This essay deals with Byron's travelogue "The Road to Oxiana". In 1933, Robert Byron sets off for the Middle East to study the Central Asian forms of Islamic buildings and to document architectural masterpieces made of bricks and tiles. The route takes the 28-year-old Englishman by ship, car and horse from Italy and Cyprus via Palestine, Syria and Iraq to Persia and Afghanistan. The destination of his 11-month study trip is Oxiana, a predominantly Turkic-speaking area around the Amu Darya, known as the Oxus in ancient times.
Based on the chronological entries of the travel diary which Byron kept between August 1933 and July 1934, "The Road to Oxiana" (1937) is a literary account in diary form that combines different text types and tones into a multi-layered collage. In addition to narrative passages, it includes numerous political notes, comic dialogues, and sardonic comments, as well as a wealth of architectural, topographical, and ethnological descriptions in exceedingly poetic language.
The travelogue has long since become a classic of modernist British literature. While Bruce Chatwin has referred to it as “a work of genius”, Paul Fussell has attached to it as much importance for the literary canon of the interwar period as James Joyce's novel Ulysses or T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. Even though Robert Byron has sometimes been criticized for his orientalist ideas, he must still be considered a pioneer of contemporary travel literature.
,The Road to Oxiana: Robert Byron´s travelogue records his study trip to Persia and Afghanistan in the early 1930s
“Morning comes. Stepping out on to a roof adjoining the hotel, I see seven sky-blue pillars rise out of the bare fields against the delicate heather-coloured mountains. Down each the dawn casts a highlight of pale gold. In the midst shines a blue melon-dome with the top bitten off. Their beauty is more than scenic, depending on light or landscape. On closer view, every tile, every flower, every petal of mosaic contributes its genius to the whole. Even in ruin, such architecture tells of a golden age.” (Byron, 89)
Such is the lasting impression of the 28-year-old Englishman Robert Byron when he first sees the glory of the minarets and mausoleum in the western Afghan city of Herat on 20 November 1933. Three months before, he sets off for the Middle East to study the Central Asian forms of Islamic buildings and to document architectural masterpieces made of bricks and tiles. The route takes him by ship, car and horse from Italy and Cyprus via Palestine, Syria and Iraq to Persia and Afghanistan. The destination of his eleven-month study trip is Oxiana, a predominantly Turkic-speaking area around the Amu Darya, known as the Oxus in ancient times; however, he will never reach the river in the Afghan-Russian border region.
Born in London on 26 February 1905, Robert Byron is already an experienced writer with distinct preferences and prejudices when he travels to Persia and Afghanistan. In the course of his schooling at Eton College, he develops a profound interest in Byzantine culture, and as a student at the University of Oxford he acquires extensive knowledge of Islamic architectural history. After graduation, he visits several European and Asian countries and authors a total of seven books. While his adventurous travelogues focus on personal impressions from Greece, India, Russia and Tibet, his erudite architectural studies explore the artistic development in the Eastern Roman Empire.
[...]
- Quote paper
- Bernhard Wenzl (Author), 2021, The Road to Oxiana. Robert Byron's Study Trip to Persia and Afghanistan, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1171524