Lawrence
Sterne’s Sentimental Journey is very much the follow-up after the success of
Tristram Shandy. The author does not try to re-create the near anarchy of the
earlier work. Indeed, especially when compared with Shandy, Sentimental Journey
at times even approaches coherence. But it remains a variety of coherence that
might confuse a modern reader, since the book is neither a novel nor a travel
book, though at times it aspires to be both. What it is not can be listed, but
what exactly it is remains hard to describe.
The
Reverend Yorick, apparently, is on a European tour, specifically to France and
Italy. Along the way he relates his experiences, but he is less inclined to
take in the scenery than chase the local talent, an activity that appears to
demand much attention and time wherever it might be pursued.
If
any theme does run through Sentimental Journey, then it is this, the Reverend
Yorick’s pursuit of skirt. Be they chamber maids or merely ladies of leisure
(day or night), the good Reverend is clearly interested. But his exploits are
couched in an absurd eighteenth century politeness, an unwillingness to speak
directly of the matter in hand, gloved or not. The style, perhaps, was as
absurd in its own time as it appears to be today. As a consequence, there are
significant passages where the narrator seems to spend much time not discussing
the thing he is actually talking about.
Lawrence
Sterne is determined that his sentimental traveller should explore the
experience of travel. This is a journey to experience as well as within it, but
experience here is a process, not a destination. In modern terms, he is the
kind of person who wanders past Notre Dame in search of an ice-cream, and would
see neither irony nor contradiction in the act. He is perhaps the
quintessential British tourist who looks at the stained glass from the outside,
proclaims it to be less than it’s cracked up to be and then complains that the
ice cream was the wrong flavour.
Yorick
does meet several interesting characters, but he rarely lets their diversion
come between himself and his pursuits. And some of these prove very humorous
indeed, possibly even funny.
Setimental
Journey is unfinished. It is probably autobiographical. Much of the material
feels like it may have been expanded from a journal kept on the road, kept by
Sterne himself, while he made his own travels on the Continent. But there
remains the ultimate problem for the modern reader, who will always want to
ask, “Where is all this going to lead?” And the answer is, experientially,
precisely nowhere. And that’s the point.
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