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.