Classic of travel literature finally released in Portugal – Showbiz
“The Snow Leopard” is one of the most consecrated copies dedicated to travel literature. In the early 1970s Matthiessen set out for the Himalayas with biologist George Schaffer. In his luggage he carried the hope of seeing the elusive feline, but he also had to deal with his inner sorrows – with the still recent death of his wife from cancer.
Thus, much more than any tourist guide that today can be easily found on the internet, Matthiessen filters objective and descriptive observations with a subjective look that gives it a special grandeur.
“Yes”, António Araújo, the coordinator of the publisher’s new travel collection, tells SAPO Mag, “I believe that the last thing he should do was make a tourist guide based on an idea of linearity of time and objectivity of places. The spaces he describes are real and objective, no doubt, but mediated by his experience and his conscience.
The trip also comes at a time when counterculture spirits were still turning to the East in search of self-knowledge, inner peace and spirituality. But despite the passage of time, Matthiessen’s work finds its contemporaneity in many ways.
“The book is a product of the 60s, without a doubt, but as concerns that raise alternatives will remain very much alive in contemporary, post-materialist, spiritually sedentary and syncretic ways, it has made an interesting revisitation of the decade spirit”, evaluates António Araújo.