hardly had goethe set foot on italian ground when he began to feel something of the joy and elasticity of temper for which he had been longing. he was absolutely his own master again, and all around him was the sunny land which he greeted as, in some sense, the true home of his spirit. the people, too, with their natural grace and courtesy, delighted him, and their speech fell softly and pleasantly on his ears. he had never had keener pleasure than he felt in looking forward to the happy days and weeks that were before him.
during his visit to italy he wrote a large number of letters, most of which were addressed to frau von stein. long afterwards he issued some of them, carefully edited, as one of the supplements of his autobiography, giving them the general title, “italienische reise” (“italian journey”). these letters have all the freshness of immediate impressions, yet we find in them only so much detail as is necessary to give brightness and animation to his pictures of the central elements of interest that meet him on his way. in every letter we{107} feel the influence of a deep enthusiasm, but it is an enthusiasm that never distorts his vision or injures the noble simplicity and purity of his style.
he entered italy from the tyrol, and the first important town at which he stopped was verona. from verona he went to vicenza, and so, through padua, to venice. at venice he remained three weeks, allowing its splendours to impress themselves deeply on his imagination. he then went to bologna, which he ever afterwards associated with the charm of raphael’s st. agatha. in his thoughts about italy it had always been rome of which he had chiefly dreamed, and now his longing to be there became so overwhelming that he hurried over what remained of the journey, staying only three hours at florence. in view of the joy that was to come he was scarcely conscious of the inconveniences of travel. “if i am dragged to rome on ixion’s wheel,” he wrote, “i will not complain.”
on october 29, 1786, he drove into rome through the porta del popolo. “yes,” he wrote a day or two afterwards, “i have at last arrived at the capital of the world!... all the dreams of my youth are now realized. the first engravings i remember—my father had hung the views of rome in an entrance-hall—i see now in reality, and all the things i have long known from paintings and drawings, from copper-plates and wood-cuts, from plaster casts and cork models, stand together before me. wherever i go, i find an acquaintance in a new world; it is all as i had conceived it, and all new. the like i may say of my observations, of my ideas. i have had no new thoughts, have found{108} nothing quite strange, but the old thoughts have been so defined, they have become so thoroughly alive, they have been brought into such harmonious relation to one another, that they may pass for new. when pygmalion’s elise, whom he had formed absolutely in accordance with his wishes, and to whom he had given as much truth and reality as were within the scope of art, at last came to him, and said, ‘it is i,’ how different was the living woman from the sculptured stone!”
while at rome, goethe realized with new vividness all that the mighty city had been to the world in the remote ages when on her had been imposed the task of guiding it to higher destinies. and he worked hard to think himself back into the rome of ancient times. this, he confesses in one of his letters, was no easy task. “it is a sour and sad undertaking,” he writes, “to pick out the old rome from the new.... one comes upon traces of a splendour and of a destruction, both of which go beyond our conceptions. what the barbarians allowed to stand, the architects of modern rome have laid waste.” gradually, however, a living idea of the ancient city was formed in his mind. “roman antiquities,” he wrote about two months after his arrival, “begin to delight me. history, inscriptions, medals, of which i might otherwise have known nothing, all crowd in on me. as it happened to me in natural history, so it happens here; for in this place the entire history of the world centres, and i count as a second birthday, the day of a real new birth, that on which i entered rome.” with regard to the significance of the remains of ancient art in rome, winckelmann had introduced a wholly new order of ideas, and goethe{109} owed much to him in the appreciation of the apollo belvedere and all the other masterpieces of sculpture he had now an opportunity of studying. he was astonished to find how little he had learned from plaster casts. the breath of life, it seemed to him, was to be felt only in the original marble figures. the fascination exerted by ancient statues led him to renew, but in a higher way, the studies of the human body which he had formerly carried on through anatomy. “in our medico-surgical anatomy,” he says, “all that is aimed at is a knowledge of the part, and for this a wretched muscle is enough. but in rome the parts are worth nothing if they do not at the same time present a noble, beautiful form.”
the art of the renascence, as represented in rome, stirred in goethe an interest not less profound than that awakened by ancient sculpture. long before, when as a young student he visited dresden, the pictures which had appealed to him most strongly were those of the dutch school. now he felt the power of the ideal art of italy in her great period. he was fascinated by the loggie of raphael, at the vatican, but even they seemed of slight importance in comparison with the masterpieces of michael angelo in the sixtine chapel. “i could,” he says, writing of these sublime conceptions, “only gaze and stand amazed. the inward sureness and manliness of the master, his greatness, go beyond all expression.”
he did not fail, of course, to make pilgrimages to the great churches, and in one of his letters he describes how, after a visit to the sixtine chapel, he went with his friend tischbein to st. peter’s, “which received the most beautiful light from the cheerful sky, and appeared in all{110} its parts bright and clear.” “as men who had come to enjoy what we were to see, we delighted in its greatness and splendour, without allowing ourselves, this time, to be misled by a taste too fastidious and intelligent. we suppressed every unfavourable judgment, and delighted in what was delightful.”
anxious that nothing should stand in the way of his full enjoyment of “the capital of the world,” goethe avoided as far as possible all association with “the great.” he had, however, several friends with whom he had pleasant intercourse. the most intimate of them was tischbein, a good german artist, whom he had known for several years. goethe occupied two rooms in tischbein’s house, and obtained from him much help in the study both of ancient and of modern art. another of his friends at rome was meyer, a swiss artist, who delighted him as much by the charm of his personal character as by his artistic skill and knowledge. goethe was also greatly attracted by moritz, a writer who had made some reputation as the author of a book of travels in england, and was now collecting materials for a like book on italy. angelica kaufmann, who had settled in rome after her departure from london, welcomed goethe cordially to her home, and he soon held her in high esteem. with these and other friends he spent many happy hours, and his delight in the new world opened to him in rome was, if possible, deepened and intensified by their sympathy.
from the time when goethe had taken lessons in drawing from oeser at leipsic he had never lost the wish to become a skilful artist; and at weimar he had dis{111}played considerable aptitude for portraiture. now, when he had so many opportunities of indulging his taste, he took great pains to improve himself in drawing, painting, and modelling. for some time he even debated with himself whether he ought not to become an artist by profession. he did not long, however, remain in doubt. although, with tischbein’s help, he made good progress, he was obliged to admit that nature had denied to him the capacity of achieving, in art, work that in any way corresponded to his lofty ideal of what such work should be.
he had brought with him from weimar many writings which he proposed either to complete or to re-cast for the new edition of his works. the first task undertaken was the transformation of “iphigenie” from a prose to a poetical drama, and he had worked at it more or less steadily at all the places at which he had stopped before reaching rome. it had also frequently occupied his thoughts while he travelled from one point of his journey to another. at bologna, while he stood before raphael’s st agatha, his conception of the character of iphigenie assumed a new and higher form. “i remarked the figure well,” he afterwards wrote; “in mind i shall read my ‘iphigenie’ to her, and my heroine shall say nothing that the saint might not utter.” in rome the writing of “iphigenie” formed from day to day, until the work was completed, the central interest around which all his other occupations grouped themselves. on the 12th of december the drama received its last touches, and it was soon afterwards read to a group of his friends. they had expected that the play would resemble “goetz von{112} berlichingen,” and goethe saw only too plainly that it disappointed them. angelica kaufmann alone had something like an adequate idea of its importance.
about this time goethe received a friendly letter from the duke of weimar extending his leave of absence indefinitely. he resolved to profit to the utmost by the opportunity thus provided for him, and on the 22nd of february, 1787, he started with tischbein for naples. as they approached the city, he was powerfully impressed by the view of vesuvius, from which great masses of smoke were issuing. the liveliness and good humour of the people of naples enchanted him, and he found inexhaustible sources of delight in the beauty of the town itself, in the bright southern sky, and in all the splendours of nature that constantly presented themselves in new aspects both on land and sea. twice he climbed vesuvius, and on both occasions he described his experiences in letters that bring the scene before us almost with the vividness of reality. as in rome, so in naples he made himself familiar with every treasure of ancient and modern art that was accessible to him, and his conception of the old roman world was at once enlarged and made more definite by visits to pompeii, herculaneum, and p?stum. “i have seen much and thought still more,” he wrote on the 17th of march; “the world opens itself more and more; even the things i have long known become now for the first time my own.” in the same letter, however, he says: “many a time i think of rousseau and his hypochondriacal misery, and yet it becomes intelligible to me how so fine an organization might be thrown off its balance. did i not take such{113} an interest in natural things, and did i not see that in the apparent confusion a hundred observations are capable of being compared and classified, as a land surveyor corrects many single measurements by one line drawn through them, i should often consider myself mad.”
on the 29th of march, 1787, accompanied by kniep, a german artist settled at naples, goethe embarked for sicily. sixteen days he remained at palermo, where art and nature combined to give him a happiness that seems to have been absolutely unalloyed. he then made for alcamo and segesta, visited girgenti and catania, climbed a part of mount etna, and finally arrived at messina, whence he returned by sea to naples. his letters, written for frau von stein, in the form of a diary, reproduce with astonishing power, yet with perfect simplicity, the impressions produced upon him during his visit to sicily. he studied closely the remains of greek architecture, and at the same time carried on his scientific investigations, which had occupied him at every favourable opportunity from the day of his arrival in italy. these investigations had become more attractive to him than ever, for he had now a clear conception of the main outlines of his great discovery of the metamorphosis of plants.
on the 6th of june he was once more in rome. it was his intention to return to weimar soon, but rome exercised so irresistible a power over him that nearly a year passed before he could bring himself to leave it. all that he had seen before his departure for naples he studied again and again, and almost daily he found objects of interest that had been overlooked. during{114} this time his idea of rome and of its greatest possessions became so full, accurate, and vivid that it was never in the faintest degree blurred by the events of his later life.
he looked forward with the deepest interest to the great ceremonies of the roman church during passion week, and they seem to have given him a wholly new conception of the service art may be made to render to religion. writing of a mass in the sixtine chapel, attended by the pope and the cardinals, he says he does not wonder that strangers are often unable to contain themselves in the presence of a spectacle at once so great and so simple. the ceremonies in the sixtine chapel on the morning of easter day filled him with admiration, and appeared to him a striking proof of the fact that at rome the church had penetrated deeply into the spirit of “the christian traditions.”
in his literary work his progress was less rapid than he had expected. he was able, however, to achieve some important results. among his papers was an unfinished prose drama, “egmont,” which dated from about the time when he had written “stella.” he had often thought of completing it at weimar, but had never accomplished his purpose. now he gave the play its final form, partly re-casting it; but re-writing it, as originally planned, in prose. he also improved the less important works, “erwin and elmire” and “claudine von villa bella.”
another of his papers, frayed at the edges and grey with age, was “faust,” in the form in which he had taken it from frankfort to weimar. it was hard for him, after so long an interval, to take up this work at the{115} point at which he had left it. on the 1st of march, 1788, however, he wrote that he had “found the thread again,” and that “the plan for ‘faust’ was made.” at rome he wrote “die hexenküche” (“the witches’ kitchen”), one of the most striking scenes in “faust,” a scene at which, no doubt, his imagination worked all the more freely from the strange contrast it presented to the actual world in the midst of which it was conceived. in this scene there is one slight indication of the difficulty he must have experienced in carrying on the work in the spirit in which it had been begun. faust in the first monologue says he has had pupils for ten years. this means that he cannot be much more than thirty years old. in the “hexenküche” he is presented as a man over fifty, for he speaks of the possibility of his youth being renewed by thirty years being struck out of his life. goethe never detected this curious contradiction.
at last it became necessary for him to drag himself away from the city he now knew and loved so well. on the evening of the 21st of april, 1788, he strolled with some friends along the corso in the moonlight, and visited for the last time the capitol and the colosseum. next day he was travelling towards the north. on the way he spent some time at florence and milan, and on the 18th of june he re-entered weimar.
