Peace! peace! No, we do not know! Or rather, we do not wish to know. Naturally, we always have a few superficial motives4 at our disposal when it suits us to mask our unconscious secrets from ourselves and from the world. Why do we travel? Psychologists have given many reasons, but they do not go beyond such superficial motives as “the desire for a change,” “a craving6 for excitement,” “curiosity,” “fatigue, the need for a rest,” “flight from the home,” etc. Some go further and attribute the desire to travel to the elementary pleasure of being in motion. For these psychologists the little child’s first step is its first journey, the last step of the weary aged7 their last journey. Others again veritably classify journeys and distinguish between trips undertaken for health reasons, business trips, scientific trips, etc.
Vain beginning! In reality one trip is like another. If we would understand the elementary feelings associated with a trip we must go back [Pg 134]to our youth. In youth we still have a sense of the wonderful; in youth the horizon of our fantasies is aglow8 with wondrous9 visions. But of course the world about us is solemn and wearisome, full of duties and obligations. But ah, the wide world without! There dangerous adventures smile alluringly10; there unrestrained freedom beckons11; there deeds may be achieved that may make kings of us. In our thoughts we build a small skiff that will take us out of the narrow channel of our homes into the vast sea; we battle on the prairie with the brave and crafty12 Indians; we seek out the sun-burned gold-fields in the new world; we put a hurried girdle round about the earth, and—when at top speed—we would even attempt a flight to the moon.
Nothing that makes an impression on the human mind is ever lost. Our youth with its fantasies and childish desires exerts an important influence on us all our life. Henceforth all our excursions are journeys into the realm of youth. All, all are alike. Life hems13 us in with innumerable obstacles, bonds, and walls. The older we grow the greater becomes the weight that loads us down. In the depths of the soul the tintinnabulation of youth is ringing and speaking to us of life and freedom, and keeps on ringing alluringly till weary man surrenders and takes a trip. The tinkling14 music of the soul works strongest on the mind of youth. He, fortunate he, knows not the difference between the music [Pg 135]of his heart and the hum of the world without. He knows not yet that the world is everywhere the same, the people everywhere the same, and the mountains, the lakes, the seas, with but slight variations, the same. His longings15 carry him out, far out, and he seeks their fulfilment.
The adult lives a life of bitter disappointments. He never seeks the new. He longs only to get rid of the old. And the aged wanderer, having reached the end of the vale of life, follows his buried wishes, his memories of the beautiful days in which there was still something to hope for, in which he was not beyond self-deception.
It is not to be denied that ours is the travelling age. This is partly due to the fact that we experience so little, as we have already said, in our craving for excitement. The many inventions that have conquered time and space have made it possible for us to fly over the whole world, and thus the primary purpose of travelling, the hunger for experience, shrinks into trivial, merry or vexatious hotel adventures. But in every such trip one may discover a deeply hidden kernel17 of the voyages of the old Vikings. Every journey is a tour of conquest. Here at home we have found our level; our neighbours know us and have passed their irrevocable judgment18 on our person. To travel means to conquer the world anew, to make oneself respected and esteemed19. Every new touring acquaintance must stand for a new conquest. We display all [Pg 136]our talents for which we no longer have any use at home and all our almost rusty20 intellectual weapons, our amiability21, our courteousness22, our gallantry, are again taken out of the soul’s lumber23 chamber24 and put to use in conquering new persons. This secret foolery compensates25 us for all the plans of conquest that we have long ago given up. To conquer persons without having to depend on one’s social background is one of the greatest delights of travelling.
How strange! As in ordinary life we seek ourself and are overjoyed to find ourself in our environment and get most out of the individual who is most like ourself, so everywhere abroad we seek our own home. How happy we are on beholding26 a familiar face even though it be that of a person who has been ever so unsympathetic or indifferent. We are delighted with him and greet him like a trusted friend—only because he represents for us a fragment of our home which we have been seeking out here and which we have found, to some extent, in him. That is why such discoveries make us happiest as revealing identities with our home. Even in this the infantile character of travelling is shown. Just as in our youth we had to learn many things that we had to forget subsequently so we act with regard to our journeys; every new city, every new region is a kind of primer whose fundamentals we have to make our own no matter how much it goes against our grain to do so. The faithful visiting of all the objects [Pg 137]of interest with our Baedeker in our hands, the profound sense of an obligation to have seen so-and-so is clearly such an infantile trait and has about it much of the youthfulness and school-boyishness of the time in which the teacher’s authority meant compelling knowledge to follow a set norm.
Much might be said about the technique of travelling. The manner in which the thought springs from the unconscious, gently and with tender longing16, takes on more definite shape and apparently27 suddenly breaks out during the night with the violence of a deed, presents almost a neurotic28 picture, and one is justified29, from this point of view, in speaking of a “touring neurosis.” Every repression30 begets31 a compulsive idea. The repression of the emotions of youth begets a touring neurosis. The compulsion is strongest in the first few days during which difficult internal conflicts have to be overcome. The threads that bind32 us to our home, our vocation33, and our beloved, must first be wholly severed34. This happens only after several days, after the so-called “travel-reaction.” That is the name I would propose for that unpleasant feeling that overcomes us after a few days. Suddenly we feel lonesome and alone, curse the desire that prompted us to leave our home, and play with the idea whether it would not be better to terminate the trip and go back home. It is only when this reaction has been overcome, when the conflict between the present and the [Pg 138]past has been decided35 in favour of the latter, only then has one acquired the correct attitude to travelling, an attitude which depends upon a complete forgetting of our social and individual obligations. It is, for all the world, as if after this reaction we had suppressed all our relations to our home and freed all our inhibitions. Only then can we enjoy the pleasure of travelling, but, alas36, it lasts only a short time. For soon there rises before our eyes, like a threatening monster, the time when we must again resume our obligations. The sense of duty gets stronger and stronger, the desire for travelling gets weaker and weaker, and after a short but decisive conflict, the fever for travelling abates37, leaving behind it a little heap of ashes in which the feeble coals of memory gradually die.
It is a profound feeling of bliss38 that we feel at home, for down at the bottom of the heart we have always been faithful to the home. We see everything in the new colours with which our journey has beautified the dull gray of daily life; alas! they are only temporary joys, borrowed harmonies, which lose their intensity39 in the day’s progress and are bound to return to their former dulness.
Particular mention must be made of the journeys of married couples. These, too, are trips into the realm of youth, into the beautiful country of the betrothal40 period, and thus every such trip is a new honeymoon41. The energies which had hitherto been devoted42 to [Pg 139]the discharge of their duties have now been freed and burst powerfully into the amatory sphere; but they may also intensify43 components44 of aversion and hatred45, and are just as likely to emphasize antagonisms46 as, under circumstances, they may build bridges over bottomless depths. Inasmuch as en tour thought and feeling are dominated by infantile traits, and inasmuch as to a certain extent a new spring of love awakens47 with the youthful fire and youthful tenderness, a journey may—just because of these results—result in disappointments such as cannot otherwise be brought to light in staid old age.
Let us also make mention of the opportunity a journey gives one of living a purely48 physical existence, of enjoying the rare pleasure of feeling oneself a creature of muscles, a thing all backbone49 and little brain. Let us also mention the delight of feeling oneself a stranger, of shaking off every irritating constraint50, of being able to break with impunity51 the rules of propriety52 and good breeding, and we have, in comparison with all the really important psychological motives, touched only a small part of the surface psychology53 of travelling.
And now I come to the really important point of my thesis. What I have hitherto said is of general validity, applying to the generality of travelling people. But I believe that every individual has also a secret, deep-lying motive5 of which he himself is unaware54 and which one rarely is in a position to discover. Now and then [Pg 140]one may succeed in discovering such a motive and one is then astonished at the strange things that may be hidden behind the passion of travelling.
There are so many things that we seek all our life and that, alas! we can never find. One is on the hunt for a friend who will “understand” him; another for a beloved whom he can comprehend; the third for a place where he may find the people he has dreamed of. Which of us has not his secret, dark desires and longings which really belong to “the other one” within us and not to the outer personage on whom the sun shines? What is denied us by the environment may possibly be found somewhere beyond. What withers55 here may bear luxuriant blossoms somewhere beyond....
The deepest-lying, repressed desires are the driving power in the fever for travelling. We are infected—infected by the seeds that have been slumbering56 within us for years and which have now with mysterious power engendered57 the ardour that drives us on to travel. Behind every journey there lies a hidden motive. It will, of course, be a difficult matter to discover in every case this deeply hidden motive, this innermost spring of action. In some cases one succeeds, however, and lights upon most remarkable58 things. One may hit upon some exciting touring experience of earlier days, upon a strange fantasy, upon some sweet wish that seems to be too grotesque59 to be spoken of openly. [Pg 141]No one has yet fathomed60 just what constitutes happiness. It is never the present, always the future. A trip is a journey into the future, a hunting after happiness.
The best light on the psychology of the “touring neurosis” is thrown by a consideration of the opposite phenomenon—the “fear of travelling.” There are many persons who are afraid of every journey, for whom a railroad trip is a torture, for whom going away from home is a punishment. There are persons who have compromised with the present and have given up all hope of a future; who have no happiness to lose and therefore have no wish to achieve any; who fear any great change and who have become wrapped up in themselves. They are the great panegyrists of home, the enthusiastic patriots61, the contemners of everything foreign. They behave exactly like the fox for whom the grapes were too sour. Because their fears won’t let them travel they prove to themselves and to the world at large that travelling is nonsensical, that the city they live in is the best of all places to live in. The fear of travelling also has a hidden motive which not rarely is fortified62 by justifiable63 and unjustifiable consciousness of guilt64. Why we do not travel is often a much more interesting problem than why we do travel.
Fear and desire are brother and sister and emanate65 from the same primal66 depths. The wish often converts to fear and fear to wish. [Pg 142]One who is incapable67 in his heart to fly from himself and his environment bears a heavy and unbreakable chain within his soul. So do we all. But we break it now and then. The future may perhaps create free human beings. Then there may perhaps be no abysms of the soul. Just at present darkness surrounds us. The mysteries of the soul are barred to us. Its depths are unfathomable. Even if we have illumined some hidden corner and brought something that was long concealed68 to the light of consciousness, it is only like a drop snatched from the infinity70 of the ocean. The real reason why we travel can be told us only by our “other self,” that “other one” whom we buried in our remote youth. Whither we travel is quite clear. Large and small, young and old, fools and wise men—all journey to the realm of youth. Life takes us into the kingdom of dreams, and the dream takes us back again into life, into that life to which we have been assigned and to which our deepmost desires belong. What desires? Those are the secrets we anxiously conceal69 from ourselves.
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1
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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recuperate
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| v.恢复 | |
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malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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aglow
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| adj.发亮的；发红的；adv.发亮地 | |
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9
wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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alluringly
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| 诱人地，妩媚地 | |
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beckons
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的第三人称单数 ) | |
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crafty
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| adj.狡猾的，诡诈的 | |
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hems
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| 布的褶边，贴边( hem的名词复数 )； 短促的咳嗽 | |
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tinkling
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| n.丁当作响声 | |
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longings
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| 渴望，盼望( longing的名词复数 ) | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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kernel
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| n.(果实的)核，仁；(问题)的中心，核心 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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19
esteemed
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| adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 )；敬重；认为；以为 | |
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20
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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amiability
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| n.和蔼可亲的，亲切的，友善的 | |
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courteousness
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| Courteousness | |
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lumber
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| n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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compensates
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| 补偿，报酬( compensate的第三人称单数 )； 给（某人）赔偿（或赔款） | |
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26
beholding
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| v.看，注视( behold的现在分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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neurotic
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| adj.神经病的，神经过敏的；n.神经过敏者，神经病患者 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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repression
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| n.镇压，抑制，抑压 | |
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begets
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| v.为…之生父( beget的第三人称单数 )；产生，引起 | |
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32
bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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vocation
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| n.职业，行业 | |
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severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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abates
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| 减少( abate的第三人称单数 )； 减去； 降价； 撤消（诉讼） | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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39
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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40
betrothal
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| n. 婚约, 订婚 | |
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41
honeymoon
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| n.蜜月（假期）；vi.度蜜月 | |
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42
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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43
intensify
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| vt.加强；变强；加剧 | |
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44
components
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| （机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分 | |
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45
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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46
antagonisms
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| 对抗，敌对( antagonism的名词复数 ) | |
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47
awakens
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的第三人称单数 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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48
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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49
backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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50
constraint
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| n.(on)约束，限制；限制(或约束)性的事物 | |
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51
impunity
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| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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52
propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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53
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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54
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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55
withers
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| 马肩隆 | |
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56
slumbering
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的现在分词形式） | |
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57
engendered
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| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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58
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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59
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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fathomed
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| 理解…的真意( fathom的过去式和过去分词 )； 彻底了解； 弄清真相 | |
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patriots
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| 爱国者，爱国主义者( patriot的名词复数 ) | |
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62
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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63
justifiable
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| adj.有理由的，无可非议的 | |
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64
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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65
emanate
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| v.发自，来自，出自 | |
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66
primal
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| adj.原始的；最重要的 | |
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67
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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68
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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69
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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infinity
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| n.无限，无穷，大量 | |
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