Book Review, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804- Volume 1 by Alexander von Humboldt

Joseph Karl Stieler [Public domain]

Book Review, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804- Volume 1 by Alexander von Humboldt 

 It’s a book on South America that has seen plenty of decay for its meanings over the years and Humboldt’s racism won’t be the most shocking aspect in concern of Spanish literature.  Humboldt had received permission from the royalty of Spain for experimenting with science, including subjects of various kinds, more subjects than a normal guy will ever get into these days.  Of course, let’s keep in mind that “racism” didn’t become a popular word in the English language until over a hundred years later after Humboldt’s exploration in South America.  From all the vocabulary used in the book, each and every secondary cousin of language will come into play under the writer’s coarse phrasing of certain, unfortunate events.  He was the kind of man who gave the name of a lady’s body part to a cave, dreamed of a balloon in his fancy on scientific exploration, excused lots of foreign words in his general exercise of analysis, made bad generalizations between populations, and added much of the realm of knowledge in South America’s past state to our mutual understanding of crime, disruption, and too much favoritism.  An exercise in literature like this one needs little to no explanation.  Plants and geological objects are analyzed under a firm, restrictive look of apprehension from Humboldt.  The scientist regretted calling native Americans “savages” and continued making constant, overwhelming comparisons between those native populations with the old Spaniard’s claim to white superiority.  Honestly I’ve found his racist statements to be irritating.  It’s as if Europeans didn’t know how to deal with complete, total strangers.  Humboldt mentioned what his religion was but the declaration of faith was wasted due to the favoritism and prejudice realized in complex, horrible dialect spoken in for the name of science.  Native Americans were praised and criticized all at once within the range of 600 or 700 or so pages even if the 1st volume became an 1,100+ page stamp of approval (at least by the standards of vintage Spanish government).  Slang tends to pop up here and there all over the pages as plenty of pages are discounted into scientific achievements in what our foundations ought to refer to with literary caution.  Events unfolded in South America which contradicted the Bible in terms of nature and witness; that left Humboldt in an awkward position as a writer to keep a straight face in exercise and expression of French, Spanish, Polish, and so many other languages.  All we have to do is look at the words to know that Humboldt was uncomfortable- a native American man breastfeeding a baby, electricity from fish, unhappy slavery among the blacks, rampant earthquakes and unpredictable weather… if you were a European Christian who observed these things, how would you think you’d feel?  Scared?  Bewildered?  While this book is too complicated to recommend to an average American today I find Humboldt’s exploration to be a tragedy of sorts that represented slavery in poor fashion and, to this day, makes science appear to be the evil which contradicts faith, reality, and belief.     

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt