August von Goethe - A Journey to the South

August von Goethe (1789-1830) was buried in the foreigners' graveyard in Rome. "Goethe the son, passed on before the father, died at the age of forty": so ran the inscription that the older Goethe ordered for the headstone, which did not even mention his son's name. August set out for Italy at the same age as his father had done, decades before. His travel diary has never previously been deciphered or published. It is an intensely interesting and amusing text, and also a revealing account of the emotional condition of a young intellectual, all too painfully aware of being overshadowed and dominated by his father, who continued to redefine his role in life with all the good humour he could muster until alcohol, illness and an accident conspired to bring about his early demise in Rome.