Laudator Temporis Acti

A friend sent me two quotations from Goethe, "one curmudgeonly and the other euphoric," on a postcard after visiting the Casa di Goethe museum in Rome on December 28, 2012.

Goethe, Italian Journey (November 5, 1786; tr. W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer):

I find it a difficult and melancholy business, I must confess, separating the old Rome from the new, but it has to be done and I can only hope that, in the end, my efforts will prove well worthwhile. One comes upon traces both of magnificence and of devastation, which stagger the imagination. What the barbarians left, the builders of Modern Rome have destroyed.

Gestehen wir jedoch, es ist ein saures und trauriges Geschäft, das alte Rom aus dem neuen heraus zu klauben, aber man muss es denn doch tun und zuletzt eine unschätzbare Befriedigung hoffen. Man trifft Spuren einer Herrlichkeit und einer Zerstörung, die beide über unsere Begriffe gehen. Was die Barbaren stehen ließen, haben die Baumeister des neuen Roms verwüstet.

Goethe, letter to Karl Ludwig von Knebel (November 17, 1786; my translation):

Aqueducts, baths, theater, amphitheater, circus, temple! And then the palaces of the emperors, the tombs of the great — with these images I have nourished and strengthened my spirit.

Wasserleitungen, Bäder, Theater, Amphitheater, Rennbahn, Tempel! Und dann die Palläste der Kayser, die Gräber der Großen — Mit diesen Bildern hab' ich meinen Geist genährt und gestärckt.

At the end of the postcard:

Goethe didn't live long enough to witness all of the destruction by Barbaren and Baumeister, but neither bevy of wreckers has managed to blight seriously the euphoria of visitors to Rome, me among them.

Thanks very much, my friend.

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Ian Jackson comments:

On your "Postcard from Rome", Goethe's remark "Was die Barbaren stehen ließen ..." is presumably an echo of the famous 17th-century pasquinade on Maffeo Barbarini (Pope Urban VIII)'s appropriation of bronze spolia from the Pantheon: "Quod non fecerunt barbari, Barbarini fecerunt".