Abstract
Goethe’s longing for Italy expressed in Mignon’s poem ‘Kennst du das Land . . .’ and his account of his journeys and sojourns there in the Italienische Reise are well known; less often emphasized is the unfulfilled nature of that longing and the fact that the Italy Project (‘Italien-Projekt’ q.v.) undertaken by Goethe and Johann Heinrich Meyer in 1795–7 was never completed. Claudia Keller revisits this project in her book, which is based on her 2015 dissertation for the University of Zurich. She has unearthed a vast amount of archival material held in Weimar and Zurich. While some of the material reached contemporaries in published works of Goethe’s (the Italienische Reise, the introduction to the journal Propyläen or the essay on architecture, Baukunst, of 1795), much of it, especially Meyer’s contribution, remained unpublished and is in the form of correspondence, writings, jottings and notes on towns and their art, architecture and landscape. It was an ambitious, collaborative project of cultural analysis, one of the unwritten books of the time that can reveal much about the way cultural analysis was emerging and becoming more objective, scientific and interdisciplinary. The title of Keller’s book, Lebendiger Abglanz, ‘living reflection’, adapted from words spoken by Faust at the opening of Faust II, highlights a new emphasis on aspects of German Classicism that emerge when it is approached from a modern theoretical perspective. Keller sets out to provide evidence to counteract the idea of Weimar Classicism as presenting autonomous and self-sufficient works of art and a vision of wholeness, a view that was discredited by Adorno. Although inspired by Winckelmann’s view of Greek art, Goethe and Meyer are seen as diverging from the Winckelmannian notion of noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, the emphasis on form and beauty, the exemplary nature of Greek art and its normative status, which he had explained as a product of climate and geography. This gives way to an approach which is more sophisticated, historically conscious and based on experience in the present. The real space of aesthetic experience is a complex one, informed by a network of diverse strands of culture, heterogeneous or, to use Foucault’s term, a heterotopia. Keller highlights the notion of a living, evolving Classicism that embraces notions of organic growth and colour. The metaphor of the rhizome, taken from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, is used to show the natural evolution of the project, growing underground as it did, more like a creeping rootstalk in different directions and on different levels without necessarily bearing fruit in the form of a finished work. This is closely linked to Goethe’s writings on botany and morphology. Keller shows that the idea of ‘characteristic art’, emphasizing the expression and character of a region or mentality, continued to guide Goethe in his classical period rather than the principle of the unity and harmony of all component parts. The project combined elements of different genres: factual and encyclopaedic writing, more subjective travel writing, tableau, novel, poem and epic. There is detailed examination of some of the many connections between the project and Goethe’s later works. Thus Goethe’s anti-Newtonian theory of colours is linked to his experience of art in Italy. The visitor to St Peter’s Basilica in Rome will be conscious of the interaction of colours on the inside of the building, and as he reflects, he may also be aware of the evolution of the interior over a period of time that uses diverse, heterogeneous styles. It might be added that the observer of the copula of St Peter’s from the outside gets a different impression that is more easily aligned with Winckelmann’s notion of simplicity and grandeur. In this case, Keller’s argument is selective and exaggerates the notion of discontinuity and movement at the expense of linearity and form. The Italy Project is seen essentially as a cultural analysis of colour. Keller emphasizes the interaction of colours as opposed to the traditional classical references in the Roman House in Weimar, the Aldobrandini Wedding fresco in the Vatican and in the late literary works, especially the novels Die Wahlverwandtschaften and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (the chapel scenes and the significance of coloured windows are given special attention). In her conclusion, Keller elaborates a new reading of the opening scene of Faust II, made possible through reference to the Italy Project, which emphasizes the dynamic and affirmative nature of Faust’s vision rather than the resignation often seen to be implied by reflection (Abglanz). It would have been interesting had Keller considered connections between the Italy Project and Goethe’s very late works (a concept introduced by Charlotte Lee in her book The Very Late Goethe: Self-Consciousness and the Art of Ageing (2014)), but instead she rather takes for granted the categorization of Goethe’s late work forming a unit. I also miss a mention of Karina Becker’s thesis, Der andere Goethe (2012), which studies all of Goethe’s literary fragments.
Keller speculates plausibly that the main reasons for non-completion of the project were the intrusion of the reality of the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleon’s plundering of Italian art treasures. But, as she repeatedly emphasizes, the deeper reason for its non-completion and consequent neglect was that it was open-ended, diverse and fragmentary, evolving as it progressed rather than enunciating its theoretical foundations at the outset. Keller’s study is the first full-scale attempt to understand and contextualize this most interesting of failures and to show where it led.