Orientalism (65 page)

42
.
Renan,
L’Avenir de la science
, p. 23. The whole passage reads as follows: “Pour moi, je ne connais qu’un seul résultat à la science, c’est de résoudre l’énigme, c’est de dire définitivement à l’homme le mot des choses, c’est de l’expliquer à lui-même, c’est de lui donner, au nom de la seule autorité légitime qui est la nature humaine toute entière, le symbole que les religions lui donnaient tout fait et qu’ils ne peut plus accepter.”

43
.
See Madeleine V.-David,
Le Débat sur les écritures et l’hiéroglyphe aux XVII
^e
et XVIII
^e
siècles et l’application de la notion de déchiffrement aux écritures mortes
(Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1965), p. 130.

44
.
Renan is mentioned only in passing in Schwab’s
La Renaissance orientale
, not at all in Foucault’s
The Order of Things
, and only somewhat disparagingly in Holger Pederson’s
The Discovery of Language: Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century
, trans. John Webster Spargo (1931; reprint ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972). Max Müller in
his
Lectures on the Science of Language
(1861–64; reprint ed., New York: Scribner, Armstrong, & Co., 1875) and Gustave Dugat in his
Histoire des orientalistes de l’Europe du XII
^e
au XIX
^e
siècle
, 2 vols. (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1868–70) do not mention Renan at all. James Darmesteter’s
Essais Orientaux
(Paris: A. Lévy, 1883)—whose first item is a history, “L’Orientalisme en France”—is dedicated to Renan but does not mention his contribution. There are half-a-dozen short notices of Renan’s production in Jules Mohl’s encyclopedic (and extremely valuable) quasi-logbook,
Vingt-sept ans d’histoire des études orientales: Rapports faits à la Société asiatique de Paris de 1840 à 1867
, 2 vols. (Paris: Reinwald, 1879–80).

45
.
In works dealing with race and racism Renan occupies a position of some importance. He is treated in the following: Ernest Seillière,
La Philosophie de l’impérialisme
, 4 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1903–8); Théophile Simar,
Étude critique sur la formation de la doctrine des races au XVIII
^e
siècle et son expansion au XIX
^e
siècle
(Brussels: Hayez, 1922); Erich Voegelin,
Rasse und Staat
(Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1933), and here one must also mention his
Die Rassenidee in der Geistesgeschichte von Ray bis Carus
(Berlin: Junker und Dunnhaupt, 1933), which, although it does not deal with Renan’s period, is an important complement to
Rasse und Staat
; Jacques Barzun,
Race: A Study in Modern Superstition
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1937).

46
.
In
La Renaissance orientale
Schwab has some brilliant pages on the museum, on the parallelism between biology and linguistics, and on Cuvier, Balzac, and others; see p. 323 and passim. On the library and its importance for mid-nineteenth-century culture, see Foucault, “La Bibliothèque fantastique,” which is his preface to Flaubert’s
La Tentation de Saint Antoine
(Paris: Gallimard, 1971), pp. 7–33. I am indebted to Professor Eugenio Donato for drawing my attention to these matters; see his “A Mere Labyrinth of Letters: Flaubert and the Quest for Fiction,”
Modern Language Notes
89, no. 6 (December 1974): 885–910.

47
.
Renan,
Histoire générale
, pp. 145–6.

48
.
See
L’Avenir de la science
, p. 508 and passim.

49
.
Renan,
Histoire générale
, p. 214.

50
.
Ibid., p. 527. This idea goes back to Friedrich Schlegel’s distinction between organic and agglutinative languages, of which latter type Semitic is an instance. Humboldt makes the same distinction, as have most Orientalists since Renan.

51
.
Ibid., pp. 531–2.

52
.
Ibid., p. 515 and passim.

53
.
See Jean Seznec,
Nouvelles Études sur “La Tentation de Saint Antoine”
(London: Warburg Institute, 1949), p. 80.

54
.
See Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
Philosophie anatomique: Des monstruosités humaines
(Paris: published by the author, 1822). The complete title of Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s work is:
Histoire générale et particulière des anomalies de l’organisation chez l’homme et les animaux, ouvrage comprenante des recherches sur les caractères, la classification, l’influence physiologique et pathologique, les rapports généraux, les lois et les causes des monstruosités, des variétés et vices de conformation, ou traité de tératologie
, 3 vols. (Paris: J.-B. Baillière, 1832–36). There are some valuable pages on Goethe’s biological ideas in Erich Heller,
The Disinherited Mind
(New York: Meridian Books, 1959), pp. 3–34. See also Jacob,
The Logic of Life
, and Canguilhem,
La Connaissance de la vie
, pp. 174–84, for
very interesting accounts of the Saint-Hilaires’ place in the development of the life sciences.

55
.
E. Saint-Hilaire,
Philosophie anatomique
, pp. xxii–xxiii.

56
.
Renan,
Histoire générale
, p. 156.

57
.
Renan,
Oeuvres complètes
, 1: 621–2 and passim. See H. W. Wardman,
Ernest Renan: A Critical Biography
(London: Athlone Press, 1964), p. 66 and passim, for a subtle description of Renan’s domestic life; although one would not wish to force a parallel between Renan’s biography and what I have called his “masculine” world, Wardman’s descriptions here are suggestive indeed—at least to me.

58
.
Renan, “Des services rendus au sciences historiques par la philologie,” in
Oeuvres complètes
, 8: 1228, 1232.

59
.
Ernst Cassirer,
The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel
, trans. William H. Woglom and Charles W. Hendel (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950), p. 307.

60
.
Renan, “Réponse au discours de réception de M. de Lesseps (23 avril 1885),” in
Oeuvres complètes
, 1: 817. Yet the value of being truly contemporary was best shown with reference to Renan by Sainte-Beuve in his articles of June 1862. See also Donald G. Charlton,
Positivist Thought in France During the Second Empire
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), and his
Secular Religions in France
. Also Richard M. Chadbourne, “Renan and Sainte-Beuve,”
Romanic Review
44, no. 2 (April 1953): 126–35.

61
.
Renan,
Oeuvres complètes
, 8: 156.

62
.
In his letter of June 26, 1856, to Gobineau,
Oeuvres complètes
, 10: 203–4. Gobineau’s ideas were expressed in his
Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines
(1853–55).

63
.
Cited by Albert Hourani in his excellent article “Islam and the Philosophers of History,” p. 222.

64
.
Caussin de Perceval,
Essai sur l’histoire des Arabes avant l’Islamisme, pendant l’époque de Mahomet et jusqu’à la réduction de toutes les tribus sous la loi musulmane
(1847–48; reprint ed., Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1967), 3: 332–9.

65
.
Thomas Carlyle,
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
(1841; reprint ed., New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1906), p. 63.

66
.
Macaulay’s Indian experiences are described by G. Otto Trevelyan,
The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875), 1: 344–71. The complete text of Macaulay’s “Minute” is conveniently to be found in Philip D. Curtin, ed.,
Imperialism: The Documentary History of Western Civilization
(New York: Walker & Co., 1971), pp. 178–91. Some consequences of Macaulay’s views for British Orientalism are discussed in A. J. Arberry,
British Orientalists
(London: William Collins, 1943).

67
.
John Henry Newman,
The Turks in Their Relation to Europe
, vol. 1 of his
Historical Sketches
(1853; reprint ed., London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920).

68
.
See Marguerite-Louise Ancelot,
Salons de Paris, foyers éteints
(Paris: Jules Tardieu, 1858).

69
.
Karl Marx,
Surveys from Exile
, ed. David Fernbach (London: Pelican Books, 1973), pp. 306–7.

70
.
Ibid., p. 320.

71
.
Edward William Lane, Author’s Preface to
An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians
(1836; reprint ed., London: J. M. Dent, 1936), pp. xx, xxi.

72
.
Ibid., p. 1.

73
.
Ibid., pp. 160–1. The standard biography of Lane, published in 1877, was by his great-nephew, Stanley Lane-Poole. There is a sympathetic account of Lane by A. J. Arberry in his
Oriental Essays: Portraits of Seven Scholars
(New York: Macmillan Co., 1960), pp. 87–121.

74
.
Frederick Eden Pargiter, ed.,
Centenary Volume of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1823–1923
(London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1923), p. x.

75
.
Société asiatique: Livre du centenaire, 1822–1922
(Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1922), pp. 5–6.

76
.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Westöstlicher Diwan
(1819; reprint ed., Munich: Wilhelm Golmann, 1958), pp. 8–9, 12. Sacy’s name is invoked with veneration in Goethe’s apparatus for the
Diwan
.

77
.
Victor Hugo,
Les Orientales
, in
Oeuvres poétiques
, ed. Pierre Albouy (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 1: 616–18.

78
.
François-René de Chateaubriand,
Oeuvres romanesques et voyages
, ed. Maurice Regard (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 2: 702.

79
.
See Henri Bordeaux,
Voyageurs d’Orient: Des pélerins aux méharistes de Palmyre
(Paris: Plon, 1926). I have found useful the theoretical ideas about pilgrims and pilgrimages contained in Victor Turner,
Dramas
,
Fields
,
and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 166–230.

80
.
Hassan al-Nouty,
Le Proche-Orient dans la littérature française de Nerval à Barrès
(Paris: Nizet, 1958), pp. 47–8, 277, 272.

81
.
Chateaubriand,
Oeuvres
, 2: 702 and note, 1684, 769–70, 769, 701, 808, 908.

82
.
Ibid., pp. 1011, 979, 990, 1052.

83
.
Ibid., p. 1069.

84
.
Ibid., p. 1031.

85
.
Ibid., p. 999.

86
.
Ibid., pp. 1126–27, 1049.

87
.
Ibid., p. 1137.

88
.
Ibid., pp. 1148, 1214.

89
.
Alphonse de Lamartine,
Voyage en Orient
(1835; reprint ed., Paris: Hachette, 1887), 1: 10, 48–9, 179, 178, 148, 189, 118, 245–6, 251.

90
.
Ibid., 1: 363; 2: 74–5; 1: 475.

91
.
Ibid., 2: 92–3.

92
.
Ibid., 2: 526–7, 533. Two important works on French writers in the Orient are Jean-Marie Carré,
Voyageurs et écrivains français en Égypte
, 2 vols. (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1932), and Moënis Taha-Hussein,
Le Romantisme français et l’Islam
(Beirut: Dar-el-Maeref, 1962).

93
.
Gérard de Nerval,
Les Filles du feu
, in
Oeuvres
, ed. Albert Béguin and Jean Richet (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 1: 297–8.

94
.
Mario Praz,
The Romantic Agony
, trans. Angus Davison (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Co., 1967).

95
.
Jean Bruneau,
Le “Conte Orientale” de Flaubert
(Paris: Denoel, 1973), p. 79.

96
.
These are all considered by Bruneau in
ibid
.

97
.
Nerval,
Voyage en Orient
, in
Oeuvres
, 2: 68, 194, 96, 342.

98
.
Ibid., p. 181.

99
.
Michel Butor, “Travel and Writing,” trans. John Powers and K. Lisker,
Mosaic
8, no. 1 (Fall 1974): 13.

100
.
Nerval,
Voyage en Orient
, p. 628.

101
.
Ibid., pp. 706, 718.

102
.
Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
, trans, and ed. Francis Steegmuller (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1973), p. 200. I have also consulted the following texts, in which all Flaubert’s “Oriental” material is to be found:
Oeuvres complètes de Gustave Flaubert
(Paris: Club de l’Honnête homme, 1973), vols. 10, 11;
Les Lettres d’Égypte, de Gustave Flaubert
, ed. A. Youssef Naaman (Paris: Nizet, 1965); Flaubert,
Correspondance
, ed. Jean Bruneau (Paris, Gallimard, 1973), 1: 518 ff.