03/16/2015
In late 1974, Werner Herzog was on a mission. He believed that his friend Lotte Eisner, a film historian, would survive a serious illness if he walked from Munich to Paris, where she was convalescing. This eloquent diary recounts his journey and his fleeting thoughts while walking. He offers typical Herzogian observations of the coarse salt on pretzels and the trusting faces of sheep caught in a snowstorm. But perhaps more revealing is his mix of pensive musings about loneliness and practical concerns about his blisters and swollen Achilles tendon, the constant rain, and finding a place to sleep. Herzog's slight narrative is captivating because his experiences humanize the legendary filmmaker. He is full of curiosity and wonder. Finding cigarette packets on the roadside or a bicycle discarded in a brook stimulates his imagination. A rainbow inspires confidence, while cranes flying in formation provide a "metaphor for him who walks." Even when he meanders into strange asides, such as a story about his grandfather, Herzog remains interesting. This book is especially satisfying to imagine as a documentary narrated in Herzog's distinctive voice. (Apr.)
"Herzog's existential journey through a hostile winter landscape is one of the great modern pilgrimages—a record of physical suffering, of hallucination and ecstatic revelation, of portents and animals, of the wreckage of history and myth. Of Walking in Ice has the eerie power of the best fairytales. It hits you with the force of dreams and leaves you with the taste of snow-filled air."—Helen Macdonald
"Surely the strangest, strongest walking book I know, it tells the story of a winter pilgrimage, made in desperation and in hope. At once a diary, a blizzard of weather and memories, and the record of a ritual: only Herzog could have written this weird, slender classic."—Robert Macfarlane
"Herzog's pilgrimage is a fugue and an absurdist comedy as rich as anything in his cinema."—Iain Sinclair
"A poetic rendering of a fraught and wild pilgrimage."—Kirkus Reviews
"Herzog’s slight narrative is captivating because his experiences humanize the legendary filmmaker. He is full of curiosity and wonder. Even when he meanders into strange asides, Herzog remains interesting."—Publishers Weekly
"Herzog’s private dairy of his journey was first published four years later on. Titled Of Walking in Ice, it’s now being reissued by the University of Minnesota Press. It is a weird and wonderful document—a vital record of Herzog’s creation of his famous, baffling self."—Slate
"Perversely compelling...Herzog’s account begs to be read aloud."—New York Times
"Of Walking in Ice is not always particularly easy or pleasant to read. Nonetheless, Herzog’s tortuous prose makes you feel his pain. The further you read, the more you feel the anguish of the repetitiveness of walking alone."—Full Stop
"You almost forget that Herzog must have been writing these entries at the end of the day, because of course he couldn’t walk and experience and chronicle at the same time. And yet, like film, there is a vital sense of the now in his writing."—Film International
2015-02-17
Diary of a passionate quest.In 1974, when he was 32, acclaimed film director, writer, and producer Herzog (Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo, 2010, etc.) set out on foot from Munich to Paris with the goal of saving a dying friend, the film critic and poet Lotte Eisner. For Herzog, walking was an exercise in magical thinking. "When I'm in Paris she will be alive," he told himself. "She must not die. Later, perhaps, when we allow it." At that point in his career, he had completed only one movie, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972). Dozens of works, including Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1982), lay in the future. Originally published in 1978, this raw, emotional account of his three-week journey, from late November to December, reveals an astute observer, a painterly writer, and a man desperate to achieve his goal. Like a Romantic hero, Herzog finds that nature echoes his state of mind: "Dusky desolation in the forest solitude, deathly still, only the wind is stirring." He walked through blizzards and suffered bone-chilling cold, and when he could not find an inn for the night, he buried himself under hay in barns. Sometimes, he broke into vacant homes, taking brief refuge. He sustained himself mostly on milk and tangerines; often, he was parched with thirst. His feet, in new boots, blistered and ached. He endured pain in his knee and an Achilles tendon that swelled to twice its size. He was plagued by horseflies, and his duffel bag rubbed a hole in his sweater. Suffering, though, only spurred him on. Two weeks into the journey, he was overcome by "severe despair. Long dialogues with myself and imaginary persons." Finally, he arrives at Eisner's bedside: she was alive, and she lived for nine more years. A brief but poetic rendering of a fraught and wild pilgrimage.
