A Calm Fire and Other Travel Writings by Philippe Jaccottet Translated by John Taylor

It's not a common travel writing

book A Calm Fire and Other Travel Writings by Philippe Jaccottet Translated by John Taylor published by Seagull Press, but mostly an intellectual researched experience about travelling; travelling in disgraceful places where unfortunately war and dishamony have been the most important themese during the centuries; the travelling intended by Philippe Jaccottet is not descriptive of places, as you would wait from a common teavel-writing book, but a philosophic approach that will space in centuries, will capture religious thematic, understanding the mutation during the centuries of places and cultures, capturing episodes, reporting, and analyzing; an activity that absorbs the poet in various countries, from Italy to Lebanon, from Athen to Israel and much more, passing through literary remembrances and the research of the past in biblical passages when saint places are described as Bethlem the little town where Jesus was born for example. Sure the present, with the little church created where the moltiplication of loaves took place, the absence of fishermen but just swimmers in the Jordan, the presence of old women in the area, their existence just "dictated" by the holy presence of christian history create a strange harmony and disharmony with the following pages where Saul lived and biblical passages of his existence will be protagonists for then returning abruptly to the reality, writing of a country, Lebanon that means whiteness, the same name of the moon, where snow is falling down "on the rusted carcasses of tanks." Places the one of this area where you have the certainty that people for a while, maybe for little moments, lived in peace, tasted freedom as a precious dish, understood what meant peace, for them fighting back again, building graves that looked like fountains. As the poet writes citing Rumi: "Death breaks the cage, but doesn't kill the bird."

Israel is a peaceless place where the signs of violence are everywhere: whoever live in that place risk the contagion of evil as also wrote Hugo in Les Tragiques. Sometimes is more simple to hating and fighting against someone or some group of people without understanding reasons. All the Middle East is described, with also closest countries, like Italy for giving not just a fresco, but a historical, religious, philosophical touch of these realities and people who live, in a daily dramaticity sometimes.

I found fresh and interesting the first part of the book with the description of Italy; Rome, then Fregene, avoiding Ostia considered immensely ugly; Venice is seen after an additional day spent there as "an unhealthy town full of superficiality, fabricated to delude stupid couples dull by their conventional love and determine, having paid the price, to go into ecastasy about everything."

There is also to mention that the swiss poet remarks the poverty that there is in some corners of Italy.

I thank Chicago University Press and Seagull Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori