Ambience and nature in travel writing: An ecostylistic study of The Old Patagonian Express and Eastward to Tartary

3.1 Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Frame Semantics

The present paper integrates insight from Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Frame Semantics (FS). The rationale for doing this is to unearth a considerable number of landscape-related metaphors by means of a close reading of the language employed by the authors, and to reveal how these metaphors shape the stance, the worldview, and the mood of the authors. Within the general field of Cognitive Linguistics, on which the present paper is framed, CMT and FS prove to be useful tools from which the study of both books explored here can be approached. Both CMT and FS deal with figurative language, thus blurring the traditional boundaries between linguistics and literature, by claiming that language is not modular and that language, cognition, and literature are on a continuum with each other (Stockwell 2012: 3).

The interaction between the linguistic choices made by the producers of a given stretch of discourse, when coding their conceptualization (in this case, the writers), and the receivers (here, the readers), who conceive and interpret meaning by taking these linguistic choices as a basis, establish a communication channel along which conceptual metaphors are encoded and need to be interpreted by the readers through cognitive operations. Following Sullivan (2013: 2–3), metaphoric language can involve metaphoric words, but words are not enough to convey metaphor. For a metaphor to be activated, a specific grammatical context is needed, and this entails particular relations between words. This is consistent with the study of stretches of text larger than a single metaphoric word or phrase, where multiple and varied lexical choices help shape a semantic frame which will act as the source domain of the arising metaphors.

The axis around which the present paper revolves is the notion of ambience. This is consistent with both CMT and FS if we consider that a large part of the literary experience lies in its ambient value. The ambience of a narrative text (and travel writing is, indeed, narrative) deals with the vaguer notions of tone and atmosphere. The reason for their vagueness lies in the fact that the reader cannot know what is in the writer’s mind for certain. Tone can be described in text-linguistic terms at the level of the lexical choices and at the level of register choice (depending on formality or sociocultural conventions). Atmosphere, on the other hand, requires a description that takes into account the readerly sense of the contextual world of the setting depicted (Stockwell 2014: 361). Generally speaking, atmosphere pertains mainly to the world, whereas tone pertains mainly to the utterer (Stockwell 2014: 364). But atmosphere and tone are not mutually exclusive, since a particular world is depicted by someone in their own characteristic voice, and narrations need to depict a tangible reality. It is the job of the stylistician to explore the language employed by the authors and to unearth the meanings underlying the figurative language embedded in the narrative text. These meanings should serve as evidence of the writers’ real purposes, whether objectively descriptive, or subjectively loaded. Atmosphere and tone are closely related but vague concepts that depict the world through the observers’ consciousness and draw the readers into the ambient feeling of the narrated world (Stockwell 2014: 360–374, 2017: 7–23).

CMT is intertwined with ambience in light of the study proposed in this paper. CMT mainly deals with conceptual domains. A conceptual domain has been defined as a coherent area of conceptualization against which semantic units may be characterized, and it is relevant when it comes to the dissection of a conceptual metaphor. A conceptual metaphor takes place when our cognitive mechanisms are used to express and understand a conceptual domain in terms of another. The semantic area from which we draw the metaphorical expressions and their linguistic realizations is known as the source domain, whereas the conceptual domain that is intended to be conveyed and understood is referred to as the target domain (Kövecses 2002: 17–32, 2017: 325; Lakoff 1987: 288; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Langacker 1987: 488). Take, for example, the following instance adapted from Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, Middle East and the Caucasus (Kaplan 2000):

The hills became a tea-colored carpet unfurling steeply in bony creases.

The steep slopes of the hills are conceptualized as carpets being unrolled. This is conveyed by drawing upon some of the components of the cloth conceptual domain, namely, “carpet”, and its quality of “unfurling”, or “creases”, where the threads are intertwined to give consistency to an item of clothing or a carpet. These components of the cloth conceptual domain and their qualities and relations constitute the source domain of the metaphor the slopes of the hills are unfurling carpets, the slopes of the hills being the target domain (see della Dora [2021] for further information about the metaphorical representation of the earth as a mantle in art, literature, geography, and cartography).

Along similar lines to CMT, FS puts forward the notion of frame (Fillmore 1982: 111–135), reformulated later on as semantic frame (Sullivan 2013: 17–34). Semantic frames are composed of a series of elements, abstracted from our worldly experience, and the logical relations between them. They are somewhat similar to conceptual domains, to the extent of overlapping with each other. For the purposes of this paper, the term “conceptual domain” will be used when the metaphor under scrutiny emerges from a single phrase or a sentence. The above example could also be treated in light of semantic frames, since the principle is quite the same. However, the term “semantic frame” will be employed when the metaphor emerges from a larger stretch of language, such as a paragraph or a several-line passage, where the presence of a number of semantically-related lexical items evokes a particular semantic frame.

3.2 Ambience

The present study focuses on how ambience can be retrieved from the lexical choices made by the authors, with particular attention to the adjectives. Adjectives and adjectival constructions have proven to be useful and effective ambience enactors. An ambience enactor can be defined as a lexical choice that carries in itself the power to activate ambience, both in the text and in the mind of the readers, after their interpretation of it (Stockwell 2014: 361–364, 2017: 7–8). This can be done at two different levels, depending on the intention of the writer. On the one hand, ambience can be activated in the form of atmosphere, that is, at the levels of objective descriptions made by the writer that shape a particular setting or environment, common to any observer. On the other hand, ambience can be enacted in the form of tone, whereby the writer conveys emotions, feelings, or personal opinions, construing their stance, with the intention of impinging on the reader’s subjective mind.

Adjectives are good ambience enactors, not only in themselves as a lexical category but also in the way they interact with nominals. This noun-adjective relation entails that the nominals employed will also be relevant for the purposes of this paper. In both The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas (Theroux 1979) and Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, Middle East and the Caucasus (Kaplan 2000), the situational contexts when natural landscapes are being described determine not only the choice of adjectival and nominal constructions, but they also determine the atmosphere of the passages and depict its tone, that is, the mood and the feelings of the authors. These are effectively construed by the deliberate choice of certain lexical items, as they activate semantic frames which serve the role of conceptual target enactors which will later on contribute to the emergence of conceptual metaphors and metonymies.

The adjectival constructions analyzed in the present paper are of two distinct types: domain constructions and predicating modifier constructions. Domain constructions are constructions in which the adjective is non-predicating, that is to say, it cannot occur in a predicating position. On the other hand, predicating modifier constructions, by definition, contain adjectives that can indeed be placed in predicating or post-copula position (Ernst 1984, 2001; Sweetser 1999). Take, for example, the phrases “leafy trees” and “knifing wind”, both from The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas (Theroux 1979). “Leafy trees” is an instance of predicating modifier construction, since the adjective “leafy” merely modifies the noun, expressing a quality of it, and may therefore be placed in post-copula position (“the trees are leafy”). However, “knifing wind” establishes a completely different relation between the adjective and the noun, since “knifing” denotes not a quality of the wind, but a subcategory of wind. The hyperbolic adjective “knifing” activates a conceptual metaphor, namely, cold wind is a knife, and post-copula position is not acceptable (*“the wind is knifing”). It is an instance of domain adjectival construction, where the adjective is the source domain of the metaphor.

Following Sullivan (2013), domain constructions and predicating modifier constructions are treated as distinct constructions rather than as simply constructs involving different types of adjectives. The reason for this is the fact that there are differences in the relation between modifier and noun, and those differences cannot be associated with the adjective alone and must be thus considered part of the constructional meaning. Domain adjectives express a subcategory of the noun and, as will be shown in the following sections, evoke the target domain of the metaphor, whereas predicating modifier constructions express a quality of the noun, and it is the noun that evokes the target domain. Most of the adjectival phrases dealt with in this paper are predicating constructions, since they have a powerful descriptive force, and they are a strong resource for both authors. However, a few domain adjectival constructions will be approached closely, as they add a significant load of semantic import to the nouns that they modify. These notions will be applied to analyze the language employed in the selected excerpts from both books in the following sections.

5.1 The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas

Paul Theroux is a talented language manipulator and a skillful selector of lexical items which enact certain semantic frames which end up yielding conceptual metaphors. These metaphors contribute to construing the tone and the atmosphere of the passages. Theroux engages himself in imaginative descriptions of the dramatic landscapes of the Americas as he travels down the continent, from freezing Boston in the middle of the historical snowstorm of 1978 to the desolate lunar plains of Patagonia. His descriptions are an effective discursive resource whereby he lets his imagination flow while he contemplates the astounding and varied sights and allows them to mingle with his mood at the moment of writing. Theroux’s wide range of intense experiences (from the latent racism of Panama Canal “zoners” to the nausea he feels when traveling over ten thousand feet in Peru or Bolivia, or the chickens jumping around the station master’s office in Nicaragua) provides him with a fertile ground for displaying his descriptive skills. These skills serve as an ignition point to spark a number of imaginative metaphors.

The first selected passages have been excerpted from Chapter One, soon after he has left Boston, in the middle of a ferocious snowstorm:

Theroux evokes death, bareness, and coldness by deliberately choosing adjectives which activate the semantic frames death and desolation. The predominant presence of predicating modifier constructions, expressing qualities of the nouns they modify, construe not only the lugubrious atmosphere of the passage, but also the somber tone of the author as he leaves Boston in the middle of a nasty snowstorm. Adjectives related to darkness and coldness interact to activate the semantic frame death, with some frame enactors, such as “bare”, “half-buried” and especially “knifing”. As noted in Section 3, this is an instance of domain adjective, since it does not state a quality of the wind, but a subtype of wind, one that drives a knife into the body, and it realizes the source domain of a hyperbolic metaphorical construct, namely, cold wind is a knife.

The gloomy mood of the author and the tone of the chapter, as he leaves America for the sunnier South, is reinforced when he describes the cars of the train right after Buffalo:

The semantic frame emptiness, closely related to death, is construed by a series of predicating adjectival constructions modifying nominals (“heavy vapor”, “a blue-grey fog”, “a cloudy fluorescence”), together with certain deliberately selected vision-preventing nominals (“curtains”, “frost”), and a couple of verbs of senses expressing emptiness (“rubbed away”, “blurred”).

The deadly atmosphere of the passage, along with the gloomy tone of the author, is reinforced a few lines down the chapter when, during a train stop in the middle of the fog, dead nature is brought back to life by the sudden morning sunshine:

The semantic frames light and darkness are paralleled with life and death. This parallelism becomes apparent by the selection of verbal and nominal phrases such as “bled”, “decayed”, “wound”, “buried”. There is also a simile related to the afterlife, when the passing trees are compared to “ghostly sails”. The underlying metaphors here are darkness is death and light is life. It is the darkness of the stormy North of the United States that the author tries to escape from, in the hope that a sunnier South will lift his spirits and boost his enthusiasm in his travel adventure to Patagonia.

At Ponca City, Oklahoma, the landscape is depicted metaphorically as a death scenario:

The use of a series of adjectives in both predicative and attributive positions denotes emptiness, nothingness, destruction (“flat”, “barren”, “bare”), together with the nominal phrase “scattered carcasses”. The pervading presence of the color brown occurs at two different levels. On the one hand, it is employed literally by the author, when describing the land with patches of snow. On the other hand, the brown color is also metaphorically summoned by the remains of a dead animal whose colors are brown and white (the ermine): a dead land is thereby mapped onto a dead animal. Again, the harsh winter conditions are conceptualized as death. This is reinforced further down the passage by “the white ovals of frozen ponds”, “the narrow ice-paths”, “stony riverbeds”, “a few bare brown trees”, “brown cattle […] nibbling at brown turves”.

But the ultimate death-enaction resource in the passage is an oatmeal plantation:

The plantation is conceptualized as mourners at a funeral, where the morning sky is the dome of a basilica and the rising sun is endowed with a crimson color, which stands for blood, and it is described as a “slit” (which is the result of the cut of a knife) and a “red squint” (which may give rise to the idea of pain and blood). The use of the noun “mass”, a homophone with the Catholic celebration, is deliberate and consistent with the mental image of a church during a funeral mass.

Already across Mexico, the writer seems to be affected by the high temperatures there:

The scorching heat makes the writer depict the landscape with a series of negatively loaded adjectives (“cloudless”, “abandoned”, “wild”, “grotesque”, “swollen”), as if he was contemplating a deformed panorama, while he endures the effect of intense heat in his body, the increasing blood pressure and the subsequent annoyance. His irritation is reflected in his description of the scenery.

Farther down in Central America, in Guatemala, the author is shocked by an impressive gorge that can be observed from the train window:

His scare (“this topsy-turvy sight” [Theroux 1979: 129]) is reflected in the way he describes the geographical features of the view from the window. The presence of a pair of crows, scavenger birds, enacts the semantic subframe carrion, subsidiary to the more general semantic frame death. The pinnacles of rock cropping among the mass of clouds are depicted as thorns caught in the middle of fleece, like a knife cutting the flesh open. The whiteness contrasts with the blackness of the crows, in the same way as the semantic frame life opposes death. Paul Theroux’s scare hence construes the tone of this passage by evoking the idea of knife-slitting, death, and carrion.

Farther ahead, in the middle of the Guatemalan barren landscape, there is hope for those who struggle in the middle of adversity:

Cactuses are envisaged and richly described in colorful metaphors as tough survivors equipped with weapons and shields to fight the harsh conditions of their surroundings. This is carried out by a series of nominals attributively modified by adjectives (“fine white hairs”, “tough hide”, “hairy brown tubes”, “prickly pear cactuses”), plus a subsequent prepositional phrase introduced by “of” (“sprawling nets of weed”).

The author arrives in El Salvador, and soon the volcanic landscape inevitably catches his attention and wakes up his descriptive skills:

The sight of the Chinchontepec volcano rising out of Lake Ilopango is represented as a sensorial feast, depicted as a blooming and colorful explosion of hues, shades, and tonalities which combine to shape a rich visual perception. The vividness of the description in this passage is intended to involve the reader at a multimodal level. The effect of reading this excerpt turns the reflective act of reading into a bursting pictorial experience. The reader feels that they are actually watching a colorful painting: this is achieved not only by using words denoting actual colors (particularly “darkly chromatic sea”, by which the writer describes the sea water shining in the moonlight), but also by employing a number of other adjectives and nominals which activate color perception in the mind of the reader (“emerald”, “enameling”, “frothy”).

A very similar pictorial experience is activated by the author a few chapters afterwards, when traveling across Colombia:

It is interesting to focus on how Theroux foregrounds the colors and tonalities as he visually goes through the marsh. Colors shift from one to another within a wide variety of hues affected by the “salmon-colored light” coming “from the hinge of the sun”. This is a beautiful metaphor whereby the setting sun is figuratively conceptualized as a closing door. The nominal enactor of the metaphor is “hinge”, like the hinges of a door. The pervading pink light parallels the dusk sunlight flooding the place as the day dies away.

In Costa Rica, the author describes the passing along a gorge in the mountains as an overwhelming event:

The atmosphere of the passage is scary and reveals the fearful tone of the description, since the author depicts the rapids of Río Reventazón and the vertiginous gorge as a violent natural phenomenon. Again, the deliberate choice of lexical items, specifically the preference for noun + of-phrase construction, construes the ambience of the excerpt. The reason for this is the descriptive quality of the prepositional phrase modifying the noun, similar to the descriptive quality typically found in adjectives. The reader can, hence, construe a mental picture of destruction in progress. One can imagine the flowing mist, the falling rubble and boulders, the abruptness of the suds against the cropping rocks. The scenario evokes chaos and devastation.

• On his way to Puntarenas, Costa Rica, the traveler witnesses tilled fields:

The autumnal scenery after harvest time, with the fields spangled with farming waste, is metaphorically conceptualized as a field of death. Lifeless nature is reflected by a number of semantically close lexical items (“drooped”, “bare”, “fluttering”, “brown”, “burned”, “losing”, “dry”).

The fear of the force of nature is again evoked when the writer arrives at Panama City:

The violence of the sudden tropical rain overwhelms both people and landscape equally: the former, looking for shelter; the latter, drowning in darkness and shrinking as if for protection. The atmosphere is conveyed by a number of verbs denoting darkness and devastation: “darkened”, “swept”, “blackened”, “wrinkled”, splashed”, “soaked”. An appealing paradoxical metaphor is activated here when the canal is mapped onto a burning coal. The rain and the wind bear an unexpected effect on it, by turning it black and making it wrinkle, as a piece of firewood being consumed by fire.

The deadly and lugubrious side of nature overcomes the author when, aboard the Panamericano, he is arriving at La Paz:

The geological features of the mountains are metaphorically described as the injuries of a battle against a fierce enemy. The activation of the semantic frame war is achieved by the use of certain adjectives and past participles (“brutal”, “exposed”, “pitted”, “clawed”, “collapsed”) and nominals (“authority”, “flanks”, “tents”, “blankets”) that fit normally into the description of soldiers in a battlefield. Particularly interesting is the domain participle “clawed”: it constitutes the source domain for the metaphor erosion is a predator.

The Patagonian landscape enacts a gloomy tone of despair in the writer, a feeling of hopelessness:

Again, the semantic frames bareness and death emerge when nature itself destroys any chance of life. New references to imaginary bones and the mighty power of the wind eroding the environment blow the soil off its land revealing the bare rocks, even uproot trees, together with the thorny features of the scarce vegetation.

In the last part of the book, a couple of multimodal, multi-sensorial passages stand out in the middle of this trip across the continent and reinforce the author’s openness to new experiences. The first one appears when he is traveling past Jujuy and the Río Grande:

The valley is richly depicted in a combination of colors and smells. The author feels invigorated by this interaction of senses, and this is reflected in the positive language employed, like a couple of predicating modifier adjectives (“leafy trees and flowers” and “a fresh breeze”), and the fact that the place is “perfumed” by “the rain on the blossoms”.

The second excerpt merges shades, hues, and sounds when the author is overwhelmed by the beauty of the Patagonian valley:

Theroux treats nature and natural phenomena as a dramatic succession of abrupt ups and downs. This is expressed by a series of verbs: “deepened”, “split”, “whittled”, “fissured”. He conceives nature as a living being in constant struggle with itself, and even endows it with the human ability of singing and dancing (“the wind sang in the bushes”, “the bushes shook with this song”) and even smoking (“A puff of cloud”). This bestowal of human abilities enacts the metaphors the wind is a song and wind-induced movement is dancing.

Paul Theroux gives a thorough account of the natural scenery that he witnesses as he travels southbound down the continent. He proves to be a particularly sensitive writer when he opens himself to the new experiences of the unknown territories and allows himself to be affected by the atmosphere of the most varied scenarios, thus reflecting his mood and stance, construing the tone of many of the passages depicted.

5.2 Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, Middle East and the Caucasus

First conceived as a sequel to Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (Kaplan 1993), Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, Middle East and the Caucasus (Kaplan 2000) constitutes an account of Robert D. Kaplan’s travels across Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia Minor. It is essentially a political atlas, very much along the lines of Kaplan’s work. The author focuses his attention on the historical and political issues of the countries he visits.

The historical turbulences of the Balkans and the Near East are referred to constantly and presented as a reflection of the ontology of the region. For Kaplan, there is a dramatic clash at several levels. There is a geological clash between Europe and Asia, with natural barriers such as the Carpathians or the Kopet Dag, which have decisively contributed to the dramatic shaping of the local communities. There is a historical clash, as the area was the borderland not only between East and West, but also between The Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium, between Habsburg Europe and the Ottoman Empire, and between Christianity and Islam, even between Catholicism and the Orthodox Church. There is also a cultural clash, a logical consequence of the chaotic history of the region and the troubled coexistence of different races and religions. Lastly, there is a political clash, since the area has been the stage of numerous contemporary wars, and many of the countries in it have endured decades of Communism.

Kaplan uses all these circumstances as a situational context for the descriptions of the landscapes he travels across, with unexpected metaphors emerging from those descriptions which contribute to construing the ambience and the author’s stance in the middle of historically rebellious lands with the harsh living conditions of their peoples. In Eastern Europe, Kaplan’s trip takes place soon after the fall of the numerous Communist regimes that those countries had endured for several decades. The Balkans are defined by the author as “the frontier between Europe and the Near East that […] did not begin and end in a certain place but fell away in a series of gradients” (Kaplan 2000: 13).

One of his first stops is Debrecen, in Hungary. On his way there, Kaplan offers a vivid description of the Hungarian “Great Plain, the westernmost Asian steppe” (Kaplan 2000: 13–14):

If we take a look at the use of a series of adjectives in both attributive and predicative positions in this passage, namely, “flat and threadbare”, “muddy”, “lonely”, “peeling”, “rotting”, “emptier”, it becomes apparent that they all share common semantic frames such as decay and bareness. This is the atmosphere that the author means to construe as he crosses a country submerged in a serious economic crisis, with signs of neglect and dereliction all around. Nevertheless, Kaplan holds some room for hope, as he contrasts this hopeless scene with colorful “oceans of lemon-green grass” that shimmer on dark, rich soil. The fact that the scene occurs in the late winter and the fact that Kaplan makes this explicit through the domain adjective “late-winter” construe the subjective tone of the passage. There is hope for this land after years of authoritarian regimes, and this gives rise to the metaphors dictatorship is winter and freedom is spring.

As the train approaches Transylvania, already in Romania, the author focuses his attention on another derelict piece of land:

Here, Kaplan makes an interesting observation: there is beautiful nature making its way through the debris and the junk left behind by Ceaușescu’s regime. This stands for a metaphor for hope, namely, this land has an opportunity after the long winter of tyranny. The scene depicts a farm where old-fashioned, rusty utensils and machinery contrast with colorful nature scattered around the junk. Even the peasants are, to some extent, dehumanized as “hordes of Gypsies”, “peasants in sheepskin”, or “women, draped in black” (Kaplan 2000: 19). Note the use of the domain adjectival construction “the grinding reality of subsistence agriculture”, which gives rise to the metaphor hard life is a slow mill stone.

En route to Bucharest, the train climbs through a high pass in the Carpathians, and Kaplan is taken aback by the beauty of the mountain scenery:

The solid mountain range is vividly depicted as a living being dressed up in its glad rags, composed of natural features. This is a female conceptualization of Nature, since domain adjectives “girdled” and “pearly” enact the semantic frame dress-up, thus giving rise to the metaphor nature is a beautiful dress. The deliberate choice of the adjectives “girdled” and “pearly” evokes garments and jewelry typically associated with women (girdles and pearls). This metaphorical conceptualization subsidiary to the nature is cloth metaphor appears again a few pages later, across the Danube plain when the train passes “green and brown fields threaded by hauntingly beautiful rivers” (Kaplan 2000: 58).

Robert D. Kaplan is a Social Sciences man, and his background pervades both his vision of the world, and the way he accounts for it. After leaving Plovdiv, in Bulgaria, he establishes the splendor and magnificence of the plain of Thrace as the Stage of History:

This conception of the landscape as the stage of an imaginary theater where history was shaped and forged is recurrent throughout the book. It is interesting how Kaplan uses the nature is cloth metaphor again, employing a sewing process, “threaded”, to describe the winding movement of the train, while offering detailed descriptions of the natural scene. This conception of the landscape as the Stage of History becomes even more acute as he crosses Anatolia, and he links the shape of its geology to the inherent insurgent nature of the different Balkan peoples:

Kaplan parallels the numerous wars that these lands have seen throughout history with the laboring farmers that he sees from his train, claiming an inherent spirit of turmoil in these people and the historically volatile stability of the region. The atmosphere of the passage is shaped by a number of nominals which share the import of the semantic frame instability (“upheaval”, “impermanence”, “destruction”), together with a rapid succession of yellow and black colors, as if mentally depicting fire and smoke. A powerful descriptive resource employed is the noun + of-phrase construction. Note the use of the domain compound adjective “cake-swirl” to metaphorically display the general tonality of the scene and its historical turmoil.

A colorful view captivates the author as he leaves Ankara:

The ochre tonalities of the dry land contrast with the sudden appearance of a river lined with poplars. The “silvery blue water” and the “green poplars” are profiled against the yellowish “baked” hillsides. Kaplan combines the ochre tonalities and bread-related nominals to enact the land is oven metaphor, a powerful descriptive tool that accounts not only for the color itself, but also for the temperature.

Farther along his trip, Kaplan illustrates the changing scenery:

On his route from Syria to Lebanon, Kaplan opposes the empty, sandy desert to the abundant vegetation of the Lebanon Range. This contrast parallels the author’s mood, in high spirits as he reaches the Mediterranean, a much more welcoming setting.

En route from Jordan to Israel, the vast arid plains become predominant: the Jordan Valley is referred to as a “deep rift in the earth’s surface” (Kaplan 2000: 186), which conceptualizes the land as an injured animal, consistent with the historical instability of the region:

The land is oven metaphor is drawn upon to shape the scorching temperatures, and the land is cloth metaphor is enacted when the only vegetation of the surroundings is described as a “hazy ribbon” along the river. The land is treated like a living being: it can be injured, it dresses up. This is construed via the domain adjectival constructions “biscuit-brown” and “hazy ribbon”.

Already leaving Trabzon, at the eastern end of the Black Sea, and heading uneasily for unknown Georgia, the author invokes the Greek mythology, referring to that patch of land as Colchis, and “the destination of Jason and the Argonauts”, “Medea” and “the Golden Fleece” (Kaplan 2000: 218):

The solid granite mountains are conceptualized as “cathedrals”, in the middle of a multicolored scene while, at the same time, activating the death semantic frame. The lexical choices shape this: take, for example, the nominals “cathedral” and “clouds”, the compound “white-granite” and the domain adjectival construction “shrouded”. They belong to the death semantic frame, specifically to the funeral semantic subframe. They evoke the temple, the coldness of the rock, which parallels the coldness of death, the ascension to heaven, and the corpse’s attire, which envelops the mountains as a shroud envelops a dead body.

However, the traveler insists on giving this land an opportunity for the future:

The author opposes the old and rusty junk to the fresh booming nature as a way of foregrounding the chasm between the debris of Communism and the new hope for those former Soviet countries. The predicating adjectival constructions employed mark this dramatic contrast (“brutish” and “filthy” versus “sublime” and “gentle”).

Kaplan’s concern about environmental issues in the post-Soviet era becomes apparent in Azerbaijan, as he visits Sumgait, the center of Azerbaijan’s heavy industry in Soviet times:

He develops an intersensorial account of his experience, mixing the senses of sight and smell while he breathes toxic air and feels deep sorrow for the deaths caused by pollution. The dereliction and shambles before him are profiled in a succession of descriptive predicating adjectives. It is interesting to focus attention on how Kaplan construes not only the atmosphere, but also the tone of the passage by putting forward a series of nominal and adjectival lexical choices which evoke the semantic frames death and decay. Particularly intense are those inherently linked to the decomposition of a body after death, namely, “rotting”, “stench”, “skeletons”, before he presents the tragic climax of the “apocalyptic” scenario: the graves of children.

Farther down his route, as he leaves the Caspian Sea behind, he focuses his attention back on the environmental disaster that Communism meant for this vast extension of Eurasia. The multicolored sight of a group of girls seems to cast a glimpse of hope for the future:

Curiously enough, the nothingness of a desert landscape is depicted as a symbol of purity or, at least, untouched by the shambles of the Soviet era. In Turkmenistan,

The use of the domain adjective “lunar” adds a nuance of strangeness to the purity of the scene. The simile envisages the absence of industrial activity as an otherworldly feature, as if he were on the Moon.

The nature is cloth metaphor is evoked once more, as he witnesses the Kopet-Dag, the mountainous border between Turkmenistan and Iran. The mountains are vividly visualized as “a fabulously intricate tea-colored carpet, unfurling steeply and majestically in delicate, bony creases” (Kaplan 2000: 293).

History returns to Kaplan’s narrative as he arrives in Nyssa, with its “baked-yellow mathematical purity” (Kaplan 2000: 303), where the armies of Alexander the Great were repelled:

The oven semantic frame is enacted by the use of the nominals “clay” and “potter”, which activate the craft semantic frame. The semantic imports of color (“smooth clay landscape”), geometry (“the honeycomb of ruins”), and heat (“the dry heat and emptiness”) are consistent with the craft of pottery and provide the author with a skillful descriptive resource as he beholds the ancient city and its surroundings.

The supernatural imbues the descriptive passages when the author reaches Armenia. Frequent allusions to the Bible, religious ceremonies, and the afterlife are scattered along the last chapter of this travel adventure. The chapter begins at Mount Ararat, and Kaplan takes his time to explain the name from an etymological perspective, the Armenian root for “life” and “creation”:

The multicolored scene is shaped by compound predicating adjectives (“smoky-blue” and “silvery-white”) semantically coherent within the semantic frame heaven and the nouns “spell” and “sky”, as if magic or any other kind of otherworldly forces were at work on this particular place.

Death and the supernatural emerge in an especially dramatic form when Kaplan enters Karabah:

Again, he employs the land is living being metaphor. The fact that the mountainsides are “bearded” and the streets are “gutted” (both domain adjectives) bestows the land with human features. Death is explicitly stated by the noun phrase “ethnic cleansing”, while the attributive domain adjective “eerie” evokes the supernatural. It is not a mere quality of silence, but a kind of silence, that of the spirit world: the spirits of the genocide victims, hence, seem to haunt the town.

Kaplan is deeply concerned with the stormy background of this historically lawless and riotous area of the world and its peoples, with constant uprisings and abrupt power switches. He not only presents the landscape as the Stage of History, but also envisages the land as a living being who bears the injuries and the scars of their turbulent past. Booming nature, however, stands for another new beginning for those peoples, their latest attempt to resurrect from their ashes.