Journey Round My Room

Under the bibliographical heading of “Travel and Exploration” is a subhead, “Imaginary Journeys”. Here we have a book based on personal experience by a traveller who goes nowhere outside his living quarters, except in his imagination.

The author, Xavier de Maistre, was born in 1763 at Chambéry in France. In 1790, as a young officer in the Piedmontese army, he participated in a duel. It is not known whether his opponent perished or was wounded; de Maistre records no injury to himself. As punishment he was confined to his own quarters in Turin for forty-two days. During that period of house arrest he wrote a book, a short work, but one that would have long influence and enjoy virtually uninterrupted publication to this day in its original French, as well as in translations.

The author’s conceit is that, even though incarcerated, he is free to travel. The mode of meandering he recommends will appeal to everyone, he insists, especially the rich, because it is so inexpensive as to cost nothing. Confined to his room, waited upon by his servant and accompanied by his dog, he roams about, finding means of escape through his imagination and the objects that trigger it. He counts the thirty-six paces of the room’s periphery and crisscrosses it haphazardly. Sometimes he uses his arm-chair as a conveyance. He tips back on its hind legs, balancing and rocking, maneuvers forward, sideways, or rearward, employing this means of locomotion when he has no schedule to keep, that is, when he is not in a hurry, as is the case throughout his imprisonment. How boring, you might think, but he is not in solitary confinement. He has dream visitors as he slumbers in his comfortable bed. At the end of the book it is revealed that he has entertained real guests. The furniture, the books, the pictures on the walls, the views through windows are observed and occasion further observations. Why go so far as to Paris or Rome? Rather range farther as a stay-at-home!

The illustrations are by the architect Ross Anderson. They are sixteen photographs of small models of the room, its furnishings, and the author’s travelling coat, taken with a cell-phone digital camera. These low-resolution pictures are printed on translucent UV/Ultra II paper by offset lithography. The result is an elusive evocation of an interior that becomes the vast expanse of the interior of the mind.

Anderson also created a housing for the book (sold out)

. This is a box with portholes that allow the viewer to look inside. Light through the ceiling of the box illumines walls and floors of an abstract apartment that serves as the lid to the tray holding the book. It is an architectural model that might be called “the second story”. A portion of the book edition is offered with this box as an optional feature.