Baroque Rome

Andreas Gryphius

Als Er aus Rom geschidn

ADe! Begriff der Welt! Stadt der nichts gleich gewesen /

Vnd nichts zu gleichen ist / in der man alles siht

Was zwischen Ost und West / und Nord und Suden blüht.

Was die Natur erdacht / was je ein Mensch gelesen.

Du / derer Aschen man nur nicht vorhin mit Bäsen

Auff einen Hauffen kährt / in der man sich bemüht

Zu suchen wo dein Grauß / (fliht trüben Jahre! Fliht / )

Bist nach dem Fall erhöht / nach langem Ach / genäsen.

Ihr Wunder der Gemäld' / ihr Kirchen und Palläst /

Ob den die Kunst erstarr't / du starck bewehrte Fest /

Du herrlichs Vatican, dem man nichts gleich kan bauen:

Ihr Bücher / Gärten / Grüfft; ihr Bilder / Nadeln / Stein /

Ihr / die diß und noch mehr schliß't in die Sinnen ein /

Fahrt wol! Man kan euch nicht satt mit zwey Augen schauen.

What a wonderful poem. Rome the city that is a compendium of things, which the poet divides between nature and books. What you can find anywhere else, is here. Rome is a city of trade, filled with people and commodities from what the poet considers to be the entire world. He hints at the reputation for the illicit in Rome when he mentions that you can encounter everything written in books there too. But it is not the city that is a text, rather whatever a person ever read appears there. As if the city brings to life what one reads about elsewhere—a feeling Goethe had a century later as well. Rome is the fantasmagoria of imagination in material existence.

He repeatedly mentions that he cannot compare Rome to any other place. This is not just the poet expressing the inexpressible, making his point about the superlative character of Rome by stating that he cannot make is point. Gryphius is also using a medieval trope reserved for the Holy Land. Walther von der Vogelweide declares the Holy Land incomparable, impossible to compare to any other place—but tellingly the medieval poets do not rave about all the marvelous things in Palestine, rather they are motivated by the presence of Christ having once walked there. The Holy Land is not described in medieval literature, it is declared sacred and thus incomparable.

Gryphius picks up on this line, applies it to Rome, which is after all sacred and the site of pilgrimages, but he lists the palaces, churches and works of art amassed in there—the Vatican library as well. The text above was lifted from the German Projekt Gutenberg, fittingly enough

Rome fills the senses, particularly sight. The city is a spectacle of which one can never see enough—again an ancient trope—St. Augustine warned long before against the visual distractions of the coliseum games, almost as if the Christian's soul would be pulled out by the sight of so many marvelous, shocking things. Gryphius is still enraptured as he departs, and not particularly concerned for his soul, either. We are left at the end with the poet’s taking his leave, even as he laments that he cannot see enough.