In His Italian Travels Goethe
Jogs Along At A Snail's Pace, But Always Mindful That The Earth
Is Beneath And The Heavens Are Above Him.
His Italy is not
merely the fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and scene of
splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil, daily shined on by
the sun, and nightly by the moon.
Even the few showers are
faithfully recorded. He speaks as an unconcerned spectator,
whose object is faithfully to describe what he sees, and that,
for the most part, in the order in which he sees it. Even his
reflections do not interfere with his descriptions. In one place
he speaks of himself as giving so glowing and truthful a
description of an old tower to the peasants who had gathered
around him, that they who had been born and brought up in the
neighborhood must needs look over their shoulders, "that," to use
his own words, "they might behold with their eyes, what I had
praised to their ears," - "and I added nothing, not even the ivy
which for centuries had decorated the walls." It would thus be
possible for inferior minds to produce invaluable books, if this
very moderation were not the evidence of superiority; for the
wise are not so much wiser than others as respecters of their own
wisdom. Some, poor in spirit, record plaintively only what has
happened to them; but others how they have happened to the
universe, and the judgment which they have awarded to
circumstances. Above all, he possessed a hearty good-will to all
men, and never wrote a cross or even careless word. On one
occasion the post-boy snivelling, "Signor perdonate, questa e` la
mia patria," he confesses that "to me poor northerner came
something tear-like into the eyes."
Goethe's whole education and life were those of the artist. He
lacks the unconsciousness of the poet. In his autobiography he
describes accurately the life of the author of Wilhelm Meister.
For as there is in that book, mingled with a rare and serene
wisdom, a certain pettiness or exaggeration of trifles, wisdom
applied to produce a constrained and partial and merely well-bred
man, - a magnifying of the theatre till life itself is turned into
a stage, for which it is our duty to study our parts well, and
conduct with propriety and precision, - so in the autobiography,
the fault of his education is, so to speak, its merely artistic
completeness. Nature is hindered, though she prevails at last in
making an unusually catholic impression on the boy. It is the
life of a city boy, whose toys are pictures and works of art,
whose wonders are the theatre and kingly processions and
crownings. As the youth studied minutely the order and the
degrees in the imperial procession, and suffered none of its
effect to be lost on him, so the man aimed to secure a rank in
society which would satisfy his notion of fitness and
respectability. He was defrauded of much which the savage boy
enjoys.
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