Reporter | Zhao Yunxian
Edit | Yellow Moon
If forced to stay at home, is there still a possibility of travel? It's hard for people who are accustomed to long-distance travel to think of it in their own house, after all, compared to the outside world, the room is so small and stable, there is neither a changing scenery along the way nor a chance to meet other humans. However, it is not uncommon to walk around the room, and there is even a considerable tradition that can be juxtaposed with adventurous travel. Henry Thoreau prides himself on traveling at home, and Emily Dickinson says that "travel is equal to closing your eyes.".
Half a century before them, a European nobleman named Xavler de Maistre (1763-1852) was sentenced to stay at home for forty-two days for dueling with others. The punishment was intended to make him depressed and confess his mistake, but de Mestre traveled the room for forty-two days with great interest, and made a travelogue for this purpose, which was published in 1794. He begins by declaring that as long as one reads The Journey in One's Own Room, no one will not aspire to the indoor travel he recommends.
Indeed, indoor travel is open to almost everyone compared to outdoor travel, which requires money, physical strength, and time. DeMeister shouted to the world, "Follow me all the unfortunate, sick, and lonely people of the world!" All the lazy bones stand up! He called on all his compatriots who were "full of love and friends" to shut themselves in the house with him, "far from the bo of luck of the world and the widowhood of the crowd." "If you feel lonely and afraid outside, or unwelcome, why not take the initiative to seek another kind of freedom and vastness behind closed doors?" If flying thousands of miles is still "pulling grass and punching cards", then lying on the bed and tracking the manifestation and flow of light and shadow at night, can't you see more scenery?
Indoor travel seems to have no threshold, and even a little bit of a suspicion of flattery, but its requirements for imagination and sensitivity are exactly the essence of travel that has long been masked by tourism: memory and the present, the intertwining of exotic and hometown, the unknown and uncontrollable of the road, and the relaxed and happy mood.
<h3>Indoor travel rules: break the rules, aimless</h3>
The first step in traveling around the room is to abandon the rules. No matter how big the room is, it will not be as endless as the staggered stretch of the road, and it becomes necessary to change the pattern. Demeister had several ways of walking in the room, such as walking straight, horizontally, obliquely, sometimes in zigzags, and if necessary, tried geometric paths. These are not his witty remarks, and the extent to which what people see and think after changing their perspectives can be discussed by a large number of writers. Kafka's Gregor stood on his trembling legs to see his place, and Brodsky found that writing travel notes was like lying in bed at the end of the day, and the consciousness would "lie on his back and give up resistance." Unusual moves help the traveler in the room break through the confines of space. People's movements in the house are often purposeful, such as getting out of bed to get a book and drinking a sip of water, and this approach of going straight to the goal is exactly the opposite of travel. Everything is planned, how can you meet the occasional pleasure on the way?
DeMeister claims that the most exciting way to travel indoors is to go arbitrarily, "like a hunter chasing wildfowl, there is no established route at all." He often took detours, sometimes even deliberately changing direction halfway in order to delay the arrival of his destination. Suddenly, the armchair appeared in the middle of the road, and its temptation was like a hiking traveler seeing a tall weeping poplar tree under the hot sun. Should I stop and rest, or should I keep on my way? DeMeister did not hesitate to choose the former, and he sat up comfortably—ah, "The armchair is truly a perfect piece of furniture." "Man is far away from the hustle and bustle in a soft package, the sun soon falls from overhead below the ground level, and time flows away," and we will not notice it passing sadly at all. ”
Until falling off the armchair, DeMeister's trip was done in the armchair. He wandered the house with his gaze, paintings on the walls, books on shelves, and personal letters in drawers leading him to the Alps and his lover's dwelling place, Plato and Hippocrates running to his fireplace to quarrel, and the faces of dead friends constantly emerging during the journey. The painting parade takes up most of the time, and many people may think that De Mester was able to carry out this trip only because of the support of his aristocratic life, where would ordinary people have such comfortable armchairs and fireplaces, and paintings full of walls?
People who travel indoors will more or less borrow power from external objects, such as opening books to connect the world, or understanding the truth from the furniture in front of them, but the most important thing is that people must have inward spiritual strength and travel outside, otherwise taking a book to board the train is just an embellishment or a form, and it is impossible to understand the wonders outside the book. De Mestre describes his rose-red and white bed, not indulging in how luxurious and comfortable it is, using it as a symbol of quality, but through deeper thinking, abstracting the meaning of this everyday thing in life: "On this lovely furniture, we spend half of our lives to forget the pain of the other half of our lives... It is a cradle surrounded by flowers; it is the throne of love; it is a cave grave. ”
However, the process of divination was not smooth, and De Mester explored the twists and turns in detail. He introduced the concepts of "soul" and "other-me" (sometimes referred to as "animal nature"), the former indicating the unfettered and non-utilitarian part of the spirit, and the latter representing the part driven by desires and instincts, which is tired of the mundane, responsible for completing some mechanical, mundane work. He particularly emphasized that this division is different from the theory of spiritual flesh: animal nature is not exactly equivalent to the body, it has a spiritual side, it has its own preferences and will, it is embedded with the soul, overlapping each other, and the difference between the two can be distinguished only when the soul is on top of it. Many people who seem to be preoccupied with what they are doing have experienced what De Mester calls a soul outing. For example, when reading a book, I was caught by a wonderful thought, my thoughts had long left the table, but my eyes were still looking down line by line, and I didn't know what to do after reading it. This is the moment when he and I divide into spiritual activities, and man expands his existence by reading out of his mind rather than reading itself.
There is also a subtle experience that takes place when the soul is summoned by him or me while he is wandering. One day, de Mestre and I were wiping the portrait of their lover Madame Hukasa, and the soul floated into the vast sky as usual, but this mechanical work produced a great peaceful pleasure from the lover's face, so that the soul returned to the body at lightning speed to share this joy. He sighed that in that instant, time and space disappeared, and he suddenly returned to the past, violating the laws of time and becoming young again. This moment of passion is extremely short-lived, and in the blink of an eye, DeMeister feels that he is a year older, "the heart is cool and frozen, and he is once again beaten back into the alienated and indifferent sentient beings." ”
<h3>Interruption and frustration of travel: the entanglement of memory and reality</h3>
Travel is not always enjoyable, but so is indoor travel. Although DeMeister loudly extolled the pleasures he had acquired in the first few chapters, his exaggerated efforts had exposed the dullness, and the travel writer Paul Soru described him as "pretentious, trying to relieve the boring confinement life". By the eleventh chapter (the eleventh day), he revealed for the first time the fear that travel and writing could no longer continue. He claims that his mind is monopolized by a hillock that carries romantic memories, and he stands still and watches the trip come to an end. He prayed that he would be able to get back on the road with his spirits, but in the twelfth chapter there were only two words, "hilly." By the thirteenth day, he surrendered completely, "all efforts were in vain ... Whether I want to or not, I have to stay in the room, this is a military order, "the previous provocations to the commander, the mockery of the world, have turned into nothingness." The next day, the traveler spoke again about morning meditation, saying nothing about his previous setbacks, and we have no way of knowing where he got the courage and strength to get back on the road.
This wasn't the only time he was haunted by memories and the past. De Mester found that no matter what state his soul was in, his eyes and thoughts would eventually stop under the statue of his late father, evoking the pain of exile. He was born into an aristocratic family in the Duchy of Savoy, his hometown at the foot of the Alps. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, Savoy was occupied by the revolutionaries and incorporated into France in 1792. Dermest lamented that fortunately, his father had died before the "evil poisoned the earth" and did not suffer this great pain. He wrote:
"Father, can you see the tragic fate of the family members left behind in heaven?" Did you know that your children are in exile and forced to leave your country of wholehearted devotion? Did you know that they were forbidden to worship you at your grave? ”
The journey leads to the future, but also to the past. Calvino said this in "The Invisible City", and every time he went to a new place, the "old me" and "what has been lost" were ambushed here, waiting to pounce on the traveler and catch him off guard. De Mestre travels in the dawn of the morning and in love, and it is inevitable that he will be captured by the memories of exile.
In addition, the writer confided in his own regrets and guilt during his travels. He was well aware of how extravagant and extravagant the room he was in was, and though he was in exile, his aristocratic style was not affected. Thinking of the servant who had endured his anger, the greedy laborer who got up early on the street, his heart felt a pang of self-blame, but soon he entered the "irresponsible" state of the traveler--although the suffering of others aroused his sympathy, he did not need to stay to face it, and he could pull out his leg and leave. DeMeister thought that she could move closer to simplicity through constant reflection, but she was "a little shaken" at the thought of the beautiful lady wearing the costumes tailored for her by famous designers.
When the forty-two days of indoor travel came to an end, de Mestre did not preach and preach for this new way of traveling as he did at the beginning, and he could hardly suppress his desire for the outside world, and ran with great joy to the blue sky and the earth, strolling between the porches and arcades, watching thousands of familiar shadows flying before his eyes, and thinking of the mansion behind him, the house where he claimed to be free from the world's thinness and freedom—"the lonely solitude" oppressed him like death. Ultimately, whether a person voluntarily lives in isolation or is forced to stay grounded has a decisive influence on their indoor travel experience.