[Bilimsel Haber] Review: Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe

[Gonul Pultar]

*Wendy Bracewell, Alex Drace-Francis, eds.* /Under Eastern Eyes: A 
Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe./ 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9639776114> 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.

*Reviewed by* Patrice M. Dabrowski
**

*Travels in Time? East European Travelers on Europe*

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 /Under Eastern Eyes/ 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, /A Bibliography of East European Travel 
Writing in Europe/, 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 
/Orientations:  An Anthology of East European Travel Writing on Europe./

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]

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.

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).

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 Kriz(anic'); 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 /other/ 
Others" (p. 120).

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.

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 
/Bildung/ 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.

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 S?owacki--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. 

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.

Note

[1].  Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis, /A Bibliography of East 
European Travel Writing in Europe/,/ /East Looks West 3 (Budapest and 
New York:  Central European University Press, 2008), 487.

 
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*Citation: * Patrice M. Dabrowski. Review of Bracewell, Wendy; 
Drace-Francis, Alex, eds., /Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative 
Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe/. HABSBURG, H-Net 
Reviews. September, 2009.
*URL:* http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24866

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