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<p class="revtext"><strong>Wendy Bracewell, Alex Drace-Francis, eds.</strong>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9639776114"><em>Under
Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel
Writing on Europe.</em></a> East Looks West: East European Travel
Writing, 1550-2000 Series. Budapest: Central European University Press,
2008. 388 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-963-9776-11-1.
</p>
<p class="revtext">
<strong>Reviewed by</strong> Patrice M. Dabrowski<br>
<strong></strong><br>
</p>
<p class="revtext" align="center">
<strong>Travels in Time? East European Travelers on Europe</strong>
</p>
<p class="revtext">This interesting and rich volume considers the east
European as traveler--in particular, as a traveler about Europe, one
who has produced travel writing that sheds light on what it means to be
European. The editors of <em>Under Eastern Eyes</em> aver that theirs
is “the first book to analyse the phenomenon of east European travel
writing in a systematic fashion” (p. vii). It most certainly
represents part of a conscientious attempt to lay the foundations for
all future study of the phenomenon. The book under review is part of a
larger research project under the aegis of University College London’s
School of Slavonic and East European Studies entitled East Looks West:
East European Travel Writing, 1550-2000. Two other volumes are being
published in this three-part series. Volume 3, <em>A Bibliography of
East European Travel Writing in Europe</em>,
was published by Central European University Press in 2008. It
contains references to over 4,400 travel accounts published in book
form since circa 1550. Volume 1 (forthcoming) will be entitled <em>Orientations:
An Anthology of East European Travel Writing on Europe.</em></p>
<p class="revtext">The book is comprised of three comparative
introductory studies, followed by nine case studies. In “Towards a
Natural History of East European Travel Writing” (chapter 1), Alex
Drace-Francis begins with a detailed and methodical (indeed, seemingly
exhaustive) examination of the key concepts. “Travel” is defined as
“organized, methodized movement” (p. 4). “East European” is given both
geographic and linguistic dimensions (encompassing “the region between
Russia and Germany, Turkey and Italy,” and including works written in
“Albanian; Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Serbo-Croatian; Bulgarian;
Czech; Greek; Hebrew and Yiddish; Hungarian; Macedonian; Romanian;
Polish; Slovak; Slovene; and Ukrainian” [p. 6]). Readers of HABSBURG
should note that neither modern Austria nor the Baltic states are
included within this definition, which is used in the companion volumes
as well. That said, a separate section of the bibliography (volume 3)
lists travel books published in other international
languages--“languages of international circulation,” defined as “Latin,
French, Italian, English, and Russian,” as well as a “very few” texts
in German--by “east Europeans” (as defined above).[1]</p>
<p class="revtext">Drace-Francis further analyzes the evolution of
writing and printing in the vernaculars of the region, with an eye to
figuring out what gave rise to travel writing. It is interesting to
learn how much early travel writing by east Europeans concerned itself
with “Eastern” destinations, such as the Ottoman Empire. What
apparently caused the ensuing rift between western and eastern European
travel writing were the major schisms that wreaked havoc on these
societies in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, although again
more recent scholarship has provided somewhat of a corrective to this
view and is acknowledged here. As regards how travel writing was
enabled in the region, Drace-Francis singles out four characteristics:
the public sphere grew out of, not in opposition to, courtly culture;
diffusion proceeded in a north-south direction; the public sphere
remained local or provincial, rarely extending to a national scale; and
the discursive essay and not the novel developed above all. Although
many travelogues were written in the earlier period, it was the second
half of the nineteenth century that witnessed an explosion of travel
writing in eastern Europe.</p>
<p class="revtext">The next of the foundational chapters (by David
Chirico) deals with the travel narrative as a literary genre. While
its “literary-theoretical approach” may be of less interest to
historians, Chirico is right to remind us not to forget the literary
nature of these texts. He defines the travel narrative as “a
non-fictional first-person prose narrative describing a person’s
travel(s) and the spaces passed through or visited, which is ordered in
accordance with, and whose plot is determined by, the order of the
narrator’s act of travelling,” and singles out three modes: classical,
romantic, and realist, while presenting some examples of Czech travel
texts (pp. 39, 53).</p>
<p class="revtext">Another foundational chapter--and, at about sixty
pages, the most substantial--is provided by Wendy Bracewell. This
comparative tour de force considers the limits of Europe as delineated
by the travel writers of eastern Europe. What Bracewell argues is that
the inhabitants of this region were no less engaged in mapping Europe
than travel writers in the West, despite certain asymmetries of
perception. For example, the distinction between (local) insider and
(cosmopolitan/educated) outsider was often blurred in the case of east
European travelers, particularly these literate ones. Transnational
and comparative analysis demonstrates, according to Bracewell, “that
travelers from both the east and the west of Europe, each pursuing
their own interests, contributed jointly to definitions of the limits
of Europe, coming to equate the concepts of modernity, progress and
cultivation with Europe, their absence as barbaric, backward and
Oriental” (p. 67). Early east European travel writers were less
introspective in this regard (with the notable exception of the
Croatian priest Juraj Križanić); concepts of Europe took off during the
Enlightenment, yet culture more than cartography originally determined
one’s Europeanness (which, interestingly, could be expressed in
degrees). While some used the travelogue as a tool for reforming their
own, more backward, societies, the varied responses of east European
travelers suggest the “limitations of a psychological-pathological
approach to identities and power relations on Europe’s peripheries”
(pp. 110-111). Indeed, Bracewell is careful to note the variety of
prisms through which travel could be refracted, the “multifaceted
character of identity discourses constituted in these borderlands, not
just with reference to Europe or an undifferentiated ‘West’ or ‘East’,
but to a whole series of <em>other</em> Others” (p. 120).</p>
<p class="revtext">This richness is partially demonstrated by the
remaining nine chapters, the case studies. Ordered chronologically,
they are written by scholars representing a range of disciplines. Many
are quite enlightening. We learn, for example, that Reform Hungarians
who traveled to study (primarily in the German lands, the Dutch
Republic, and England) in the early modern period viewed the countries
of Europe and Europeans through the prism not of modernity/backwardness
but of religious creed (chapter 4 by Graeme Murdock). In another
strong chapter demonstrating her enviable command of multiple languages
and travel literatures, Bracewell examines travels of east Europeans
through the Slavic world (in particular, through the south Slav
lands)--that is, through their “own” lands, beginning from the end of
the eighteenth century. Her chapter features noble Poles Jan Potocki
and Alexander Sapieha on a Slavic mission, in the face of the
“rottenness” of the West and the partitions of their country; the
Morlachs of Dalmatia as well as the Montenegrins, each seen as
maintaining, despite obstacles, primeval Slavic virtues; and east
European perceptions of a promising future for Slavs in Europe and the
world (p. 173). Bracewell coins the term “domopis” to denote the kind
of “homeland writing” of the Slavs that she explores here (p. 192). In
her chapter, Irina V. Popova-Nowak interestingly considers modes of
transportation--in particular coaches and steamboats--as well as travel
through Hungary’s different regions (and abroad) for both Magyars and
Hungary’s ethnic minorities as they engaged in an “odyssey of national
discovery” of their little-known country (p. 195). She also remarks on
their travel in time: to the West meant traveling to the future, to
the East to the past.</p>
<p class="revtext">Andi Mihalache reminds us that much in travel is
anticipation of seeing what has already been imagined. In an at times
opaque chapter nonetheless full of interesting insights, he analyzes
the understudied travelogues of writer Nicolae Iorga, as viewed through
the prisms of metaphor and monumentality. And Zoran Milutinovic has
written a fascinating chapter that also demonstrates the role of the
“imaginary,” this time, of a “Europeanised Balkanite” whose travels to
Africa and assessments of the Africans he encounters--both authentic
natives and Creoles--reveal more about Europeanness (western and
eastern alike) than one might expect (p. 269). Also learning more
about himself is the protagonist of chapter 10, Mihail Sebastian (pen
name of the Romanian-acculturated Jewish intellectual Iosy Hechter),
who “became” Sebastian while on a trip to Paris in the interwar
period. In contrast, socialist travelers to the West were not supposed
to undergo any <em>Bildung</em> or transformation during their stays
in “enemy” territory, as demonstrated by Rossitza Guentcheva. In one
of only two chapters dealing with the post-1945 period, she groups
published Bulgarian travel books on the West into three categories:
ultimately banned, criticized, and acceptable, analyzing each in turn.</p>
<p class="revtext">Several chapters challenge the definitions provided
in the foundational chapters. For example, the Polish literary scholar
Maria Kalinowska focuses on poetic (as opposed to prose) works of the
romantic period--here, those of Antoni Malczewski, Adam Mickiewicz, and
(especially) Juliusz Słowacki--as these poets wander in proper romantic
form through Europe and beyond (chapter 7). Likewise, the other work
dealing primarily with Polish themes--Katarzyna Murawska-Muthenius’s
chapter--argues that Jan Lenica’s 1954 sketchbook of London can be
“read” as a “Cold War travel text” (p. 329). The inclusion of poetry
and drawings, although interesting as sources to historians of varying
stripes, nonetheless seems to dilute the effect of what could have been
a tighter volume. Surely there were Polish travel narratives--perhaps
one by a woman (unrepresented here, as they apparently were
underrepresented among east European travel writers)--that could have
been addressed here to round out the collection. </p>
<p class="revtext">All told, however, this second of the three
projected volumes represents a major step in the direction of laying a
solid foundation for the systematic study of east European travel
writing. While the nine case studies seem to have been assembled in a
less systematic way, the opening three chapters neatly set the stage
for further investigations. They, and the other pieces, should be
welcome additions in courses dealing with travel and tourism as well as
depictions of East and West.</p>
<p class="revtext">Note</p>
<p class="revtext">[1]. Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis, <em>A
Bibliography of East European Travel Writing in Europe</em>,<em> </em>East
Looks West 3 (Budapest and New York: Central European University
Press, 2008), 487.</p>
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<p class="revtext">If there is additional discussion of this review,
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<p class="revtext">
<strong>Citation: </strong>
Patrice M. Dabrowski. Review of Bracewell, Wendy; Drace-Francis, Alex,
eds., <em>Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East
European Travel Writing on Europe</em>.
HABSBURG, H-Net Reviews.
September, 2009.<br>
<strong>URL:</strong> <a
href="http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24866">http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24866</a>
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