Trips and descriptions

Viajes y descriptions is a short story that takes place on board a sailboat and narrates the vicissitudes of a return trip to Argentina from Europe, passing through France, Spain and Cuba. Juan Bautista Alberdi rarely surrenders on his travels. He describes them with passionate words, but without passion overshadowing the reflection of the thinker. In this way, these trips reflect the two aspects of Alberdi’s personality: that of the writer and that of the thinker.

I do not know if this feeling is common, but I have never been able to stand on the banks of a river, without feeling possessed of I do not know what vague tenderness, mixed with hopes, memories, confused and sweet memories. I have been envious to ask the passing waters what regions they came from and where they were going. I have watched them pass with envy, because I love every movement. It seemed to me that they were going to other, happier climates. The beaches of the rivers have always been a muse, a germ of inspirations for my soul, as for the states a source of progress. And I recognize in this instinct something just. These waters that I have seen pass carry a great destiny, they will swell the powerful vehicle of freedom and humanitarian sociability: the ocean. The ocean is the unity, the progress, the very life of the human spirit. Without this divine bond I would not be one and the same man who lives always and progresses continuously. To exhaust the seas was to plunge nations into servitude and barbarism. The modern freedom of Europe is natural to an island. Freedom like swans and muses loves the water’s edges. If the ancient muses inhabited the forests, the muses of the day seek the rivers and the seas. Daughters of freedom and progress, they love the cradle of their parents.

Excerpt from the text

Reference edition: El Ateneo, Buenos Aires, 1928.