Continuing to read through the Italian Journey, I finally have Goethe arriving in Italy proper, crossing down into the peninsula through the Alps. The first major city he's headed towards is Verona, but he makes a leisurely pace through the countryside, stopping at Lake Garda with all its coastal towns.The Jesuits again crop up when Goethe sees one of their abandoned churches. Goethe is writing less than 20 years after the Jesuits had been suppressed by Pope Clement XIV, and their shadow basically haunts Europe, at least the Catholic parts of Europe.There's a funny episode in the town of Malcesine, which is part of the Republic of Venice. Goethe goes up a hill to sketch an old castle, but he's accosted by the citizens of the town because the castle marks the border between Venice and the Austrian Empire and the townsfolk suspect Goethe of being a spy for the emperor. Goethe responds by saying that he's from Frankfurt-am-Main and thus, like them, he is a citizen of a republic. This softens their attitude towards him considerably.Hilariously, as he gets close to Verona, Goethe makes note of how ugly all the women are, and how ugly the countryside people are in general. He attributes this to them primarily eating a diet of polenta; this was fascinating to me because I eat and cook Italian food and polenta's a staple starch of Italian cuisine. It was funny to see it mentioned in this context.As always, Goethe continues to make note of the geology and mineralogy of the region, particularly the marble quarries on the road to Verona. I also learned in this part that there was apparently a huge controversy in the scientific community in the 18th Century about whether volcanic eruptions or oceanic mineral deposits were primarily responsible for the makeup of the Earth's crust. These two camps even had names: the pro-volcano people were called "Vulcanists," the pro-ocean deposit people were called "Neptunists." Goethe was a Neptunist.
>>24927011
>>24927011giga based spoonfeeder
>Goethe was a Neptunist.Kek of course he was scientifically wrong. He seems to make a principle out of this
>>24927011Btw anon, are you aware that the nicest thing about Goethe, and why he is held in such high regard in Germany, is because his German is so pleasant to read. It’s not forced, ornate or anything other but simply very pleasant to read. It is like reading the purest German (even if he forces in his most recent favorite french-latin germanized verb all the time).So, you should really read him in German to make these diary blog novels of his most enjoyable.
