Passionate Journey, a Novel Told in 165 Woodcuts

Masereel's Passionate Journey occurs entirely in his series of 165 woodcuts, rather like a black-and-white movie, as Thomas Marm explains in his introduction, written in 1926. Each of the woodcuts centers on a young man who we may as well think of as Masereel himself, who was in his early thirties when he cut this novel. The young man is shown in a variety of situations, and a highly romantic account of Masereel's spiritual development emerges. The young artist enters a city by railroad and walks crowded streets with bemused amazement. Throughout the series he undergoes various pleasures and pains of the physical, mental, political, moral, and religious life as a sort of preparation for a Christlike death and spiritual rebirth. This is a thoroughly romantic, ego-centered production which provides a virtual checklist of the social, political, religious, and artistic concerns of Masereel's cultural moment. Audiences today will appreciate its value as a characterization (and equally as a caricature) of European intellectual life during the first two and a half decades of this century. We can no longer flip through it with the passion and mounting excitement which Mann describes in his introduction. For us, such journeys seem to end very close to where they began