Customer Reviews

Eothen, or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East

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This is a book to be treasured and I read it several times. It is hard to imagine the world Kinglake describes which is virtually extinct now at a time when lions abounded in Eastern Europe, Caliphs and Pashas smoked their pipes through long tubing and Lady Hester Stanhope gets esoteric.

Full of humour, the book is as British as they come with such sensitive nuances about the subject matter including disease, women, customs and issues of religion in the holy land.

I'm still looking for this brand of hero inside and out but don't think he's that common except as a carricature. Did Kinglake's world and attitude really exist?

Absolutely Charming. A picture of an admirable type of man, long since extinct: The aristocratic Englishman, who views everything with an ironic good humor, and complains about nothing, no matter how dangerous, or annoying,or trying. The writing itself is priceless, the subject matter interesting, but it is the man himself that makes the book.

Once asked how he learned to write so well, Winston Churchill growled, "Kinglake." That was Alexander Kinglake whose main works were this slim travelogue reporting on his tour as a young man through the Levant and a huge history of the Crimean war which occupied most of his life. Eothen is a wonderfully engaging tale of a traveler and the people he encounters in what was at the time a formidable journey. We are fortunate that it is back in print, bibliophiles treasure the early, leather-bound editions.

If you've ever had a dream to travel outside of your own backyard, this book will give you the push you need to make that decision. Alexander Kinglake takes you through the exotic east by the most interesting modes of transportation. Horseback, Camels, Dromedaries, and fantastic sea vessels. You'll travel through places such as Stanboul, Constantinople, Cyprus, Galilee, Cairo, the Pyramids, and Jerusalem just to name a few.

A brilliant descriptive writer, Kinglake tells you every detail about what he's viewing along the way, along with the emotional side of traveling through history. Standing on a hilltop, possibly the precise spot where Homer did, that inspired his works, Kinglake takes you there with him, describing unchanged landscape and the flood of emotions that will definately touch you. When he arrived at the Holy lands, it left me in tears, and a great yearning to plan my own pilgrimage there.

It amazed me that this man made it through his travels safe and sound. He survived the plague which was rampant at that time. It was frightening to read about, let alone live through it! Which he tells about in depth. The extreme fear everyone lived in. Yet despite all the precautions taken, it still managed to seek you out and take you into it's unimaginable numbers. Day after day, he watched cavalcades of funeral processions pass through the streets, from sunrise to well beyond sunset. How he fooled it, I'll never know. He always seemed to be in contact with plague stricken people, and even thought for a time that he too had fallen victim when symptoms began to appear.

Through this journal you'll learn about the people of this era and before. The Ottomans, Bedouins, Monks, Jews, Catholics, and Christians. Aristocrats, such as Lady Hester, Sheiks, and Pasha's. Most interesting was Kinglake himself. Just who was this man? He tells little about his own background. But as you read, this intelligent, confident, diplomatic Englishman unfolds before you. With a sense of humor few can match!

This book was gifted to me, and sparked the desire to be a part of what Kinglake and others knew about life. Not to let each day pass by caught up in mundane routines, but live each one to the fullest.

Eothen is a kind of quirky travelogue describing Alexander Kinglake's 1834 tour of the Near East; it was originally published in 1844.

Kinglake, like many an English gentleman (and lady) of his era, is full of prejudices and preconceptions about other cultures and races. He takes "the natural ascendancy of Europeans" as a graven truth, and doesn't scruple at making sweeping generalizations about Arabs, Jews, Turks, Greeks, and everyone else he encounters. The book, for this reason, probably reveals more about Kinglake than it does about the places he travelled. His descriptions of the customs and characters he observes are those of "a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant" outsider, and for that reason must be viewed with skepticism - but they are wonderfully entertaining all the same.

Here is an example of the witty style that makes this book delightful to read:

"Christianity permits, and sanctions, the drinking of wine, and of all the holy brethren in Palestine there are none who hold fast to this gladsome rite so strenuously as the monks of Damascus; not that they are more zealous Christians than the rest of their fellows in the Holy Land, but that they have better wine. Whilst I was at Damascus I had my quarters at the Franciscan convent there, and very soon after my arrival I asked one of the monks to let me know something of the spots that deserved to be seen... "There is nothing in all Damascus," said the good man, "half so well worth seeing as our cellars"; and forthwith he invited me to go, see, and admire the long range of liquid treasure that he and his brethren had laid up for themselves on earth. And these I soon found were not as the treasures of the miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse, for day by day, and hour by hour, the golden juice ascended from the dark recesses of the cellar to the uppermost brains of the friars..."

Highly recommended.

Amazon asked me to review this purchase, however, my review is limited to the purpose for which I bought my second copy of Eothen.

I bought the book not to read it, but only for the artwork by Sir Francis "Frank" Brangwyn one of the greatest painters of his era. I am an architect and painter and exhibit my work worldwide and Brangwyn's work inspired me since boyhood. He is what artist's call, "a painters painter." His art is colorful, rapidly painted and with a style that bridged Impressionism and realism and created a style of his own which inspired many painters and illustrators here and abroad. In fact, after many years of being one of America's greatest illustrators, the great Dean Cornwell, "Dean of Illustrators" put aside his multi-million dollar career as illustrator to move overseas to study with Brangwyn and dedicate himself to Mural painting. He only then illustrated when he needed cash, as mural painting did not pay well.

In Eothen, there are twelve full color illustrations. My only regret is that they are reproduced at a very small scale and the reproductions are thus not as clear as I would prefer. Never the less, they are Brangwyn's and any bit of Brangwyn art is a sacred thing for painters/illustrators who specialize in figure painting. I have a large collection of larger, brilliantly colored reproductions of the art of Frank Brangwyn and often have one or more propped up on my easel for inspiration.
I rated it only four stars because of the small size and less clear reproductions of the masters work.

Most copies of the works of Frank Brangwyn are out of print, as are many of the books he illustrated, as is this version of Eothen. However, even now 50 years after his death at a ripe old age, artists who specialize in figure painting still seek out his work and every now and then a new publication comes forth with excellent reproductions. If you like Brangwyn's brand of Impressionism, which is closer to Italain, Spanish and Russian Impressionism you can search the net for reproductions of his worksEOTHEN OR TRACES OF TRAVEL BROUGHT HOME FROM THE EAST

"Eothen" is a marvellous source of Victorian "Orientalism". Completely unconscious, Alexander William Kingsley, projects his British self into alien worlds equipped with such phrases as "soft Asiatic", and "the Oriental", or, "my poor Arabs being on foot", and his "dragoman" doing his bullying for him (which he feels is utterly necessary in the desert which he crosses partially guided by a Bedouin caravan. Kinglake knows only a few word of Arabic but is full of opinions about the "Asian" man. The most famous scene in the book is set in the midst of the desert, when after days of travelling alone (with his Arab retinue) another Englishman on camel-back appears on the horizon going into the opposite direction. While the Arabs who are in their employ will not be deprived of the pleasure of exchanging greetings and news, the two Englishmen would have passed one another by simply by doffing their caps and waiving their arms, as they would have in London. In fact they pass one another and only turn around , on second thought, when they had passed each other by forty yards. The other gentleman, an Army Officer, on of the "few thousand satrong Englishmen to whome the empire of INdia is committed".
"Eothen" then is about British empire, therefore, and travelling enabled by British banks and their global outlets. For the home reader it created the romance of far places, but closed channels of communication rather than opening them, and created the possibility of disrespect based on superficial judgements, failing to see that travelling only puts the traveller in touch with a minute part of foreign society, and only for a short time. We still have to overcome such travel writing, and it is instructive to see the precedents of contemporary attitudes to "the East".

The author is apparently an anti-Catholic and his hate for the Church shines forth. He portrays monks as lazy, alcoholic social outcasts. Since he so thoroughly misrepresents Catholics, I can't trust his accuracy in any of the rest of this book. Of course, there will always be those who don't truly seek the truth in good faith, but who work to undermine Christ's Great High Priestly Prayer for Unity.