The reader knits his brow? Evidently he has not just been reading
Goethe's `Travels in Italy.' I have. Or rather, I have just been
reading a translation of it, published in 1885 by George Bell & Sons.
I daresay it isn't a very good translation (for one has always
understood that Goethe, despite a resistant medium, wrote well--an
accomplishment which this translator hardly wins one to suspect). And
I daresay the painting I so want to see and have isn't a very good
painting. Wilhelm Tischbein is hardly a name to conjure with, though
in his day, as a practitioner in the `historical' style, and as a
rapturous resident in Rome, Tischbein did great things; big things, at
any rate. He did crowds of heroes in helmets looked down at by gods on
clouds; he did centaurs leaping ravines; Sabine women; sieges of Troy.
And he did this portrait of Goethe. At least he began it. Why didn't
he finish it? That is a problem as to which one can but hazard
guesses, reading between the lines of Goethe's letters. The great
point is that it never was finished. By that point, as you read
between those lines, you will be amused if you are unkind, and worried
if you are humane.
Worried, yet also pleased. Goethe has more than once been described as
`the perfect man.' He was assuredly a personage on the great scale, in
the grand manner, gloriously balanced, rounded.
Pages:
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183