Jan Morris on Travels in Arabia Deserta by Charles M Doughty

Jan Morris on Travels in Arabia Deserta by Charles M Doughty
Not many books can claim to be entirely unique, but one of them is undoubtedly Charles Montague Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta, which he wrote in 1888 when he was 45 years old. It is unique in its subject matter – the first book to be written, in any language, about wide tracts of the Arabian Peninsula. It is unique in its method of research, for, alone among the early European explorers of Arabia, Doughty never pretended to be anything but what he was – a devout middle-aged Christian wandering footloose in Muslim territories. If Doughty was not quite the only poet to be an explorer too, he was certainly a rarity, and above all he was an English stylist altogether sui generis – other writers may have picked up some of his mannerisms, but so far as I know, nobody has ever written quite like him.
Except, perhaps, in parody, for Doughty’s literary style was itself a sort of inspired pastiche of far older forms. He believed that, by his time, the English language had become decadent, and he was dedicated to restoring its ancient glories. Chaucer and Spenser were his inspirations, and his own interpretation of their splendours was lyrical, high-flown and stately. He had already spent 10 years writing an enormous blank-verse epic about the origins of Britain, and by the time he came to write his Arabian magnum opus, his command of his own vernacular was complete and inimitable.
Some readers find his convoluted cadences and idioms too demanding. Others, like me, have learnt over the years to think of it as music, grandly lyrical and rhythmic. And such is the extraordinary nature of the book that others have found its style perfectly redolent of its subject – the magnificent mysteries of the empty desert. TE Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, declared that the book would always remain peerless as “the indispensable foundation of all true understanding of the desert”.
So, whether for the strange beauty of its language, its record of a tremendous adventure, or its accurate evocation of a landscape and a civilisation, Arabia Deserta is truly one of a kind. For a long answer to that old friend’s question, expressed in a prose that is one of the esoteric glories of English literature, read the book, dear reader, read the book.


(I think this is the next book I’m going to read!)

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