A Fortune Teller Told Me By Tiziano Terzani Analysis

Patience and Poetry: The Effort of a Fresh Perspective (Draft) In his travel narrative, A Fortune-Teller Told Me (2001), Journalist Tiziano Terzani avoids airplane travel for an entire year due to a prophecy he receives warning him of grave danger if he failed to comply. Terzani being an international journalist, who covers wars, political uprising, and other global events, navigated the globe for an entire year without ever stepping onto an aircraft. Instead, he relied on trains, boats, cars, and other methods. Terzani wanted to give his life “a touch of poetry” (2), to regain a fresh sense of the world, and the beauty it has to offer. He saw the prophecy bestowed upon him as an opportunity to enact this plan. However, that poetry does not
Terzani compares transportation by air to that of ships, suggesting that the uniformity of airports diminish the experience of travel. He asserts, “Reached by plane, all places becomes alike-destinations separated from one another by nothing more than a few hours’ flight" (5). Terzani is arguing that flying creates uniformity in travel and that it skips over important pieces of culture and history a place has to offer. Furthermore, this uniformity makes all places feel the same because of how easily they are reached, making the joy or poetry of discovering them far less impactful. Comparing flying to ship travel, Terzani states, “Ships approach countries by slowly and politely entering the mouths of their rivers; and distant ports become long-awaited goals, each with its own face, each with its own smell” (5). In this passage, Terzani is making the point that travel by sea, although it is slower and more difficult than air travel, illuminates a countries identity. The ports and rivers are all unique to each location, and their differences restore the individuality of a place that airports take away through their uniformity. Moreover, the uniqueness and individuality of each country that one realizes through this slow method of travel provide a fresh perspective on life, a touch of poetry. Along with the method of transportation, discovering what a country has to offer also
Even so, Terzani witnessing these emotional hardships and inhumane treatment serves as a form of effort to obtain poetry. One must be perfectly honest about what lies within the beautiful, mountainous countryside. An airplane would fly over these atrocities, getting to its uniform airport, but sometimes the hard parts of the journey require extra effort, a dose of human emotion through inhumane treatment of others. It is the reminder that the world we live in, despite its beauty, has flaws. Moreover, these flaws represent our flawed human condition as a whole, and acknowledgment of such circumstances leads to a better understanding of the world around us. Although this process requires effort through both slow travel and willingness to dive deep into countries imperfections, it ultimately gives one a fresh sense of the world around them through realizing that there is change to be made, and this indeed, serves as a touch of poetry if perhaps not the most perfect or beautiful form. For art and poetry require humanity, and human nature, like all things in the world, is