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291 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1937
A man looking like a decayed railway porter--as most Persians do under the present sumptuary laws--joined us at the mosque. We dined with a man named Hannibal, who is descended, like Pushkin, from the Peter the Great's negro and is certainly cousin to certain British royalties. Also present was a Jewish revisionist leader, part of an extreme party that wants England to set up a Jewish state. I don't know how long they think the Arabs would suffer a single Jew to exist once the English went.Robert Byron displays a keen enthusiasm for architecture but even in appraising a structure that pleases him, he often suggests that...
Certainly, this is façade-architecture: the prototype of the Taj & a hundred other shrines. It breathes power & content, while its offspring achieve only scenic refinement. It has the audacity of true invention; the graces are sacrificed to the idea & the result, imperfect as it may be, represents the triumph of the idea over technical limitations. Much great architecture is of this kind.The author is particularly fascinated by Persian wind towers but most buildings are described as "perfunctory" or of a "confused style". However, Byron can also be uplifted by what he sees, as with the Tomb of Tamerlane at Samarkand, first seen at dusk, causing the author to go to bed "like a child on Christmas Eve, scarcely able to wait till morning...
when 7 sky-blue pillars are revealed, rising out of bare fields against heather-coated mountains, with each enshrouded in a highlight of pure gold at dawn, with every tile, every flower, every petal of the mosaic contributing its genius to the whole. Even in ruin, such architecture speaks of a golden age. Has history already forgotten it?Meanwhile, the language is often vernacular or oddly colloquial but then quickly drifts to a far more formal style especially when detailing architecture. Still, his descriptions are seldom anything except caustic, as with those in a bazaar who he views as "hawk-eyed & eagle-beaked, with the swarthy, loose-knit men swinging through the dark bazaar with a devil-may-care attitude, carrying rifles while shopping as Londoners carry umbrellas".
"Where is your kibitka", they asked. "My what?" "Your kibitka?" "I don't understand." With expressions of contempt & irritation, they pointed to their own felt & wattle huts: "Your kibitka--you must have a kibitka. Where is it?" "In Inglistan." "Where is that?" "In Hindostan." "Is that in Russia?" "Yes."To be fair, I enjoyed much of Robert Byron's rather chaotic travel book but often, it seemed that rather than attempting to draw the reader in, he endeavored instead to keep the reader at a distance from the experiences he was in the process of relating. It was a pleasant experience to be taken by the author to Yadz, Isfahan & Persepolis in Iran (places I have visited), as well as outposts in Afghanistan such as Bamiyan, with its now destroyed huge, inset Buddhas, locations that I will only come to know through books like The Road to Oxiana.