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Title: A Road
Author: Zo d’Axa
Date: 1895
Language: en
Topics: voyage
Source: Retrieved on June 26, 2011 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/zo-daxa/1895/road.htm
Notes: From “La Revue Blanche”. First Quarter 1895;  Translated for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2010.

Zo d’Axa

A Road

Foreigners everywhere!

There aren’t many fewer of them in Paris than in this London where I

have vegetated in the vacation of an outlaw for the past three months.

Here, for example, you don’t become acclimated, not even superficially.

You can’t overcome the natives’ absolute reserve; you don’t in any way

penetrate the surrounding environment. You feel you are materially

pushed to the side. Isolation weighs on you in the compact sadness of

the fog.

You frequent the international clubs in vain: they’re disappointing.

The solidarity of certain revolutionary groups has the ostentation of

charity: it is nothing but a distressing spectacle. And what is more,

bad tempered suspicions fly, giving any enthusiasm a cold shower.

Accusations are exchanged. Argument and invective win out over

discussion.

Mistrust rules.

You have to return to your room and your solitude. But the little room

facing onto the courtyard on the top floor of a gloomy house is cause

for nostalgia.

You could count the number of exiles who enjoy a comfortable home.

The rest unconsciously drag their feet to the area around Whitechapel,

down there behind the Tower of London. They wander the poverty-stricken

alleys, coming out onto the main streets when the scurrying crowd is

leaving the factories and docks and then rises in a tide it would be

pleasant to drown in.

In the big cities you pass though it’s not the wealthy boulevards or the

communal buildings that are the most interesting. You rarely halt during

museum visits, since rare are the works of yore that still move us.

Monuments only have the beauty of their harmony, and when this proud

totality no longer exists they stand there like old stones that a

historic memory doesn’t suffice to magnify.

But it is still fascinating to seek out the salient traits of a race by

making contact with the soul of the people. And you go to the poor

quarters, among the shops of the lower professions, in the streets where

kids run barefoot, down streets where here and there the vast buildings

— popular barracks — looming over leprous mounds, look like giant hives

for the wretched.

The cells of these hives are narrow, the walls of these hovels are close

to each other and have no fireplace. The compressed life of these dumps

overflows onto the muddy sidewalks, sometimes livened by a ray of

sunlight. When this happens the rushing about is like a commotion of an

anthill.

Outdoors in the daylight there’s endlessly renewed labor. Pale women

wash coarse linen. Potatoes are cooking on heaters whose fire is fanned

by for the meal that will later be eaten, seated on wobbly chairs in

front of the door. And these people all know each other, they call out

to each other, moves, exist in a special lifestyle, with its

characteristic usages, determined customs, an original spirit and morals

whose brutal side evokes the primitiveness of a type.

In London I commonly felt hostility in the gazes that fall on you as if

to forbid you from approaching: “Go away!”

Every Englishman strangely symbolizes his country.

These island dwellers are so many unapproachable islands where the sap

of warm colored plants sleeps.

It’s so monotonous, it’s so neutral, it’s so gray... and I’ve had enough

of it!

To leave!

It’s not that you delude yourself by dreaming of a fraternal reception

under other skies. The outlaw knows that every asylum is uncertain. He

knows that he will be as suspect in Geneva as he is in Brussels, in

Spain as in Italy. But when you’re tired of sojourning it’s true that

you don’t need a goal to set out on the road.

To leave, to go anywhere...

The voyage! To go, fleeing spleen. In the beginning, every place has its

charms. Everything is beautiful for an hour at least.

Wisdom resides in not staying.

To pass, gleaning impressions, tasting new sensations and the savor of

the earth. And then go back on the road, no doubt towards some

unreachable fatherland. Vagabond, pilgrim, beggar on a voyage of

exploration, of conquest. Unsatisfied, like Don Juan, but with a higher

love. The dress you want to tear is the veil on the horizon.

The green, deep Thames carries so many adventurous desires along on its

waters.

After Westminster, after the Tower, after the docks, beyond Blackwell it

opens up. The ships glide towards the sea and their whistles are calls

you hear with a start.

It was in Blackwell that one morning, without any real plan, I took the

boat to Holland. If I would have had a few more shillings I would just

as well have embarked to see Sweden or take a look at Calcutta.

The crossing from London to Rotterdam lasts a day and a night. The price

isn’t very high, fifteen francs for third class. And for a short sea

voyage the lowest class is not noticeably worse than first. You enjoy

standing contemplating the battle of the waves, and on the open sea

watching the sky sink into the waters.

All places are the same for this infinite spectacle, forward as well as

aft.

In any case, third class is imposed on you when all you have is a few

louis. This is my case, and my baggage is light and the velvet of my

suit is rustic.

In third class you meet few people travelling for pleasure. There are

nothing but poor people being repatriated, workers hoping to find work

far from their city.

No tourists.

The latter want to be pampered and comfortable. Even the most modest

among them. They prefer to wait and swell their savings so they can

travel in second class. They embark with their wallets full, holding a

roundtrip ticket and coupons for pre-arranged hotels. Not having to rub

elbows with them is the immeasurable advantage of traveling third class.

The insipid chatter of mighty is nowhere more pitiful that in the

majesty of the open sea.

It’s as if you’re being pursued...

You’re better off with the puerile talk of the passengers in steerage,

of the penniless who are free of poses and aren’t afraid to express

their naïve sentiments. None of the irritating drone or the mannered

recitation of triumphant commonplaces. They speak of hope and

difficulties. And according to the weather and the hour, they give free

rein to colorful language.

And it also happens that in third class chance gives birth to

camaraderie. I went down the Thames in the amiable company of some needy

troubadours who paid for their transport by singing the waltzes of their

country.

Dark heads on supple gypsy bodies of gypsies with boisterous violins.

They were returning from a tour around the Scottish countryside.

They were emigrating, fleeing winter.

Some of them spoke French and told me of their nomadic life. There was

beauty and seductiveness in its carefree nature. They simply kept going

forward, nothing but sun, fresh air, and music.

I wasn’t with them long enough.

Seated in the front of the ship, camped on valises while their violins

rested in their cloth cases, we distractedly watched the sure-handed

functioning of the tugboats and the whimsicality of the sailboats.

Fewer factories along the river, lagoons of red earth where sheep grazed

on the sparse grass. The Thames widened again. It was Greenwich, and in

the evening we felt the waves’ backwash.

We’d reached the sea.

I didn’t know the strange melody my companions saluted it with. But

their instruments, their voices, and the sound of the water harmonized

in the rhythm of a lullaby.

At night, having had an aperitif of salty air, we were hungry , and they

sliced off large chunks of ham and fraternally circulated a whiskey

gourd.

Upon arriving in Rotterdam we went the next day to an inn at the port.

And while they improvised a concert, I went to see the old houses with

their stepped roofs, squeaky clean on the canals of this vulgar Venice.

The musicians soon told me they were going to stay there for two weeks.

That was more than I could do. Good wishes, farewell, handshakes.

Not faraway, at its mouth, the Rhine sent me the clean reflection of its

old castles. The same pressing desire that had caused me to go down one

river pushed me to go up another. The Thames, the Rhine! Isn’t it as if

they were the prolongation of a seductive highway?

From the light steamship, sparkling under the sun, we see Patras at the

foot of the mountain opposite Missolonghi.

On the small square near the port, not far from the market, the scurry

of a Sunday. Brightly colored European garb, timeless fashions. Church

services were ending. The women’s beautiful faces, lost under the

edifices of their hats. Old Greeks in national costumes, the short

pleated skirt of a female dancer. And the polychromatic, shimmering

crowd, turning like a merry-go-round on the square with its three dusty

palm trees.

On the terrace of a Moorish café, where anisette and “mastic” were

served amidst saucers of olives on small, low tables, I piously gave

myself over to my first hookah.

The light tobacco is slowly consumed in the red clay chimney under the

scented coal, while in the carafe with its copper armature the water

purrs its strange gluggings. The hookah stands hieratically and the long

tube with its triangular amber tip unfurls like the rings of some sacred

serpent.

It’s quite a change from rotgut whiskey.

And I have to say that from the decorative point of view there is an

analogous difference between the men of that country and the inhabitants

of ours. These Greeks show signs of their pedigree. The least turkey

farmer has the inbred distinction that our swells seek in vain. With his

delicate features, even the peasant preserves the aristocratic imprint

that imperiously expresses the glorious line of his ancestors.

Their proud bearing and this whimsicality in attire explain the

laisser-aller that you note in the carrying out of daily tasks. Commerce

doesn’t enthuse them, and their agriculture is strange. In fields I saw

potatoes and lilies mixed together in the barbarous furrows.

The train I took to Athens on a bright sunny morning stopped at every

single station.

Constantly getting on, getting off, renewing themselves, there were

peasants snacking on coarse bread and eating goat cheese to pass the

short trip. Priests and longhaired beggars filling their pockets travel

from here to the next village, along with poorly dressed soldiers

singing strange nasal tunes.

Tourists in their sleeping cars have no idea how well you get to know a

people through a prolonged stay in a vulgar passenger car, and to what

extent it allows you to enter into contact with them.

A klepht [1] goes to the city to stock up on gunpowder. Seated in a

corner of the wagon he seems to isolate himself, his pistol butts

forming commas on his leather belt.

He has both the burnoose and the hardiness of a Kabyle.

You see more and more similarities between Arabs and Greeks.

The free mountain man — shepherd, hunter, perhaps “collector of indirect

taxation from strolling rich men” — possesses the tranquil majesty of a

qadi [2] after a razzia [3].

Here, on the arid plains of Megara, where the houses are cabins of red

clay, you would almost think you were under the scorched trees of a

Saharan oasis.

The décor changes.

Having gone around a hill, Athens is in view. Standing over the

styleless buildings of a provincial city geometrically sliced up by the

layout of the streets, stands the rock of the Acropolis, the pedestal of

the Parthenon.

The Parthenon stands out in the impeccability of its serene columns, and

the Acropolis looks like the final entrenchment of a haughty past,

disdainful of the modern effort eating away at its base.

It’s not that I exalt the vestiges of a vanished world. It’s that I tell

myself that our world will leave nothing but refuse.

I am a stranger to the emotional respect of archeologists before antique

stones. The stadium led me to reminisce. Illisus made me think less of

the Argonauts than of college, of homework, of teachers.

College. The first prison. Academic Procrustean bed, a training for the

barracks, a miniature society so ugly that it is the seed of Society.

And anyway, how can you isolate yourself, bring the past back to life,

imagine warriors and chariots in these arenas alongside the tramway? How

can you dream of paganism in these temples rising from archeological

digs where Orthodox tapers have religiously daubed Holy Virgins as their

vestals?

I don’t accompany the Englishmen who stroll with their Baedeker,

swooning at the sight of shapeless blocks for the sole reason that this

debris is catalogued in their guidebook. They don’t miss a single piece

of debris, not a single mutilated drawing. They drag their hands over

the mosaics in the baths:

Socrates passed here!

I don’t frequent clinical museums: venerable pieces of statues, arm of

Venus, leg of Apollo, labeled torso: all of surgical Greece.

As much as I appreciate those primitive works in which the essential is

harmonious, which are triumphant in the esthetic of synthesis, to the

same extent the race of amateurs digging into piles of illustrious

crumbs appears to me grotesque. Amphora handles, brick shards, poor

crumbs under glass... The sight of a stone floating down a stream in its

eternal vagabondage inspires more thoughts in me.

I had arrived in Athens in distress.

I hoped to find a letter at the post office. Nothing. I had to wait

several days.

At the doors of restaurants I melancholically contemplated the little

suckling pigs grilling in the most joyful poses and satisfied myself

with small portions in suburban greasy spoons.

Did I get to eat the finest foods of Greek antiquity? In any case I

remembered the philosophers who once slept on the temple porch. One

evening I went to the Parthenon and only came down the next morning. I

will say in support of the renown of this client-free asylum that for

morning soup we enjoyed a unique feast: the awakening of a golden

countryside at the feet of Mount Hymette.

[1] Greek bandit

[2] Muslim judge

[3] Raid