The last frontier

Borneo has been called “the last frontier bordering on myth”. I have crossed the frontier of that myth many times. Each time it was harder to come out of it, with the body and the mind. Once I risked not coming out at all. Not in one piece, at least. It is chiefly the mind that gets lured into a web of sensations, visions and dreams; after two weeks there, you can't get out of it.
I am thinking about this again because an old friend has asked me to contribute towards a book on Italians in the Pacific. I chose to write a chapter on Odoardo Beccari, a naturalist from Florence who, between 1865 and 1878, explored the forests of far Southeast Asia. He was often isolated for months at a time. This is how he described the forest: “Infinite and varied are the aspects under which it presents itself, as are the treasures it conceals…Its mystery, sacred to science, rewards the believer equally as much as it does the investigative philosopher.” You understand why his writings inspired Salgari. But Beccari is not a character from a Salgari novel. He is more complex, as is revealed in his book, “In the forests of Borneo”, written with passionate, philosophical and even poetic words. He is more similar to certain Conrad characters, or Conrad himself.
As I do my research on Beccari, I discover new stories and come across others lost amongst my papers, bringing back memories of books read and journeys made. An intrigue of plots and characters forms, featuring seas, forests and rivers, sandbanks and deep oceans, pirates and pirate hunters, privileged gentlemen and unlucky adventurers, traders, explorers, old carts and Land Rovers.
Lost in this library of Babel, I think the only way to get out is to embark on a new path - any one will do. Perhaps beginning with these Bassifondi. Before my memory of them is also lost, the dreams merging with nightmare and the visions with ghosts.
Borneo - according to the introduction to Conrad's “Almayer's Folly” - is one of those scenarios that are a “metaphor for the actions happening there”.


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