Goethes Italienische Reise Mit Zeichnungen Und Bildnissen Goethes. [Goethe’s Italian Journey With Drawings And Portraits Of Goethe].

GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von.

Item Number: 111094

Insel-Verlag zu Leipzig: Wohlfeile Ausgabe, 1913.

Finely bound example in German of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Italian Journey. Octavo, bound in one quarter vellum over pictorial boards, top edge gilt, ribbon bound in, illustrated. In near fine condition.

"We are all pilgrims who seek Italy", Goethe wrote in a poem two years after his return to Germany from his almost two-year spell in the land he had long dreamed of. For Goethe, Italy was the warm passionate south as opposed to the dank cautious north; the place where the classical past was still alive, although in ruins; a sequence of landscapes, colors, trees, manners, cities, monuments he had so far seen only in his writing.