Translating the Journey: A Literary Perspective on Truth in Cartography‪.‬

A cuartete by Antonio Machado, one of the most engaging and terse comments on travel in modern poetry, underscores some of the crucial elements of travel writing. A journey is a physical displacement that involves doing, viewing and thinking, the most fundamental human activities. Making a journey, looking at the path, returning home, and, eventually, talking or writing about it are the gnoseological operations that are at the foundation of travel narrative. The journey is not just a sequence of footsteps never to be imprinted again, but an object for the traveler's reflection. And writing one's journey it is just an attempt to re-create what one cannot regain, as in the well-known line by Yeats: "I sing what was lost."