Goethe: Journey of the Mind

Resumen del libro

"The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is often see as the quintessential 18th century tourist, though with the exception of a trip to Italy he hardly left his homeland. Compared with many of his peripatetic contemporaries, his actual journeys were very few, and the list of European cities he never set foot in is long. He never saw Vienna, Paris or London, and he only once visited Berlin. During the last 30 years of his life he was essentially a homebound writer, but his intensive mental journeys countered this sedentary lifestyle and the misconception of Goethe as a traveller springs from the uniquely international influence of his writing. Whist Italian Journey is a classic piece of travel writing, it was Goethe s only real physical journey. The majority were only of the mind, taken amid the pages of books by others. In his reading, Goethe was the typical 18th-century armchair traveller, accruing knowledge of other places, both near and far, through the words and eyewitness accounts others. In Goethe: Journeys of the Mind, Nancy Boerner and Gabrielle Bersier explore what it was that made the great polymath distinct from his peers and ask, in the internet age, when it possible to learn about anything from anywhere, how Goethe was able to explore the culture and learning of places he never saw with his own eyes. "