Travels with Herodotus

by Ryszard Kapuściński

I felt trapped. Besieged by language. Language struck me at that moment as something material, something with a physical dimension, a wall rising up in the middle of the road and preventing my going further, closing off the world, making it unattainable. It was an unpleasant and humiliating sensation. It might explain why, in a first encounter with someone or something foreign, there are those who will feel fear and uncertainty, bristle with mistrust.

And that one must learn about them, because these other worlds, these other cultures, are mirrors in which we can see ourselves, thanks to which we understand ourselves better—for we cannot define our own identity until having confronted that of others, as comparison. And that is why Herodotus, having made this discovery—that the cultures of others are a mirror in which we can examine ourselves in order to understand ourselves better—every morning, tirelessly, again and again, sets out on his journey.