Erkundungen Des Unbekannten. Neuzeitliche Formen Des Reisens in Authentischen Und F Iktiven Darstellungen

Pikulik, Lothar. Erkundungen des unbekannten. neuzeitliche Formen des Reisens in authentischen und f iktiven Darstellungen. Hildesheim: olms, 2014. 196 pp. euro 27.80 (paperback).Comparison with an older work that bears a similar title to the one under review facilitates a clearer appreciation of what Pikulik's book is actually about. Holger Graf's and ralf Prove's Wege ins ungewisse. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Reisens 1500-1800 (1997) foregrounds, on the one hand, the material, social, legal, infrastructural and logistical conditions and difficulties of travel in the early modern period and, on the other hand, the economic, political and social changes in europe-the emergence of the absolutist state with its Mercantilism and comprehensive administration-that necessitated ever more and ever more varied kinds of traffic and travel to meet the needs of transforming economies and societies (12). Pikulik's Erkundungen des unbekannten, in contrast, is interested in the individual as homo viator, i.e., in man's motivation for embarking on a journey, be it real or imaginary, rather than on travel as practicality or necessity. for him, curiosity, the desire to investigate what lies beyond the ordinary, the limited and the routine forms part of a distinctly modern human condition once the (religious) ban on cu- riosity as challenging the existing world order and questioning limitations imposed by the divine was lifted. the discovery and experience of what had remained unknown and uncharted is thus understood as an emancipatory act. travel, in Pikulik's readings, responds to a profoundly human desire; and in any form and in any representation it demonstrates man's capacity for self-determination, for agency and for making sense of his own position in the world. the use of the definitive article in the genitive attribute of the title suggests that the very acknowledgement of the entity "the unknown," and the desire to push its limits, is a defining feature of the post-medieval human condition-regardless of the circumstances that inform the actual activity of physically departing from the sedentary. (the fact that in many non-Western cultures travel is approached in terms of necessity rather than desire, and the further fact that curiosity travel is not a universal part of the definition of humanity, often for reasons that differ considerably from those invoked in the Christian Middle ages to justify the interdiction, are issues that go beyond Pikulik's remit.)Chronologically, Pikulik's work somewhat overlaps with the predecessor; his earliest sources are adam olearius's travels to russia and Persia in the 1630s and Georg Wilhelm steller's accounts of his two Nordic expeditions with Vitus Bering between 1733 and 1742. yet, his main witnesses for the profound humanity of travel and for the vast range of travel-related experiences and designs are Johann Gottfried seume's journey of unpredictability that results in an appreciation "des Wandels und der Wandelbarkeit der menschlichen Dinge und damit des Bewusstseins von der blos relativen Geltung des Bestehenden" (49), friedrich Nicolai's meticulous planning and expediency as a counterexample to the more fortuitous journeys but also one that is deeply indebted to the enlightenment ideal of self-improvement, and karl Philipp Moritz's exploration of travel as reflex of psychological dispositions in Anton Reiser (97). Pikulik is interested mainly in the modes of experience, from the sentimental (sterne) and sublime (Haller's Alpen as paradigm) to the adventurous, where the exposure to danger facilitates a heightened form of engagement with the unknown. the distinction between Erfahrung and Erlebnis is central to Pikulik's elaborations, as is the notion of extensive and intensive travel, travel into exterior and interior worlds, into physical and spiritual space. While his investigation is firmly text-based, Pikulik however pays little attention to the actual textuality of literary travel experience. …