Egoists, A Book of Supermen: Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrès, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner, and Ernest Hello — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
Egoists, A Book of Supermen: Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrès, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner, and Ernest Hello
Nietzsche · en
But there are, luckily for them, many who are not compelled to assist
at this intellectual Barmecide's feast. They go and they come, and no
man says them nay. Whether they see as much as those who voyaged in the
more leisurely manner of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
is open to doubt. Europe or Asia through a car-window is only a series
of rapidly dissolving slides, pictures that live for brief seconds.
Modern travel is impressionistic. Nature viewed through a nebulous
blur. Our grandfathers, if they didn't go as far as their descendants,
contrived to see more, to see a lot of delightful little things, note
a myriad of minute traits of the country through which they paced at
such a snail's gait. Nowadays we hurriedly glance at the names of
railroad stations. The ideal method of locomotion is really that of the
pedestrian--shanks'-mare ought to be popular. Vernon Lee spoke thus of
our hero: "'Tis the mode of travelling that constituted the delight and
matured the genius of Stendhal, king of cosmopolitans and grand master
of the psychologic novel."
It is interesting to turn back and flutter the pages of that
perennially delightful book, Promenades dans Rome. Italy may truthfully
be said to have been engraved upon the author's heart. Under the
heading Manner of Travelling From Paris to Rome, dated March 25, 1828,
he tells his readers, few but fit, how he made that wonderful trip.
One of the best ways, writes Stendhal, is to take a post-chaise,
or a _calèche_, light and made in Vienna. Carry little baggage. It
only means vexation at the various custom-houses, bother with the
police--who treat all travellers as spies or suspected persons--and
it will surely attract bandits. Besides, prices are instantly doubled
when a post-chaise arrives. There is the mail-coach. It rolls along
comfortably. In its capacious interior one may sleep, watch the
scenery, converse, or read. You can go to Béfort or Basel if you desire
to pass the north of la Suisse, or to Pontarlier or Ferney, if desirous
of reaching the Simplon. You may take the mail to Lyons or Grenoble,
and pass by Mont Cenis; or until Draguignan if you wish to escape the
mountains and enter Italy by the beautiful highway, the work of M. de
Chabral. You arrive at Nice and pass on to Genoa. This is the ideal
route for scenery.