Images from a Delillean idyll. Józef Kremer’s journey through Styria

Abstract

Images from a Delillean idyll. Józef Kremer’s journey through Styria

Józef Kremer, a professor of philosophy and history of art at the Jagiellonian University, travelled through Styria in 1852, on his way to Italy. He described this journey in a work entitled A Journey to Italy published between 1859 and 1864, which was inspired by Goethe’s Italian Journey. In Styria’s idyllic, bucolic image he noticed harmonious, colourful pictures modelled on Jacques Delille’s descriptive poem. He described not only the picturesque area around the Mur Valley and the Mura River, but also his fellow travellers. He was interested in local legends and folklore tradition. However, the conventional and idyllic Styrian Alps, deprived of the romantic mountain horror and mysticism, seemed tiresome to him. That is why the Styrian episode in Kremer’s journey plays an insignificant role in the research into the Alpine motif in literature.