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Travels in History and Geography: An Interview with William Dalrymple

2013; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 87; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2013.0289

1945-8134

William Dalrymple, Rita Joshi,

Travel Writing and Literature

photo: karoki lewis 14 World Literature Today Travels in History and Geography An Interview with William Dalrymple Rita Joshi W illiam Dalrymple is a Scottish travel writer, historian, and journalist who now lives in New Delhi, India. His books trace the steps of Marco Polo (In Xanadu), Byzantine Christianity (From the Holy Mountain ), the complex legacy of the English empire in India (White Mughals), and the transformation of South Asian religious life (Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India). He has co-edited a book on art, Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707–1857. The Asia Society Museum, New York, featured paintings from this book in an exhibition last year. Dalrymple has just published a book, Return of a King, on the last Afghan king, Shah Shuja Durrani. In September 2012, Rita Joshi met with Dalrymple at his farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi to discuss his work, his travels, and why travel writing is not a “colonial hangover.” wlt interview march –april 2013 • 15 Rita Joshi: In your books, travel is juxtaposed with an exploration into the history of the places you visit. What is your quest as a traveler and travel writer? William Dalrymple: I have written three different sorts of books. All my books are nonfiction. My first few books were all travel narratives. Then I’ve written three history books, which are very different. There are two different things going on—there are books that travel in geography and books that travel in history, but they are obviously by the same author—so the travel books are very much infused with a sense of history , and my history books are full of a sense of place and have the detailed physical descriptions you would expect in a travel book. The third sort of book I have done is journalism: The Age of Kali. Both Xanadu and From the Holy Mountain are following the trails of historical figures. The least historical is Nine Lives, about nine people who are alive now—but there is historical padding around the nine figures and the types of religious devotion they represent, even in that book. RJ: In Xanadu, your first book, you decided to retrace the steps of Marco Polo, who carried a vial of holy oil to Kubla Khan in China, hoping to convert him. It was a journey of adventure and religion. How were your contemporary travels different from those of Marco Polo? WD: Marco Polo’s journey wasn’t just a journey of religion. It was very clearly a journey by a merchant hoping to make a profit. The Venetians were very hardheaded and successful merchants. Marco Polo’s book is deeply infused with merchandise . Before he noticed the monuments, he noted what was available in the bazaars. His book was very much a merchant’s book and part of a tradition of merchants’ books that began emerging earlier. Marco Polo ended up in prison when he was captured by the Genoese. He was imprisoned with a romance writer, Rustichello. So Marco Polo’s book, which was a trader’s book, gets a strange spin of romance, and some of it is fabricated by Rustichello. It’s a very odd book. The text has come down to us in quite a late form probably very different from Marco Polo’s original notes. My own book I wrote when I was still in university, and it was something I wrote to get someone to pay for my student travels. I was lucky enough to go to a college in Cambridge that had a lot of bursaries and scholarships. In Xanadu is really a student’s memoirs of having a good time with a backpack. I was very interested I’m only unusual in that I am going in the opposite direction of many contemporary writers from the Indian subcontinent—from West to East. Yet what’s interesting is that many writers from India who have migrated west continue to write about their homelands many years after they have left it. 16 World Literature Today in history and very interested in Marco Polo; I was making a very sincere effort to follow in his footsteps...