“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

I wouldn’t go as far as Pascal. Can think of plenty of humanity’s problems that stem from exploitative economic systems, racism, tribalism or exposure to pathogens, to name a few. But we are not here today to discuss politics.

We are here to admire what people who are forced to sit alone in a room come up with – or, more specifically, one particular person, bon vivant, military man, writer, painter and museum director Xavier de Maistre.

The guy was a marvel. Born to an aristocratic family in Savoy in the 18th century, brother to one of the more blood-thirsty counter-revolutionary philosophers, Joseph de Maistre, he fled to Piedmont when the revolution threatened his aristocratic neck. There he was at some point punished with 42 days of house arrest as the consequence of a dubious duel.

With just one servant and his dog as company, he spent these weeks in 1790 turning his boredom and frustration into a book: A Journey Around my Room (Voyage autour de ma chambre,) which was published eventually in 1794 at the urging of his brother, the one who thought that mankind would eventually destroy itself by killing each other. Who knows, maybe Joseph could predict the future… then again the servant and the dog played quite a role in Xavier’s book teaching humanity, so maybe there is hope.

The book – pretending that each object or view in his room is comparable to the sights of foreign travel – is satire and moral speculation, thorough observation of detail and far-flung analysis all at once – it is fun, most of all because it drips with the determination of making the best of any given situation, a notion that I currently like to have repeated to me as often and as loudly as possible. And it exhibits how thoughts of this or that, of observables, can lead to thoughts that are only loosely related but somehow connected, after all, veering into more abstract domains – something that always fascinates me, both when I read and when I write. Please confirm, dear Reader!

(Photographs today are consequently a journey around my living room, with select treasures bartered, bought or being given as presents by the wonderful artistic and/or kind people in my life. )

Here is an excerpt from the book (and talking about tangential side lines – the excerpt was located between a letter from an English mummy smuggler, and an 1889 advice manual to lady travelers called Safe Conduct. Laphams Quarterly never disappoints.)

Maistre wrote a few other books, none particularly successful, including Les Prisonniers du Caucase, (“The Prisoners of the Caucasus,” 1825) that included a poem which can be heard in today’s musical selection.

(Of course, there is also renowned harpist Xavier de Maistre, who is musically perhaps a marvel, but also strikes me as a strange bird. He likes being filmed running around in a T-shirt that has Defend Paris and a machine gun printed on it…. here he is playing Haydn who wrote this concerto during the author’s lifetime.)

18th century Maistre lived a colorful life, with many explorations into different fields, acknowledged by his peers, and at home in the country of his choice, Russia, where he died in 1852, aged 88. Should be a plum for any biographer.

Of course, if you don’t want to travel around your own living room, there is always the possibility of books. The best vicarious travel ever.