Italian Food
Italian food. As if the entire country was just one behemoth restaurant offering the same kind of offerings. Not Goethe, however. Italian food for the German can be boiled down to not just one particular region, but one particular city. Not even a city really because:
“Naples is simply one huge kitchen garden.”
Rome
The author offers a bit of ironic paradox by suggesting that those travelers who arrive in Rome, take a quick look and then leave are truly the fortunate few. Why? Because for those who like to amuse themselves and study:
“Rome is a world, and it would take years to become a true citizen of it.”
Sicily
The mystery of visiting Italy has been solved by the writer of Faust. So don’t go making any deals with devilish travel agents who insist that a visit to Italy need not take you off the mainland because:
“To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.”
The Fruit Tree of Knowledge
Goethe pays a debt to Heinrich Meyer, a German theologian for being an irreplaceable link in his path to knowledge. He asserts that in comparison to everything he learned from Meyer:
“everything I learned in Germany is like the bark of a tree compared with the core of the fruit.”
Italian Art
Perhaps Goethe arrives at one particular metaphorical insight only because he comes from the northern part of Europe. Those continental travelers are rather notorious for seeking the sun of Italy during holiday. A person from the South Seas or the grand vistas of southwestern U.S. might disagree on this assessment of the unique qualities of Italian painting:
“A Venetian painter is bound to see the world as a brighter and gayer place than most people see it.”
