Passionate Journey, or My Book of Hours (), is a wordless novel of 1919 by Flemish artist Frans Masereel. The story is told in 167 captionless prints, and is the longest and best-selling of the wordless novels Masereel made. It tells of the experiences of an early 20th-century everyman in a modern city.
Masereel's medium is the woodcut, and the images are in an emotional, allegorical style inspired by Expressionism. The book followed Masereel's first wordless novel, 25 Images of a Man's Passion (1918); both were published in Switzerland, where Masereel spent much of World War I. German publisher Kurt Wolff released an inexpensive "people's edition" of the book in Germany with an introduction by German novelist Thomas Mann, and the book went on to sell over 100,000 copies in Europe. Its success encouraged other publishers to print wordless novels, and the genre flourished in the interwar years.
Masereel followed the book with dozens of others, beginning with The Sun later in 1919. Masereel's work was lauded in the art world in the earlier half of the 20th century, but has since been neglected outside of Western comics circles, where Masereel's wordless novels are seen as anticipating the development of the graphic novel.
Synopsis
The story follows the life of a prototypical early 20th-century everyman after he enters a city. It is by turns comic and tragic: the man is rejected by a prostitute with whom he has fallen in love. He also takes trips to different locales around the world. In the end, the man leaves the city for the woods, raises his arms in praise of nature, and dies. His spirit rises from him, stomps on the heart of his dead body, and waves to the reader as it sets off across the universe.
Background
Frans Masereel (1889–1972) was born into a French-speaking family in Blankenberge, Belgium. At five his father died, and his mother remarried to a doctor in Ghent, whose political beliefs left an impression on the young Masereel. He often accompanied his stepfather in socialist demonstrations. After a year at the Ghent Academy of Fine Arts in 1907, Masereel left to study art on his own in Paris. During World War I he volunteered as a translator for the Red Cross in Geneva, drew newspaper political cartoons, and copublished a magazine Les Tablettes, in which he published his first woodcut prints.
In the early 20th century there was a revival in interest in mediaeval woodcuts, particularly in religious books such as the Biblia pauperum. The woodcut is a less refined medium than the wood engraving that replaced it—artists of the time took to the rougher woodcut to express angst and frustration. From 1917 Masereel began publishing books of woodcut prints, using similar imagery to make political statements on the strife of the common people rather than to illustrate the lives of Christ and the saints. In 1918 he created the first such book to feature a narrative, 25 Images of a Man's Passion. He followed its success in 1919 with Passionate Journey, which remained his favourite of his own works.
Publication history
The black-and-white woodcut images in the book were each . Masereel self-published the book in Geneva on credit from Swiss printer Albert Kundig in 1919 as in an edition of 200 copies. It was printed directly from the original woodblocks.
German publisher Kurt Wolff sent Hans Mardersteig to Masereel to arrange German publication in 1920. It was printed from the original woodblocks in an edition of 700 copies under the title , Wolff thereafter continued to publish German editions of Masereel's books, later in inexpensive "people's editions" using electrotype reproduction. The 1926 edition had an introduction by German writer Thomas Mann:
The German edition was particularly popular, and went through several editions in the 1920s with sales surpassing 100,000 copies. Its success prompted other publishers and artists to produce wordless novels.