The Art of Travel (original 2002; edition 2002)

Ever since I was a child I had a longing to travel. There are many explanations for this longing, but it became clear to me one summer, when after my first real heartbreak, I traveled by myself to Munich (because that was 'his' favorite city) by train reading "The Magic Mountain" (because that was 'his' favorite book), and I looked out the cabin window and wondered why I was there. And I knew. I was searching for something, what exactly was unclear, but it was something important, something elusive--beauty, love, meaning, something that I could not find in familiar places. I had to isolate myself from everything that was familiar in order to find my own meaning again. Alain de Botton's book "The Art of Travel" is a wonderful essay about longing and learning to see anew what is always before us. I loved the mix of paintings, memoirs, word-painting, and his own experiences. My favorite parts were.... well everything. I want to read the authors he spoke of, see the paintings he described, learn to word-paint and see the world in all its beauty. ( )

have ebook version

Why travel at all? Nomadic herdsmen travel long distances, following seasonal shifts in pasture land. Trade is an ancient motivation. People migrate because of growing population density, reduction in farm productivity, etc.: in search of a way to make a living. People travel escape warfare or to practice warfare. People travel to cultivate diplomatic relations, to manage trade or migration or warfare. People travel to visit familiy and friends. People travel to learn skills that aren't taught in their hometowns. People travel to explore, to find out what remote places are like, to find new opportunities for trade etc.

De Botton picked his title well. Another sort of travel is motivated by aesthetics, to cultivate some sort of aesthetic appreciation of the place itself. Travel can be a way that I can change myself internally, emotionally, intellectually.

Is this kind of purely internal focus really effective? Can we cultivate a healthy internal without cultivating a healthy external at the same time? There are a variety of ways to combine travel with working to make the external world, the world outside myself, a better place. But that kind of heavy-handed deliberateness is not required, either. If we are simply engaged with the world in a careful and meaningful way, that can be enough, that can be even more powerful.

Pilgrimage is a curious sort of travel that is focused on internal transformation but that doesn't seem to fit de Botton's aesthetic approach. Maybe the difference is that de Botton looks for ways that external stimuli can trigger or steer internal dynamics. Pilgrimage, on the other hand, seems more externally focused. The story, the dynamics, are external. The self is subjected to that external story.

I just started watching Louis Malle's documentary film Phantom India. This film seems also to take an aesthetic approach to its subject, but seems to bring into question more the nature of that engagement. That film is also more people-oriented than de Botton's book. People demand more active engagement than does landscape!

We already seem to be retreating from the pinnacle of exotic travel, as the global airline industry goes into retreat, handicapped by high fuel prices and security concerns. Pulling in our horizons will feel much different than pushing them out. Intellectual and emotional self-transformation is always a worthy project, but its relationship to travel may be due for a major shift as we move into a world of declining resource availability. ( )

I'm not usually one for travel books but I loved this one. The approach is why to travel instead of where or what to see. I needed that reminder. ( )

Dit boek las ik tijdens een kampeervakantie in Zweden. Een mooie brok literatuur waarin De Botton op zoek gaat naar de kunst en de geheimen van het reizen. Hij doet dat aan de hand van zijn eigen reiservaringen en van een aantal 'gidsen' uit de wereld van de kunst en de literatuur. Warm aanbevolen. ( )