Romantic Orientalism, Dispatch 2

There is, of course, another side to the Romantic belief in a "universal poetry manifest in each national literature"--a dark side. As Walter Burkert has pointed out (in The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age), the ideology of Romantic nationalism prompted many scholars in the late 18th and 19th centuries to focus upon "origins and organic development rather than reciprocal cultural influences." The result is that the earth was flattened in the scholarly imagination and "West" and "East" became reified categories, sui generis, and impervious to outside influences. Where influence was admitted, it seemed always to travel in only one direction: from "West" to "East." This placed the European states and their North American progeny (for the movement is also always "North" to "South") in a superior position to the presumed inferior, dependent, client-states of the "East." Edward Said's rejection of this imperialistic ideology-as-history in Orientalism and other works offered a much needed corrective to the kind of thinking that, in hindsight, may well to serve underwrite much (if not most) of the "Clash of Civilizations" discourse retailed by today's neo-fascists.

Unfortunately, Said's polemical strategy tended to offer counter-ideology in the place of a more nuanced critique; in my opinion, he held many Orientalists in contempt on the ground that they had failed to live up to a scholarly ideal that did not take into account their personal location in terms of space, time, and culture. I do not intend by these remarks to belittle Said's contribution to the debate; far from it. I have benefited immensely from his scholarship over the years and cannot help but admire his moral and political courage. When he died a flame of righteous indignation passed from this world--a flame which is sorely needed today, I am afraid. But all of us tend to proceed in unfamiliar territory by way of misunderstanding; it is the particular spirit or animus with which we proceed that colors our efforts and, I believe, ought to color, correspondingly, what judgments are rendered upon those efforts. I am often reminded of a line from a poem by Emily Dickinson: "...sweet countrymen,/Judge tenderly of me!" Grace and forbearance have brought me this far in life and I expect grace and forbearance will see me through to the end. The least I can do is try to extend towards others a little of what I have been fortunate to receive.

On Romantic Orientalism, dispatch 1.

In a paper delivered in 1947 to a symposium on "Near Eastern Culture and Society"--included in a volume collected under that title, edited by T. Cuyler Young, and published in 1951 by Princeton University Press--the Orientalist Gustave E. von Grunebaum observed that "Romanticism through its belief in a universal poetry manifest in each national literature, and the neo-humanism of the inter-war period with its realization of the conceptual autonomy of the individual civilization, have proved the principal intellectual stimuli toward the investigation of Arabic belles-lettres" (p. 48). von Grunebaum would also point out, however, that the "poetic universalism of the romantic mood proved a poor heuristic principle as soon as philology uncovered the foreignness and somewhat prosy technicality of pre-Islamic literature. Where self-identification was possible for the student steeped in playful nostalgia for medieval pomp and chivalry, the aesthetics of Arabic song remained accessible" (p. 49). This strikes me as a somewhat begrudging but sincere acknowledgement by a philologist of the genuine contribution that fantasy and play have made towards "serious" scholarship. Romanticism can take us to places where we would not otherwise venture; furthermore, it can equip us with an attitude appropriate to sanguine exploration of foreign territory. We can do--and have done--much worse...