A lesson in happiness: animals and nostalgia in the travel stories of Leonhard Huizinga

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the function of animals in nostalgic discourse in modern Dutch travel stories, particularly those of writer Leonhard Huizinga (1903-1980). In his travelogues, Huizinga depicts himself as a misanthropic traveller who prefers the companionship of animals to that of humans. Travelling with animals reminds him of an unspoiled past. The question, both posed and answered, is to what extent the animals he describes constitute a form of nostalgia that not only serves the narrator, or are central to a more reflective form of nostalgia that serves the relationship between human and non-human species. In answering this question, attention is paid to Svetlana Boym’s theoretical insights on nostalgia and to the dynamic tension between text and image in Huizinga’s travel stories.