ABSTRACT
Goethe’s visit to Italy is usually known as his Italian Journey, from the title he gave in his old age to the book describing it. But his life in Italy would be a truer description of the time he spent there, most of it in Rome. It was no mere holiday tour or pleasure trip, and sightseeing occupied but a relatively small place in it; although he took ‘Volkmann’ with him, a digest of English and French travel books and the Baedeker of its day, he rarely used it, and when he did it was mostly to contradict it. He called on very few people, although it was then the custom to do so, and he did not take with him a single letter of introduction. Of Italian society, the chief goal of visitors in those days, he saw virtually nothing, nor did he ever go to any of the famous conversazioni, where visitors were always welcome; it was only in Naples that he mixed a little in the higher circles of society. Most of the time he spent, true to his pseudonym of Filippo Moller, as a painter among painters, living in the simplest conditions. He drew a great deal, talked with artists and dreamed once more of becoming a painter. At the same time he continued to work on his poetry and edited the first volumes of his Collected Writings. But above all he lived, loved and enjoyed life, delighting in the Italian sun and the brilliance of its light as he wandered round. In Italy he felt at home, for the first and last time in his life; elsewhere he always regarded himself as an exile. On returning to Weimar he felt more of an exile than ever, ‘a victim of despair’, cast out without hope, living in an alien land.
