Heir to the greatest private fortune in England, William Beckford (1760–1844) is remembered not only as the author of Vathek, a classic of Gothic literature, but as one of the most eccentric and refined figures of late eighteenth-century European culture. Claiming to have been a pupil of Mozart and educated by exceptional tutors such as the painter Alexander Cozens, Beckford undertook his first journey to Italy at the age of twenty, recounting it with a freedom and intensity unprecedented in English travel writing. Through idiosyncratic tastes, a nostalgia for antiquity, and a fascination with twilight atmospheres, Beckford records the decline of a phase of European modernity, intertwining the description of places with his own dreams, fears, and obsessions in an ironical voice free from mannerism. During his second Italian tour in 1782 he travelled with John Robert Cozens, son of Alexander and the author of more than one hundred watercolours inspired by the journey. Their complex relationship gave rise to an aesthetics of word and image that would exert a lasting influence on nineteenth-century landscape painting, from Turner onwards. This translation is based on the 1783 edition of Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents, withdrawn by Beckford himself before distribution and now surviving in only five copies. Fifty years later, in a profoundly altered cultural climate, a radically revised version was incorporated into Italy: with Sketches of Spain and Portugal (1834); the volume’s introduction also reconstructs this further, intriguing editorial episode.
Sogni, visioni e accadimenti in una serie di lettere da varie parti d'Europa
Daniele Niedda
2025-01-01
Abstract
Heir to the greatest private fortune in England, William Beckford (1760–1844) is remembered not only as the author of Vathek, a classic of Gothic literature, but as one of the most eccentric and refined figures of late eighteenth-century European culture. Claiming to have been a pupil of Mozart and educated by exceptional tutors such as the painter Alexander Cozens, Beckford undertook his first journey to Italy at the age of twenty, recounting it with a freedom and intensity unprecedented in English travel writing. Through idiosyncratic tastes, a nostalgia for antiquity, and a fascination with twilight atmospheres, Beckford records the decline of a phase of European modernity, intertwining the description of places with his own dreams, fears, and obsessions in an ironical voice free from mannerism. During his second Italian tour in 1782 he travelled with John Robert Cozens, son of Alexander and the author of more than one hundred watercolours inspired by the journey. Their complex relationship gave rise to an aesthetics of word and image that would exert a lasting influence on nineteenth-century landscape painting, from Turner onwards. This translation is based on the 1783 edition of Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents, withdrawn by Beckford himself before distribution and now surviving in only five copies. Fifty years later, in a profoundly altered cultural climate, a radically revised version was incorporated into Italy: with Sketches of Spain and Portugal (1834); the volume’s introduction also reconstructs this further, intriguing editorial episode.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
