A Nocturnal Expedition Round My Room

In 1790, Xavier de Maistre was 27 years old, and a soldier in the army of the Sardinian Kingdom, which covered swathes of modern-day Northern Italy and Southern France. He was placed under house-arrest in Turin for fighting an illegal duel. It was during the 42 days of his confinement here that he wrote the manuscript that would become Voyage autour de ma chambre. Inspired by the works of Laurence Sterne, with their digressive and colloquial style, de Maistre decided to make the most of his sentence by recording an exploration of the room as a travel journal. de Maistre’s book imbues the tour of his chamber with great mythology and grand scale. As he wanders the few steps that it takes to circumnavigate the space, his mind spins off into the ether. It parodies the travel journals of the eighteenth-century (such as A Voyage Around the World by Louis de Bougainville, 1771), and could be read today as an early take on the modern vogue for “psychogeography” — each tiny thing that he encounters sends de Maistre into rhapsodies, and mundane journeys become magnificent voyages.

Excerpt from A Nocturnal Expedition Round My Room I will confess, however, that I love solitude in large cities; but, unless I am compelled by serious causes, such as A journey round my room, I do not care to be a hermit except in the morning 5 in the evening, I like to see human faces again. The inconveniences of social life, and those of solitude, thus counteract each other, and these two modes of existence thus beautify one ano ther. The inconstancy and fatality of earthly affairs are such, however, that the vividness of the plea sures that I enjoyed in my new residence ought to have warned me of their probably short duration. The French Revolution, which was surging on all sides, had just overtopped the Alps, and was pouring down upon Italy. The first wave carried me to Bologna. Here, nevertheless, I still kept on my hermitage, into which I had all my furniture moved, to await happier times. For some years I had been an exile one fine morning I found myself without employment. After a whole year spent in seeing men and things I cared little for, and in wishing for things and men I could no longer see, I returned to Turin. It was necessary to take some definite step. I walked out from the Hotel de la Bonn: Femme, where I had put up, with the intention of giving up my little room, and selling my furniture. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Finding himself locked in his room for six weeks, a young officer uses his imagination to travel around his room, using the various objects it contains as inspiration for a delightful parody of contemporary travel-writing and exercise in Sternean picaresque, and humorously demonstrating what one can explore without having to travel to exotic locations. Contains a foreword by Alain de Botton

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ A Journey Round My Room: Followed By A Nocturnal Expedition In The Same Regions. From The French Xavier de Maistre Carey, Lea, & Carey, 1829 Fiction; Classics; Fiction / Classics