IV.

Sojourn in Italy

Several reasons induced Goethe to go to Italy. He had grown weary of the life of the Weimar court, the frustration of his relationship with Charlotte von Stein, and, above all, he felt the need of fresh perspectives upon which to base his future writings. He found a new vitality in Italy and a revelation of the grandeur of the Classical world. After visiting several cities in northern Italy, he settled in Rome, where, except for a short trip to Naples and Sicily, he remained until 1788. He studied the art, architecture, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome and those Renaissance works that had been most strongly influenced by the ancients; he achieved an understanding of the Classical spirit, which stressed balance and perfection of form rather than emotional content. Thenceforth, his work dealt with universal and timeless themes, expressed with a measured calmness yet vibrant with passion. The writings dating from his Italian stay and the period shortly following it include an iambic version of Iphigenia in Tauris, the dramas Egmont (1788) and Torquato Tasso (1790); and further work on Faust, part of which appeared as Fragment (1790). These works brought into German literature the discipline of ideas and form that initiated the so-called Classical period.