Deep Space: Problems of Vertical Travel
Deep Space: Problems of Vertical Travel

Summary/Abstract: Travel writers often claim that they have encountered and represented the “heart,” “soul” or “spirit” that lies beneath the seemingly incoherent surfaces of a place. This pre-supposes that places have both hearts and depth and that a diligent traveller can access them by going “beneath the surface.” This paper examines metaphors of vertical travel in three travel narratives on Albania – Eric Newby’s On the Shores of the Mediterranean, Dymphna Cusack’s Illyria Reborn and Robert Carver’s The Accursed Mountains – and suggests a connection with Romantic conceptualisations of place as made manifest in poems by Shelley and Wordsworth. Contrasting this with an alternative, more psychogeographical approach to place, the paper asks whether the idea that places have a coherent, even permanent “heart” or “soul” might in itself distort or even prevent successful travelling encounter.

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