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

3. Taking the Words out of the Father’s Mouth: Goethe’s Authorial Triumph

3 Taking the Words out of the Father’s Mouth Goethe’s Authorial Triumph Acritical difference begins to emerge between the classical aesthetics of Winckelmann and Goethe. In its most concise formulation it might read as something similar to the following: the former imitates the imitation of the ancients; the latter imitates that imitation. The consequences of such differences are telling. While imitation in Winckelmann requires a cutting off that extends to a narrativization of his life, Goethe’s narrative of his life in Italy offers a reading of imitation that extends to the very cutting off so critical to the preservation of the ideal in Winckelmann. By originating another order of imitation or substitution, Goethe further conceals the absence of the ideal and survives the conditions otherwise indicated for the survival of that ideal. As Michel Serres points out in Rome: Book of Foundations, Goethe may even be the better reader of Rome, the true inheritor of its traditions. According to Serres , Rome is founded upon an infinite regress of violent acts. Romulus murders Remus and Rome is founded. But this act is only one in a series of repetitive and violent acts of foundation: Today we are familiar with numerous examples of originating processes that can develop only by sawing off the branch from which they were able to grow. They only develop by erasing the condition of their development; they only have successors by destroying their predecessors. The more origi79 CHAPTER 3 80 nating they are, the more they are turned toward what follows them, the more they turn their back on the ensemble that presupposes them, the sequences that condition them. A particular element appears that multiplies only by destroying the world that made it appear. Alba must be destroyed for Rome to be founded. (28) 1 The originary genius that draws its inspiration from Rome does not reveal the conditions of its (re)birth as it does in Wincklemann’s aesthetics . Rather, it conceals those conditions. In fact, this concealing is the originary act, although in the case of Goethe the violence at the origin is not wholly clear. As suggested in the previous chapter, the unusual frequency with which murder greets his arrival into the land of his childhood dreams may serve as a predictor or indicator of what the apparent rediscovery of his poetic talents required. I have also used the term sorcery to describe the manner in which Goethe’s creative rebirth was effected without prescribing to the terms such a rebirth in Rome presupposes. One sure sign of this sorcery is that his rebirth acquires a form of origination it never possessed. In other words, the truly original character of his Italian journey and its supposed rebirth is to be found in a staging rather than an actual reenactment of the conditions for new beginnings in Rome that Winckelmann and Serres presume. The rupture with his past, the sexual breakthrough with Faustina, the resolution of what Eisler has called an enduring Oedipal repression might all be names for a concealment or veil placed over nothing (Eisler 2:927–30). It is important not to assign intention here; a spectacular confluence of factors allows Goethe’s journey to acquire the unique status that it achieves. I have already indicated that somewhere or sometime between his first and second visits to Rome Goethe masters the logic of substitution or the imitation of imitation. The events or passages of his Italian journey that demonstrate such mastery is the subject of this chapter. Goethe’s “rebaptism” in Rome will now come to be understood as an indication of Goethe’s understanding of what it means to be a true Roman citizen: a staging or reiteration of the rites of rebirth. In this regard , he is a reader, not a follower, of Winckelmann. And since that reading is also Goethe’s reading of his own travels in Italy, it always situates him elsewhere. His presence is concealed: “It is history, above all, that one reads quite differently here from anywhere else in the world. TAKING THE WORDS OUT OF THE FATHER’S MOUTH 81 Elsewhere, one starts from the outside and works inward; here, one thinks to read from the inside out. Everything is encamped about and sets forth again from us” (Rome, 29 December 1786). 2 In Rome, reading moves in the opposite direction; history’s course is reversed. This allows Goethe to...