities they had destroyed."
After attending a blessing of the candles ceremony in the Sistine and leaving early in annoyance: "I thought to myself: these are the very candles which for three centuries have blackened the frescoes, and this is the very incense which, with sacred insolence, not only wraps the sun of art in clouds, but also makes it grow dimmer every year and in the end will totally eclipse it."


I took the book along with me today on my rounds, and read a few pages in the Museo Nazionale alle Terme in the gallery that contains my beloved Boxer.  It was a bit of a surprise to realize that Goethe was in Rome in the 1780s--the Boxer and his companion the Prince wouldn't be discovered for another hundred years!

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