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Italian Journey

1786-1788

Paperback
$19.00 US
5.1"W x 7.8"H x 0.93"D   | 12 oz | 36 per carton
On sale Dec 01, 1992 | 512 Pages | 9780140442335
Goethe's account of his passage through Italy from 1786 to 1788 is a great travel chronicle as well as a candid self-portrait of a genius in the grip of spiritual crisis.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Before he was thirty, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had proven himself a master of the novel, drama, and lyric poetry. But even more impressive than his versatility was his unwillingness ever to settle into a single style or approach; whenever he used a literary form, he made it something new. Born in 1749 to a well-to-do family in Frankfurt, he was sent to Strasbourg to earn a law degree. There, he met the poet-philosopher Herder, discovered Shakespeare, and began to write poetry. His play Götz von Berlichingen (1773) made him famous throughout Germany. He was invited to the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, where he quickly became a cabinet minister. In 1774 his novel of Romantic melancholy, The Sorrows of a Young Werther, electrified all of Europe. Soon he was at work on the first version of his Faust, which would finally appear as a fragment in 1790. In the 1780s, Goethe visited England and immersed himself in classical poetry. The next decade saw the appearance of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, his novel of a young artist's education, and a wealth of poetry and criticism. He returned to the Faust material around the turn of the century and completed Part 1 in 1808. The later years of his life were devoted to a bewildering array of pursuits: research in botany and a theory of colors, a novel (Elective Affinities), the evocative poems of the West-Eastern Divan, and his great autobiography, Poetry and Truth. In his eighties he prepared a forty-volume edition of his works; the forty-first volume, published after his death in 1832, was the second part of Faust. Goethe’s wide-ranging mind could never be confined to one form or one philosophy. When asked for the theme of his masterwork, Faust, he could only say, “From heaven through all the world to hell”; his subject was nothing smaller. View titles by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Italian Journey - Goethe Translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer

Introduction by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer
Part One
From Carlsbad to the Brenner, September 1786
From the Brenner to Verona, September 1786
From Verona to Venice, September 1786
Venice, October 1786
From Ferrara to Rome, October 1786
Rome, First Roman Visit, October 1786-February 1787
Part Two
Naples, February-March 1787
Sicily, March-May 1787
Naples, May-June 1787
Part Three
Rome, Second Roman Visit, June 1787-April 1788
June 1787
July 1787
August 1787
September 1787
October 1787
November 1787
December 1787
January 1788
February 1788
March 1788
Index

About

Goethe's account of his passage through Italy from 1786 to 1788 is a great travel chronicle as well as a candid self-portrait of a genius in the grip of spiritual crisis.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Author

Before he was thirty, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had proven himself a master of the novel, drama, and lyric poetry. But even more impressive than his versatility was his unwillingness ever to settle into a single style or approach; whenever he used a literary form, he made it something new. Born in 1749 to a well-to-do family in Frankfurt, he was sent to Strasbourg to earn a law degree. There, he met the poet-philosopher Herder, discovered Shakespeare, and began to write poetry. His play Götz von Berlichingen (1773) made him famous throughout Germany. He was invited to the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, where he quickly became a cabinet minister. In 1774 his novel of Romantic melancholy, The Sorrows of a Young Werther, electrified all of Europe. Soon he was at work on the first version of his Faust, which would finally appear as a fragment in 1790. In the 1780s, Goethe visited England and immersed himself in classical poetry. The next decade saw the appearance of Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, his novel of a young artist's education, and a wealth of poetry and criticism. He returned to the Faust material around the turn of the century and completed Part 1 in 1808. The later years of his life were devoted to a bewildering array of pursuits: research in botany and a theory of colors, a novel (Elective Affinities), the evocative poems of the West-Eastern Divan, and his great autobiography, Poetry and Truth. In his eighties he prepared a forty-volume edition of his works; the forty-first volume, published after his death in 1832, was the second part of Faust. Goethe’s wide-ranging mind could never be confined to one form or one philosophy. When asked for the theme of his masterwork, Faust, he could only say, “From heaven through all the world to hell”; his subject was nothing smaller. View titles by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Table of Contents

Italian Journey - Goethe Translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer

Introduction by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer
Part One
From Carlsbad to the Brenner, September 1786
From the Brenner to Verona, September 1786
From Verona to Venice, September 1786
Venice, October 1786
From Ferrara to Rome, October 1786
Rome, First Roman Visit, October 1786-February 1787
Part Two
Naples, February-March 1787
Sicily, March-May 1787
Naples, May-June 1787
Part Three
Rome, Second Roman Visit, June 1787-April 1788
June 1787
July 1787
August 1787
September 1787
October 1787
November 1787
December 1787
January 1788
February 1788
March 1788
Index