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"O Switzerland!": Travelers' Accounts 57 BCE to the Present
The most incisive writing about Switzerland from the world’s most creative from Tolkien to Tolstoy, Petrarch to Prince, Julius Caesar to George Sand. They wrote of wars and money, poverty and peaks, dances and prisons, wolves and fleas. “O Switzerland!” deftly weaves together over 450 first-hand accounts to paint a dazzling and disturbing portrait of an enigmatic land.
- GenresTravel
320 pages, Hardcover
Published August 31, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 17, 2019
Switzerland is one of those countries more written about by visitors than by locals, who are already used to the views. It makes an impression, is what I'm saying. I went for a walk with my daughter yesterday and it looked like this:
Of course, if you tap a local villager on the shoulder and point, open-mouthed, at the vista behind them, they are apt to shrug and puff their pipe impassively, before turning back to their game of jass with perhaps a grumbled reflection on the impressionability of foreigners.
This is the only country I know that looks like its calendars. Yet things were not always this way. Before the beauty of the mountains became a cliché, reactions to the scenery here could be unpredictable. CCL Hirschfeld, passing through in the 1760s, commented:
And even a century later, tourism was not to everyone's taste. Tolstoy was pleasingly irritable about the whole thing:
(Guilty!) Those that enjoyed it, though, certainly got a lot out of it, especially the writers and artists. ‘This Engadine is the birthplace of my Zarathustra,’ Nietzsche declaimed. Wagner wrote many of his masterpieces here, and later said: ‘nowhere else could I have composed them.’ Rilke hammered out most of the Duino Elegies here, and all of the Sonnets to Orpheus. Gibbon finished the Decline and Fall in Lausanne, and Tolkien used his travels in Switzerland as a model for Bilbo's journey from Rivendell to the far side of the Misty Mountains. Mary Shelley went as far as to invent the horror genre after a dirty weekend on Lake Geneva. And on, and on, and on.
Turner, The Pass of St Gotthard, near Faido, 1843
So this collection of letters, diaries and other comments from people travelling through Switzerland, arranged thematically, has a large pool to draw on and gives you a pretty good summary of how the country's image has shifted – and, in other ways, remained the same – over the years.
As you can see from the above, it doesn't just concentrate on the positive reviews. Which is important. The Swiss, though neutral during the Second World War, did not exactly cover themselves with glory back then – the yellow star that Jews had to wear was a Swiss invention, and Switzerland turned away huge numbers of Jewish refugees at the border, with justifications that have become horribly familiar again in recent years:
The government eventually apologised for this in 1996.
Switzerland is a hard country to understand: neutral in conflicts, but thoroughly militarised; at the heart of Europe, but politically detached from it; functionally multilingual, but speaking by preference their own incomprehensible local dialects. A lot of those quoted in here have a puzzled tone, as if struggling to get a handle on the place; many, indeed, write it off out of sheer misunderstanding. (When Frédéric Dard settled here, he wrote to his friends: Je me suis suissidé, ‘I've committed Swisside’, which is probably the wittiest thing anyone has ever said about Switzerland. It isn't in this book though.)
If you really want to understand Switzerland, the best first step is to be born here. But failing that, this compilation is a fun way to sympathise with others who have done their best to figure it out.
Of course, if you tap a local villager on the shoulder and point, open-mouthed, at the vista behind them, they are apt to shrug and puff their pipe impassively, before turning back to their game of jass with perhaps a grumbled reflection on the impressionability of foreigners.
This is the only country I know that looks like its calendars. Yet things were not always this way. Before the beauty of the mountains became a cliché, reactions to the scenery here could be unpredictable. CCL Hirschfeld, passing through in the 1760s, commented:
What struck me most in Switzerland among the curiosities of nature were those horrid structures the Alps.
And even a century later, tourism was not to everyone's taste. Tolstoy was pleasingly irritable about the whole thing:
2 July. Got up at 3. A filthy bed with bugs. The same stupid view of nature and of people. Englishmen in blankets, with Murrays and maps. “Ah!” they exclaimed, when the sun appeared.
(Guilty!) Those that enjoyed it, though, certainly got a lot out of it, especially the writers and artists. ‘This Engadine is the birthplace of my Zarathustra,’ Nietzsche declaimed. Wagner wrote many of his masterpieces here, and later said: ‘nowhere else could I have composed them.’ Rilke hammered out most of the Duino Elegies here, and all of the Sonnets to Orpheus. Gibbon finished the Decline and Fall in Lausanne, and Tolkien used his travels in Switzerland as a model for Bilbo's journey from Rivendell to the far side of the Misty Mountains. Mary Shelley went as far as to invent the horror genre after a dirty weekend on Lake Geneva. And on, and on, and on.
Turner, The Pass of St Gotthard, near Faido, 1843
So this collection of letters, diaries and other comments from people travelling through Switzerland, arranged thematically, has a large pool to draw on and gives you a pretty good summary of how the country's image has shifted – and, in other ways, remained the same – over the years.
As you can see from the above, it doesn't just concentrate on the positive reviews. Which is important. The Swiss, though neutral during the Second World War, did not exactly cover themselves with glory back then – the yellow star that Jews had to wear was a Swiss invention, and Switzerland turned away huge numbers of Jewish refugees at the border, with justifications that have become horribly familiar again in recent years:
When you are in command of a small lifeboat with limited carrying capacity and supplies, that is already very full, while thousands of victims of a shipping disaster are crying for help, you must seem cold-hearted when you can't take everyone.
—Eduard von Steiger, Federal Council Member, 1942
The government eventually apologised for this in 1996.
Switzerland is a hard country to understand: neutral in conflicts, but thoroughly militarised; at the heart of Europe, but politically detached from it; functionally multilingual, but speaking by preference their own incomprehensible local dialects. A lot of those quoted in here have a puzzled tone, as if struggling to get a handle on the place; many, indeed, write it off out of sheer misunderstanding. (When Frédéric Dard settled here, he wrote to his friends: Je me suis suissidé, ‘I've committed Swisside’, which is probably the wittiest thing anyone has ever said about Switzerland. It isn't in this book though.)
If you really want to understand Switzerland, the best first step is to be born here. But failing that, this compilation is a fun way to sympathise with others who have done their best to figure it out.
January 14, 2022
It is said the Swiss don’t have a sense of humour. Perhaps they have been spoilt by the influx of tourists or their relatively recent surge in affluence. Here is a village boy from Weggis, hired in 1878 by Mark Twain and his party to help them carry their things up the Rigi, and when this boy seemed to wonder why the tourists were taking so many breaks in their endeavour; ‘he asked if it had been our idea to hire him by the job, or by the year? We told him he could move along if he was in a hurry. He said he wasn’t in such a hurry, but he wanted to get to the top while he was young.’ What wit!
This is a compilation of impressions and anecdotes from travellers in Switzerland from antiquity to the present day with the occasional comment from the compiler. As such it is a historical document not just of Switzerland, but also of the attitudes of the writers themselves and the times in which they lived. In a way it is difficult to rate this book. The authors are the people which the compiler chose to include in the book. There are many famous names such as Leo Tolstoy and Napoleon. Richard Wagner and Voltaire. Switzerland has been and remains a fascination to many and some of that fascination is uncovered here.
This is a compilation of impressions and anecdotes from travellers in Switzerland from antiquity to the present day with the occasional comment from the compiler. As such it is a historical document not just of Switzerland, but also of the attitudes of the writers themselves and the times in which they lived. In a way it is difficult to rate this book. The authors are the people which the compiler chose to include in the book. There are many famous names such as Leo Tolstoy and Napoleon. Richard Wagner and Voltaire. Switzerland has been and remains a fascination to many and some of that fascination is uncovered here.
October 22, 2018
A wonderful book for anyone wishing to have a deeper knowledge of Switzerland or see the country with fresh eyes. It offers a wealth of fascinating commentary from diverse voices over the centuries. A beautifully presented and well-researched collection. The author has done an excellent job organising the excerpts into themes, such as mountains, justice, poverty, animals, religion, transport, the Swiss, food and drink, industry and commerce. Packed with astonishing details. His small pointers in between passages provide context and make the book flow in a very accessible way. It can also be dipped into in small doses.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews