Blogging from Haiti

I don't feel like writing an update today. I am feeling too philosophical and lethargic. But I'm not going to go without posting, because that would be irresponsible!

So, as a compromise, I am reposting, from my Haiti blog, a little note that I wrote about Mandeville from my tent in Croix des Bouquets. In sum, I spent a few weeks in Haiti in June 2010, and aside from all the crushing sadness and beauty of the trip, one of my biggest challenges was settling on what I should bring to read. I settled for Cohen, Rilke and Borges, but I also brought my Mandeville. In the end, I'm glad I did, because I was actually very moved by the experience of reading travel literature while I was traveling and of encountering, understanding and communicating new things in much the same way that Mandeville does in the text.

I include this now because, having read and annotated the first half of the text while in Haiti, I intend to complete my work on that edition during my upcoming travels on the Big Island. So, more reflective drivel to come, I'm sure.

Anyway, from 15 June, my first full day in Haiti:

Mostly I brought poetry, things I can read and reread, but I also brought an old copy of Mandeville’s Travels. It was published in 1919 – so, ninety years ago – and though I didn’t realize it when I bought it, it’s never been read. It’s all in Middle English, which means that I am reading it slowly and savouring every sentence, but it’s also a neat and tactile interaction with my book because I’m sitting with a knife in my lap and cutting the sealed quartos of the book to turn the pages.

For those of you unfamiliar with my obsession of the last nine or ten months, Mandeville’s Travels is a thirteenth century travel narrative detailing the voyage of an English knight through the Holy Land to India and China and back to England again. Though the author adopted “Mandeville” as a pseudonym (pseudopersona?) and essentially plagiarized much of his account, it is rooted in a literary tradition spanning herbals, genuine travel accounts, encyclopedias, hagiography, and many other types of writing.

In his “travels” (or what he represents as his travels), Mandeville describes the places and people he encounters with incredible detail. What seduces me is the botanical narrative, and the rich vegetation that permeates the text. Often one reads descriptions of unusual fruits, plants, exotic animals – things modern travelers still encounter, and still struggle to describe. Now, as I am in a context where I’m doing the same thing – seeing sights I never could have imagined, and rediscovering things (like mangoes!) in their native environment only to realize how different they are...I feel even more of a kinship with Mandeville.

Initially, I found the Travels interesting because Mandeville seems in many senses to share my travel values. That is, the things I most appreciate about traveling and the things I tend to notice strike some people as unusual. I have a passing interest in monuments, historical places, beautiful architecture – but I am more allured by the idea of peoples, the rich variety of culture, and the incredible natural beauty all around me. I tend to spend most of my time examining native flora, overturning stones on the beach to pick out their different qualities, looking at how people interact with their environment in meaningful ways. The Mandevillean style of traveler, even if invented in this text, is totally sensible to me. Especially now, I enjoy vicariously experiencing the exotic, and exploring someone else’s attempt to define it and express it.