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| cover photo: by Annemarie Schwarzenbach courtesy of Swiss National Archives |
The Buoyancy of the Craft: The Writing and Travels of Annemarie Schwarzenbach
There is always a long list of acknowledgements to be made when a book comes out but for now, apart from the obvious thanks to my publisher, I’d also like to thank all the people involved in the production, including the design, printing and delivery. Delay was inevitable because of the pandemic restrictions. People have worked from home, worked overtime, sometimes having to isolate, and courier and mail services face huge backlogs. So many thanks to them.
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| Annemarie (left) & Ella Maillart from the cover of Ella's book The Cruel Way |
Below are some questions that my publisher, diehard, asked me about the book. Well, one question. Others will follow!
Diehard: Where did you get the idea for the title and what does it mean?
In the first chapter I write about the necessity of a philosophy, like a boat to carry one through life’s storms and challenges. And I suggest that it might be love that gives the necessary buoyancy to our craft, our floating vehicle. Annemarie put a lot of emphasis on love in her life, not just passionate and erotic love but also love from the heart. We may not call it a philosophy but we all create a worldview based on our beliefs, life experiences and values. The strength of Annemarie’s and what gave it buoyancy, was, I believe, her passion, her love for what she did, the way she followed her heart, despite the difficulties and dangers.
In dreams, a house often represents our psyche. Vehicles of one kind or another can represent our body, and not just the physical body but the emotional one and the intellectual one, created through our beliefs and values. Some of these we may not be conscious of, but if we dig down into our unconscious and pay attention to our dreams, we may find beliefs, attitudes and values that underpin our actions.
Annemarie studied philosophy as well as history and she had a life-long interest in the ways and patterns of the mind and feelings, the bases on which choices are made. She questioned the nature of freedom and of free will. An explorer in the realms of the mind and consciousness as well as in the physical world, she posed questions and was never didactic in her discoveries. She recognized that everyone creates their own ways and values and we are all highly individual in that sense.
A physical place of her own, a home where she could belong, was important to her and she did eventually find such a place. But up till then she spent so much of her time travelling and seeking that I felt the metaphor of a boat, a craft, a home that’s in movement, was applicable to her life as a journey. I felt, the more I read of her work, that she perceived life more as an ocean on which she sailed than dry land, with its accompanying sense of firmness and stability.
You could say her external world of travel, dangers and adventures reflected her inner tides, storms and becalmings. Perhaps she sought in the outer world what reflected her own inner experience. She certainly had agency and plenty of courage. But she also longed for a place of calmness and sanctuary, before setting off again. I’m reminded of Edward Lear’s comment in one of his many letters when he wrote I wish I had some settled aboad – at least until the last narrow box. But if I settled myself I should go to Tobago the next day.
There were many times during her life of travel when Annemarie feared that her vessel would be destroyed by the powerful ocean she was sailing on. Her most formidable challenge was loss of love, parting from those she loved, a deep sense of isolation and alienation, each time that she felt she had to begin again, to return to zero. But although there were times when she felt she was close to drowning, Annemarie’s vehicle of travel, her craft, did in fact have enough buoyancy to carry her across all the oceans in her life; storm-damaged, flooded, capsized even – it survived the storms. She shaped that craft herself, she worked hard at her understanding of life and her own nature – self-critical and idealistic, she did eventually manage to reconcile conflicting aspects of her nature, to accept herself, others, and her surroundings, to let joy into her life, to love and accept all that life brought her.
Her revelation came through the physical place she found herself in, the African Congo, that ‘dark heart’ that Joseph Conrad wrote about, it was as if she had to travel into her own darkness, to discover illumination and understanding. That is something that her compatriot the Swiss psychologist C G Jung would have understood and might even have recommended to her, had she ever consulted him (which she did not). But Annemarie found her own way there, (both literally and metaphorically) fashioning and travelling in her own craft (in both senses of the world – boat and writing) though I’m sure Jung would have appreciated the symbolism. Her inner reconciliation then led on to an outer one as she travelled to Morocco to meet up, after several years of separation, with the man she married in Tehran, Persia, seven years earlier.
Their time together was so successful and enjoyable for both of them that they agreed to meet up again a few months later. Before that, Annemarie had further things to settle and arrange in her life, back in Switzerland. A reconciliation with her mother, a novel to finish and a home to secure, a house of her own, in her beloved Swiss mountains. She succeeded in all of these. But just as she was beginning this new life it would seem that her boat, her vehicle (this time in the physical form of a bicycle) let her down. Yet it was not her fall from the bicycle, it was subsequent mis-diagnosed and brutal medical treatment that crushed her body’s capacity for recovery. She had survived the privations and dangers of travel to Afghanistan and within the Congo, but it was the treatment at home (however well-intentioned) that tested her body’s endurance beyond its limits. I wonder what Jung would have made of that symbolism.
[Copies are available directly from me, £8 which includes postage in the UK. For postage elsewhere only 2 or 3 pounds or euros more. Contact me with your details morellesmith@hotmail.com and I'll be happy to post one out to you.]
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