Advent Calendar Day 11 ”Atlas of an Anxious Man” by Christoph Ransmayr

Welcome to day 11 of our Austrian Advent Calendar, and to another book review, one that will take us around the world.

Atlas of an anxious man, Christoph Ransmayr’s book of travel impressions, has been a challenging and rewarding experience. I went in without any idea whatsoever about what to expect. And very soon, I realised this is a book to be savoured in small increments. 70 texts from 70 places on Earth, each beginning with I saw…

Which is, if you think about it, the essence of travel. Most of us have a hard time putting into words the things we see during our travels, so we compensate with photos, and in the digital age, too many of them if I might add. And the first thing I enjoyed in Ransmayr’s book is that feeling of travel journal you were encouraged to keep as a child during your summer holidays. The texts themselves don’t feel like pages of a journal, they’re more essays than anything else. But the way you switch gears every few pages when you jump from one location to the other is what gives it that intimate and unconventional, travel journal feel.

Many memorable passages, written on the brink of reality and fiction, with such delicate attention to detail, you wouldn’t even care if they were real or not. And what’s even more intriguing to me is that almost none of the essays seem like much from the first phrase. And 5 or 6 pages later, you’re ending the tale in awe. Sometimes it’s the people encountered along the way, other times it’s the incredible natural world that leaves the greatest impression, whatever Christoph Ransmayr chooses to focus on, becomes a means of fascination. Take this encounter with a hunchback whale in the depths of the Carribean :

“The giant looked at me. No, she brushed me with her gaze and altered her course by a hair’s breadth, just enough that we didn’t touch each other. Yet although she avoided me with this hint of a deviation, and therefore recognized and acknowledged my existence, I discerned a complete indifference in her look – akin to the mountain’s toward someone climbing it, or the sky’s toward someone flying through it – that I was overcome by a feeling that I would dissolve into nothing before these eyes, disappear before them as though I had never lived. Maybe this Atlantic giant in black had actually swept up from its realm in the deep to convey to an Atlantic swimmer how rich and varied, unchanged and natural the world was without him.”

Christoph Ransmayr – Atlas of an anxious man

While reading, I felt this was the memoir of a famous explorer combined with the observations of an anthropologist, put together by the sensitive soul of a poet. As if the writer combined secret measures of his different personalities in order to obtain a volatile instant of emotion.

To be read and enjoyed one by one, small doses of wonder for Christmas !

Until tomorrow, happy virtual travel !