Journey toward the Cradle of Mankind

The distinguished Italian poet Guido Gozzano (1883-1916) embarked for India in February 1912, ostensibly to treat his tuberculosis. His trip lasted three months and, all told, he spent six weeks on the subcontinent. His dispatches home for a newspaper are collected and published here in English for the first time. The extent of Gozzano’s travels–to Ceylon, Goa, Agra, Jaipur–makes one wonder how the writer could visit all or even most of the places he so vividly describes. I did not honestly think I would find so much of it intact, the spellbound Gozzano repeats to himself, before what he must shortly recognize as prodigious evidence of decay.