Johann Gottfried Seume - Syracuse

Grimma to Dresden

Dresden, 9 December 1801.

In Grimma I strapped on my knapsack(1), and off we went. A caravan of good-natured, cheerful people accompanied us over the hills of the Mulde valley(2). Friend Großmann(3) talked at length with my friend Schnorr (4) about matters from the sanctuary of their goddess, of which I, as one of the uninitiated, understood very little. Unnoticed, I stole a few minutes for myself, sat down up there opposite Saint George’s great dragon(5), and prayed my traveller’s prayer:

“that Heaven might grant me fair and friendly innkeepers and courteous gate clerks(6) from Leipzig all the way to Syracuse, and back again by the other road to my own country; that it might preserve me from the hands of those monarchic and those demagogic benefactors of mankind, who with equal despotism clap their system upon us ordinary folk’s noses, as the Samoyed(7) fastens a ring through the noses of his animals.”

Then I looked back over the beautiful country which Melanchthon(8) had already found so delightful that he wished to live there; and in my mind I quickly ran through all the happy days I had enjoyed in that same place: toil and vexation are soon forgotten. There stood Hohenstädt(9) with its handsome clusters of houses, and on the slope appeared Göschen’s splendid estate(10), where so often we dug and planted and weeded and talked and harvested, and ate potatoes and peaches. Friendly villages lay around the hills, and the river wound down through the mountain gorges, where not a path or an oak tree was unknown to me.

The sun shone warmly, as in spring, and we took leave of our companions gratefully and with the brightest hope of returning. Once more I looked to the left, towards the new mill on the highest rise, which from our garden house in Hohenstädt had so often marked the limit of our view across the valleys. Then we walked quietly down the road towards Hubertsburg(11). In Altmügeln(12) we were received with patriarchal warmth, entertained with the friendship of youth, and sent on the following morning, to a beautiful melody from Goethe’s song—“Kennst du das Land?”(13)—and with the warmest wishes, onwards to Meissen(14), where we received an equally warm welcome. If only we could have those kind friends join us on Sicily’s southern coast! The Elbe rolled majestically down between the Dresden hills. The heights gleamed as though the buds were just about to burst out again, and smoke rose from the river towards old Scharfenberg(15). On 8 December the weather was so sultry that it was a great relief to pass out of the sun and into the shade of the forest.

Footnotes

(1)'Grimma': A town on the Mulde River, about 25 km southeast of Leipzig. Seume worked there from 1797 as a proofreader for his friend and publisher Georg Joachim Göschen, and began his walk to Syracuse there on 6 December 1801. ↩︎
(2)'Mulde Valley': The Mulde is the river running through Grimma. Its wooded valley and surrounding hills formed the first stage of Seume’s walk eastwards from the town. ↩︎
(3)'Friend Großmann': Großmann was one of the friends who accompanied Seume out of Grimma. His identity has not been securely established. ↩︎
(4)'Friend Schnorr': Veit Hanns Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1764–1841), a Leipzig painter and close friend of Seume, accompanied him as far as Vienna before turning back. ↩︎
(5)'Saint George’s great dragon...': Seume paused at the Georgenkapelle, or Hospital Chapel, on the outskirts of Grimma. His “great dragon” playfully invokes the legend of Saint George and the dragon. ↩︎
(6)'courteous gatekeepers'...: Travellers repeatedly passed through guarded city gates, where clerks checked papers and collected tolls. Seume’s prayer asks that these petty officials prove civil. ↩︎
(7)'Samoyed': “Samoyed” is an old and now outdated collective name used by Europeans for several Indigenous peoples of northern Siberia. Seume draws on a contemporary image of reindeer being led by a nose-ring to describe political systems imposed by force. ↩︎
(8)'Melanchthon': Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), the German humanist and Reformer, praised the country around Grimma as a place where he would have liked to live. ↩︎
(9)'Hohenstädt': Now Hohnstädt, a district of Grimma on the opposite side of the Mulde. Göschen’s country house and garden stood there. ↩︎
(10)'Göschen’s delightful homestead'...: Georg Joachim Göschen (1752–1828), Seume’s publisher, employer, and friend, owned the country house now known as the Göschenhaus in Hohnstädt. Its garden was a meeting place for their literary circle. ↩︎
(11)'Hubertusburg': Hubertusburg is the large Baroque hunting palace at Wermsdorf. The Treaty of Hubertusburg, signed there in 1763, helped end the Seven Years’ War. ↩︎
(12)'Altmügeln': A village adjoining Mügeln in Saxony, on Seume’s route from Grimma towards Meissen. ↩︎
(13)'Goethe’s song “Kennst du das Land?”': Mignon’s song from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795–96), beginning “Do you know the land where the lemon trees bloom?” ↩︎
(14)'Meißen': Historic town on the Elbe, northwest of Dresden, famous for its cathedral, castle (Albrechtsburg), and porcelain manufactory. ↩︎
(15)'Scharfenberg': Scharfenberg Castle stands above the Elbe between Meissen and Dresden, near the modern municipality of Klipphausen. ↩︎

Map of Seume’s route from Grimma to Dresden via Meissen — Route map

Grimma to Dresden, via Meissen.

Grimma to Dresden

Grimma to Dresden

Footnotes

Route map