“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought” Matsuo BashÅ
Reading books about other people forces us to think about our relationship with those people and their actions. When people seek adventure, what are they actually searching for? And when we read their books, how should we respond? Why did, say, Joseph Banks, or Celia Fiennes, or Fridtjof Nansen live those particular lives?
The classical hero is obsessed with previous heroes – Alexander the Great wants to be Achilles, Caesar wants to be Alexander, Napoleon wants to be Caesar, and so on. They deliberately set out to be heroic. In contrast, today we say that heroes must be either accidental or victims.
If humans learn by imitation, and if there is value in challenging oneself with the lives and decisions of other people, how do we do that without just being a ludicrous? How do we avoid acting out a pastiche, and actually “…seek what they sought”? This project is partly an attempt to address these questions.