Goethe's Italian Journey

Locator: 10010GOETHE.

One of the challenges of reading literature in high school and college is the fact that one needs to be receptive to what one is reading. If one is not receptive it becomes drudgery and very little is gained. I was reminded of that when I began reading Goethe's Italian Journey last night. I had mentioned in the previous post that the pristine condition of my paperback suggested the book had never been read, and certainly not by me. How wrong I was. It had annotations throughout the index. Obviously I enjoyed the book enough the first time that I added notes to the index for future reference. But, just as obvious, I was not truly receptive at that time to read the Italian Journey. I must have been in my Goethe phase and in an attempt to understand him better I must have tried reading his other works (I do recall skimming through Werther at a discount book store but did not buy it and have not read it to this day). Having not been receptive to reading the Italian Journey some years ago I don't even recall having read it!

But now I am very receptive and read about one-third of it last night, savoring every bit of it.

Why am I receptive to it now, I wonder? I know that I was looking for something new to read. I had become bored with Harold Bloom's Genius; I will continue to read the latter; it is easy to do since it is really a compilation of essays. Perhaps subliminally Bloom suggested I read Goethe again since he had an essay on him in Genius, and yesterday when I was going through a box of "stored books," I came across the Italian Journey, and was curious again. (For the same reason I started to re-read John Dominic Crossan's In Search of Paul again. Bloom had an essay on Paul and I re-discovered the book in that same box in which I found the Italian Journey. I was also prepared to re-read Crossan's Paul having just completed a little treasure, G. W. Anderson's The Religion and History of Israel, taking me through Old Testament times, well before Paul. But I digress.)

So, I was receptive to Goethe because I was bored, and was looking for something different. More importantly I had just read  Edith Wharton's A Backward Glance in which she praised the Italian Journey, and I think that was the main reason I wanted to go back to Goethe. I had not realized how much this was simply a travel book, nothing more, nothing less, but written by a genius and a poet.

And, then, as luck would have it, my copy had been translated by W. H. Auden, who, as I mentioned before, had intrigued me. The introduction to the Italian Journey by Auden and Elizabeth Mayer was so lucid and so enjoyable. Perhaps that, the introduction, was the final reason for making me so receptive to reading the Italian Journey.