An authoritative English translation of Goethe's correspondence and diary entries from his travels in Italy Containing the letters and diaries that Goethe wrote during his journey to Italy at age thirty-seven, Italian Journey reveals his tremendous range of interests. His writings cover literature, art history and his own struggle to be a painter, various sciences and political events, personal encounters, and the Italian landscape. "In Rome, I first found myself," Goethe writes, "for the first time I achieved inner harmony." For Goethe the writer, this temporal and spiritual journey was at the root of his development from Sturm und Drang to classicism, a decisive point in his life and the history of German literature. The Collected Works of Goethe presents modern translations of a representative portion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's vast body of work. Selected from more than 140 volumes in German, this twelve-volume series remains the standard collection in English and features poetry, drama, fiction, memoir, criticism, and scientific writing.