A masterpiece that effortlessly takes its place among the classics of travel writing Victor Segalen (1878–1919) was a French doctor, archaeologist, explorer and author who traveled extensively in Polynesia and China. Journey to the Land of the Real ( Equipée in French) is the summation of the author’s life as traveler and poet, and a summation that is all the more surprising since he could know nothing of his imminent and mysterious Journey appeared posthumously. In part, it recounts an actual expedition through China to the borders of Tibet in the last years of the First World War; there are real adventures in a country now lost to time, but more mysterious events too. Segalen describes this work as lying “between what one dreams of and what one does, between what one desires and what one obtains; between the summit conquered by a metaphor and the altitude reached on foot by exertion; between the winged dance of the idea and the tough march along the road.” Here is a masterpiece that effortlessly takes its place among the classics of travel writing precisely because it is so much more than that; among its brief chapters are consummate prose poems that reveal a lucid, eloquent and very likable author at the height of his powers.
Author
Victor Segalen was a French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic. He was born in Brest. He studied naval medicine in Bordeaux. He traveled and lived in Polynesia (1903–1905) and China (1909–1914 and 1917). He died by accident in a forest in Huelgoat, France ('under mysterious circumstances' and reputedly with an open copy of Hamlet by his side). In 1934, the French state inscribed his name on the walls of the Panthéon because of his sacrifice for his country during World War I. He gave his name to the Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2 University of medicine, literature and social sciences in Bordeaux under the Academy of Bordeaux where he studied, and to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Brest where he was born. From Wikipedia
