And what is the smell of pilgrimage? Fragrant, or foul? Towards the blissful odour of the divine? Or the stink of God dying (if/when God detects the smell)?
I’ll begin with a quotation-
Enrique Vila-Matas, tr Rosalind Harvey and Anne MacLean. Dublinesque (2012), P 24.
The narrative is taking Samuel Riba back to his home in Barcelona in a taxi. He reads a newspaper on the journey:
"He goes back to the newspaper and reads that Claudio Magris believes (that) Ulysses' circular journey as he returns triumphantly home – Joyce's traditional, classic, Oedipal and conservative journey – was replaced halfway through the twentieth century by a rectilinear journey: a sort of pilgrimage, a journey always moving forward, towards an impossible point in infinity, like a straight line advancing hesitantly into nothingness.”
What does being on pilgrimage (see our strapline) mean? Outlaw and Disloyal is one answer, such as:
- using the reference to Claudio Magris in the above quotation
- anthropological writing, such as Tim Ingold on ‘Lines’, or Michael Taussig on ‘Fieldnotes’
- OR being ‘en route to Istanbul’ (according to our ABOUT # here) concocting a theory in transit, as I was about a week ago ON A TRAIN FROM WATERLOO TO PARKSTONE involving
1.) ‘Vagabond Literature’: on the CONTEXT of Writing
Outlaw and Disloyal (rather than (say) Cosmopolitan or Bohemian)
a) Out of Place = vagabond dialectics
b) Abroad = serial dialogicity
2.) ‘Rurban’ – on the LOCATION of Walking
The complexity of ‘city vagabonds
= landscapes rather than spaces
3.) 'Just Past'* – on the TIME of Talking
Histories of the living
= the feuilleton tradition
(* Urgeschichte: for more on the ‘Just Past’ see Walter Benjamin etc)
4.) ‘Sunrise’ – on the STYLE of walkingtalkingwriting
Subjective kinetic optimism plus moral imagination
= in jest
Earlier in Dublinesque the narrative takes the sixty year old Samuel Riba, thereafter shortened to ‘Riba’, to a hilarious meeting with his ancient mother and father, where he finds that he is no longer able to explain his movements. It is, so to speak, a meeting with God, "So you've been to Lyon", his parents ask Riba over and over, irritably seeking a reply – and I rather suspect, malodorously – but he finds it impossible to give any account of his recent visit to that city, where he spent the whole time alone in his hotel bedroom concocting a general theory of the novel.
However, when he had finished his “daring” theory, Riba remembered the ‘sacred
instinct of having no theories’ spoken of by Pessoa, and so held a secret funeral for it (and all other theories) and left the city. Riba of course is unable to tell any of this to God, or to his ancient parents.