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  • The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo
  • Bridget Pupillo
Ambrosio Bembo . The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo. Trans. Clara Bargellini. Ed. Anthony Welch. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2007. 451 pages.

The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo represents the collaborative effort of translator Clara Bargellini (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and editor Anthony Welch (University of Victoria) to bring this important and little known seventeenth-century travel narrative to a modern, English-speaking [End Page 319] audience. Ambrosio Bembo, of an illustrious Venetian family claiming such distinguished ancestors as Cardinal Pietro Bembo, set out in 1671, at the age of nineteen, on what would be a four-year adventure through the Middle East to the west coast of India and back again, tracing the exact route of his famed predecessor Pietro della Valle. He returned to Venice in 1675, having documented his extraordinary journey along the way. Although his travel journal was most likely meant for publication, it has remained until now unpublished in only two known extant manuscripts: an abridged version owned by Abbé Celotti and a second, complete version purchased by the University of Minnesota in 1964. Welch happened upon Bembo's story when he made use of a single illustration accompanying the manuscript for a separate publication in 1973. After examining the lively but obscure narrative, Welch and Bargellini felt that it was time to make Bembo's voice heard. Their English-language translation offers a valuable addition to the genre of European odeporic literature.

Welch's extensive introduction to the edition provides the reader with a broad yet thorough overview of Bembo's time and place in history. Welch begins by situating this narrative in the greater context of European travel to the east, from merchant traveler Marco Polo to adventurer Pietro della Valle. He provides a brief biographical account of Ambrosio Bembo, then focuses on the travel narrative itself. Welch highlights many important episodes from the text, including the entertaining anecdote in which Bembo acquires his illustrator, Guillaume Joseph Grélot, who has been suffering under the abusive mistreatment of another traveler. Bembo is able to steal Grélot away by offering him employment, and thereby gains a companion and illustrator for the remainder of his journey. Readers may find Welch's textual analysis a bit lengthy due to the extensive citations from the text; this analysis might have been streamlined by providing more concise citations and pointing the reader to the page within the text. Welch follows with a brief description and provenance of the manuscript from which the translation was produced.

The introduction continues with a general historical overview of European relations with Asia at the time of Bembo's journey. Welch untangles the complex knot of European powers vying for commercial and political dominance in the East, while examining the various kingdoms and sultanates Bembo will encounter on his journey. After highlighting aspects of Bembo's character gleaned from the text, Welch concludes his introduction with a biographical examination of the illustrator Grélot and his contribution to Bembo's narrative. The variety of subtopics covered within these first thirty pages demonstrates the appeal that The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo will certainly have for a diverse readership.

Bargellini's translation of the text is beautifully clear, entertaining and accessible, achieving in the English language a "smooth and easy narrative" that Bembo himself hoped to accomplish in the Italian. This translation allows the distinctive voice of the young Venetian adventurer to shine. Within the first pages, Bembo confides to the reader a fear: that his own account will pale in [End Page 320] comparison to those of his noted predecessors. Instead, the traveler provides a refreshingly sensitive and intelligent view onto the world he experienced. His narrative contains surprisingly few of the pitiless judgments and typical sensationalist episodes that pepper earlier European travel accounts such as that of della Valle. Although Bembo includes the conventional account of sati or widow-burning, he never claims to have witnessed such a ceremony first-hand and admits that the practice has all but died out in India by that time. Bembo demonstrates an unbiased and humane fascination with the...

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