28th December 1983

The Endearing qualities of Goethe

I am reading Goethe’s Italian Journey at the moment.  I bought it in England this summer with the express intention of reading it in Italy, and the wait has proved worthwhile.  It is the first book by Goethe I have ever read, and I am enjoying it immensely.  Of course I had always regarded Goethe as a dusty figure – in much the same way as most English people must regard Shakespeare in fact – and now I am taking pleasure in having my presumption corrected.  His liveliness bursts forth from every page: he’s so human so curious, so eager to learn.  And the thought of a literary Olympian eyeing up the olive-eyed beauties and staying at hotels where there isn’t even a table at which to write up his journal is immensely endearing. 

I like his rejection of the North: I know from Heidelberg the provincial and conservative types he was rejecting, and I feel for the way he pined after the South for so many years.  I keep on hearing Byron through Goethe’s words, though the two were so different.  And as I read him, I think of the time in Berlin when I told Margaret about the Italophiles and Heidelberg and she rolled her eyes and sighed out, “Goethe”. 

How exciting it must have been for those romantics.  They were breaking new ground by rediscovering old, which must be a model for every significant learning process.  The 19-year olds who buy their Transalpino tickets and pack their borrowed rucksacks for the summer and take off to see the Duomo and the Ponti Vecchio at Florence are following down the same tracks, whether they know it or not.  The great cities of Europe are full not only of aspiring Hemingways, but also of shadow Byrons, Shelleys and Goethes. 

But these first romantics had stature, they travelled, they wrote, they sketched – and when one thinks of the energy that went into their letters and journals and sketchbooks and then of the lethargy that goes into the postcards and snapshots which are their modern descendants, it is enough to make one despair.  And Venice is full of mini-Turners pointing Nikon cameras at non-existent sunsets.  Where will it all end?  Romanticism has been the spirit of the times for 200 years now, surviving all imitation, trivialization and parody.  One wonders when on earth the end will come and what the new movement will be like.  It will have to be unimaginably different.  Only the unimaginable is really new.

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