Travellers' Checks | Room travel – a voyage we can all take during times of coronavirus quarantine and lockdown
- French soldier Xavier de Maistre invented the niche literary genre while confined to his room for six weeks
- If you’re aspiring writer in quarantine or self-isolation looking for inspiration amid coronavirus pandemic, this could be the book for you
“They have forbidden me to roam around a city, a mere point in space; but they have left me with the whole universe: immensity and eternity are mine to command” – Xavier de Maistre, Voyage autour de ma chambre (1794).
In the city of Turin in 1790, de Maistre, a French soldier, was confined to his room for six weeks. He was not in quarantine, but under house arrest for having fought a duel. An adventurous man, who had become one of the first air travellers when he flew, briefly, in the new Montgolfier balloon, six years earlier, de Maistre resolved to travel around his room, on a journey of discovery.
The resulting 42-chapter manuscript, Voyage autour de ma chambre (“Voyage Around My Room”) was published four years later, launching that nichest of literary genres, room travel. “I have just completed a 42-day voyage around my room,” de Maistre began. “The fascinating observations I made and the endless pleasures I experienced along the way made me wish to share my travels with the public.”
By closely examining everything within his own four walls, he found “a delightful country that holds every good thing, and all the riches of life”.
Two centuries later, American writer Susan Sontag called Voyage Around My Room “one of the most original and mettlesome autobiographical narratives ever written”, and philosopher and author Alain de Botton tried out the concept, on a broader scale, in his 2002 bestseller The Art of Travel.