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| The tower of Kabus. Picture by Robert Byron |
Some books just stop you in your reading
tracks. I mean by that, that instead of reading further, picking up the next
book, intrigued, you keep lingering on the pages you just read. You reread, you
go back to certain passages, you check-out the credentials of the author, look
up the settings that are described, the people he meets, to finally lose
yourself meandering through the most obscure reviews on the web.
When this happens, as it recently did when
I read Robert’s Byron’s “The Road to Oxiana”, you know the book has struck a
nerve…
°°°
“The Road to Oxiana” recounts the voyage Byron
undertook, in the company of Christopher Sykes, from August 1933 to July 1934, to
the legendary Oxania, the region surrounding the Amu
Darya River
whose flow effectively delineates the northern border of Afghanistan with Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan Palestine
( Israel and Lebanon ), Syria ,
Iraq , Persia ( Iran
), Afghanistan to finally end
in British ruled Pakistan
“The road to Oxiana”, was first published
in London
Commercially the book was no success. James
Knox, in his recent Byron biography, reported sales of a mere eight hundred
copies in the first three months. By the end of 1938, the total sales amounted
to no more than fourteen hundred volumes. Compare that with “News from
Tartary”, written by Robert’s literary rival, Peter Flemming, which appeared at
the same time and needed eight reprints in four months.
Although “The road to Oxiana” was
awarded a gold medal at the National Book Fair that year and that it was lauded
as the most outstanding travel book of the year, Byron’s book soon slipped into
obscurity.
Today however, thanks to the praise of modern
fellow travellers, “The road to Oxiana” is back in the limelight as a
travel-classic. Quite a few travel writers have acknowledged Byron’s influence
on their own work. But, rather than just an influence, for some of those
celebrated travel writers, “The road” was a genuine template for their own work.
Chatwin and Stewart for instance are hugely indebted to Byron, as is Patrick
Leigh Fermor, albeit to a lesser degree. Chatwin, whose mimicry of Robert Byron
was not only restricted to his writings, described the book as "a sacred
text, a writing beyond criticism," and he boasted that he had carried his
copy with him, since he was fifteen years old, "spineless and flood
stained" on four journeys through central Asia .
While Geoffrey Moorhouse summed up the general appreciation: “A book like no
other that went before it…an enduring classic… a reference point in travel
writing”, it is Paul Fussell, the professor with the purple heart from the
University of Pennsylvania, who went as far to claim that “The Road
to Oxiana was to the travel book what "Ulysses had been to
the novel and what The Waste Land had been to poetry."
While that may sound a bit hyperbolic, there is no doubt that Byron’s work
effectively had changed the way travel books were written. There are for
instance, quite a few identifiable differences in the way the narrative is told
in Bruce Chatwin’s “In Patagonia” and Norman Douglas’s “Old Calabria”. There is
indeed a before and an after “The Road to Oxiana”.
°°°
What made Robert Byron’s writing so new?
Wherein exactly could one find what Evelyn Waugh would describe as its “Modernity”?
The modernity was twofold. First and most
important was that Byron created the illusion that his book was a barely edited
journal, a collection of jottings, a first hand account of all his impressions
during the voyage.
The second “innovation” was his carefully
handed mix of raw journal entries of harrowing travel memories with elaborated descriptions
of archaeological lore and displays of cultural and historical erudition.
The result was uncompromising. While “The
road to Oxiana” still had the immediacy of an original diary, the reader at the
same time learned about unknown architectural masterpieces and with the
guidance of Byron appreciated its esthetical value.
In his memory, “Four studies in Loyalty”, Byron’s
travel companion, Christopher Sykes wrote that “The road to Oxiana” was far
from a collection of jottings or raw journal entries. On the contrary, it was a
carefully contrived and painstaking piece of writing that went through many
drafts before Byron was satisfied with the effect it produced.
The work, Sykes claimed, occupied three
full years of Byron’s life.
And work it was. Instead of following the
traditional conventions of storytelling, retelling one’s experiences as a
continuous narrative like Fleming or Douglas would do, Byron did model his book
to the format of his journal. He kept the structure for instance; five parts
for each of his journals; and rigidly adhered to its dated diary entries.
Occasionally he would rearrange de sequence
of events to improve their narrative flow but he tightened the prose and cut the
redundant material. He worked on expressing himself in a more concise, yet more
conversational way.
Here are some examples of the “raw journal
entries”, incidents from his trip:
Zinjan,
October 22nd – “Grand Hotel – town hall”again…
“Christopher
is in a sad state. His legs are swollen up to the knee and covered with water
blisters. We have taken seats in a car which leaves here this afternoon, and
should reach Teheran by midnight.
Bandar
Shah ( sea-level), April 26th – Under arrest ! I am writing on a bed in the
police-station.
Damghan
( 3900 foot ), April 28th – More disasters.
Twenty
miles from Samnan the back axle broke. We had a spare one, but it took five
hours to fit…
But then suddenly, unannounced, he lightens
up his text by mixing these kind of entries with a discourse on a “lost”
architectural masterpiece to end flamboyantly with an aesthetic appreciation…
Here is an example: first a normal entry of
a travel diary…
Securing
a bowl of curds and a flap of bread as big as a tent from a teahouse, we
entered the mausoleum…
Then he sees and describes what others
haven’t seen before…
This
remarkable building was finished by the Mongol prince Uljaitu in 1313. […] The
brick is pinkish. But the minarets were originally turquoise, and trefoils of
the same colour, outlined in lapis, glitter round the base of the dome. […]
Byron gives the impression that he has an
impressive command of the ancient Timurid architectural heritage and deploys it
with great effect. In reality Byron, like most of us, was totally ignorant of
the history and architecture of the region. The knowledge he exhibits in his
book was acquired after his trip, on return to London ,
when researching his essay on the architecture of Afghanistan
He continues…
But
it still breaths power and content, while its offspring achieve only scenic
refinement. It has the audacity of true invention; the graces are sacrificed to
the idea, and the result, imperfect as it may be, represents the triumph of the
idea over technical limitations. Much great architecture is of this kind. One
thinks of Brunelleschi.
Brilliant! Who would not want Byron to be
his travel companion?
°°°
Although the first entry reads: “Venice
From the first sentences, I had no doubt
that in “The road to Oxiana”, there was as much to be understood “between the
lines”, as was printed in black and white on the pages. This too picked my
curiosity and I started to concentrate on the “blind spots”, on what was not
mentioned in the book. More than just “close” reading, I tried to understand
the lived reality that unfolded beyond the text. Who was involved and who send
Byron money when he was in Bagdad ? Was it just
cultural curiosity that drove Byron and Sykes into Persia
and Afghanistan
Like all diaries, Byron s journal has its
secrets.
The first entries for instance are
punctuated with sexual imagery, indiscernible for those who read too fast.
Byron is clearly feeling uneasy. More than just the departure blues, it seems
like Byron has double feelings about leaving.
Byron claims to enjoy his last weekend with
his friends in the Italian city before heading to the Orient. Christopher Sykes,
his travel companion is not there. It has been agreed that he will join Byron a
week later in Cyprus China
Both lovers will meet again in 1935, only
to hear that Desmond had been affected by a fatal case of Hodgkin disease.
Desmond will tragically die in ‘37, a mere twenty six years old. It is odd how
in his diary-book the homosexual Byron gives the impression that there is
something between Diane and him. More than an unintentionally created false
impression it looks like a cover-up for the sake of his family and especially
his mother, acute reader of her son’s writings.
There are financial worries too. Byron and
his family are broke. Over the years the huge fortune and estate of Robert’
grandfather has withered away. To finance his trip, Byron can only rely on a
meagre advance on his book. But there is more. Byron and Sykes have agreed to join
a highly publicized British expedition about to test a “charcoal – burning”
device powering the cars. If successful, these engines could effectively
replace petrol fuelled combustion engines. Robert, who has no money, has
refused to participate in financing the expedition but he has agreed to be
their unpaid “official” writer of the expedition and that he can use the
lodgings and food arranged for the expedition for free . All this is not
explained in the book and the Charcoal burners are only mentioned cryptically
from time to time.
In fact the expedition would have months of
delay and will only catch up with Byron half a year later. In Venice Robert is
unaware of the huge problems the expedition is facing. By the time he gets to Palestine Bagdad . A row would later explode when the Charcoal
burners accuse him of spending the money for his own goal rather than for the
benefit of the expedition.
°°°
The part of the world Byron travels
through, Iraq – Iran - Afghanistan
Byron interacted with the locals and
negotiated transport, including motor vehicles, horses and asses to carry him
on his journey. He encountered heat, cold, hunger and thirst and suffered the
inconvenience of bugs, fleas, lice and physical illness.
Byron himself appears to be a rather
complex character. A product of Eton and Oxford
Christopher Sykes describes him in a funny
way, when they meet in Palestine
“…a
round figure dressed in jodhpurs and a tweed jacket, and with a cigarette dangling
from his lower lip, fairly charging along the jetty to the sound of clattering
cameras, pencil cases and folio which hung about him…”
Byron, with his Eton – Oxford
It is his intelligence which makes me like
the character. His foresightedness in how Germany
and Russia Europe discovers the true face of Nazism and Stalinism,
Byron warns the “intellectuals” of what might be expected. But nobody seems to listen,
on the contrary, his aggressive reaction against anybody with Nazi sympathies
soon enough makes him “persona non grata” in quite a few social circles. It was
as if he had a premonition, for it was the Nazis in the end who got him. Byron disappeared
in 1941, when the ship on which he was travelling to Egypt
was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath , Scotland
His arrogance, especially in artistic
esthetical manners, is of the cultivated kind. It is a pose, an attitude. He is
outspoken in his dislikes, strong in his prejudices: the Dutch masters? Rubbish!
Rembrandt? Disgusting! Shakespeare? Grocer’ writings! Michelangelo? Hah!
Such prejudices have that effect in a young
man that he has to replace them by something else. And he does. Against general
appreciation, he prefers El Greco to Michelangelo. Then he is the first to
point to Byzantine art rather than the Roman and Greek classicist examples. When
he realizes nobody knows about Timurian Art, Umayyad Art, Abbasid Art, Mughal
Art, Safavid Art, he makes it his speciality and its fierce defender.
And it is this introduction to and appreciation
of these lesser known heritages, which makes up the heart of this book and its most
fascinating attraction. Byron’s book uncovers a hidden world.
Around the Mediterranean, we are still able
to visualize the world he describes: Venice , Jerusalem , Cyprus ,
Beirut Iraq Shiraz , the elegance of the
tomb of Zoroaster, the height of the portal of the Fiday Mosque in Yezd, the massive
tower of Kabus
I for one, had not a clue. With the
fascinating hypnotic pictures made by Byron, I looked up all these masterpieces
on the net and I discovered a world. I was struck dumb, so much beauty, so much
unknown… Iran , Iraq , Pakistan
With his book Byron, not only modernized
the literary form of the cultivated travel book. By donning himself the mantle
of the Scholar traveller, expert in Persia
The copy I read, gives credit to the beauty
of Byron’s disclosed world. It is my cherished beautiful Folio Society edition,
aptly bound in a truly splendid teal – blue coloured cloth, embellished with a
silvery Islamic foliage design, as if inspired by the lines out of “The road to
Oxiana”
