Letters from Switzerland and Travels in Italy · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
FROM FERRARA TO ROME.
And so it may seem strange to some that we should go on troubling ourselves to acquire an idea of antiquity, although we have nothing before us but ruins, out of which we must first painfully reconstruct the very thing we wish to form an idea of. With what is called "_classical ground_" the case stands rather different. Here, if only we do not go to work fancifully, but take the ground really as it is, then we shall have the decisive arena which moulded more or less the greatest of events. Accordingly I have hitherto actively employed my geological and agricultural eye to the suppressing of fancy and sensibility, in order to gain for myself an unbiassed and distinct notion of the locality. By such means history fixes itself on our minds with a marvellous vividness, and the effect is utterly inconceivable by another. It is something of this sort that makes me feel so very great a desire to read _Tacitus_ in Rome. [Sidenote: Road-side fantasies.] I must not, however, forget the weather. As I descended the Apennines from Bologna the clouds gradually retired towards the north, afterwards they changed their course and moved towards Lake Trasimene. Here they continued to hang, though perhaps they may have moved a little farther southward. Instead, therefore, of the great plain of the Po, sending as it does, during the summer, all its clouds to the Tyrolese mountains, it now sends a part of them towards the Apennines,--from thence perhaps comes the rainy season.
They are now beginning to gather the olives. It is done here with the hand, in other places they are beat down with sticks. If winter comes on before all are gathered, the rest are allowed to remain on the trees till spring. Yesterday I noticed, in a very strong soil, the largest and oldest trees I have ever yet seen. The favour of the Muses, like that of the dæmons, is not always shown us in a suitable moment. Yesterday I felt inspired to undertake a work which at present would be ill-timed. Approaching nearer and nearer to the centre of Romanism, surrounded by Roman Catholics, boxed up with a priest in a sedan, and striving anxiously to observe and to study without prejudice true nature and noble art, I have arrived at a vivid conviction that all traces of original Christianity are extinct here. Indeed, while I tried to bring it before my mind in its purity, as we see it recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, I could not help shuddering to think of the shapeless, not to say grotesque, mass of Heathenism which heavily overlies its benign beginnings. Accordingly the "Wandering Jew" again occurred to me as having been a witness of all this wonderful development and envelopment, and as having lived to experience so strange a state of things, that Christ himself, when He shall come a second time to gather in His harvest, will be in danger of being crucified a second time. The Legend, "_Venio iterum crucifigi_" was to serve me as the material of this catastrophe.
Dreams of this kind floated before me; for out of impatience to get onwards, I used to sleep in my clothes; and I know of nothing more beautiful than to wake before dawn, and between sleeping and waking, to seat oneself in one's car, and travel on to meet the day. * * * * * _Città Castellano, October_ 28, 1786. I will not fail you this last evening. It is not yet eight o'clock, and all are already in bed; so I can for a good "last time" think over what is gone by, and revel in the anticipation of what is so shortly to come. This has been throughout a bright and glorious day; the morning very cold, the day clear and warm, the evening somewhat windy, but very beautiful. It was very late when we set off from Terni, and we reached Narni before day, and so I did not see the bridge. Valleys and lowlands;--now near, now distant prospects;--a rich country, but all of limestone, and not a trace of any other formation. Otricoli lies on an alluvial gravel-hill, thrown up by one of the ancient inundations; it is built of lava brought from the other side of the river.
As soon as one is over the bridge one finds oneself in a volcanic region, either of real lava, or of the native rock, changed by the heat and by fusion. You ascend a mountain, which you might set down at once for gray lava. It contains many white crystals of the shape of garnets. The causeway from the heights to the Città Castellana is likewise composed of this stone, now worn extremely smooth. The city is built on a bed of volcanic tufa, in which I thought I could discover ashes, pumice-stone, and pieces of lava. The view from the castle is extremely beautiful. Soracte stands out and alone in the prospect most picturesquely. It is probably a limestone mountain of the same formation as the Apennines. The volcanic region is far lower than the Apennines, and it is only the streams tearing through it, that have formed out of it hills and rocks, which, with their overhanging ledges, and other marked features of the landscape, furnish most glorious objects for the painter. To-morrow evening and I shall be in Rome. Even yet I can scarcely believe it possible; and if this wish is fulfilled, what shall I wish for afterwards? I know not, except it be that I may safely stand in my little pheasant-loaded canoe, and may find all my friends well, happy, and unchanged.
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