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Works: Letters From Switzerland. Travels In Italy
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- GenresTravel
376 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
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About the author
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
13.4k books7,000 followersA master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem
Faust
, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.
George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .
With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours , he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.
Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.
Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.
George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .
With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours , he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.
Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.
Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.
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July 27, 2022When Goethe set out on his travels to Switzerland and Italy in 1786, he packed some books for the trip. One of the titles he chose was Johann Volkmann’s Nachrichten Von Italien (News from Italy). In the course of the Letters that make up his own travel account, Goethe refers to Volkmann from time to time, and Volkmann in turn recalls authors he took along on his journey. On first viewing Lake Garda, for instance, Goethe tells us that he read a passage from Volkmann in which the writer quoted a verse of Virgil’s about the wind blowing on the lake: “Fluctibus et fremiter resonans, Benace, marino.” (The flow and hum of the sea resonates across Benace (Garda)).
Goethe goes on to remark that this is the first Latin verse, the subject of which ever stood visibly before me, and now, in the present moment, when the wind is blowing stronger and stronger, and the lake casts loftier billows against the little harbour, it is just as true as it was hundreds of years ago. Much, indeed, has changed, but the wind still roars…
'Storm on Lake Garda' Rudolf von Alt, 1839
Much indeed has changed but something remains from those long-ago traveling habits. When I travel, I also take books with me, and like Goethe and Volkmann, I choose titles that are related to the destination. While visiting Northern Italy in September of this year, I took this volume of travel writings along and began reading it on the plane.
My flight followed a path across the Alps, and as the bright peaks spread beneath us, I read about Goethe’s trip through alpine mountain passes: nothing could vie with the view of the mountains covered with snow and glaciers. We sat down before some rocks to shelter us from the cold wind, with the sunshine full upon us, and highly relished our little meal.
I was very aware of the contrast between his experience and mine. Unlike Goethe, who had to dismount each time the mule train had to face into a steep slope, I was comfortably seated the whole way. I may not have relished my food quite as much as he did but I had a great view of crest overlying crest as far as the porthole could see.
Viewing the Alps from above gave me huge respect for the traveler of Goethe’s day. The choice of conveyance was limited. Apart from the mule train, you could hire a horse-drawn carriage called a vettura, driven by a vetturino, but in Goethe’s experience, it is but sorry travelling with a vetturino, it is always best to follow at one's ease on foot. The repeated mention of being obliged to get down and walk leaves the reader with the impression that Goethe travelled most of the way from his home in Weimar to Rome on foot!
His book collection probably travelled more comfortably, stowed away in the mule packs or in the back of the vettura, but I’d like to think he had at least one little book in his pocket for when he took a rest—as I did on the steps of the amphitheater in Verona which I visited for the first time on the 16th of September last.
I took out my book and read a few pages, and might well have echoed Goethe’s words about reading Virgil while contemplating Lake Garda, because what should I read while sitting in the sun on the steps of the amhitheatre but the following lines:
Well then, the [Verona] amphitheater is the first important monument of the old times that I have seen—and how well it is preserved! When I entered, and still more when I walked round the edge of it at the top, it seemed strange to me, that I saw something great, and yet, properly speaking, saw nothing. I was quite alone..
That passage, in which Goethe regrets that the amphitheater was empty, was dated the 16th of September 1786—and reading it inside the amphitheater on the 16th of September 2017 was a highlight of my book life!
That day, there was a concert being set up in the arena, so there was a lot of noise. Workmen were constructing platforms and rigging up scaffolding for the light system; sound engineers were testing the powerful speakers; there were tourists crowded onto the tiered seating, adding to the general hubbub. I’d have preferred to be ‘quite alone’ as I read Goethe’s eighteenth century observations.
Two hundred and thirty years old though they are, his observations seem oddly in tune with my life. It isn’t just that he liked to take travel writing along on his trips, or that we happened to be in Verona on the same day of the same month, it’s that his real life experiences in Switzerland and Italy seem to match my recent fictional journeys. When he mentions the romantic Castle of Chillon near Geneva, I immediately pictured dauntless Daisy Miller offering her girlish dreams a day-trip. When he enthuses about Leonardo de Vinci in Rome, I smiled because I’d just been reading about Leonardo’s Roman sojourn in The Subtlest Soul. When Goethe speaks of Tivoli where the ancient Romans had their villas, I think immediately of Yourcenar’s Tivoli setting for Mémoires d'Hadrien. When the boat in which he is travelling to Sicily encounters high winds while skirting Capri, I was reminded of that great Capri saga, South Wind which I read earlier this year. A description of the marvelously decorated palace of a Sicilian Prince brought back The Leopard, also a recent read.
But there were other surprising parallels between Goethe’s experiences and mine. When he views the rococo decor of the interior of Saint Peter’s in Rome, he says, as men willing to be pleased, we were delighted with its vastness and splendour, and did not allow an over nice or hypocritical taste to mar our pleasure. We suppressed every harsher judgment: we enjoyed the enjoyable. Not only could I relate to that reaction regarding the interior of Saint Peter’s, I had a similar one when I first glimpsed the profusion of pinnacles rising from the unusually broad gothic façade of the cathedral in Milan. But like Goethe, I suppressed any harsher judgement and just enjoyed the expanse of bright white marble peaks sparkling in the September sun.
While we might both be a little doubtful about over elaborate architectural decor, he and I share a definite love of art galleries. I spent many happy hours in the Pinacoteca Brera, the Ambrosiana and a host of other galleries, and can easily relate to his enthusiasm for art: It lies in my nature to admire, willingly and joyfully, all that is great and beautiful, and the cultivation of this talent, day after day, hour after hour, by the inspection of such beautiful objects, produces the happiest feelings.
One happy feeling I definitely experienced was finding a statue of Goethe himself in the courtyard between the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and the Biblioteca of the same name in Milan. I had been disappointed to find no reference to the city in his book but finding his statue there made up for that. And since Goethe was an artist as well as a writer, the Ambrosiana complex which houses both books and paintings, was the perfect place for his monument.
As well as viewing art collections, Goethe visited many churches too, just as I did, and we both had interesting encounters with caretakers. His conversation with a porter who promised to not only shew me the church and all its parts, but also to narrate to me in full the histories of the several altars and chapels; and, moreover, that he should also open to me all the sacristies, and shew me their remarkable contents, mirrored an experience we had in a church in Parma. Because we took such an interest in the architecture and decor of the church, the caretaker gave us a detailed account of the history of the building, and then declared we couldn’t possibly leave until we had visited the former sacristy though it wasn't normally open to the public. The Aladdin’s cave which was unlocked for us with the caretaker’s giant iron key was an elaborately furnished space with a frescoed ceiling. Each cabinet was decorated with fine marquetry and when opened revealed shelf upon shelf of intricately designed liturgical ornaments and beautifully bound books. Quite a treasury.
Goethe and I were on the same page much of the time but not always—I would never consider advising the Italians on how to make their cities cleaner, for example: As I walked along I could not refrain from sketching a body of regulations on the subject, anticipating in thought some superintendent of police, who might act in earnest. Thus one always feels an inclination to sweep one's neighbour's door.
He was also much more disgruntled than I was with Italian life in general: I am now made only too sensible of the rashness of travelling in this country without a servant, and without providing oneself well with every necessary. What with the ever-changing currency, the vetturini, the extortion, the wretched inns, one who, like myself, is travelling alone, for the first time in this country, hoping to find uninterrupted pleasure, will be sure to find himself miserably disappointed every day. However, I wished to see the country at any cost, and even if I must be dragged to Rome on Ixion's wheel, I shall not complain.
Comparing his situation to Ixion’s torture on the fiery wheel is perhaps a slight exaggeration, no matter how uncomfortable and annoying the vetturini and the bumpy roads of Italy were. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that the author of The Sorrows of Young Werther allows himself some moments of self-pity. Fortunately, there’s frequently a spark of humour underlying his disgruntlement. In Palermo, for instance, he falls into conversation with a Sicilian who had once been to Weimar and who wants to gossip about the people he knew there. "And how," [the Sicilian] asked, "is the person, who, full of youth and vivacity when I was there, was the life of society? I have forgotten his name, but he is the author of 'Werther.'" After a little pause, as if for the sake of tasking my memory, I answered, "I am the person whom you are inquiring about." With the most visible signs of astonishment, he sprung back, exclaiming, "There must have been a great change then!" "O yes," I rejoined, "between Weimar and Palermo I have gone through many a change”.
To give him his due, Goethe had attempted initially to travel incognito, and was happy not to be recognized, but, as he tells us, in order that it may not be the same with my dear incognito as with the ostrich, which thinks itself to be concealed when it has hid its head, so in certain cases I give it up. He chose therefore to be lauded and feted by well connected people in Rome, Naples and Palermo: Just now I have had a visit from a Marchese Berio, a young man who appears to be well informed. He was anxious to make the acquaintance of the author of "Werther.”
The author of ‘Werther’ will always be associated for me with the notion of the Beautiful versus the Sublime, and his accounts of the horrifically spectacular eruptions of the volcanoes at Vesuvius and Mount Etna offered perfect examples of the Sublime itself—I added some of those passages to the updates so I won’t quote them again but here's one of his own drawings of Vesuvius erupting in 1786.
Neither so sublime nor beautiful as his written descriptions perhaps, but a trace of his underlying humour can be seen in the foreground figures.
Speaking of the Beautiful, one of the most beautiful passages I found was the following, written on visiting Naples: I can pardon all who lose their senses in Naples, and remember with emotion my father, who retained to the last an indelible impression of those objects which to-day I have cast eyes upon for the first time. Just as it is said, that people who have once seen a ghost, are never afterwards seen to smile, so in the opposite sense it may be said of him, that he never could become perfectly miserable, so long as he remembered Naples.
I will never become perfectly miserable so long as I have books like this to entertain me.
Goethe goes on to remark that this is the first Latin verse, the subject of which ever stood visibly before me, and now, in the present moment, when the wind is blowing stronger and stronger, and the lake casts loftier billows against the little harbour, it is just as true as it was hundreds of years ago. Much, indeed, has changed, but the wind still roars…
'Storm on Lake Garda' Rudolf von Alt, 1839
Much indeed has changed but something remains from those long-ago traveling habits. When I travel, I also take books with me, and like Goethe and Volkmann, I choose titles that are related to the destination. While visiting Northern Italy in September of this year, I took this volume of travel writings along and began reading it on the plane.
My flight followed a path across the Alps, and as the bright peaks spread beneath us, I read about Goethe’s trip through alpine mountain passes: nothing could vie with the view of the mountains covered with snow and glaciers. We sat down before some rocks to shelter us from the cold wind, with the sunshine full upon us, and highly relished our little meal.
I was very aware of the contrast between his experience and mine. Unlike Goethe, who had to dismount each time the mule train had to face into a steep slope, I was comfortably seated the whole way. I may not have relished my food quite as much as he did but I had a great view of crest overlying crest as far as the porthole could see.
Viewing the Alps from above gave me huge respect for the traveler of Goethe’s day. The choice of conveyance was limited. Apart from the mule train, you could hire a horse-drawn carriage called a vettura, driven by a vetturino, but in Goethe’s experience, it is but sorry travelling with a vetturino, it is always best to follow at one's ease on foot. The repeated mention of being obliged to get down and walk leaves the reader with the impression that Goethe travelled most of the way from his home in Weimar to Rome on foot!
His book collection probably travelled more comfortably, stowed away in the mule packs or in the back of the vettura, but I’d like to think he had at least one little book in his pocket for when he took a rest—as I did on the steps of the amphitheater in Verona which I visited for the first time on the 16th of September last.
I took out my book and read a few pages, and might well have echoed Goethe’s words about reading Virgil while contemplating Lake Garda, because what should I read while sitting in the sun on the steps of the amhitheatre but the following lines:
Well then, the [Verona] amphitheater is the first important monument of the old times that I have seen—and how well it is preserved! When I entered, and still more when I walked round the edge of it at the top, it seemed strange to me, that I saw something great, and yet, properly speaking, saw nothing. I was quite alone..
That passage, in which Goethe regrets that the amphitheater was empty, was dated the 16th of September 1786—and reading it inside the amphitheater on the 16th of September 2017 was a highlight of my book life!
That day, there was a concert being set up in the arena, so there was a lot of noise. Workmen were constructing platforms and rigging up scaffolding for the light system; sound engineers were testing the powerful speakers; there were tourists crowded onto the tiered seating, adding to the general hubbub. I’d have preferred to be ‘quite alone’ as I read Goethe’s eighteenth century observations.
Two hundred and thirty years old though they are, his observations seem oddly in tune with my life. It isn’t just that he liked to take travel writing along on his trips, or that we happened to be in Verona on the same day of the same month, it’s that his real life experiences in Switzerland and Italy seem to match my recent fictional journeys. When he mentions the romantic Castle of Chillon near Geneva, I immediately pictured dauntless Daisy Miller offering her girlish dreams a day-trip. When he enthuses about Leonardo de Vinci in Rome, I smiled because I’d just been reading about Leonardo’s Roman sojourn in The Subtlest Soul. When Goethe speaks of Tivoli where the ancient Romans had their villas, I think immediately of Yourcenar’s Tivoli setting for Mémoires d'Hadrien. When the boat in which he is travelling to Sicily encounters high winds while skirting Capri, I was reminded of that great Capri saga, South Wind which I read earlier this year. A description of the marvelously decorated palace of a Sicilian Prince brought back The Leopard, also a recent read.
But there were other surprising parallels between Goethe’s experiences and mine. When he views the rococo decor of the interior of Saint Peter’s in Rome, he says, as men willing to be pleased, we were delighted with its vastness and splendour, and did not allow an over nice or hypocritical taste to mar our pleasure. We suppressed every harsher judgment: we enjoyed the enjoyable. Not only could I relate to that reaction regarding the interior of Saint Peter’s, I had a similar one when I first glimpsed the profusion of pinnacles rising from the unusually broad gothic façade of the cathedral in Milan. But like Goethe, I suppressed any harsher judgement and just enjoyed the expanse of bright white marble peaks sparkling in the September sun.
While we might both be a little doubtful about over elaborate architectural decor, he and I share a definite love of art galleries. I spent many happy hours in the Pinacoteca Brera, the Ambrosiana and a host of other galleries, and can easily relate to his enthusiasm for art: It lies in my nature to admire, willingly and joyfully, all that is great and beautiful, and the cultivation of this talent, day after day, hour after hour, by the inspection of such beautiful objects, produces the happiest feelings.
One happy feeling I definitely experienced was finding a statue of Goethe himself in the courtyard between the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and the Biblioteca of the same name in Milan. I had been disappointed to find no reference to the city in his book but finding his statue there made up for that. And since Goethe was an artist as well as a writer, the Ambrosiana complex which houses both books and paintings, was the perfect place for his monument.
As well as viewing art collections, Goethe visited many churches too, just as I did, and we both had interesting encounters with caretakers. His conversation with a porter who promised to not only shew me the church and all its parts, but also to narrate to me in full the histories of the several altars and chapels; and, moreover, that he should also open to me all the sacristies, and shew me their remarkable contents, mirrored an experience we had in a church in Parma. Because we took such an interest in the architecture and decor of the church, the caretaker gave us a detailed account of the history of the building, and then declared we couldn’t possibly leave until we had visited the former sacristy though it wasn't normally open to the public. The Aladdin’s cave which was unlocked for us with the caretaker’s giant iron key was an elaborately furnished space with a frescoed ceiling. Each cabinet was decorated with fine marquetry and when opened revealed shelf upon shelf of intricately designed liturgical ornaments and beautifully bound books. Quite a treasury.
Goethe and I were on the same page much of the time but not always—I would never consider advising the Italians on how to make their cities cleaner, for example: As I walked along I could not refrain from sketching a body of regulations on the subject, anticipating in thought some superintendent of police, who might act in earnest. Thus one always feels an inclination to sweep one's neighbour's door.
He was also much more disgruntled than I was with Italian life in general: I am now made only too sensible of the rashness of travelling in this country without a servant, and without providing oneself well with every necessary. What with the ever-changing currency, the vetturini, the extortion, the wretched inns, one who, like myself, is travelling alone, for the first time in this country, hoping to find uninterrupted pleasure, will be sure to find himself miserably disappointed every day. However, I wished to see the country at any cost, and even if I must be dragged to Rome on Ixion's wheel, I shall not complain.
Comparing his situation to Ixion’s torture on the fiery wheel is perhaps a slight exaggeration, no matter how uncomfortable and annoying the vetturini and the bumpy roads of Italy were. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that the author of The Sorrows of Young Werther allows himself some moments of self-pity. Fortunately, there’s frequently a spark of humour underlying his disgruntlement. In Palermo, for instance, he falls into conversation with a Sicilian who had once been to Weimar and who wants to gossip about the people he knew there. "And how," [the Sicilian] asked, "is the person, who, full of youth and vivacity when I was there, was the life of society? I have forgotten his name, but he is the author of 'Werther.'" After a little pause, as if for the sake of tasking my memory, I answered, "I am the person whom you are inquiring about." With the most visible signs of astonishment, he sprung back, exclaiming, "There must have been a great change then!" "O yes," I rejoined, "between Weimar and Palermo I have gone through many a change”.
To give him his due, Goethe had attempted initially to travel incognito, and was happy not to be recognized, but, as he tells us, in order that it may not be the same with my dear incognito as with the ostrich, which thinks itself to be concealed when it has hid its head, so in certain cases I give it up. He chose therefore to be lauded and feted by well connected people in Rome, Naples and Palermo: Just now I have had a visit from a Marchese Berio, a young man who appears to be well informed. He was anxious to make the acquaintance of the author of "Werther.”
The author of ‘Werther’ will always be associated for me with the notion of the Beautiful versus the Sublime, and his accounts of the horrifically spectacular eruptions of the volcanoes at Vesuvius and Mount Etna offered perfect examples of the Sublime itself—I added some of those passages to the updates so I won’t quote them again but here's one of his own drawings of Vesuvius erupting in 1786.
Neither so sublime nor beautiful as his written descriptions perhaps, but a trace of his underlying humour can be seen in the foreground figures.
Speaking of the Beautiful, one of the most beautiful passages I found was the following, written on visiting Naples: I can pardon all who lose their senses in Naples, and remember with emotion my father, who retained to the last an indelible impression of those objects which to-day I have cast eyes upon for the first time. Just as it is said, that people who have once seen a ghost, are never afterwards seen to smile, so in the opposite sense it may be said of him, that he never could become perfectly miserable, so long as he remembered Naples.
I will never become perfectly miserable so long as I have books like this to entertain me.
February 20, 2015
Les Voyages en Suisse et en Italie sont un ensemble de lettres écrites par Goethe à la fin du dix-huitième siècle, lorsqu'il se rendit dans le sud de l'Europe, jusqu'en Sicile. L'intérêt est inégal, mais si nombre d'entre elles restent anecdotiques, on en trouvera des descriptions très vivantes, comme par exemple le carnaval de Rome. Ce voyage fut également dédié à l'étude, Goethe restant plusieurs mois à Rome, et fourmille d'observations intéressantes sur la genèse de ses œuvres qui raviront les amateurs et les curieux. Pas mal.
June 28, 2021
A beautifully written account of Goethe's travels across Europe and his influences from them. I would thoroughly recommend anyone interested in his life or, indeed, this genre to read.
September 11, 2009
Letters from Switzerland. More of a geographic discourse, very hill and dale he saw, to the tune of several hundred pages. Still well written, just rather dull.
Letters from Italy. No this on the other hand, approaches the same candid nature as his Autobiography. Some of it is hysterically funny, some sad (when he realized that a very famous artist's pictures were complete fabrications, indicating that the artist had never even been to the location, making his art a lie). His comments on the Roman Chuch, as observed while in Rome, are funny - and sad, although accurate, from the Christian perspective. His observations about people from the different regions in Italy are very apt - and still pretty accurate, today. Really, a great read. I'd give Lettters from Italy a 5+.
Letters from Italy. No this on the other hand, approaches the same candid nature as his Autobiography. Some of it is hysterically funny, some sad (when he realized that a very famous artist's pictures were complete fabrications, indicating that the artist had never even been to the location, making his art a lie). His comments on the Roman Chuch, as observed while in Rome, are funny - and sad, although accurate, from the Christian perspective. His observations about people from the different regions in Italy are very apt - and still pretty accurate, today. Really, a great read. I'd give Lettters from Italy a 5+.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews