Vrijdag 9 november 2012, 19:31
De Amerikaanse schrijver Mark Twain kent u waarschijnlijk van de avonturen van Tom Sawyer en Huckleberry Finn. Twain was echter ook populair als travel writer. Een van zijn bekendste reisboeken is "A Tramp Abroad" uit 1880, een verslag van een "journey through Europe on foot". (De titel is natuurlijk een woordspeling: 'tramp' kan niet alleen 'landloper' betekenen, maar ook 'wandeling'.) In feite doet hij enkel Zuid-Duitsland, Zwitserland en Noord-Italië aan. Twain beleeft vele avonturen en geraakt zelfs betrokken in een 'afschrikwekkend' Frans tweegevecht. Het relaas daarvan beslaat een heel hoofdstuk, en slechts een stukje daaruit citeren daaruit zou onrecht aandoen aan de genialiteit van de tekst.
Twain reflecteert ook regelmatig over reizen in het algemeen en over culturele verschillen. Een paragraaf die mij bijzonder trof, gaat over het gebruik van vreemde woorden de eigen taal:
"There are men who know a foreign language so well and have used it so long in their daily life that they seem to discharge whole volleys of it into their English writings unconsciously, and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time. That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the man's readers. What is the excuse for this? The writer would say he only uses the foreign language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English. Very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he ought to warn the other nine not to buy his book."
Vervang Engels als basistaal door Nederlands, en het is perfect van toepassing op deze blog...
De beste ontdekking in "A Tramp Abroad" is echter Mark Twains liefde voor de bergen. In de Alpen geraakt hij uitermate gefascineerd door bergbeklimmen.
"A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him! [...] I walked in a new world, I saw with new eyes. I had been looking aloft at the giant snow-peaks only as things to be worshiped for their grandeur and magnitude, and their unspeakable grace of form; I looked up at them now, as also things to be conquered and climbed. My sense of their grandeur and their noble beauty was neither lost nor impaired; I had gained a new interest in the mountains without losing the old ones. I followed the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye, and noted the possibility or impossibility of following them with my feet. When I saw a shining helmet of ice projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagine I saw files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a gossamer thread."
Hoe herkenbaar, dit gevoel! De interesse gewekt, begint Twain de voorbereidingen met het lezen van boeken over bergbeklimmen. Met Mark Twain weet je natuurlijk nooit wat feit en wat overdrijving is, maar het volgende uittreksel geeft sowieso een fascinerend beeld van hoe bergbeklimmers 135 jaar geleden te werk gingen.
"I read several books, and here are some of the things I found out. One's shoes must be strong and heavy, and have pointed hob-nails in them. The alpenstock must be of the best wood, for if it should break, loss of life might be the result. One should carry an axe, to cut steps in the ice with, on the great heights. There must be a ladder, for there are steep bits of rock which can be surmounted with this instrument,—or this utensil,—but could not be surmounted without it; such an obstruction has compelled the tourist to waste hours hunting another route, when a ladder would have saved him all trouble. One must have from 150 to 500 feet of strong rope, to be used in lowering the party down steep declivities which are too steep and smooth to be traversed in any other way.
One must have a steel hook, on another rope,—a very useful thing; for when one is ascending and comes to a low bluff which is yet too high for the ladder, he swings this rope aloft like a lasso, the hook catches at the top of the bluff, and then the tourist climbs the rope, hand over hand,—being always particular to try and forget that if the hook gives way he will never stop falling till he arrives in some part of Switzerland where they are not expecting him. Another important thing—there must be a rope to tie the whole party together with, so that if one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the rope and save him. One must have a silk veil, to protect his face from snow, sleet, hail and gale, and colored goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous enemy, snow-blindness. Finally, there must be some porters, to carry provisions, wine and scientific instruments, and also blanket bags for the party to sleep in."
Hoe bekwaam Mark Twain als alpinist werkelijk was, wordt in "A Tramp Abroad" niet echt duidelijk. In feite beschrijft hij zichzelf als een gigantische idioot. Na een hillarische beklimming van de Riffelberg, besluit hij bijvoorbeeld om per gletsjer terug naar Zermatt af te dalen, want hij "was aware that the movement of glaciers is an established fact. [...] I marched the Expedition down the steep and tedious mule-path and took up as good a position as I could upon the middle of the Glacier — because Baedeker said the middle part travels the fastest."
Later, in Chamonix, eisen Mark Twain en zijn reisgenoot bij het hoofd van de plaatselijke gidsenbond een diploma voor hun "Ascent of Mont Blanc by Telescope".
"We worried him enough to make him remember us and our ascent for some time. He even said, once, that he wished there was a lunatic asylum in Chamonix. This shows that he really had fears that we were going to drive him mad. It was what we intended to do, but lack of time defeated it."
Ondanks al die overdrijvingen, wordt toch duidelijk dat Mark Twain helemaal geen idioot is. Hij mag dan wel drie dagen doen over een route die volgens de reisgids slechts drie uur zou mogen duren (vanzelfsprekend ligt de schuld bij de reisgids), maar hij weet perfect wat er in het hoofd van de alpinist omgaat. Het volgende citaat bewijst dit:
"Nothing is gained in the Alps by over-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding two day's work into one for the poor sake of being able to boast of the exploit afterward. It will be found much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days, and then subtract one of them from the narrative. This saves fatigue, and does not injure the narrative. All the more thoughtful among the Alpine tourists do this."
Het meest sympathieke fragment uit "A Tramp Abroad" is voor mij het volgende:
"Now the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. It is no matter whether one talks wisdom or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the flapping of the sympathetic ear."
Dit laatste citaat kan ik niet anders dan opdragen aan LUUHC.