Writing East

Today’s task: Writing East (Iain Macleod Higgins, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).

Okay, the amount of self-scrutiny involved in this entry is crazy. Of course I haven’t got anything bad to say about it – it’s brilliant, and I actually feel like I understand it, which is marvelous to say the least. But can I just say (hi Dr. Higgins!) that it feels weird to comment on scholarship written by your supervisor?

I think it’s exacerbated by my general feeling of “who the hell am I to pursue an MA in English”. Let’s be honest. I’ve known from the start that I have no more than a fleeting interest in academia, and that only as something to observe – not something in which to participate. This is not a career-driven degree, nor is it even remotely related to my “real” work. I’m doing this out of love (seriously, don’t laugh) and though that is precisely what I need to validate my studies in my own mind, it typically gets me laughed out of the room by people with serious academic ambition.

What I mean to say is, I have a crisis of self-doubt just about every time I attempt to express an opinion about anything, because my level of academic street cred is low, man. But two things make the issue deeper. The first is that I’m commenting on something written by someone I know, who is often across the desk or on the other end of an email – someone whom I respect, who knows far more about this text than I ever will. That makes me feel strange. The second is that quite honestly, there is an art and a sort of poetry to the writing in this book that (to my mind) elevates it above all the other desiccated pieces of scholarship I work through each day. Somehow that changes things too.

All this anxiety is totally unnecessary at this particular moment, however, because I have nothing to say about it! Yes, my friends, I had an utterly unproductive day.

I read the first few chapters of Writing East in a Toronto snowstorm this past February, where I was visiting dear friends. Unfortunately “my” room in their house has a wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling shelf of amazing literature, so I got distracted and dropped off in the middle of the fifth chapter to pick up some pretty novels. Today I decided to start from the beginning.

At this particular moment, I am in Koeye, and I am taking care of a group of fifteen kids who are participating in a leadership camp. I skimmed over the introduction while my biscuits were in the oven and my glup stew was simmering (a thick, brothy dish full of fresh veggies and salmon cooked over an open fire – smoky and wonderful). However, I suspect I am still working some Haitian bug out of my system after my spectacular illness in Croix des Bouquets, and by late afternoon, I was waning.

I walked out to a lookout point that affords an unparalleled view of Fitzhugh and Hakai Pass, with the deepening blue sky and the dark blue water rushing together at the horizon line. I nestled into the moss under a huge old spruce tree, idly thumbing through the pages of the second chapter as I basked in the last sweet bits of sunshine trembling on the breeze. But I became completely distracted by an amazing fact:

The fat, ripe salal berries out on the point are the precise shade of blue shared by the cover of my copy of Writing East. It’s flawless. So I kept picking handfuls of berries to compare them, then slowly eating them as I watched humpback whales work the channel, and picking more just to double check. I will admit to a few purple stains on the paper, and a couple of unfortunate blackflies crushed between the pages. It’s true: the book belongs to Koeye now.

Anyhow, I eventually curled up like a dry leaf in the lee of a mossy log and fell hard asleep with the book for a pillow. I woke up refreshed but sunburned after a bizarre (if fitting) dream about how nice it would be to have a single large foot to give me shade from the sun. I waited until all my whales were holding their breath under water, then made my way back into the lodge to grab a cup of tea before falling into bed to sleep off the rest of this queasy mess. So, goodnight – I’ll revisit Writing East when my body and mind re-learn to work cooperatively.

The Travels of Friar Odoric

Today’s task: The Travels of Friar Odoric (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002)

Let me start by saying that while I love buying books online, I need to start looking more closely at the editions I order. This one starts with a bit of bible-thumping as some publisher out of Grand Rapids reclaims Odoric for the modern missionary. Okay, it’s not so bad, but the framework this particular book provides for Odoric’s writing pirouettes on my very last nerve. It has a beautiful dust jacket, a pleasant typeface and a reassuring weight to the paper, though, so in the end, all is well.

Quick recap: who is Friar Odoric? A Franciscan monk from northeastern Italy who traveled throughout Asia in the early fourteenth century (I believe through present-day Iran, India, Indonesia, China, Nepal and Russia).

I have totally loved Odoric since we read his journal in 515. There’s no bullshit with Odoric. He’s descriptive and even poetic at times, but always in measured doses, and generally you sense you’re receiving his impressions unaltered by any thought of artistry or politics. If this makes sense, what impresses me about Odoric is how he confidently shuns any need or desire to impress. In short, he’s the sort of traveler I aspire to be: he lets the places and people he encounters largely speak for themselves, and speak how they will to whatever audience they find – but he doesn’t shame himself from indulging in description of the crazy shit he comes across, either. Good man.

Some points that cross with Mandeville:
-Odoric gives prices for trade items like dates and ginger, which Mandeville largely avoids in the versions I’ve read
-Odoric mentions the Dry Tree in passing (though Mandeville describes it at length), and passes over the Tartary Lamb in a passage that seems a bit truncated to me
-The discussion of bamboo, its uses and its properties is very similar to my versions of Mandeville
-The trees bearing honey, flour, poison and wine are in both Odoric and Mandeville, and change very little between the two


I am intrigued by the following passage that occurs early in Odoric’s journal:
“Of all I purpose not to speak, though I shall be the first to tell of many which will seem to a number of people past belief” (64).

I feel like this is close to a statement made by Mandeville in at least one version, but as I don’t have Mandeville with me here in Koeye (for shame!) I’ll have to check up on this later.


For the future, I have a question: what the hell are lignum aloes? I keep coming across references to them and have yet to find a satisfactory explanation. I'll push on this a little harder when I have a stabler internet connection.


For now, here is an index of botanical references in my edition of Odoric:
Agriculture -- 131
Apple -- 163
Bamboo -- 109
Barrenness -- 75
Cotton -- 131
Dates -- 75
Fertility -- 155
Flower -- 78
Forest -- 144
Fruit -- 67, 106
Ginger -- 98, 121
Green Mount -- 136
Lemon -- 115
Lignum aloe -- 105, 141
Pasture -- 93
Pepper -- 94, 96
Rhubarb -- 151
Rice -- 105, 106, 120, 128, 154
Shrubbery -- 129
Spices -- 107
Sugar -- 123
Thicket -- 136
Tree -- (Dry Tree) 68; (instrument of martyrdom) 88; (pleasant) 129; (tree of flour) 108; (tree of honey) 108; (tree of poison) 108; (tree of wine) 108; (tree worship) 77, 78
Vegetable lamb -- 148
Wheat -- 105
Wine -- 67, 77, 78, 100, 107, 120, 128, 134, 148

The Journey of William of Rubruck

Today's task: The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253-55 (Kessinger Publishing, 2009)

I'm going to be honest with you here. I find William of Rubruck to be a rather distasteful man. I don't know what it is - something in his tone, no doubt. While it must take tremendous character and intrepidity to bring the Word of God all the way to Mangu Chan, the voice that carries across the centuries through this account is not a voice I find it easy to like or respect.

Anyway, that's just fine, because I don't need to respect him to find him useful. He did at least have this much sense:

"...it seemed to me, as I said before, that I had been transported into another world" (83).

Most plant references in Rubruck's text are pretty utilitarian. The majority reference millet, wine, food and drink, with little to no natural history or commentary on the botany/ecology of the lands he passes through. He gives some simple trade information - like Mandeville, the merchandise but not its worth, its consumers or its market.

Plants do figure on several occasions as points of comparison (X here is like Y at home), and while Rubruck does discuss the importance of agriculture, it is without moralizing. That is, people who do not practice agriculture are inferior, but they are not evil or immoral. This distinction, drawn by Mandeville, is one I find interesting and oddly logical (though by those standards, one might - and did - assume that my people were evil and immoral).

The most interesting botanical passage to my mind refers to rhubarb and its properties as a medicinal and supernatural curative. While the spiritual and medicinal are firmly parted ("Either go as an apostle doing real miracles . . . or do as a physician in accordance with medical art" [216]), the botanical is portrayed by Rubruck at different parts of the text as intrinsic to each one - a bridge, as it were.

At any rate, while I can make myself imagine limited borrowing by Mandeville in terms of Rubruck's plants, it is very minimal. Though he clearly relies on Rubruck for other aspects of his narrative, I fail to see the exchange of a bouquet of posies or anything else significantly plant-related between the two authors.


In any event, here is an index of botanical references for my edition of Rubruck:

Agriculture -- 134
Almond -- 67, 206
Apple -- 65
Art -- 54
Bean -- 95
Bough -- 211
Briar -- 133, 172
Cotton -- 44, 52, 70, 71, 201
Flour -- 68
Forest -- 51, 70, 92, 99, 158, 179
Fruit -- 48, 86, 103, 105, 143, 206, 212, 224, 242
Garden -- 134
Grains -- 221
Grapes -- 135, 262
Herbs -- 156
Medicine -- 156, 192, 216
Millet -- 62, 68, 98, 132, 169, 183, 186, 202, 221
Nomadism -- 53
Pasture -- 53, 92, 111, 117, 259
Pear -- 65
Plant technology -- 53, 55, 70, 71, 73, 195, 201, 208, 212, 147, 270, 272
Prune -- 206
Raisin -- 206
Rhubarb -- 192, 216
Rice -- 62, 166, 173, 186, 199
Rye -- 97, 98
Spices -- 44
Tree -- 128, 204, 208, 212, 247
Wheat -- 98
Whey -- 67
Wilderness -- 92, 118
Wine -- 48, 83, 86, 90, 102, 103, 105, 166, 173, 186, 194, 199, 206, 208, 242, 262, 266
Woods -- 133
Wormwood -- 172