Letters from Italy/Introduction

Before I started, kind friends sent me thick volumes on Italian history, ancient Rome, art in general and other subjects, with emphatic advice that I should read them all through. Unhappily I did not comply; the result of this remissness is this opusculum.

Man usually performs something other than he desires. I had no desire to travel at all, nevertheless I have journeyed as though crazy, by every conceivable vehicle and mostly on foot, and when at sea off Africa I wanted to go on to Africa itself; I had no mind to write, but yet I have written the whole of this small book to which I contribute this preface—in which I should have liked to note down hastily all that, alas, I had forgotten to record in succeeding pages, e.g., Florentine architecture; various kinds of wine; different ways of tying up vines; especially the wine of Orvieto; Tintoretto; suburbs which I have traversed with particular interest wherever I happened to be; temples at Paestum which from a distance resemble drying kilns but are Doric when near at hand; pretty Roman women who have very strong and powerful frames; the nightingales at Fara Sabina; the singularity of an asinine bray; the Bonano and Barisano doors at Monreale; and a great ​many other things and phenomena; however it is too late now to recall them all.

And thus I made my way not only without any useful information but without a definite plan; I traced the journey with my finger on a map, often attracted by a pretty name, or by the fact that the first train went in that direction at 10 a.m., so that I did not need to rise early. However, since according to Hegel Absolute Reason realises itself in the course of this world, these chances and humours conducted me by wondrous guidance to nearly all the places “one must see” in blessed Italy.

In this world, however, one ought to see everything: everything stands for show, every street and every man, every object wretched or glorious. There is nothing whatever undeserving of interest and inspection. I have wandered with pleasure through areas upon which Baedeker does not mark a single “*” as being worthy of attention, and I have not regretted a single step but went wherever chance led me, even following honest folks down their passages; sometimes I gazed at very celebrated monuments and sometimes only on children, aged grandmothers, human misery and joy, on animals and people at windows. But when I wanted to describe what I had seen I somehow hesitated to relate things so insignificant, or else did it out of vanity or personal whim. Briefly, after all I have written straightforwardly and for the most part ​about different famous memorials. For this reason I now set down by way of introduction a warning to all readers of this book not to regard it as a guide-book, a travel description, or a cicerone, but as whatever they feel inclined; so that when they take a journey they may rely—without the road-map—entirely on the peculiar grace which accompanies a traveller and indicates more to him than it is at all possible to describe or narrate.