Summary
François-René de Chateaubriand, whose Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (1810-1811), recording a journey of 1805-1806, Said presents in Orientalism as the French pilgrim opposite Edward William Lane: where Lane sacrificed his ego to the Orientalist canon, Chateaubriand made everything he said about the Orient wholly dependent on his ego (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.180-185 / printed p.171-176).
Details
- Chateaubriand claimed insolently that he undertook his voyages exclusively for his own sake — he went, in his phrase as quoted, in search of images, and that was all — came to the Orient as a constructed figure rather than a true self, calling Bonaparte the last Crusader and himself “the last Frenchman who left his country to travel in the Holy Land with the ideas, the goals, and the sentiments of a pilgrim of former times”, and admitted, in the phrase Said quotes, that he spoke eternally of himself (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.178, 180 / printed p.169, 171).
- Of the Koran, which he called le livre de Mahomet, Chateaubriand held, in the passage Said quotes, that it contained no principle of civilization and no precept that could elevate the character, and preached neither hatred of tyranny nor love of liberty; the Oriental Arab was for him “civilized man fallen again into a savage state” (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.180-181 / printed p.171-172).
- Chateaubriand argued the Crusades were not aggression but a just Christian counterpart to Omar’s arrival in Europe, and gave, in Said’s reading, the first significant mention of the theme of Europe teaching the Orient the meaning of liberty: “Of liberty, they know nothing; of propriety, they have none: force is their God” — a European talking in 1810, Said says, like Cromer in 1910 (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.181 / printed p.172).
- In Judea, Said argues, Chateaubriand’s ego dissolves itself in the contemplation of wonders it creates and is then reborn stronger than ever; unlike Lane, he attempts to consume the Orient, representing and speaking for it not in history but beyond history, and in Jerusalem grants himself a total reconciliation with an Orient as Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Greek, Persian, Roman and finally French (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.182-183 / printed p.173-174).
- Unable to do more than look at the Pyramids from a distance, Chateaubriand sent an emissary to inscribe his name on the stone — writing, for him, an act of life, by which his name, if it lived, had been enough, and if it did not, had been too much (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.184 / printed p.175).
Related pages
Orientalism (1978), Orientalism, Edward William Lane, Alphonse de Lamartine, Gérard de Nerval