Thoughts on Italian Journey

I finished reading Italian Journey and I am still finding inspiration from it. Below are some observations.

1.

One thing that all cultures share is their ability to tell stories. We tell stories when we are with our friends. We talk about things we see in our daily lives. We talk about the food we ate at a new restaurant. We talk about the places we’ve traveled to and the experiences we have had. We talk about the person we aspire to be.

2.

Everyone has an idea of their perfect self. We find the idealized version of ourselves in specific locations. A beach, perhaps, or in a certain city or even within the worlds of our favorite books. We attach the essence of these idealized versions of ourselves to these special places. We leave a piece of ourselves there. When we revisit these memories days, weeks or even years after, it is these pieces we pick up. And for a moment, those pieces bring us home. There is no set definition as to what home is. It is abstract. It is a state of mind. As Witold Rybczynski puts it, you can walk out of the house, but you always returned home.

3.

We want to experience a new restaurant to expand our horizons. We read books to relate to the world around us. We want to visit a new country to challenge ourselves in a place where we don’t speak the language. Maybe we travel there because we do speak the local language. Maybe we just wanted to escape. Whatever our reasons may be, we experience these things because we want to. Something about that place makes us happy. By chasing these things that make us happy, we are trying to make ourselves better. Life is a constantly giving us opportunities to improve ourselves.

4.

There is a scene on May 1 where Goethe watches Kniep put together a “quick sketch of an interesting distant view”, but it was really terrible, and he added in a few touches that weren’t in the original sketch to turn it into a “delightful little picture”. He wonders how many other paintings contain such “half-truths”.

I like this observation by him. He wrote this book thirty years after he returned home. This must have been a little nod to his audience. That what we are reading was not the quick sketch but in fact the delightful little picture complete with the additional details.

5.

There is a line on page 491 where he states:

“During all those years, in fact, I was tormented by an unsatisfied longing for the unknown, which I never succeeded in suppressing, though I often tried. So, when I had to leave Rome, I suffered greatly at parting with all these possessions, which I had so longed for and at last acquired.”

Imagine spending part of your life thinking a piece of you was missing. Goethe found his missing piece. He used his diary and correspondence to memorialize his missing piece into a book that still inspires people three hundred and fifty years later. W.H. Auden summarized the book in the Epigraph:

“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 first importance.”

I found so many relatable things in this book. Goethe described everything in such vivid detail sometimes it was difficult to tell whether he was writing this book in the present day. I think that is part of its legacy. A lot has changed in the world since this was written. But the feelings he described feel applicable to today. Reading this makes me want to complete a quest of my own. And, if I am lucky, inspire someone else the same way Goethe inspired me.