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Vienna, April 14, 1898
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Wilhelm,
I think it is a good rule for a correspondent to leave unmentioned what the recipient already knows and to tell him something new
instead. I therefore shall pass over having heard that you had a bad time at Easter; you know that anyway. I would rather tell you about my Easter trip, which I took in a grumpy mood, but from which I returned refreshed.1
We (Alex and I) left from the South Station on Friday evening and on Saturday morning at ten o'clock we arrived in Gorizia, where we walked in bright sunshine between whitewashed houses, saw trees covered with white blossoms, and could eat oranges and candied fruit. While doing so, we collected memories — the view from the fortress recalls Florence; the fortezza itself, San Pietro in Verona and the castle in Nuremberg. The first impression of the Italian landscape that overtakes one — that of missing meadows and woods — naturally was very vivid, as is the case in all transitions. The Isonzo is a magnificent river. On the way we passed three ranges of the Julian Alps. On Sunday morning we had to get up early to take the local Friulian railroad to the vicinity of Aquileia. The former metropolis is a dump; the museum, though, exhibits an inexhaustible wealth of Roman finds: tombstones, amphorae, medallions of the gods from the amphitheater, statues, bronzes, and jewelry. Several priapic statues: a Venus indignantly turning away from her newborn child after having been shown his penis; Priapus as an old man, whose genitals are being covered by a silenus and who henceforth can give himself over to drink; a priapic stone ornament of the penis as a winged animal, which has a small penis in the natural place, while the wings themselves end in a penis. Priapus stood for permanent erection, a wish fulfillment representing the opposite of psychological impotence.
At ten o'clock a little steamer was towed by a strange tug into the Aquileia Canal, just when the tide was at its lowes