Enjoy a brief passage of pure poetry from Melville at Destinationality (a free resource organizing classic literature excerpts about great destinations)
"When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South Sea; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue.
"There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness."
Enjoy more passages of classic literature at Destinationality (a free resource organizing timeless travel stories)
At #15 on The Guardian’s 100 best novels of all time, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick sails readers around the world in a nearly endless pursuit. Along the way, he paints a vignette of the Pacific: “…for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still…”
Enjoy a brief passage of pure poetry from Melville at Destinationality (a free resource organizing classic literature passages about great destinations)
"...a country so deeply conditioned by its miles and miles of uncitied wilderness that until one has known the wilderness one cannot begin to understand the cities."
(Read the full passage at Destinationality – no ads, nothing for sale)
Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Age of Innocence, published in 1920. That same year, her travelogue In Morocco also premiered.
On her journey from Tangier to Rabat, she wrote: “…until one has known the wilderness one cannot begin to understand the cities.”
Read more of her thoughtful, romantic prose and travel adventure at Destinationality
Iran stands among the top 10 countries globally for UNESCO World Heritage Sites, now with 30 registered locations.
Long ago, the writer, traveller, and archaeologist Gertrude Bell visited Tehran and wrote about her experience: “Here in the dust and the sunshine is an epitome of the living East…”, "...irrepressible..." Enjoy a passage from her “Persian Pictures” on Destinationality on this warm, sunny weekend. (no ads, nothing for sale)
"...It is one of the older casinos, archaic and run-down. Its woodwork reeks of smoke, and its carpets have a sweet rancid sponginess that my English shoes like. I go there every other weekend night or so, losing a thousand a week from my Inexhaustible Fund. ...and losing there is easier than winning, more gratifying. It's more like winning than winning itself, and everyone knows you are not a real player until you secretly prefer losing."
In The Odyssey, Ulysses (Odysseus) lands on a mythical island called “Scheria”. He describes it as a utopia: “…the splendour… was like that of the sun or moon”. So why does he ultimately long for something/somewhere else?
Join Homer as he draws inspiration from the real-world island of Corfu in the following short story at Destinationality.
“Nothing is grander than that which has fallen.”
Long before the tourists descended on the ruins of Heidelberg Castle in Germany, Hugo wrote of his solitary experience there. This is a truly beautiful, romantic, and contemplative passage. “Timeless writing. Iconic destination.”
Enjoy the full excerpt at Destinationality (no ads, no sign-up).
A great travel passage from Jules Verne’s 1873 adventure, Around the World in Eighty Days. Some of the language and the selected final lines of this extensive excerpt reflect the period's inherent bias. A thought-provoking window into the literary landscape of the past? Relevant to the present?
Read it on Destinationality – no ads, no sign-up…
“He saw the darkening lands slipping away past him…”
Join Joyce as the night train steams from Dublin to Cork. A two minute read… that will linger in your thoughts much longer. Find the moody excerpt at Destinationality (no ads, no sign up)
On arriving in Bangkok: "...Here and there in the distance, above the crowded mob of low, brown roof ridges, towered great piles of masonry, King’s Palace, temples, gorgeous and dilapidated, crumbling under the vertical sunlight, tremendous, overpowering, almost palpable, which seemed to enter one’s breast with the breath of one’s nostrils and soak into one’s limbs through every pore of one’s skin."
A one minute reading escape at Destinationality (no ads, no sign up).
Join Conrad as he floats “under the shadow of the great gilt pagoda”, and through the Thai capital “crumbling under the vertical sunlight”.
A one minute reading escape at Destinationality (no ads, no sign up).
Take a summer stroll with Dostoyevsky’s “dreamer” narrator through Saint Petersburg, as he finds solace in nature just outside the city gates.
Destinationality – for readers, travelers, and dreamers.
Read the full excerpt on Destinationality (no ads, no sign up).
The Guardian recently listed its “100 best novels of all time”. The author with the #1 novel? George Eliot.
Here’s an expansive, haunting paragraph she wrote about Prague, and her character’s “visions… of strange cities”:
“…The more I lived… the more frequent and vivid became such visions as that I had had of Prague—of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes—the presence of something unknown… …revealed and yet hidden by the moving curtain of the earth and sky.”
Read more on Destinationality (free, no sign up)
A great short story. “Morning gave us a new world--somewhere between Heaven and Earth.” More weekend reading on Destinationality. (free, no sign-up) https://destinationality.com/destination/asia/greater-china/hong-kong/rudyard-kipling/
Glad to see Madame Bovary at number 10 on the latest “100 best novels of all time” by The Guardian. \#TheGuardian The perfect time to add a NEW Paris story!
Read more at Destinationality. (free, no subscription)
https://destinationality.com/destination/europe/france/paris/gustave-flaubert/
“…Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma’s eyes in an atmosphere of vermilion.”
Obviously, I am not Virginia Woolf! :P But I edit classic travel literature into short stories or vignettes about iconic destinations. In this case, London. Originally published 99 years ago, this is excerpted from STREET HAUNTING: A LONDON ADVENTURE. Read more at Destinationality (free, no sign-up): https://destinationality.com/destination/europe/united-kingdom/london/virginia-woolf/