FRANS MASEREEL / Passionate Journey

This is the last of the 167 woodcuts that the Flemish artist Frans Masereel engraved in 1919 for the longest and best-selling of his wordless novels. Passionate Journey – or My Book of Hours – tells the experiences of an ordinary man in the early 20th century who arrives in a modern city. He also travels to different places around the world. In the end, he leaves the city for the forest, raises his arms in praise of nature, and dies. His spirit rises from his body, steps on the heart of his corpse, and waves as he walks through the cosmos.
A story both comic and tragic, told with expressionistic and moving images. It was published in Switzerland, where Masereel spent much of World War I. The book, a precursor to the graphic novel, sold more than 100,000 copies in Europe. Its success encouraged other publishers to print wordless novels, and the genre flourished in the interwar years. Masereel followed the book with dozens of others.
The book's visual vocabulary derives in part from silent film. Thomas Mann named the book his favorite film.