Ethical Code

The Historisch-kritische Nachrichten by J.J. Volkmann (1771-1772) were the reference guide book from their publication to the end of the century. They gave an account of recent important archaeological discoveries (Herculaneum, Paestum, Pompei…) and were inspired by Winckelmann’s ideas who had just laid the bases for a new aesthetic code. Volkmann also established developments of the 1740s political reforms, especially concerning Neapolitan society, and regretted in a Lutheran inspired perspective that many fields - particularly the caritative one - had remained in the hands of the clergy rather than in those of the State. In the travel stories by Leopold von Stolberg (1794) and Kotzebue (1805) the political thought is more developed instead: to the Volkmann’s praise of the Tanucci «enlightened» policy succeeds a sharp criticism for the Court of Ferdinand IV and his despotism, whereas the lazzaroni - present in all the 18th century tales -, first in favour of the French Revolution then disappointed by the idea people had of freedom, are represented as positive counterparts of the sans culotte because of their loyalty to their king in spite of the mistakes of his government. The reference to France enables them to denounce despotism as the crucible of ochlocracy.

As a landscape painter who was famous for his vedute from the Roman countryside and the Naples region, Jakob Philipp Hackert has logically represented the visual icon of the Parthenopean city as well:the Vesuvius. He devoted two works to the spectacular eruption of the volcano, thus confronting the problem of the pictorial representation of the Sublime (he had discovered the theory of the Sublime by reading
Sulzer). But apart from these paintings, in many other ones he gave a
much more reassuring and poetic image of this tutelary silhouette: Vesuvius was represented as a symbol and witness of an Arcadian countryside, where harmony, opulence and fertility reigned, so that political power and nature did not seem to be antagonistic.

The journey to Italy represents for the Goethes a cultural heirloom which is passed down through three generations (Johann Caspar, Johann Wolfgang, August). It is a real learning experience discovering
classical antiquity, where their mindscape and emotional world become
wider. Naples embodies the culmination of their Italian journey, since the city in Southern Italy was usually the last destination of the Grand Tour in Italy. Foreignness means a positive articulation of cultural difference as such. In their trip journals, the Reise nach Süden shapes itself as a perilous voyage to an unknown land: in Naples they cross inner and outer thresholds between life and death, heaven and hell. My aim in this essay is to investigate both the different explorations in their journals and their different cultural relationship with the Fremde, which is connected to their own stories, time and social roles.

Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa

In 1787 Goethe spent about 50 days in Naples where he visited the
Vesuvius several times, as well as mineral and botanical inquiries, archaeological sites, museums and collections. In the Parthenopean city he associated with Filangieri – the most important Italian Enlightenment thinker – and different Neapolitan aristocrats, as well as Sir Hamilton – the British ambassador – and the charming Emma Harte, who later became Lady Hamilton. At the same time, he had the opportunity to observe the «lazzari», the common people, about whom he wrote exemplary pages, careful and sympathetic at once. In that short period Goethe «Neapolitanised» himself and learnt to love that sweet idleness although he could perceive its inner risks. He became aware of the social and natural contradictions of the city, constantly threatened by the close active Vesuvius which also symbolised a precarious situation on the eve of the Jacobin revolution. Naples ismoreover present in a short novel of Mozartian flavour within Goethe‘s collection Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten.

While Wilhelm Heinse’s trip to Italy is justly considered a major event in his life and a significant component of his aesthetic thought, his brief stay in Naples may not appear determinant. In both his essays and fiction, nevertheless, Heinse does mythologize the city – in contradiction to the socio-political critique to be found in many Aufklärung travel narratives. Firstly, he praises Naples for its conjunction of both Edenic and destructive nature, as well as its inhabitants’ spontaneous adaptation to undomesticated elements. Secondly, in his novel Hildegard von Hohenthal, which he draws from his knowledge of the great composers of late opera seria he reactivates the musical myth of the «Neapolitan school».
 

Pervonte oder die Wünsche. Ein neapolitanisches Märchen was written by Christoph Martin Wieland between 1778 and 1794 as a rewriting of
Giambattista Basile’s baroque fairy tale Peruonto, from the Neapolitan fairy tales collection Lo cunto de li cunti, also known as the Pentamerone. The purpose of this research is to investigate Wieland’s rewriting of this tale by analysing his narrative strategies and the way the plot structure and the characters depiction differ from the original version. The goal is to show that Wieland’s rewriting process can be seen as a literary cultural transfer between the Neapolitan baroque fairy tale and his German philosophical tale in the context of the Enlightenment, based on the concept of cultural transfer developed by Michel Espagne. Aim of this research is also to define the idea of Weltliteratur, coined by Wieland and Goethe in the 18th century. By showing that the definition of Weltliteratur was not a univocal concept back then, this research highlights the importance of Wieland’s role as a cultural mediator, who transformed a Neapolitan fairy tale into a philosophical parable depicting the triumph of reason over foolery and implying a universal dimension.

The interest of German romantic authors in Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone is well known. But while the Grimm brothers were mainly focused on the marvellous motifs in the Neapolitan tale collection, Clemens Brentano was fascinated with Basile’s language and style, who represented for him an authentic incarnation of the popular literary creativity. Brentano owned a 1749 edition of the Pentamerone, but he most certainly read another edition of the Neapolitan text. After a presentation of the Cunto de li cunti and its poetics, the paper attempts to show Basile’s presence in the Brentano’s Italienische Märchen: it was clearly his stylistic virtuosity and inventiveness thatfascinated the romantic writer the most.

Naples occupies a special place in the cultural and political memories of Central European nobility. In the aftermath of the Congress of Vienna the resorts of the Habsburg nobles are closely linked to the diplomatic and military action in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Their circulation brings to light the Parthenopean city in the formation of the political culture of the generation born at the dawn of the century of revolutions. The aim of this study is to compare two writings about the Austrian presence in Naples, drawn from the archives of Bohemia and Austria, in order to give them meaning in the establishment of Pax Austriaca in pre-unified Italy. On the one hand, the Count of Clary-Aldringen, revisiting the spirit of the Grand Tour, stayed in Naples during the decisive years of the Quinquennio 1815-1820 and spent the following years writing memories of his travels. On the other one, the Count de Ficquelmont, a veteran of the Spanish War, was sent to Naples in order to gauge the scale of the 1820 insurrections. The concrete implications of their stays in Naples are thus compared with the formation of an aristocratic representation supporting the Habsburg action in the Restoration process.

After having clarified the biographical and literary context in which Franz Grillparzer undertook his journey to Italy from March to the end of June 1819, the article sheds light on the particular significance of his stay in Naples in his Tagebuch auf der Reise nach Italien. The article shows that the account he gives of his discovery of the city and his ascent of Mount Vesuvius is the result of a double dialogue: on the one hand, with Kant’s analyses of the notion of the Sublime, and on the other hand, with Chateaubriand’s Travels in Italy.

This contribution provides a multidisciplinary analysis of a popular historical novel written by a forgotten German author of the 19th century. It is fitted into the context of the German publications about Masaniello, the leader in the Neapolitan revolt against the rule of Habsburg Spain in 1647. In the paper, it is given priority to an aesthetic approach and is shown the popularization of Romanticism in the text. It is simultaneously considered the political context of the Vormärz –when the novel was published – and the possible political orientation of the author of the novel.

Based on Nietzsche’s notes and letters about his stay in the Gulf of Naples in 1876-77, the article outlines the author’s relationship to Italy and its significance for his philosophy. Nietzsche’s journeys to Italy don’t follow the pattern of a classical educational “Grand Tour”. He makes a caseagainst the upcoming sightseeing-tourism and proposes to actively get impressions during a journey. The new, accelerated way of travelling in the beginning age of the railways is also reflected in Nietzsche’s new aphoristic style of writing. The trip to Naples will become a profound event that quickens his renunciation of former philosophical positions. Nietzsche’s art-historical reflections focus on the decreasing importance of sacral architecture in the past-religious epoch which he foresees.

In The Pascarella Family, Franz Werfel’s family novel about the Neapolitan society of the late 1920s, it is actually not Napoli that prevails but Italy more generally, according to the author himself who commented his work in an interview in 1931. This assessment confirms
the problematical status of Napoli which, although physically in the
foreground, quite vanishes in the background on a symbolic level. Whereas the capital of Campania appears along with the main characters in the original German title (Die Geschwister von Neapel) and constitutes the framework and scenery of almost every chapter in
Werfel’s novel, the heterogeneity in the perception and representation
of the town gives rise to mixed feelings in the reader, who is hence justified in questioning Werfel’s relationship to Napoli and attendant issues such as modernity, tradition or tourism. Our analysis of the way
Napoli has been depicted by Werfel, or rather by his characters (the
members of the Pascarella family), should help understand why Italy
significantly prevails over Napoli in his literary attempt of re-presenting
(that is showing once again) the fall of a world similar to what Werfel experienced less than 20 years earlier with the end of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire, and what this changing of places and latitudes (from Austria to Southern Italy) eventually implicates in his eyes.

In the post-war period many German-speaking authors choose Italy as the country of their voluntary exile. However, they do not travel to Italy in Goethe’s footsteps, they project instead recent past and present experiences on the land «where lemons blossom». That is why in two of Ingeborg Bachmann’s cycles of poems (Lieder von einer Insel and Lieder auf der Flucht) Naples appears as a «place of joy» and a place of horror at once, where menacing signs of war and destruction are still tangible. In her poetry, Marie Louise Kaschnitz tends to depict Naples in a rather mythical and timeless sense, while in her prose she lays more emphasis on social criticism. On the one hand, Kaschnitz appears to be fascinated by the beauty of the city, but on the other one she harshly criticises its poverty and misery.

Werner Schroeter’s first realistic narrative film The Reign of Naples is an epic life chronicle of a proletarian family in Naples from 1943 to 1972. It shows the lives of a few families in a poor quarter of Naples across two generations and at the same time post-war Italy in the flesh.
The plot focuses on a brother and a sister: the young girl tries to keep
her dignity and earn a living, while her brother works for the Party. In contrast with this melodrama, standard historical information is cursorily sketched at intervals through shots of posters, documentary footage and old stills: standard images of «History» illustrating W. Schroeter’s will to show politics as the substance of real life.

The article examines the cross-media popularity of Naples in German films, novels, travelogues, advertising brochures and comics. By using the new concept of the «cultural icon», it provides the following insights: if the German experiences of Naples and Italy are combined with an ideal of (self-)education, they form a coherent complex across all media in which we can always find a reference to, and an update and a specific productive use of, Goethe’s journey to Italy. Understanding Goethe’s journey to Italy as an iconic model thus provides a compact and precise approach to the manifold popularity of Naples in contemporary German culture.

In his audio piece of 2013, Alban Nikolai Herbst (b. 1955) intends to outplay the traditional cliché of Naples as a «paradise inhabited by devils». Blending authentic sounds recorded in the streets with Baroque and contemporary music, quotations from famous visitors such as Vergil or Goethe, Bloch or Benjamin and the crime statistics found in Saviano’s Gomorra, Herbst represents the living world under the volcano as a most paradoxical mix of vitality and fear, courage and violence. Since the actual reality of Naples essentially interferes with its
history and mythology, the only adequate (i.e. poetically justified) way to reveal it to the listeners at home is the radical collage.

Jacques Derrida speaks of a letter from Carl Schmitt to Walter Benjamin which does not actually exist. It is a “Purloined Letter” in which the main defendant is History. From this theft - real or fictitious - a plot unfolds that sheds light on some aspects of the relationship between Schmitt and Benjamin and on the cross-reading of an outsider like Georges Sorel. At stake is the clash between anarchy and statism under the incipient «Um dieser Tiere, reiner und unreiner, willen!».

The article intends to shed light on the poetic elaboration of the sentimental nostalgia in Blütenlese, the only poetic collection by Selma Meerbaum- Eisinger, a young poetess from the German-speaking Bukowina  who died at 18 in the concentration camp of Michajlovka and only recently has caught the attention of both critics and the public. Through the stylistic analysis of some poems, directly and indirectly destined to his beloved Lejser Fichman, the present paper aims to reconstruct and propose a phenomenology of the depiction of the sentimental nostalgia within the conceptual poetic framework of Blütenlese.

The present article aims to offer an innovative reading of one of Gertrud
Kolmar’s most fascinating and puzzling poems, Die Tiere von Ninive, by focusing on the symbolism hidden behind the portrayal of the different animal classes. The main purpose of such analysis is to investigate the techniques employed in the rewriting of biblical narratives, as well as to examine relevant rabbinic sources which also played a significant - albeit indirect - role in the intertextual reworking of biblical accounts.

The paper analyses - from a functional-communicative approach - the first Baedeker guide books (1842-1866) dedicated to Italy, with the aim of highlighting the communicative strategies used for transmitting information and advice to the German traveller about the tourist destination. Knowledge transmission is always based on the grounds of the sender and receiver’s common Weltwissen, including current discourse on Italy. The analysis focuses on recurring linguistic-textual structures such as stereotypes, comparison and exemplification.

Università degli Studi di Bologna