The Spell of Italy: Vacation, Magic, and the Attraction of Goethe

Notes

231 Notes Introduction 1. Between 1954 and 1957 Bachmann lived in Rome and Naples, where she wrote the poetry she published in her collections. Her first trip to Italy was two years before, in 1952. Between 1958 and 1962 she lived alternately in Zurich and Rome. She lived in Rome for eight years before her death. 2. See the Piper collection, Mein Erstgeborenes Land: Gedichte und Prosa aus Italien, ed. Gloria Keetman-Maier, for a more extensive selection of works written in Italy that, according to the editor, display the unmistakably Mediterranean quality of her language (7). For the reasons for connecting the land of the poem with Italy see the same introduction (5–7). The poem appeared as part of the collection, Anrufung des großen Bären (Invocation of the Great Bear), 1956. Filkins translates the title as “The Native Land,” which I reject. “Heimatsland” or “Geburtsort” would be a more likely expression of “native land.” Here is the poem in its entirety: Das erstgeborene Land In mein erstgeborenes Land, in den Süden zog ich mich und fand, nackt und verarmt und bis zum Gürtel im Meer Stadt und Kastell. Vom Staub in den Schlaf getreten lag ich im Licht, NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 232 und vom ionischen Salz belaubt hing ein Baumskelett über mir. Da fiel kein Traum herab. Da blüht kein Rosmarin, kein Vogel frischt sein Lied in Quellen auf. In meinem erstgeborenen Land, im Süden sprang die Viper mich an und das Grausen im Licht. O schließ die Augen schließ! Preß den Mund auf den Biß! Und als ich mich selber trank und mein erstgeborenes Land die Erdbeben wiegten, war ich zum Schauen erwacht. Da fiel mir Leben zu. Da ist der Stein nicht tot Der Doch schnellt auf, wenn ihn ein Blick entzündet. 3. Goethe repeatedly emphasizes how he is learning to see throughout his Italian journey, and it is perhaps as strong or recurrent a theme as is his rebirth. For an extended discussion of how or what Goethe learns to see, refer to Bell, especially 175–80. 4. Bertha Mueller insists, and she is certainly not alone, that “Goethe coined and first used the term,” yet the botanist Carl Friedrich Burdach first used the word in 1800 (9n.17). 5. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Goethe’s Italienische Reise are from the Hamburger Ausgabe, vol. 11. Dates are used instead of page numbers to facilitate use of other editions. 6. According to the Roman Elegies, even Faustina, the woman with whom Goethe apparently had his first sexual encounter, is now considered to be the author’s invention. At the very least, there is scant evidence to support her actual being. See Reed xxii. See Swales (5–10) for an overview NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 233 of how Reed’s work contrasts with that of other influential biographers, not specifically with regard to the (non)existence of Faustina but rather with regard to the meaning of Italy for Goethe. 7. There is, of course, no shortage of quotes from the text to link Italy with Corinne and the feminine. As Prince Castel-Fortel remarks to Oswald, “We say to foreigners: ‘Look at her, she is the image of our beautiful Italy.’ We delight in gazing at her as a . . . harbinger of our future” (27). Showalter casts the novel along Bakhtinian terms to contend that “Italy argues with England, female genius with patriarchal duty” (192). In light of Bachmann’s description of Italy in “The First-Born Land” as “naked and impoverished,” this suggests that Italy’s character results from a patriarchal oppression that descends from the north. The curious relationship between Goethe and de Staël is worth noting here. In that regard, see Behler. 8. That the spell of Goethe’s Italy has never ceased enchanting subsequent generations of writers and scholars is evident from the surfeit of works in all genres and media that it continues to generate. In the past fifteen years alone, the Goethe Jahrbuch has devoted two volumes to the journey as well as numerous articles in other volumes. T. J. Reed recently translated into English for the first time Goethe’s Italian diaries. In 2002, Norbert Miller, in a volume that exceeds 800 pages, coordinated Goethe’s subsequent creative output with his experiences in Italy. Filmic references include the 1980s East German series, “Go Trabi, Go.” Literary treatments include Josef Ortheil...