A Sentimental Journey to Mars: Laurence Sterne and his Twentieth-Century Successors

This essay examines the idea of the journey in Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768) and the manner in which it has been referred to and elaborated upon by three twentieth-century writers: Italo Svevo in Corto viaggio sentimentale (Short Sentimental Journey, 1925), Gregor von Rezzori in Kurze Reise übern langen Weg: eine Farce (The Orient-Express, 1986) and Claudio Magris in Danubio (Danube, 1986). The authors engage in a dialogue with Sterne and the literary model he proposed in his works. Despite the differences between their texts, in all of them the journey appears not only as a narrative device, but also a symbol of the never-ending quest for individual freedom, self-knowledge and erotic fulfilment. It is both a physical and psychological experience and a literary practice which allows the authors/narrators to distance themselves from cultural clichés and dogmas of their time and venture beyond social routines. This essay attempts to elucidate the unconventional character of ‘sentimental’ travel narratives and bring to the fore thematic continuities between Sterne and his twentieth-century successors.