- Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923)
Hammarskjöld was translating Buber's Ich und Du, a German philosophical work about relationships, in the weeks before his death. He had his translation with him, as well as an English edition of the work, during his final flight to Ndola.
I expect the English version was the 1957 Ronald Gregor Smith translation (reprinted by Continuum, 2004) that I bought this morning, and which I read over a coffee in one of the new cafes in King George Square. And although I am only just now beginning my first reading of this work, I can't help but underline the quoted sentence above as a kind of topic sentence for my coming trip to Ndola: we travel in order to meet, and in this sense travel often brings us closer to real living:
All real travel is meeting.
