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.)

Museums Can Be Sexy

Here's the entrance to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. This imposing building was first a cavalry barracks, then part of the university. It finally became a museum in the late 18th century, and today holds one of the best collections of Greco-Roman artefacts in the world. You can marvel there at extraordinary Classical, Etruscan and Egyptian antiquities: sculptures and statuary (including the famous 'Farnese Bull' - restored by Michelangelo - which depicts the Queen of Thebes tied to a bull and being torn apart on some rocks), murals and frescoes, helmets and instruments of warfare, ceramics, glassware, homely household items ...

Some of the most touching, intimate and beautiful objects are the fragments of fresco rescued from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the nearby towns submerged in ash and mud lava after the volcanic eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79 ...

This fresco comes from Stabiae, a seaside resort also engulfed by the eruption. It's known as Primavera di Stabiae (Stabiae's Springtime). The delicately painted figure of Spring is walking gracefully away from us, picking flowers as she goes ... Immediately I'm reminded of another figure whose back I photographed earlier in Palermo ...



And what's going on here? This is the goddess Artemis of Ephesus, one of the most widely venerated deities in Ancient Greece, and the centre of a huge cult. (Most statues in the museum are Roman copies of Greek originals, but this one's an actual Roman original - from the 2nd century AD.) So what on earth are all those strange protuberances on her chest? Some think this shows a many-breasted goddess of over-abundant fertility - after all, Artemis is the goddess of forests and hills, fertility and the hunt. But in fact these odd fruit-like globules are apparently more likely to represent the scrota of bulls, victims of sacrifice ...



And things get stranger and stranger ... for who can this reclining, pewter-like figure be? A hermaphrodite for sure ... and surrounded by wriggling snakes, or are they spermatozoa?



We looked for but could not find the erotica collection - which is locked away in the museum's notorious Secret Room. (I think you have to book a special visit beforehand.) So we never did see this coupling of Pan and the nanny goat ...

In Naples You Can Never Be Sad

Vedi Napoli e poi muori - 'See Naples and die' - is a saying commonly attributed to Goethe, though I have my doubts (I think he actually said, 'Someone who has seen Naples can never be sad.') The famous phrase means, of course, that when you've seen Naples, you can die content, knowing you've seen everything, seen the ultimate. It doesn't mean you'll be mugged by a cut-throat villain, fleeced by a snatch-and-grab kid on a scooter, then expire in the dust, caught in Mafia crossfire. (I'm glad to say none of these things happened to us.) Along with Goethe we found Naples completely wonderful - lively, chaotic, anarchistic, friendly, open-hearted... and real...

You could escape the loud and frenzied streets for quieter backwaters, such as the Piazza del Plebiscito with its Chiesa San Francesco di Paola...

And what about this for a shopping centre! Arndale, please take note...

Here's the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, in the heart of Naples' historic old quarter, Spaccanapoli. The richly carved Baroque obelisk is called a guglia, and at the top of the steeple is a statue of St Dominic himself...

But how about this? It looks very much like the pensive person (she of the fixed and contemplative gaze) whose back I photographed here in Palermo, and also the photographer I photographed in my Knowing Not-Knowing / Uncontrollable Journey post. And now she's joining me for breakfast in the B&B Parteno on the waterfront overlooking the Gulf of Naples! Whatever next?

See It And Die

Cook's Tourist's Handbook of 1884 declared this city ill-built, ill-paved, ill-lighted, ill-drained, ill-watched, ill-governed and ill-ventilated. It also said that it was perhaps the loveliest spot in Europe.

Lonely Planet's Italy describes the city as follows: Raucous, polluted, unruly, deafening and with so many of its majestic historical buildings grubby and crumbling, and says it has at least as much in common with Casablanca in Morocco or Egypt's Alexandria on the other side of the Mediterranean as with fellow Mediterranean ports such as Genoa, Marseilles or Barcelona. And, like the cities on the other side of the pond, it's glued together by the sheer zest and vitality of its inhabitants.

We know which city they're talking about, don't we - the city generally side-stepped by the more genteel kind of tourist bent on the safe, cultural delights of Rome and Florence, Venice and Verona.

Yes, Naples hit us like a sackful of hammers, and we loved it.