Journeying
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A writer for whom the journey has always mattered reinvents the very form itself in this inviting collection of in-the-moment impressions of his journeys
A writer of enormous erudition and wide-ranging travels, Claudio Magris selects for this volume writings penned during trips and wanderings over the span of several decades. He has traveled through these years with many beloved companions, to whom he dedicates the book, and sought the kind of journey “that occurs when you abandon yourself to [the gentle current of time] and to whatever life brings.”
Taken together Magris’s essays share a clearly identified theme. They represent the motif of the journey in all its aspects—literary, metaphysical, spiritual, mythical, philosophical, historical—as well as the author’s comprehensive understanding of the subject or, one might say, of his own way of being in the world. Traveling from Spain to Germany to Poland, Norway, Vietnam, Iran, and Australia, he records particular moments and places through a highly personal lens. A writer’s writer and a reader’s traveler, Magris proves that wandering is equal part wondering.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Magris (Blameless), a novelist and professor emeritus of modern German literature at the University of Trieste, demonstrates humble erudition in this collection of essays on travel. In the introduction, Magris describes each of the selections as being "unequivocally... of the moment in which they were experienced and written." What follows is a quietly profound reflection on politics and literature between 1981 and 2004. Each essay takes place in a different location, ranging from a newly postcommunist Prague in 1990 to a full-fledged capitalist China in 2003. Magris's subjects include the apartment building where Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment; the disappearing culture of what may be Europe's smallest ethnic minority, the Cici; and Madrid's modernization. Magris's penchant for observation and literary references makes each essay a fascinating endeavor, especially for fellow bibliophiles. In "Don Quixote's Footsteps," Magris visits La Mancha and is reminded of how Cervantes's knight began his journey by letting his steed pick a direction. As Magris observes,"All the fundamental things love, joy, pain happen by chance or by grace, once you drop the reins." While place and journey are important throughout, the key theme is that of changing times, in an era that saw the collapse of communist regimes and accelerating globalization. The result is an eloquent blend of literary criticism, political history, and travel writing.
