Word: herodotus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That he was. The Greek writer traveled throughout the known world 25 centuries ago, describing its tribes and nations in all their diversity, and chronicling their many wars with an air of humanity and sadness. Herodotus was one of the first classical writers to leave the comfort of the agora, Kapuscinski says, and thus should be viewed "as a visionary on a world scale, an imagination capable of encompassing planetary dimensions - in short, as the first globalist...
Kapuscinski was a globalist too - and one of the most intrepid reporters since Herodotus. Before his death in January at age 74, he had been jailed 40 times, witnessed 27 coups and revolutions, survived four death sentences, contracted tuberculosis, cerebral malaria and blood poisoning, and was once doused with benzene and nearly set ablaze. "I was driving along a road from where they say no white man can come back alive," he wrote of that incident, in war-torn Nigeria. "I was driving to see if a white man could, because I had to experience everything for myself...
That may be why he found Herodotus good company. Travels is actually two interwoven stories: Kapuscinski's account of working in India, China, Egypt, Sudan, Congo and Ethiopia; and Herodotus' colorful observations on customs and conflicts in the equally exotic lands he visited. (Like Kapuscinski, he was accused of exaggerating for effect.) From Herodotus, Kapuscinski says he learned that "each culture requires acceptance and understanding, and that to understand it one must first come to know...
...Greek's main subject is the costly, misguided 5th century B.C. war in which invading Persian forces were eventually repulsed by a united Athens and Sparta. Kapuscinski gets hooked by his ancient predecessor's storytelling skills. "As I immersed myself increasingly in Herodotus' book, I identified more and more, emotionally and cognitively, with the world and events that he recalls," writes Kapuscinski. "I felt more deeply about the destruction of Athens than about the latest military coup in the Sudan, and the sinking of the Persian fleet struck me as more tragic than yet another mutiny of troops in Congo...
...could write a long-envisioned book on his Polish homeland. But from the apartment he and his pediatrician wife Alicja shared in a working-class district of Warsaw, he pounded out articles and gave interviews right up to his final hospitalization. In contrast to Kapuscinski's astounding output, Herodotus left only The Histories. In its opening passage, the ancient scribbler declares that his purpose in writing - stunningly ambitious for the era - is "to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time." The Histories, concludes Kapuscinski, is an "expression of man's struggle against time, against the fragility...