Travel Writing: Freya Stark

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Long before many of us started to put pen-to-paper (as the old saying goes), there were travel writers galore. Indeed, whole libraries are devoted to travel writing, so we amateurs are always on the lookout for good examples.

One of my favorite authors, going back to my childhood (I have no idea who introduced me to her writings) is Freya Stark. An amazing lady, Stark (1893-1993) was famous for her story-telling, and the exotic lands she went to simply provided yet one more structure on which she could frame her stories. Claudia Roth Pierpont writes about Stark in "East is West: Freya Stark's Travels in Arabia" in the April 18, 2011 issue of The New Yorker and notes, "As an explorer, Stark could claim no major discoveries, but her acute observations and her surveying skills had earned her professional respect and, for cartographic contributions, a Royal Geographic Society award."

So she was more than a story-teller. But those "acute observations," together with an strong talent for getting to know the people she was meeting and listening to what they had to say, provided the foundation on which her descriptions of her travels through Syria, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Yemen were built. Pierpont's commentary even includes a sort of mini-essay on slavery as practiced in that region of the world when Stark was travelling there. Another describes Stark's efforts to build the Brotherhood of Freedom ("her proudest accomplishment," Pierpont writes), which Stark set up to counter the efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood - which had been around for a while for "training Arab fighters against foreign domination." For this little adventure, Stark's chosen techniques were personal freedom and secular democracy. And, as Pierpont puts it, "the method of spreading these values was Stark's great specialty: talk." All of which worked, as the Brotherhood of Freedom grew eventually to claim tens of thousands of members.

"Proudest accomplishment" indeed.

The Pierpont essay proceeds from the reissue - by Modern Library and I.B. Taurus - of many of Stark's books. In itself, Pierpont's article is fascinating, and a delightful biographical read, providing us with much about Stark that I suspect many of us never knew. A good read.  

More da Vinci: The Authentication Controversy

A quick follow-on to the story about the National Geographic Society Museum's exhibition da Vinci - The Genius: Coincidentally, on the train returning from Washington, I found myself reading about yet another possible da Vinci work, currently on exhibition in Sweden under the patronage of the Italian government.

Known as La Bella Principessa, the drawing serves as the lead-in to a fascinating story in the July 12-19 issue of The New Yorker, a long piece of investigative journalism by a very talented staff writer, David Grann.

The Mark of a Masterpiece goes into an incredible amount of curious material describing some of what goes on in the art history/authentication/restoration fields. I found it to be one of those "too-good-to-put-down" stories, and while the focus of the story is a Canadian forensic art expert named Peter Paul Biro, there is a wealth of information describing what goes on in what Grann refers to as "the priesthood of connoisseurship".

Among the tidbits of information one picks up is that Biro is the inventor of an innovative multi-spectrum camera, much like that used in identifying the true pigments of the Mona Lisa, mentioned in the post about the National Geographic Society Museum's exhibition. Curious coincidence there, but in any case, it doesn't distract from the interesting story and certainly pulls up the reader's respect for how science and art are collaborating to drill down into the background and history of some of the most beloved and respected painters and their work.