The Journey As A Psychological Quest

One of my favourite travel books is Goethe's Italian Journey . . .

Some journeys — Goethe's was one — really are quests. Italian Journey is not only a description of places, persons and things, but also a psychological document of the first importance. 

WH AUDEN

Some quotes from the book itself . . . 

My purpose in making this wonderful journey is not to delude myself, but to discover myself in the objects I see.

Wherever I walk, I come upon familiar objects in an unfamiliar world; everything is just as I imagined it, yet everything is new. It is the same with my observations and ideas. I have not had a single idea which was entirely new or surprising, but my old ideas have become so much more firm, vital, coherent that they could be called new. 

Naples.

Naples is a paradise; everyone lives in a state of intoxicated self-forgetfulness, myself included. I seem to be a completely different person whom I hardly recognise. Yesterday I thought to myself: either you were mad before, or you are mad now.

Naples.

When I indulge in self-reflection, as I like to do occasionally, I discover in myself a feeling which gives me great joy. Let me put it like this. In this place, whoever looks seriously about him and has eyes to see is bound to become a stronger character . . .  At least I can say that I have never been so sensitive to the things of this world as I am here. The blessed consequences will, I believe, affect my whole future life.

Nothing, above all, is comparable to the new life that a reflective person experiences when he observes a new country. Though I am still always myself, I believe I have been changed to the very marrow of my bones.

GOETHE

Frankfurt

The Paulskirche, or St Paul's Church, in Frankfurt. This church has great historic and political importance, as it was the seat of the first democratically elected German parliament in 1848. This first National Assembly paved the way for the unification of Germany as a nation state in 1871.

The Römer has been Frankfurt's city hall for over 600 years (the British Queen Elizabeth II visited this historic landmark just a few weeks ago). These buildings have been much restored, for in 1944 Allied bombers obliterated the Römer, along with much of central Frankfurt. 

Opposite the city hall, and forming the east side of the Römerberg square, are more reconstructed buildings.

The famous Eiserner Steg, or Iron Bridge — a pedestrian bridge connecting the Römerberg with Sachsenhausen on the south bank of the river Main. The bridge was blown up by German forces at the end of World War II, but quickly rebuilt in 1946.

The view west down the Main from the Iron Bridge.

Cityscape old and new: modern skyscrapers dwarf the Catholic Leonhardskirche, which originally dates from 1219 and is an important pilgrimage church. Frankfurt lies at an intersection of pilgrim routes leading to Jerusalem and Santiago.   

Frankfurt's Historisches Museum (Historical Museum). Once again, this has been completely restored.

At one corner of Saint Paul‘s Church stands this concentration camp memorial — a sober reminder of the Holocaust and the dark days of the early 1940s.

The Goethehaus at 23, Grosser Hirschgraben. Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born here on 28 August 1749. The house was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1944, but reconstructed as closely as possible to the original between 1947 and 1951. Inside you can see Goethe's study and the writing desk at which he wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, a seminal book of the Romantic movement.

On the second floor of the Goethehaus stands this astronomical clock made in the eighteenth century by clockmaker Christian Kintzing of Neuwied.

A Comedic Greek Tragedy And A Rhinocerus In London

To London for a few days . . . On Wednesday evening it was the Old Vic with Kristin Scott Thomas and Diana Quick in Ian Rickson's production of Electra. After reading some positive reviews, I must admit we were a little disappointed. The disconcertingly flippant style took some getting used to, and the longer the performance went on, the more it seemed to play for laughs. Laughs in a Greek tragedy? Although Scott Thomas as Electra was impressive in her histrionics, and Quick as her husband-slaying mother Clytemnestra a wonderful foil, we were left feeling rather let down: a case of bathos rather than catharsis. The next morning we walked from the Travelodge in Farringdon Road to the Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty Street (above), along Chancery Lane . . .

 . . . through Holborn, past the Law Courts and down the Strand . . .

. . . to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, where we bought tickets for Rembrandt: The Late Works. The show was simply stunning. Many famous pictures were on display, including several self-portraits. Compared with the flat, prosaic book and poster illustrations we're all familiar with, the original oils are all about vitality and texture — you could witness close-up the rough layers of paint Rembrandt applied with a palette knife, giving human skin a sweaty, tactile, lived-in quality. Unlike most of the visitors, who dutifully toured the exhibition in the pre-planned order of their yawningly tedious audio guides, we darted about here and there, going where the crowds were the thinnest, sometimes viewing etchings and paintings from more distant and unusual perspectives across dimly-lit rooms. I was especially struck by this sketch of a young woman sleeping (above) . . .      

On Friday we climbed to the top of St Paul's . . .

. . . to a bird's-eye view of modernist London in muted greys and greens.

The Thames and Blackfriars Bridge.

From St Paul's we crossed the river by the Millennium Footbridge and made our way past Tate Modern to the National Theatre and the Southbank Centre.

Sunset over the Thames.

The Hotel Russell, Bloomsbury. I remember many sales conferences here in times past . . .

. . . but back to times present, and it's Saturday morning, and we decided to visit the British Museum before catching our train. London had been vibrant and dynamic — buzzing with happy, optimistic young people — but we were glad to return to the peace and quiet, the serenity and fresh air of home.

Marble sculptures from the Greek Parthenon.

The special exhibition Germany: Memories of a Nation: a 600-year History in Objects was well worth the price of its £10 entry ticket, and included Tischbein's iconic portrait of Goethe and Dürer's woodcut print of a rhinoceros. 

Italian Farewell: Travel And Life

And now, farewell! On this journey I shall certainly learn how to travel; whether I shall learn how to live, I don't know. The people I meet who possess this art are so different from me in their nature and habits that I doubt whether I have the talent. GOETHE Italian Journey

So it's farewell, Italy, with your succulence...



... your seascapes...



... and your familiar strangers...

(All photos taken in Positano)

Mystical Topography: A Naples Of The Mind

I wonder if the remark by Goethe I quoted yesterday - that his father could never really be unhappy because his thoughts could always return to Naples - resonated with anyone as much as it did with me? For I'm continually recalling special places I've been to, numinous places I've stumbled across, significant intersections of latitude and longitude on this fair earth I've washed up against - and this brings me deep content. It's something I often do before falling asleep each night. Revisiting these sacred spots in the imagination is something I never tire of. And, apart from happiness, I think it's also a source of creativity.

A jewel-like lake high in the Ariège in the French Pyrenees, the top of Haystacks in the English Lake District, the golden crescent of sand at Sandwood Bay in north-west Scotland, a birch and chestnut forest in south-west France on the Voie d'Arles pilgrimage route, the tabletop plateau of the Spanish meseta on the Camino Francés, a view across Monsal Dale in Derbyshire's Peak District on a still summer's day, when I lay in the grass over a precipice, insects busy all around ... The list is endless, and the pleasure of recollection unbounded.

But perhaps the most deeply embedded, the most meaningful of all are those place-memories from childhood. Some of these are inerasably etched on my mind, for they are the places which first gave me that feeling of the thrill and shock of the natural world, and that half-mystical shudder you get when suddenly 'ambushed by beauty'. Among these epiphanies of place I remember the summit of Potter's Hill near Woolacombe in Devon, the semi-tropical Undercliff area near Lyme Regis in Dorset, and the tiny 'island' my sister and I named 'Crystal Island' (a simple patch of grass, a few trees and marsh surrounded by farmers' dykes) which lay a couple of miles from our family home in Lincolnshire ...

We all have a Naples of the mind, a place where we can never really be unhappy. The memories of such special places are ours forever, locked in the treasure-chest of our minds and imaginations, always there to give solace, sustenance and inspiration whenever we turn the key.

(The photo shows one of my special places: the High Ariège in the French Pyrenees.)

Goethe On Naples

After the monochrome and muted tones of some more northerly European landscapes, the intense light and vibrant colours of southern Italy come as a wonderful shock to the senses. Goethe travelled to Italy between 1786 and 1788, and was highly enthusiastic about its charms. He was in Naples in March and May 1787, visiting Sicily during the intervening month ...

By the time we reached the outskirts of Naples the sky was completely cloudless, and now we are really in another country. The houses with their flat roofs indicate another climate, though I dare say they are not so comfortable inside. Everybody is out in the streets and sitting in the sun as long as it is willing to shine. The Neapolitan firmly believes that he lives in Paradise and takes a very dismal view of northern countries. Sempre neve, case di legno, gran ignoranza, ma denari assai - that is how he pictures our lives. For the edification of all northerners, this means: 'Snow all the year round, wooden houses, great ignorance, but lots of money.'

We spent today in ecstasies over the most astonishing sights. One may write or paint as much as one likes, but this place, the shore, the gulf, Vesuvius, the citadels, the villas, everything, defies description ... Now I can forgive anyone for going off his head about Naples, and think with great affection of my father, who received such lasting impressions from the very same objects I saw today. They say that someone who has once seen a ghost will never be happy again; vice versa, one might say of my father that he could never really be unhappy because his thoughts could always return to Naples. In my own way, I can now keep perfectly calm and it is only occasionally, when everything becomes too overwhelming, that my eyes pop out of my head.

Everything one sees and hears gives evidence that this is a happy country which amply satisfies all the basic needs and breeds a people who are happy by nature, people who can wait without concern for tomorrow to bring them what they had today and for that reason lead a happy-go-lucky existence, content with momentary satisfaction and moderate pleasures, and taking pain and sorrow as they come with cheerful resignation.

Naples is a Paradise: everyone lives in a state of intoxicated self-forgetfulness, myself included. I seem to be a completely different person whom I hardly recognize. Yesterday I thought to myself: Either you were mad before, or you are mad now ... Every time I wish to write words, visual images come up of the fruitful countryside, the open sea, the islands veiled in a haze, the smoking mountain, etc., and I lack the mental organ which could describe them.

(All quotes are taken from Goethe's Italian Journey.)

Greek Theatre, Taormina

After climbing the steep cliffs near the sea, one reaches two summits connected by a half-circle. Whatever shape it may have had originally, Art has assisted Nature to build this semicircle which held the amphitheatre audience. Walls and other structures of brick were added to provide the necessary passages and halls. The proscenium was built in a diagonal at the foot of the tiered half-circle, stretching from cliff to cliff to complete a stupendous work of Art and Nature.

If one sits down where the topmost spectators sat, one has to admit that no audience in any other theatre ever beheld such a view. Citadels stand perched on higher cliffs to the right; down below lies the town. Though these buildings are of a much later date, similar ones probably stood in the same places in older days. Straight ahead one sees the long ridge of Etna, to the left the coast line as far as Catania or even Syracuse, and the whole panorama is capped by the huge, fuming, fiery mountain, the look of which, tempered by distance and atmosphere, is, however, more friendly than forbidding. GOETHE Italian Journey

Bob Dylan played the Greek theatre, Taormina, on 28 July 2001. What a setting to have seen him in!

If Love Came In Colours, Then I'd Choose This One For You

I was very struck by this poem which Lorenzo quoted in his comment on my Cornflower Blue post recently - so I reproduce it here.

Words to Accompany a Bunch of Cornflowers

Those beads of lapis, even the classical
Blues of dawn, are dimmed by comparison.
When I hand you this bunch of cornflowers
The only other color in the room
Illumines your eyes as you arrange them.

They are the blue reflection of whatever
Moves in you, serene as cool water tipped
Into crystal, oddly enough the willing bride
To a cloudy head of melancholy
So deeply blue it could prove musical.

This is the blue John Lee Hooker’s gravelly
Voice in the sundown field was looking for.
This is the unrequited dream of an iris.
Ice blue, spruce blue, little periwinkle blue—
Nothing else that dies is exactly so blue.

GIBBONS RUARK

(This poem immediately brought to mind the 'Blaue Blume', the 'Blue Flower' symbol of German Romanticism, emblem of love, desire and impossible longing. I remember being strongly affected by this motif when reading Novalis, von Eichendorff and Goethe in the sixth-form at school - and later when studying German Literature at university.)

Present Joy

I'll close A Year Of Grace after taking one more quotation from it. It's only a short one. It comes from Goethe's flawed, magnificent, practically unstageable, poetic and dramatic masterpiece Faust. I love Faust and I love Goethe. At one time in my life I had to read almost everything Goethe ever wrote - and I did not regret it. Goethe towers over German Literature as Tolstoy does over Russian Literature and Shakespeare does over ours. This is from Faust Part II, Act III - the scene where Faust meets Helen of Troy:

FAUST. The Spirit looks not forward, not behind,
Here in the Present -

HELEN. Here our joy we find.

So A Year Of Grace has led us from the blessings of the Beatitudes to a willing and joyful endurance of all aspects of life (for the good of "the peace and tranquillity of our soul"); from the perception of beauty and the praising (the witnessing and the celebrating) of it (and praise not only of obvious beauty but also of "those dark, deadly, devastating" and "wildest and mildest of ways"), finally to the positive recognition of the present moment.

Grace indeed.

This Reading Life (2)

The sage-like figure of Goethe looms over German literature like Shakespeare does over ours. This from his Italian Journey...

...knowing that life, taken as a whole, is like the Roman Carnival: unpredictable, unsatisfactory and problematic. I hope that this carefree crowd of maskers will make them [my readers] remember how valuable is every moment of joy, however fleeting and trivial it may seem to be.

Similarly, Tolstoy is the writer who towers over Russian literature. I've read Anna Karenina, but I'm ashamed to say I have yet to read War And Peace. I see I haven't noted down the origin of this Tolstoyan quotation...

Admit that human life can be guided by reason and all possibility of life is annihilated.

And while we're on Russian literature, Anton Chekhov, who penned some of the most sublime plays and short stories ever written, observed...

Every person lives his real, most interesting life under cover of secrecy.

The opening sentences of the Prologue to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography reverberate in the mind long after the book has been put down...

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I must have been subconsciously following Mark Twain's advice when I walked the Camino towards the end of last year...

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

And finally two quotes about the power of language, and its potential force for good. The first from John Berger...

One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannnot be hostile to man.

Developing this theme, the distinguished academic and Bob Dylan critic Christopher Ricks writes in his fascinating, deep and detailed book Dylan's Visions Of Sin...

Words trust, and they can keep faith. They are built upon faith, the faith that people will tell the truth - or at any rate that people may betray themselves when they are failing to do so... A language is a body of agreement, and acts of trust. A word is not a matter of fact, or matter of opinion, it is a social contract. Like all contracts, its life is a pledge and a faith. (And, like all contracts, it can be dishonest, suspect.) Songs and poems likewise keep faith alive. They "strengthen the things that remain" - words of the Book of Revelation...

As Dylan aficionados will know, Dylan quotes these Biblical words in his song When You Gonna Wake Up from the album Slow Train Coming. Unlike many, I never did turn against Dylan during his evangelical, religious phase - and some very good songs did come out of this period, for instance Precious Angel...

I've really enjoyed leafing through my old notebooks of quotations. I hope some of the sentiments struck a chord with some of you. Perhaps I'll do the same again some time...