Last year, a friend recommended Kapuscinski's Travels with Herodotus. I was, of course, intrigued by the engaging idea of "traveling with Herodotus." But more, I wondered, when was the last time I had read a book translated from Polish?
As my friend pointed out: such translations in English remain rare even today so in that sense, the book was noteworthy for that reason alone. (He tells me that, in contrast to the English language publishing world, that Polish translations abound in French and Italian).
On a whim I decided to give the book as a gift. And on a second whim, I decided to read the book last night before giving it away. How could I resist?
Poland-- the more one reads about Polish history the more one is astounded by the bloodshed. I have never been, though I very much long to go. What is the Poland of my imagination? Well, a place of very rich and aristocratic-style culture-- music, architecture, and the arts; a country of sublime scenery and a tradition of beautiful woodworking that reminds me something of Japan.
Kapuscinski himself is a surprise.
He is certainly no Utz-- that's for sure. Indeed, I was, in fact, imagining the man would be another East European intellectual whose knowledge of books, fine music and art would leave the rest of us feeling like our educations had perhaps lacked something. But no, Kapuscinski is not an intellectual. In fact, having been educated during war time and then under a totalitarian regime, his access to books had been limited. Herodotus, for example, while it had been translated into Polish had been kept under lock and key until things thawed in Poland after Stalin's death. People kept their heads down-- and yet Poland being Poland, people looked for codes in everything: What was the author really trying to say?
I don't know how much of this background went to shaping the man, but Kapuscinski comes across as profoundly decent. Never mind that people say he was probably a spy. In the book, he is almost child-like in both his deep curiosity and humbling humility-- and his self-portrait alone makes this book unique for me.
The man. I was sad to learn that he had just passed away in January of last year.
He tells us that when he was very young, just starting off as a reporter in Warsaw, he had an undeniable urge to cross the border-- just once.
He tells his editor at the newspaper where he is employed:
"I'd like to travel abroad."
"What???" She is incredulous-- for remember this is 1950s Poland.
"Perhaps to Czechoslovakia," he says.
Well, not long after, he finds himself in India. Barely able to speak English and with absolutely no knowledge of Indian culture or history, he just wanders around the country and looks. My friend had found his early reports from India and China "flat and shallow"-- I was more interested in the way he set out to just "see things."
But not just to look but to try and write down what he saw in order not to forget it. Not necessarily that any truth can be illuminated but only this aim of leaving behind a trace of what happened. It is, I think, a human impulse-- this desire to remember. (something about which I have been writing so much about lately)
This was, after all, why Herodotus tells us that he wrote down his own travels-- in unending run-on sentences that overflowed onto countless papyrus scrolls.
Without memory one cannot live, for it is what elevates man above beasts, determines the contours of the human soul; and yet at the same time so unreliable, elusive, treacherous. It is precisely what makes man so unsure of himself. Wait, wasn't that...? Come on, you can remember, when was that...? Wasn't it the one that...? Try to remember, how was it... We do not know, and stretching beyond that "we do not know" is the vast realm of ignorance; in other words- of nonexistence.
Kapuscinski doesn't say much about his own philosophy but one thing is clear: he was an enemy of what TS Elliot called "temporal provincialism," and in that sense, Kapuscinski is a true globalist. He goes out and looks. And he does this in order to remember-- for, as he tell us, "It is only in permanent dialogue with our ancestors, that the human race can become fully alive to its history as 'an uninterrupted progression of events.'”
Before leaving on his first trip, his editor hands Kapuscinski a copy of Herodotus' Travels, and it is this book that serves as his constant companion wherever he travels to for the rest of his very eventful life. Kapuscinski's descriptions of Herodotus-- a man who lived 2500 years ago-- are without a doubt the most interesting part of the book.
Herodotus was, it must be admitted, an interesting guy. He didn't have a secret mission like Zhang Qian-- who undertook his travels two centuries or so after Herodotus in order to secure the necessary supply of horses for the Emperor. Nor did he have a spiritual project like Xuanzang-- who eight centuries later went out in search of Buddhist Scriptures and Knowledge.
No, the only real project that Herodotus has, we are told, was to go out and see the world and then to record what he saw in order that no one would ever forget:
Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks, among matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non-Greeks.
To never forget.
I will leave you with the TS Elliot quote on temporal provincialism that so impressed Kapuscinski:
In our age, when men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with knowledge, and knowledge with information, and to try and solve problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is provincialism, not of space but of time; one for which history is mereley the chronicle of human devises which have served their turn and been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no shares. The menance of this kind of provincialism is, that we can all, all the people on the globe, be provincials together, and those who are not provincials, can only become hermits.
**
For more:
What was Herodotus trying to tell us? The New Yorker. And for some problems from the perspective of a classicist, see this review from the Times LS.
On Han dynasty Zhang Qian's quest two centuries or so after Herodotus: My post (NHK Silkroad Part 1) On the Heavenly Horses 天馬行空
And on Xuanzang: My post Pearls of the Taklamakan
And for more on the heavenly horses: NHK (Part 8) Toward the Valley of the Heavenly Horses (And the infamous Sogdian-Turk who Toppled the Empire)
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