ENCOUNTERING, TRAVELLING, WRITING

Encounter

Sergio Ramazzotti collects beer bottle labels as travel souvenirs, as he tells his Chinese interpreter Celia, in La birra di Shaoshan: '"Le incollo in un libro, come in un album di fotografie. Ogni etichetta è un incontro ('I stick them in a book, like a photo album. Each label is an encounter'). He prefers beer labels to photographs because they oblige him to reconstruct the person's face and voice from memory (Birra, 60). The label represents an encounter, and the collection of labels or encounters is both the sum of the journey and the part that Ramazzotti chooses to keep as a souvenir. Throughout his journey in China Ramazzotti strives to understand the country, always searching for something, without knowing exactly what he is seeking. His frustrated encounter with China becomes an encounter with Celia instead, whom he attempts to relate back to China: 'Celia [...] era la piccola Celia ed era tutti i cinesi e forse la Cina stessa' (79; Celia [...] was little Celia and she was all the Chinese and perhaps China itself). The tension between traveller and interpreter is constant: he is alternately impressed and disappointed by her; he lectures her, she protests. He attempts to circumvent the formality of their acquaintance, but she insists on the economic basis of their relationship. He is undecided whether or not he desires her physically, while she attempts to navigate his vague quest and vocal preconceptions, all the time worrying that his questioning and criticizing of her country pose a threat to herself and her family. The beer labels of Shaoshan prove elusive, adhering stubbornly to their bottles, and besides, Celia doesn't even drink beer. Eventually Ramazzotti renounces his attempts to comprehend China and thinks he has won Celia over because she toasts his decision. He contemplates burning his whole collection of beer labels: a symbolic gesture to cease representing and symbolizing and leave past encounters to memory. Then they are both arrested; China finally confirms his expectations and Celia leaves him with a defiant beer label for his album, an instruction to represent her, perhaps. Ramazzotti set out to visit China, but the principal subject he chooses for his account of that journey is his awkward, unresolved, troubled encounter with this individual Chinese woman, Celia.

Ramazzotti's choice to prioritize the encounter is shared by other travel writers, who populate their narratives with characters met during their journeys. Some highlight encounters from the outset: Gianni Celati dedicates Avventure in Africa 'a quelli che abbiamo incontrato' (to those whom we met), Olivier Weber declares in the opening sentence of Voyage au pays de toutes les Russies that 'Ce ne sont pas des chapitres, mais des hommes rencontrés' (These are not chapters, but men encountered). Others reflect back at the end of their journeys: Bernard Ollivier thinks of the many characters who have kept him company on his 'longue marche' (long walk) across Asia as he completes the final kilometres: 'On s'émerveille que j'aie pu faire ce chemin en solitaire, mais j'ai rarement été seul' (People are amazed that I could do this journey on my own, but I have rarely been alone). Encounters form the backbone of many travel narratives, which become collections of portraits and interactions. Nicolas Bouvier's L'usage du monde is, in his own words, a 'gigantesque ménagerie' (vast menagerie) of characters. In FrançoisMaspero's Lespassagers du Roissy-Express encounters are collected as so many photographs, reproduced alongside the text, while Tiziano Terzani's Un indovino mi disse catalogues a long series of meetings with fortune-tellers. Not all encounters are brief; some travellers establish lasting relationships, for example with their guides, as in Corrado Ruggeri's Farfalle sul Mekong, or their hosts, as in Nicole-Lise Bernheim's Saisons japonaises, or their travelling companions, as in Jean-Claude Guillebaud's La colline des anges. Such examples demonstrate the importance of interpersonal encounter in contemporary travel, a fact already noted by Franco Trequadrini in 1980, writing about twentieth-century Italian travel literature: 'Nel nostro secolo il viaggio serve un'esigenza di riscontro, di dialogo, di testimonianza' (In this century travel meets a need for comparison, for dialogue, for personal stories). The statement is echoed twenty-five years later by Olivier Hambursin, in his study of French travel literature of the same period: 'L'Autre est un personnage-clé de la littérature voyageuse du XXe siècle' (The Other is a key character in twentieth-century travel literature).Despite the significance of interpersonal encounter in travel and its narratives there is a lack of critical attention to the subject, a failing that this study aims to address by analysing encounter in a range of contemporary travel writing. The meaning of the term encounter is not as straightforward as it might appear, and the first task is to clarify its uses in the context of travel.

In her study of Italian travel literature, Gaia De Pascale suggests that the principal motivation of voluntary travel today is contact with 'l'altro da sé' (the self's other), but she recognizes that 'altro' is not necessarily a person; it can refer to landscape or place. When encounter is evoked, in both travel writing and studies of travel, it often denotes a general experience involving a vague confluence of place, culture and people as a collective. This is encounter between the traveller and the other as a concept, often idealistically elusive or mystical, rather than an individual person. The exotic appeal of unknown people(s), as much as unknown places, is a long-established motivational trope. Encounter in this evocative sense seems attractively easy; gathering a collection of strange and colourful others could be as simple as peeling off beer labels and sticking them into an album. Experience often belies ideals, and Ramazzotti, like every traveller, is confronted with the reality of the person facing him, in his case Celia. Italian anthropologist Marco Aime observes that tourist advertising emphasizes encounter with nature, history or tradition, but he draws attention to the fact that 'a gestire quella natura, quella storia o tradizione sono individui, persone' (managing this nature, this history or tradition are individuals, people). Even when travellers purposely seek encounter with places and concepts, they must constantly deal with actual people; Ramazzotti travels to encounter China, but his narrative is dominated by his encounter with Celia. Travellers spend a considerable amount of time meeting and contending with people as concrete individuals and it is interpersonal encounter in this sense that is the theme of this book.

A travel encounter occurs every time a traveller comes into contact with another person....