Itinerary Reconstitution
Reproduction of the travel from the 'Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem' of Chateaubriand.
If you have read my other articles, you probably think I am a science nerd who never leaves his workshop. Most of the time, I would agree. But there is another side of me: I am also a nerd of 19th century French literature, and my chouchou is Chateaubriand (you may have met him in René the boozer).
I am such a groupie that, after reading his Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, the story of his trip around the Mediterranean, I decided to redo it as faithfully as I could: on foot, hitchhiking, and sleeping wherever I can. Would a science nerd do that? I don't think so!
There are plenty of mysteries around the exact route, and around why he made this trip and wrote this book. So I did a lot of research, and I tried to live what he lived. Here is a bit of what I found.
The itinerary
// to be written
Big drama
Avramiotti
In 1816, five years after Chateaubriand published the Itinéraire, a doctor from Argos, Gian-Dionisio Avramiotti, printed a small book of critical notes on the part of the journey that crosses Greece.
Drama! Avramiotti was really unhappy with his encounter with Chateaubriand... His verdict, from the first page: the Itinerary is "a novel, or a poem, in prose: graceful, if you like, but also full of bold insolence, plagiarism and shameful lies".
I wanted to understand what happened, so I set out to get my hands on Avramiotti's book.
The book
Unfortunately, this book is super rare: only 5 known copies. I managed to find 2 of them in Greece, at the library of the Parliament and at the National Library of Athens.
It was translated into French by Alice Poirier in the 20th century, and I found a copy of that one in Athens too (I only know of about 2 copies, so it is just as rare). But her book is not in the public domain, so I don't have the right to show it to you...
But, crazily, Google and its huge book-destroying scanner scanned the original a while ago, probably to feed its LLM. So now we can all study the original version.
A rough translation
Armed with my high-level Italian (mammaaaa), my translation dictionary and my Claude Pro Max hyper mega plan, I have the pleasure to offer you a first translation of the book!