VV(18): "Tourists"

[Dave Monroe]

"This is a curious country, populated only by a breed
called 'tourists.'  Its landscape is one of inanimate
monuments and buildings ..." (V., Ch, 14, Sec. ii, p.
408)

>From Charles Baudelaire, "Anywhere out of this
world--N'importe ou hors du monde," Petit Poems en
Prose (Le Spleen de Paris) (Paris: Editions Garnier
Freres, 1963), pp. 211-13.  Translated by Juliet
Flower McCannell ...

"It seems to me that I would alawys be better off
where I am not, and this question of moving is one I
discuss incessantly with my soul ...

[...]

"Not a word.  My soul, could it be dead?
   "'Have you then come to the point of such torpor,
paralysis, that you are not happy except in your pain?
 If so, let us flee towards countries that are
analogous to Death.  I have it, poor soul! ...  still
further than life, if this is possible; let's install
ourselves at the pole.  There the sun grazes the earth
obliquely, and teh slow alternatives of light and
night siuppress variety and augment monotony, this
half of nothingness.  There we could take long baths
of shadow, while, to give us diversion, the aurora
borealis would send us from time to time their pink
sheaves, like reflections of fireworks from Hell.'
   "Finally, my soul explodes, and wisely cries to me:
'Anywhere!  Anywhere!  Only let it be out of this
world."

Epigraph to Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory
of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken, 1977) ...
 


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