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A Sentimental Journey: With The Journal to Eliza and A Political Romance
"I have laid a plan for something new, quite out of the beaten track." The result, A Sentimental Journey is as far from the conventional travel book as Tristram Shandy is from other novels. This volume includes the journal Sterne wrote for Eliza Draper which is essential reading for anyone
interested in the development of his comic and satiric genius.
interested in the development of his comic and satiric genius.
241 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
6 people are currently reading
197 people want to read
About the author
Laurence Sterne
1,530 books402 followersLaurence Sterne was an Irish-born English novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. Sterne died in London after years of fighting consumption (tuberculosis).
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence...
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence...
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 4, 2016
This novel is based on a trip that Sterne took in 1765 through France and Italy. How much is true and how much is fiction is uncertain, but after reading it I suspect it is mostly fiction. It's quixotic in nature and structure, but Sterne's episodic tales of Yorick, a British clergyman, fall well short of the brilliance of Cervantes famous character. But it was entertaining enough to give it 4 stars. Now off to try his more popular work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
December 20, 2019
I hadn’t read any Sterne for years, but revisiting A Sentimental Journey reminded me of how hilarious he is, and how sophisticated and experimental. It’s salutary, as always, to remember quite how postmodern premodern literature can be.
The book was Sterne’s last, published less than a month before his death from tuberculosis in 1768, and it draws on a journey he himself made through France and Italy in 1762, in search for a climate that would benefit his health. He narrates the tale of his travels in the person of “Mr Yorick”--on the one hand, a transparent alter ego (Sterne had published his own sermons as The Sermons of Mr Yorick), yet, on the other, a reference back to the parson character in his breakthrough work, Tristram Shandy (1759-67). This complicated and ambiguous first-person / third-person narrator plays a huge role in the success of the narrative. Travel literature traditionally relies on the reliability of the narrator as witness. Yorick / Sterne is exquisitely and intrinsically unreliable: a wonderfully slippery fictional construct.
I read A Sentimental Journey in an excellent 2003 Oxford World’s Classics edition, which presents the work with other, related writings by Sterne. The introduction (by Tim Parnell) strikes me as oddly nervous in presenting Sterne’s work to contemporary readers, insisting on “our modern sense of the incompatibility of satire and sentiment,” and fearing that “modern readers are likely to discover bathos and mawkishness in the representations of tearful familial affection or pathetic spectacles of virtue that are common currency in … mid-eighteenth-century fiction.”
I didn’t really feel that such warnings were necessary in this case. Yorick is certainly a self-consciously, and performatively, “sentimental” narrator, and his journey through France (truncated by Sterne’s death, the book breaks off before he reaches Italy) is punctuated by moments of empathetic emotion triggered by chance encounters along the way. Yorick’s sentiment is always comically undercut, however, by his lascivious interest in the women he encounters, so it becomes impossible to disentangle his disinterested, “human” sentiments from his sexual impulses. Furthermore, I don’t think they are meant to be disentangled; one of Sterne’s points, as a deeply humane and forgiving satirist of human nature, is that we are all a hopeless muddle of intellect and desire, of soul and mind and body, “created half to rise and half to fall,” in Pope’s words.
Contrary to the anxieties of his modern editor, I felt that Sterne’s peculiar mixture of comedy and sentiment works quite well for our contemporary world and is overdue for a revival. I read the book against the backdrop of a brutal, Brexit-dominated election in the UK, and I felt its sane acknowledgment of the prevalence of human prejudice against “otherness” (including differences of opinion), accompanied by a faith in the capacity of empathy to break through that prejudice, was a lesson we could usefully relearn.
The work’s rather lovely moral vision was epitomized for me by a episode near the beginning of the work, where Yorick turns on a begging friar—convenient symbol of the strangeness of Catholic Europe for a visiting Englishman--and gives him a lecture on his idleness and general worthlessness as a human being, only to subsequently rethink and relent. The episode concludes with a love-in moment where the two men sentimentally exchange snuffboxes. The fact that Yorick’s change of heart is prompted by seeing the friar in conversation with an attractive woman, so that his motives in returning to speak to him are somewhat compromised, doesn’t detract from the effect of the episode for me—quite the contrary! This is sentimentalism for cynics, or cynicism for sentimentalists--not at all a bad combination at all.
Add in the fact that this unfinished novel, sadly truncated by the author’s death, manages a near-perfect (non)-ending, as well as a splendidly dashing beginning… this really is one of my reads of the year.
The book was Sterne’s last, published less than a month before his death from tuberculosis in 1768, and it draws on a journey he himself made through France and Italy in 1762, in search for a climate that would benefit his health. He narrates the tale of his travels in the person of “Mr Yorick”--on the one hand, a transparent alter ego (Sterne had published his own sermons as The Sermons of Mr Yorick), yet, on the other, a reference back to the parson character in his breakthrough work, Tristram Shandy (1759-67). This complicated and ambiguous first-person / third-person narrator plays a huge role in the success of the narrative. Travel literature traditionally relies on the reliability of the narrator as witness. Yorick / Sterne is exquisitely and intrinsically unreliable: a wonderfully slippery fictional construct.
I read A Sentimental Journey in an excellent 2003 Oxford World’s Classics edition, which presents the work with other, related writings by Sterne. The introduction (by Tim Parnell) strikes me as oddly nervous in presenting Sterne’s work to contemporary readers, insisting on “our modern sense of the incompatibility of satire and sentiment,” and fearing that “modern readers are likely to discover bathos and mawkishness in the representations of tearful familial affection or pathetic spectacles of virtue that are common currency in … mid-eighteenth-century fiction.”
I didn’t really feel that such warnings were necessary in this case. Yorick is certainly a self-consciously, and performatively, “sentimental” narrator, and his journey through France (truncated by Sterne’s death, the book breaks off before he reaches Italy) is punctuated by moments of empathetic emotion triggered by chance encounters along the way. Yorick’s sentiment is always comically undercut, however, by his lascivious interest in the women he encounters, so it becomes impossible to disentangle his disinterested, “human” sentiments from his sexual impulses. Furthermore, I don’t think they are meant to be disentangled; one of Sterne’s points, as a deeply humane and forgiving satirist of human nature, is that we are all a hopeless muddle of intellect and desire, of soul and mind and body, “created half to rise and half to fall,” in Pope’s words.
Contrary to the anxieties of his modern editor, I felt that Sterne’s peculiar mixture of comedy and sentiment works quite well for our contemporary world and is overdue for a revival. I read the book against the backdrop of a brutal, Brexit-dominated election in the UK, and I felt its sane acknowledgment of the prevalence of human prejudice against “otherness” (including differences of opinion), accompanied by a faith in the capacity of empathy to break through that prejudice, was a lesson we could usefully relearn.
The work’s rather lovely moral vision was epitomized for me by a episode near the beginning of the work, where Yorick turns on a begging friar—convenient symbol of the strangeness of Catholic Europe for a visiting Englishman--and gives him a lecture on his idleness and general worthlessness as a human being, only to subsequently rethink and relent. The episode concludes with a love-in moment where the two men sentimentally exchange snuffboxes. The fact that Yorick’s change of heart is prompted by seeing the friar in conversation with an attractive woman, so that his motives in returning to speak to him are somewhat compromised, doesn’t detract from the effect of the episode for me—quite the contrary! This is sentimentalism for cynics, or cynicism for sentimentalists--not at all a bad combination at all.
Add in the fact that this unfinished novel, sadly truncated by the author’s death, manages a near-perfect (non)-ending, as well as a splendidly dashing beginning… this really is one of my reads of the year.
February 9, 2017
Whether modern or old, the edition of a book is important. I am very fussy and perhaps even sentimental about this. For me a book is a physical object to be cherished for its sheer physicality as much as for its sentiment and sense. My first choice for A Sentimental Journey is the Oxford World's Classics edition edited by Ian Jack and Tim Parnell. I like the font and the discreet signalling of notes with a little superscripted circle.
This Oxford edition contains A Sentimental Journey and Other Writings. The Other Writings are a sickly sweet love journal to his sweetheart, an adroit satire on political games played by obscure churchmen and some surprising sermons on such topics as feasting, concubines and enthusiasm.
Of these, A Sentimental Journey is easily the best. It is far and away the best. It is incomparable. It is sublime.
You might wonder what a clergyman is doing writing so wittily and sentimentally about his erotic experiences in France and Italy. But it is his very respectability that makes his sentimentality so piquant.
Mr. Sterne's observations are never crude. He is a world away from Tobias Smollet's toilet humour. You are given hints and you must find out the erotic detail for yourself. You must feel it. That is what Mr. Sterne is so very good at, making you feel. You must imagine yourself as the gentleman sitting next to the fille de chambre on the big hotel bed as she carefully searches for, then reveals, the quilted satin and taffeta purse she has made to hold the coin you gave her. You must wonder what you would have done had you been the Marquesina in Milan who was pursued by such a charming and witty clergyman. Would you, like her, have let him into your carriage?
I know I would.
That glimpse he gives us of his erotic adventure in Milan is, unfortunately all we get of Italy. The French portion of his journey occupies volumes one and two and the journal ends abruptly in Savoy, with Turin no more than a twinkle on the horizon. The work is unfinished. And yet, you might say, it is exquisitely finished.
It is impossible to do justice to Mr. Sterne's work in a brief summary because he is so very brief himself. For readers only familiar with Tristram Shandy, it is astonishing how concise he can be. He is so concise you have to read the whole work to appreciate its beauty. He has put so much into it and, at the same time, left so much out. It creates ripples in your mind and in your senses. It is tantalising. It is perfect.
It is, truly, a classic.
This Oxford edition contains A Sentimental Journey and Other Writings. The Other Writings are a sickly sweet love journal to his sweetheart, an adroit satire on political games played by obscure churchmen and some surprising sermons on such topics as feasting, concubines and enthusiasm.
Of these, A Sentimental Journey is easily the best. It is far and away the best. It is incomparable. It is sublime.
You might wonder what a clergyman is doing writing so wittily and sentimentally about his erotic experiences in France and Italy. But it is his very respectability that makes his sentimentality so piquant.
Mr. Sterne's observations are never crude. He is a world away from Tobias Smollet's toilet humour. You are given hints and you must find out the erotic detail for yourself. You must feel it. That is what Mr. Sterne is so very good at, making you feel. You must imagine yourself as the gentleman sitting next to the fille de chambre on the big hotel bed as she carefully searches for, then reveals, the quilted satin and taffeta purse she has made to hold the coin you gave her. You must wonder what you would have done had you been the Marquesina in Milan who was pursued by such a charming and witty clergyman. Would you, like her, have let him into your carriage?
I know I would.
That glimpse he gives us of his erotic adventure in Milan is, unfortunately all we get of Italy. The French portion of his journey occupies volumes one and two and the journal ends abruptly in Savoy, with Turin no more than a twinkle on the horizon. The work is unfinished. And yet, you might say, it is exquisitely finished.
It is impossible to do justice to Mr. Sterne's work in a brief summary because he is so very brief himself. For readers only familiar with Tristram Shandy, it is astonishing how concise he can be. He is so concise you have to read the whole work to appreciate its beauty. He has put so much into it and, at the same time, left so much out. It creates ripples in your mind and in your senses. It is tantalising. It is perfect.
It is, truly, a classic.
April 12, 2011
The only novel I know where the author purposedly omitted the last word. And that word, if I may so delicately disclose, is CUNT. Or the equivalent old slang term they use for it when this was first published in 1768: CASE. As in:
"His Pego measur'd to the Female Case,
"Betwixt a Woman's Thighs his proper Place."
--Essay on Woman, John Wilkes (1763)
Virginia Woolf surely would have disagreed. She read this sometime in the late 1920's, expressed admiration for Laurence Sterne's "delicate, flashing style" and praised his "many passages of...pure poetry." As example of the latter she cited this part where the principal protagonist aptly named Yorick, alone in his hotel room during his travel through France and Italy, narrated for the reader:
"...I walked up gravely to the window in my dusty black coat, and looking through the glass saw all the world in yellow, blue, and green, running at the ring of pleasure.--The old with broken lances, and in helmets which had lost their vizards--the young in armour bright which shone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather of the east--all--all tilting at it like fascinated knights in tournaments of yore for fame and love.--"
Pure poetry, my aching foot! "Running at the ring" was a chivalric sport in which horsemen would attempt to lance a suspended metal hoop which Rabelais used as a sexual symbolism in "Gargantua and Pantagruel" and which Sterne also borrowed for his "Tristram Shandy" ("They are running at the ring of pleasure said I, giving him a prick"). "Armour" was an 18th-century euphemism for a contraceptive; "tilting," a slang term for copulation; the "broken lances" of the old (which can't "pierce" anything anymore), the "helmets" which had lost their "vizards," the old (with the broken lances) busy with these helmets--you know what these could be.
Imagine the bawdy Laurence Sterne, looking down from heaven, having the time of his life watching Virginia Woolf rhapsodize about the "poetry" in his work--
"Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Madame de Rambouliet p_ _s on--And, ye fair mystic nymphs! go each one PLUCK YOUR ROSE, and scatter them in your path--for Madame de Rambouliet did no more..."
Virginia Woolf thinking, what a beautiful imagery, roses being plucked and scattered before one's path, like in a wedding, or in a palace walk as the king returns from battle. How romantic.
But then Sterne whispers to you, while trying to suppress a giggle, that "pluck a rose" he actually got from Jonathan Swift's "Strephon and Chloe"--
"None ever saw her pluck a Rose.
"Her dearest Comrades never caught her
"Squat on her Hams, to make Maid's Water"
and it ("pluck a rose") is actually a euphemism for urination; and that the enigmatic "p_ _ s" he wrote was not for "pass" but maybe for "piss."
This is a good read, must read, for all ye here at goodreads. No assurance you'll love it as you might also misappreciate Sterne's real genius. If ever this happens, however, it still won't be anything bad. You can at least claim that you are like Virginia Woolf.
"His Pego measur'd to the Female Case,
"Betwixt a Woman's Thighs his proper Place."
--Essay on Woman, John Wilkes (1763)
Virginia Woolf surely would have disagreed. She read this sometime in the late 1920's, expressed admiration for Laurence Sterne's "delicate, flashing style" and praised his "many passages of...pure poetry." As example of the latter she cited this part where the principal protagonist aptly named Yorick, alone in his hotel room during his travel through France and Italy, narrated for the reader:
"...I walked up gravely to the window in my dusty black coat, and looking through the glass saw all the world in yellow, blue, and green, running at the ring of pleasure.--The old with broken lances, and in helmets which had lost their vizards--the young in armour bright which shone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather of the east--all--all tilting at it like fascinated knights in tournaments of yore for fame and love.--"
Pure poetry, my aching foot! "Running at the ring" was a chivalric sport in which horsemen would attempt to lance a suspended metal hoop which Rabelais used as a sexual symbolism in "Gargantua and Pantagruel" and which Sterne also borrowed for his "Tristram Shandy" ("They are running at the ring of pleasure said I, giving him a prick"). "Armour" was an 18th-century euphemism for a contraceptive; "tilting," a slang term for copulation; the "broken lances" of the old (which can't "pierce" anything anymore), the "helmets" which had lost their "vizards," the old (with the broken lances) busy with these helmets--you know what these could be.
Imagine the bawdy Laurence Sterne, looking down from heaven, having the time of his life watching Virginia Woolf rhapsodize about the "poetry" in his work--
"Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Madame de Rambouliet p_ _s on--And, ye fair mystic nymphs! go each one PLUCK YOUR ROSE, and scatter them in your path--for Madame de Rambouliet did no more..."
Virginia Woolf thinking, what a beautiful imagery, roses being plucked and scattered before one's path, like in a wedding, or in a palace walk as the king returns from battle. How romantic.
But then Sterne whispers to you, while trying to suppress a giggle, that "pluck a rose" he actually got from Jonathan Swift's "Strephon and Chloe"--
"None ever saw her pluck a Rose.
"Her dearest Comrades never caught her
"Squat on her Hams, to make Maid's Water"
and it ("pluck a rose") is actually a euphemism for urination; and that the enigmatic "p_ _ s" he wrote was not for "pass" but maybe for "piss."
This is a good read, must read, for all ye here at goodreads. No assurance you'll love it as you might also misappreciate Sterne's real genius. If ever this happens, however, it still won't be anything bad. You can at least claim that you are like Virginia Woolf.
November 28, 2018
This is one of the more difficult books I've ever read, which is unusual considering it's barely more than 100 pages. I was first assigned it in university as part of a course on 18th century literature, during a period of my studies in which I didn't read anything I hadn't heard of, because only what is suitably canonical to reach my attention could be worth my time. I was pretty stupid. One of the reasons we were assigned this book and not Tristram Shandy is because the latter book is 800 pages long. I missed out on quite a few great books from my own ignorance, which I'm trying to rectify now.
Even so, I don't think I would've enjoyed this book, had I bothered to read more than 10 or so pages. A Sentimental Journey is mostly plotless, a light work wrapped in rather dense prose. If you aren't finding it funny you're probably not getting much from it. In writing this review, I only 'finished' the book as opposed to 'read it' - I'd read 60 pages earlier in the year, and picked up the book yesterday with the bookmark still inside. I don't think I needed to remember much to get up to speed. Mr. Yorick, a gentleman, travels ostensibly through France and Italy (he gets to Paris and not much further). I'm not familiar with Smollett or other 18th century travelogues this book gleefully skewers, but I'd like to be - I'm growing fond of the 18th century style that, when studying, I found too arcane and convoluted.
The book is also interesting as it is example of the 'sentimental' novel that was to become highly popular in the late 18th century, a style eventually parodied in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. It certainly isn't a type of novel that seems to have any strong influences on writing today. We don't live in an age that praises sentimentality - the word is used only in negative connotations. I'm not sure what to think about it all yet. Nevertheless, I look forward to reading Tristram Shandy.
Even so, I don't think I would've enjoyed this book, had I bothered to read more than 10 or so pages. A Sentimental Journey is mostly plotless, a light work wrapped in rather dense prose. If you aren't finding it funny you're probably not getting much from it. In writing this review, I only 'finished' the book as opposed to 'read it' - I'd read 60 pages earlier in the year, and picked up the book yesterday with the bookmark still inside. I don't think I needed to remember much to get up to speed. Mr. Yorick, a gentleman, travels ostensibly through France and Italy (he gets to Paris and not much further). I'm not familiar with Smollett or other 18th century travelogues this book gleefully skewers, but I'd like to be - I'm growing fond of the 18th century style that, when studying, I found too arcane and convoluted.
The book is also interesting as it is example of the 'sentimental' novel that was to become highly popular in the late 18th century, a style eventually parodied in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. It certainly isn't a type of novel that seems to have any strong influences on writing today. We don't live in an age that praises sentimentality - the word is used only in negative connotations. I'm not sure what to think about it all yet. Nevertheless, I look forward to reading Tristram Shandy.
October 20, 2022
I just don’t really get it.
March 9, 2021
"It had ever been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one."
September 18, 2019
Pathos and Humor, Uncomfortable Bedfellows
Probably no one reads this novel without having read and enjoyed the author’s idiosyncratic Tristram Shandy (TS), hoping this novel will be in the same delightful vein, only to discover that Sterne had taken a new direction by utilizing techniques from his popular sermons to promote morality and sensibility in his audience, as well as challenge accusations of his own immorality occasioned by the previous novel. Fragmentary episodes from the experiences of the English clergyman Mr. Yorick on his trip through France provide Sterne’s material, enhanced by the fact that Mr. Yorick is not only a character from Tristram Shandy but also his name alludes to the jester’s skull disinterred by Hamlet’s grave digger. This fortuity is a humorous cause of his being granted a passport after illegally entering France because a “jester” could not be dangerous to the state (73), so his “dual” nature is underlined: a pastor seeking general evidence of moral behavior and a jester capable of mocking behavior. Due to Sterne’s death the final volumes about Italy were not written, and Mr. Yorick’s adventures are interrupted in media res at a tantalizing sexual moment.
One aim of the novel is to demonstrate that travel can liberate a person from narrow, national prejudices by showing there are “good and bad every where” in all countries, and “the advantage of travel, as it regarded the savoir vivre, was by seeing a great deal both of men and manners; it taught us mutual toleration; and mutual toleration…taught us mutual love” (52). There is similar didactic intent behind each of the small, often “pathetic,” episodes that are described, whether about dwarfs in Paris (“every third man is a pygmy,” 49), or an old soldier wearing his gold cross as a Chevalier and selling pâtés on a street corner (66). Even a starling, caged and trained by a bored young English groom, croaking repeatedly in English “‘I can’t get out’…overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile” (60). Sterne’s failure to have a passport meant he could be imprisoned, which he had tried to rationalize that its main terror lay in its name: it could be viewed as free accommodations where he could write, if he had a little money for supplies. Ultimately the bird’s message evokes in Mr. Yorick a florid eulogy on LIBERTY, and an imaginative vision of a man, imprisoned for thirty years in a dark dungeon, who uses notches on sticks to mark his hopeless days. “I burst into tears--I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn” (61). Another narrative involves an old German mourning the loss of his faithful friend, his ass, and fearing that “the weight of myself and my afflictions together have been too much for him--they have shortened the poor creature’s days, and I fear I have them to answer for--Shame on the world! Said I to myself--Did we love each other, as this poor soul but loved his ass--‘twould be something.-- (35). While there’s an aura of the ridiculous about this incident, nonetheless Sterns finds a moral import, exactly as if it were part of a sermon, and knows that embodying the moral in a story makes it more memorable.
The livening aspect is that Mr. Yorick freely flirts with any young, attractive French girl/woman he meets. Not only is his conversation often personal, rather than socially restrained, he doesn’t hesitate to touch the woman after they have established a brief rapport. His susceptibility to French female charms is evident throughout: “she had a quick black eye, and shot through two such long and silken eye-lashes with such penetration, that she look’d into my very heart and reins--It may seem strange, but I could actually feel she did--” (46). But it is all apparently chaste and a demonstration how the sexes can get along in a friendly, non-passionate manner, a point the editors of this volume are at great pains to emphasize. Sterne is demonstrating that eros and agape cannot be rigidly separated (xxviii), for as Mr. Yorick says “there is nothing unmixt in this world” (74). This results in episodes with women that often end on an intimate note that may or may not be sexual, such as the encounter with the Marquesina de F****, which the editors think probably ended sexually, based upon the phrase “the connection which arose out of that translation, gave me more pleasure than any one I had the honour to make in Italy” (48), with Stern playing upon double meanings of “connection” and “translation.”
But if this is so, why is there not a similar outcome in the boldly named chapter “The Conquest,” wherein a fille de chambre after a certain amount of manhandling is uptipped onto the bed, which leads Yorick to enthuse, “If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?…Wherever thy providence shall place me for the trials of my virtue--whatever is my danger--whatever is my situation--let me feel the movements which rise out of it, and which belong to me as a man--and if I govern them as a good one--I will trust the issues to thy justice, for thou has made us--and not we ourselves” (78). The hotel manager assumes impropriety, a scandal, and orders him to leave, although if the meeting had been in the morning it wouldn’t have caused concern (a curious fact that isn’t explained). Then the manager offers to send him another woman that would be appropriate for a sexual encounter (“who would use you en conscience, 81). Yorick agrees, buys some items from her but no sexual favors, knowing the manager is “a dirty fellow” (81) and will share any money she gains. Since it’s clear Yorick prefers women who aren’t basically prostitutes and will flirt with any woman, married or not who is attractive, it’s hardly clear that the “conquest” was of his sexual desires and not of the young woman. He thinks of himself as “good” whenever he’s engaged in serious flirtation because his intent is never to do any harm to the woman but to give her whatever she is willing to accept; mutually agreed-upon coitus in a “web of kindness” would not be harmful.
For a contemporary reader the most curious, if not bizarre, aspect of the book is Sterne’s focus on pathetic incidents and individuals with the desired intent of arousing a viewer/reader’s sympathy via his sensibility. If a person is moved by another’s distress, this is evidence of a soul that is connected to divine forces, because purely material components would not rise to the level of disinterested concern beyond one’s own needs. Sensibility, “eternal fountain of our feelings!…this is thy divinity which stirs within me…--all comes from thee, great--great SENSORIUM of the world! Which vibrates, if a hair of our heads but falls upon the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation” (98) is key to this novel’s uniqueness, making Sterne an important contributor to the “sentimental novel” and earning him an “eighteenth-century reputation as a master of pathos” (xvii). Sterne, an English Protestant, offers his first pathetic example when Mr. Yorick encounters a seventy-year-old, impoverished, mendicant Franciscan monk in Calais and initially dismisses his appeal for alms, playing to the English sentiment that Catholic monks selfishly exploit the alms they are given. Yorick glibly says he has too many impoverished in his home country, adding insult to injury (7), which he almost immediately regrets. But it isn’t until Sterne winds this story through details about the type of carriage Yorick wants to hire and his meeting with a woman who obviously excites him, that the monk comes up again, this time to offer Yorick some snuff from his plain snuff box, and Yorick offers him snuff from his tortoise-shell box as “the peace-offering of a man who once used you unkindly, but not from his heart. The poor monk blush’d as red as scarlet…you never used me unkindly.--I should think, said the lady, he is not likely…My God! cried the monk…the fault was in me, and in the indiscretion of my zeal” (17). After they stood for a while in silence, the monk exchanges his plain snuff box with Yorick’s tortoise shell box. When Yorick later visits the monk’s grave, he weeps, and his memory of Father Lorenzo’s courtesy, whose own life was full of disappointments until he ”took sanctuary, not so much in his convent as in himself” (18), remains throughout Yorick’s subsequent adventures. Whenever he uses the monk’s snuff box he remembers the “courteous spirit of its owner to regulate my own, in the justlings of the world” (18).
As an aid to developing this ability, Sterne discusses the art of “translating,” which means analyzing a person’s non-verbals to understand what he’s thinking or feeling. He brags that he’s stood behind a crowd in London, “where not three words have been said, and have brought off twenty different dialogues with me, which I could have fairly wrote down and sworn to” (48). While this ability aids in the “progress of sociality” (47), it may that a sensitive writer is apt to let his imagination work, building up fantasies about others without any confirming or conflicting notes of reality. In addition the ability can be put to use analyzing the behavior of a person from whom one wants something, to see what arguments and what behavior will be effective, which Sterne does when seeking a special passport from a French Duke (64).
The encounter with the lady goes on for several chapters and ends when she gives him the name of a woman he can meet in Paris if he desires to see her again. As with all the “sexual” episodes in this novel, exactly what happens is unclear, partly because Sterne is playing with words that have double meanings and partly because the novel itself is unpleasantly fragmentary. Many of his sentences are confusing, not just because of archaic words or meanings but because the phrasing itself isn’t clearly constructed. Sterne was ill while writing the book and involved in a serious flirtation with a married woman who was about to embark for India and return to her husband. These distractions, coupled with his own emotional nature, subject to severe depressions, make it understandable if the novel lacks coherence but at the same time make the book less satisfying. Later there’s a similar interrupted episode where Yorick wonder why a strange man passing in the street only asks alms from women and then is always successful. Several chapters pass before the explanation is given that he flatters them and this results in their generosity. Yorick, of course, decides to use this technique, which he does to gain entree and success in Parisian society. “For three weeks together, I was of every man’s opinion I met” (93), which gains him the reputation of being wise and witty. “I could have eaten and drank and been merry all the days of my life in Paris, but ‘twas a dishonest reckoning--I grew ashamed of it--it was the gain of a slave--every sentiment of honour revolted against it…and one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick…and in the morning..set out for Italy” (94).
None of the characters is well developed. Toward the end of the second book Sterne inserts a recap of a melancholy story from TS about Maria, deserted by her lover and wandering forlornly about the beautiful countryside. Mr. Yorick seeks out Maria because “I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in” melancholy adventures (94). Sterne provides a brief, conventional scene of the deserted maiden, Yorick’s remark about himself as a replication of the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, and notes that “affliction had touch’d her looks with something that was scarce earthly--still she was feminine--and so much was there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for in woman” that if he could forget his current amour Eliza, “Maria should lay in my bosom, and be unto me as a daughter” (97), a series of almost personal yet clearly conventional reflections. Other females are only briefly described, as is the potentially amusing character of La Fleur, the young Frenchman hired as Yorick’s servant, whose only ability was to play the drum and fife, which he had learned during his military service. Yorick seems happy with the “faithful, affectionate, simple soul” (27), whose equanimity about whatever happened served as a model for Yorick’s own more emotional responses. However, La Fleur was always in love, a situation Yorick understands as “I always perceive my heart locked up--I can scarce find in it, to give Misery a six-pence and therefore I always get out of it as fast as I can, and the moment I am re-kindled, I am all generosity and good will again, and would do any thing in the world either for, or with any one, if they will but satisfy me there is no sin in it…I am commending the passion--not myself” (26). Then comes an unexpected story about a profligate town in Thrace. While this “Fragment” illustrates the power of love, as well as referencing Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, other than its thematic association, it’s an abrupt, dissonant note. There are many others like this that possibly work well in a sermon where citing authorities’ illustrative examples are standard and pasting them together may make a complete sermon, but in a novel coherence is more important, along with development of action and character, not simply random examples instructive of an intellectual thesis. In the eighteenth century when sermons were more popular, the similarity in style of this book worked to its advantage; now a reader’s expectations are different, although the format of stringing together similar episodes is common in some other literary forms. La Fleur, who is potentially an interesting character, is generally over-looked, except when his mistress passes along his love token to another lover, making him the basis of a pathetic episode.
Reading the novel is challenging, as there are numerous references to Tristram Shandy or its characters, plus plays on words and contemporary ideas that will also be obscure. Many words and phrases are satirical in nature, so the reader has to read carefully to understand the point, if that is possible when the situations Sterne writes about are over 200 years old. In addition to Sterne’s obscurantism, the Oxford University Press edition suffers from its authors’ excessive editorial zeal. After the editors’ extensive search for sources, which they annotate even if it’s just a possibility, almost every idea Sterne presents in this novel seems to be derived either from scripture, or some previous laudable author, resulting in scholarly articles on minutiae to show “possible” influence. While the book is no longer of general interest, at least Sterne is providing academic employment and fulfilling his goal of combining pathos and humor.
Probably no one reads this novel without having read and enjoyed the author’s idiosyncratic Tristram Shandy (TS), hoping this novel will be in the same delightful vein, only to discover that Sterne had taken a new direction by utilizing techniques from his popular sermons to promote morality and sensibility in his audience, as well as challenge accusations of his own immorality occasioned by the previous novel. Fragmentary episodes from the experiences of the English clergyman Mr. Yorick on his trip through France provide Sterne’s material, enhanced by the fact that Mr. Yorick is not only a character from Tristram Shandy but also his name alludes to the jester’s skull disinterred by Hamlet’s grave digger. This fortuity is a humorous cause of his being granted a passport after illegally entering France because a “jester” could not be dangerous to the state (73), so his “dual” nature is underlined: a pastor seeking general evidence of moral behavior and a jester capable of mocking behavior. Due to Sterne’s death the final volumes about Italy were not written, and Mr. Yorick’s adventures are interrupted in media res at a tantalizing sexual moment.
One aim of the novel is to demonstrate that travel can liberate a person from narrow, national prejudices by showing there are “good and bad every where” in all countries, and “the advantage of travel, as it regarded the savoir vivre, was by seeing a great deal both of men and manners; it taught us mutual toleration; and mutual toleration…taught us mutual love” (52). There is similar didactic intent behind each of the small, often “pathetic,” episodes that are described, whether about dwarfs in Paris (“every third man is a pygmy,” 49), or an old soldier wearing his gold cross as a Chevalier and selling pâtés on a street corner (66). Even a starling, caged and trained by a bored young English groom, croaking repeatedly in English “‘I can’t get out’…overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile” (60). Sterne’s failure to have a passport meant he could be imprisoned, which he had tried to rationalize that its main terror lay in its name: it could be viewed as free accommodations where he could write, if he had a little money for supplies. Ultimately the bird’s message evokes in Mr. Yorick a florid eulogy on LIBERTY, and an imaginative vision of a man, imprisoned for thirty years in a dark dungeon, who uses notches on sticks to mark his hopeless days. “I burst into tears--I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn” (61). Another narrative involves an old German mourning the loss of his faithful friend, his ass, and fearing that “the weight of myself and my afflictions together have been too much for him--they have shortened the poor creature’s days, and I fear I have them to answer for--Shame on the world! Said I to myself--Did we love each other, as this poor soul but loved his ass--‘twould be something.-- (35). While there’s an aura of the ridiculous about this incident, nonetheless Sterns finds a moral import, exactly as if it were part of a sermon, and knows that embodying the moral in a story makes it more memorable.
The livening aspect is that Mr. Yorick freely flirts with any young, attractive French girl/woman he meets. Not only is his conversation often personal, rather than socially restrained, he doesn’t hesitate to touch the woman after they have established a brief rapport. His susceptibility to French female charms is evident throughout: “she had a quick black eye, and shot through two such long and silken eye-lashes with such penetration, that she look’d into my very heart and reins--It may seem strange, but I could actually feel she did--” (46). But it is all apparently chaste and a demonstration how the sexes can get along in a friendly, non-passionate manner, a point the editors of this volume are at great pains to emphasize. Sterne is demonstrating that eros and agape cannot be rigidly separated (xxviii), for as Mr. Yorick says “there is nothing unmixt in this world” (74). This results in episodes with women that often end on an intimate note that may or may not be sexual, such as the encounter with the Marquesina de F****, which the editors think probably ended sexually, based upon the phrase “the connection which arose out of that translation, gave me more pleasure than any one I had the honour to make in Italy” (48), with Stern playing upon double meanings of “connection” and “translation.”
But if this is so, why is there not a similar outcome in the boldly named chapter “The Conquest,” wherein a fille de chambre after a certain amount of manhandling is uptipped onto the bed, which leads Yorick to enthuse, “If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?…Wherever thy providence shall place me for the trials of my virtue--whatever is my danger--whatever is my situation--let me feel the movements which rise out of it, and which belong to me as a man--and if I govern them as a good one--I will trust the issues to thy justice, for thou has made us--and not we ourselves” (78). The hotel manager assumes impropriety, a scandal, and orders him to leave, although if the meeting had been in the morning it wouldn’t have caused concern (a curious fact that isn’t explained). Then the manager offers to send him another woman that would be appropriate for a sexual encounter (“who would use you en conscience, 81). Yorick agrees, buys some items from her but no sexual favors, knowing the manager is “a dirty fellow” (81) and will share any money she gains. Since it’s clear Yorick prefers women who aren’t basically prostitutes and will flirt with any woman, married or not who is attractive, it’s hardly clear that the “conquest” was of his sexual desires and not of the young woman. He thinks of himself as “good” whenever he’s engaged in serious flirtation because his intent is never to do any harm to the woman but to give her whatever she is willing to accept; mutually agreed-upon coitus in a “web of kindness” would not be harmful.
For a contemporary reader the most curious, if not bizarre, aspect of the book is Sterne’s focus on pathetic incidents and individuals with the desired intent of arousing a viewer/reader’s sympathy via his sensibility. If a person is moved by another’s distress, this is evidence of a soul that is connected to divine forces, because purely material components would not rise to the level of disinterested concern beyond one’s own needs. Sensibility, “eternal fountain of our feelings!…this is thy divinity which stirs within me…--all comes from thee, great--great SENSORIUM of the world! Which vibrates, if a hair of our heads but falls upon the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation” (98) is key to this novel’s uniqueness, making Sterne an important contributor to the “sentimental novel” and earning him an “eighteenth-century reputation as a master of pathos” (xvii). Sterne, an English Protestant, offers his first pathetic example when Mr. Yorick encounters a seventy-year-old, impoverished, mendicant Franciscan monk in Calais and initially dismisses his appeal for alms, playing to the English sentiment that Catholic monks selfishly exploit the alms they are given. Yorick glibly says he has too many impoverished in his home country, adding insult to injury (7), which he almost immediately regrets. But it isn’t until Sterne winds this story through details about the type of carriage Yorick wants to hire and his meeting with a woman who obviously excites him, that the monk comes up again, this time to offer Yorick some snuff from his plain snuff box, and Yorick offers him snuff from his tortoise-shell box as “the peace-offering of a man who once used you unkindly, but not from his heart. The poor monk blush’d as red as scarlet…you never used me unkindly.--I should think, said the lady, he is not likely…My God! cried the monk…the fault was in me, and in the indiscretion of my zeal” (17). After they stood for a while in silence, the monk exchanges his plain snuff box with Yorick’s tortoise shell box. When Yorick later visits the monk’s grave, he weeps, and his memory of Father Lorenzo’s courtesy, whose own life was full of disappointments until he ”took sanctuary, not so much in his convent as in himself” (18), remains throughout Yorick’s subsequent adventures. Whenever he uses the monk’s snuff box he remembers the “courteous spirit of its owner to regulate my own, in the justlings of the world” (18).
As an aid to developing this ability, Sterne discusses the art of “translating,” which means analyzing a person’s non-verbals to understand what he’s thinking or feeling. He brags that he’s stood behind a crowd in London, “where not three words have been said, and have brought off twenty different dialogues with me, which I could have fairly wrote down and sworn to” (48). While this ability aids in the “progress of sociality” (47), it may that a sensitive writer is apt to let his imagination work, building up fantasies about others without any confirming or conflicting notes of reality. In addition the ability can be put to use analyzing the behavior of a person from whom one wants something, to see what arguments and what behavior will be effective, which Sterne does when seeking a special passport from a French Duke (64).
The encounter with the lady goes on for several chapters and ends when she gives him the name of a woman he can meet in Paris if he desires to see her again. As with all the “sexual” episodes in this novel, exactly what happens is unclear, partly because Sterne is playing with words that have double meanings and partly because the novel itself is unpleasantly fragmentary. Many of his sentences are confusing, not just because of archaic words or meanings but because the phrasing itself isn’t clearly constructed. Sterne was ill while writing the book and involved in a serious flirtation with a married woman who was about to embark for India and return to her husband. These distractions, coupled with his own emotional nature, subject to severe depressions, make it understandable if the novel lacks coherence but at the same time make the book less satisfying. Later there’s a similar interrupted episode where Yorick wonder why a strange man passing in the street only asks alms from women and then is always successful. Several chapters pass before the explanation is given that he flatters them and this results in their generosity. Yorick, of course, decides to use this technique, which he does to gain entree and success in Parisian society. “For three weeks together, I was of every man’s opinion I met” (93), which gains him the reputation of being wise and witty. “I could have eaten and drank and been merry all the days of my life in Paris, but ‘twas a dishonest reckoning--I grew ashamed of it--it was the gain of a slave--every sentiment of honour revolted against it…and one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick…and in the morning..set out for Italy” (94).
None of the characters is well developed. Toward the end of the second book Sterne inserts a recap of a melancholy story from TS about Maria, deserted by her lover and wandering forlornly about the beautiful countryside. Mr. Yorick seeks out Maria because “I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in” melancholy adventures (94). Sterne provides a brief, conventional scene of the deserted maiden, Yorick’s remark about himself as a replication of the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, and notes that “affliction had touch’d her looks with something that was scarce earthly--still she was feminine--and so much was there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for in woman” that if he could forget his current amour Eliza, “Maria should lay in my bosom, and be unto me as a daughter” (97), a series of almost personal yet clearly conventional reflections. Other females are only briefly described, as is the potentially amusing character of La Fleur, the young Frenchman hired as Yorick’s servant, whose only ability was to play the drum and fife, which he had learned during his military service. Yorick seems happy with the “faithful, affectionate, simple soul” (27), whose equanimity about whatever happened served as a model for Yorick’s own more emotional responses. However, La Fleur was always in love, a situation Yorick understands as “I always perceive my heart locked up--I can scarce find in it, to give Misery a six-pence and therefore I always get out of it as fast as I can, and the moment I am re-kindled, I am all generosity and good will again, and would do any thing in the world either for, or with any one, if they will but satisfy me there is no sin in it…I am commending the passion--not myself” (26). Then comes an unexpected story about a profligate town in Thrace. While this “Fragment” illustrates the power of love, as well as referencing Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, other than its thematic association, it’s an abrupt, dissonant note. There are many others like this that possibly work well in a sermon where citing authorities’ illustrative examples are standard and pasting them together may make a complete sermon, but in a novel coherence is more important, along with development of action and character, not simply random examples instructive of an intellectual thesis. In the eighteenth century when sermons were more popular, the similarity in style of this book worked to its advantage; now a reader’s expectations are different, although the format of stringing together similar episodes is common in some other literary forms. La Fleur, who is potentially an interesting character, is generally over-looked, except when his mistress passes along his love token to another lover, making him the basis of a pathetic episode.
Reading the novel is challenging, as there are numerous references to Tristram Shandy or its characters, plus plays on words and contemporary ideas that will also be obscure. Many words and phrases are satirical in nature, so the reader has to read carefully to understand the point, if that is possible when the situations Sterne writes about are over 200 years old. In addition to Sterne’s obscurantism, the Oxford University Press edition suffers from its authors’ excessive editorial zeal. After the editors’ extensive search for sources, which they annotate even if it’s just a possibility, almost every idea Sterne presents in this novel seems to be derived either from scripture, or some previous laudable author, resulting in scholarly articles on minutiae to show “possible” influence. While the book is no longer of general interest, at least Sterne is providing academic employment and fulfilling his goal of combining pathos and humor.
February 8, 2024
A Sentimental Journey is, much like The Life and Opinions or Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, an absolute joy to read. Yorick, the narrator, and La Fleur, his guide, are just the sort of highly amusing characters you expect from Sterne: bustling with life (often to fault) and good-natured. There's no real story here, just brief episodes that deftly display Sterne's wit and ability to craft likable characters whose flaws more than anything increase their worth.
The Letters to Eliza were honestly a bit of a bore to me. In some ways, it reminded me of Kafka's Letters to Felice, but it lacked the sense of peering into the soul of the author which Kafka's letters achieved. Sterne's letters read more like a horny married man complaining to his mistress. I suppose the two are also joined in that tuberculosis claimed their lives far too early.
A Political Romance closed out this volume, and while I appreciated some of it, it didn't do much for me, perhaps because the allegory is too specific and too far removed from my general knowledge. However, I do love "The Key," wherein members of a Political Club argue about the meaning of the sotort, offering numerous keys, interpretations of the characters and symbols, until finally the captain of the club declares, "That the Right Key, if it could be found, would be worth the whole Bunch put together."
The Letters to Eliza were honestly a bit of a bore to me. In some ways, it reminded me of Kafka's Letters to Felice, but it lacked the sense of peering into the soul of the author which Kafka's letters achieved. Sterne's letters read more like a horny married man complaining to his mistress. I suppose the two are also joined in that tuberculosis claimed their lives far too early.
A Political Romance closed out this volume, and while I appreciated some of it, it didn't do much for me, perhaps because the allegory is too specific and too far removed from my general knowledge. However, I do love "The Key," wherein members of a Political Club argue about the meaning of the sotort, offering numerous keys, interpretations of the characters and symbols, until finally the captain of the club declares, "That the Right Key, if it could be found, would be worth the whole Bunch put together."
September 26, 2023
ASJ: Yorick's ramblings through France, predominantly Nampont, Paris and Calais, and his various fleeting intimacies with women
JTE: Yorick's yearning for the 22y/o wife of an East India Company official who sails for Bombay
A Polit Romance: Sterne (for his own amusement) contributing to the clerical dispute between Fountayne and York lawyer, Dr Topham (Trim). Featuring battles over Great Watch-Coat, Pulpit Cloth and Velvet Cushion, and some breeches.
JTE: Yorick's yearning for the 22y/o wife of an East India Company official who sails for Bombay
A Polit Romance: Sterne (for his own amusement) contributing to the clerical dispute between Fountayne and York lawyer, Dr Topham (Trim). Featuring battles over Great Watch-Coat, Pulpit Cloth and Velvet Cushion, and some breeches.
December 15, 2023
Only got a quarter of the way through - couldn't work out what was going on!!
January 17, 2022
—And is all this to be lighted up in the heart for a beggarly account of three or four louis d’ors, which is the most I can be overreached in?—Base passion! said I, turning myself about, as a man naturally does upon a sudden reverse of sentiment,—base, ungentle passion! thy hand is against every man, and every man’s hand against thee.—Heaven forbid! said she, raising her hand up to her forehead, for I had turned full in front upon the lady whom I had seen in conference with the monk:—she had followed us unperceived.—Heaven forbid, indeed! said I, offering her my own;—she had a black pair of silk gloves, open only at the thumb and two fore-fingers, so accepted it without reserve,—and I led her up to the door of the Remise.
Monsieur Dessein had diabled the key above fifty times before he had found out he had come with a wrong one in his hand: we were as impatient as himself to have it opened; and so attentive to the obstacle that I continued holding her hand almost without knowing it: so that Monsieur Dessein left us together with her hand in mine, and with our faces turned towards the door of the Remise, and said he would be back in five minutes.
Skimming through just to read this passage that later inspired Joan's Galaxy star-seeing scene.
Monsieur Dessein had diabled the key above fifty times before he had found out he had come with a wrong one in his hand: we were as impatient as himself to have it opened; and so attentive to the obstacle that I continued holding her hand almost without knowing it: so that Monsieur Dessein left us together with her hand in mine, and with our faces turned towards the door of the Remise, and said he would be back in five minutes.
Skimming through just to read this passage that later inspired Joan's Galaxy star-seeing scene.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 22, 2019
Formally and stylistically, Sterne's idiosyncratic Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a challenging read. As a fictional travel narrative that never quite manages to get to the Italy of its title (Sterne died before he could finish it) it is less concerned with documenting sights, monuments, and local customs than a series of "sentimental" encounters in which the narrator, Reverend Mr. Yorick, encounters characters and incidents which demand his his moral and emotional attention. Whether its the mendicant Father Lorenzo or the caged bird or the appearance of a woman who strikes his fancy, Yorik is forced to reckon with and contemplate the ambiguities of his own emotional response. The text explores the complexities of one's sympathetic and affective responses to the outside world and is concerned with "travel" chiefly as an opportunity to sympathetically identify with an external other; for this reason it is an important document in the 18th-century's man-of-feeling's canon.
July 17, 2013
I'd just like to caution readers that this is, in fact, a work of art, and not just a roman a clef of dirty 19th century references. Sterne expounds brilliantly on a number of human topics, often with a sly dirty joke thrown in. It's fun picking up all the naughty humor, but if you shouldn't miss Sterne's touching, wry comments on the nature of life, even when they're inserted into a joke about a lady's
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November 8, 2017Has anyone written an essay on how similar Sterne is to Jack Kerouac? They both write impulsively, preferring dashes to real punctuation. Both celebrate travel. Both are deeply spiritual, fall in love with every woman they meet, have unexpected insights that surprise themselves as they write. Both have a bemused, aristocratic tone that is vaguely French.
March 4, 2011
It read like a short tie-in to Tristram Shandy. Sterne continues with his usual style--diversions galore and then back to the main story, if that is what it is. I felt teased by the shortness, but the ride was fun and with a final push in the end, makes its exit.
December 22, 2009
Weird and funny! Once I got into it, I really enjoyed Sterne's style.
May 18, 2012
yeah, yeah I get it...you mean sex.
April 15, 2013
Our narrator, an English clergyman, is diplomatic and interested in people. His personality reminds me of a late-1700s William Powell in The Thin Man. He is witty in a quirky way.
March 15, 2018
Such a beautifully written piece but be warned large portions are in French. This is typical of the time period but if you don’t speak French you are going to need a French dictionary near by.
September 26, 2018
Reading the endnotes might help with this. But who has time for endnotes?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews