Briefe aus Italien

When Karel Čapek travels to Italy, he does so not primarily on tourist paths. He wanders without a plan, without preconceived notions. However, since everything is worth seeing to him, things and people reveal themselves almost effortlessly, and off the beaten paths, he discovers many breathtakingly beautiful, lovely, and magnificent sights.

His way of traveling is to get as close to things as possible, to touch everything at least with his finger, to run his hand over the whole world. In this way, he sees the great in the small and the comical alongside the sublime. In Venice, he is not ready to burst into storms of enthusiasm; in Ravenna, the fascists in their uniforms remind him of chimney sweeps; and in Florence, he observes the foreigners who pilgrimage through the museums more or less reverently instead of the artworks.

However, Čapek is neither a despiser nor an ignorant of art, but an insider. Thus, this volume conveys insights that remain relevant even a hundred years later.