Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands

2019 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Arabian Sands (Longmans 1959) by Wilfred Thesiger, arguably the last of the great British travelers in the Middle East who published their accounts. Arabian Sands, found on almost any respectable list of travel literature, recounts two back to back journeys in the great Arabian desert The Empty Quarter and inner Oman between 1946 and 1948 and documents the post-war erosion of thousand year old Bedouin ways of life due to changes inherent in development, particularly that of the expanding oil industry. Thesiger especially disdained oil companies' exploration in spite of the fact they had, in part, financially supported some of his travel. Thesiger also considered automotive vehicles the paramount factor responsible for the destruction of the Bedouin since they ultimately nullified the camel herding and trading at the heart of their nomadic lifestyle. Modern modes of travel also diminished a geographical space the Bedouin was formerly able to use to his evasive advantage. In a 1999 Washington Post Book World report by David Streitfeld, Thesiger is quoted, "The biggest misfortune in human history is the invention of the internal combustion engine. Cars and airplanes diminish  the world, rob it of all its diversity. Young men who meet me want to know how they could do what I've done. But all they can be is tourists now." And further on, "I resent every material manifestation of our modern civilization." Surely he'd cast a frown at the highway across the Empty Quarter that opened in summer of 2018.

Empty Quarter Rd. c. 2018 Saudi Gazette

Thesiger's father and grandfather were notables in the British Foreign Service and colonial administration and Thesiger himself, prior to his Arabian journeys, had had expeditionary experience in several parts of Africa. For me, a 1930 photograph of him, in comparatively plain clothes, among more than two dozen other members of the British delegation in Addis Ababa, almost every one of whom is attired in truckloads of decorations and medals and horsehair plumed helmets, achingly illustrates disparities within the Empire's foreign subjects in the advancing 20th century, the one obdurately preserving the patrimonies of a waning Pax Britannica and the other squirming to shed the pomp and throw his lot in with the locals to see what ho on the other side of the wadi.

Plate 24. The Empty Quarter

The Qarra Mountains Plate 5. The Northern Slopes Plate 6. The Southern Slopes

Plate 37. Our Party Loading Up in the Sands Plate 38. A Saar Encampment

British travelers in the Middle East and Ottoman lands from Freya Stark to Robert Byron to Wilfred Thesiger produced a canon of inspired travel writing that detailed rigorous journeys and exploration to places still remote and barely known to the average reader at the time. They excelled in burnishing their reporting with insider gravitas and elitism that welcomed the hardships inherent in their exploits as the cost of doing business. But this business did often include immersive kinship and deep empathy with the inhabitants of these lands, particularly the Arabs, although it can't be overlooked that their sojourning was safe in the foreknowledge they would someday return to their green home or, at minimum, was secure in the conviction that they brought to the table an incomparable civility even if the fire of the Victorian ethos was not recognized to be in its dying embers. Is it paradoxical that these travelers upheld a culture they simultaneously sought to escape? I've often wondered if they questioned their romance to ponder if their motivation played at hardship and deprivation or if that's just a jaded supposition from this armchair. Play or not Thesiger did, in fact, crisscross by foot an infamously inhospitable desert in the few scant years before it became more charted, more navigable, and more penetrable all without needing the assistance of Bedouin guides. And he left us with one of the great wanderlust stories of all time.

Lastly, below are images of the large foldout maps included with my first edition of Arabian Sands. In searching for these on the internet I only found other charts of Thesiger's journeys or thumbnails of these maps. Here the maps are reproduced in single frame as well as in a larger format for use with the computer's scroll bars for closer detail.

Comparing editions of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet

NOT LONG AGO my dad passed along to me his copy of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, the universally acclaimed 20th century tetralogy that explores contrasted perspectives of a romance set within the dying embers of the storied Levantine center. I attribute so much of my connection to books to growing up in a house full of them, literally cheek to spine with them since crawling age when almost certainly the physical attributes of books as objects, e.g. color, typeface and cover art, began to etch my senses. Because the A.Q. is renowned mid-century lit these attractive volumes had (but weren't alone in having) some presence on the family bookshelves. And after they landed on mine I was happily surprised to discover they were US (Dutton) first editions. The boxed collection was released in 1961. 

The original UK Faber first edition illustrated jackets are just as beautiful.

 

 

Then there are the Faber and Dutton trade paperback editions:

 

And finally, early mass market covers by Cardinal clearly stamped with imagery that might be thought of as Levantine in a Hollywood kind of way.

 

The Mohawk Valley - Gateway to the West

The Mohawk Valley -  Gateway to the West, by Nelson Greene, has no trouble qualifying as a set of tomes and a masterpiece of American historical chronicle, including extensive geological commentary. For anyone immersed in travels through New York or recreating in its abundant and scenic highlands, lithic formations, valleys and woodlands, the first four chapters are a fascinating reference. Rare as it is I did come across the set pictured here in a north Pennsylvania second hand bookstore but couldn't even begin to entertain the $900.00 "bargain" rate tag. No worries though - the entire history is available online at the Schenectady Digital History Archive. Click here to link to it: History of the Mohawk Valley

A Few Notes on the Twelve Days of Christmas

Like so many other aspects of ritual that populate a realm of hazy detail this year’s holiday meditations led to asking: what exactly are the twelve days of Christmas? And, as usual the answer isn’t exactly easy.  In Christian custom the twelve days bridge Christmas and the Epiphany, when God, manifest in human being as Jesus Christ, is celebrated. Depending on the denomination some reckonings begin on December 25 and end on January 5 while others go from the 26^th to the 6^th. This period, also known as Christmastide, culminates on the Twelfth Night which marks the coming of the epiphany and the traditional feast and merrymaking that attend the occasion.

Further complicating the picture is how dates are offset within different denominations depending on whether or not they are aligned with the Julian or the Gregorian calendars.

In exploring the Twelve Days of Christmas the well known song inevitably comes under consideration. "The Twelve Days of Christmas is an English Christmas carol that enumerates in the manner of a cumulative song a series of increasingly grand gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas.” (Wikipedia) and the numerous variants keep step with multiplicity of detail.  A dozen or more versions of the words, from Mirth Without Merriment (1780) to Swortzell’s (1966) present well known and some lesser known characters - mainly in the latter stanzas - in differing sequence. Things are comparatively stable through seven swans a swimming; at eight an 1842 rendition has ladies dancing instead of the more regularly encountered maids a milking. Nine through twelve each, at different times, see ladies dancing, lords a leaping, drummers drumming and even, in the 1867 Cliftonian verse, badgers baiting. The 1909 Austin verse is the one familiar to many Americans.

Understanding the changes within the song’s words throughout the past few centuries

sheds light on variations within illustrations and elucidates subtle semantic conundrums such as “four calling birds” – it was originally “collie birds”, collie being an English regional term for “black”. See more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Days_of_Christmas_%28song%29

Of the narrative's numerous visual treatments the 1949 interpretation by Ilonka Karasz appeals for its sensitive patterning and delicately poised forms which imbue the pictures with a lyrical quintessence.  The successive segments of the song are rendered with subtle shifts of balance among the characters as they increasingly crowd the page with their well ordered ranks. The illustrator’s playfulness abounds but is especially endearing in the movement of the five gold rings. Finding them in Karasz’ densely patterned drawings, stylized in her native Hungarian visual language, becomes a bit of a game.