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Rome

Georg Simmel

RANSLATORS NOTE: Originally published as Rom: Eine sthetische

Analyse, in Die Zeit, No. 191 (Vienna), 1898: 1379; also in Georg Simmel
Gesamtausgabe, vol. 5, Hans-Jrgen Dahme and David P. Frisby eds, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992, pp. 30110.
The subtitle Simmel gave to this article an aesthetic analysis could also
apply to the approach he takes in the two shorter pieces he wrote several years later
on Florence and Venice. In all three essays, Simmels focus on the framing and
unification of the diverse elements of the cityscape (Stadtbild) to form an image or
picture in the mind may be contrasted to how these themes are developed with
regard to nature in The Philosophy of Landscape (1913, translated in this issue).
In contrast to his celebrated essay from 1903, The Metropolis and Mental Life (in
David Frisby and Mike Featherstone eds, Simmel on Culture, London: SAGE,
1997), here Simmel assumes the standpoint of the foreign visitor rather than the
indigenous city-dweller. Likewise, apart from a disparaging footnote on modern
Rome, he approaches these experiences of life in particular cities in terms of how
the past is sustained within rather than suppressed by the present. As in his
fragment on The Ruin (1911, in Georg Simmel, 18581919, Kurt Wolff trans.,
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1959), his aim in the present essay is partly
to show how human culture may preserve or reshape rather than merely eliminate
distinctive features of the natural world. As the reader may infer from the concluding comments on Kant, Feuerbach and Goethe, Simmel self-consciously locates his
reflections within a long line of German intellectuals for whom travel to Italy constituted a kind of pivotal life experience. The classic example of this genre is Goethes
Italian Journey (Robert R. Heitner trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1994), which Simmel also alludes to in his essays Goethe and Youth and
Individualism (1914 and 1917 respectively, translated in this issue).
In view of Simmels objective to highlight and compare the hybrid character
of these Italian cities, we have found it necessary in each of three essays to translate Geist sometimes in its traditional sense as spirit and sometimes in its more
modern meaning as mind.

* * *

Theory, Culture & Society 2007 (SAGE, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore),
Vol. 24(78): 3037
DOI: 10.1177/0263276407084466

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Simmel Rome 31

ERHAPS THE most profound appeal of beauty lies in the fact that
beauty always takes the form of elements that in themselves are indifferent and foreign to it, and that acquire their aesthetic value only
from their proximity to one another. The particular word, colour fragment,
building stone, or sound [Ton] are all lacking on their own. The essence of
their beauty is what they form together, which envelops them like a gift that
they do not deserve by themselves. Our perception of beauty as mysterious
and gratuitous something that reality actually cannot claim but must
humbly accept as an act of grace may be based on that aesthetic indifference of the worlds atoms and elements in which the one is only beautiful
in relation to the other, and vice versa, in such a way that beauty adheres
to them together but not to any one of them individually.
We are used to seeing this miracle occur either in nature, whose
mechanical arbitrariness forms its elements as much into something
beautiful as into something ugly, or in art, which from the outset draws these
elements together for the sake of beauty. Rarely do we encounter a third
possibility: that human works which are fashioned for some purpose in life
find one another in the form of beauty, accidentally and without being guided
by any will to beauty, like natural objects that are unaware of having any
purpose. Almost alone, old cities, in having grown without any preconceived
design, provide aesthetic form to such content. Here, structures that originate from human purposes and appear only as the embodiment of mind and
will [Geist und Willen] represent in coming together a value that lies entirely
beyond these intentions while attaining through them a kind of opus
supererogationis. That very same element of chance that fashions the line of
the mountains, the colour of the oceans and the branching of the trees
according to our aesthetic needs, is affirmed here in a material that has
removed itself from chance in that it is the carrier of purpose and spirit
[Geist], but not of beauty. In the same way, human actions which are fully
conducted and fulfilled by the singularity and narrowness of their aims
nevertheless meet one another through the realization of a divine plan for
the world, of which they know nothing.
In the cityscape of Rome such a fortunate and fortuitous merging of
human purposeful structures with a new unintentional beauty seems to
achieve its highest appeal. Here, many generations have produced and built
next to and above one another, without any care for (and indeed without
entirely comprehending) what came before, surrendering to the needs of the
day and to the taste and mood of the times. Mere chance has decided which
overall form would result from what has come earlier or later, from what is
deteriorating and what is preserved, and from what fits well together or
clashes discordantly. And since the whole has nevertheless assumed such
an incomprehensible unity, as if some conscious will had brought its
elements together for the sake of beauty, the force of its appeal now seems
to emerge from this wide and yet reconciled distance between the arbitrariness of the parts and the aesthetic sense of the whole. Herein lies the happy
guarantee that all the senselessness and disharmony of the worlds elements
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32 Theory, Culture & Society 24(78)

do not hinder their unification in the form of a beautiful whole. What makes
the impression of Rome so incomparable is that in what separates one age
from another, styles, personalities and lives which have left their traces here
span further than anywhere else, and nevertheless merge into a unity, a
mood, and a sense of belonging unlike anywhere else in the world.
If one tries to dissect Romes aesthetic effect psychologically, one will
arrive from all directions at this centre to which its outward image first
points: from the greatest oppositions into which high culture could have
split, a complete organic unity has grown.1 Just as it is in the nature of
knowledge to form a comprehensible, congruent image of the world out of
the fragmentary and isolated sensations of the senses, and just as it is the
duty of morality to unite unrelated or antagonistic interests, in the same way
it is one of the final motives of aesthetic satisfaction either to discover or
fashion a unity from the divergent abundance of impressions, ideas and
stimuli. If indeed one of the deepest underlying human characteristics is to
attain something that inheres in the soul out of the original multiplicity of
things and ideas, then perhaps all art is just a special medium and form for
succeeding in this, one of the paths leading from external (or also internal)
multiplicity to internal unity. The importance of any work of art thus
increases to the extent that the multiplicity of its conditions, its substance,
or its problem-field is more diverse, and to the extent that the unity in which
this multiplicity is captivated is narrower, more powerful, and more unified.
A work of arts aesthetic value would then be measured in that tension
between the multiplicity and the unity of the things that it offers for feeling
and perception. In that sense, Rome appears as an artwork of the highest
order. To begin with, the streetscape is defined by its hilly terrain, and
almost everywhere the buildings are in a reciprocal relationship of above
and below. Thus, they refer to one another with a very different significance
than they would if they were merely juxtaposed on the same level. Perhaps
the fundamental attraction of a hilly landscape is that anything above is
possible as such only because of something below it and vice versa. In this
way, the parts of the whole enter into an incomparably intimate relationship,
and its unity, which here and everywhere consists only in the mutual interaction of the parts, becomes immediately perceptible. Where a landscapes
elements are situated on one level, they are more indifferent towards each
other; each has its own position for itself, as it were, rather than each
position being defined by every other. Thus the form in which Rome is built
succeeds in transforming the fortuitousness, contrasts and lack of principles
that characterize its architectural history into a manifestly tight unity.
Through this sense of above and below, the confusing lines of the cityscape
take on certain directives, as if all the details appear as beams belonging
to this structure. The dynamism of Roman city life appears in the same way:
no element, however antique, foreign or useless, can escape its outrageous
liveliness. Even the most resistant part is drawn into this current. The integration of old (and the oldest) remains into later buildings is symbolically
in a solidified form the same as what the dynamism of Roman life presents
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Simmel Rome 33

in its fluid form, namely, the construction of a unique unity of life consisting of immeasurably different elements that, through the scope of their
tension, vividly represent the force of that unity in a way that is unequalled
elsewhere. This is why in Rome, anything for which we only have the regrettable expression sight [Sehenswrdigkeit] does not appear as it would somewhere else, that is, as an isolated, particularly emphasized point of interest
that lies beyond anything that might be found elsewhere. Rather, here each
is a link in a totality and all are organically connected to one another through
the overarching unity that is Rome. That is also why in Rome the typical
tourist seems more unbearable and unstylish than usual. Because his attention is only directed to the individual sights as such, the sum of them
appears to him to be synonymous with Rome. It is as if he were to equate
an organic body with the anatomical sum of its limbs and so to bypass the
process of life itself in which each limb is only one organ of an all-moving,
all-pervasive, all-controlling unity. He does not perceive that second-degree
beauty which constitutes itself out of and above these beauties in their
singularity.
The fusion of the most different things into a unity that characterizes
the spatial image of Romes cityscape achieves an effect that is no less
real in its temporal form. In a truly peculiar way that is difficult to
describe, one can perceive here how the separateness of time-periods
converges into a presentness and togetherness. One can find this notion
expressed in the sentiment that in Rome the past appears to become the
present, or vice versa: one seems to perceive the present in a dreamlike,
meta-subjective way as if it were the past. In this way one merely expresses
from different sides something that does not in itself have different sides,
that is, the timelessness, the unity of the impression which the reflective
minds categories of before or after accompanying this impression cannot
tear apart. Certainly the idea of the historical course of things never falls
silent in Rome. But it is miraculous that here too, in the temporal dimension, the elements only appear to be far apart so that they can indicate
more effectively, impressively and extensively the unity in which they are
converging. Just as the remnants of old times have found a new form in
and through their destruction, so too does the hinted-at idea of their
temporal separateness seem to work as a kind of aesthetic nuance of its
present appearance. The continuity of the times that keeps vividly filling
up consciousness in Rome prevents the isolation of what is temporally
distinct. Things thereby reach a common level on which they meet one
another purely according to their objective contents. Precisely because of
the enormous expanse of time-periods that one can survey, the temporal
point of view with regard to a particular thing becomes irrelevant; it [the
particular thing] no longer seems entranced by the temporal relationships
which would allow one to appreciate it only if one were immersed in them.
Rather, by being drawn into the overall image of Rome, it achieves an
entirely unmediated vitality; everything historical does play a part in it, but
not in such a way that it would turn an object into a separate antiquity
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34 Theory, Culture & Society 24(78)

removed from present contexts. Instead, by entering into the unity of Rome,
the object functions purely according to its objective significance, as if the
fortuitousness of history had disappeared and the pure, dissolved contents
of the things in platonic terms, their ideas had emerged to exist next to
one another.
This sentiment that can only be approximated in words is perhaps the
ultimate basis for Feuerbachs profound statement: Rome puts everyone in
his place. The individual who becomes aware of himself within this overall
picture loses the position that his narrow, secluded, socio-historical circle
has granted him, and suddenly sees himself as part of an order and as
participating in a system of immensely diverse values according to which
he must judge himself objectively, as it were. It seems as if in Rome we
shed everything that temporal conditions have done to us, whether for or
against the essential core of our being. We perceive ourselves to be reduced
to our purely inner force and significance, just as Romes substance is. We
cannot escape its unifying power which arranges everything into a total
image across the chasms of time. After all, we are at the same distance with
respect to ourselves as we are to other things in Rome, as if unbound from
the here and now. We would be ashamed to ask for exceptions here. What
so often conceals the place that we are entitled to according to the vigour,
expanse and mood of our soul, and what isolates us and blocks the bridge
to our inner home the vagaries of time, the exaggerations and the difficulties of our historical situation all this falls away in Rome. Here, where
all social and historical conditions appear at the same time in their full scale
and final accuracy, things are assessed by us, and we along with them, only
according to their essentially timeless objective value. Thus, Rome really
puts us in our place, while the place that we usually inhabit inwardly is all
too often not our place at all, but rather that of our class, our one-sided
destiny, our prejudices or our egotistical illusions. That all this falls away
is ultimately the result of that one characteristic which defines the overall
image that governs Rome: the immense unity of the manifold which is not
torn apart by the vast tension of its elements, but whose incomparable force
rather is displayed through this very tension. Just as the peculiar attraction
of old fabrics after so many years lies in how they have achieved an otherwise unattainable unity and reconciliation, transcending the contrast of
colours and the shared fates of sunshine and shadow, humidity and dryness,
so too would one like to say that what is globally furthest and most foreign
in time, origin and soul has undergone adaptation, interaction and integration through the shared experience of being in Rome and of partaking in its
fate. In such wondrous circumstances, the individual significance of things
reaches its maximum, as does the significance of the unity into which they
fit together as elements.
Just this unity evinces a psychological phenomenon within the Roman
sense of enjoyment to which one is otherwise attuned only with respect to
the greatest individuals. What Goethe signifies for us achieves its immeasurable breadth in the fact that, for us, all of Goethe is behind each one
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of his remarks. We do not enjoy any remark merely for the immediate content
that it would have as an anonymous statement; rather, we enrich it with
everything that we associate with Goethe and that is reminiscent of him. A
narrow-minded rationalist is concerned with that enthusiastic reverence that
we affix to each of Goethes lines: No one would take any notice of it if it
had been written by some nameless person. This is entirely true, but even
if it had the exact same wording, it would not have the same purpose because
the meaning of each remark (one cannot emphasize this enough) consists
only in what it elicits and forces us to think. One of Goethes words necessarily lets us think more and different things than if any Peter and Paul were
to pronounce it since we know that a very different soul has clothed its
richness with an ostensibly similar gown. We only do justice to the remark
if we give it the utmost and highest credit we are wont to associate with it,
even if it exceeds the particular meaning that we might give it in isolation.
So too do those things that are part of Rome possess a significance in and
for itself which is beyond what is proper to them, and which in any other
place would be inconsequential. By virtue of the unity into which Rome lets
all its contents grow, the whole assumes solidarity with each of its elements.
Behind each element is the whole of Rome, investing it with a wealth of
associations for us which entails much more than an isolated view, loosely
and indifferently held together. Since things are what they mean to us, they
actually are much more to us in Rome than they would be elsewhere, and
than they would be without the mutual enrichment they gain from being
embraced by Rome in its unity.
Perhaps the deepest significance of aesthetic formation is expressed
in a statement by Kant who, of course, envisioned quite a different subject
matter: Among all ideas [Vorstellungen], the connection [Verbindung] is the
only one that is not given by objects but must be accomplished by the
subject itself because it is an act of its self-activity. That unity through
which the elements of Rome are connected is not inherent in them but
only in the perceiving mind, since it obviously occurs only in a particular
culture under certain conditions of mood and education. That hardly
speaks against the importance of this unity, however, in that precisely the
self-activity demanded of it is Romes most precious gift. Only the liveliest, albeit unconscious action of the mind may be able to capture the infinitely different elements which lie in that unity as possibility but not yet
as reality. If in Rome one does not feel overwhelmed but rather that one
has arrived at the height of personality, then this is surely a reflex of the
enormously increased self-activity of what is inherently human. Nowhere
else in the world has good fortune ordered objects for our mind so
adequately, so that they call for a deployment of forces to gather these
objects across the immense distances of their immediate conditions into
such a complete unity. That is also why Rome leaves such an indissoluble impression in our memory. Where impressions and pleasures simply
present themselves as they appear, without our having to shape their inner
image by our own efforts, all memory fades by becoming weak and
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36 Theory, Culture & Society 24(78)

transient. For even if an impression is especially powerful and distressing,

it is nevertheless something foreign to the innermost soul that cannot
reside in it permanently. Otherwise, how else would the terrible estrangement of lovers be imaginable if the bare sensation or simple acceptance
of some happiness, even in its most extreme heights, left no trace in
consciousness! Only when the soul has become active from the inside out,
when it has woven the impact of its innermost activity into external impressions, will such impressions truly become its property. A base or subhuman consciousness clings to its ideas in isolation, but the characteristic
sign of a higher consciousness, and proof of its domination and freedom,
is that it establishes connections between singularities and at the same
time experiences their full richness and diversity, since unity and multiplicity presuppose one another. Nowhere else does the abundance of things
allow this specifically human activity to be as sovereign as it is in Rome.
Nowhere else does the soul, taking in so much, have to accomplish so
much simultaneously in order to shape the image. That is the ultimate
reason for that incomparable relationship that the expanse of Romes
impressions possesses in their depth and duration, as if here every
dimension of the souls contents could achieve its upper limit at the same
time.
It is the lot of psychological analyses never to be final. The human
soul is such a diverse and intricate construct that it possesses quite
manifold ways for arriving at the same content and condition. Indeed, its
richness is that it can unfold the same elements into an abundance of inner
oppositions, as well as the most diverse elements into a sameness of inner
outcomes. But if the significance of Romes aesthetic impression can therefore be explained in various other ways, then in addition to this possibility
it is remarkable how the structure of the object encounters that of the
subject. As it is the greatness of truly great persons not to be unequivocal but rather to make themselves understood by everyone individually and
to lift each person in a direction that leads beyond his own being, so too
would Rome not possess its full greatness if an appreciation of it would
only allow for one meaning, if it did not resemble nature in speaking to
everyone in his own language and allowing each to appreciate and understand it according to his own inclinations. Indeed, to me it is precisely
this multiplicity of Romes effects and of their interpretations that corresponds to the life-principle itself, from which its aesthetic singularity
seems to spring. That Rome can be perceived in so many different ways,
and that its meaning can be interpreted in so many other ways while it
remains the one Rome, the one focal point of such divergent rays: here is
the ultimate culmination of its aesthetic greatness, which stretches all
oppositions to the utmost in order to reconcile them with such masterful
force within its unity.
Translated by Ulrich Teucher and Thomas M. Kemple

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Note
1. I shall not consider the parts of Rome that are consistently both modern and
disgusting in equal measure, since they are fortunately situated in such a way that,
if care is taken, they affect the foreigner only very little. I had last seen Rome more
than 20 years ago and have found it less changed now than general opinion would
suggest [Simmels note trans.].

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