Author’s Journeys (Part Two)

Places that never leave our side. Experiences of memory, outposts of recollection, the span of a life still unfolding. Fragments of truth cut from a realm steeped in imagination. That is what books are: the refuge we withdraw to when we long to fly without ever leaving ourselves behind. But sometimes they also herald the beginning of a journey that involves more than our inner world. We set out—brave, curious, occasionally hesitant—to see for ourselves, to touch firsthand what nourished us through those written pages. Traveling together, accompanied by the one you love, means embedding your bond into the treasure trove of memories, anchoring it in a safe harbor where no storm, however fierce, can chip away at it.

Here we are again, ‘arms and baggage’ in hand, bound once more for destinations our hearts have already known, unwitting protagonists of a voyage our souls have already undertaken. And though we have spoken of India before, we find ourselves here again, glued to the lines, captivated by the power of words. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997) offers a snapshot of the character of New Delhi and, more broadly, southern India, weaving them into the universal tapestry of human emotion, ever in conflict with the demands of convention. In contrast, The Scent of India by the late Pier Paolo Pasolini (1960) presents itself as a travelogue. The author, writing in the first person, wanders through the subcontinent’s streets, entranced by the chaotic reality that shapes it. It is a celebration of keen, sensitive observation—the same sensibility that captures the enchantment of a land and, in turn, the horror of life lived within it.

…so we do not forget Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Published in 1929 as a literary essay, it drew its inspiration from lectures Woolf delivered at the women’s colleges of the University of Cambridge the previous year. It was a revolution of thought in a stubbornly male-driven English society, a bold claim for the right of women—long consigned to overt or subtle subordination—to assert their own ideas and perspectives.

We now find ourselves in Iceland, perhaps the northernmost point on our literary map. Specifically, we begin at the dormant Snæfellsjökull volcano—a perfectly fitting choice to lend power to Jules Verne’s 1864 novel, a pioneering work of science fiction. It tells of an imagined journey into the hidden depths of the Earth, featuring a protagonist who is a kind of ‘Alice’ in the guise of a professor, encountering giant mushrooms, prehistoric monsters, auroras, geysers, electromagnetic phenomena… From crater to crater, the ever-awe-struck expedition concludes with a vertiginous ascent to the surface, thrust upward by the erupting lava of Stromboli.

A gypsy, in every sense of the word—offspring of French obscurantism, like the beautiful Esmeralda in Victor Hugo’s 1831 masterpiece. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame immortalizes the cathedral that bears its name, ferociously alluring yet crumbling into decay. It is the building itself, intentionally or not, that sits at the epicenter of the sorrows, passions, and impulses of those who circle it. Paris, as shadowed as the world of Madame Bovary. Through the story of a provincial doctor’s wife, Flaubert unveils repressed desires and the dark underbelly of his society. At its publication, Madame Bovary was denounced as obscene and immoral, yet it was soon recognized as a cornerstone of world literature. From Les Misérables to Daniel Pennac’s Monsieur Malaussène (1995), at least thirty-two real-world locations in and around the City of Light can be pinpointed—each easy to find, each with its own tale to tell…

Fifty-three. That is the number of sites across the Italian Peninsula capable of inspiring artists through the ages. From 19th-century Turin in Edoardo De Amicis’s Heart (1886) to Procida, the setting for Elsa Morante’s Strega Prize–winning The Island of Arturo (1957); from Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), which in epistolary form transports us to the splendor of the Emperor’s villa in Tivoli, to countless other works—each awaiting discovery according to the promptings of a wholly personal instinct, the one that stirs our minds and leaves us insatiably hungry for more.

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