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normally bears the incisors. The anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, had claimed
that although the premaxillary bone was present in mammals and apes, it was absent in
humans, as judged by the lack of visible sutures demarcating the premaxillary zone from
adjacent maxillary tissue. Much was made of this apparent difference between humans and
apes because it supported the biblical Creation narrative. However, several earlier studies
had demonstrated the presence of suture lines around the premaxillary bone in the skulls
of fetuses and children.^44 These lines gradually went away during development due to bone
fusion. Goethe tried to find evidence of the premaxillary bone in a wide variety of verte-
brates, including humans, by looking for residual signs of the premaxillary sutures. He was
able to detect remnants of the premaxillary sutures in every vertebrate skull he examined.
The latter observation convinced him that the premaxillary bone was part of the vertebrate
body plan, shared by humans and apes, proving that they were both based on the same
blueprint or archetype.^45Goet h e’s Italienische ReiseIn spite of his success with his work on the premaxillary bone, Goethe was growing increas-
ingly impatient with other aspects of his life. His mounting physical frustration over his
relationship with Frau von Stein coincided with a low ebb in his poetic output. He began
to wonder whether his talents, like his sex life, were withering on the vine. The crushing
weight of administrative responsibilities at the Weimar court was also beginning to take a
toll. Today, it would be fashionable to describe Goethe’s emotional state as a midlife crisis.
A plan was forming in his mind to escape the barren, chilly confines of the Weimar court
and to reinvent himself in the hot, sensuous landscapes of Italy.
Goethe planned his escape carefully, and, at 3:00 am on September 2, five days after his
thirty- seventh birthday a passenger identifying himself as Filippo Möller, carrying only a
leather trunk and a knapsack, boarded the mail coach in Carlsbad and began the long jour-
ney to Italy. His choice of an Italian first name suggests that Goethe had already begun to
reinvent himself. Six days later, he crossed the Brenner Pass into Italy, where he hoped to
spend a rejuvenating two- year sabbatical pursuing his three primary passions: art, botany,
and women.
Along the road to Bolzano, Goethe recorded an observation that indicates that several
years before writing his Metamorphosis he accepted the sexual theory of plants. He noted
that the foothills he was passing through were covered with vineyards and that maize was
growing tall between the rows of grape vines: “The fibrous male flowers had not yet been
cut off, for this is not done until some time after fertilization has taken place.”^46 Although
he doesn’t mention pollination specifically, he calls the pollen- bearing inflorescences at the
top of the stalks “male.”
During his first year in Italy, Goethe befriended a group of ex- patriot German artists
and intellectuals in Rome who had formed an art colony. He immediately revealed his true
identity to his compatriots and was given a place of high honor among them. Although
not described in Italienische Reise, he also pursued many alluring women, but his sex life
failed to improve as quickly as he had hoped. In a letter to Karl August on February 3, 1787,
Goethe complained that although “public girls of pleasure” were readily available, he was
afraid of catching the “French disease.”^47 Moreover, all of the respectable women to whom