Introducing A Novel Form of Travel
A Journey Around My Room was first published in French, in 1794. Its author introduced a world – that was then taken in by the fantastical accounts of sea voyagers like Ferdinand Magellan or Captain James Cook – to a new form of exploration: room travel. De Maistre himself had been confined to his room for forty-two days as a form of punishment. For taking on an opponent in a duel.
With a vengeance that emerges from a strong imagination and equally strong will, he turns his imprisonment into a journey, exploring his four-walled confines with a vivacity that few modern tourists can conjure across vaster distances. His is an ingenuity that might elude even the billionaires who sign up for private space travel.
In his foreword to the 2013 edition, the pop philosopher and essayist Alain de Botton observes, rightly that “de Maistre’s work springs from a profound and suggestive insight: that the pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.” An incurious traveler, especially in the social media age, will likely return with been-there-done-that selfies, but with few shaken assumptions or broader insights that we expect of arduous explorations.
Moreover, de Maistre was aware, in an era when tourism wasn’t as widespread as it currently is, that travel wasn’t feasible for many. Not for those who lacked the financial means. Or others, whose circumstances hemmed them in – like the caretakers of aged parents or young children. Or the ill, or differently-abled. Or those fearful of physical adventures or highway robberies or pirates.
There is another category that de Maistre, as a male writer, does not mention: women. Surely, it’s not a coincidence, that many of those “brave” early adventurers – Christopher Columbus, or the Chinese Xuanzhang – were men. That their wives or mistresses were not even permitted to conceive of independent forays. That, fortunately, is a barrier that has been lifted at least for women with means.
But even today, despite airports bursting to the seams, travel for leisure, is a privilege: the vast majority remain inside circumscribed localities, in which they have to eke out livings or care for families or abide with other limitations. This book might be for them and for others, who want to pare down their travel to limit carbon footprints.
Finding Strangeness In The Mundane
“I have undertaken and completed a forty-two-day journey around my room.” With this sardonic and bombastic claim, de Maistre intends to rescue readers from boredom and the other inflictions of staying in the same place. Across his rectangular room, which measures “thirty-six paces in circumference” he refuses to move in straight lines or along linear paths. He sometimes zigzags. He prefers not to tightly calendar his time. He wants to go where his imagination leads him. “A nice fire, books, pens; how many resources against boredom!”
He wakes up, many mornings, to the sound of swallows, and indulgently watches the play of sunlight on his bed. He spends significant chunks of time, examining each piece of furniture. He treasures his bed, its expanse, the manner in which it witnesses both his days and nights. “A bed witnesses our birth and death; it is the unvarying theatre in which the human race acts out, successively, captivating dramas, laughable farces, and dreadful tragedies. It is a cradle bedecked with flowers; it is the throne of love; it is a sepulchre.”
But outward journeys inevitably lead to inward ones. Xavier De Maistre – believes that humans, including himself, consist of a “soul and a beast” – a duality if you will, of a lower and higher intelligence, or of reason and feeling, or of nobler instincts clashing with baser desires. He warns, that while the soul attempts to lift itself, the beast often chains it down or banishes it, or ignores it entirely. “The great art of a man of genius lies in being fully able to train his beast so that it can get along by itself, whereupon the soul, delivered from this painful contact, can rise up to heaven.”
He also notices that the “beast” does things unthinkingly. Automatically. Like making toast. All the while, the soul wanders off on various imaginative trips, and then lands back with a thud, to find that the toast has been burnt. He notes that it is difficult to have the soul watch over the beast. “This is the most astonishing metaphysical tour de force that man can perform.”
Usually, the “soul” (and one could substitute this, in modern parlance, with one’s mind) is out meandering – among hills and dales and merry meadows, or in more unpleasant pastures, like among one’s past mistakes or with future anxieties – but returns to the beast when yanked by its senses. To indulge in some “extreme pleasure” or in the opposite, to appraise itself of some new crisis.
For instance, while casually wiping the dust off a wall portrait, his mind returns to his bodily act, when he rediscovers how ravishing the painted woman looks, a past lover perhaps, who seems to have returned in physical form. Soon, reason returns, and he realizes with despondency, that this is just a painting, a simulacrum of the real thing.
He returns to his bed. He advises readers to choose bed colors carefully, suggesting “pink and white” to enhance joy. “Pink and white are two colors dedicated to pleasure and happiness.” He is certain of human immortality; or the immortality of all life. He rues the death of a close friend who fought alongside him in a war. But he’s sure of meeting him again. He sees signs of immortality where others might just see life; or ordinariness. “The flight of an insect through the air is enough to persuade me; and often the sight of the countryside…”
He observes his own writing. Sometimes, he expects to end on a cheery, buoyant note, but instead, he ends in despondency. Writing, like thought, does not always travel down expected pathways. He seems to think too, that painting requires more of a focused “mind” than music – which can be played habitually, without attention.
He speaks to a self-portrait of Raphael that hangs in his room. He’s really taken in by the master painter’s genius, and he mourns his early death. He accuses Raphael’s mistress of causing his early demise – but later, forgives her.
More beautiful than Raphael’s portrait, and all paintings by the School of Italy is the mirror – which reflects the true image of a person, which permits all kinds of ploys to be tried – like pretending to flirt with someone, or trying on a pout, or a sullen look. He wonders how much more useful a moral mirror would be – one that reflects back a person’s character to him/herself; he wonders if most people would be reluctant to look into such a mirror, except for philosophers. But perhaps, not even them.
He alights upon his desk; upon his notebooks and letter bundles. The latest letters lie on top, the earlier ones beneath. “What a pleasure it is to see in these letters the interesting situations of our young years, and to be transported back again to those happy times that we will never see again!” When he reads past letters, he realizes how friends and acquaintances were caught up in the swirl of particular events or occurrences, which they have long forgotten now.
He can, of course, roam for eons inside his own bookshelf, wander by the banks of rivers, take flight, roam among stars and galaxies, abide with angels and devils. He relishes leaping with Satan – whom he strangely admires – into the pits of hell. Would any human being, fly straight into leaping flames and other horrors that supposedly await us in hell? Doesn’t it take a kind of courage to plunge into damnation?
While we can travel almost anywhere, with an ease that was unimaginable in de Maistre’s time, what we lack is a different kind of conquest: an ability to stay riveted by the smallest of things, by mundane objects that fill our every days. Besides harkening to new-age diktats about mindfulness, we would be well-served to travel across our “prisons” – literal or metaphorical – with de Maistre’s writerly eyes.
References
Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room, Alma Classics, 2013