In Breathless Pursuit

We were surprised, reading a review in the Times Literary Supplement of a collection of letters to and from Bruce Chatwin to come across a name very familiar, but not one we expected to find in the TLS.

A letter sent to Chatwin near the end of his life, when the author of "In Patagonia" was in a hypomaniacal phase--the result of both AIDS and a rare Chinese fungus that attacked his brain--is described by reviewer William Dalrymple as "a loving farewell note." 

The letter writer had visited Chatwin, and left, he said, full of "dark and strange thoughts. You seemed in a realm of exultation--extreme physical dilapidation seems to have sent you shooting up into the sky with the angels...Over it all hung an unmistakable air of Nunc Dimittis...It is quite possible that you experience this apparent frenzy from inside some deep calm...But those who love you--and see only the outside--see someone haunted and in breathless pursuit.  I'm not sure it is among the offices of friendship to convey my sense of foreboding and disquiet at how I saw you.  I may just be expressing a friend's regret at losing you to a great wave of conviction, to some gust of certainty, that leaves me here, rooted to the spot and you carried away.  In which case, I can only wave you onto your journey."

Dalrymple called this "perhaps the single most wonderful letter in the [554-page] volume" and the editors chose a phrase from it--"in breathless pursuit"--to be the title of the review.

The writer of that letter?  Michael Ignatieff.