The Greater the Distance, the Closer You Get

Abstract

Where exactly are we when we are going to the airport: are we still at home or already travelling afar? Does spatial distance from home, or from persons we feel closely attached to, decrease or actually increase the intensity of our social ties? If essayist Alain de Botton 1 or sociologists of globalized intimacy like Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim 2 could have posed these questions to medieval writers concerning the experience of travelling, they might have replied with a paradox of proximity. In 1127, Hugh of St Victor advised those who seek proficiency in their studies to expand their home country to such an extent that it becomes a place of exile: delicatus ille est adhuc cui patria dulcis est; fortis autem iam, cui omne solum patria est; perfectus vero, cui mundus totus exsilium est. ille mundo amorem fixit, iste sparsit, hic exstinxit. 3 (Someone who finds his home country sweet, is still tender ; someone who regards every country his home, is already strong. To the truly perfect one, however, the whole world is a place of exile. The tender has attached his love to a certain spot in the world, the strong has dispersed it, the perfect has extinguished it.

Letter, Word, and Good Messengers: Towards an Archaeology of Remote Communication

“…This is in line with this discourse of remote love, that is almost exclusively occupied with love from afar (Gebert 2013 [forthcoming], Söffner 2009, Wyss 2011). Therefore, it seems to be more than just a coincidence that figures often touch the media of remote communication (scrolls, letters) and that it often involves a lover and a messenger rather than two lovers.…”