Sterne's Sentimental Journey through France and Italy

Virginia Woolf's Introduction to ASJ

"A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" by Laurence Sterne was first published in 1768. Described as a ‘picaresque novel transformed into abstract art’ (Alvarez) it begins as a bawdy account of Yorick’s tour by coach through France and Italy, but soon digresses through the folds and creases of an individual’s mind into a world where anything might happen.

Strene’s sentimental journey cannot be found in guidebooks but inside one’s own mind. His poetic meanderings transfer our interest from the macro to the micro, from the outer to the inner. He has no universal scale of values: large open streets hold just as much interest as unobserved corners in dark streets; cathedrals have as much to tell us as does a girl with a green satin purse; silence reveals just as much as speech.

For all its levity and wit the book is fundamentally philosophical, a reflection on the emotions of the heart, and of pleasure, fun and wholehearted joy: “Hail ye, small, sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it! … Vive l’amour! Et vive la bagatelle!” Strene’s approach inspired Virginia Woolf to comment in her introduction to the Penguin edition: “One must pirouette about the world, peeping and peering, enjoying a flirtation here, bestowing a few coppers there, and sitting in whatever little patch of sunshine one can find.”


Sterne's ASJ is therefore a philosophy on pleasure, realized as a story in a linear form. The music that is created from within this book will be 'about' its central premise - the philosophy of pleasure - but will realise it in the best way for music, which is not a linear story.