Hellenism and the lure of Italy

Abstract

[Dr Johnson] said, 'A man who has not been to Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what is expected a man should see. The grand object of traveling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above the savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean.' Boswell, Life of Johnson When Forster sends his characters to Italy, he invokes a complex tradition of representing English travel to southern Europe. Italy epitomises the 'sacredness of old European beauty and aspiration'. Its monuments and artefacts were a staple component of the Grand Tour, the eighteenth-century tradition of travel to the Continent that functioned as the finishing stage in a young English gentleman's education. As Dr Johnson's comment suggests, a young gentleman 'ritually joined himself to the “Classical Mind” by visiting the sites made famous by the texts he had studied'. As the Continental tour became more accessible to a broader range of English travellers in the nineteenth century, however, the value of this kind of travel could no longer be taken for granted. Rather than offering a chance to commune with the 'Classical Mind', English travel to Italy in the post-Romantic period could actually exacerbate a sense of cultural and historical belatedness. It could expose rather than resolve a sense of emotional and sensual alienation.