Argentinean Literary Orientalism: From Esteban Echeverría to Roberto Arlt 3030544656, 9783030544652

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HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL INTERCONNECTIONS BETWEEN LATIN AMERICA AND ASIA

Argentinean Literary Orientalism From Esteban Echeverría to Roberto Arlt Axel Gasquet

Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia

Series Editors Ignacio López-Calvo University of California, Merced Merced, CA, USA Kathleen López Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ, USA

This series is devoted to the diversity of encounters between Latin America and Asia through multiple points of contact across time and space. It welcomes different theoretical and disciplinary approaches to define, describe, and explore the histories and cultural production of people of Asian descent in Latin America and the Caribbean. It also welcomes research on Hispano-Filipino history and cultural production. Themes may include Asian immigration and geopolitics, the influence and/or representation of the Hispanic world in Asian cultures, Orientalism and Occidentalism in the Hispanic world and Asia, and other transpacific and south-south exchanges that disrupt the boundaries of traditional academic fields and singular notions of identity. The geographical scope of the series incorporates the linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Pacific Rim and the Caribbean region. We welcome single-author monographs and volumes of essays from experts in the field from different academic backgrounds. About the series editors: Ignacio López-Calvo is Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of California, Merced, USA and director of the UC Merced Center for the Humanities. He is author of several books on Latin American and US Latino literature. He is co-executive director of the academic journal Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World. Kathleen López is Associate Professor in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Department of History at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA. She is author of Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History (2013) and a contributor to Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought (2015), Immigration and National Identities in Latin America (2016), and Imagining Asia in the Americas (2016). Advisory Board Koichi Hagimoto, Wellesley College, USA Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University, USA Junyoung Verónica Kim, University of Pittsburgh, USA Ana Paulina Lee, Columbia University, USA Debbie Lee-DiStefano, Southeast Missouri State University, USA Shigeko Mato, Waseda University, Japan Zelideth María Rivas, Marshall University, USA Robert Chao Romero, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Lok Siu, University of California, Berkeley, USA Araceli Tinajero, City College of New York, USA Laura Torres-Rodríguez, New York University, USA

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15129

Axel Gasquet

Argentinean Literary Orientalism From Esteban Echeverría to Roberto Arlt

Axel Gasquet Department of Spanish Studies University of Clermont Auvergne Clermont-Ferrand, France Translated by José I. Suárez University of Northern Colorado Greeley, CO, USA

Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia ISBN 978-3-030-54465-2 ISBN 978-3-030-54466-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54466-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Nina and David, again and always

Preface to the English Edition

This study, while innovative, is not comprehensive because it is part of a larger research project. It is one of three volumes analyzing the impact and consequences of the East on Argentinean literary culture throughout slightly more than two centuries. The first two were published in Spanish in 2007 and 2015 respectively. Material collection coupled with varied textual sources led to the decision of a three-volume publication based along chronological and thematic lines. Each volume exhibits an internal coherence that responds to its authors’ synchronic intonation, and a diachronic one that covers the great chapters of Argentinean culture since independence. The project aims at an extensive intellectual and cultural history of the Eastern tradition in Argentina, with each volume having a specific focus: the first, on literary orientalism; the second, on the cultural history of orientalism; the third, on the incidence of the orientalist theme in the development of twentieth-century Argentinean culture. Such coherence provides certain elementary organizational principles for observing the diverse dialogues between Argentinean literary culture and Eastern cultures, with allowance for the widest and most indistinct boundaries. This complex interplay of Argentinean Orientalism is often contradictory or misaligned with the real East because it was not only conceived as an imaginary cultural space, but also as an intricate and problematic political, historical, and cultural body. From experience as well as contact, multifaceted discourses arise that provide evidence: no single East existed that

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spanned all generations as the product of an essentialism that ran through the ages. On the contrary, it is quickly noticed that the East, as a political and cultural entity, is diverse, plural, polymorphic, and its contours and limits are always mobile and of a variable geometry. Therefore, we question ourselves about its scope and boundaries, as well as when did this or that region or country belonged to the East in a real historical and political manner and in an imaginary cultural, artistic, and literary one. However, the fact that this is the first volume of a trilogy does not make it any less rigorous and exhaustive than the others. It may be read and discussed autonomously, regardless of other publications. Each volume seeks to harmoniously adhere to the preceding stages of the research while contributing new analytical elements in a different historical and cultural context, whether in Argentina or globally. This study’s contents have been favorably received by specialists and academic critics in Ibero-America. From its original 2007 publication, its research has filled a long-standing lacuna by detailing and examining how Orientalist discourse occupied a prominent place in the construction of an Argentinian national identity within West civilization, by combining elements of local and global interpretation. It is a modest attempt to break the hegemony of a limited vision in Ibero-American studies, which has been constrained to an everlasting dialogue between America and Europe, impervious to elements outside that exclusive relationship. This work seeks to introduce a different equation to the Argentinean and South American cultural configuration, by studying the contribution of and dialogue with Eastern cultures and peoples, in the broadest possible sense. To accomplish our purpose, it has been necessary to modify some analytical foundations. For example, and without wanting to contradict some of the unavoidable contributions of the post-colonial approach, our vision of the East-West phenomenon tends to surpass this critical stance and is situated in another space. Indeed, we start from a different set of methodological presuppositions. To us, it does not matter to what extent the terms “Orient” or “Orientalism” are reviled in contemporary criticism. And though these critical premises are assumed in our investigation, we have had to depart from the fact that in the West, always and everywhere, then and now, average persons/readers think that they are knowledgeable when referring to the East, that is, about its reality, cultures, or religions. It is enough to follow the mass media in any South American country to notice that “this Orient” has an obvious embodiment in

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

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Western perceptions. Of course, we critically analyze many of these views, but this does not erase the fact that an “unfair, partial, and essentialist” configuration of the East constantly permeates our political and historical reality via our cultural imaginary. As mentioned, all think that they know what the East is or, at least, they claim to have a cursory idea about it. It matters little if this vision is narrow-minded, vague, or fallacious. If we wish to erase these misconceptions, we must begin by analyzing what the East truly represents to Latin Americans, though this discourse is based on premises that we either reject because of their theoretical underpinnings, or for being founded on an ideologized historical reality. Thus, this research is based on an analysis of sources, with the goal of always placing them within a rigorous historical context. We aim to avoid anachronisms while putting matters in their proper historical perspective. The guiding principle behind this work is to analyze how this Orientalist discourse imported from Europe was adapted to the Argentinean national reality and how it developed a new meaning within this milieu. In other words, we intend to demonstrate how Argentinean Orientalism is not merely a copy of the European model, but rather an adaptation of the Eastern discourse in a strictly local sphere that, consequently, generated a new meaning only understood in said context. An outcome of this research was the verification of how an Orientalist discourse, so obviously foreign, would serve to set the perimeters of a civilizational project for nineteenth-century Argentines, both in historical and cultural terms. Had we wholly rejected Orientalism in toto—invalidated beforehand as an ideological element of colonial or post-colonial domination—, we would have been unable to identify how this Orientalist discourse underscored the configuration and emergence of a specific concept that applies to the contemporary Argentinean nation. We do not disagree with current criticism about how the ideological characteristics of European Orientalist discourse served as an instrument of domination through knowledge; on the contrary, these criticisms are accepted and expounded. It is also not our intent to merely denounce current Western Orientalism in its South American variant, but rather to determine how this discourse generates a new meaning (while still employing a distorted and prejudiced version of the East) through its local adaptation. Trends are, by definition, ephemeral, but when a subject exceeds a generation and covers an extended period, then it is fair to say that this apparent trend reveals something important: the intergenerational multiplicity of discourses around the East show the existence of a more

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permanent and genuine interest in this cultural region; the explanation of this phenomenon stems from more complex and, until now, undetected reasons. Another important aspect of our study is its global approach, which leans toward a totalization within the context in which these discourses take place. This means that, even when we occasionally analyze a specific text or author, we always function within a general knowledge of the phenomenon, in its synchronic and diachronic aspects as enclosed in Argentinean cultural history and, often, in reference to literary and cultural histories of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Hence, this research is an eminently comparative body of work that invokes knowledge exceeding that of an Argentinean context. Some readers perhaps will have already guessed a premise that we will now explain: this research is not exclusively focused on criticizing the inadequacy of the Orientalist imaginary as compared with the “real Orient” within Argentinean history and literary culture. Although we also discuss this point, what guides our research is an attempt to unveil the meanders of this, until recently unknown, cultural history in Argentinean literature and confirming, through an in-depth study of known sources (many until now largely dismissed) that, in their diachronic continuity, these discourses were “generators of new meaning” in the cultural context of Argentines. Our purpose has always been to observe how these discourses concretely operated within Argentinean intellectual history as generators of internal meaning for the nation. It is common knowledge that Argentina never had any imperial or expansionist aspirations beyond its borders. Therefore, the premises, which make Orientalism an ideological discourse serving to build a hegemony of Western colonial knowledge over the East, are not operative in this case (or have very little legitimacy). Argentina’s objectives during the nineteenth century did not involve an imperial or neo-imperial appropriation of the East; instead, such topics were the tools that allowed Argentines to establish their national spatial epicenter, the Pampas, and its internal barbarism (identified through social subjects such as gauchos, or the integration/extermination of its indigenous population to make room for European immigrants). This double conceptualization of its internal barbarism coupled with its physical space largely allowed Argentina to elaborate a project for its present-day civilization that, with some modifications, endures. Our analysis uncovers the positive outcome of this project.

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Without a detailed investigation, it is undoubtedly rash to generalize the lessons learned from the Argentinean case and its Orientalist influence with those experienced by other South American countries. In this regard, it is advisable for us to be prudent and to perhaps err by being excessively cautious than by being excessively naive. Each historical case follows and evolves in different contexts, thus making comparison almost impossible. Yet, we must at least point out one determining factor of the Argentinean case that may also be observed elsewhere in Ibero-America: the notions of the East conceived since independence are not homologous with European imperialist aspirations; rather, each has a local bent. An in-depth study on Orientalism in other Ibero-American countries, like this one on Argentina, is still pending. Châtel-Guyon, France October 2019

Axel Gasquet

Contents

Part I Introduction 1

Which East by Way of the South?

2

The European Archetype and the Debate on the Eastern Question

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Part II The East in the Pampas 3

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The Romantic Importation of Esteban Echeverría and Juan Bautista Alberdi

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An Ideological Reading of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

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Part III

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Eastern Prints from Globetrotters, Tourists and Positivists

The Worldly Splendor of Lucio Victorio Mansilla

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CONTENTS

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The Judicious Enlightenment of Pastor Servando Obligado

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The Hygienist Modernity of Eduardo Faustino Wilde

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Part IV 8

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Arabesques and Chinoiseries in the Imagination of Leopoldo Lugones

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The Moorish African Fiction of Roberto Arlt

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Part V

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Mirages of the East

Building Up a Literary and Cultural History of Argentinian Orientalism

General Conclusion

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Bibliography

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Author Index

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Lok Index

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PART I

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Which East by Way of the South?

They have discovered these and other horrendous things, but never mentioned what is wonderful about the East, as if all those who had written about it were great bastards. Umberto Eco, Baudolino (2000) We never go so far as when we know not where we are going. Oliver Cromwell

This study analyzes a seemingly marginal subject within Argentinean literature: Orientalism, the attraction for the East—its cultures and exotic influence. After the publication of The Ruins or Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires by Constantin-François de Volney, as well as the works of Domingo F. Sarmiento or Juan Bautista Alberdi, Eastern issues aroused aesthetic as well as political interest in Argentina. Orientalism is a constituent part in the formation of Argentinean national literature. Eastern literature arrived in the River Plate region with a European bias. During the eighteenth century, the East began to be viewed in the West as new and untamed regions that stood opposite to Eurocentric civilization. The image of the Other was created, from which one had to urgently distance oneself to affirm Europe as the continent of civilization, the pinnacle of all arts and sciences. Concurrently, the East became attractive to Westerners because of its diverse cultures. Yet, the East was difficult to characterize through a collection of epithets, whether stigmatizing or © The Author(s) 2020 A. Gasquet, Argentinean Literary Orientalism, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54466-9_1

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laudatory. It inspired all types of thinkers, artists, and adventurers. In its positive European version, the East had to conform to the picturesque as defined by Western anthropology. It is fair to say that this definition did not serve to negate, but rather to corroborate, in Europe, a negative political image of the East: all despotism is imbued with Eastern traits.

Prolegomena The impact of travel literature on early Argentinean literature is known, but the study of incipient Orientalism in the political and literary spheres has been neglected. In that sense, Argentinean Orientalism is not simply an imitation of its European version. On the contrary, Argentinean Orientalism exhibits a strong form of regional adaptation. It became an endogenous element of the so-called South American barbarism. South America’s original flaw in its political thought would have been stricken by the concept of Eastern fatality. Hence, Orientalism became an indispensable conceptual tool in any analysis of institutional deficiencies and the national political organization. Eastern thought took hold in South America by gradually being adapted. It acquired an autonomy that could be compared to the European and American models. From that moment on, the attraction and repulsion of the East would become a constant in Argentinean literature. Though always marginal and rarely perceptible, our objective here is to realize an evaluation of this persistent component in this literature. We will analyze the importance of the Eastern themes in the works of Esteban Echeverría, Alberdi, Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Pastor S. Obligado, Eduardo F. Wilde, Leopoldo Lugones, and Roberto Arlt. Given the breadth of Argentinean Orientalist literature, it was necessary to limit this study to works published before 1941, with our final analysis devoted to the African writings of Roberto Arlt. Until the 1920s, echoes of Eastern assimilation resonated within the ideological and cultural layout of the land. Eastern imprints, perceptible in the mood of the Independence Centennial celebrations (1910), are characterized by the political construction and appropriation of the discourse on the East, a process that has subsequently dissipated. We will try to show that, with obvious cultural ramifications, Orientalism clearly played a long-standing ideological role in the Argentinean political sphere before acquiring its autonomy and slowly achieving greater creative freedom and evocative strength.

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Another fundamental trait of Argentinean Orientalism literature is that, from Sarmiento and Mansilla, testimonies of Argentinean travelers through these regions began to be published regularly. This essential change represents a decisive and qualitative leap: Orientalist readers were now travelers who rendered their testimony in writing. Obviously, this testimony did not presuppose the objectivity of their statements. Voyages to the East were by now quite common and travelers adhered to widely known travel guides that were also ideologically flawed; however, in situ presence assured travelers the chance of forming objective reconsiderations. Their European archetypes were, for the most part, derived from French writers (Volney, Chateaubriand, Hugo, Lamartine, Gautier, Nerval, Flaubert), but also from Spanish (Espronceda, Larra, Zorrilla, et al.) and English Romantic writers (Byron). It is noteworthy that a consistent objective of modern travel literature was to revisit places about which classical authors had written, while also creating a kind of referential itinerary or spiritual pilgrimage. Before delving into an analysis of the various literary testimonies, we will study the conditions of the ideological and political impact of European Orientalism on the River Plate region. This will require a review of eighteenth-century Orientalist theses and their legacy of Enlightenment, with reference to the case of Volney and the School of Ideology, which fills the first chapter. We will also see how the Orientalist debate is presented at the end of the eighteenth century (mostly in France) by attempting to evaluate its ideological and aesthetic impact on the then young Argentinean literary figures. Afterwards, throughout eight chapters, we will introduce a chronological series of travel writers who were active for just over a century (circa 1830–1940). To these we have accorded a monographic treatment. The methodological choice for this approach was dictated by the length of the period studied. In addition, the chronological progression of the monograph allows us to better convey the slow and constant rhythm prevalent in the Orientalist discourse within Argentinean literature while observing the essential features of its evolution.

What Is Orientalism? This field of study is so vast that, not to risk going astray, it was necessary to limit our research. Concerning Orientalism, what is the purpose of this book? To understand the scope of Orientalism in Argentinean literature, we will offer a series of clarifications that apply to the research range, to

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the historical particularities unique to the River Plate region, and to the limitations of our literary corpus. Orientalism, as a discipline, includes all that relates to Eastern cultures, religions, arts, and native languages. This wide range makes it a vague and imprecise concept to study. Its conceptual imprecision is inversely proportional to its ideological utility. At its core, Orientalism typically includes almost all “non-Occidental” cultures, that is, it presupposes a tacit knowledge of the West and implicitly places the geographical East in the realm of radical Otherness. The Orientalist subject in the West has always caused concern and can still do so to cultures south of the Mediterranean (the Maghreb), the Eastern Mediterranean (the Levant) or the Far East, but equally to that of Central Asia, the Caucasus region and, in certain cases, Eastern Europe. Furthermore, until recently, Orientalism included certain regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly those with large Muslim populations (Sudan and the coastal areas along the Indian Ocean) and non-Muslim countries (Ethiopia). In these latter cases, Orientalism is devoid of any geographical notion and is reduced to a mere ethnographic bias, that is, one that lumps together those areas that are not part of the Western tradition. Thus, the term’s enormous interdisciplinary approaches. Orientalism is, by its nature a facile term to employ when pointing out what is wrong with the East. In short, to Orientalists, the East represents all that is inscrutable or exotic in comparison to the West. Our purpose here is not to examine the ideological usages of Orientalism. Edward Said, in his now classic work Orientalism (1978), has done that in depth. This does not mean that we do not share most of his theses as, for example, that the Orient is a political-ideological-cultural construction of the West, whose goal was to establish a symbolic form of political control and supremacy over the East. This objective was reached through European colonialism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with its predominantly British and French variants. However, unilaterally, Said also reduces the East to Muslim Arab cultures, while neglecting the Far East and the Indian subcontinent. Our aim, however, is not to delve into the regional exclusions of the term, but to limit ourselves to the literary one. Henceforth, we will study the ideological construction of the Argentinean nation in the nineteenth century, with a special interest in the political consequences of literary Orientalism in Argentina. This study will therefore not pretend to participate in colonial/post-colonial studies.

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What Is Argentinean Orientalism? As mentioned, a multitude of historic aspects separate Argentinean Orientalist literature from its European model. The former occurred very late and, consequently, postdates the European model. Yet, within the global political context, historical considerations in both share similarities. Argentines never had colonial aspirations other than to expand domestically by vanquishing the indigenous peoples of Southern Patagonia, the Northwest, and the Central Western portion of the country. The importation and the adaptation of the Orientalist theme in the River Plate region corresponded to political motivations different from those exposed by Said in his book on European Orientalism. The fundamental dissimilarity rests on the fact that during the middle of the nineteenth century, Argentina was not a great political power, nor did it aspire to be. Basically, the distinction separating Argentina from the European colonial powers was its power disparity. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Argentina was a developing nation struggling to find a secondary status within the world’s geopolitics. Even in its most affluent days, Argentina systematically constituted a region on the periphery of Capitalism, whose task consisted of furnishing raw materials and agricultural products to the principal capitalist countries, mostly those of Europe. For this reason, Argentinian Orientalism was not shaped by colonial demands, like those of Great Britain and France during the Restoration or the Second Empire. Quite the opposite, Argentinean Orientalism adapted to an internal political discourse that allowed an ideological-military operation targeting its indigenous population. The same energy that incited the European powers toward the colonization of entire regions only had domestic implications in Argentina. Indeed, the disastrous consequences of the wars against its indigenous population were no less dramatic or less savage in the Patagonian South than they were in the European colonies of North Africa and Asia. But, from a strictly political and social perspective, European colonial expansion and Argentinean anti-indigenous wars did not constitute comparable actions. These activities were undertaken by distinctly different societies. France and Great Britain were world powers with well-defined and solid NationState models. They tried to reach world supremacy through economic expansion at the expense of their colonized territories, sources of raw materials that made them quite wealthy. Argentina had a different motivation: as an aspiring young nation, it rose from having been a colony

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to acquiring a permanent frontier culture. Said culture assumed a very different spatial and cultural configuration than that of the European nations, one that only resembles those of other New World regions. Europeans in their countries never considered themselves colonists. Along with American, Canadians and Australians, Chileans and Argentines of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century did view themselves as colonists. Here is how Homero M. Guglielmini describes it: Whatever the differences, the frontier “situation” is a typical element in the evolution of New World societies. All, at a given moment in their development, had to go through that phase…. The gradual conquest of the Argentinean desert unfolds as the backdrop of its history, the perpetual and recurring theme, the constant of its existence, beyond the political vicissitudes, the episodes, and the characters who dazzle us in the foreground of the stage. (Guglielmini 1972: 11)

This notion of a frontier culture served as a model for Argentinean nationality. The depiction of this frontier society in its waning days can still be appreciated in the works of William H. Hudson or Robert B. Cunninghame Graham (Hudson 1999a, b; Cunninghame Graham 1997). An understanding of the rise of this frontier mentality is essential to being able to include Orientalist depictions in written compositions: these authors’ works are based on the scenography of the desert. Without a desert setting, a place characterized by barbarism, Argentinean Orientalism would have lost its importance and would have become an empty term. Said pointed out a major detail: the Orientalist mindset, though aimed at Eastern cultures, reflects the societies where it is prevalent: Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its alleged subject, which was also a Western product. As such, the history of Orientalism simultaneously consists of an internal coherence and a strongly articulated set of relationships to the dominant surrounding culture. (Said 1980: 36)

This reflective characteristic of Orientalism constituted the common foundation of European and Argentinean Orientalism. More than a thorough understanding of their concrete realities, both are purely imaginary representations of the East. These say more about the cultures that produced Oriental motifs than they do about the actual object of their

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studies. For this reason, over the course of the nineteenth century, Argentinean Orientalism systematically took us back to the frontier society that adopted it. (As mentioned, this so-called Orientalism was initially borrowed from the classic French works as well as those of the Spanish and English Romanticists.) However, beginning with Mansilla, the first Argentinean traveler to have reached India and the Middle East, this mere emulation parts ways with its imaginary significance. After Mansilla’s journey, it was no longer possible to view the “real” desert as before. Consequently, Mansilla’s later observations and evaluations of the Ranquel Indians completely differed from the clichés coined by Sarmiento, his friend and mentor. Orientalist literature is clearly situated in the representation realm; only from this perspective can the desert around Volney’s Palmyra ruins be compared to the Pampa desert as described by Echeverría. More than just displaying a knowledge of the East, both embody the representation of foreign cultures—the former inscribing them in the European West, the latter in a peripheral Western culture, that of the Argentinean frontier culture. Since the late nineteenth century, with the advent of the Modernism, the Eastern subject distanced itself from all political requirements. This does not mean that the stereotypical clichés forged by preceding generations were not repeated, but instead, by becoming autonomous from the reference to the “real” desert, the Orientalist inspiration fundamentally embodied an expression of aesthetic freedom. This observation will be studied in detail in the chapter devoted to Lugones. The aesthetic imperative that drove Echeverría to make the Pampa desert the center of gravity of literary creativity was no longer the focus of the Modernist generation. Obviously, Modernism was also within the scope of Eastern representation, without it making any contribution to the real knowledge of these foreign cultures. The Modernist configuration exclusively adhered to this Exoticism criterion at the end of the nineteenth century.

The Argentinean Oriental Corpus The Argentinean Orientalist literary corpus consists of texts that we consider to be literary in the broadest sense of the word, that is, these texts do not pretend to belong to those of scientific or academic works written by specialists. They are not texts whose aim was to shed new light or knowledge on the East and its cultures but, rather, they were

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personal travel testimonials. Provided that they have been properly edited, we will deal with fictional literary texts as well as travel narratives, personal journals and chronicles, journalistic articles, some correspondence, etc. Among the fictional texts, there are plays, tales, novels, and poetry. The authors studied here are mostly recognized intellectuals, even if several have been largely forgotten by Argentinean literary history as, for example, Pastor S. Obligado.1 Others are famous authors of nineteenth-century Argentina—Sarmiento, Alberdi, or Echeverría. While others, although recognized, are known only through some of their writings as, for example, Mansilla, Wilde, Lugones, and Arlt. In short, they are figures who have written about the East, but whose writings on the subject remain unknown. Our study does not pretend to completely address all Orientalist influences in Argentinean literature. Our aim, rather, is to concentrate on one aspect of the literary culture that, though persistent, has not previously been the subject of known monographs. In attempting to draw attention to the Orientalist themes, we wanted to highlight the presence of their fundamental role in the emergence of modern Argentinean political thought as well as its notable aesthetic impact on literature. Sarmiento’s conceptualization of civilization and barbarism, which permeates Argentinean culture as a persistent leitmotiv, would not have been possible without this national adaptation to Orientalism. In large part, it is due to European Orientalism that Alberdi’s ideas could emerge along with certain of Echeverría’s verses. Other than acknowledging that a more exhaustive review of Argentinean Orientalism remains to be realized, any all-encompassing project would entail an in-depth study of the diffusion of Eastern literature and thought along with its pertinent editorial work. Such a complex and arduous undertaking far exceeds our present framework. Here, we would like to start an initial exploration into an area that, except for a few critical studies, remains largely neglected.

1 For length reasons, we are here omitting Chapter IX of the Spanish edition [Part 3], titled “The aesthetical traditionalism of Jorge Max Rohde” (233–267). We based our decision on our belief that Rohde’s work would be of less interest to an English-speaking readership. Those interested in his works should consult the Spanish edition.

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References Cunninghame Graham, Robert B. (1997). El Paso [El River Plate Region]. Paris: Phébus. Guglielmini, Homero M. (1972). Fronteras de la literatura argentina. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Hudson, William Henry (1999a). La tierra purpúrea. Buenos Aires: Elefante Blanco. Hudson, William Henry (1999b). Allá tiempo y hace lejos. Buenos Aires: Emecé. Said, Edward W. (1980). Orientalisme: l’Orient crée par l’Occident. Paris: Seuil. Foreword by Tzvetan Todorov.

CHAPTER 2

The European Archetype and the Debate on the Eastern Question

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ours, is not a pretty thing when you look at it closely. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; an unselfish belief in that idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to… Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902) I live in solitude among the ruins; I will question the ancient monuments about the wisdom of times passed. Volney, The Ruins of Palmyra (1791) The wise man brings everything back to the court of reason, even to reason itself. Emmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

Europe’s interest in the East may be traced to classical antiquity through writers like Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus of Sicily. However, since the Age of Enlightenment, with the advent of Rationalism, the East became a space of imaginary representation, totally evoking a series of negative visions, as observed in the writings of Montesquieu (1689–1759), Voltaire (1694–1778), and the engineer Nicolas Boulanger

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Gasquet, Argentinean Literary Orientalism, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54466-9_2

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(1722–1759): cultural decadence, despotism, religious fanaticism, ignorance, etc. (Montesquieu 1997; Voltaire 2007; Boulanger 1988). The East would ideologically function as a model that should not be imitated, one from which it was imperative to distance oneself. This perception of the East, as an area of repulsion, also connoted considerable ambiguity: on the one hand, it constituted a negative model but, on the other, it was one that demanded close examination. This ambivalent attraction stimulated the emergence of the discipline commonly known as Orientalism. Nevertheless, not everything had to be discarded within the Eastern model. The Middle East was also a sacred place where three monotheistic religions had arisen and developed, a counterbalance to the negativity associated with Orientalism. This fact would raise motivation and curiosity in Orientalist studies (App 2010). We must bear in mind the difference between motivation and curiosity concerning religious phenomena given that the inflection points between the Rationalists, who were moved by curiosity (Volney, Champollion), and the later School of Romanticism, motivated by faith and religious belief (Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo). This dual purpose for visiting the East prevailed throughout the nineteenth century. The Rationalists, Ideologues, and philosophers would set out for the East to either try to know it in its social and political configuration or to adopt it by means of scientific exploration. However, the Romanticists were trying to address the spiritual enigma that drove them to make the trip. Both groups had a common denominator: a search for truth. The former wished to discover the truth about natural and social laws; the latter, to shed light on the mystery of spiritual truth.

Volney and the Ideologues The Ideologue School, heirs to the French Enlightenment, set out to replace metaphysical reflection with rigorous studies of ideas. The term “ideology” was created in 17961 by Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), disciple of Condorcet (1743–1794) and Laplace (1749–1827)—they belonged to the first generation of Ideologues who were considered the

1 In 1801, Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy published the volume, Elements of Ideology. In 1808, he was elected member of the French Academy of Letters to occupy the seat previously held by Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis. Tracy’s successor would be François Guizot. This detail is important because Cabanis, Tracy and Guizot were to have an important intellectual impact on the River Plate region through the Generation of 1837 .

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founders of the School of Rationalism.2 The Ideologues initially dedicated their efforts to the analysis of the mental faculties and various types of ideas. Ideas for them were neither metaphysical forms nor psychological facts. According to Tracy, ideology is the study of “knowledge.” He defined it as being closely linked to general grammar and the logic that deals with the application of thought to reality (Ferrater Mora 2001: 1748). The Ideologues lived during the tumultuous and dramatic period of the French Revolution and the subsequent establishment of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Empire. They were key protagonists in the fall of the Ancient Regime, which provided a place for a new bourgeois class with its General States (États Généreaux). As Jean Gaulmier affirmed, this period was somewhat forsaken by literary historians “because the wealth of political, social, diplomatic, and military events almost exclusively occupied their time—to such an extent that it was to be believed that, from 1789 to 1820, French intellectual thought experienced a total eclipse between two periods of unprecedented happiness, the Enlightenment and the flamboyance of Romanticism” (Gaulmier 1980a: 9). For a long time, Ideologues were considered the lost generation of the French Revolution and the modern era. They provided an intellectual substratum without which the subsequent cultural revolution would have been impossible. Constantin-François Chassebeuf de Boisgirais (1757–1820), who was publicly known as Volney, was one of the key personalities of this period and of this generation of Ideologues. Even though he has almost been forgotten and is rarely recognized, his intellectual influence throughout Europe and the New World is noteworthy up until the nineteenth century. A disciple of Diderot, Condorcet, Helvétius, and Holbach, he would later become a close friend of Pierre Cabanis and Thomas Jefferson. His pseudonym, Volney, was coined in recognition of the intellectual teachings that Voltaire imparted on him—Volney is an acrostic of VOLtaire + FerNEY.3

2 Destutt de Tracy and the other Ideologues are usually considered part of the Sensualist movement in the history of philosophy; this term can no longer be adopted in designating this group of thinkers, the heirs of Rationalism during the Enlightenment. 3 “Ferney” is the name of the village where Voltaire lived the last twenty years of his life. Currently renamed Ferney-Voltaire, it is located near the Swiss border and the city of Geneva.

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Volney was born into a family of local notables in Craon, Anjou, on 3 February 1757. His father, Jacques-René Chassebeuf, practiced law in the barony of Craon. His paternal side, of peasant origin, had socially risen thanks to his great-grandfather, Royal Baliff, who became Craon’s Notary. Throughout their gradual social ascension, the Chassebeuf family was able to slowly acquire various properties in Craon and its surrounding area. Volney was thus raised in a petit-bourgeois family, one that, though they lived comfortably, never forgot their peasant origins; they distrusted the aristocracy because they feared its paternalism and insolence. In the Chassebeuf family, social ascension was sought through the acquisition of a solid cultural base, while not losing contact with the rural world whence they came. After having initially begun legal studies, as the family tradition required, health issues prompted Volney to study medicine instead. While in medical school in Paris, he formed a lasting friendship with a student of his age, Pierre Cabanis, who would introduce him into the intellectual milieu of the Parisian parlors. Volney especially frequented the widow Helvétius’s parlor, where he met Condorcet and Benjamin Franklin. In 1777, his friend Cabanis invited him to the parlor of the Baron Holbach, where Diderot and Naigeon were often present, and where students of medicine and philosophy rubbed shoulders. Holbach, as a result of the received acclaim of several of his books (System of Nature [1770], the Social System [1783], and the Ethocratic or Universal Morality [1776]), was well known within the intellectual milieu. The work of Helvétius, whom Volney never had the chance to meet because of his death in 1771, and of Baron Holbach, with whom he regularly socialized, would profoundly influence the young student’s intellectual development. Volney also adopted Holbach’s radical atheism that was based on natural and physical laws. While continuing his medical studies, Volney also acquired an encyclopedic erudition. He decided to learn Hebrew and other Semitic languages to challenge the existing translations of the Bible, which he suspected of being fraught with deceit. Along with his friend Cabanis, who was equally obsessed with Hellenism, Volney began to read Herodotus, the historian of Asia Minor,4 readings that led to his travels through the 4 Herodotus (Halicarnassus 484–426 BCE), is considered the “father of history.” He traveled to numerous countries: Egypt, Persia, Libya, Magna Graecia, and Hellas. He lived in Athens for two years where he became a close friend of Sophocles. His masterpiece is The Histories, composed of nine books in which he recounts the history of Persia and the

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Middle East (Volney 1809).5 Like his mentor Holbach, he believed that thought should be rooted in experience, not in the imagination because it is conducive to erroneous logic. On the condition that they remain within the limits of the measurable and verifiable, Enlightenment intellectuals, being Humanistic Rationalists, were strong interdisciplinarians who relied on geography, meteorology, agriculture, medicine, linguistics, etc. This modus operandi would later cause Volney to be reproached by Sainte-Beuve for having “attained his ideal in the domain of statistics” (Sainte-Beuve 1960: 160). In 1782, at the age of twenty-five, Volney embarked for Egypt and Syria from the Port of Marseilles with his philosophical and scientific baggage. The voyage was partially financed by his inheritance. Throughout the two-year journey, Volney would take many notes, consistently keeping the same observation criteria, that is, his scientific detachment from the surrounding environment. Travelers must not identify with countries they visit. Thus, a salient element in the reading of his travel memoirs is the cold precision of his descriptions, which might be perceived as being completely devoid of emotion. From his book’s inception, Volney stated that the travel literature genre belongs more to history than to literature. This Rationalist belief had already been formulated by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre when, in the appendix to his book on the exploration of Madagascar (1773), he suggested that future travelers ought to employ less fantasy and more scientific rigor in their narratives (Saint-Pierre 1833: 106–109). He was operating under the influence of Rationalism, which proposed that travel should be exclusively for scientific exploration rather than for personal pleasure. Readers should not only indulge their curiosity regarding exoticism, but they also have the obligation of acquiring knowledge through self-instruction. Volney was among the first French travelers to adhere to this new stipulation and, by so doing, he preceded Baron von Humboldt (Gasquet 1999: 22–28; 2006: 31–36).6 Volney states that “in relation to my travels, I have tried

Greco-Persian Wars. The book is a compilation of oral and written traditions as well as on his direct observation of facts. 5 Volney would later dedicate time to an in-depth study of Herodotus. In fact, it was in anticipation of Part II of New Researches on Ancient History that he would publish Parts I and III in 1813. 6 The Naturalist Alexander Von Humboldt is the first to perfectly honor this new model of scientific voyage.

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to retain the spirit that I brought to the examination of facts, that is, an impartial love of the truth” (Volney 1787: 13). At the end of January 1783, Volney arrived in Alexandria where he remained a few weeks. Far from living up to its reputed splendor in antiquity, the city was now a seaport with barely ten thousand inhabitants. He took advantage of his sojourn by taking a short tour on the Nile Delta. From there, he departed for Cairo, where he remained for seven months, until 23 September 1783. Due to the collapse of the shortlived regime of Mameluk Ali Bey, the city was in a state of total chaos. This collapse had generated heavy bickering over the succession of power. Almost all French residents had already abandoned Cairo because of its political problems, except for Mallagon, a connoisseur of the East, who gave Volney an update of events in the region. Volney roamed around the city with the intention of becoming acquainted with its daily life and of practicing his Arabic, which he had begun to study in Paris. He would not prolong his trip to visit southern Egypt, and thus would never know ancient Thebes (Luxor, Karnak and the Valley of the Kings). However, Volney made several daytrips to the Giza pyramids and visited Suez. Owing to the plague that was beginning to spread throughout Egypt, he hastened preparations for his visit to Syria that included an initial stopover in Jaffa and Tyr, where he witnessed the extent of the terror with which Djezzar Pacha governed. Tyr was the main French commercial stopover in the Mediterranean region. After passing through Cyprus, he finally arrived in Latakia, on the Syrian coast. From there, he departed in December 1783, for Aleppo, the grand northern city, where he spent six weeks taking short trips to the surrounding area. His next move was to Tripoli, by way of Hama in the Orontes River valley, in January 1784. After a month there, he headed to Dhour El Choueir, which overlooks Beirut and the Mediterranean Sea; in March 1784, he checked in at the Basilian convent of Mar Hanna, where he stayed eight months studying in the local library and improving his Arabic. This stay allowed him time to visit the surrounding region and to explore the high mountains of the Druze region. Next on his journey was Jerusalem, which he reached by traveling on the road to Tiberias. There he stayed for four months and, according to his writings, it gave him time to become familiar with the various quarrels among the religious orders. In the region of Gaza, he lived among a relatively powerful Bedouin tribe, the Ouâhydât, who at that time controlled the territory between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. He then set sail from

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Acre, bound for Alexandria with the painter Louis-François Cassas (1756– 1827) who had thoroughly documented the Palmyra ruins. Cassas even gave Volney several sketches of the Sphinx and the panoramic view of the ruins as seen from the nearby fort, Qala’at ibn Maan, built by the Arabs (Cassas 1796).7 After having once again passed through Alexandria, Volney embarked for Marseilles, where he arrived in the middle of April 1785—he was immediately placed on a strict quarantine due to the possibility of his having been exposed to the plague in the Levant. The episode of his return and his acquaintance with Cassas is significant because the Palmyra ruins, which the latter sketched in detail, would be the setting where Volney developed his best-known work, The Ruins and Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires (1791). It should be emphasized that, despite the knowledge acquired in the Middle East, he never visited the Palmyra ruins, only those at Baalbek. He adhered closely to the maps and comments made by the Englishmen, Robert Wood and James Dawkins, during a 1751 journey (Wood 1753, 1757a, b; Volney 1787: 447-sq.). The ancient city of Palmyra, called Tadmor by the Syrians (“the place of palm groves”) and whose description is found on stone tablets dating from the nineteenth century BCE, was what remained of an empire that existed between Persia and Greece, an important ancient stopover on the commercial route linking Asia to the Mediterranean and whose language was Aramaic. When Emperor Hadrian visited it in 130 CE, he declared it a “free city” and Palmyra rapidly adapted to the presence of the Romans in the region. Its decline began during the reign of Queen Zenobia, when she defied Rome by declaring the city independent from Rome. However, her troops were defeated at Antioch and she was then imprisoned and taken to Rome. In 273 CE, in retaliation for a popular uprising that killed six hundred Roman archers, Emperor Aurelian destroyed Palmyra. In June 1785, Volney returned to his native Craon and, after having sold the remaining assets from his maternal inheritance, he moved to Paris that autumn. He set up residence in Auteuil, at the home of Helvétius’s widow, who offered him a room and the necessary tranquility for recording his trip’s memoirs. To this end, young Volney heartily applied himself for the next eighteen months, finding himself at peace 7 Cassas begins to publish a project (later interrupted) of 330 engravings on which 30 are barely edited. Volney oversaw the composition of the preliminary texts of the seven first fascicules.

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and far from the distraction that was Parisian society. Years later, after a lengthy trip throughout the United States, Volney confessed that “after having gone to Turkey, as garrulous as a Frenchman, I returned three years later, as reserved as a Muslim” (Volney 1803: 708). Volney specialist and main biographer, Jean Gaulmier, devoted an entire chapter of his book to raising some serious objections to the version, accepted even today, of Volney’s version of his journey through the Levant (Gaulmier 1980a: 43–63). According to a series of wellfounded clues, Volney probably traveled secretly on behalf of King Louis XVI’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vergennes, for the purpose of doing reconnaissance work for a possible French military takeover of Egypt, then an Ottoman province. The situation was complex and delicate since France maintained a political alliance with Constantinople for it believed that reinforcing Ottoman supremacy would contribute to inhibiting Russian advances toward the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, France—like Great Britain, Prussia, and Austria—was convinced of the profound decline on all levels (economic, military, institutional, administrative, and moral) of the Turkish regime. Yet, no European power dared to destabilize Ottoman hegemony in the area for fear of disrupting the regional balance that might favor whatever adversary tried to replace it. France and Great Britain had just finished their confrontation over the uprisings in their North American colonies (the Treaty of Versailles, ratifying American independence, was signed in Paris in October 1782) and neither was interested in opening another battlefront. It should be noted that Volney frequently socialized in the parlors of Helvétius with Benjamin Franklin, the first American ambassador to France; upon his return from the Levant, Volney would form a close friendship with Thomas Jefferson who by now had replaced Franklin as ambassador.8 In fact, France’s secret plans for occupying certain Middle Eastern territories were not new. In 1774, Saint-Didier, an official in the Navy Ministry, submitted a report favoring the conquest of Egypt (Gaulmier 1980a: 49). Due to abovementioned, the project was never realized, although it was periodically reconsidered by the military. Indeed, at the time Volney was preparing for his departure, there were two opposing 8 It was Volney’s friendship with Jefferson that encouraged him to travel to the United States between 1795 and 1798. From this experience, he wrote Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis (1803). He would maintain an extensive correspondence with Jefferson until the end of his life (Chinard 1923).

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factions on this matter within the Ministry. One faction was headed by Choiseul and Saint-Priest (ambassador to Constantinople) who encouraged France to take advantage of the decline and eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The other faction, led by Vergennes, then Minister of Foreign Affairs and predecessor of Saint-Priest as ambassador to Turkey, favored continuing French support of the sultan’s regime. This impasse went unresolved, which perhaps explains Vergennes’s decision to send an agent to Syria and Egypt to buy time to gather data that would contradict the opposing faction. The gathered data would yield a report that would counter the one submitted by Baron of Tott. (In 1776, after a stopover in the Levant, Baron of Tott came to support a position like that of Saint-Priest.) According to Jean Gaulmier, the agent Vergennes sent was supposedly Volney. His travel memoirs on Syria and Egypt contain numerous passages in which he analyzed aspects of Ottoman military defenses in the region. Indeed, military matters are a constant in Volney’s memoirs. According to his biographer, this would explain the fact that the English translation of his chronicle appeared in London in the same year that Volney published it. The quick British translation shows the enormous attention that the English paid to French intentions in the Middle East, which they were closely observing. It will never be known whether Volney’s trip did constitute a State mission, but numerous clues do give implicit proof of it; for example, no official record from the period has been found indicating that Volney received an inheritance of about six thousand French francs in gold coins to finance his trip. Likewise, no record has been found that confirms his various stopovers in the Levant. In his book, Volney cautioned the French against the dangers of military operations in Egypt—an area easy to conquer, but difficult to defend and maintain. This position favored the continuity that Vergennes advocated, but countered the shared opinion of Saint-Priest and Baron of Tott who maintained that Egypt would be easy to conquer and easy to control. Nonetheless, whatever were the reasons for Volney’s 1798 Eastern trip, when Napoleon Bonaparte launched his Egyptian campaign, he was carrying out a highly desired and analyzed project, one the French had been yearning to undertake for some twenty-five years. Although Bonaparte had studied Volney’s military advice in detail, such action did not prevent his campaign from a disastrous end.9 In spite 9 Napoleon Bonaparte departed from Toulon in May 1798 with an expeditionary force of 38,000 men and 167 intellectuals and artists (Laurens 1987; Nolin 1998).

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of defeat, Napoleon’s campaign would heighten French enthusiasm for Egypt throughout the nineteenth century and would eventually be related by writers who would later visit these sites: Victor Hugo praised Egypt in Les Orientales (1829) [“Orientals ”] and it inspired learned men such as Jean-François Champollion.

The Palmyra Ruins Les Ruines ou meditation sur les revolutions des empires (better known in Spanish under the title Las Ruinas de Palmira 10 ) could for many reasons be considered as an addendum to Voyage en Syrie et en Égypt [“Journey to Syria and Egypt ”]. Though four years apart in their publication, the two books complement each other. Voyage did not satisfactorily address an entire series of questions that Volney excluded, such as the philosophical considerations that the decline of the Ottoman Empire caused Western powers. When Volney approached the subject of religion, for example, he did so superficially through a description of popular religious forms of religion while omitting any conclusion expected from a Rationalist. Conversely, Les Ruines excludes any accurate historic factor (except for the brief description of the Palmyra site), nor does it offer any description of Eastern customs and anthropology. The book retraces the origins of the great civilizations and presents the Rationalist debate on the origins and future of religions. Les Ruines features different world religious representatives who, while debating their beliefs, file past Rationalist legislators in a court setting. These legislators are trying to enlighten the world by dispelling superstition and abolishing the moral slavery (or alienation) that religious faith imposes on people. The Rationalists here are defending natural and physical laws that, for them, are the only ones to which humans should adhere in order to assure their material development and spiritual harmony. Les Ruines therefore consists of a series of meditations that rely on the political and military observations made in Voyage. It thereby constitutes a sort of philosophical corollary or appendix to the latter. It was composed at various times; its first part seems to have been written almost simultaneously with Voyage. Hugo erroneously assumed that Les Ruines was

10 For practical reasons, this book by Volney will henceforth be referred to as Les Ruines.

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originally part of the Eastern chronicles11 (Gaulmier 1980b: 201). It is a work that synthesizes Volney’s philosophical influences and epitomizes the spirit of the Enlightenment. Stylistically, the volume is not homogenous and seems to be composed of a series of statements juxtaposed in a relatively impulsive manner. This is surely due to circumstances that led to a haphazard and uneven composition that lasted four years. Les Ruines is by far Volney’s most well-known work. Published in 1791, just after the French Revolution, its success was largely due to the National Constituent Assembly,12 with whose ideas its contents coincided. The Assembly consequently promoted its vast dissemination along with its successive 1792 and 1799 reeditions. Its reception by the press was excellent. According to Gaulmier: “the critics seem to have very judiciously sensed its essence. It is the bold philosophical testament of the eighteenth century” (Gaulmier 1980b: 202–203). By 1822, ten reeditions had been published. Between 1820 and 1822, Bossange, the publisher, came out with a posthumous edition of Volney’s Œuvres Complètes, which it republished in 1826 (Volney 1822). We have mentioned that Volney’s initial description of Palmyra was extracted from a book by Robert Wood and was supplemented by additional images inspired by the painter Cassas. The protagonist (Volney himself) sits down to meditate among those glorious remains of Eastern civilization, pondering why such civilizations disappear. In fact, he asks himself whether one day the fate of European civilizations will be like those of Asia. Overcome with melancholy as the sun sets on the ruins, a genie, who is none other than Reason, appears before him. This apparition transports him through the heavens from where he simultaneously views apocalyptical scenes of men doing battle in fratricidal wars and invasions. The scenes evoked are those of the Tartar conquest of Moscow, Crimea, and Kuban. Russians and Turks engage in battle as both appeal to their gods for victory. The genie then reveals to our traveler the absurdity of men begging their gods, thereby revealing how religion is the cause of all human evil.

11 Victor Hugo writes the obituary notice on Volney: Le Conservateur Littéraire, Vol. II-13, Paris, June 3, 1820: 116–117. 12 In 1789, Volney participated in the National Constituent Assembly at Versailles where he was one of the three representatives from Anjou. Other Ideologue authors such as Destutt de Tracy also played an important role in the assembly (Volney 1989: 143–161).

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The book may be divided into at least five quite different, yet interlinked, sections: (a) a prose poem: “Invocation,” that opens the book; (b) highlights of Helvétius and Holbach’s philosophy; (c) a recreation of the 1789 Constituent Assembly composed of universal legislators (the Rationalists) who publicly debate with and test representatives of the different world religions; (d) a detailed overview of humanity’s theological development; (e) the final verdict of legislators who appeal to people to abandon their superstitious and fallacious beliefs in order to embrace natural laws, which are the only ones capable of assuring human fellowship and freedom. Reference to the French Revolutionary Assembly model is evident when legislators scrutinize theologians within a framework that recalls a people’s court. However, France is never directly mentioned. Volney only refers to the country indirectly: “That is the plan, folks, that a great nation has proposed, a nation free from chains and anxieties” (Volney 1822: 378). No reader needed clarification regarding which nation then served as an example to the world. Although not always explicit, his book’s underlying encyclopedic references are very learned. Using Helvétius and Holbach’s model, Volney showed a comprehensive knowledge of the ancients (Herodotus, Plutarch, Tacitus, Tertullian, et al.) and of the literature of his time: Volney was aware of the estimable works of Fréret, most notably his M émoires sur les Orphiques [“Orphic Memories ”]; l’Histoire du Manichéisme [“History of Manicheism”] of Beausobre, the renowned Histoire des Fétiches [“History of Fetishisms ”] of Président de Brosses, le Dictionnaire des hérésies [“Dictionary of Heresies ”] of Father Pluquet, L’Histoires des Apologistes [“History of the Apologists ”] de Burigny, and Lettres sur les origines des sciences et sur celles des peuples en Asie adressée à M. De Voltaire [“Letters about the Origins of Science and of the Asian Peoples Addressed to M. De Voltaire”] of Bailly. (Gaulmier 1980b: 208)

Yet, such a list does not include all his formative readings. Boulanger’s influence may also be detected, he who had not only made common the “oriental despotism” concept in his homonymous book but had also shown Volney the way regarding the philosophical knowledge of language through his L’Antiquit é dévoillée (Boulanger 1768–1777). Indeed, Les Ruines is a synthesis of elaborate linguistic and philological deliberations that Volney successfully applied to the etymology of religion, an approach that allowed him to examine the mythological diffusion among

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the different religions. Along with Wood and Dawkins, Gaulmier even points out other readings: La Loubère revealed Siam to Volney; Sonnerat, nephew by marriage of his friend Dupont de Nemours, Minister of France to Indochina, is a very reliable guide in his Voyages en Chine [“Trips to China”]…. He found, in the Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuple du monde [“Ceremonies and Religious Customs of All the World’s People”] of Bernard Picard and Bruzen de la Martinière, more than enough details for accurately characterizing the various types of fanaticism that his book General Assembly of the People had brought to light. (Gaulmier 1980b: 209)

Even though the references are indirect, Montesquieu’s influence was equally important. One can observe its traces in Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence [“Considerations on the Causes of Roman Greatness and Decadence”] (Montesquieu 1734: 272) that served as a model for Volney. Montesquieu delves into the contributing factors of the collapse of history’s greatest Western empire. Volney used this same model in elucidating the cause for Palmyra’s demise and the concurrent political splintering of the Ottoman Empire. Les Lettres persanes [“Persian Letters ”] provided Volney with a different observation mode. It is known that this work by Montesquieu was not an Orientalist undertaking; instead it is a bitter appraisal of early eighteenthcentury French laws, customs, and institutions, as seen through the startled eyes of two supposedly Persian travelers in Paris. Volney does borrows this technique in Les Ruines but turns it around; instead of two Persians visiting France, he includes one Frenchman in Syria who, while accompanied with the genie Reason, speculates about the reasons for the decline of these Eastern cultures. It is noteworthy that Les Ruines indirectly offers more of a reflection on revolutionary France than it does on Asia and its decadent model. By questioning the disappearance of past civilizations, Volney is in fact considering the possible extinction of European civilization. This implies that Montesquieu and Volney’s main goal was to radically challenge the foundation of French society, whose model was enlightened absolutism. Volney was not trying to reform Eastern cultures, but rather he wished to warn Europeans of the possible dissolution of Western civilization if European absolutism remained unchanged. Volney’s book reveals a recurrent fact of the period: when the negative image of Eastern despotism is evoked, it also alludes to the fact that the

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ongoing enlightened despotism had to be reformed or Europe would eventually face the same fate as that of the Ottoman Empire. It must be emphasized that, parallel to the favorable reception of Les Ruines by the French, the book was also successful abroad, particularly among English-speaking readers. An English translation was available in London by 1792 and, up until Volney’s death, it included sixteen British reeditions. Also, one was published in Ireland, at least two in the United States (New York and Philadelphia), as well as a translation in German and another in Italian. It can therefore be concluded that the circulation of Les Ruines was as widespread among English speakers as it was in France and other European countries. In trying to explain this phenomenon, we would like to advance an unverifiable hypothesis: more than the French, English-speaking readers imagined themselves to have become the world’s “model nation.” Great Britain had ruled over India since 1757. For different reasons and through different paths, the young American nation, having become the first modern republican state, and Great Britain, having undergone Cromwell’s revolution, were far ahead of a France that was fumbling through its republican model.

The Ibero-American Path of Les Ruines The book’s Spanish translation underwent various ups and downs in keeping with those of the Spanish liberal movement, whose members were often in exile after the absolutist restoration that followed the Napoleonic wars. With the return of Ferdinand VII in July 1814, the leaders of the Junta of Cadiz, who implemented in 1812 the first liberal Spanish constitution, were severely suppressed, persecuted, and/or assassinated. Many went into exile in France, England or Holland. Gaulmier reviewed the first anonymous Spanish translation, published in Madrid, supposedly in 1820 (Gaulmier 1980a: xxxviii) because the publication year was not included.13 This publication year is not surprising given that Volney’s works had been banned under the absolutist regime and could be published only after the liberal revolution that shook Spain on 1 January 1820. Spain’s first translation of Les Ruines was quickly accomplished.

13 In March 2005, in an antique bookstore in Madrid, I had the opportunity to consult a Castilian edition of Les Ruines of Volney, published in London in 1820. I am unsure as to whether it was the edition Gaulmier indicated to having been produced in Madrid.

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Along with its dissemination, refutations of Volney’s atheism14 were made on both sides of the Pyrenees; for example, a posthumous extant 1834 pamphlet “Meditaciones de … Félix Amat y Pont, en un supuesto Congreso celebrado entre las ruinas de dicha ciudad … con que se refuta … la impía fábula que forjó Volney … obra póstuma”15 (Amat de Palou y Pont 1834: 53). The two ensuing Spanish-language publications were completed in 1836 and 1839, probably thanks to the support of a group of liberal Spaniards exiled in Paris (Águila 1993: 91–107). It is also known that, in the middle of the nineteenth century (1854 and 1869), several Madrid publications were made available. Henceforth, Las Ruinas de Palmira spread throughout South America in various languages. At least eight different translations can be accounted for between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. It is unknown exactly when Les Ruines arrived in the River Plate region, nor is it known in what language the work was disseminated. One must keep in mind that the elite Ibero-American classes could usually read French and English literature in the original. These are four theories hypotheses of what might have taken place: (a) The book was clandestinely introduced shortly after its first French edition, before Argentinean independence (1810). It is important to note that all Spanish territories practiced cultural contraband (not just merchandise); this was especially true in the River Plate region, which was a marginal area of the Spanish empire. There is ample proof of the many books, censured by Spanish authorities, that found their way to the Spanish colonies. Given the quick dissemination of Les Ruines in Great Britain and in the United States, it is also possible that its English translation was the first version to reach the River Plate region—American editions date from 1796 in New York and from 1799 in Philadelphia.

14 The wide diffusion of Bossange’s edition of Les Ruines (1820–1822), immediately impelled the religious community, which felt empowered by the monarchy’s restoration of the monarchy after Napoleon’s fall, to refute Volney’s work (Noirlieu 1823: 311–429). This Abbot Noirlieu claimed the work of Volney was “a most dangerous impious work” (313). 15 [“Meditations of … Félix Amat y Pont on his alleged Conference held among the ruins of said city … where Volney’s impious fable was debunked….”].

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(b) In 1810, once the May 25 Revolution had erupted, Les Ruines arrived in the River Plate region either in its French or English version. It is known that the publication of Volney’s complete works by Adolphe Bossange (1820–1822) had immense repercussion in Europe. It is therefore fair to suppose that, amid the Argentinean independence struggle, this edition was widely circulating throughout Ibero-America. (c) Les Ruines was disseminated in a Spanish-language version, with its distribution being assured thanks to liberal Spanish circles in Madrid, Paris, or London. These had numerous contacts among liberal Ibero-Americans who traveled to and resided in Europe. (d) Given the structure of the publishing world of the time, it is probable that local underground editions were circulated in Ibero-America, either before or after 1810. No matter how it arrived, Les Ruines was soon included among the classic works that the French Enlightenment inspired and had found their way to America. Many writings and documents acknowledge the Ideologue importance in the New World. Besides classical authors such as Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, the second Ideologue generation (Destutt de Tracy and Pierre Cabanis) had an enormous impact and whose works rapidly became required reading among enlightened young liberals.16 In the River Plate region, the generation born after independence almost unconditionally embraced the principles of liberalism, thereby spawning the first generation of Ibero-American Romanticists. It is important to emphasize that this Romanticism occurred excessively late and did not exactly adhere to the same principles of European Romanticism. By the time this aesthetic movement had reached South America, the Romantic Movement in Europe was waning.

16 At the end of the nineteenth century, the illustrious and conservative Catholic Colombian, Miguel Antonio Caro, reproached the liberals for their pernicious reading of Destutt de Tracy and Bentham, who “for a century have been devastating and corrupting the education of the masters” (Caro 1978: 59–65).

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Eastern Despotism Those characteristics, specific to the Asian political and cultural model that define Eastern despotism, represent the antithesis to the cosmic vision of the Rationalist liberal world. According to Boulanger, the deepest roots of despotism are embedded in theocracies and in the forms of government that these produce. Theocracies engender idolatry, which is the basis for all despotism (Boulanger 1768–1777: 85–89, 92–95). The despotic structure of theocracies is then transposed to civil despotism. The deeply imbedded and strongest motivating force of all despots (civil or ecclesiastical) is their objective of governing by force, not only people but Nature as well (Boulanger 1768–1777: 105–108). Despotism is indubitably the form of government most averse to natural law. According to Volney’s Voyage and Les Ruines, which in large measure agree with Boulanger’s theses, despotic characteristics may be summarized thus: a) Credulity, violence, and tyranny. Social laws do not obey natural and physical laws; instead, they adhere to a system of theological mystification that places power and ownership in the hands of a minority who enslaves and exploits the majority. Despotism relies on religious faith and the rejection of doubt. “Believing without evidence, without proof, is an act of ignorance and foolishness,” Volney stated, “The credulous person is lost in a labyrinth of inconsistencies. Reasonable persons examine and argue to form their opinions. Honest people tolerate contradiction because, for them, this action alone gives rise to evidence. Violence is the solution of liars, who impose their beliefs and their will on people. Ruling by force is a trait and the outcome of tyranny”. (1822: 247) b) Oppression and anarchy. Despotism is the oppression of people by a conquering minority. Anarchy leads to oppression and tyrants rule where division occurs. Disunity among people promotes isolation and mutual ignorance, keeping them in a constant state of rivalry. Internecine wars thrive where despotism flourishes.

In Volney’s words: Asia lies deeply under the profoundest gloom. The Chinese, governed by brazen despotism, by bamboo-cane lashings and by their lot in life…. Indians, overwhelmed with concerns and entangled by the sacred web of the caste system, vegetates in an incurable indolence. The ignorant and loyal Tartars, whether nomadic or stationary, live as uncivilized as

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their ancestors. Arab strength, virtue and common sense are eroded by tribal anarchy and family feuds. Africans, having lost their dignity, appear doomed to eternal slavery. In the North, I only see reviled serfs, flocks of people who have become playthings to their rich owners. Everywhere, ignorance, tyranny, and misery have dumb downed nations. People’s vices have damaged common sense and destroyed their instinct to seek truth happiness. (1822: 248)

The following excerpt from Les Ruines is a concrete example of tribal discord between the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem, published four years before Voyage: Thanks to its industrial production, Habroun is the most powerful village in these cantons. It can arm between eight to nine hundred men who belong to the Qaisi faction. Its population traditionally views Bethlehem as its enemy. This enmity dates to the first Arab arrival and has been the cause of perpetual civil war ever since. The peasants are constantly invading each other’s territory and mutually ravaging their small villages, doura, sesame plants, and olive orchards. They steal each other’s sheep, goats, and camels. In general, the Turks do very little to end this situation because their authority here is very precarious…. Hence anarchy, worse than the despotism encountered elsewhere, has devastated this part of the country, giving this province a worse state of poverty than that of the rest of Syria. (1787: 497–498)

Volney later expounds on these same ideas in an essay that examines the political consequences of the 1787 Russo-Turkish war (1788): c) Plundered land and autocratic rule. Asiatic despotism was modeled after the Tartars for whom despotism was of a military nature, inherited from Genghis Khan’s politics of conquest and adopted by the Turks to wrestle Syria and Egypt from the control of the Mamluks. Laws governing military conquests were nonexistent or negligible at best and were exclusively founded on the right to plunder the territory held by the conqueror. Merciless war was justified by the tribal chief’s disregard for abuse, by his one-sided tyranny that only led to one despot succeeding another (“the territory will change tyrants without ever changing its tyranny,” observed Volney in Les Ruines. (1822: 239)

This excerpt from Voyage explains military despotism:

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Through the various characteristics mentioned, readers may judge that the Turkish government in Syria is strictly military despotism, that is, the population submits to the will of an armed faction of men who have all they want at their disposal…. When the Ottomans, under Salim, took Syria from the Mamluks, they viewed it as a spoil won from a defeated enemy, as property obtained through war. This right, among uncivilized peoples, allows the conquered to belong completely to the conqueror, that is, they become his slaves, their lives and properties belong to him. The conqueror becomes their master who has all at his disposal, owing to no one, and answering to no one…. Such was also the right of the Romans, the Greeks, and all those criminal societies that deemed themselves conquerors. It was also the right of the Tartars, ancestors of the Turks. (1787: 535) d) Ignorance, deception, and greed. Ignorance is the fertile ground where despotism and tyranny thrive. People’s ignorance is reinforced and perpetuated by theocracies and their outrageous deceits. In the Asiatic and Muslim world, ignorance is synonymous with Mohammad’s name and the Koran. The Ottoman government never bothered to build a modern state that could serve as a possible mediator between Christian and Arab communities. It bothered itself even less in educating its subjects. One can then deduce that Turkish decadence had its roots in the moral decline of Islam. The five precepts of a faithful Muslim may be summarized thus: one must believe in only one god, Allah, and his prophet, Mohammad; one must pray five times daily facing toward Mecca; one must fast from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan; one must make the pilgrimage to Ka’ba; and one must give alms to widows and orphans.

We have here the profound source from which all sciences and all political and moral knowledge must flow. Solon, Numa, Lycurgus, all legislators in antiquity, vainly exhausted their geniuses by trying to clarify the relation between man and society as well as the rights and obligations of each class and individual. Mohammad, perhaps more capable and profound, resolved it all in five precepts. It must be said that of all those who ever dared to provide men with laws and principles, none was ever so ignorant as Mohammad. Among all absurd compositions derived from the human mind, none is more despicable than his book. What has been occurring in Asia for the last twelve hundred years is enough to prove it because … it would be easy to show that government turbulence and people’s ignorance in this part of the world are the immediate result of the Koran and its moral instruction. (Volney 1787: 553–554. Emphasis ours.)

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Despotism’s true ally, its principal scourge, is the ignorance in which its people live and the Koran, which is at heart of its ideological control. In addition. Volney does not ignore the despotic devastation caused by Christianity when, for example, he includes the cruelty of the Spanish monks at Jaffa and Ram Allah when encountering those who do not kindly accept religious control. In Voyage, Volney describes the following: The Spanish monks at Jaffa and Ram Allah treat those Christians who depend on them with a rigidity that is by no means evangelical. They excommunicate them during mass, apostrophizing them by name. They intimidate certain women by threatening to spread rumors about them. They organize public penance, candles in hand. They hand over to the Turks the obstinate ones and refuse to help their families; in short, they disrespect the country’s cultural decorum by visiting the wives of Christians when they are at home alone under the pretext of confession—when alone, these married women may only be visited by close family members. Turks could not conceive of such freedom without inducing negative repercussions. Christians, who follow this Turkish policy, whisper and mutter about it, but do not dare to speak out against it. Experience has taught them that the masses’ anger can have dreadful consequences. (Volney 1787: 495)

Ignorance and greed are the source of evil, the reason for human decadence, and pose an urgent need for total reform. It is on these grounds that despotism was perpetuated, and the most deviant tyrannies sustained without interruption. Religion constitutes the principal tool in separating people; it employs fantasy in its discourse rather than adhering to natural laws, which are the only ones that can save humanity from its stultification. In Les Ruines, Volney stresses: Through ignorance and greed, man takes up arms against his fellow man, family against family, tribe against tribe, as the land turns into a bloody setting of conflict and lawlessness. Through ignorance and greed, a secret war, fermenting within each state, has divided citizens from fellow citizens; it has created a society of oppressors and of the oppressed, of masters and slaves, village leaders, now insolent and daring, have placed, as the outcome of their shared passions, shackles on those around them. It is their mercenary greed that created political despotism. (1822: 204)

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These wicked passions have caused the collapse of empires. Volney then asks, “Children of Nature! Until when will you follow the path of ignorance?” (1822: 230). The solution discerned by Volney was plagued by as much pessimism as it was by despair. For him, the only guarantee to salvation was educating the people according to natural laws. The work of enlightening, of demystifying the deception that has confused men for millennia, had just begun to dawn on some enlightened men who, “for three hundred years now,” have struggled for the abolition of ignorance and the eradication of despotism. In Volney’s words: In a nation, when ideas are transmitted, entire classes of people will become educated and knowledge of science will be common. All men will know the principles of individual and public happiness. They will understand their relationships, their rights, and duties within a social framework. They will learn to fend off illusions of greed and will be able to conceive of morality as a physical science apparently composed of complicated elements made simple and invariable by their very nature because they comprise the same elements as those of human nature. (Volney 1822: 243–244)

Consideration on the European Orientalist Model The enlightened model of eighteenth-century Orientalist despotism, as defined by Boulanger and Volney in accordance with Rationalist criteria, did not have immediate resonance within the French Romantic movement, to which Chateaubriand, Hugo, Lamartine, Nerval, et al., belonged (Moussa 1995). Indeed, these writers appropriated certain elements of the Orientalist discourse in their simplest aspect, of which “despotism” was one, but without giving credit to any of the Rationalist arguments that were largely at the basis of their negative judgment. European Romanticists reacted to the mindset of Rationalism and the Enlightenment, which they considered cold and soulless, by rejecting Volney’s radical atheism that discarded religion as an enormous mystical deception. The Romantic generation, struck by Chateaubriand’s conversion to Catholicism, made them reevaluate the Christian faith and strongly justified it. For the Romanticists, a trip to the Levant implied absolutely no scientific mission. On the contrary, their goal in traveling was to research the profound origins of religious belief. It is not by chance

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that Chateaubriand titled one of his famous books, Génie du christianisme [“Christianity’s Genius ”]. This “génie” is intended to be a replica of the “génie” (Reason) of Les Ruines. It is known that during his exile in London, Chateaubriand had the opportunity of corroborating Volney’s great influence and of reading his work. He even quoted him in his Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem [“Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem”]. Yet, the views of the two writers were in complete disagreement. This Rationalist/Spiritualist ambivalence of the European or French voyage to the East is also found among South American epigones and will be developed and analyzed next. However, il male era ormai fatto, and one of the rare elements of continuity between Volney and the Romanticists lay in the characterization of despotism as a value applied to the entire East, to such a degree that Westerners made it a distinctive feature of that culture. Beyond the criticism then on Volney’s Eurocentric vision that, just as Said has noted, was to be the imminent formulation of a colonial and imperial policy—differences between the Enlightenment generation and that of the Romanticists are determining factors and should not to be ignored. Whereas, in Voyage and Les Ruines, despotism clearly appears to be connected to many Asiatic cultures, particularly to Islam, Volney was clever enough to realize that the object of much of his criticism of the East was also directed at the West under the diverse formulations of absolute despotism and enlightened absolutism. Proof of this abounds in both of his books. Volney was a radical atheist. It is therefore logical to suppose that it was a priority in his oriental chronicles to detail the types of despotism rooted in the dominant local religions. But, in his other political or philosophical writings, like La loi naturelle [“Natural Law”] and Leçons d’histoire [“History Lessons ”], it was clear to him that he likewise condemned the theological mystification of European Christianity with no less radicalism and enthusiasm than he exhibited in his written criticisms of the Islamic religion. His characterization of despotism must be placed within this philosophical configuration. It is not inconsequential that every time the words “despot” and “despotism” appear in Voyage, they are never preceded by the qualifying adjective “Eastern.” This clue proves to what extent Volney was aware that “despotism” has no physical borders and that it was not limited to the Levant or Asia. Shortly after the passage quoted concerning despotism, he bitterly said: “It is true that in a few European countries, reason has begun to slowly surface; however, among some, the lights have not come on” (Volney 1822: 248).

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Chateaubriand and a faction of the French Romantic movement, on the other hand, were evolving within a context completely against the Enlightenment and distanced themselves from the utilitarian-trip model advocated by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.17 For the Romanticists, it was important to renew their ties with tradition at a time when the West was rapidly changing. Chateaubriand witnessed the ravages that an excessive revolutionary zeal could incite. The decrease of the revolutionary terror somehow became an indication of a path not to be followed. In this sense, the Revolution was the legitimate, though undesired, daughter of the Enlightenment. The French Romanticists possessed a strong nostalgic penchant for yesteryear. Nostalgia and tradition developed two exploratory forms: an approach to Hellenic Classicism, and the return to the common values contained in Western European Christianity. Chateaubriand represents both Romantic aspirations differently. The important differences existing between French Romanticism and the subsequent River Plate Romanticism will be addressed next.

References Águila, Yves (1993). “La Nueva España entre Antiguo Régimen y Liberalismo,” in Joseph Perez & Armando Alberola (eds.). España y América entre la ilustración y el liberalismo. Alicante-Madrid: Instituto de Cultura Juan GilAlbert/Casa de Velázquez, 91–107. Amat de Palou y Pont, Félix (1834). Meditaciones de… Félix Amat y Pont, en un supuesto Congreso celebrado entre las ruinas de dicha ciudad… con que se refuta… la impía fabula que forjó Volney… obra póstuma. Madrid: Imprenta Fuentenebro. App, Urs (2010). The Birth of Orientalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Boulanger, Nicolas-Antoine (1768–1777). L’antiquité dévoilée par ses usages, ou examen critique des principales opinions, cérémonies et institutions religieuses et politiques des différents peuples de la terre. Amsterdam: M. M. Rey, 2 vol. in 3 t. (LX, 355 p.) ([II], 387 p.) (363 p.).

17 Said affirmed that “Volney and Napoleon were searching for a scientific reality. The French pilgrims of the nineteenth century were certainly searching for an exotic reality, but also a specially seductive one… beginning with Chateaubriand, they would find a scene in the East compatible with their vision of myths, their obsessions, and their personal demands” (Said 1980: 197).

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Boulanger, Nicolas-Antoine (1988). Recherches sur l’origine du despotisme oriental [1761]. Besançon: Annales Littéraires de l’Université de Besançon. Critical edition by Paul Sardin. Caro, Miguel Antonio (1978). “Bastiat y Bentham” [1872], in José Luis R omero (ed.). El pensamiento conservador (1815–1898). Caracas: Ayacucho, 59–65. Cassas, Louis-François (1796). Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phœnicie, de la Palestine et de la Basse-Egypte. Paris: Imprimerie de la République, An VII, 3 vols., in-folio. Chinard, Gilbert (1923). Volney et l’Amérique: d’après des documents inédits et sa correspondance avec Jefferson. Paris: Presses Universitaires. Ferrater Mora, José (2001). Diccionario de filosofía. Barcelona: Ariel, 3° ed. Gasquet, Axel (1999). “De la Mirada imperial a la errancia moderna,” in Quimera, n° 176, Barcelona, January, 22–28. Gasquet, Axel (2006). “Présentation,” in Juan Bautista Alberdi. Écrits satiriques et de critique littéraire. Clermont and Ferrand: University Press Blaise Pascal, series Textes, 9–71. Gaulmier, Jean (1980a). “Introduction,” in Constantin-François de Volney. La loi naturelle, suivie de Leçons d’histoire. Paris: Garnier. Gaulmier, Jean (1980b). L’idéologue Volney (1757 –1820). Contribution à l’Histoire de l’Orientalisme en France. Geneva and Paris: Slatkine, 2° ed. Hugo, Victor (1820). “Variétés, Nouvelles littéraires, etc.,” in Le Conservateur Littéraire, vol. II-13, Paris, June 3, 116–117. Laurens, Henry (1987). Les origines intellectuelles de l’expédition d’Égypte, L’Orientalisme Islamisant en France (1698–1798). Istanbul and Paris: Éditions Isis. Montesquieu [Charles-Louis de Secondat] (1734). Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence. Amsterdam: Pieter Mortier. Montesquieu, [Charles-Louis de Secondat] (1997). Cartas persas [1721]. Madrid: Alba. Moussa, Sarga (1995). La relation orientale. Enquête sur la communication dans les récits de voyage en Orient (1811–1861). Paris: Klincksieck. Noirlieu, (Abbé) Martin de (1823). “Réfutation abrégée du livre de Volney intutilé Les ruines ou méditation sur les révolution des empires,” Études d’un jeune philosophe chrétien, ou moceaux extraits des plus célébres défenseurs de la réligion; suivies d’une réfutation abrégée du livres des ruines de Volney. Paris: De Méquignon Junior Libraire, 311–429. Nolin, Olivier (1998). Bonaparte et les savants français en Égypte: 1798–1801. Paris: Mille et une nuits, series Souvenirs. Said, Edward W. (1980). Orientalisme: l’Orient crée par l’Occident. Paris: Seuil. Foreword by Tzvetan Todorov.

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Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin (1960). Portraits littéraires. Paris: Gallimard, series La Pléiade. Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de (1833). “Lettre sur les voyageurs et les voyages,” in Voyage à l’Île de France [1773], in Œuvres. Paris: Lefevre, 106–109. Volney, C.-F. (1787). “Préface,” Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, pendant les années 1783, 1784, 1785. Paris: Volland et Desenne. Volney, C.-F. (1788). Considérations actuelles sur la guerre des Turcs. London: s/n. Volney, C.-F. (1803). Tableau du climat et du sol des Etats-Unis, vol. I–II. Paris: Courcier. Volney, C.-F. (1809). Chronologie d’Hérodote. Paris: Courcier. Volney, C.-F. (1822). Les Ruines ou Méditations sur les révolutions des empires [Les ruines de Palmyre]. Paris: Bossange frères, 10º ed. Volney, C.-F. (1989). “Discours politiques,” Œuvres, vol. I. Paris: Fayard, 143– 161. Edition of Henry Deneys. Voltaire (2007). Textes sur l’Orient, t. II, La Chine, l’Inde, Le Japón, la Perse. Paris: Coda. Edition by Faruk Belici. Wood, Robert (1753). The Ruins of Palmyra (illustrated). London: A. Millar. Foreword by R. Wood. Wood, Robert (1757a). The Ruins of Palmyra. An Account of a Journey to Palmyra, Otherwise Tedmor in the Desert. With a Description of the Remains of the Ruins of That Celebrated City (Chronicle), in Henry Maundrell. A Compendium of a Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem… The Travels of Dr. Thomas Shaw, F.R.S. and A Journey to Palmyra (by Robert Wood). Dublin: J. Smith, 255–306. [French edition: Robert Wood (1819). Les Ruines de Palmyre, autrement dite Tedmor au désert. Paris: s/n. Translated by JeanJacques Barthélemy.] Wood, Robert (1757b). The Ruins of Balbec, Otherwise Heliopolis, in Coelosyria L.P. (illustrated). London: s/n.

PART II

The East in the Pampas

CHAPTER 3

The Romantic Importation of Esteban Echeverría and Juan Bautista Alberdi

The homeland does not demand blind idolatry, but a rational cult instead. Esteban Echeverría, “Primera Lectura” at The Literary Parlor (1837)

Sometimes a South American will write verses about the Italian moon, at the light of the South American moon … and while relaxing in the forest of Paraná, he dreams of the wonders of the Orient. Juan B. Alberdi, Veinte días en Génova [1846] (1928)

The Genesis of Romanticism and Ibero-American Orientalism The first major difference between South American and European Romanticism is their chronology: the former came about excessively late in relation to the latter. Once independence from Spain had been achieved and amid the political turbulence that followed it, Romanticism arrived at the River Plate region. Critics agree that it was Esteban Echeverría who there initiated this movement. In fact, the young poet had lived in Europe for five years (1825–1830), mainly in Paris, where he was imbued with Romantic literature. The popularity of European Romanticism, having reached its peak in the early nineteenth century, began thereafter to decline. By 1830, it had reached a crisis point and, by the time of the

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1848 revolution, it had all but disappeared. German Romanticists, Goethe and the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) group, were outdated and the Romantic models were viewed as having hit their mark.1 Several figures of heroic Romanticism had died as, for example, Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), E.T.A. Hoffman (1776–1822), Lord Byron (1788–1824) and Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), Those still alive were in declining health, like Goethe (1749–1831). Very little is known about Esteban Echeverría’s sojourn in Europe because he and his friends who compiled his biography after his 1851 death left little information about his activities during this period. It is known, thanks to Juan María Gutiérrez who was part of that generation, that Echeverría left some notebooks in which he wrote about his readings of Leroux, Cousin, Guizot, Chateaubriand, Pascal, Montesquieu, Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, Hugo, and Byron (Gutiérrez 1870–1874). Not only had Echeverría pleasurably read Chateaubriand but, to a certain extent, he was also his countermodel because, after a transatlantic voyage, Echeverría followed Chateaubriand’s itinerary in the opposite direction [Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem], as he traveled from the “desert” to “civilization” (Altamirano and Sarlo 1997: 17). Here another essential point is revealed, one that countered Old World Romanticists from those of the New World. Europeans had to leave their continent to find the exoticism of the East. In contrast, Echeverría arrived in Europe from the West, from the “desert” of the Pampas.2 This situation is typical of what we have described as a New World frontier culture. Indeed, the future Argentinean nation had been perceived, since the colonial period, as the West’s rearguard even though it was still inhabited by indigenous people—the term “West’s rearguard” is how European Madrid viewed its colony. However, viewed from the River Plate region, this frontier was a remote outpost of Western civilization. Chateaubriand traveled to undergo exotic experiences; Echeverría traveled to find civilization. Echeverría’s European trip was in part a colonial voyage because, though the country formally declared its independence in 1816,3 Madrid had been replaced by other European powers capable of radiating cultural 1 We are thinking, for example, of the classic works of Goethe about tragic love (Goethe, Die Wahlverwandschaften, 1809). 2 Throughout the nineteenth century in Argentina, “the Pampas” was referred to as “the desert.” 3 Spain officially recognized Argentina’s independence on 7 July 1859.

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genius, such as France and Great Britain. The concern of River Plate Romanticists like Echeverría was forcibly different from that of the Europeans. Witnessing barbaric exoticism in South America did not require extensive travel; the desert was within a relatively short distance from the city of Whites. In addition, Chateaubriand had no need to imagine or construct France, neither as a nation nor as an institutional entity. However, Echeverría and his generation had to build, culturally and politically, an emerging nation and the conceptual tools at their disposal were alien.4 Therefore, they faced significantly different challenges. In South America, this involved a process of self- invention that required a much different approach than just a recreation of the European Romantic model. Mary Louise Pratt writes: It is not necessary to identify with the interests and prejudices of the elite Creoles to recognize the challenges the South Americans faced at the time of decolonization. Establishing independence was not a known process. They were improvising as writers were writing. … The initial period of decolonization implied embarking on a future that would transcend the experience of European societies (still the case today). (1997: 307)

This process of self-invention was extremely delicate for Argentines because it implied a Creole commitment to a liberal project that, while simultaneously curtailing European colonial greed (admired in some aspects), it had to answer the cries for equality stemming from the country’s own lower classes (indigenous people, mestizos, mulattoes, and Blacks). Romanticism and Orientalism were inserted into a project of political and social experimentation. Consequently, they had to be reconsidered and assimilated in a new context that implied major changes regarding European models. We have seen how divergent visions of Orientalism, both conceived in France—Volney’s Rationalism and Chateaubriand’s Spiritualism—were two perspectives that, although having some commonality, involved a very different intellectual expansion concerning the Levant. However, several determining factors, which

4 Echeverría would later say: “All the knowledge and enlightenment that we possess does not belong to us. It is a sort of intellectual capital acquired thanks to foreign generosity, not by our sweat and toil” (Echeverría 1977: 171).

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caused the divergence between Rationalists and Spiritualists in Europe, would be overlooked or judged superficial in the River Plate region. The younger generation’s political and cultural elite, initially embodied by Echeverría, would indiscriminately borrow elements from both of divergent tendencies, aiming to develop their own version of Orientalism. This undertaking was not a mere whim; on the contrary, it was a necessity whose limitations were established by the country’s reality. From the outset, Echeverría and the Generation of 1837 were perfectly aware of the disadvantages they were facing yet, simultaneously, they had no intention of cutting corners in hopes of rapidly achieving their goal. Echeverría stated: “We cannot entertain the quixotic pretension of now having the philosophical, political, and artistic resources of civilized Europe. Our society, in its infancy, is to reach that level.” (Echeverría in Weimberg 1977: 176). Theirs was truly a research experiment that was looking to find its own way rather than following a foreign one. The young Juan Bautista Alberdi earlier pointed out this fact: To follow one’s own development path leads to civilization, though imperfect as it may be, it is better than to follow those of foreign civilizations regardless of how advanced. Each nation must be aware of its time and place. Each nation must be itself for being typical and natural is never reproachable. Despite its helplessness, infancy is never laughable. Macho pretensions are what makes it ridiculous. Even perfection is ridiculous when it is out of place or, better said, nothing is more perfect than opportunity. … We have been charged with achieving our own proper and national civilization. (1977: 140)

In this quotation. we can observe implicit references to Volney’s La loi naturelle in which he outlines natural development paths that society should follow. Romanticism and Orientalism had to adapt to the local situation’s opportunities. Though we have included some River Plate Romantic characteristics already, we summarize them thus: (a) Young Argentine Romanticists fervently embraced the cause of modernity, the legacy of the French Enlightenment. Their European peers were nostalgic of the past and claimed a golden premodern age, definitively oriented toward traditional values.

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(b) Modernity coincided with political and economic liberalism, which is why it was resolutely associated with the establishment of a capitalist, bourgeois society. Europeans stood by the delusions of the past and criticized (through fear) the values of a rising bourgeois society. (c) Spiritual dimension did not imply a return to Christian sources or religion. Quite to the contrary, the Argentinean Romanticists were either atheists or agnostics who were fighting for a society respectful of secular traditions, even though they did not radically exclude all religious belief. In Europe, faith and religion were key points of an antimodern reaction. (d) The Argentinean Romanticists were solid supporters of the new republic. Their European peers questioned or yearned for past different prerevolutionary regimes (Gasquet 2006: 9–71). These differences between Argentinean and European Romanticism are so important that one could legitimately ask what were the common denominators between the two groups? First, both groups manifested a nonconformist, dissident stance. In Europe, the group rejected modernity and eighteenth-century enlightenment while, in South America, the group rejected the colonial model inherited from Spain. Secondly, the two groups were motivated by a sort of youth rebellion and by demanding total artistic freedom that emphasized total artistic freedom. For historical reasons, it was obvious that the first River Plate Romanticists, born after the country’s independence, could not advocate for an unconditional return to the institutional colonial past. They also could not claim to adhere to Christian spiritual values attributed to the onerous legacy of Spanish Catholicism or dream of a golden age that they never had. Indeed, although this seems excessively deterministic, this generation of South Americans Romanticists had no option but to resolutely embrace the future because it was all they could someday claim as their own. Their dual identity as White Ibero-Americans required them to accept general Western European cultural values, while simultaneously addressing the limitations normally imposed on individuals living in a frontier society. Thus, despite the enormous differences between the two groups, there was a vital need for the first River Plate Romanticists to accept the European cultural legacy in its most positive and innovative aspects, namely, those of rationalist and liberal modernity.

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In turn, Orientalism was the ideological instrument that permitted the Romanticists to conceptualize (territorialize) the desert inhabited by indigenous tribes, incorporating it into the new nation’s sovereign geography, even before this space was taken over by White settlers who followed the military campaigns to exterminate native people. By adapting the European Orientalist model locally, they were able to conceive an intellectual appropriation of space. It was how to give a name to that which was nameless and possessing that which was still unpossessed, that is, to claim ownership of what belonged to others by making it an essential part of their vital physical space. According to Said, European Orientalism helped to improve and develop lands taken through colonial conquest— as France did in Egypt and Algeria—or to secure possessions already held—as Great Britain did in India—by adhering to a plan whose origins were scientific and intended to broaden world knowledge. Argentinean Orientalism was likewise a plan to symbolically appropriate the Other, not through a plan of foreign conquest, but rather through one that aimed, culturally and materially, toward a domestic occupation of a vital space that would provide wealth to a new nation. We will later examine the elements that enabled the development of literary and conceptual Orientalism, a development that may be observed in the works of three towering figures of the Generation of 1837 : Echeverría, Alberdi, and Sarmiento. Among these three founders of Argentinean letters, Sarmiento is unique for having had the opportunity to visit Algeria. Although Alberdi lived for more than twenty years in France and his projects led him to almost all countries in the Old World, neither he nor Echeverría ever traveled to the Levant or to the Maghreb. Within the total framework of his European sojourn (1845–1848), Sarmiento’s Middle Eastern side trip took place during his European tour (1846–1848), when he decided to travel to Argelia between the end of 1846 and January 1847. The motivation for the trip remains a mystery, but we must note that it took place a year and a half after the Chilean publication of his Facundo, in which Sarmiento characterizes “civilization” and “barbarism” under the umbrella of Orientalist literature. After Facundo and his Voyage missives, Sarmiento would have few chances to write in reference to the space and cultures of the East.

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Esteban Echeverría (1805–1850) Echeverría is a towering figure in the literary history of Argentina because he laid the foundations of a national aesthetic program whose center of gravity was the Pampas desert. He, having been for many years (before and after the Salón Literario) the noted spokesman of the Unitarios (opponents of the dictator Manuel de Rosas (1832–1852)), was also the indefatigable promoter of liberal social thought and left a number of literary writings (La cautiva “The Captive” and El matadero “The Slaughterhouse”). These works initiated a series of classic topics in Argentinean literature. When Echeverría returned from France in 1830, his first poem, Elvira o la Novia del Plata (1832), was published shortly after El moro expósito (“The Forlorn Moor” [1831]) by the Duke of Rivas, the first Spanish Romantic writer (Hatamleh 1972: 203–215). The timing of these two pieces indicates that Spanish Romanticism and that of the River Plate region were practically simultaneous movements—although mutual influences existed, these were rather fortuitous because the main and almost sole Romantic influence on South American writers came from France, Great Britain, and Germany. In 1834, Echeverría published Los consuelos (“Consolations” 1944: 85–228), in which one first notices traces of Byron in the characterization of “the pilgrim and the outlaw” (Barcía 2004: 13), along with poems of a clear Orientalist bent. The most prominent of all was La Historia, written in Paris (August 1827). Here Echeverría manifests a careful reading of Volney’s Les Ruines in this composition and infuses it with an undeniably Romantic and pessimistic spirit. In the poem, the poet questions that past during which modern nations arose and, in a somber tone, concludes that history repeats itself without humanity ever learning from it. He asks himself: Where is Egypt and the knowledge and the name Which were, throughout the ages, marvelous, And history, with a monotone echo, Transmits incessantly from century to century? They shined for an instant And became engulfed in the chaos of time ………………………………… In its days of splendor, Asia included Empires that dismayed all on Earth, And there, ignoble adulation found

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In assassins with crowns, heroes, And there, Romans trembled Before the prominence of a sole monarch. But what became of strength and power Which stupefied the bewildered universe? Among pomp and pleasures, all perishes, And even the soul’s vigor—now only slaves And blandness do I see Among the ruins, as a great example. (Echeverría 1944: 129, 130–131)

Echeverría adopted the same strategy as Volney by considering the problem of the decadence of Asia, ancient cradle of civilization that then lay in ruins. But he distanced himself from Volney’s ideology when it came to a rational optimism that so lifted the latter’s spirits: Echeverría was a pessimist and everywhere, even in the West, he could only see the outrageous outcome of human fanaticism. In the following verses, we can also observe a personal and critical reading of the Chateaubriand’s Eastern “pilgrimage”: In the Orient, they are unleashed in fury, Rage, ambition, and fanaticism, Throngs of Christian legions, The Cross Blazon, emblem of omnipotence Treacherously clamors, As the harsh steel strikes down.

Blood badgers mountains, From ruins and corpses, they advance Sowing, like the angel of death, Desolation everywhere, as they reap, To pay holy homage, From the God they scorn, blood and tears.

The faithful of Islam leap, filled With fanatic ardor, as they dam The impetuous torrent that threatens Of Mohammed devastate the august temple; And longing for revenge, Incite the Christian to slaughter. (Echeverría 1944: 133–134)

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At poem’s end, Echeverría inverts Volney’s natural laws: reason is not the people’s fate (doomed to committing the same errors), but their lost (and irretrievable) past just before their fall into the most serious religious fanaticism: For centuries long, two furies, Fanaticism and force, enslaved the land And buried in the mire of evil Reason was uncovered, whence man Had gone astray From the moment of its return. ……………...…………… Pride unable to help, Neither painful weeping nor moans Silences the pallid conscience, The man who startled by the vile mire lifts his head, And sees the unappealable abyss before him. (Echeverría 1944: 135)

In 1837, Echeverría distinguished himself with his work, Rimas (“Verses”), which asserted his Romantic experimentation in the aesthetic domain. This is revealed in his well-known “Advertencia” (“Warning”) in La cautiva, an epic poem included in volume II. He wrote: “The desert is ours, it is our most important legacy, and we must extract from it not only its wealth for our greatness and well-being, but also its poetry for our moral delight and the development of our national literature” (Borges and Henríquez Ureña 1998: 60). Unlike during the colonial period, the desert no longer represented a sterile entity. It is noteworthy that Echeverría’s interest in the desert was not only aesthetic, but also material as a source of wealth. It is often forgotten that the poet spent a long time studying Sismondi’s political economics in Paris and that his Romanticism had strong Rationalists inclinations, like Lamartine in his Méditations poétiques (Altamirano and Sarlo 1997: 22). Moreover, his family owned a farm named “Los Talas,” north of Buenos Aires, near Luján. His social and economic musings are detailed in many passages of his lectures at the Salón Literario as well as in his Ojeada retrospectiva (“A Retrospective Look”) (Echeverría in Weimberg 1977: 159–184; 1979: 89–156). La cautiva, comprised of nine parts and an epilogue, can best be summarized by Echeverría’s words: “the author’s principal objective has been to depict certain physical traits of the desert and, to avoid reducing

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his work to mere description, he intermingles two ideal beings, two souls united by love and misfortune, in the vast solitude of the Pampas” (Barcía 2004: 14–15). These ideal individuals are María and Brian, two White settlers on a land devastated by Indian raids. María, a Creole, and Brian, an Englishman, are symbolic of capitalist progress, that is, they are trying to make the desert bear fruit while introducing civilization to phase out its barbarism. This is a classic theme in frontier literature, that of settlers being exposed to all types of Indian atrocities: Brian is captured and tied to a stake in the blistering heat and María is taken away as a captive. In this poem, Indians are nothing like the pure, exotic Natchez, as depicted by Chateaubriand in Atala (1801), a novel inspired by his 1791 visit to the United States, as well as by the memoirs of Thomas Cook and Bougainville, who coined the term “noble savage” to describe the moral character of South Pacific natives. La cautiva, moreover, stands counter to Atala. Whereas Chateaubriand depicts the unfortunate love affair of the Indian Chactas with Atala, (Christian-educated Indian maiden promised to the Virgin Mary by her mother), Echeverría relates the tragic experiences of a couple of White settlers (Creole and European). Atala could have only been written with the passionate pen of a European in quest of exoticism. The same story, written by a Creole author in Latin America, would have been met with derision by the Buenos Aires elite. Orientalist references in La cautiva are not at first obvious. On the surface, it seems to address the captivity theme so dear to frontier literature, one that includes aesthetic effects uniquely relevant to Argentinean literary criticism. To stop there, however, would mean settling for a cursory reading. Many clues link this poem to the plethora of European Orientalist literature. As it turns out, in Echeverría, this approach is not immediately obvious because he included that literature’s traits indirectly. Let us now analyze two characteristics that attest to the poem’s Orientalist intertextual system. (a) The Epigraphs Each of the nine parts of the poem, as well as its epilogue, have distinctive epigraphs. The introduction’s epigraph is by Byron, then those that, respectively, follow are by Hugo, Dante, Calderón, Manzoni, Dante, Moreto, Lamartine, Antar, Petrarch, and Lamartine. Each epigraph appears in its original language, except Antar’s, which Echeverría quoted

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in French as borrowed from Lamartine. There is no mention of their sources. These epigraphs reveal Echeverría’s readings and his observations on several Romantic authors such as Byron, Hugo, Manzoni, and Lamartine as well as those on Dante and Petrarch. Spanish playwrights Calderón de la Barca and Agustín Moreto y Cavana, however, are excluded. Byron’s epigraph, the first one, establishes the poem’s general tone poem, which focuses more on the female character, María, than on the desert: Female hearts are such a genial soil For kinder feeling, whatsoever their nation They naturally offer the “wine and oil” Samaritans in every situation. (Byron 1986: 249)

The epigraph is from stanza CXX of Song V from Don Juan (1819– 1824), a poem that includes seventeen songs and that may be considered his most polished work. Echeverría’s autobiographical testimony mentions his reading of Byron during his stay in Paris and his astonishment at the dramatic strength of Don Juan (Echeverría 1944: 15). Apart from the opportunity presented, the reference is apparently superficial; it must be pointed out that the action in Song V takes place within an Eastern setting, Constantinople, and is carried out by characters typical of Levant exoticism. Through a close reading of the work, one can surmise that Echeverría borrowed the name María from Byron’s hero who presents Song V, stanza III that introduces us to the city, as seen from the Bosporus, with its Hagia Sophia dome. Constantinople symbolizes European/Asian brotherhood, where East meets West, as observed in stanza III: The European with the Asian shore Sprinkled with palaces, the ocean stream Here and there studded with a seventy-four Sophia’s cupola with golden gleam The cypress groves, Olympus high and hoar, The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream Far less describe, present the very view Which charmed the charming Mary Montagu. (Byron 1986: 219)

This stanza IV verse states:

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I have a passion for the name of Mary. (Byron 1986: 220)

This name undoubtedly refers to Mary Montagu (1689–1762), daughter of the Duke of Kingston, and a bold traveler in Asia and Africa at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Montagu wrote several famous letters to her sister from Turkey, where her husband, Edward Worley Montagu, was ambassador in the court of the Turkish Sultan. Keeping in mind that Byron declared his predilection for the name “Mary” and that he referred to Constantinople as “[the city] which charmed the charming Mary Montagu,” we then might conjecture that the apparently insignificant quotation in La cautiva’s Introduction was part of a Romantic imaginary completely won over by exotic settings that mostly included Orientalist themes. Other epigraphs are equally worthy of analysis because they reveal the thick intertextuality in plot development that the Romantic generation conceived around Orientalism. Victor Hugo’s quote, “They are going. The space is wide,” is the header of Part I, “El Desierto.” Trivial in appearance, this verse is found in the children’s poem “Mazeppa” that Hugo published in Les Orientales (1829); it pays homage to Byron’s eponymous epic poem. Likewise, Byron’s “Mazeppa” (1819) was inspired by Voltaire’s Histoire de Charles XII, roi de Suède [“History of Charles XII, King of Sweden”], which relates the story of the Polish Mazeppa who, victorious in the battle of the Cossacks against the Tartars, was named Prince of Ukraine by the Tsar (Voltaire 1987: 196). La cautiva’s seventh part and epilogue contain epigraphs by Lamartine. The source of the former, “Look … already the torrent flame is being deployed,” has not been be determined. The epilogue’s epigraph “Sweet light are you their soul?” is taken from the poem Le soir [“The Evening”] featured in Méditations poétiques [“Poetic Musings ”] (1820). A close reading of Lamartine’s first book takes us down a different path: Echeverría’s first book, Elvira o la novia del Plata (“Elvira or the Plate’s Bride”) (1832), was probably inspired by Meditations poétiques. The third poem in the volume is “A Elvire”; Echeverría develops a similar topic, with the same melancholic, anguished tone in Elvira. Lamartine’s second poem, “L’homme,” is devoted to Lord Byron and, with characteristic pompous tenor, he praises the immortality of the exiled poet. Again, this confirms the abundance of quotations and mutual dedications typical of Romanticists who Echeverría imitated.

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The eighth part features a quotation from Antar as epigraph: “Warriors and couriers themselves /Are there to attest my victory, /I must rename myself after my sword …” (Echeverría 1979). Here Echeverría’s publisher shows us the Orientalist bent with a note: “Antar, a sixth-century Arab warrior and poet, was lauded as an epic hero in the Romance of Antar. Echeverría took this excerpt from among the quotations included in texts by this author, quotations that Lamartine translated in Voyage en Orient ” [“Travel in the Orient ”] (Lamartine 2000: 410). This indicates that after returning to the River Plate region, Echeverría continued reading contemporaneous French literature and kept himself well informed. Voyage en Orient dates from 1835; Echeverría included La cautiva in his 1837 Rimas. Lamartine’s narrative represents an important change in the conception of his trip, as had been previously set by Chateaubriand. Lamartine there proposes a fusion between East and West, one that is far from the Christian exaltation contained in Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, in which the Levant is negatively presented as simply an exotic backdrop to boost Chateaubriand’s narcissistic ego. (b) Captivity This topic is not the only important one found in nineteenth-century Argentinean literature; it also belongs to the traditional themes of South American frontier literature. Nevertheless, the notion of captivity has a long history and can be traced to the travel narratives of sixteenth-century explorers as well as to the chronicles of the New World conquest. This topic gave rise to a profusion of survival narratives whose first example was Los Naufragios [“Shipwrecks ”] (1542), the noted chronicle by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. In these works, individuals who, having spent many years living in captivity among the savages of the intercultural “zones of contact,” relate their unusual experiences (frequently imagined) to the European public after their return to civilization. However, what remains specific in La Cautiva is Echeverría’s presenting the opposite of what takes place in classic captivity narratives: his protagonist does not safely return, but instead dies after failing his colonial undertaking. Pratt observes: “Narrated in the third person rather than in the first, he recounts the other story, that of those who did not survive the clashes and who were unsuccessful in creating a White social order” (Pratt 1997: 321).

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Yet, we must here stress the metaphorical sense that the figure of the captive develops within the frontier culture. According to Cristina Iglesia, “The captive is the metaphor of a frontier that is mobile, but one that never truly disappears” (1985: 80). Moreover, here the captive is female: la cautiva. Females were frequently considered spoils of war; male prisoners, on the other hand, were usually executed immediately. “The literary image of the female captive will also serve as a symbol of the inversion of the appropriation” of Indian territories (1985: 82). However, the subject of captivity is also exploited in Orientalist literature that, in its own way, is also a frontier literature: the woman captive in a harem (Moussa 1995: 175–198). This Orientalist motif likewise reverberates in Spanish Romantic literature that, though with less impact than that of the French, had genuine connections to the Argentinean movement. The Generation of 1837 was most influenced by its liberal and Romantic Spanish peers, particularly by Larra, Zorrilla, and Espronceda. Félix Weimberg questions the extent of this generation’s alleged anti-Spanish sentiment: Were they truly as stubborn and anti-Spanish as is generally maintained? Many proofs invalidate this thesis. Let us keep in mind the influence that Espronceda and, above all, Larra exerted on them. … They felt a sense of solidarity with what they called the “Young Spain,” that is, with that group of men who precisely then were fighting for Peninsular renovation and freedom. (1977: 68–69), (Águila 1993: 91–107).

We know that Larra and Espronceda’s writings circulated extensively among the River Plate youth and that they had an enormous influence on Alberdi and Sarmiento. (They criticized, through their ironic and biting depiction of Spanish customs, the immobility and extreme conservatism in which the nation found itself.) Alberdi himself used the pseudonym “Figarillo” when signing many of his articles in La Moda or El Iniciador and made no secret of his link to and praise of Larra’s Figaro (Gasquet 2006: 9–71). Sarmiento, during his brief time as a journalist for El Zonda in provincial San Juan, imitated Larra’s caustic style (Verdevoye 1988: 83– 99). Echeverría and other young Argentines also often read Espronceda although it is not exactly known how his texts were circulated. We can conjecture that Echeverría and Espronceda met in Paris, given that the Spanish poet’s adventurous life in exile would perhaps corroborate such meeting. As a matter of fact, Espronceda arrived in Paris in 1828

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after a journey that took him from Lisbon to London, then from England to Holland and, lastly, from there to France. He remained in Paris until, at least, 1833 and probably took part in the barricades during the 1830 revolution, a period when the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy was achieved and finalized, resulting in the coronation of Louis-Philippe of Orleans as King of France. Echeverría then returned to Spain in 1833, after a general amnesty to liberals. It is therefore not extraordinary, given that both poets had similar political and aesthetic sensibilities, that between 1828 and 1830, before Echeverría’s return to the River Plate region, the two frequented the same Romantic and liberal circles in Paris. The possible encounter of these poets, or at least the careful reading of Espronceda by Echeverría, would explain their shared familiarity with the subject of the captive. Among the rare texts by Espronceda with Orientalist contents, there is a poem titled “La cautiva.” This coincidence is too amazing to be simply attributed to mere chance. Abdo Hatamleh has studied the Morisco inclusion in Romantic Spanish literature and questions Espronceda’s choice. He says that “Orientalism was one of the five great Romantic passions, but with Espronceda, considered a great Spanish Romanticist, a paradox arises regarding his apathy or apparent lack of interest on Arab subjects” (Hatamleh 1972: 191). Only three of his lyric poems can be regarded as Orientalist (“Canto del Cruzado” [“A Crusader’s Song”], “A Jarifa en una orgía” [“To Jarifa in an Orgy”], and “La cautiva”) as well as his only 1840 historical novel (El castellano de Cuellar o Sancho Saldaña [“A Castilian from Cuellar or Sancho Saldana”). The song La Cautiva appears as an epigraph in Sancho Saldaña. Hatamleh outlined three hypotheses concerning the poet’s apathy toward the East: his classical education at the Mirto Academy under Alberto Lista; his identifying with the Romanticists’ subjectivist tendencies, removed from the other historic and legendary strands to which other Orientalists adhered; and his limited knowledge of the East, which did not prompt him to venture into unknown territories (Hatamleh 1972: 193). An analysis of the Espronceda’s “La cautiva” exposes a series of clichés regarding a woman’s place in Arab or Muslim societies that included an array of those illusional elements associated with harems. The protagonist Zoraida is a White woman, obviously not part of Eastern culture, who clings to the impossible and fanciful dream of returning to her country (“But, woe to me! I am a captive /An orphan who alone sighs, /In an unknown climate I breathe/And I am in love with a foreigner too!

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/My eyes cannot find my homeland; /My love has turned to smoke; /no one soothes my pain, /and jealousy is burning me alive”). The feelings of Zoraida, the captive, are compared to the profound sadness felt by an expatriate, the difference being that hers feels like a forced uprooting. Secondly, this analysis slightly opens the door to a reading of “La cautiva” as an allegorical poem concerning the political situation of the Spanish liberals in the European diaspora: “I am no longer the Castilian’s /Submissive lover /I am the captive who is tired /Of allowing herself to be oppressed” (de Espronceda 1873: 71–73). If we consent to an allegorical interpretation, then our initial supposition—Orientalists texts more often address the culture that produced them than the East itself—is strengthened. We have now seen that Echeverría’s Romantic Orientalist readings significantly weighed in after the call for the construction of a national poetic aesthetics, one rooted in the Pampas desert, was made. In Echeverría, the Eastern bedrock is relatively weak and inorganic, but it represents the first effective step toward the construction of an ideological Argentinean Orientalism that will be fulfilled (and succeed) with the works of Alberdi and Sarmiento.

Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810–1884) In his autobiography’s outline, “Mi vida privada” (“My Private Life), written in Spa, Belgium, on 18 September 1873, Alberdi acknowledged that he had profited from reading Volney in 1824: Les Ruines de Palmyra by Volney was my first reading at that age. I have not forgotten the principle on which Natural Law ends and where this book’s morals are summarized: Maintain yourself, instruct yourself, regulate yourself. The serious sadness of that reading indescribably thrilled me. As the war with Brazil raged and the cannon blasts of the battles around the River Plate could be heard, I was often engrossed in Las Ruinas, a work inspired by wars. (1999: 37–38)

As we have indicated, we are unaware of which edition of The Ruins was then circulating in the region, whether the French edition of Bossange, an English edition, or its first Spanish translation (1820). What is certain is that then, in whatever language, Las ruinas (its long title shortened, thus becoming vague and imprecise) was published first, then

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followed by La ley natural [“Natural Law”]. Its shortened title could lead to confusion with Wood’s The ruins of Palmyra. As mentioned, the choice of Palmyra was arbitrary for Volney; he could have chosen for his title the ruins at Baalbek or other famous Levant ruins. This book was in fact a pretext for his musings about the decadence of empires and for defending atheism and natural laws. Its contents, as pertained its subtitle (“meditation sur les revolutions des empires ”), also became less clear from the shortening of its entire title. However, we infer that, having become a widely diffused classic, its short title did not confuse readers as to its covered subject. We suppose that publishers and readers knew about its contents. Such popularity led to conflating both books as the same Rationalist effort to elaborate a moral philosophy (La ley natural ) along with a political-theological thought (Las ruinas ). Alberdi confessed to reading Volney at the onset of the war against Brazil—on 10 December 1825, Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil, declared war on the River Plate region. Sometime during January 1826, the first naval battle between the two countries took place. As a result, the independence of Uruguay was ratified, a territory whose initial annexation to the United Provinces of the River Plate on 25 August 1825 enraged Brazilians who, for years, had wanted to exert control over this area. For most of the nineteenth century, Uruguay functioned as a buffer state between these two large South American neighbors. War cries and the imperial Brazilian threat to the River Plate region concerned Alberdi who, in 1924, had recently arrived in Buenos Aires as a scholarship recipient to attend the Colegio de Ciencias Morales, founded by Rivadavia in 1818 with the purpose of educating Argentina’s future elite. Having read Rousseau’s Le contrat social at the age of fifteen, Alberdi began his ideological education with Volney. The fledgling war made him aware of the dangers threatening his young nation and of the possible consequences that the collapse of the neighboring empire could bring. Rivadavia, symbolic father of this new generation, was educated in France where he took in the theories of the Restoration statesmen and read the works of Tracy, Bentham, and Constant. It was perhaps on account of Miguel Cané’s advice that Alberdi became familiar with Volney’s work. After an interlude of practically two years, Alberdi entered the university attended by almost all his friends from the Colegio. During those years, Diego Alcorta, who was Chair of the Department of Philosophy, would leave an indelible mark on the entire Generation of 1837 . Years later, José Mármol would recall Alcorta’s pedagogy thus:

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Every man of the generation to which we belong and who has been educated at the University of Buenos Aires is imbued with the lively, palpitating, and eloquent teachings of Doctor Alcorta. We are his ideas in action; we are, many times over, the outcome of his aristocratic virtue, his humanitarian conscience, and his philosophical thought. As an academic, he has filled our hearts with enthusiasm … for [ensuring the country’s] welfare, freedom, justice. (Mármol 1944: 35)

Having been named “Professor of Ideology” by a 4 February 1828 decree and, subsequently, Provost (4 March 1833), Alcorta introduced his students to the doctrines of Destutt de Tracy and Condillac. It is likely that it was then when Alberdi began to read Volney and his Leçons d’histoire in depth. Nevertheless, it was not only to the university that Alberdi owed his education. It may also be attributed to his independent research. In his autobiography, he acknowledges his intellectual curiosity: It was from Echeverría, who studied in France during the Restoration, that I first heard mention of Lerminier, Villemain, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Lamartine and of Byron and all that was then called Romanticism, which stood against the old classical school. … However, my education was not solely realized at the university on account of Locke and Condillac’s doctrines taught in philosophy classes, nor was it the result of conversations and contact with my most enlightened friends. More than that, my education was achieved through personal initiative, through my own readings of authors who I must name, who contributed to my education and intellect. My favorite readings throughout my youth were those of well-known authors, yet not those of Spanish writers.: Volney, Holbach, Rousseau, Helvétius, Cabanis, Richerand, Lavater, Buffon, Pascal, La Bruyère, Bentham, Montesquieu, Benjamin Constant, Lerminier, Tocqueville, Chevalier, Bastiat, Adam Smith, J.B. Say, Vico, Villemain, Cousin, Guizot, Rossi, Pierre Leroux, Saint-Simon, Lamartine, Destutt de Tracy, Victor Hugo, Dumas, P.L. Couvier, Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, Lamennais, Jouffroy, Kant, Merlin, Pothier, Pardessus, Troplong, Heignecio, El Federalista, Story, Balbi, Martínez de la Rosa, Donoso Cortez, Capmany. From this list, it may be deduced that I rarely read works by Spanish authors. This was not because of my anti-Spanish biases generated and fostered by our war of independence, but because of my philosophical orientation. In Spain, I found no philosophers like Byron and Locke, or writers like Montesquieu, or jurists like Pothier. (1999: 49, 59)

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Obviously, young Alberdi was not initially planning to study literature (“I had no preference for it in my studies”), but social studies. Let us emphasize, in his lengthy list of read authors, that many Romantic writers of this generation were also politically engaged (Lamartine, Hugo, Dumas, et al.). We stress the preponderance of thinkers from the School of Ideologues featured in his long list: Volney, Holbach, Rousseau, Helvétius, Cabanis, and Destutt de Tracy. Given that these names are not alphabetized, do we notice in this list a decreasing hierarchical order of figures who inspired Alberdi and thus surmise that Volney was among the authors who had the most influence on him? Whatever the answer, it seems that, even after fifty years since having first read him, Alberdi had not forgotten Volney. A decade after having arrived in Buenos Aires, Alberdi returned to his native Tucumán for a few months There he remained from July to November 1834 to deal with a variety of family circumstances. Soon after returning to Buenos Aires that December, he submitted one of his first writings to a publisher: Memoria descriptiva sobre Tucumán [“Descriptive Memory of Tucuman”] (1999: 81–106). This work is interesting, not per se, but because it is indicative of young Alberdi’s understanding of the world after ten years of progressive learning in Buenos Aires. In Memoria, Alberdi proceeds as did eighteen-century Enlightenment travelers, that is, in accordance with utilitarian and scientific journey criteria. While his scope is much narrower, Alberdi clearly followed Volney’s model in his Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte. The text is divided into four sections (he avoids calling them chapters out of modesty) that are introduced with a warning. He begins his work with an explanation of the province’s geographical scope (sección 1ª, “Rasgos fisonómicos de Tucumán”; sección 2ª, “Continuación de la sección anterior”). What follows is a description of the inhabitants’ morals as shaped by the geography. (sección 3ª, “Carácter fisco y moral del pueblo tucumano baja influencia del clima”). He then concludes his short essay by enumerating historic monuments (sección 4ª, “Monumentos patrióticos”). This is the basic framework that chronicles of scientific expeditions followed, according to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Driven Rationalist travelers accepted the concept of geographic determinism, as espoused by Montesquieu, which maintained that, as a function of their adaptive needs, humans acclimated to their environment and its natural determinants. Humans are the product of the natural and physical laws that govern the world, and all can be explained by the adaptive capacity of

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humans. As just another natural element, humans “have integrated” with their environment, just like with other natural elements, without wishing to change it, (risking being unable to guarantee their own survival). Humans and nature have not opposed each other; instead, the two makeup one permanent organic body. Given his work’s limitations, Alberdi anticipated the negative criticism that “Warning” would bring. He voiced modest objectives that had little to do with the lengthy titles of the book’s sections: “Readers should not read more into it than what it is: a few observations concerning the physical and moral aspect of Tucumán’s beauty.” He later became concerned with its usefulness (read “scientific benefit”) as his rhetorical question reveals: “Will I be told that this piece is useless because it only treats the subject of beauty? Personally, I believe that a country is not poor just because it is beautiful and, consequently, that its history of beauty cannot be insignificant.” Finally, to head off eventual criticism, he decided to enlist the help of unquestionable intellectuals: “I would never receive such objections from men like Buffon, Cabanis, Humboldt, and Bonpland who could never separate knowledge of the natural composition of different regions from the history of human civilization” (Alberdi 1999: 83). In “Warning ” and Memoria, Alberdi managed to blend Romantic motivation (the subjective search for beauty) with a process intended to be Rational and utilitarian (the social mechanism and its scientific chronicle). In effect, he superimposed the two opposing European tendencies that had been defined in the early nineteenth century, and which fit in with Volney and Chateaubriand’s models. The young intellectual was seeking to harmonize, with little skill and scant results, Volney’s own Rationalist objectivism (“all that is good is useful”; “that which is necessary is natural”) with the Chateaubriand’s narcissistic subjectivism (“the world is made in my image and likeness”; “nature is a backdrop to exalt my inner self”). The descriptions that follow the first two sections are interspersed with brief naturalist annotations (soil type and orography, plant and animal variety, etc.) weak in scientific and documented content. The text is impersonal and tries to be objective (as the Rationalist model requires) but, all together, it is written in the first-person plural. That “we,” which distances the subject from “I,” is intended to be confidential in tone and disguises the author’s ego behind an inclusive plural form (I + you = we). Henceforth, the subjective (or poetic) and objective (or rational) registers become indistinct. The bird description, for example, does not

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follow naturalist or zoological rules; instead, Alberdi opts for a quotation by Racine (!). Natural beauty is described by the often use of “sublime,” a crutch term that Romanticists employed following Chateaubriand. Likewise, geography becomes an expression of the Divine: “This marvelous scene where Divinity, tearing off her celestial veil, reveals her glorious and sublime face” (Alberdi 1999: 93). The third section is undoubtedly the most interesting because it is there that Alberdi attributes the temperamental traits of the Tucumán people to its climatic conditions. While today his description of the province could be regarded as comical, Alberdi, basing himself on his conclusions, confirms that, in addition to having studied his province in-depth, he applied to it precepts learned from his Enlightenment and Romantic studies. In this section, there is also an abundance of learned quotations: there are two notes (quotations from Cabanis) and references to Humboldt, Hippocrates, Montesquieu, to French Romanticists, and to Andrews. From the outset, Alberdi highlights the attentiveness of a Tucumán resident according to Romantic criteria: “Rarely frivolous, he is a man who is either marvelous or dangerous.” He then distinguishes two climate-induced temperaments: the dyspeptic and the despondent; these are applied to two types of Tucumán inhabitants, the wealthy and the aristocratic. The wealthy are an accurate portrayal of the Romantic melancholic archetype: A high-class Tucumán citizen has, in general, a sad demeanor, a pale face, sunken fire-filled eyes, black hair, narrow waistline, thin and gaunt body, [and] slow and circumspect movements. He is strong, though feeble in appearance, meditative and reflective, at times chimerical and visionary, and exhibits vehement speech filled with imagination like that of a passionate man full of new and original expressions. (Alberdi 1999: 98)

However, common people, though having similar physical traits, possess a nauseous temperament. Their “interior strengths fail and wish to be stimulated.” He therefore concludes that “work must not be energetic, but analogous to the sluggishness brought about by heat and abundance.” Morally speaking, they share the same constitution as the wealthy: “[the common man] frequently exhibits an impetuous and exalted soul, a restless and passionate spirit, and is always predisposed towards great virtues” (Alberdi 1999: 97). After this description, Alberdi concludes that “the Tucumán commoner is more adept to war and its aristocrat to the

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arts and sciences.” We ask ourselves why Alberdi considers this distinction to be Tucumán specific. Lastly, Tucumán women deserve separate mention regarding his considerations on their nature. Their beauty is due to “their ordinarily melancholic constitutions.” And, because the war for independence reduced the number of men, women there “are less daring than anywhere else. Consequently, they are less vain and presumptuous; undoubtedly whence their wisdom arises, which has won the admiration of many foreigners” (Alberdi 1999: 99). In a footnote, he added a quotation from Cabanis concerning the adaptability of animals (as opposed to the plant world) to reach the same unusual conclusion about women: “this last point is especially true with respect to Tucumán women.” The section concludes by comparing the moral character of the people of Tucumán with Romanticism, a movement whose most salient value is melancholy: “No literary movement will go further in Tucumán than Romanticism, whose types are the same as those that characterize a melancholic temper.” He continues: “Romanticists have only known great progress thanks to the nostalgic writings of Madame De Staël, Chateaubriand, Hugo, Lamartine, and of many Northern European writers of gloom” (Alberdi 1999: 99–100). Alberdi claims that one should not confuse laziness with calmness because “the melancholic person is not lazy, but one of calm activity.” We find the absurd link of climate influence on individuals and political life most interesting. He avers that “if the yoke of despotism is unbearable for a man haunted by the coldness and sterility of his surroundings, why is it not the same for he whom heat torments? Heavy clothing cannot be borne under a scorching sun, yet one is expected to endure despotism!” From this premise, Alberdi deduces that Tucumán residents are, by their very nature, insubordinate to any form of despotism and tyranny, a gross error when one knows that, during those years, Alejandro Heredia ruled the province with an iron fist as a despot and, to boot, he was a strategic ally of Rosas. Alberdi himself did everything possible to avoid this caudillo’s influence and oppressiveness. The fourth section is a catalogue of the province’s cultural wealth, here labeled “historical monuments.” We must recall that it was in the city of Tucumán that the Constituent Congress of the United River Plate Provinces met and that it was there that the country’s independence was declared on 9 July 1816. The Alberdi family home was very close to the place where the Congress took place—these were among the

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first memories of his childhood. Less than twenty years after Argentina gained its independence, young Alberdi, identifying with Volney, had the same thoughts as the Frenchman while standing before the Palmyra ruins: “Therefore, national glory, like its monuments, was and is no longer! … It reminds me of our nation’s past glory [and here Alberdi adds a note that reads: ‘Because I was observing these ruins while Volney was meditating over the Palmyra ruins. …’ ]. An identical image of the melancholic countenance that today represents Argentinean history” (Alberdi 1999: 104). Alberdi’s Memorias descriptivas [“Descriptive Memories”], despite its amateurism and serious mistakes, is important because it reflects his considerable effort to impose an interpretative model on the physical, political, and human reality of his native province. Somehow, this effort foreshadows what he will later include in Bases (1852): a constitutional model for Argentina’s future. It must be stressed that Alberdi’s ideas and objectives remained extremely constant throughout his life— only the profoundness with which they were expressed changed over the course of time. Therefore, his early readings of Volney would leave an indelible mark on his life. We repeatedly witness Les Ruines ’ influence on his writings against the war of the Triple Alliance (Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) against Paraguay (1865–1870). Following his assertion that “if there is anything in South America that politically expresses barbarism, freedom’s antipode, is war itself” (1988: 258). Here we again find Ideologue teachings. The conviction that only through enlightened instruction and education would humanity develop and progress,5 a tenet of Redemptorist optimism regarding the future, stems from these teachings. This continuity of ideas did not exclude his life’s considerable evolution within the Enlightenment philosophy. For example, having become a proponent of individual freedoms, he moved from an adherence to the popular sovereignty concept,6 in which the enlightened elite played an important role—particularly in the educational and legislative sphere—in recognizing the more open influence of liberal, Anglo-Saxon thought. 5 “Barbarism and instruction meet and become one, in a single man, in a country, when education fails,” said Alberdi (Mayer 1983: 140). 6 Alberti declares that “people’s sovereignty is therefore not the people’s collective will; it is their collective reason, a reason that is superior to willpower, a divine principle … people are only sovereign through what is just” (Alberdi 1886–1887, vol. I: 189).

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Likewise, that same Enlightenment, which so shaped his early years, had moved toward more balanced and less Manichean ideas than those advanced by eighteenth-century intellectuals. Along these lines, Alberdi was light years from Volney because, after his first trip to Europe (1843), he demystified the barbarism/civilization duality. This means that he no longer placed Europe as the exclusive embodiment of civilization and Asia or South America as the absolute areas of barbarism. Although he maintained the civilization vs barbarism scheme, he now knew that the two are not separated by geographical barriers or political boundaries, but that they can largely coexist within the same society and culture. By distancing himself from the simplistic notions that so typified Sarmiento’s political propositions, Alberdi’s thinking became more refined and penetrating. Despotism, in this sense, ceased to be a cultural notion and became an anthropological reality. In his only allegorical novel, Peregrinación de Luz del Día [“Daytime Pilgrimage”] (written in 1871; published in 1874), we find these interpretations: Although Europe might be what we find most civilized about the world, it is not civilized because it is Europe. This continent holds, deep in its bowels and under the splendor of its shining capitals, thousands of barbarians and scoundrels who are worse than the worst indigenous people in South America. The Pampas are in Paris, Patagonia, in London. (1874: 29)

War is the result of barbarism. It reproduces it and amplifies it, and Europe is not exempt from this universal plague. Alberdi became more realistic and increasingly observed reality as it was instead of trying to view it abstractly, as seen in his Memorias. His observations were now based on experience and not merely on simple principles and ideals. For example, he regretfully ascertains that: When Voltaire’s France enters in conflict with Kant’s Germany, what is done, what is the process for judiciously deciding its outcome? They act the same as the Pampa Indians: they arm themselves with sticks, and those who kill or destroy the others are the ones who are right. Physical might makes right and, until this stops, the world will be partially civilized but overall untamed. (1891–1895: 238–239)

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The surly intellectual debate included in Sarmiento’s Cartas Quillotanas (1853) treats the abandonment of idealist positions that he defended (Alberdi and Sarmiento 2005). Alberdi no longer believed that the mere accumulation of ideas moved to action or, in other words, that Sarmiento’s endless newspaper articles against Rosas, written abroad, would help to overthrow this tyrant. Although the influence of the Ideologues and of the Romanticists on Alberdi is unchallengeable, one must wonder how the notion of despotism entered and operated in his mind. Not only had Alberdi never visited the Levant, but he was also less concerned than Sarmiento by the East’s legacy and its familiarization with South America. Volney’s discourse Voyage and Les Ruines reveals an exclusively more political than a cultural reading. Alberdi examined the fall of these empires, but he was basically interested in the transmission and development of a Western civilization adapted to South American countries. A bit like Lamartine, he was aware of the West’s presence in the East, and vice versa. That is, that barbarism was present in all civilizations and, inversely, that in all barbarian cultures there were elements of civilization. Alberdi’s works are closer in content to modern-day historiographical and epistemological sensitivities than those of the nineteenth century, thus anticipating Walter Benjamin’s philosophical observations on history (Benjamin 1971). The main thought that guided Alberdi’s life was the development of a rule of law in which individuals could freely prosper. Aware that the young New World nations owed everything to the Revolution (daughters of the French Revolution7 ), he nevertheless cautioned against the risks of anarchy and the fratricidal battles led by the provincial caudillos. For this reason, he also denounced the “tyrannical” excesses of sovereignty: “Sovereignty’s doctrine of omnipotence is the most immoral and ferocious form of tyranny. Rousseau, in this sense, is as fearsome as Machiavelli for having come up with the theory of royal despotism as well as that of popular despotism” (Alberdi 1886–1886, vol. I: 188). Unlike Sarmiento, Alberdi was uninterested in the White man’s conquest of Indian territories. To him, the conquest had ended, and the indigenous population was out of the mix. However, the symbolic area to be conquered was Buenos Aires because it was there that the desert’s political destiny lay and where “civilized barbarians” gathered. 7 He wonders: “Regarding ideas, what is our great Revolution, if not a reflection of the French Revolution?” (Alberdi 2000: 82).

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For Alberdi, the problem was not savage Indians or gauchos. (The former would assimilate or eventually die; the latter would either adapt to or endure the new civilizing model brought by European colonists who taught by example.) Alberdi’s problem was with the city’s Creoles who held the country’s destiny and were reluctant to renounce their own barbarism. For him, in Bases, the conquest of the desert was a directive that made no sense because “a war of conquest presupposes rival civilizations, that is, two states at odds: the savage and the European. This antagonism does not exist because the savages have been vanquished, they have no domain or authority. We, ethnic and civilized Europeans, are the masters of South America” (Alberdi 2000: 85). The infamous and hated Eastern model, fixed on the intellectual minds of the River Plate region by the Europeans, became imbedded in South American cities and, often, it was even shared by those educated liberals who, like Bartolomé Mitre,8 unleashed war on Paraguay. The enemy was physical space as well, the desert’s vastness that rejected every attempt at political unification. Geography was a sort of wild card or joker that, on the one hand, was the basis of sovereignty and the source of all wealth and, on the other, it was the source of all evil. Alberdi declared that: The main enemy of a real unification of the Argentinean Republic is not Juan Manuel de Rosas, but rather a space of two hundred thousand square miles over which a handful of our population is scattered. Distance gives rise to autonomy because it replaces force. Why is the gaucho independent? Because he inhabits the Pampas. Why does Europe recognize us as a nation while our population is less than that of the former province of Bordeaux? Because we are thousands of miles away. (2000: 136)

Despite the prevailing difficulties and like all men of his generation, Alberdi had confidence in the future and thought South America’s destiny lay in forging a great civilization that could replace Europe. Consequently, we once again find Les Ruines mentioned in one of his early writings. Volney’s adaptation to geographical surroundings is obvious (Europe is the East of South America) when Alberdi scrutinized the far horizon: 8 Bartolomé Mitre (1821–1906). Military leader, writer, historian, and a political figure, was the first President of the reunified Republic of Argentina from 1862 to 1868. Argentina, with Brazil and Uruguay declared a war on Paraguay, which ended in 1870. That same year, Mitre founded the newspaper La Nación, which is still today one of the most widely distributed newspapers in the country.

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I imagine a new environment, an unknown world of laws, institutions, ideas, and forms that only exists today in the honest speculations of his genius; I hear about the nineteenth century in the same manner as I hear today of the Middle Ages; I hear talk of present-day Europe, this modern Asia, like I today hear about the Orient and primitive Asia. (1986: 302)

We will next study ideological Argentinean Orientalism in its true form, which was one of Sarmiento’s intellectual undertakings. Though not always impartial, his discourse on civilization was widely acclaimed and accepted, as a political and historical project, by the young Argentinean nation.

References Águila, Yves (1993). “La Nueva España entre Antiguo Régimen y Liberalismo,” in Joseph Perez & Armando Alberola (eds.). España y América entre la ilustración y el liberalismo. Alicante-Madrid: Instituto de Cultura Juan GilAlbert/Casa de Velázquez, 91–107. A** [Alberdi, Juan Bautista] (1874). Peregrinación de Luz del Día, Viaje y Aventuras de la Verdad en el Nuevo Mundo. Buenos Aires: Casavalle. Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1977). “Doble armonía,” in Félix Weimberg. El Salón Literario de 1837 . Buenos Aires: Hachette. Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1986). “Impresiones en una visita al Paraná,” Escritos satíricos y de crítica literaria. Buenos Aires: Academia Argentina de Letras. Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1988). Alberdi póstumo. Buenos Aires: Puntosur. Edited by Oscar Terán. Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1999). Mi vida privada y otros textos. Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes. Edition and Foreword by Miguel Espejo. Alberdi, Juan Bautista (2000). Bases [1852]. Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra. Alberdi, Juan Bautista & Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (2005). La gran polémica nacional. Cartas Quillotanas, Las Ciento y una. Buenos Aires: Leviatán, series Segundo Centenario. Foreword by Lucila Pagliai. Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1886–1887). Obras Completas, t. I. Buenos Aires: La Tribuna Nacional. Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1891–1895). “El crimen de la guerra,” Escritos Póstumos, t. II. Buenos Aires: Imprenta A. Monkes. Altamirano, Carlos & Sarlo, Beatriz (1997). Ensayos argentinos. Buenos Aires: Ariel. Barcía, Pedro Luis (2004). “Los aportes de Echeverría a la literatura argentina,” in Pedro Luis Barcía & Félix Weimberg. Homenaje a Esteban Echeverría.

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Buenos Aires: Academia Argentina de Letras y Academia Nacional de la Historia. Benjamin, Walter (1971). “Tesis de filosofía de la historia,” Angelus Novus. Barcelona: Edhasa, series La Gaya Ciencia. Translated by Héctor A. Murena. Borges, Jorge Luis & Henríquez Ureña, Pedro (1998). Antología clásica de la literatura argentina [1937]. Buenos Aires: Seix Barral. Byron, George Gordon (1986). Don Juan. Londres: Penguin Books, series Classics. Edited by T.G. Steffan, E. Steffan, & W.W. Pratt. Echeverría, Esteban (1944). Clasicismo y romanticismo. Los Consuelos. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sophos. Foreword by Eros Nicola Siri. Echeverría, Esteban (1977). “Primera lectura” & “Segunda lectura,” in Félix Weimberg. El Salón Literario de 1837 . Buenos Aires: Hachette. Echeverría, Esteban (1979). La Cautiva, El matadero y Ojeada retrospectiva. Buenos Aires: CEAL. Edition and Foreword by Carlos Dámaso Martínez. Espronceda, José de (1873). Obras poéticas. Paris: Garnier. Gasquet, Axel (2006). “Présentation,” in Juan Bautista Alberdi. Écrits satiriques et de critique littéraire. Clermont and Ferrand: University Press Blaise Pascal, series Textes, 9–71. Gutiérrez, Juan María (1870–1874). “Noticia biográfica,” in Obras Completas de Don Esteban Echeverría. Buenos Aires: Casavalle. Hatamleh, Mohammed Abdo (1972). El tema oriental en los poetas románticos españoles del siglo XIX . Granada: Anel. Iglesia, Cristina & Schvartzman, Julio (1985). Cautivas y Misioneros, Mitos blancos de la conquista. Buenos Aires: Catálogos. Lamartine, Alphonse de (2000). Voyage en Orient [1835]. Paris: Honoré Champion, series Textes de Littérature Moderne et Contemporaine. Edition by Sarga Moussa. Mayer, Jorge (1983). El pensamiento vivo de Alberdi. Buenos Aires: Losada. Mármol, José (1944). Amalia, t. I & II. Buenos Aires: Estrada. Moussa, Sarga (1995). La relation orientale. Enquête sur la communication dans les récits de voyage en Orient (1811–1861). Paris: Klincksieck. Pratt, Mary Louise (1997). Ojos imperiales, Literatura de viajes y transculturación. Bernal: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Verdevoye, Paul (1988). Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, educar y escribir opinando (1838–1852). Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra. Voltaire (1987). Histoire de Charles XII, roi de Suède [1731]. Paris: Orban. Foreword by Roger Peyrefitte.

CHAPTER 4

An Ideological Reading of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

There is no possible amalgam between savage and civilized people. Wherever the latter set foot, deliberately or not, the former was forced to abandon their land and existence because, sooner or later, they had to vanish from the face of the Earth. Domingo F. Sarmiento (1844)

Background The relationship between Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811–1888) and the East dates to his early youth, when he was starting his newspaper career in El Zonda (1839). Already then, he had begun to view the French colonization enterprise in Algeria (1830) as a point of reference. The East represented the ultimate in picturesque exoticism; however, the Algerian enterprise provided him an immense social and political laboratory from which the new states of Ibero-America could benefit and learn. Before studying the two most important texts of Sarmiento, in which Eastern references abound (Facundo, 1845; Viajes, 1848), we will examine his mindset during his 1840 exile in Chile. We will thus see that his adoption of the Eastern model was not the result of improvisation; on the contrary, it was the product of a long period of reflection on his most constant anxieties. We will analyze some of his journalistic texts during that time. As Paul Verdevoye recalls: “Sarmiento lived obsessed with a concrete conflicting situation” (Verdevoye 1993: 695). © The Author(s) 2020 A. Gasquet, Argentinean Literary Orientalism, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54466-9_4

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The struggle of the exiled Unitarios,1 who opposed Rosas’s dictatorship, took place within the context of a more generalized effort whose goal was the eradication of barbarism in these South American regions. By interposing the description of another caudillo, Facundo Quiroga, Sarmiento was attacking Rosas who represented the latest manifestation of IberoAmerican barbarism. It must be remembered that, despite certain learned quotations on Orientalist literature, Sarmiento never professed to undertake an impartial study of the Islamic culture or, for that matter, any Eastern culture. Much to the contrary, reading European Orientalist literature only interested him to the extent that it could provide a historical and political tool that would aid him to better understand local barbarism. In this sense, South American Orientalism is the transcription of an interpretative apparatus (then, an operational one for the European conquest and colonization of Asia and Africa), one responding to distinctly different needs than those of South America and its political and literary elite. As we shall see, the Algerian case interested him because it recreated certain conditions applicable to the Ibero-American frontier culture. Initially, let us investigate under what local scheme should his Orientalist consideration, which he will later include in Facundo, be included. On 27 September 1844, at the University of Chile (where he was Professor since 1843), Sarmiento published a thesis by J. Victorino Lastarria2 in which Lastarria analyzed the colonial heritage left by the Spaniards. Sarmiento, known for his resentment toward Spain, showed kindness and full of appreciation here. His extensive comments: Regarding these concepts, the author has not been able to divorce himself from the war-of-independence voguish ideas that, to arouse independent sentiments against Spain by lying about a supposed alliance with Indians to place them into conflict with our colonizers whom we wished to expel from Ibero-America…. But we must be fair to the Spaniards by adding that, to exterminate those savages whose territory they would occupy, they were merely doing what all civilized people do with these brutes, which is what the colonizer does, whether deliberately or not, with indigenous

1 “Unitarios” (Centralists), those defending “Federalism,” also represented the opposition to the Rosas regime. Many of them would go into exile in Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru where they continued their activities against Rosas. 2 Victorino Lastarria will later be one of the recipients of Sarmiento’s letters that make up Viajes por Europa, África y América.

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people: it assimilates, destroys, and exterminates. If this terrible civilizing process is cruel and barbaric in the eyes of justice and reason, it is how, like war and conquest, Providence has armed the various human groups, particularly the most powerful and advanced, to replace those who, due to their inherent weakness or delayed development toward civilization, are unable to attain human greatness on Earth. It may be considered unjust to exterminate savages, to stifle nascent civilizations, and to conquer those in possession of coveted land. But thanks to these injustices, IberoAmerica, instead of being left to savages incapable of progressing, is today ruled by the Caucasian race, which is the most perfect, the most intelligent, the most beautiful, and the most sensitive to progress in comparison with any other race. Thanks to these injustices, Oceania is filled with civilized people, Asia has begun to progress under the European impulse, Africa is reliving, along its coastline, Carthage’s heyday and Egypt’s glory days. Thus, the world’s population is subject to revolutions founded on absolute laws; powerful nations exterminate weak ones, civilized people supplant savages by appropriating their land. This is providential, useful, sublime, and grand… Therefore, we believe that our writers should no longer emphasize Spanish cruelty on the savages of South America who, now as then, are enemies of our people, ethnicity, customs, and civilization. Moreover, they should no longer replace the history of our existence with that of indigenous people who have nothing in common with us. (Sarmiento 2001: 164–165)

Sarmiento later employed the example of the United States that, in his opinion, was more radical in its extermination of Native Americans than Spain during its period of conquest and colonization. Today Sarmiento’s words are undoubtedly shocking in their staunch defense of social evolution and its brutal application of biological Darwinian evolution to the anthropological discourse. Nevertheless, this overt racism, which did not hesitate in distinguishing superior ethnic groups (destined to dominate and trace the course of civilization) from inferior ones (destined to adapt to or be exterminated by the former), was attuned to the dominant ideas of the time. Then, almost all of Sarmiento’s articles were published in El Progreso, a Santiago de Chile newspaper. No one protested the contents of his writing, revealing the public’s consensual opinion about the indigenous issue and the fightto-the-death struggle in which White Creoles were involved. Opposed to conservatives, Sarmiento was considered a progressive liberal. In the above excerpt, we not only detect Darwin’s ideas (Sarmiento met him

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in Chile circa 1835),3 but also the most profound ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, that is, the inexorable advancement of human history toward progress and, inspired by Volney’s thoughts, the idea that the world’s population is subject to revolutions founded on absolute laws. In any case, this quotation is valuable for explaining Sarmiento’s concerns around 1844, shortly before writing Facundo.

Caudillismo and Despotism We know that Facundo was first published as a fascicle in the newspaper El Progreso between 2 May and 21 June 1845. (A month later, in July 1845, and before his embarking for Europe, different fascicles by Sarmiento were compiled and published in book form with the addition of two new chapters.)4 Once all his fascicles were published in the Chilean newspaper, Sarmiento reviewed another Master’s thesis for the same newspaper, that of an Argentinean immigrant and friend, Vincente Fidel López. The review included the influence and contribution of ancient cultures on contemporary civilization and allowed him to expound on Eastern cultures. He includes, with few alterations, the classic eighteenth-century views on European Orientalism: This work exhibits two different affiliations in the classification of diverse civilizations: one is Oriental, religious, primitive, and static; the other, Western, political, progressive, and warlike. In the former group, he lists India, Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, Phoenicia and its two offshoots, Judea and Carthage; in the latter, he includes the mixed-race people of Asia, Greece, Italy who, for centuries, have been fighting under various names against most of humanity: the Semites and those of the mysterious Orient. (2001: 216)

3 “I have been familiar with Darwin’s name for forty years when, having set sail in the ship Beagle under the command of its skipper, Capitan Fitz Roy, he visited the continent’s lower regions. I then became acquainted with the ship, its crew and, of course, with The Voyage of the Beagle, which I must have quoted a number of times when speaking on the Strait” (Sarmiento 1934: 7). During an homage event to the deceased naturalist, which took place in the Argentinian Medical Circle in 1882, two men spoke: Sarmiento and Eduardo L. Holmberg. It might be mentioned that Darwin himself was not an unequivocal supporter of “social Darwinism.” 4 In fact, the serial piece initially ended with Chapter 13, “Barranca Yaco.” Sarmiento added the last Chapters 14 and 15: “Gobierno Unitario” and “Presente y porvenir.”

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The West became the heir of the Greco-Roman civilization and of its adversarial relations with the East, viewed as a faraway region in time and space. It is curious that here Western culture seems to assume a “progressive and warlike” character, while in Orientalist literature, it is precisely the Muslims and the Tartars who are described as ruthless warriors and bloodthirsty conquerors. López is reproached by Sarmiento for not completely satisfying his curiosity about the East: “We would have liked to have seen him propose something about this Eastern world where man is part of a cast system.” He also criticized certain aspects of the tone in Lopez’s account whose “oriental quietism” is perceived “as distantly removed and dated” (2001: 216). A concept stands out in this passage: the idea that the West is a “second creation” of the East. According to this thesis, Eastern links to the West may be traced to Alexander the Great and his Persian victory. This idea is important because it offers us a new vision of the East, now concurrently conceived as radically different, yet identical to the West. Somehow, this eternal struggle between East and West was presented as a conflict between neighbors, a fight between people who, despite their enormous cultural and political differences, had been adversaries, though for centuries they had known and influenced each other. This vision of an East-West confrontation was applied to the then prevailing conditions of the South American frontier wars. This is perhaps why Sarmiento reproached López for his lack of daring in portraying an aspect of Orientalism that was then practiced in South America. Sarmiento was already truly thinking that the Easterners South America were the savage Indians who devastated fertile lands. By 1845, Sarmiento had finished his work on the intellectual interpretation of the East. Before observing the contributions of Orientalism within this framework, we will now go over the fundamental assertions included in Facundo. Sarmiento’s book was inspired by a basic tenet: nineteenthcentury Argentinean society was split into two camps whose members turned their backs on each other: an urban society, whose epicenter was Buenos Aires, and a rural society stretched throughout the Pampas, the coast, and the nation’s landlocked regions. Both groups largely coexisted, apart from each until independence in May 1810. The independence war was essentially an urban revolution that drove the Buenos Aires social elites to seek support from rural areas. The contact was brutal. From the early days of independence, both nation-building projects were set forth but became mutually conflictive. The first was the urban plan, following an unitario and centralist model, which sought rural support

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while its elite retained all political and economic power. The second was the rural model, one with a Federalist approach that proposed to redistribute or balance the political and economic power concentrated in Buenos Aires. Now then, problems arose when internal struggles became exacerbated because the country’s interior tended to gravitate toward charismatic leaders (caudillos ) whose intentions were to capitalize on their regions’ opposition to Buenos Aires’s centralism. The unitario model was based on the experiences of the French Revolution, which reinforced the centralist tendencies already present during the former regime’s absolutism. The federalist model was formally based on the American experience. The problem was that the configuration of the River Plate provinces was very different from that of the former American colonies. The latter had a similar degree of development, relatively homogenous, unlike that of the landlocked provinces of Argentina, which were generally backward and profoundly disparate. For example, consider the distance between the coast and the mountainous regions. This made the Federalist model essentially untenable in practice. Sarmiento believed that, in a country still licking its colonial wounds, the best model to follow was the urban one. Buenos Aires, the country’s capital and cultural center, was to carry out a civilizing mission among the provinces, which lacked cultural access and were evolving within a primitive setting. Because Buenos Aires was the principal link to Europe, it had to therefore spearhead the cultural development of the country’s backward interior. The political experience, subsequent to General San Martin’s heroic victory, confirmed that, instead, it was the rural model that won over the urban one. The country had managed to gain independence at the price of a partial defeat for Buenos Aires in its struggle with the provinces. For Sarmiento, the most concrete embodiment of this phenomenon was the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas, a large landholder who, politically speaking, personified rural barbarism. The only city capable of saving the country by following a civilized European-style model was overrun by barbarians from the interior. This dual-society plan would constitute the physical basis on which the strategies of urban civilization and rural barbarism were to be developed. According to Sarmiento, both strategies would result in war, one in which the only choice was the extermination of the enemy. There was no middle ground or possible concessions. In short, for Sarmiento, the then ongoing political struggle in Argentina was defined in civilizational terms: it was a clash between

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two models that were mutually exclusive. The model of rural caudillismo, theoretically a federalist one, could only function (in practice) as a despotic government, like that of Rosas and his regional leaders. The urban model, hypothetically unitario, could only be progressive and democratic. Thus, the political ravages of rural federalism were huge since true despotism was more backward than the former colonial system. According to Montesquieu in De l’esprit des lois, “The Spirit of the Law,” despotism, under all situations, is more dreadful than any monarchy. The latter, though it is government by one person, functions according to fixed and established laws, while despotism, though one-person rule as well, is lawless and solely based on the will and whims of the despot. For Sarmiento, the notion of despotism was not related to the model of enlightened European despotism, but rather to that of the Eastern model,5 as developed by the European political philosophy of the eighteenth century. When in 1845 Sarmiento wrote a pamphlet on Quiroga, not only had he not yet visited North Africa (his knowledge of the East was limited to his readings), but he had also not yet set foot in the Pampas or in the vast and rural River Plate interior with which he would eventually become acquainted after Rosas’s fall from power in February 1852. Of course, he had never been to Buenos Aires either. In the River Plate region, he had only briefly visited the city of Montevideo in January 1846 during a stopover between Chile and Europe. This is an important fact because it proves that, both his knowledge of the interior (with Eastern impressions) as well as that of the city (with civilized impressions), is entirely abstract and literary. For Sarmiento, South America represented the Bible’s promised land. He asks: “after Europe, is there any other part of the Christian world that may civilized besides South America?” (1999: 44). Upon writing Facundo, Sarmiento begins with the enlightened theory already included in Alberdi’s Memoria descriptiva sobre Tucumán: the 5 Carlos Altamirano pointed out the centrality of despotism in Facundo: “‘The Orient’ and ‘what is Oriental’ in Sarmiento’s book,” he says, “is not uniquely intended to emphasize the American peculiarity of the barbaric image or of the ‘generic other,’ but to put a particular face on an idea or on a ghost, the idea and the ghost of despotism” (Altamirano and Sarlo 1997: 89). Nevertheless, the work of Altamirano makes no distinction between the variations of enlightened and absolutist European despotism and the Eastern model of despotism. This is due to critics not including a precise historical definition of despotism: the term is employed in its current acceptation and is associated with its South American context and the imprint of Caudillismo on its tradition.

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decisive influence of soil and climate on men. Sarmiento’s view of this theory was not as kind as Alberdi’s, one that was less influenced by the concept of the sublime, so dear to the Romanticists. The Argentinean soil and its immense desert were the source of all the evils that plagued the nation (“the evil afflicting the Argentinean nation is its vast expanse for the desert completely surrounds it and deeply affects it”) (1999: 56). Hence, his comparison with the East played an important role in understanding those who inhabit the Pampas’ desolate plains since the Asian and Tartar primitive people with a pastoral tradition resembled their lifestyle. This explains the three epigraphs related to his Orientalist comparison made (Victor Hugo in Chapter 4; Alix in Chapter 5; Roussel in Chapter 6) shortly after the beginning of the first chapter: “As if infused with a kind of Asian dye, this vast stretch of plains cannot fail to have a pronounced effect of life in the interior.” Such a picturesque reference, stated in Romantic terms and meant to reinforce the local color of the Pampas, is capped with a Volney quotation: When I often view the serene and shining moon rising through the grasslands of the Earth, I automatically greet it with Volney’s words in Les Ruines: “The full moon of the Orient rises, against the bluish background of the plains, on the banks of the Euphrates.” And indeed, there is something about Argentinean solitude that recalls Asian solitude. The soul finds some type of analogy between the Pampas and the plains that divide the Tigris from the Euphrates; it finds a sort of kinship between the solitary wagon trains crossing our desolate areas to arrive, months later, to Buenos Aires at the end camel caravans heading toward Baghdad or Smyrna. (1999: 61–62)

We must emphasize the tremendous boldness exhibited by Sarmiento while comparing two landscapes (the Pampa and Iraq’s Mesopotamia) completely unknown to him. The author had not seen the moon rise above the Pampas grasslands; instead, he had carefully read the South American adventures of Captain Francis Head (Head 1986), which he quoted in his first epigraph. However, Sarmiento went beyond poetic license since this analogy about the spirit would become the cornerstone on which he would build his “barbarism” concept that he would apply to the Argentinean cultural sphere and on which, with great support from

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epigraphs, he blended the desert landscape of La Rioja with Palestine6 and its provincial capital, with Jerusalem (“the skeleton of Rioja, a solitary city without suburbs, withers like Jerusalem at the foot of the Mount of Olive” [Sarmiento 1999: 146]). However, other of his comparisons or epigraphs point to the likeness of character and human physiognomy: “what most brings to mind these oriental recollections,” wrote Sarmiento, “is the truly patriarchal appearance of the peasants of La Rioja. Today, thanks to the whims of fashion, it is not unusual to see men with full beards, like those of Oriental men.”7 For Sarmiento, civilization could only be the creation of White men; any opportunity for future civilizing would likewise depend on this race. The Ibero-American mistake had been broad miscegenation. Sarmiento tells us that: The fusion of these three families (White, Indian, and Black), has resulted in a homogenous whole, distinguished by its love for idleness and its industrial incapacity … the assimilation of the indigenous people during Spanish colonization must have largely contributed to this unfortunate result. The Ibero-American races live in idleness and have shown their incapacity to dedicate themselves consistently to hard work, even when forced to do so. This gave rise to the idea of bringing Negroes to this continent, with fatal consequences. (1999: 63–64)

To him, the outcome of this race mixing and mindset, the mestizo par excellence of the Argentinean Pampas, was the gaucho whose moral flaws he also vilified. These flaws definitively sealed the gaucho’s fate and 6 Chapter 6 of Facundo, titled “La Rioja,” contains an epigraph from Roussel about Palestine, which says: “The sides of the mountains seem to expand and give the impression of being at once larger and more barren than they truly are. Little by little, the scant vegetation fades and dies; [even] the moss with its flaming red hue subsequently disappears” (Sarmiento 1999: 145). Paul Verdevoye, coming across this quotation in the original text, observed a typographical error that has been placed in brackets. Verdevoye says, “The last name of Michaël Russel, an Episcopal bishop from the Church of Glasgow, hides behind the French name [Roussel]. The bishop edited several books on Polynesia, Egypt, Greece and, in 1831, one titled Palestine or the Holy Land. It is to this work to which Sarmiento refers in La Crónica (16 December 1849), translating the title into Spanish: Palestina, o la Tierra Santa (II, Sarmiento, 1993: 345).” Paul Verdevoye, “Viajes por Francia y Argelia,” in Sarmiento (1993: 693–694). 7 Facundo, Chapter 5, “Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga” (1999: 146–147), has an epigraph by Alix [Alexandre-Louis Félix], taken from Précis sur l’Histoire de l’Empire ottoman (1822–1824), whose aim is to describe Quiroga as a human prodigy.

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condemned him to extinction; he was to be sacrificed in the quest to civilize the River Plate region. The gaucho embodied the man of civilizations long past, an anachronistic survivor of a desert pastoral culture belonging to the nineteenth century. The enormous difference between gauchos and Asian shepherds or nomadic Africans is that the former did not constitute a community or a migrant society, though they moved widely around the Pampas. The gaucho social unit was spread out and founded on individualism. In this sense, under Sarmiento’s Orientalist scheme, gauchos more resembled Tartars than Arabs. Yet, we will later see that Sarmiento found some similarities (faults and virtues) between gauchos and Arabs. In evoking the endless grasslands of the Pampas, Sarmiento returns to the Eastern image: “The pastoral life there unexpectedly recalls the memory of Asia, whose image we can imagine in the plains, spotted here and there with the tents of Kalmyks, Cossacks or Arabs” (1999: 67). Arab tribes are the very evidence of social backwardness, of the inability to progress because their nomadic tradition forbids land ownership, which facilitates the growth of cities and the attainment of power, both essential to all modern civilizations. Sarmiento continues: The Arab tribes who wander remote Asian lands are under the control of tribal elders or warlords. They do exist as a society, but one that is not static…. Its progress is stifled because there can be no progress without permanent land possession, without cities where industrial output increases and property ownership expands. (1999: 67–68)

Sarmiento inherited this concept of wealth and progress through land ownership from the physiocratic theories elaborated by French political economists of the eighteenth century.8 Although he used these theories as axioms, by then they had been rejected in Europe and had been totally refuted by the mid nineteenth century, particularly by adherents to mercantilism who included liberals and other economic philosophers of the Anglophone tradition. Though this is a point of interest, we will not detail the economic debate underlying Sarmiento’s political theories, but rather exemplify the fact that he had acquired most of his knowledge from the French schools of thought that were influenced by eighteenth-century Enlightenment, both in their most superficial or ideological aspects (observed by Volney) 8 The founder of physiocracy was François de Quesnay (1694–1774) (Salleron 1958).

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and in their economic aspects. Ultimately, Sarmiento received a complete and articulated world view from the French Enlightenment that he tried to adapt and apply to a South American framework while, at the same time, he insisted in maintaining its most elementary dogmas. Concepts of wealth and land value featured among these basic notions. Similarly, for Sarmiento, “progress” did not only signify material progress, but essential moral progress as well, the true driving force behind the former. Without moral progress, no material progress is possible. This deficiency is the greatest flaw of rural cultures; the Eastern model appears to worsen in the Pampas. According to Sarmiento: Moral progress, or the culture of neglected intelligence within the Arab or Tartar tribes, is here [in the Pampas] not only neglected, but also impossible to attain. Where could a school be built so that children, spread over a ten-mile radius, could attend? Thus, when civilization is totally impossible in such a place, barbarism becomes normal and it may consider itself fortunate if the local customs allow for some sort of morality. (1999: 70)

The gaucho’s material survival (and that of indigenous people) in the Pampas did not require them to increase their intelligence level. According to Sarmiento, this was why there would not be any moral progress among the inhabitants of the prairies. Despite their continual deprivation, members of this society readily found all they needed for survival: food and shelter. This pastoral culture fatally leads to a despotism embodied in the figure of the caudillo. For Sarmiento, caudillos were not just descendants of Spanish colonists, but they were also imbued with Eastern despotism. Within a South American context, Quiroga or Rosas are like Mohammed: “… the caudillo, who in his uprisings prevails, has wide and terrible powers without any opposition and without his minions challenging them. Today, those powers may only be found among Asians. The Argentinean caudillo is like Mohammed who, at will, can change the predominant religion and impose a new one” (1999: 102). Caudillismo recurred almost naturally because civilized cities used the caudillo to place rural areas under their control and thus were able to govern those unruly barbarians. This infernal cycle was perpetuated through a succession of weak city governments:

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… city power is weak in the interior of the country because of its lack of influence and of a faithful following. City governments thence turn to those men who inspire the most fear in order to force the people into obedience—a well-known policy employed by all weak governments to temporarily ward off present threats, which will later reappear on a much larger scale. (1999: 102)

To better subdue country people, urban centers tried to neutralize the caudillos by buying them off with privileges and praise but, in the end, it was barbarism that subjugated these weak and corrupt cities. Sarmiento once again shed light on this vicious process with an Eastern anecdote: “So as not to be dethroned himself, the Sultan granted Mehemet Ali9 the title of Pacha only to have him later recognized as heir to the King of Egypt” (1999: 103). The 1810 revolution altered the political apathy in the country’s interior: “political life, previously lacking to this Arab-Roman group, was quickly accepted” (Sarmiento 1999: 104). It would also lead provincial guerillas and their caudillos to triumph over the city. Quiroga and Rosas were, for Sarmiento, the manifestation of this phenomenon. Sarmiento wrote that “it is Rosas, who having stabbed the cultured citizens of Buenos Aires with his gaucho knife, destroys their civilization, laws and freedom, their centuries-old achievements” (1999: 105). The goal of Facundo was a reasoned, historical explanation of this treachery. It was a detailed analysis of the Pampas barbarism’s triumph over urban civilization or, if one wishes to use Sarmiento’s metaphor, it was Mehemet Ali’s cunning victory over the Turkish Sultan. As he affirmed in Facundo: “Rosas [is] the legislator of this Tartar civilization” (1999: 140).10 Sarmiento’s entire future political program would be founded on this scheme; he remained uncommonly faithful to the 9 Mehemet Ali (1769–1849) was an intriguing opportunist who first and foremost led the Mamluks against the Napoleonic troops, then subtly conspired against the Ottoman empire in his region, getting himself appointed Viceroy (Pacha) of Egypt in 1809. Following numerous bloody and rebellious attacks on the Sultan’s army, he is granted the hereditary throne of Egypt. Following the death of his two sons, Toussoun and Ibrahim, his grandson by his eldest son, Abbas, received the scepter after Mehemet’s death. 10 A bit later Sarmiento compared Quiroga to Cesar, Tamerland, and Mohammed and concluded by affirming: “… his words and his dossiers bear a seal of originality giving him certain Oriental appearance, a certain tint of Solomonic wisdom regarding the masses” (Sarmiento 1999: 142).

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“cultured” Buenos Aires even when this city, misled or manipulated, was not always committed to its civilizing purpose. It was not in vain that when Facundo became known in Chile, his friend Vicente Fidel López described the book as a “Bedouin story.”11 The binary interpretative scheme of Facundo largely responds to an Orientalist theoretical model that, despite efforts to adapt it to the regional reality, remains abstract (or uncorroborated) with respect to authenticity. We again underscore that, back then, Sarmiento had not visited Buenos Aires, the Pampas, or the East. His official mission to Europe would give him the invaluable opportunity to test some of the theories in Facundo he had formulated shortly before. Although not in an official capacity, Sarmiento took a side trip to Algeria at his own expense, thus allowing himself a brief aside during his journey through the Old World.

Postcards from Algeria According to Verdevoye’s conjectures, the only viable motive that could be attributed to Sarmiento’s trip to Algeria was to obtain “direct data that would permit him to reinforce and confirm his sociocultural theories…. Verifying onsite what he had only imagined through his reading and personal reflection” (1993: 689). We mentioned that, since his early experiences at El Zonda, Sarmiento was precociously interested in everything pertaining to the French colonial mission in Algeria that began in 1830. Eastern politics and ideology shaped his works long before he visited these distant lands. It is also noteworthy that this side trip to Algeria was rather expensive for him and, according to his Diario, he covered fifteen percent of its costs himself. Considering that his visit lasted almost three weeks, it would be fair to conclude that Sarmiento was enormously interested in this Maghrebian trip. A certain genealogical curiosity was also a motivation: on his maternal side, the family name “Albarracín” is undoubtedly of Arabian origin, a distortion of the local caudillo’s name, Ban Hudheil Ben Razin.12 11 The anecdote is reported by the writer and critic, Ricardo Rojas, who maintained that Sarmiento had enormously appreciated this definition (Rojas 1951: 213). 12 Albarracín is Teruel’s judicial seat (Zaragoza); in 988, (382 since the Hegira), it was under the jurisdiction of the caudillo Ban Hudheil Ben Razin. The African origin of the name “Albarracín” have been debated. Historian Évariste Lévi-Provençal (1894–1956)

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Sarmiento’s trip to Algeria was cursory and superficial given that he only had time to visit a few places. He arrived in Algiers, by way of Majorca, and took a trip to Blida. He then boarded a steamboat to Oran, with stopovers in Cherchel and Tenez, whence he went on a three-day jaunt to Mascara, passing through the village of Saint-Denis-du-Sig on the way. Then, Mascara comprised the colonial territory’s southern border and from where the European civilizing mission was being carried out in the Maghreb. This trip’s chronicle is essential to our body of information, not only because Sarmiento’s excitement was driving its composition, but because it was also the first written testimony by an Argentine about an Eastern country, though some claim that it was apocryphal.13 His trip began in Barcelona, where he obtained an entry permit to Algeria (Ferdinand de Lesseps headed the French Consulate). He then landed in Algiers on 20 (or 22) December 1846—“I was then in Algiers, a place that had been, since leaving Chile, a significant part of my itinerary” (2001: 155). Viajes por Europa, África y América includes Sarmiento’s letters to various correspondents. He describes his African expedition in a long letter to his friend Juan Thompson, dated 2 January from Oran,14 and sent when he was about to sail to Rome by way of Marseille on 10 January 1847. He began his missive by detailing the difficulties he endured on his way to Majorca and then to Algiers from the Balearic Islands. The last leg of his voyage was stressful: “I will not tell you tell you how much I suffered during those three long days.” Arriving in Algiers in the midst of a storm, he found his first impression of the city from the sea to be confirms its African origin by stating: “We find Berbers Banu Razin in the Albarracín region, whose name is a distortion of the name of this tribe” (Lévi-Provençal 1999: 178). Sarmiento adds: “In Algiers, I was surprised to discover the physical similarities between gauchos and Arabs; my driver flattered me by saying that everyone here would take me for a [Islamic] believer…. I speak the truth when I smilingly say that it flatters me to know that this genealogy makes me an alleged descendant of Mohammed” (Sarmiento 1944: 40). 13 Juan Martínez Villergas (Spanish polemist, humorist, poet, dramatist who then lived in Buenos Aires) wrote a pamphlet to denounce the travel guides’ imprecision or plagiarism regarding Sarmiento’s comments in Viajes. This widely read text was published in Valparaiso (1853) and republished in Buenos Aires (1854). Two editions followed, in 1855 and 1858, both published in Paris (Martínez Villergas 1855). The text was also reprinted by Juan María Gutiérrez (1942: 185–276). 14 Olga Fernández Latour de Botas, according to the expense Journal, maintains that the letter was very likely written in Oran on January 10, not on January 2 as stated in Viajes (Fernández Latour: 1054).

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fascinating: “[I was] thrilled by the unique city that lay before me like a white mantle, an Arabian hooded cloak, from the base of a hill to the top” (2001: 155). Although cautious and moderate in describing his landscape impressions, Sarmiento was less reserved in his stark judgments about the country. These are revealing of how, from the moment of his arrival, Sarmiento observed this inexplicable world. South American travelers did not simply come to discover the unknown, but rather to confirm what they had heard from third parties about the East. He consequently believed to have found a concise sample of the entire Eastern world in Algiers. Perspectives on the East are transmitted by European culture (geographically speaking, the real East for South Americans), resulting in the notion and usage of the “Orient” as cultural and ideological rather than as simple geographic principle. Algiers indeed gives us an idea of oriental customs and character; as for the Orient, which is so prestigious to Europeans, its antiquity and traditions are certainly empty words to a South American, the youngest offspring of a Christian family. Our Orient is Europe and, if there is a shining light beyond, our eyes are not prepared to see it unless using European lenses. (Sarmiento 1999: 155)

This passage is fundamental because it simultaneously shows three points: (a) “the South American, youngest offspring of a Christian family” alludes to the peripheral and subaltern position of South American culture as compared to Western European traditions, though it strongly claimed to be an integral part of those traditions. (b) the fascination of South Americans (or at least its Creole elites) with European culture was the same as that of Europeans for Eastern cultures and themes. Nevertheless, Sarmiento dismissed a big difference between the two: while Europeans perceived the East as the Other or as a radical alterity, South Americans felt a filial relationship with the Old World, of which they consider themselves to be a subordinate part. Implicitly, Sarmiento overlooked a major hypothesis that corroborated that, whereas South America and the Eastern world were very similar, linked by the frontier culture and by the common denominator of barbarism, South America did not have a single affiliation, but rather two or even three (European, Eastern, and indigenous). (c) the Eastern cultural and aesthetic wealth could only be perceived by South Americans through a European lenses. Sadly, South

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Americans saw all related to the East though the “borrowed eyes” of Europeans. It was impossible for them to observe this world without the cultural and ideological mediation of Europe. This “blindness,” as acknowledged by Sarmiento, was typical, on the one hand, of the peripheral position of South America in relation to Europe and profoundly revealing of its mentality while, on the other hand, it concealed the most original and creative elements of Sarmiento’s proposal: the secret political and cultural likeness between South America and the East. No European had ever made this original association. It was Sarmiento who first proposed it, after Echeverría and Alberdi had anticipated it. This sociological and literary contribution, beyond any polemic regarding its ideological validity, was an “original creation” made by the Generation of 1837 and, specifically, Sarmiento. Sarmiento’s first surprise concerning the city of Algiers involved its cosmopolitan aspect: a blend of Arabs, Turks, and Jews living among French, Spanish, and Italians. Parisian-style architecture and urban design (boulevards, parks, promenades, the Tuileries with its street vendors) were evident. Sarmiento stated that “Europe suddenly appears on the site of a future African Paris.” He was both surprised and disillusioned in not discovering a preponderance of “mosques and minarets that European travelers were expecting to find among Mohamed’s countrymen” (2001: 156). The Arab quarters, limited to the city heights and outskirts, exhibited a vibrant social and public life. His prediction was certain. The barbarian city began inexorably to disappear and to leave room for a civilized city that was perpetually in motion and developing: “Presently, this country may be properly called an African France” (2001: 156). The colonization impetus was overwhelming, a threat that summoned all reasonable men to unite. Sarmiento felt that it was important to restore Rome’s glorious past, which the French were on the verge of accomplishing with their colonial victories. Algeria had to reconnect with its past by ending the barbaric influence of those believing in the Prophet: the “La Mitidja [‘flatlands’], which only four years ago could not be safely crossed, may be now crossed on cobblestone roads leading to Aumale, Joinville, etc., with no other escort than a coachman.” Despite everything, the traveler lamented the fact that “much remains for the population of Europe to regain the magnificence the continent attained in Roman times” (2001: 165). The vestiges of the past and the Roman ruins proved that the Arabs or the Berbers did not know how to build a civilization worthy of this term and, even worse, their destructive actions put an

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end to these ancient cultures. In places where formerly great olive groves flourished, only rubble remained; in the fertile valleys where vineyards thrived, only lumps of dry earth existed. Tribes of nomadic shepherds put an end to agricultural civilizations and progress disappeared back into the archaic past. Sarmiento hastened to make this condemnation: “It is impossible to imagine a more destructive barbarism than that of these people” (Sarmiento 2001: 165). However, modern redemption was already underway and the former Roman Mauritania Tingitana (Algeria), food basket of Rome in Gracchus’s time, was on the verge of regaining its glorious past. For Sarmiento, the topography and landscape of the Atlas region resembled Andalusian topography. Further on, before the Sig ruins south of Oran, Sarmiento would recall Volney’s teachings in Les Ruines. “Strange fate that of human things!” he exclaimed, only to then question himself at the site of a French archeological excavation of a “large Roman city that barbarism destroyed and buried” (2001: 174). He proceeds: While contemplating, leaning against a broken column, these humble ruins … I feel the anguish so inimitably expressed by Volney upon seeing the magnificent colonnades of Palmyra. These plains were once populated by an active, enlightened, and wealthy people; now, there is nothing! … But where, oh Lord, have so many millions of men gone! … Ask the scimitar and the Koran! (Sarmiento 2001: 172)

Soon afterwards, he continued his tirade against the Prophet using almost Volney’s terminology: “Oh Mohammed, Mohammed! How much havoc can a single man wreak while approving of and developing the perverse instincts of humans or when he encounters the brutish masses who believe because they are incapable of thinking!” (2001: 172). Religion and culture are so fused within his anthropological observations that both merged into a whole. His denial was double: nomadic and pastoral cultures, supported in their backwardness by Mohammed’s religion, used the Koran as a tool of vengeance and perfidy as they reinforced its primitivism to spearhead a drive against European elements of civilization. The Arab culture image was horrendous: “in spite of the army and the obvious flood of Europeans, hooded Arab robes are always around and, under their large folds, we find an ancient people, a primitive language, and an essentially intolerant and ferocious religion that is intrinsically unwilling to allow any association with Christians

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without threat of eternal perdition” (2001: 158). Hence, criticism of Islamic tribal society was rapidly adopted by Sarmiento who turned it into a psychological profile of Algerians whose basic personality traits involved either betrayal—not only in relationship to Christians, but also among themselves—or of Maghrebians who were constantly seeking revenge against the French for their colonial enterprise, or of the profoundly ignorant and superstitious men who were willing to believe any prophecy from the most insignificant individual. Here is Sarmiento’s depiction: What is the morality of these people living in the presence of God and whose chieftains call themselves Magnanimous Servants, which is what Abd-El-Kader calls them, or Servants of Force, as translated by Abd-ElRamen? It is impossible to imagine deeper moral depravity or a culture more entrenched in criminal ways. History shows us nothing comparable, except during its darkest periods. The agah [Muslim chieftain] lives off his tribe’s pillage. A tribe undertakes razzias (our own Indians’ war raids) against other tribes to steal their cattle, then its chieftain chops off the head of the unfortunate kadi or agah after taking his property…. Thus, family revenge is transmitted from generation to generation. (2001: 164)

Sarmiento then introduced several anecdotes illustrating his opinions, a common practice for over 150 years to illustrate European prejudices about the East. (Let us not forget that the premise of this type of narrative reflects the traveler’s observations on these cultures through European eyes.) For Sarmiento, the mere moral evaluation of Muslims was insufficient, thus his portrayal added observations regarding their hygiene. Arabs were characterized as infectious and having little fondness for cleanliness: “These people are ravaged by cutaneous diseases, as filth eats away at their clothing” (2001: 166). For Sarmiento, the basic truth was that, on the colonial Algerian scene, a battle was taking place associated with regions of a frontier culture: the fierce struggle of an urban, White civilization aiming to eradicate an indigenous, tribal, and pastoral barbarism. This is also the fundamental situation he recognized as being historically characteristic of South America. Hence, within the Algerian context, Sarmiento vigorously defended the French colonial mission because, by so doing, he was defending his own views on Argentina included in Facundo. His motto was “land belongs to those who civilize it.” In his own words:

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Oh no! Let us set aside all this pettiness among nations and ask God to strengthen European control over this land of devout bandits. Let France apply the Muslim maxim to them. Land belongs to those who best knows how to develop it. Why should barbarism be favorably considered and why should civilization not reclaim those regions taken by the [Islamic] sword centuries before and which have been intellectually deprived ever since? (2001: 165)

Behind the impassioned defense of French colonialism was the idea of fighting a war to the end against barbarism, a war of extermination with no room for half-measures, conversions, miscegenation, or assimilations. We have seen this in the epigraph referring to Sarmiento’s position vis-à-vis the South American Indians.15 The only option for a culture considered “inferior” is total extinction. After a brief visit two and a half years later to Arab lands, nothing in Sarmiento’s position had changed— he barely toned down some of his opinions. We must now examine the same confrontational and extermination logic as applied to French colonialism in Algeria: [Arabs], in the physical misery in which they wallow and the moral degradation of their souls, harbor an upmost disdain and an undying hatred toward Europeans. Never have barbarism and zealotry succeeded more profoundly in piercing the heart of a people and in frightening them to the point of their rejection of any improvement. There is not now and there will never be any possible mixing or assimilation between Europeans and Arabs. One group or the other will have to disappear, withdraw, or be dissolved—my love for civilization is such as to wish, henceforth, the definitive victory of civilized people in Africa. (Sarmiento 2001: 166)

These words came across as a death sentence. The Orientalist portrayal was complete and exclusive of any middle position. Civilization overwhelms, inexorable in its progress, like the natural laws of ideologues. The moral portrait of a people in “decline and Hell bound” and the political discourse that justified colonialism were part of the same discursive strategy. The conclusion regarding native moral perversity was an indispensable justification for the colonial enterprise, a kind of cure for

15 Confer the epigraph in this chapter and the review of J. Victorino Lastarria’s September 1844 work (supra, note 2).

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barbarism. If one presupposed that the natives were “good and innocent,” there was insufficient reason for appropriating their land. This is why Whites and Moors as well as Christians and Muslims must be considered a contradictive binomial: “The Bible and the Koran have sprung from the same source; the former enables the progress of the human species and perpetuates the pure, early traditions; the latter, like an assertion of pastoral groups, immobilizes intelligence and stereotypes barbarian customs that date back to the dawn of time” (Sarmiento 2001: 159). Given these remarks, we must not lose sight of the fact that, while Sarmiento was elaborating on the situation in Algeria, he was truly thinking about the conditions necessary for the accomplishment of just such a colonial enterprise in Argentina. His interest in the Algerian case can be attributed to a study on a colonial model that he considered would become successful in and exportable to Argentina. Sarmiento did not aspire to become a scientific authority to justify his opinions on Algeria because, in reality, it was enough for him to view and gauge the country through the eyes of third parties, functionaries, and European officials. Consequently, his contact with the natives was reduced to fleeting, tourist-like impressions. He admitted to not being able speak Arabic and acknowledged that his contacts with the natives were systematically mediated by a civil servant (shauss ) who served as his interpreter in Arabic, French, and Spanish. In the person of the shauss or chauss, we observe the reappearance of a subject associated with Western travelers in the East, which Sarga Moussa considered the ambiguous mediation of the dragomans between travelers and their surrounding world. This means that, given the myriad of prejudices travelers possessed on arrival, the rare contact they had with the local population was through an intermediary, a dragoman (servant, interpreter, and guide), or other Westerners living in the country; therefore, they would almost never have direct contact with the natives. From the outset, travelers developed a binary relationship of rejection and dependence with their accompanying hosts (Moussa 1995: 13–26). Travelers’ perceptions were largely related to the sensitivity of the guides who accompanied them, but who were also trying to make their work appear increasingly indispensable so to better justify their positions so that, at times, required them to exaggerate a bit about the country’s local customs and perils. In his account, Sarmiento synthesized

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what he had read and what his shauss or the high-ranking French official had communicated to him16 (Marshall Bugeaud, General Arnault,17 etc.). Ultimately, his personal impressions were limited to his visits to the douar (tents of nomadic tribes) in the vicinity of Sig and the bivouac in Mascara, his observations on diffa meals, clothing, Algerian women, in addition to some picturesque descriptions. Nevertheless, the text contains numerous comparisons between the Algerian and the Argentinean environment. In these passages, Sarmiento’s tone is more nuanced, and his opinion of the natives is most tolerant. We notice sparks of sympathy for the simple tribal men and the chaste women who, respectful of tradition, were nevertheless allowed to flirt. This change of tone might have been on account of a certain nostalgia he felt for country life and its freedom; it might have also been homesickness for his faraway countrymen as he visited this remote Eastern land. Sarmiento confirmed his intuition regarding the “real” similarities between the Arab horseman and the gaucho, between tribal militias and Indian Montoneras, with their primitive yet engaging hospitality, and the equally lively gazes of gauchos and Arabs. His most intense moments were experienced during his three-day excursion to Mascara by way of Oran. There, Sarmiento let himself go and succumbed to the Eastern lifestyle’s charm and seduction, typified by idleness, food preparation, and hookah smoking. He confessed that he “felt a certain intimidation as we approached the circle of douar tents …, as an Ibero-American from the remote foothills of the Andes, I was going to see those Arab tribes, heirs to prehistoric customs, to partake in their ancient hospitality, and to witness their daily lives at close range” (1993: 169). Once inside a tent, ready for diffa, he realized that there was a “certain pleasing casualness” among Arabs and that the atmosphere was one of relaxation. He then goes into an appropriative comparison when, engaging his interpreter, he exclaimed: “Look here! I thought I knew all this, but the patriarchal tents of Abraham’s descendants are no more civilized than the dwellings of our Pampa savages. The same, or worse, lack of hygiene, humidity, 16 Verdevoye put together a reliable detailed list of Sarmiento’s readings on the East during his trips to France and Algeria, which appeared in Sarmiento’s Diario (Verdevoye 1993: 701–703). 17 Verdevoye noticed a spelling error in the family name Arnault. According to an original letter that he consulted at the Sarmiento Historical Museum, the general’s name was Hippolyte Renault and not Arnault as Sarmiento had written (1993: 700).

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life’s amenities” (1993: 170). He then commented on their almost daily consumption of mutton and noticed that it was cooked “the same way that we grill it in rural South America” (1993: 171). Sarmiento perhaps found the most singular parallelism between Arab and Creole trackers, even recognizing a superiority of perception among the Africans: “Arab trackers have, among other things, attracted my attention because of a single commonality with our gauchos. As with the latter, they smell the earth to guide themselves, appreciate roots and herbs, are familiar with the trails, and are attentive to the slightest clues that the ground, rocks, or vegetation provide. Arabs, however, far exceed gauchos in sense awareness” (1993: 177). Shortly afterwards, but continuing the comparison, Sarmiento purposely inverted phrases by calling gauchos the “Arabs of over there [South America]” and the Arabs as the “gauchos from over here [Middle East]” (1993: 177). Throughout his comparisons and observations, we notice that Sarmiento was constantly seeking to justify his inclusion among the literary elite of “Western” civilizers. As a South American intellectual, he sees himself performing two roles: first, an agent of civilized Europe, having gained the complicity of senior French officers as well as that of his interlocutor, Juan Thompson and, second, by gaining that of his future readers. After a tour of Mascara’s valleys and returning to the military garrison commanded by Arnault [Renault ], Sarmiento made his desire for recognition as a literary figure known to European authorities. Before sitting us at the dinner table, the General, showing me a Revue des Deux Mondes issue, said to me: “Look how, even in the heart of Africa, we are aware of what is taking place in the world.” He then pointed to the book title, Civilización y barbarie, whose review had been published in the Revue. The satisfaction of receiving literary praise must be as stimulating as that resulting from strenuous exercise because, after receiving such a nice compliment, I was filled with a desire to rise to the occasion. (1993: 176–177)

Soon afterwards, recalling the cultural and geographical limits of his African journey, Sarmiento states that “beyond Mascara, European life ceases to exist, replaced by barbarism and the desert. These were the natural borders of my journey around the civilized world” (1993: 177). It must be remembered that the official mission of Sarmiento’s trip to Europe and to the United States was to compare the national educational

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systems with the intention of eventually introducing them to Chile. This last quotation is symptomatic of the fact that he, an emissary for civilization, traveled within the very limits of it, having condescended to entering “frontier” territories to observe barbarism up front, but never beyond the last fort’s endpoint. Toward the text’s end, Sarmiento introduces a utilitarian summary, one that, by means of comparison, brought him back to South America’s reality in which, beyond Orientalist similarities, important differences nonetheless did exist: And suddenly … , perhaps only guided by the analogous external physiognomy of the Sahara and the Pampa [!], I found myself again in South America, on this side of the Andes [Argentina], where you and I were born, in the middle of those infinite plains where the sun rises and sets…. So, I was thinking, it has been nearly four centuries since Christian people inarguably took possession of this rich soil that is just as expansive as the whole of Europe, but superior in fertility. Yet, its population is less than a million even though it has not been decimated by endemic fevers as Africa’s. Also, it is not “snake bitten,” like those indomitable Arabs who relentlessly struggle to break free from the powerful claws that grip them. There, neither a brutal religion nor an unwieldy language hinders the civilizing mission; here, however, we see a pitiful people, degenerate Christians and Europeans, tearing each other apart over words that are thrown at them like a bone to a pack of hungry dogs; here, they are sinking more and more into impotence and barbarism…. (1993: 179, emphasis ours )

This type of Argentinean lesson that Sarmiento learned from his trip to Algeria reaffirmed the premises and results found in Facundo. Other than some picturesque images that then provided him with a setting to his Orientalist metaphors (except for his recounting of some indelible emotions felt like that of entering the douar), Sarmiento did not modify one bit his premises or his diagnosis on the origin of the evils afflicting Argentina. The disease of barbarism, an organicist metaphor, can only be combated by exorcizing and annihilating the agent of barbarism, namely, the Arab nomad in Africa or, in South America, the savage Indian or, in the Pampas, the malicious and indolent gaucho (“degenerate Christians and Europeans”). Sarmiento did not go to Algeria to learn or to discover a country with a different culture; he went to confirm, on-site, what he “already knew,” only observing that which would reaffirm his prior convictions.

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From the beginning, Sarmiento admitted to being a traveler from the Western periphery in these unimaginable Arab lands and, to understand their essence, he had to see them through the eyes of Europeans and their emissaries. Despite having been the first Argentine to travel here, Sarmiento did not escape the fatal error of being an imitator of other civilizations and cultures, a fact that led him to merely render a colorless copy of the original. Certainly, as with the peculiar oversight of a copyist driven by urgency, details, and subtleties are ignored while only the coarse details are conveyed. Sarmiento carefully read Volney, Alix, and Russell (outdated by 1846) as well as various chronicles of the French military conquest; he surely overlooked, or voluntarily omitted, the subtle and incisive Algerian writing of Alexis de Tocqueville (often quoted in Facundo) who took his first trip in 1841 and who had shortly preceded him in his second 1846 trip. Tocqueville provided a much more measured and impartial assessment of the French colonial enterprise (Verdevoye 1993: 706). This is his opinion on the subject during the time (1847) that Sarmiento wrote: Muslim society in Africa was not uncivilized; it was just a backward and imperfect civilization. It was characterized by its many pious foundations whose goal was meeting charitable needs and providing public instruction. We have everywhere seized funds set aside for these purposes and have reduced the number of charitable organizations, abandoned public education, and dissolved seminaries. Enlightenment has been extinguished and the recruitment of religious men and students for Law schools has ceased, that is, we have made Muslim society much more miserable, more disorderly, more ignorant, and more barbaric than it was before our arrival. (Tocqueville 1991: 813)

In 1841, Tocqueville wrote his first report, “Travail sur l’Algérie” [“Work on Algeria”], in which, in a less pessimistic tone, he took a balanced approach to the first ten years of French colonization. Though he recommended that the French stay in Algeria, he tried to set the groundwork for a type of colonial government that would be less violent and more moderate toward locals. This report also warned the colonial government of the risks of implementing various levies and of the possibility (medium or long term) of a catastrophic outcome to the French

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colonial enterprise.18 Tocqueville was dismayed by colonial violence, “as for me, I have observed the distressing reality that, in Africa, we are now waging a much more barbaric war than are the Arabs” (Tocqueville 1991: 704). Unfortunately, we must assume that Sarmiento was unaware of Tocqueville’s critical opinions. Had he known, he might have revised his views on the alleged French “colonial success” and thus altered his model to be imported to Argentina.

Erratic Latitudes: The Sahara in the Pampas Given what has been stated, we can affirm that Sarmiento’s Orientalist accounts made fewer references to historical and anthropological perspectives and more to his own ideological tenets. With certain exceptions in Facundo, very little remains in his writings of the Romantic aesthetic reminiscences analyzed here in Echeverría and Alberdi. Echeverría was a literary figure who made important cultural and political contributions. Alberdi was a brilliant publicist and, in the intellectual sphere of his time, his theoretical and judicial views dominated political thought, often indirectly. However, Sarmiento was more a man of action than a subtle, political theorist. All emphases in his works, as a journalist and writer, were directed at concrete actions in the political arena, whether in exile, back home, or traveling abroad. This focus is evident in his testimonial on Africa. He was mentally fixated with bringing progress and a lasting civilization to his country. He repeatedly questioned himself about the comparative advantages that Argentina offered to the implementation of the European model. As he exclaimed: “Who knows! Perhaps, like some trees, great doctrines need to be transplanted to yield more flavorful fruits.” Sarmiento was thereby convinced that, if civilization was clearly European and White, then democracy must be South American and White. In North America, democracy had already found favorable ground where to thrive; Sarmiento’s dream was to also see it take hold in the South.

18 After his first voyage, and evoking the consequences of the increased appropriation of Indian territory for the benefit of the European colonist, Tocqueville concluded: “And I, sadly hearing these things, ask myself what could the future be for a country turned over to such men and when would this surge of violence and injustice finally end if not with the Indian revolt and the destruction of the Europeans” (Tocqueville 1991: 687).

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Christianity was sown in the East, where it withered quite quickly, then took root in the most distant areas of the West; democracy, unsuccessfully irrigated with blood for so many centuries in Europe, has healthily thrived on the prairies of the Mississippi and in the banks of the Potomac. (1993: 178)

Sarmiento was intrigued by the fact, which he tried to explain, that Algeria, though offering fewer advantages to the establishment of Western civilization, was much further along on this path than his own country. Consequently, we find the most definitive transcription of how European Orientalism was adapted to South American needs in this question: “[How is one] to bring civilization and industry right up to the border of an unknown Sahara that South America hides below its torrid zone?” (Sarmiento 1993: 180). After the publication of Viajes [“Trips”] (1848) and of Recuerdos de provincia [“Province Memories”] (1850), Sarmiento rarely referred to his African experience. Many years later, we find some scattered mention of Volney or of his Les Ruines,19 but Sarmiento would never again directly address the Eastern question, nor would he ever mention it among his literary interests, except for employing the term “Orient” and its derivatives in simple metaphors. Nevertheless, despite being similarly silent regarding the East from 1850 onward, the assimilation of the European Orientalist model, which helped to understand the conditions of Argentinean barbarism, was efficient (albeit distorted) because it found a niche within the country’s political reality. This is why we can see in his picturesque (and often frivolous)20 African portrayal, a complete

19 Besides the works cited in this chapter, we call attention, though not exhaustively, to a series of articles in which Sarmiento makes references to Volney or to an Eastern subject. We put in parentheses the exact reference in Obras Completas (San Justo: University of La Matanza, 2001): “Adel El Segri. Un baile de tunos,” El Progreso, Santiago de Chile, 1 December 1842 (O.C, t. II: 47–50); “Cuadros de Cocalán. La Palmería,” Sud América, Santiago de Chile, 17 April 1851 (O.C, t. II: 138–141); “Memoria sobre ortografía americana. Ortografía de Vallejos 1841–1854” (O.C, t. IV: 39); “Discurso pronunciado en Chivilcoy en una fiesta dedicada al Presidente electo,” 3 October 1868 (O.C, t. XXI: 203–209); “Inauguración del ferrocarril de Córdoba a La Calera. Discurso del Presidente,” 26 October 1871 (O.C, t. XXI: 24–26); “Convención de delegados de la nueva provincia de Buenos Aires” (O.C, t. XLI: 187–192). 20 It is interesting to point out the harsh opinion of his friend, Vicente Fidel López, on Viajes: “When writing these deplorable travel letters, Sarmiento had two models he could have followed: Chevalier and Dumas. He followed Dumas’s, which led to a frivolous

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exploitation of Orientalist stereotypes borrowed from intellectuals of the French Enlightenment: ignorance and popular superstition; the violence and stupidity of Arabs who mull over their vengeance as they wait to exact it; anarchy and despotic caudillismo, like Janus’s two faces, are exemplary outcomes of the same problem, that is, moral and spiritual dissolution. At the national level, with its sound pedagogy, Sarmiento’s ideological Orientalism fought and won, to definitively take hold of the Generation of 1880s political imaginary.

References Altamirano, Carlos & Sarlo, Beatriz (1997). Ensayos argentinos. Buenos Aires: Ariel. Gutiérrez, Juan María (1942). Cartas de un porteño: polémica en torno al idioma y a la Real Academia Española, sostenida con Juan Martínez Villergas. Buenos Aires: Ed. Americana. Foreword and notes by Ernesto Morales. Head, Francis Bond (1986). Las Pampas y los Andes [1825]. Buenos Aires: Hyspamérica. Levi-Provençal, Evariste (1999). Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane, T. 2: Le califat umaiyade de Cordoue (912–1031). Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. López, Vicente Fidel (1993). “Apuntaciones literarias,” in Domingo F. Sarmiento. Viajes por Europa, África y América. Nanterre and Madrid: ALLCA, series Archivos, 1084–1085. Martínez Villergas, Juan (1855). Sarmenticidio ó a mal sarmiento buena podadera. Refutación, comentario, réplica, folleto ó como quierallamarse esta quisicosa que, en respuesta a los viajes publicados sin ton ni son por un tal Sarmiento, ha escrito á ratos perdidos un tal. J. M. Villergas. Paris: Agencia general de la librería española y extranjera. Moussa, Sarga (1995). La relation orientale. Enquête sur la communication dans les récits de voyage en Orient (1811–1861). Paris: Klincksieck. R ojas, Ricardo (1951). El Profeta de la Pampa, Vida de Sarmiento. Buenos Aires: Losada.

piece of work, one superimposed with duplicity and with the objective of making himself feel relevant while joking around. He stuck to appearances and showed contempt for the profound meaning of nationality as well as for certain events. Had he wanted to imitate Chevalier, he could have had a myriad of useful information that could have served as topics to conceive and realize the organizational work of our generation. Instead, trying to be funny, he chose to make his frivolous side known—a cursed cultural penchant that, he of all people, should have opposed” (López 1993: 1084–1085).

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Salleron, Louis (1958). “Préface,” François De Quesnay et la Physiocratie, vol. I. Paris: INED-Presses Universitaires de France. Sarmiento, Domingo F. (1934). Darwin. Síntesis de la evolución del pensamiento laico. Buenos Aires: Sociedad Luz. Sarmiento, Domingo F. (1944). Recuerdos de Provincia. Buenos Aires: Jackson. Sarmiento, Domingo F. (1993). Viajes por Europa, África y América [1848]. Nanterre and Madrid: ALLCA, series Archivos. Sarmiento, Domingo F. (1999). Facundo, Civilización y barbarie [1845]. Madrid: Cátedra, series Letras Hispánicas. Edition by Roberto Yahni. Sarmiento, Domingo F. (2001). Obras Completas, t. I–LIV. San Justo: University Press of La Matanza. Tocqueville, Alexis de (1991). “En Algérie,” Œuvres I , Voyages en Angleterre, en Suisse, en Algérie, dans l’Inde, Écrits politiques et académiques. Paris: Gallimard, serie La Pléiade, 655–953. Edition by André Jardin. Verdevoye, Paul (1993). “Viajes por Francia y Argelia,” in Domingo F. Sarmiento. Viajes por Europa, África y América [1848]. Nanterre and Madrid: ALLCA, series Archivos, 689–709.

PART III

Eastern Prints from Globetrotters, Tourists and Positivists

CHAPTER 5

The Worldly Splendor of Lucio Victorio Mansilla

I have been, as you know, one of the most insatiable Argentines when it comes to travel. Lucio V. Mansilla, Entre-nos (1889) The Orient, either as image or as thought, has become a kind of general concern … Victor Hugo, Preface to Les Orientales (1829)

The study of Lucio Victorio Mansilla’s works (1831–1913) has generated much scholarly activity, especially on his Una excursión a los indios ranqueles (1870) [“An Excursion into Ranquel Indian Territory,” Mansilla 1984] and, to a lesser extent, on his personal chronicles that were published in the five Entre-nos volumes, Causeries del Jueves (Mansilla 1889–1890, 1966, 1995, 1997). The studies highlight Mansilla’s peculiar psychological background as a member of Generation of 1880 (Guglielmini 1961; Jitrik 1970: 101–138; 1998: 65–86; Popolizio 1954; Prieto 2003: 135–165; Sosnowski 1984; Viñas 1995: 131–161). However, until now, no monographic study has addressed the impact that his formative experience in the East had on his life, mindset, and works (Pérez Gras 2009: 25–45). Although true, this research lacuna may be attributed to the overall dearth of rigorous studies on his literary output. His Orientalist writings or those inspired by Orientalism are few in number: Diario de viaje a Oriente [“Diary from a Trip to the © The Author(s) 2020 A. Gasquet, Argentinean Literary Orientalism, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54466-9_5

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East’] (1850–1851), De Adén a Suez [“From Aden to Suez”] (1854), Atar-Gull o una venganza africana [“Atar-Gull or an African Reprisal”] (1864) and a series of articles compiled in Entre nos, Causeries del jueves: “¿Por qué?,” “En Chandernagor,” “El hombre de Chandernagor,” “En las pirámides de Egipto” (Mansilla 1855: 85–96; 1864, 1964). Under these conditions, it is difficult to ascertain the impact his Middle Eastern experiences had on his prose works. We will try to shed some light on them.

Daybreak in the East: The Generation of 1880, from Sarmiento to Mansilla Sarmiento’s brief trip along the Algerian coast provided a sort of preamble to the Argentinean travelers who were to follow him. Mansilla was the first Argentine to travel extensively in the East and to leave written proof of his experiences. Pastor S. Obligado has mentioned earlier travelers, like naval officers Marini and Peraira, who had visited Japan along with his contemporary José Pacheco who had some stopovers in the Levant (Obligado 1873: 275). Yet, throughout our research, we have been unable to find any published testimonials by these travelers, nor have we been able to confirm, by means of other documents, their mission and precise itineraries. Nevertheless, we must conclude that, given his profound knowledge of unknown or forgotten facts about Argentinean history,1 Obligado’s statements are true. Our reading of Mansilla must be put into a proper perspective: he was the first Argentine to travel to the Middle East at a time when Sarmiento’s political-ideological work on Orientalism was widely accepted. In other words, a rupture as well as a continuum exist in his works. We say a rupture because Mansilla’s motivations for undertaking his trip were much different than Sarmiento’s. The young Mansilla, barely seventeen years old, was suddenly thrust into the Asiatic vortex without his having desired it or previously contemplated it. As seen, Sarmiento planned to visit Algeria with the intention of corroborating his hypotheses and observing French colonialism’s experiment on the “eradication” of 1 Pastor S. Obligado composed ten volumes of Tradiciones argentinas, in which some exceptional facts about Argentina are narrated. The latter were developed over the course of decades during which Obligado collected like an entomologist this series of unique anecdotes. We will return to this in the chapter consecrated to his work.

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barbarism. The continuum relates to the fact that, from the outset, Mansilla understood his participation in Western culture (a fragile participation, but one with which he strongly identified), and from it he reached judgments that led him to defend the hierarchical superiority of Western civilization over that of the East. Now then, just because it was assumed that he followed Sarmiento’s Orientalist precepts (namely that the Eastern political and moral culture was definitively backward when compared with that of the West) must we infer that Mansilla and Sarmiento were in full agreement. Mansilla considered Western superiority a manifestation of the class to which he belonged; however, unlike Sarmiento, he felt no need to search for an intellectual justification for his position. (Sarmiento had elaborated a conceptual apparatus that would justify, morally and materially, the colonial enterprise of the Argentinean Republic.) Mansilla tacitly viewed this phase of the ideological construction of a liberal program as having been completed. He internalized it, made it his own, in an intuitive, singular manner, in keeping with his narcissistic and eccentric personality. Because others had already thought out the strategic aspects of Orientalism, he did not believe he needed to rethink them; all he needed was to take up these arguments in an indifferent and natural manner, with a sense of worldliness and grace. Whereas Sarmiento arose socially by his “self-made-man” education, Mansilla, Rosas’s nephew, knew from the start that a special place had been reserved for him in life. Therefore, he constantly spoke, wrote, and thought without feeling the need to justify himself. Like Ulysses, he never looked back, not because he feared the frightful song of the Sirens, but because of his deep conviction that his world truly “belonged to him” and that his future was assured. This Mansilla’s attitude vis-à-vis the world is common among the Generation of 1880, where social and political problems, having been debated for thirty years (after Rosas’s fall from power), started being resolved by the adoption of a system of values resolutely liberal and open to the world. These problems were not new and they had already been raised by the Independence generation; the novelty was that their resolution came about by the latter, through an arduous and bitter national pacification agreement that was aimed at establishing a compromise between the hegemony of Buenos Aires and its alliance with the provinces. The spirit of certainty identified with the Generation of 1880

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gradually strengthened, from the battle of Caseros to the battle of Pavón,2 until being formalized with the 1880 federalization of Buenos Aires. The model country yearned for by Sarmiento and Alberdi, one that was modern and solidly integrated into the world market, was slowly being put into practice, though not without contradictions. Over the course of thirty years, ranging from the battle of Caseros to the year 1880, the country’s crucial problems, which dated back to Independence, were steadily being resolved: a. The definitive unification that followed the 1862 national political organization. b. The end of the isolationism and protectionism imposed during the Rosas regime; c. The integration of a fragmented national territory; d. The consolidation of liberalism as an indisputable ideology of the period and the dissemination of Positivism in Argentinean thought. At the social and cultural level, an educational revolution began to take shape under Sarmiento’s guidance. Initially confined to Buenos Aires, the changes eventually took hold throughout the nation until Mitre’s Presidency. Compulsory public education was introduced that was progressive, secular, and free.3 As a result of literacy, many foreign immigrants as well as those migrating from the provinces, were able to become educated (Gasquet 2005: 61–84). These are the years when Buenos Aires definitively ceased to be a “large village” and instead became a modern, international city. Mansilla, himself, recalled his childhood city irrevocably changed: “Buenos Aires! Or as one should say, ‘Paris in South America’ because the old Buenos Aires is disappearing and, bit by bit, is being transformed into a Petit Paris ! …” (Mansilla 2000: 144). In general, the literary figures and the political elite of the 1880s agreed with the

2 The battle of Caseros (3 February 1852) marked the end of Rosas’s dictatorship as well as the new institutionalization of the country under Urquiza. The battle of Pavón (17 September 1861) faced off the forces of the Argentinean Confederation, under Urquiza’s command, against the forces of Buenos Aires, under General Mitre who triumphed, resulting in the Capital’s new hegemony over the national political model. 3 Education Law 1.420 was ratified on 8 July 1884. It was inspired by the model Sarmiento imposed on the province of Buenos Aires in 1875 as well as by the 1881 French educational law put in place by Jules Ferry.

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changes that were occurring because they were not stubbornly nostalgic and would defend, often with much naivety, the still vague notion of a cosmopolitan elite who hobnobbed with the most noted men of the Old and New World. The axiom of belonging to the civilized West prevailed within the value system of erudite Argentines, even though said belonging was only in their heads. Along with political expression, literary creation was one of the most accomplished forms through which the Generation of 1880 represented itself. Politics and literature were tightly connected at that time, and this was a phase before the professionalization of writers or journalists. Men of letters believed themselves to be independent and autonomous critics, like militants of a cause. Writing was a crucial political tool in achieving a successful political career; therefore, literary expression was not divorced from social progress or political aspiration. Writing was then an instrument for expressing political ideas. It was a means of addressing the ravages of immigration, a secular versus a Catholic education, the pros and cons of federalization, city versus rural life, and the finding of a plausible method for subjugating the Indians, etc. Those literary figures, who adhered to political and social imperatives, tended to be promoted as edifying or moralistic authors. As Noé Jitrik states: Literature enjoys what might be called a concomitant prestige. Besides the fact that it is not quite understood how a person can be solely a writer—it is viewed socially as lower than any other professional activity— but, on the other hand, it is quite understood that anyone with another profession could also be a writer, which even enhances their personality traits. (Jitrik 1998: 76)

This aesthetic and utilitarian concept (the two usages are not incompatible) of literary writing is characteristic of all the important members of this generation. Lucio V. López (1848–1894), judge and political figure; Eduardo L. Holmberg (1852–1937), naturalist, educator, and doctor; Miguel Cané, Jr. (1851–1905),4 lawyer, diplomat, and political figure; Bartolomé Mitre (1826–1906), military leader, political figure, historian, and essayist; Eduardo Faustino Wilde (1844–1913), doctor, statesman,

4 Miguel Cané, his father (1812–1863), who was referenced in Chapter 3 and a friend and political ally of Alberdi, must not be confused with Miguel Cané, Jr. (1851–1905) who is referenced here.

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and diplomat; Carlos Guido y Spano (1827–1916), diplomat and political figure; Eugenio Cambaceres (1843–1888), lawyer and statesman; Martín García Mérou (1862–1905), diplomat and political figure; and Lucio V. Mansilla, military leader, writer, political figure, and diplomat. In commenting on En Viaje [“On the Road”] (1884) by Miguel Cané, Jr, Paul Groussac (1848–1929), French resident of Buenos Aires and member of this generation, defined the characteristics of these men of letters in these terms: How different is this current generation! … They know literature down to its minute details and possess the best and most recent information on the intellectual trends around the world. If there is anything of which they are unaware, it would be knowledge of their own language or country. They have had a taste of Sainte-Beuve and Macaulay … they thoroughly know the art of writing; they are erudite and humorous; they take it all in stride. A bit refined, somewhat discontented and ironic, wearing their talent on their sleeves, they prefer the written word. Hence a dispersion, an enormous waste of talent dispersed to the four winds of journalism or conversation. (Prieto 1967: 438)

Groussac’s approval is obviously applicable to all members of this generation and, in particular, to Mansilla; in addition to Groussac’s effusive praise, he also toned down his criticism by excluding the general reproach of the period: to criticize this generation of writers for knowing more about world polemics than their own national reality or their own language. Groussac’s portrayal highlights two other key aspects of the Generation of 1880: they practiced journalism and the art of conversation, activities in which Mansilla would stand out during his mature years. Members of this generation, largely inspired by Sarmiento’s model, possessed another distinctive literary trait: almost all of them wrote travel chronicles. Mansilla, Diario de viaje a Oriente [“Orient Trip Diary”] (1850–1851) and De Adén a Suez [“From Aden to Suez”] (1854); Lucio V. López, Recuerdos de viaje [“Trip Memories”] (1881); Martín García Mérou, Impresiones [“Impressions”] (1882); Santiago Estrada, Apuntes de Viaje [“Trip Notations”] (1870) (Tuninetti 2001: 103–104); Paul Groussac, Del Plata al Niágara [“From the River Plate to Niagara”] (1897); Miguel Cané, Jr., A la distancia [“At a Distance”] (1882) and En viaje [“On the Way”] (1884); and Eduardo Wilde, Viajes y observaciones [“Trips and Observations”] (1892) and Por mares y por tierras [“Through Land and Sea”] (1899). The popularity of this literary genre

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stemmed from the fact that it purported to reveal a double phenomenon: the usefulness of the trip along with the widening of the traveler’s personal dimension. For this reason, we find a similar tone in these works in which delightful personal anecdotes were related along with political, social, and cultural observations that aimed to be objective portrayals of the mentioned countries. As proof of their authors’ cosmopolitanism, these works were intended to enjoy recognition in places visited but, at the same time, to equally confirm a psychology that aspired to be acknowledged on the local scene. This is characteristic of a generation to which the entire nation was really a work in progress; it thus needed guidance and international input to continue their development. From this viewpoint came the idea of usefulness that these authors felt that their books had to convey, despite the personal and reminiscent tone of their contents, in addition to some self-congratulatory frivolity. This strong tendency reflects what one can call the Bildungsroman of travel among the Generation of 1880 that had a twofold purpose: for the author, to introduce their coming-out novel and, for the changing society and the developing nation, to benefit from an edifying discourse. Alberdi had already warned, years before, that South American travelers seriously seeking solid knowledge should avoid traveling through “civilized” Europe. In 1846, he affirmed that “when the sincere desire for acquiring solid learning replaces vanity, Paris and London will certainly not be the cities most frequented by our youth while on their European outings” (Alberdi 1928: 218). Although Alberdi made this point by alluding to “beneficial” future trips in southern Europe, his conclusion concerning Eastern trips, originally outlined by Mansilla and developed by Sarmiento, was prophetic. Since then, this pending Eastern trip would not include (apart from Sarmiento) any immediate useful component that could be applied to the Argentinian educational, judicial, economic, or social systems. As discussed, with Sarmiento, this Eastern borrowing played an ideological role. In other words, his exclusive use of ideology was meant to conceptualize a condensation of barbarism as a negative contrast to his model of civilization. Whatever the case, a trip, different from one in Europea, had begun to be seen on the horizon. However, one must keep in mind that an Eastern itinerary would never be popular with the Argentinean elite. It would never rival the supremacy of the European voyage or the growing interest in traveling across the United States. Its allure would be to those travelers who had become tired of visiting the typically well-known tourist destinations of the Old World and

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of seeing the modern lights of the United States. The Eastern journey was made within the spirit of Romanticism—in its peculiar River Plate configuration—that reconciled liberal and secular materialism with the reactionary, nostalgic Catholicism of a Chateaubriand. From the outset, opting for an Eastern outing implied a taste for adventure, one that combined the aesthetic with the anecdotal discourse. It was not considered an option against travel to Europe or the United States; instead, it complemented them and added a cosmopolitan “plus” to the civilized world’s overall perspective. As a matter of fact, those same Argentines who traveled East had also extensively traveled to those traditional European destinations, either before or after traveling to the Levant. Like Eduardo Wilde, it was common for this generation of Argentines to have even resided for years in Europe before venturing into the Far East. A profound difference separates Sarmiento from Mansilla. The former, infused with European rhetoric, attempted to synthesize his reflections on the East, even if it was through a collection of prejudiced pieces hastily put together during the course of his brief trip to Algeria; the latter never even considered reaching firm conclusions about those Eastern countries and cultures that he had visited. He limited himself to the anecdotal and entertainment sphere. Testimony of his Eastern passage would have been more extensive had his travel diaries not been regretfully lost during his stay and exile in Paraná.5 His relatively scant corpus does not reveal the consistent influence made by his Eastern adventure.

Forbidden Games and Unspeakable Reasons Mansilla’s Eastern episode is part of a biography identified by an outlandish event. This episode would not have taken place if he had not exhibited, since his early years, a certain proclivity for passionate and dissipated romantic flings, accompanied by a certain taste for transgression, attributes that revealed a restless and curious personality. He would not have gone to India had he not benefitted from being Rosas’s nephew and having belonged to an upper-class family. Throughout his entire life, Mansilla would reproach his father for having sent him to India when he was seventeen years old but, meanwhile, he was always fully conscious 5 In 2008, one of his descendants, Doctor Luis Bollaert, found Mansilla’s travel diaries from his voyage to India during his youth. They were critically edited by a team led by Professor María Rosa Lojo and published in 2010 in Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2012.

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of the benefits of this experience that set him apart from other members of the aristocratic elite. He therefore felt contradictory emotions when alluding to his days in the East, as may be detected in some of his “causeries.” There are two explanations for the fact that his father, Lucio Norberto, placed him aboard the American brigantine, Huma, destined for Calcutta. One is a public explanation: the dishonor brought by his forbidden love for Pepita6 (Mansilla 1994: 162), a French girl, barely sixteen years of age, by whom Mansilla was smitten and whom he planned to marry and then flee to Montevideo. Mansilla’s mother, Agustina, condemned this secret relationship more so than his father, who was then residing in his salting house in San Nicolás. Lucio was punished by his mother, who sent him to his Uncle Gervasio’s ranch, south of the province of Buenos Aires. In Chascomús, he met Catalina, one of his five cousins. Thinking he had forgotten Pepita, he returned to the capital where he learned that Pepita’s mother had forced her into marriage to end the dishonorable rumors of her fling with Lucio. He became enraged, so again his mother decided to send him to his father. In San Nicolás, after expecting Mansilla to take charge of a new salting house, the father decided instead to send him to India. Why India? Here is the private explanation: the forbidden readings of young Mansilla. The father discovered that his son was secretly reading Le contrat social of Rousseau, both a book and an author unfavorably regarded during the Rosas regime. Lucio recalled his father severely scolding him: “Of course, you plan to continue living in this country,” I then told him: “Daddy, yesterday you asked me the same thing, but I do not understand.” To which the father replied: “Sonny, when you are Juan Manuel de Rosas’s nephew, you do not read Le contrat social in this country; you must leave the country if you wish to read it.” He then concluded:

6 Mansilla described that relationship thus: “Pepita was a fashion designer and lived

and worked in a high-end hat shop on Victoria Street, situated between the pastry shops owned by Monguillot and Baldraco. Her mother had a hotel on San Martin Street, almost next to today’s Supreme Court. They were both French…. We were in love. Consequently, we wrote to each other. We would see each other at night…. We saw ourselves as Romeo and Juliette” (Mansilla 1994: 162).

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The truth of the matter is that, after this encounter, everyone in Buenos Aires said they sent me away because I was a boy with very bad preferences, alluding to certain adventures [with Pepita]. The truth is that, if my father sent me away on a sailing ship … a ship leaving for India, … named Huma, it was solely and exclusively because of what I have related here. (Mansilla 1994: 172)

His readings and a forbidden love were the causes of his precocious Eastern voyage. Not having time to bid farewell to his Uncle Juan Manuel, who would later reproach him for that omission, young Lucio departed with enough wealth to permit him to live like a nobleman in India. “At the bottom of my trunk, I had a thousand Mexican patacones [gold coins], as per the captain’s recommendation…. In Calcutta, I received a letter of credit from London. Fortunately, indeed, because the thousand pieces did not last me long” (Mansilla 1994: 172). The financial justification for Mansilla’s trip was to help him establish an export business, whereby he would purchase Chinese and Indian products to send to Buenos Aires. The crossing from Argentina to India lasted ninety-six days. In transit, he passed through Cape Town and the remote islands of SaintPaul and Amsterdam in the Indian Ocean. Upon arrival in Calcutta, he quickly renounced his official business mission and began living a dandy’s life, spending a fortune of twenty thousand British pounds.

Testimonials from the East British India The essence of cosmopolitan travelers was to feel at ease everywhere in the world, that is, comfortable wherever and whatever the circumstances were, having the confidence of never losing control. A proper upbringing prepares one to act naturally in diverse situations. This nineteenth-century cosmopolitanism came with a strong dose of social worldliness. This type of rearing increases travelers’ certainty that, wherever in the world they find themselves, they can make contacts who can confirm their membership among international elites. Despite its geographical distance from Europe and the River Plate region, British India was part of a nineteenth-century travel circuit that was patently cosmopolitan. Consequently, upon his 1848 arrival in Calcutta, Mansilla did not hesitate to surround himself with a host of cosmopolitan characters. Once settled in Spence’s Hotel, a lavish lodging frequented by the English, he

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quickly established a friendship with James Fosters Rodgers, an American traveler from Boston who was twenty years his senior. Although the hubbub of Calcutta rapidly bored him, he promptly adopted aristocratic tastes: colonial India provided an opulent setting for nourishing his narcissism as, for example, he traveled accompanied by six servants.7 Shortly thereafter he departed for Chandernagore, a midsized city on the banks of the Hooghly River, and the only area in the province of Bengal controlled by the French.8 Mansilla had learned French at the school of Mister Clarmont (Mansilla 1994: 152) in Buenos Aires—it was surely his fondness for that language that led him to this small French colony. Soon after arriving in this humid, tropical city, Mansilla was recognized on the street by a gentleman who, in Spanish, called him by his proper name from a balcony. After he recovered from the initial shock, the gentleman invited him to the house and began inquiring about the state of his mother’s health as well as his father and uncle’s. It turned out that it was Mister de Vignety, governor of the territory of Chandernagore and former secretary of the French Mission in Buenos Aires. He was accompanied by a beautiful woman, his sister, and with whom Mansilla immediately fell platonically in love. They then invited him to dinner. Afterward, he returned to his hotel around midnight, accompanied by the host’s valet. It was stated that cosmopolitan worldliness identified members of the elite among their class, no matter where. That is what happened to Mansilla who believed to have been taken in by the radical exoticism of this far-off place. Beyond the anecdote that inspired the causerie, he confirmed what the meaning of cosmopolitanism was: “Seeing a familiar face, in India, in Chandernagore, after a grueling voyage against the current! … at dusk, feeling alone, isolated, segregated from the rest of the Universe, without rhyme or reason; I did not even understand the language being spoken around me!” In conclusion, “I felt accompanied, protected in this world” (2000: 97).

7 This is how he recalls this factual situation: “I was single, living alone, and had six servants. And not to be doubted, I will tell you what their duties were. The main servant was my valet. Next came the waiter (during a meal, everyone had his own) and the porter. Then came the pariah, who emptied my room’s waste. Finally, I had a servant who took care of my cabriolet and the horse and the footman….” (Mansilla 1964: 108). 8 The ancient enclave of Chandernagore, today Chandannagar, is situated 39 km from Calcutta, upstream from the Hooghly River, one of the main tributaries of the Ganges. France returned this small area to India in 1951.

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The surprise encounter with governor Vignety disconcerted Mansilla, but he rapidly regained his composure and rose to the occasion: Taking control of my psychological situation, I recovered my speech, which I had lost because of the shock effect of the unexpected situation …, and seeing a bit more clearly once my astonishment had passed, I recalled my homeland, which rushed to my aid and favor, by placidly conveying memories of my birthplace, family, schoolmates, and friends…. That gentleman, who extends me his hospitality in a far off part of the world, he who is before me, he who, with his pleasantries, does not allow me to speak, he who is a friend of the family, he is a friend of Mister Léfebvre de Bécour, the husband of my Aunt Nieves, my mother’s best friend.9 (1964: 106)

To Mansilla, his first world voyage was like attending a gentlemen’s club. He did not describe India, but took it in. India only existed through his discourse, one based on whatever anecdote he included as he narrated it to club listeners. When the causeur closed his eyes, this remote world dissolved and became an abstraction that failed to materialize, actualize, or to exist outside his consciousness. It was not until decades later that Mansilla would understand that he had not been prepared for this trip because he then felt that the essence of what he should have somehow realized had escaped him. In recalling his visit to the Egyptian pyramids, he exclaimed: “I was so ignorant!” (2000: 163). For that reason, the record of his voyage to India was reduced to a few comments or anecdotes written for an audience hungry for amusing stories, that is, for the readers of his Thursday causeries in the newspaper Sud América [“South America”] (Viñas 1995: 131–161). We know nothing about his overall visit, except that he reached the pyramids and was the first Argentine to visit them (2012: 97–99).10 Mansilla was the very antithesis of Sarmiento in terms of his testimonials and recorded impressions. The almost two 9 Mansilla specifies that he familiarly calls her “Aunt Nieves,” without mentioning the precise parental connection. 10 The team that recently edited the recovered Diario de viaje a Oriente 1850–51 [Diary of Journey to the East 1850–51] of Lucio Mansilla, has reconstituted his maritime and terrestrial itinerary. The areas indicated are Calcutta, Chandernagore, Madras (India), Point de Galle (Sri Lanka) and Male (Maldives). However, considering his prolonged stay in India, we can assume that the Mansilla’s diary did not mention all the places he visited. In addition, many of these places were simply maritime stopovers (Sri Lanka, Maldives, Yemen). In later articles, he indicated, without any specificities, that he had also visited the Himalayas, Benares, Lahore, and Delhi (Mansilla 2012: 98–99).

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years he frivolously spent in the subcontinent can be summarized in a handful of frivolous words: “I met American James Foster Rodgers in Calcutta, with whom I visited the interior of India, Benares, Lahore, Delhi, and even climbed the most accessible peaks of the Himalayas” (2000: 152–153). According to Enrique Popolizio, it was this new friend who encouraged him to discover India’s interior. Preferring the lavish lifestyle at his disposal in the British colony, he barely tried to conceal his reproachful attitude toward his father, who had sent him to this far-off place, by frivolously spending all his money without deriving any commercial benefit. Through irony, a tendency so characteristic of Mansilla in his causeries, he justified his new playboy life and his refusal to engage in commercial ventures. He wrote: For now, I will tell you that the shipment has not been made for the simple reason that instead of buying merchandise, which was my charge, I bought pleasure and spent all the money, twenty thousand British pounds. Yet, as I clearly explained to my good father, I spent it like a gentleman, doing honor to my name wherever I went in India, to the extent that if an advance is not sent to me, I have no idea how I am going to survive. That is what you get when you send a seventeen-year-old boy to India to handle shipments! (2000: 107)

Indeed, he was obsessed with a single idea: to reach Europe, where he sensed that he could realize his great, worldly aspirations. He cared little about the unimaginable world that India presented him, except that it set a fantastic stage for his persona, which he would later exaggeratedly describe to his readers. It should suffice to observe how he used the wellknown, deceptive cliché concerning exoticism when relating his return to his Chandernagore hotel: I went to bed dressed and wanted to sleep…. Impossible! … I saw ghosts in the shadows … tigers revealed their jagged teeth and cavernous mouths to me through the blinds and shutters, (there are no doors in India …) and giant boa constrictors crawled around and poked their flat heads through all the crevices … I was afraid … I screamed … nobody came … and that was not a dream. (2000: 107)

His return trip to Europe was difficult, but before his arrival there would be two noteworthy stopovers: Egypt and Turkey.

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Navigation on the Red Sea The only testimonial from Mansilla on his Arabian cruise is disclosed in De Adén a Suez. This text was written just shortly after his Eastern and European voyage, dating from 26 February 1854. It was an article commissioned by Miguel Navarro Viola, an influential Buenos Aires attorney and publisher in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, who directed the scientific and literary journal El Plata científico y literario between 1854 and 1855 (Auza 1968). It is relevant to mention that this was Mansilla’s first publication. His characteristic style, which would later make him a famous speaker, was absent from this work. More extensive than his newspaper articles, this piece reflects his concern about the usefulness of his writing and the accuracy of his descriptions. Mansilla did not yet intend to be amusing or retain reader attention and, though he did not aspire to objectivity in his observations, he still wanted his writings to be serious and well documented. This account, divided into three parts, begins with a preface that comments on the British predilection for conquest. In this text, as well as in others by Mansilla, an essential ambiguity can be perceived: his admitted admiration for Anglo-Saxon civilization, coupled with a natural mistrust of the English character. Hence, the fact that his initial praises also clearly reflect the discomfort felt by a South American before an old European power: “The most eloquent argument provided by the English is that, after long and mature considerations, to obtain from the weak what will eventually be of great importance to their political and commercial interests, they must employ cannons….” (1855: 85). Mansilla was under strong pressure caused by a desire to prove his belonging to a civilized world, comprised of elegant and cosmopolitan Europeans, while being very much different from them. This common denominator between Creoles and Europeans is defined by three factors (the ethnic, the confessional, and the cultural), that is, the White race, the Christian religion and the modern spirit. At the same time, Mansilla was aware of not being a part of Western power; hence, as an outsider, he felt a constant feeling of distrust because, as he now identified with the weak, he feared European colonialism. (In fact, Mansilla’s father fought against the Anglo-French squadron at the 1845 Vuelta de Obligado battle.) It is this reality that led to a peculiar South American distrust that never quite showed through when it came to criticizing the European colonial enterprise as led by the great powers.

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With whom did Mansilla mostly identify? With the indigenous man of Aden or with the English conqueror? With the latter of course, even though he did not totally share the same views regarding colonial expansion. He therefore based his cut-off line on religious principles, the only way of justifying this morally condemnable expansionist enterprise. Muslims are backward, driven by fanaticism. He asserts that “indomitable Muslims cannot view with indifference the fact that their precious patrimony is being taken from them; the English see in them, not the weakness and inertia of the Indians, but the fanatic heroism of Islamists who resist more from religious views than from a patriotic fervor” (1855: 85). The colonial enterprise that Mansilla implicitly condemned when imposed on White and Christian people (in South America), was instead justified when used against non-Christian people whom he deemed to belong to an inferior race. Indeed, he qualified Muslims as “infidels,” a people “genuinely lacking in fundamental principles and, because their social institutions are not solid enough to prolong their political existence, they must be absorbed by those who are driven by evangelical truths, …” (1855: 85–86). The resolutely crude tone of these ideas is combined in the text with passages imbued with strong Romantic traits. In fact, his first writing falls under the classification of late South American Romanticism, that is, a multiform mixture of reactionary Romanticism à la Chateaubriand and of Liberal Progressivism borne out of the Enlightenment (Buffon, Rousseau, Volney). Mansilla exalts the traveler’s ego, because all, or almost all, is included in his spoken word, but he also tries to add a utilitarian dimension by contributing important descriptive passages (seaports, cities like Aden, Moka, Suez) and by giving geographic details (distances between two points, heights of mountains, erudite ethnographic comments, technical and linguistic quotations, etc.). Evidence of this two-faceted expression of South American Romanticism is found when Mansilla visited the Red Sea. He, to explain Christian cosmogony, makes a Biblical reference to the Book of Genesis yet, immediately afterward, he expands on the theories of modern science to explain the origin of the world. He resorted to Buffon’s theories and even quoted Humboldt. His account must be interpreted from this double perspective: Romantic and personal in tone, but not excluding the social value. He avers that “from early on to Buffon’s time, and from Buffon to Humboldt and with an estimable perseverance, philosophers and travelers have worked enthusiastically to show, with mathematical precision,

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the physical laws to which all that exist is subjected” (1855: 91). This is why Mansilla was moved to the point of mystical rapture at the sight of biblical sites,11 such as Mount Sinai or the Port of Suez; however, he systematically provided a modern and scientific explanation in accordance with the spirit of the Positivist generation and of his journal, El Plata científico y literario.12 The negative aspects of Orientalism are outlined repeatedly, albeit irregularly. There is no direct reference to despotism but, in a previous quotation, we notice that the “social institutions” derived from the fundamental truths of Islam are “not solid enough to prolong their political existence.” Once again, this idea recalls Volney’s conclusion in Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte, after discussing Eastern political practices: One must admit that, of all men who dared to provide laws for mankind, none was as ignorant as Mohammed. Of all absurd human compositions, none more wretched than his book. What has been taking place in Asia for twelve hundred years is enough proof: because … it would be easy to demonstrate that government unrest there as well as the ignorance of people in this part of the world are, more or less, the immediate results of the Koran and its moral teachings. (1787: 553–554. Our emphasis )

Yet, Mansilla’s perspective was more tolerant than Volney’s. Unlike the latter, he did not comment on the decadence of these people or on the powerful civilizations they had formerly developed. He attributed these people’s misery to social geography: their wretched condition is due to the hardships identified with the land where they live, which yield their eternal penury. Regarding Aden, he said: It is impossible to find anything in the world poorer than this immense rock that produces absolutely nothing, and where even water is a rare commodity…. Such are the resources of these unfortunate inhabitants of 11 “… my heart was opening up and rising to the most sublime religious emotion and possessing evangelic truths to the most profound depth of my conscience,” Mansilla exclaimed (Mansilla 1855: 93). 12 We must remember that later, during the Pedagogical Congress of the 1880s,

Mansilla would defend secular education against Catholic education in an educational debate. It is for this reason that he published his causeries in the newspaper Sud América, of which the redaction was presented by Paul Groussac, Carlos Pellegrini, Lucio V. López and Roque Sáenz Peña and not in La Unión, the Catholic newspaper in which Manuel Estrada and Pedro Goyena wrote, who were ardent critics of Liberalism.

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the desert, whose pale and weakened physiognomy is proof of the deprivations to which they are being subjected. Their depraved customs along with their fiery and unhealthy nature almost always leads them to premature death. (1855: 89)

Later, he alluded to Suez in practically the same terms: a city “erected beautifully in the desert sand, whose surroundings of unparalleled sterility present the most distressing painting of solitude and melancholy” (1855: 94). Human misery, which aroused Mansilla’s piety and melancholy, was a product of the arid soil and the ravages of religion; both led Muslims into an unproductive and fanatic sterility that impedes progress. Mansilla denigrated the natives to the point of qualifying them as inhuman and, worse yet, he saw them as straw men or inanimate dolls. After an eight-day voyage from India to Aden, he went beyond a mere picturesque and exotic description to repeatedly comparing them to animals: The type of canoe on which we were traveling was smoothly drifting along; however, a group of Black females were swimming on both sides with such speed that they more resembled those sea monsters depicted in mythological tales than actual human beings. From time to time we would cast coins in their direction, prompting them to immediately dive to the bottom, with dolphin swiftness, to gather them. This action lasted only a few minutes; they would then reappear on the surface, clamping their treasure tightly between their teeth and shaking their savage heads with joy. (1855: 86–87)

His assessment denotes a certain racial condescension; the metaphor unabashedly suggests that the natives’ nature is that of animals because their miserable condition forces them to ask for bakchich (“alms”). Mansilla is incapable of conceiving that the degrading condition caused by dire poverty does not make the natives subhuman; nothing is more profoundly human than misery. Any contact he had with the natives was in vain and doomed to failure. Having arrived at his destination after five days of navigation, he referred to the indigenous people as “alienated” because they ignored White travelers. Passengers walked among “Arabs sitting on the ground …, but none would look at us: they seemed enraptured by the murmur of the sea and intoxicated by the exquisite tobacco from Latakia” (1855: 94). To Mansilla, this indifference is the product of dogmatic contempt and took it to be the type of arrogance found among conquered and subjugated people: “A number of people … was

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observing us askance …, through eaglelike stares, with a contemptuous indifference that Islam inspires towards all who are not Muslim” (1855: 96). This “arrogant” indifference of the natives was incomprehensible to him because, in fact, he saw in them the same contemptuous attitude that he, himself, had toward them. Thus, the Arab gaze was specular and reversible, giving him a sense of superiority, tinged with cosmopolitanism, that followed him as he traveled these lands. Nevertheless, not all Mansilla’s assessments were negative: being a late Romanticist, he was appreciative of the desert’s graceful and exquisite beauty along with its sunsets. The only city that stands out, Moka, is the only one that he did not visit. He was only able to admire it from afar. The ship did not stop, but it did reduce its speed enabling him to appreciate, at sunset, the city’s beachfront with its mosques and their minarets as well as “its gracious and flamboyant architecture, so characteristic of all Middle Eastern structures” (1855: 92). Ultimately, his only positive judgment was limited to an aesthetic evaluation of the culture and the landscape. The impact of natural beauty on Mansilla far exceeds that made by the locals. Here is how he concluded his essay: “Would you like to have the perfect idea of eternity? Then go see the sun rise over the desert; you will witness the most grandiose, most imposing, and most serious of natural spectacles” (1855: 96). Egypt Egypt, for a long time, stood out as the most “oriental” symbol and, as such, it became one of the first tourist destinations for nineteenthcentury Westerners. After the so-called “Italian Grand Tour” and the “European Grand Tour” (Brilli 1995; Gasquet 2006: 31–66), which took place between the seventeenth and nineteenth century and that gave rise to an authentic cultural phenomenon among the Old World leisure class, Egypt rapidly became an international tourist attraction (Reed 1996: 289–307). In fact, Eastern excursions were an extension of the European Grand Tour, which entailed sending upper-class youths on long trips to further their education on classical antiquity, the Renaissance, art, literature, languages, and the humanities. These young travelers were typically accompanied by a tutor or professor and, in addition to expanding their education on the above subjects, they were expected to develop relationships with local well-to-do families. The objective of the outing was not solely educational, but also to imbue them with cosmopolitan

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and universal aptitudes included in Renaissance Humanism, whose legacy gained new attention during the Age of Enlightenment thanks to the rise of the bourgeoisie. Young Mansilla’s trip had the same objective, though with those nuances that his sudden departure from Buenos Aires entailed. His commercial mission, in which from the start no one believed, had become one of initiation and learning. And, although he traveled without an official tutor, it may be assumed that James Foster Rodgers, with whom he arrived in Rome and London, filled that role. Mansilla’s voyage to Egypt involved an exclusive objective: to visit the pyramids in the vicinity of Cairo. The text from this Egyptian excursion, which he related many years later in his causeries, makes it very clear that this was already a popular destination. In that narration, Mansilla recovered the frivolous and conversational tone that were prevalent in his accounts about India. After a stagecoach ride from Suez, the travelers settled in Cairo’s Hôtel de Russie. For Mansilla, the capital merited no commentary. In passing, he twice mentioned the services of a dragoman during a visit to the pyramids, an indispensable attendant for all Western travelers in the Middle East. The dragoman was the guide and local interpreter as well as a man of service. Sarga Moussa distinguished between two types: the consular dragoman, intriguing key player in the diplomatic relations of the European powers in the Levant; the second-tier dragoman, lower in hierarchical rank to the consular, who leased his services to “new” travelers. This second category was unthinkable before nineteenth-century European tourism. Moussa defined him so: There exists a second type of dragoman not, in principle, at the service of a consulate: he is a guide-interpreter, whom travelers recruit in those same countries where they are traveling. Now then, this individual, a nineteenthcentury creation, played a key role in the travel stories about the Middle East. As an “all-around man,” serving as interpreter, domestic servant, cook and bodyguard, was a second-tier version of the official dragoman…. Aiming to make himself exceedingly important, this dragoman would often dress lavishly, like more prestigious colleagues who worked at the consulate or for the Ottoman government. (1995: 16)

Apart from two fleeting comments, Mansilla did not provide any description of his dragoman, although the servant must have professionally fulfilled his role as cultural go-between. On the 14 March 1851, Mansilla left for a visit to the vast area where the pyramids are scattered.

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His recollections at Giza were far removed in time. Therefore, he used an old essay by British Colonel Vyse (The Pyramids of Giza, London, 1839–1842, 3 volumes) in describing the pyramid of Cheops (one among sixty-seven) guarded by the Sphinx that to him exhibited Ethiopian characteristics [2000: 158].13 However, what was most important was the intemporal impression that the pyramids themselves had on him; they “seem to belong more to the universe than specifically to Egypt.” Admiring the pyramids linked the past to the present, a spiritual synthesis concerning the “millions of slaves applying themselves like busy ants to complete a grandiose work” (2000: 156). Mansilla, while thinking about the slave work required to build these pyramids, calculated the cost of sustaining these millions of men, a speculation that led him to a conformist and conservative observation: Ah, without the toils of the past, we would not have today’s prosperity! There will always be masters and slaves, rich and poor, those who suffer and those who do not. We are incapable of being exclusively good. All conquests lead to catastrophe. “Humankind does not find itself between good and evil; rather, between evil and the worst.” (2000: 159)

It is undeniable that Mansilla was aware of his luck and privilege as a member of the wealthy, capable of enjoying life’s benefits without remorse. Consequently, neither he nor his friend Foster Rodgers were afraid of climbing the huge Cheops pyramid, carried on the shoulders of “Bedouins” or tourist porters. The Bedouins had to hoist them 183 meters up on a 51-degree inclined plane, climbing a total of 203 steps, each measuring from 70 centimeters to one and a half meters in height. A one-sided competition was set between the two men and a group of female English tourists dressed “in skirts tucked into men’s pants.” The two wanted to arrive before the women so they could “enjoy” seeing their exhausted faces upon reaching the top. It was with a carefree and ordinary tone that Mansilla described the climb:

13 Mansilla’s citation is incorrect. The correct reference is: Richard William Howard

Vyse, Operations carried out at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837: with an account of a voyage into Upper Egypt, and an appendix (containing a survey by John Shae Perring…of the Pyramids at Abou Roash, et cetera), [With Plates.], 3 volumes, London, Fraser, 1840–42.

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The arrangement was thus: three Bedouins per head; one held us by the right hand; the other by the left with our noses facing the pyramid’s inclined plane; the third was behind…. Suddenly we heard a guttural shout of “alaha!” and, with it, we felt ourselves being pulled by both arms and a strong push on “our behinds,” as a very uneducated assistant of my father would say. They raised us one step, as though we were bundles. The “alahas” kept resounding and our climbing as bundles continued. We were really sweating it and felt not to have a single joint in place, or so it seemed. We were looking at the Bedouins whose faces seemed to say, “Give us a break!” But nothing except “alaha!” here, “alaha!” there. Foster Rodgers and I were rolling like shapeless heaps … until Divine Providence allowed us to rest on a step with a crevice. According to the Bedouins, this crevice possessed singular virtues, but the only real virtue we discovered was that they asked us for a tip (bakchich), a colloquial expression equivalent to “one hand washes the other.” (2000: 160)

At no point did Mansilla show any concern for the Bedouins’ fatigue nor did he think that a tip was warranted for being hand-carried. He seemed to be suffering more from the climb than any of his three porters, “and we, ourselves, had become excited and we began to shout ‘alaha’! to give ourselves the courage we lacked as we felt more dead than alive. We finally arrived in a pitiful state…” (2000: 161). At the top, he and Rodgers found twenty-three other tourists, “surrounded by sixty-seven demons (Egyptians) who had remained on the last step.” The tourists were Americans. Rodgers introduced Mansilla as a South American and as a “colleague,” and then everyone burst into unison in a: Hurrah! We took off our hats, waved them, and then tossed them to the wind …, all as one, as though we had conquered another world, we proudly yelled out: All Americans! Long live America! effusively, as we held hands together, while loudly continuing to shout, “Long live America!” (2000: 161)

This anecdote exemplifies, in more ways than one, Mansilla’s high spirits. He saw himself immediately accepted by the outburst and fellowship of the young Yankees. This continental solidarity was reinforced by the magnificence of this Middle Eastern land that, until then, was thought to be a place reserved for Europeans. These Americans were also apparently beginning to forge a type of Western Orientalism different from that of the Europeans. Their notions of the West were founded on the

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most simple and basic of understandings: a land where White people and Christians rule. However, Mansilla shouting “All Americans!” and “Long live America!” stemmed from a crude and scarcely believable parody. He understood that, though he was traveling through these lands, it was not because of free will. Far from it since, in a country ruled by his uncle Rosas, he could not freely read Rousseau’s Le contrat social ! This anecdote also strongly summarizes the change then taking place in a Western power struggle: American travelers, though visiting briefly, exceeded the number of European tourists. Those Yankees shouting hurrahs at the top of Cheops provided the perfect image of American modernity gaining on the Old World by symbolically taking over these ancient Middle Eastern civilizations. However, the imbalance within that noted group is significant because, as a South American, Mansilla was at a serious disadvantage and could only overcome it by becoming just another Yankee in the group. He shouted his words in English because doing so in Spanish was out of the question. Nevertheless, this reference to an unmistakable Pan American outlook, common to North and South, is not completely imaginary. Behind this view floated the vague idea that a New World civilization would replace the European one and, likewise, that the New World would establish another relationship with the East (Schueller 2001: 9). The Middle East was a place where European powers took part in ferocious geopolitical intrigues. Yet, there was no New World colonial project in the East. As Sarmiento had previously stated, for South Americans, the East was the old continent. As discussed in Les Ruines de Palmyre, Volney came up with the idea that Europe would one day become a political and cultural desert and that their advanced civilization would find refuge in the Americas. Mansilla’s self-inclusion in the “American” contingent (he later called the Yankees “compatriots”) would not be complete without its opposite, exclusion, which again proves that the criterion for belonging or remaining outside a group is racial appearance and religious orientation. He became startled by the presence of an “intruder”: “among us, the Americans—the twenty-five—oh surprise and oh disappointment, we discovered a Muslim.” Later, displaying an attitude of a confirmed segregationist and assuming to have rights in a foreign land, he asked:

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What was he doing here, this intruder? By virtue of what right was he with us? Foster Rodgers and I asked each other why did this Bedouin climb unto the platform? Why did he not remain with the others? My belief was that he was one among those who had pushed us to the top. (2000: 161)

Apparently, Egypt was only of interest to Mansilla because of the pyramids, Egyptians were mere figurines in this grand spectacle. Furthermore, tourists should not be bothered by natives who should be happy by staying on the second-to-last step. The more he showed his insensitivity toward the natives, the more Mansilla felt American. Exclusion and inclusion are the same as adding and subtracting. But this intrusion on the American platform was the outcome of a simple joke (natives would have never dared to infringe on the White man’s hierarchy) for the Bedouin in question turned out to be none other than a Yankee disguised as a Muslim! He had the naïve illusion that, by dressing up in Arab garb, he could buy antiques whose removal from the country was prohibited. This circumstantial comedian was named Abbot and was a medical doctor. Mansilla, after becoming acquainted with him, bought him a few knick-knacks. The causerie ends with a moral lesson that reaffirmed the idea of the world being divided between these cosmopolitan gentlemen who possessed a higher world vision, and the disgraceful gray masses who, as virtual slaves, kept their noses close to the ground without having any impact. Civilization encompasses a small and extremely closed world, like those exclusive gentlemen’s clubs to which only a select few are admitted. Mansilla begins his conclusion by saying that “it is not plausible for all to view the past wisely, to connect it to the present, then to intuit the future, when we can hardly see the end of our own noses!” Then came a personal admission revealing that his Middle Eastern outing failed because of his immaturity: “I must confess that when I saw the pyramids for the first time, I was unmoved. It is only in looking at them in retrospect that they have revealed something to me.” He concluded the causerie with a message to his parents: My respectable parents! Allow me to give you some advice: do not have your children travel only if they are ill…. Send them as soon as they are ready to understand the forty centuries behind the Egyptian pyramids without any assistance from a neighbor, without the use of binoculars but, instead, only using their own eyes. (2000: 161)

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This instructive plea closes with a judgment that seems apparently contrary to his sought-after cosmopolitanism: The best nurse is one’s country of birth…. Only by accepting this can we someday become true representatives of our planet. As paradoxical as it may seem, those who live abroad become hybrids at best. They will perhaps become accepted, but popular, never. (2000: 163)

This may seem strange coming from a man who spent most of his adult life in Europe, who frequented the Parisian parlor of the Marquise de La Grange and cultivated the friendship of Robert de Montesquiou Fesenzac, who had close connections with Verlaine, Moréas, Rostand, and Sarah Bernhardt, who could easily speak five languages and boasted of having crossed the Equator some fifteen times, who celebrated his second marriage in London, went back and forth as a diplomat between Berlin and Saint Petersburg, and passed away in his Paris apartment. This apparent contradiction perfectly exemplifies Mansilla’s personality who, being obsessed with originality and popularity all his life, nurtured his personality cult and constantly sought to place himself at the epicenter of urban, political, military, literary, and travel matters like no other member of his generation had done. Yet, his own judgment did not prevent him from spending almost half of his life abroad where he learned that only in his own country could he take advantage of his worldly cosmopolitanism. In other words, renouncing cosmopolitanism and reducing it in its educational reach was limited to those, like him, who were reared in wealth, but not a choice for common mortals. His fondness for dandyism and worldliness was perhaps a form of compensation for his familial woes. Mansilla emerged a winner from three firearm duels, buried his first wife and all his children, lived to endure the suicide of his brother Lucio Norberto and the death of his sister Eduarda. Readers of his Causeries can sense the emotion, though not free from frivolity, with which he opened to the public—these conversations were literary expressions of the spleen that ruled his entire life. In Europe, he was an original and striking dandy; in Argentina he aspired to being popular, but only occasionally met that wish.14 Having the good fortune of not witnessing 14 Aníbal Ponce describes the highs and lows of Mansilla’s popularity: “It sometimes happened that his worries about his career arose from the fact that he traversed forbidden zones and ventured past the limits of acceptance, even ignoring respectful social norms as

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the sudden collapse of his privileged world, Mansilla died on the eve of the First World War, a conflict that would derail the self-confidence of European society.

African Vengeance and a Brief Turkish Episode In Mansilla’s Atar-Gull, another author may be tacitly detected: Eugene Sue’s 1831 serial novel (Sue 1979) was the inspiration for this theatrical piece. The striking resemblance between the two works is such that his piece could be a rewriting of Sue’s novel.15 Mansilla did not even bother to change his protagonist’s name, the slave Atar-Gull. He adapted Sue’s plot, set in Jamaica, by relocating it to Brazil’s Northeast region and by also modifying the names of certain secondary characters,16 but leaving the plot itself unchanged. Although we will not compare the two works, it is worth mentioning that Sue’s possessed a clearly political objective: to advocate for the abolition of slavery. In Mansilla’s play, that political motive was played down for reasons to be discussed. For now, it suffices to recall that Africa and its subjects are also included in our Orientalist corpus for reasons detailed in the introduction. The existence of this dramatic adaptation (plagiarism in another context) resulted from a bet. In 1855, his friends, Manuel Blancas and Esteban Fontán, challenged the young Mansilla to write a melodrama in two days. Atar-Gull is the result of this juvenile dare. Forgotten for nine years, while Mansilla served in Rojas’s military as Captain, the piece resurfaced and was staged in Buenos Aires by the José Garcia Delgado Company on 19 May 1864 in La Victoria theater. Despite cost overruns, the play enjoyed a clamorous success, admired by the public and press alike (Gasquet 2017: 13–40). Sanctioned by the critics and by if they were an irritating burden. The society of that epoch, which had initially lionized this audacious young man who defied their morals and prejudices, then turned against him in a spirit of vengeance worthy of a spurned lover, and like Wilde, he became the victim of a insidious oblivion, a punishment, as it were” (Ponce 1976: 232). 15 There are not any concrete indications proving that Mansilla had read first-hand the serial by Sue. His most highly recommended biography very modestly indicates that “he knew of the subject as a result of some references” (Popolizio and Enrique 1954: 102). 16 After the names of Mansilla’s principle and secondary characters, their equivalents in Sue’s work: Atar-Gull (idem), Tomás Wilson (Tom Will), Roberto Wills (Mr. Will), Brulart (idem), Theodoro Volney (Théodrick), Ana Wilson (Catherine), Sofía Wilson (Jenny), the old Job or Bu-yargal (the old Job).

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Manuel Estrada, who advised him to take a chance with Costumbrismo, Mansilla wrote a second play shortly thereafter, Una tía, which was initially performed in October of the same year and was widely acclaimed as his earlier piece. Later, perhaps becoming aware that his plays were substandard, he decided to put an end to his dramatical creations. The play’s summary is as follows: Atar-Gull, a physically imposing young African slave, finds himself at the service of a planter, Thomas Wilson, his wife Anna, and their beautiful teenage daughter Sophia. Anna yearns for her native Scotland and fears being unable to return home before her parents’ deaths. Meanwhile, Sophia has fallen for their young family doctor, Theodore Volney, who shares her emotions. Atar-Gull, despite his intimidating appearance, proves to possess an obliging nature, a certain wisdom, and an exceptional loyalty toward his master. These qualities rapidly transform him into an indispensable member of the family to a degree that the Wilsons are genuinely proud of him. Other White plantation owners, however, begin to covet Atar-Gull’s peerless honesty. In the meantime, Thomas finds himself indebted to the opportunist Brulart, former French count and slave ship captain, whose ship assiduously stops in Pernambuco. Thomas had bought Atar-Gull from Brulart sometime before. Unbeknown to his family, Thomas was close to bankruptcy after the Marseilles stock market crash. Middle-age Brulart also wishes to marry the young Sophia; however, he is not alone for Roberto Wills, an Irish plantation owner, and a friend, competitor, and creditor of Thomas also secretly wishes to marry Sophia, an arrangement that would provide him with an excellent opportunity to increase his landholdings. To settle his debt, Thomas is advised by Wills to make a false declaration of theft, supposedly perpetrated by a slave (it would make Thomas eligible for a government indemnity after the slave’s execution). This gives rise to a series of secret negotiations among the three men to save Thomas from sure bankruptcy and to determine who marries Sophia. Thomas ends negotiations by promising his daughter to Brulart who agrees to forgive the father’s debt as a part of the dowry. AtarGull gets wind of these dishonest negotiations. However, the slave, also secretly in love with Sophia, prefers losing her to someone else having her. Henceforth, the plot takes off and the slave’s attributes (honesty, servility, helpfulness) are put to the service of his own revenge that he had intelligently planned at the time of his captivity in Africa. Thomas decides to falsely turn in Job, an old slave who then is hanged in the woods. He then goes hunting with Roberto and Brulart. The latter,

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while hunting, encounters Atar-Gull who then kills Brulart for having murdered his parents. Unbeknown to all Job, the executed old slave, was Atar-Gull’s father—his mother died years before on account of the cruel treatment received during the crossing on Brulart’s slave ship. Job and Brulart are now lying dead in the woods. Atar-Gull flees. Meanwhile, Anna, Sophia, and Theodore, dumbfounded by Thomas’s decision to marry Sophia to Brulart, were walking in the woods when they run across the two corpses and, in shock, they cry out for help. Amid the confusion, Thomas discreetly retrieves from Brulart’s pocket the document that stipulated the giving of his daughter’s hand in marriage in exchange for his debt forgiveness. This turn of events suits Thomas: he will receive an indemnity for his hanged slave and, his creditor now dead, means he can then marry his daughter to Theodore (the idea of Sophia marrying Brulart had always been repugnant to him). Given this new configuration, Roberto Wills finds himself out of the running. Atar-Gull, after having avenged his parents by killing Brulart, must now avenge his forbidden love for Sophia and wash away the infamy of his own slavery. In the dark of night and secretly led by Atar-Gull, the slaves rebel and burn the plantation house down. Atar-Gull, tormented by the idea of the innocent Sophia dying in the flames, runs to her rescue. Sadly, his effort fails and Sophia dies. Thomas, worried about someone finding his wallet with Brulart’s agreement inside, announces that any slave who recovers it from the fire will be set free. Atar-Gull then rushes into the house and brings Thomas the scorched wallet. Thomas and Anna weep at the loss of their daughter; Theodore, at the loss of his fiancé. Thomas is ruined. AtarGull remains subservient to his master, even after earning his freedom. All admire such a display of loyalty. Thomas believes to have been punished by Providence for his many disgraceful actions. He then states before to the Colonial Council that Atar-Gull is to inherit his few remaining possessions in recognition of the slave’s virtue. Terminally ill, Thomas hears Atar-Gull’s terrible confession from his bed: For seven years you took me to be your guardian angel. You fool! It was I who brought about your ruin…. It was I who burned your wallet that held the revealing document which you tore from Brulart’s corpse, he who was my mother’s murderer and on whom I took revenge. Finally, it was I who, for seven years, poured a subtle poison on everything your lips have tasted; thus, I took pleasure in your long and lethal pain by gradually shortening your life. Yes, it was I, the avenger of Job or Bu-yargal, my father, whom

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you and Roberto hanged when you no longer wanted to spend on him a handful of corn. (Mansilla 2017: 145)

Theodore steps in at the end of Atar-Gull’s confession and has him arrested. As he is led away, the slave says: “Vengeance is a virtue when one avenges one’s father. However, life is detestable when the punishment of the wicked bloodies the avenger’s hands” (Mansilla 2017: 457). The melodrama ends with Theodore praying to God for Thomas’s wayward soul, that of Sophia, and his own, and asks for strength and resignation to live without his beloved fiancé. This ending is identical to that of Sue, when Atar-Gull asserts his right to forgiveness for having taken revenge: “after having bought my father like a beast of burden, you hanged him like a thief because he was old, and his labor could no longer justify his sustenance … I had to avenge his life and his death. To a good son, vengeance is virtue” (Sue 1979: 37). Sue, as mentioned, wanted to concentrate all the strength of his serial novel on the abolitionist argument. This explains why Atar-Gull’s revenge is identified with virtue because it balances the scales of justice where the White man’s supreme injustice reigns. Despite his plot being textually borrowed from Sue, Mansilla wrote his play in a different context: he stressed Atar-Gull’s tragic love for Sophia and made the revenge factor secondary. Thus, the denunciation of slavery loses some of its force in Mansilla’s melodrama. It is noteworthy that, in the River Plate region, slavery was never restored after its abolition (established by the 1813 Assembly). However, its restoration did occur in France under Napoleon I. For the 1855 Buenos Aires public at large, slavery was an institution that only existed nearby Brazil, and it was not then an issue in Argentinean society. The scandal generated by Mansilla’s 1864 drama dealt primarily with the forbidden love between a Black man and a White girl. The play’s poetic contents recalled the picture of the “Oriental” harem that immediately conjured the subject of captive White women among Indians. Under certain conditions then, Buenos Aires audiences could identify with AtarGull and his vengeance, but the thought of miscegenation and social mixing scandalized them. Another small, but no less significant difference exists between Sue’s conclusion and that of Mansilla’s: Sue’s narration ends with a face-to-face dialogue between God and Atar-Gull. Despite his crimes, God is open to forgiving the former slave for having been a good son. Atar-Gull repents, conscientiously and even piously:

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“Now then, look into the motive of my actions, weigh my life as a slave, consider my punishments, and you will see that, for the treatment I have received, the price they paid is fair.” “I accept it …” God answers.

He then addresses his dead father, Bu-yargal, who is now in Heaven: “Father, are you satisfied? Wait for me … I am joining you.” Indeed, Atar-Gull soon died, nostalgic and as a Christian. (Mansilla 2017: 38)

This is the moral of Sue’s work: God accepts Atar-Gull’s company, sanctions his reprisal, because, above all, he disapproves of the disgrace that is slavery. On the other hand, Mansilla’s piece ends when the murderer is arrested by the soldiers. Atar-Gull claims that “vengeance is virtue”; however, we know nothing of his Christian faith or learn anything about his death. This does not mean Mansilla was insensitive to the subject of slavery. On the contrary, while writing Atar-Gull in 1855, he was most conscious of an incident that happened during his trip to the Levant. While in Egypt, Mansilla and Foster Rodgers went to Constantinople. In the Ottoman capital, an event took place that certainly explains Mansilla’s interest in Sue’s book. The two of them visited a female slave market, which Mansilla describes as follows: Imagine a quadrangular building, constructed with interior corridors, circling a courtyard resembling our courtyards, in an Arabian style of architecture—our houses back home resemble those in Seville with a fountain in the middle of a courtyard. On one side of the courtyard stood naked Black women, mostly Abyssinian and Nubian, entirely nude; their bodies anointed with coconut oil, rubbed in, to make them look as polished and shiny as a jacaranda tree … and, though free to move around, they could not go beyond the enclosure. (Mansilla 2000: 154–155)17

17 In the description of the slavery dens, which were truly “abominable” toilets, constituting the most sinister scene, there were not only African women sold, but also Whites (Georgians and Circassians).

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In an altruistic gesture and convinced as abolitionists (though not less racist), Foster Rodgers and Mansilla decided to buy a slave for eighty Turkish pounds to set her free. Much to their surprise, no sooner had she gained her freedom, the woman decided to again put herself up for sale in the same female slave market. Stunned by her voluntary servitude, the two are given an answer: “What am I to do with my freedom? As a free woman, who will feed me?” (Mansilla 2000: 152). This curious anecdote forever left Mansilla perplexed. Despite this experience, it seems clear that, in Mansilla’s Atar-Gull, entertainment prevails, a kind of vaudeville act with moral overtones designed for the Buenos Aires public. Although the work exhibits a certain concern about slavery, not so much because of the horror its existence caused in South America or in other world regions, but because of the moral turpitude that it entailed, one that besmirched the consciences of liberal, cosmopolitan men (Gasquet 2017: 16–21). This moral burden had to be neutralized and abolished, even if only in a symbolic and frivolous manner. This was especially so after the Battle of Pavón and the subsequent national reunification, when liberal Argentines were preparing to launch their final assault in the conquest and occupation of the indigenous territories. In 1864, the year when Mansilla’s play was first staged, Atar-Gull’s moral slogan, “vengeance is virtue,” was not only a means for correcting past injustices, but also an attempt to anticipate and warn against future injustices aimed at indigenous people. This historical context justified Mansilla’s recovery of Atar-Gull’s deceitful bravery. In what was undoubtedly intuitive, Mansilla seemed to say that South American heroes (literary, but attuned to reality) cannot come out unblemished, pure, and transparent, as if they had emerged unscathed and naïve from Romantic European stereotypes. On the contrary, heroes could only right past crimes by committing their equivalent, that is, through an honorable and premeditated revenge. The only possible heroes for the rough and rugged South American cultures had to be negative ones (disreputable Blacks, notorious Indians, evil gauchos). Of course, this group in Argentinean literature did not end with Atar-Gull, but instead had just begun. Others like Martín Fierro, Sergeant Cruz, Hormiga Negra, et al. would follow. The moral ambivalence of negative heroes, who right historical wrongs and social injustices, would eventually become a specific case in South American frontier culture.

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Conclusion We have mentioned that Mansilla’s testimonial accounts broke with Sarmiento’s ideological Orientalist alignment while maintaining its continuity. They broke it by initiating a new stylistic register that did not adhere to a political or ideological imperative. This unpublished register opened by Mansilla involves an account of his personal adventures, one removed from any attempt to confirm his political hypotheses. In an autobiographical style, the description of the East serves as a decorative backdrop, an excuse to singularly deploy his persona. These occasional Eastern brush strokes by Mansilla have the principal value of being the first postcard images from an Argentine traveling through Asia, Egypt, and the Levant. For him, his Eastern journey’s account became autonomous, it gained unity and independence. Its main flaws included the extremely narrowness of its testimonials and the author’s ignorance about all that did not affect him directly, typical faults of an inexperienced young man traveling like a mogul. This being the case, behind his political and ideological indifference, behind these unsophisticated brushstrokes worthy of an amateur painter, we find a certain continuity of those values contained in Sarmiento’s Orientalism that we know to have negative connotations. Mansilla’s dandyism and cosmopolitanism exemplified the values and contradictions identified with a self-assured and self-complacent generation. Although the East presented him with a different scenario, it conveyed the same dissolute values of yesteryear thus becoming the antimodel par excellence. In Mansilla’s writings about the East, the threat—explicit and urgent in Sarmiento’s—of South America repeating the Arab model was not apparent. On the contrary, the certainty of resolutely being Western was conveyed, though this inclusion was precipitous, stemming more from desire than from reality. For Sarmiento, the East symbolized the threat of barbarism whose echo resounded in South America. For Mansilla, the East represented pure exoticism within reach. This radical exoticism, as portrayed in Delacroix’s paintings of the East, was predominantly aesthetic. With Mansilla, the journey to the Levant became a new destination for the young Argentinean elite and, soon afterward, travelers like Pastor S. Obligado and Eduardo F. Wilde followed his initiative. The East thereafter promised the literary traveler a tangible experience; it would no

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longer be just an idea, an inspiration, an anathema, or an ensemble of prejudices. It became a possibility turned reality.

References Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1928). “Veinte días en Génova,” Viajes y descripciones. Buenos Aires: El Ateneo. Auza, Néstor Tomás (1968). Estudio e índice general de “El Plata Científico y Literario” (1854–1855), y “Atlántida” (1911–1913). Buenos Aires: Artes Graficas Modernas. Brilli, Attilio (1995). Quando viaggare era un’arte. Bologna: Il Mulino. Gasquet, Axel (2005). “Escuela y normalización idiomática en la formación de la nacionalidad argentina (1852–1910),” in Thomas Gomez (ed.). École, culture et nation. Nanterre: Grecun-Publidix, 61–84. Gasquet, Axel (2006). “Bajo el cielo protector. Hacia una sociología de la literatura de viajes,” in Manuel Lucena Giraldo & Juan Pimentel (eds.). Diez estudios sobre literatura de viajes. Madrid: CSIC, 31–66. Gasquet, Axel (2017). “Episodios misceláneos de un causeur. La dramaturgia de Lucio V. Mansilla,” in Lucio V. Mansilla. Atar-Gull o Una venganza africana y Una Tía. Villa María: Eduvim, 13–60. Guglielmini, Homero M. (1961). Mansilla. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Culturales Argentinas. Jitrik, Noé (1970). Ensayos y estudios de literatura argentina. Buenos Aires: Galerna. Jitrik, Noé (1998). El mundo del 80 [1968]. Buenos Aires: Editores de América Latina. Mansilla, Lucio V. (1855). “De Adén a Suez,” in El Plata Científico y Literario, T. IV, Buenos Aires: January, 85–96. [Reprinted in Axel Gasquet (2007). Oriente al Sur, el orientalismo literario argentino de Esteban Echeverría a Roberto Arlt. Buenos Aires: Eudeba, series Ensayos, 303–316.] Mansilla, Lucio V. (1864). Atar-Gull o Una venganza africana. Buenos Aires: Bernheim & Boneo. [New edition: Lucio V. Mansilla (2017). Atar-Gull o Una venganza africana y Una Tía. Villa María: Eduvim, 61–146. Edition by Axel Gasquet.] Mansilla, Lucio V. (1889–1890). Entre Nos, Causeries del Jueves, 5 vol. Buenos Aires: Juan A. Alsina. Mansilla, Lucio V. (1964). Entre Nos, Causeries de los Jueves (selection). Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Edition by Luis Lanuza. Mansilla, Lucio V. (1966). Charlas inéditas. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Edition by Raúl A. Krochowski. Mansilla, Lucio V. (1994). Mis memorias y otros escritos. Buenos Aires: Secretaría de Cultura de la Nación & Editorial Lugar.

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Mansilla, Lucio V. (1995). Horror al vacío y otras charlas. Buenos Aires: Biblos. Edition by Cristina Iglesia y Julio Schvartzmann. Mansilla, Lucio V. (1997). Mosaico, Charlas inéditas. Buenos Aires: Biblos. Mansilla, Lucio V. (2000). Entre Nos, Causeries del Jueves (selected texts). Buenos Aires: Elefante Blanco. Mansilla, Lucio V. (2012). Diario de viaje a Oriente (1850–1851) y otras crónicas del viaje oriental. Buenos Aires: Corregidor. Edition by María Rosa Lojo et al. Moussa, Sarga (1995). La relation orientale. Enquête sur la communication dans les récits de voyage en Orient (1811–1861). Paris: Klincksieck. Obligado, Pastor Servando (1873). Viaje a Oriente, de Buenos Aires a Jerusalén. Paris: Imprenta Americana de Rouge, Dunon & Fresné. Pérez Gras, María Laura (2009). “Los ecos del primer canto. El Diario de Viajes de Lucio V. Mansilla y las relaciones intertextuales con su obra posterior,” Decimonónica, 6 (2), Summer: 25–45. Ponce, Aníbal (1976). “Lucio V. Mansilla,” La vejez de Sarmiento. Buenos Aires: Solar-Hachette. Popolizio, Enrique (1954). Vida de Lucio V. Mansilla. Buenos Aires: Peuser. Prieto, Adolfo (1967). La historia de la literatura argentina, Capítulo Nº 19– 20. Buenos Aires: CEAL. Prieto, Adolfo (2003). La literatura autobiográfica argentina. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. R eed, Eric J. (1996). Per terra e per mare. Viaggi, missioni, spedizioni alla scoperta del mondo. Bologna: Il Mulino. Schueller, Malini Johar (2001). U.S. Orientalisms. Race, Nation and Gender in Literature 1790–1890. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Sosnowski, Saúl (1984). “Prólogo,” in Lucio V. Mansilla. Una excursión a los indios ranqueles. Caracas: Ayacucho, ix–xxvi. Sue, Eugène (1979). Atar-Gull. Paris: Vimont & Renduel, 1831. [Reprint: Paris: Flammarion, 1979.] Tuninetti, Ángel (2001). “Los Viajes de Santiago Estrada: paisaje e historia en la consolidación nacional,” Nuevas tierras con viejos ojos, Viajeros españoles y latinoamericanos en Sudamérica, siglos XVIII y XIX. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 103–134. Viñas, David (1995). Literatura argentina y política, De los jacobinos porteños a la bohemia anarquista, vol. 1. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Volney, C.-F. (1787). “Préface,” Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, pendant les années 1783, 1784, 1785. Paris: Volland et Desenne.

CHAPTER 6

The Judicious Enlightenment of Pastor Servando Obligado

Our present diaphanous existence will someday be a misty remoteness like that of Babylon or Nineveh. David Peña, Preface to Tradiciones argentinas, 8th series (1912)

… it is romance and it is not romance; it is history and it is not history… Ricardo Palma, Preface to Tradiciones de Buenos Aires, 4th series (1898)

Tradition, an echo of the past, makes itself clearly heard at the top of such high pyramids. Pastor S. Obligado, Viaje á Oriente (1873)

Pastor Servando Obligado along with his works (1841–1924) was overshadowed for quite some time by other of his illustrious family members such as his father and grandfather. However, his omission might be also attributed to his lesser importance within the Generation of 1880. Obligado was born into an aristocratic Buenos Aires family on 26 October 1841. At the end of the eighteenth century, an ancestor, Antonio Obligado, settled on the ravines that became famous in the 1845 battle against the Anglo-French squadron. His grandfather, Manuel Alejandro Obligado, a classmate of Mariano Moreno, became Treasury Secretary in

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1815 and served under the governments of Álvarez Thomas, Balcarce, Pueyrredón, Rodríguez, and Las Heras. He retired to his farm in Quilmes when the fighting between Unitarians and Federalists reached a culminating point. His father, Pastor Obligado, a distinguished lawyer from Buenos Aires, was appointed to a federal judgeship after the Battle of Caseros, later becoming part of the provincial government of Buenos Aires in which he served for three consecutive terms. Generals Mitre, Paz, Alsina, and Vélez Sarsfield became ministers or his colleagues during that period. Obligado was a member of the Generation of 1880, although his literary and political impact was minimal; he was soon overshadowed by Bartolomé Mitre. His contemporaries were Santiago Estrada, Miguel Cané, Jr, Lucio V. Mansilla, Lucio V. López, and Martín García Merou. He would take up arms during the Battle of Pavón and enlisted in the armed forces under Mitre’s command; thereafter, he obtained a doctorate in jurisprudence. On 2 July 1924, at the age of 83, he died near Buenos Aires at the Sansinena Palace in Temperley. Obligado was essentially a “traditionist,” who compiled ten volumes of Tradiciones between 1888 and 1920,1 works that earned him great recognition. By “traditionist,” we are referring to a specific literary genre that reached its culmination with the Peruvian Ricardo Palma (1833– 1919), noted author of Tradiciones peruanas (1872). This genre included truthful historical accounts expressed in a literary style. The traditionists chose minor or rare historical episodes, petty stories about the founding fathers of South American nations, were introduced to readers as works of fiction. These miscellaneous texts were first published in daily, weekly, or monthly newspapers and later collected in books. Some of these accounts frequently exhibited a humorous or satirical style. Not lacking epic 1 The first five series were titled Tradiciones de Buenos Aires and, as of the 6th series, it was named Tradiciones Argentinas, with the exception of the 7th series. Among these, the 2nd series was never published; only nine volumes remain. The chronological references are: Tradiciones de Buenos Aires (1711–1861), 3rd series, Prologue by Ángel J. Carranza, Buenos Aires, Congress Printing, 1896; Tradiciones de Buenos Aires, 4th series, Prologue by Ricardo Palma, Buenos Aires, Chacabuco Printing, 1898; Tradiciones de Buenos Aires (1580–1880), 5th series, critical edition by Carlos Guido y Spano, Buenos Aires, Galileo Typographical Printing, 1900; Tradiciones Argentinas, 6th series, Buenos Aires, La Semana Médica-Spinelli Printing, 1905; Tradiciones y Recuerdos, 7th series, La Semana MédicaSpinelli Printing, 1908; Tradiciones Argentinas, 8th series, Prologue by David Peña, Buenos Aires, Compañía Sudamericana de Billetes de Banco, 1912; Tradiciones Argentinas, 9th series, Buenos Aires, Balder Moen Editor, 1916; Tradiciones Argentinas, 10th series, Buenos Aires, Rinaldi Hnos. Editors, 1920.

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proportions, this type of short story served a dual purpose: a hagiographic function as well as basing history on legend. From the minute Obligado read a chronicle by Palma in the first issue of La Revista (1863), he became fascinated with this genre. He was not alone because Vicente Gaspar Quesada (1830–1913), codirector of the review, would also assiduously compose traditionist chronicles. This writing style was quite widespread throughout Latin America, finding notable and fervent followers among the first Romantic liberals. This following was attributed to the widespread model set by Spaniard Mariano José de Larra and Argentine Juan B. Alberdi’s articles. However, Obligado’s tone was not as good or humorous as theirs. Quite the opposite, it was more solemn and serious because he exhibited the gravity of those who build pantheons for the recently deceased. From the beginning, he accepted his secondary role. He never had the canonical aspirations of a historian or pretensions of being a literary figure. The modesty with which he accomplished his traditionist work did not prevent him from asserting himself through a feeling of transcendence that, in addition to peer recognition, he wanted to bequeath a sort of “Argentinean Parnassus” to future generations. Early recognition by Spanish writers and critics such as Valera, Alarcón, Zorilla, Campoamor, Castelar and Unamuno was enhanced by his 1901 nomination as a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy. An unconditional follower of Mitre, Obligado followed the evolution of the Generation of 1880 literary figures by participating in the Círculo Literario, founded in 1864 by José María Estrada and Lucio V. Mansilla, which sought to end the political divide among the different liberal Argentinean camps. Like all members of that generation, he was a cultured man who was keenly interested in traveling. He became energetically involved in provincial educational policies and eventually held the post of Secretary of the General Department of Schools for the State of Buenos Aires. At the age of thirty, he actively participated in the war against Paraguay. After his father’s death in Jesús María, Cordoba, in March 1870, he decided to take his first lengthy trip to Europe and the Levant. He was aware of the fainthearted Eastern excursions of José Pacheco as well as Sarmiento and Mansilla’s limited texts, but he wished to augment those experiences by offering more methodical testimony than his predecessors. His motivation was influenced by the French literary model, already made

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famous by Lamartine and Nerval. During this trip, he collected the material for the composition of his Viaje a Oriente, de Buenos Aires a Jerusalén (1873). Obligado’s unique feature is his systematization of his Eastern experience, totally missing in Mansilla and sporadic in Sarmiento. He held the set opinion that, regardless of how exotic and infrequent Asian journeys were to Argentines, the East was becoming an essential destination for a certain literary elite. While being fully aware that he would not be the last person to discover those remote territories, he explicitly stated that his book aimed to help future travelers from the River Plate region wishing to explore these lands. Indeed, the mobility of the then learned and cosmopolitan elite was impressive; in fact, Eduardo Wilde would soon venture into those regions. The expanding commercial interest of Europe in the East (particularly Great Britain) could only serve to promote the inclusion of these exotic destinations to the itineraries of the elite. For this reason, Obligado had no qualms about declaring his interest in foreign cultures: the promotor of the national pantheon was an inveterate and cosmopolitan traveler. However, his cosmopolitan brand, so noted and admired abroad, was feared and closely monitored at the local level. Obligado included a pedagogical mission in his Tradiciones Argentinas: to recall his deceased countrymen’s celebrated deeds at a time when immigrants were flooding into the national territory, straining resources, imposing new customs, and threatening to ignore Argentina’s native born and those belonging to its heroic generation. He shared this mindset with his Generation of 1880 contemporaries. As Pagés Larraya states, “they optimistically believed in progress; they were also thrilled by travel, art, literature, and enthusiastically embraced all that encompassed the modern spirit, but in no way did their works entail a break with their Creole background. Moreover, they all evoked it, …” (Pagés Larraya 1955: 17). It has been explained that this cosmopolitanism of the cultured elites, characterized by certain important polyglot features, paralleled the linguistic and spiritual “nationalization” task of educating the masses of European immigrants arriving in Argentina (Gasquet 2005: 61–84). To the elites, the world was a stage where they could easily switch languages, while the masses and the immigrants were required to speak one language, the cornerstone to building a national identity. Instruction in their mother tongues was forbidden and a gradual elimination of community educational institutions was

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started (Bertoni 2001: 173–211; Gasquet 2002: 112–116; 2005: 77– 78). Traditionists and their cosmopolitan inclinations were not perceived as contradictory; instead, they became the hallmark of the Generation of 1880.

Pristine Vision of the Middle East The testimonial, Viaje a Oriente, constituted the central corpus of Obligado’s Orientalist compositions. His trip there began in Europe, sometime between 1871 and 1872. Later, he again touched on Orientalist subjects in some of his Argentinean traditions.2 In these, we find certain elements that allowed us to speculate on whether he embarked on a second voyage to Egypt (Obligado 1908: 301–309), which would have taken place after his return with his daughter Evangelina to Europe circa 1888—if so, this would have been his third and final trip. However, there is neither concrete proof of a second sortie to Thebes, nor of his daughter’s birth at the time of his first trip, nor are we aware of any published testimonials. From the beginning, Obligado made it clear that he had “no pretension of including his book within any literary genre”; he only intended to share certain travel episodes with his friends back home. It is to them that he devoted his portraits of the Middle East: “we affectionately offer the memories in this book to those who once appreciated us and, in spite of the distance, did not forget us” (Obligado 1873: 12). He then wrote “Advertencia” at a farm in Tusculum, an ancient Roman city in the Alban Hills, near Rome, in March 1873. This simple fact shows the mobility of the Generation of 1880. Having scarcely returned from the Levant, Obligado finished writing this book in Italy, published it in Paris, and then sent it to Argentina. If we accept Pagés Larraya’s opinion, the book was widely disseminated among the Buenos Aires elite and even among transAndean readers. Viaje á Oriente was a fortunate work for it was widely read and aroused much curiosity. So much so that, in 1875, the Chilean author José Domingo Cortés stressed in his biography of Obligado that

2 These chronicles are: “Villanokoff” (Obligado 1888: 385–410); “Soldado argentino, general en Rusia” (Obligado 1903: 142–150); “Una Argentina en Karnak” (Obligado 1908: 301–309); “Lealtad” and “Reminiscencias de Gethsemaní” (Obligado 1920: 131– 136).

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he was an “indefatigable traveler” (Pagés Larraya 1955: 41–42; Cortés 1876: 346). From the beginning of the book, Obligado emphasized the new condition of the South American traveler in those formerly forbidden or inaccessible Eastern regions. This new opening to the Middle East allowed South Americans to forge their own ideas about the Levant without first viewing it through European lenses. Obligado states: To correctly speak about Egypt or Assyria, the Ethiopian people or the Persians was until recently a shaky subject for South American writers, and even for many Europeans. Some passages of dubious historical worth, where misunderstood traditions were conflated with myth or legend, were hastily recounted, always vague, uncertain or inconsistent, and included sparse data about people of such remote origins…. However, the world is truly moving forward and, during the past few years, historiographers have become more numerous, news have become more inclusive and, regarding the most remote and least frequented territories, century-old biases are beginning to be lifted. … (1873: 5)

This excerpt indicates the great importance that rediscovering the East meant to these new travelers. At last, from an unbiased perspective, the mystifying cloud engulfing these areas could be cleared. It was about building a new historical-imaginary relationship with the East, one detached from the idealized and prejudicial views associated with Romanticism, whose historical values were dubious and inconsistent with actual knowledge. Obligado here introduced truly new Positivist arguments, trying to put a definitive end to the evocative and uncertain Eastern travel of the Romanticists. He was seeking the freedom to examine these people under a different light, to obtain certain concrete, material knowledge while, at the same time, breaking with the stigmatizing anathemas of the past. It was an attempt to modestly shed a new light on these remote, ancient territories and cultures. Obligado was imbued with a utilitarian mission: On our part, we assure you that, by touring the world, we give life to the planet that we inhabit. We do so to the extent and interest given to us, by observing, pondering, comparing all that we find along the way, reporting all that may be useful to other travelers, so that they may at least become aware of what they have seen, what has been. … (1873: 6)

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This attitude by Obligado not only distanced him from Mansilla, but also from Romantic evocation. Even if a trip could have been called “relaxed,” it was no longer a question of merely enjoying the carefree worldliness of the young Creole elite. Besides providing personal enrichment, the journey should add a certain level of social usefulness. So, how did Obligado view such usefulness regarding his own jaunt through the Middle East? To him, it was a matter of being able to impart, to friends and readers, the limited knowledge he acquired on the trip through his new perspective on the immutable East, one that was quite distant from the negative perception that Western tradition had repeatedly expressed through its Enlightenment and Romanticism. Obligado’s Positivist predisposition did not exempt his writings from, at times, including some Romantic idealization of the East. Indeed, as the singular River Plate Romanticism of the Generation of 1837 combined Enlightenment thinking with the French Romantic reaction, the Positivism of the Generation of 1880 maintained certain distinguishing elements of the Romantic journey. Obligado was very familiar with the works of Chateaubriand, Hugo, Lamartine, Nerval, and Gautier and he had avidly read the European travel literature of the period. Just as Argentinean Romanticism never abandoned the guiding principle of cultural and political modernity, neither did the utilitarian Positivism of the Generation of 1880 completely detach itself from the hedonistic, subjectivist, and aesthetic criteria proper to the Romantic spirit. Although Obligado was decidedly a secular liberal, religious motivations were nevertheless not entirely alien to his Middle Eastern journey. In his chapter, “Salem,” in the section dedicated to Palestine, he revealed that one of the principal motivations for his voyage was to become acquainted with the Holy Land. Therefore, he devoted this chapter to his mother, who introduced him to the Christian faith as a child, “a faith that, despite life’s vicissitudes, never extinguished” (1873: 203). Thus, his travelogue came about from these two aspects of his trip: enlightened Rationalism, conforming to the criteria of historical and utilitarian knowledge, and aesthetic subjectivism, a personal expression of the intimate exaltation of faith and truth. Rather than considering them irreconcilable, Obligado regarded them as complementary. Another characteristic of this book is that, around 1870, excursions to the Middle East presupposed the existence of Argentinean tourism. At the time of his trip to Egypt, Mansilla had overlooked this fact. It has been mentioned that Obligado wanted his book to be useful to future

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South Americans traveling to these remote areas. In keeping with this purpose, the book is filled with helpful, practical advice regarding ticket prices, various shipping companies, local guides (dragomans), train schedules, hotels, possible tours, opportunities for trip extensions to the Far East, etc. In addition, he advised anyone traveling alone not to stray from scheduled itineraries between stopovers in the Levant, nor to venture into areas east of Jerusalem, in the direction of Persia, because these were dangerous places. He claimed that tours were a sort of tourist circuit. He even recommended traveling with a French guidebook, Le guide Joanne,3 “because in Spanish, there is no complete guidebook to the Orient, only partial ones. Under this author’s name, Joanne, guides for all countries have been published in Paris” (1873: 284). The notion of a tourist circuit across the Eastern Mediterranean region was closely connected to the Eastern travel literature previously mentioned. This literature on classic European Orientalism justified the structure of Obligado’s own book. Since the first two chapters treat “Pompeii” and “The Mediterranean,” he believed that it was necessary to explain to readers why a book about the Middle East should begin in Europe: Regarding an apology for the first chapter of this book, we must let it be known that, although it is Viaje a Oriente, this book begins with an ancient Italian city that disappeared at the beginning of the present era. We have done so in keeping with the most famous and enlightened travelers who, upon setting out, always included a description of their point of departure. (1873: 9, emphasis ours ) 3 Adolph-Laurent Joanne (1823–1881) was the creator of the most popular French travel guides. A career attorney and an inveterate traveler, he wrote his first successful guide on Switzerland in 1841. Years later, in 1852, he teams up with the publisher Louis Hachette, to create a collection of travel guides (“Chemins de Fer” [“Railroads”]) inspired by the British Handbooks. In 1860, there were twenty titles that covered France and parts of Europe; other titles about certain Mediterranean destinations (the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia, the Levant and Egypt) would come later. The Middle East guide came out in 1861: Itinéraire descriptif, historique et archéologique de l’Orient [“A Descriptive, Historical, and Archeological Itinerary of the Orient ”], by Adolphe Joanne and Émile Isambert, Paris, L. Hachette bookstore, 1861, volume 1, p. 1104 with illustrations. This guide would be successively updated in 1872, 1873, and 1890. Obligado undoubtedly used its first or second edition. In 1916, Joanne’s travel guides took a new title, Les guides bleus, which countered the German red guides by Baedecker. The popularity of these guides was such that, in the 1960s, Roland Barthes described them as true ideological factories (Barthes 1957: 121–125).

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The allusion to “the most famous and enlightened” travelers was so obvious to his readers that he did not find it necessary to mention their names. They were, of course, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Nerval, et al., who rigorously began their journeys by describing the seaports of departure: Venice for Chateaubriand, Marseilles for Lamartine, etc. Shortly afterward, Obligado provided another reason: the Pompeii ruins, an expression of Greco-Latin culture, provided an excellent point of comparison as well as a spiritual setting for his upcoming visit to the Egyptian ruins. Of course, the curiosity aroused by the “ruins” was a classical topic in accounts of the East (Basch 1998: 357–375; 2004: 48–58), but Obligado did not use the ruins as a historical metaphor—an ellipsis of the decadence of culture and civilization in Volney’s Les ruines de Palmyre. The ruins that he was preparing to visit were also not a symbol of a people’s spiritual and moral dissolution because of their innate incapacity to forego despotic rule. Rather, the ruins provided solid archeological evidence from which the traveler had everything to learn. The ruins not only demanded admiration but, more importantly, they also provided an opportunity for study and reflection. Unlike Sarmiento and Mansilla, Obligado set out on his Middle Eastern visit to learn. Therefore, to him, the East did not represent the pure embodiment of barbarism or exoticism; instead, it was a place of profound culture, of interest to those who were enlightened. He was overwhelmed and obsessed with the overlapping of so many Eastern civilizations and was aware that his simple travel impressions shattered historical chronologies, a fact that so heavily weighed on him that he felt obligated to provide his readers with some clarification. Obligado started from an idea that stood against the convictions of the then European discourse concerning the East. This region, geographically vague and with uncertain cultural vastness, could not be reduced to solely a representation of despotism, obscurantism, and backwardness. On the contrary, the East was a completely unknown universe to Westerners. It encompassed all of history, it was the very synthesis of good and evil, the beginning and the end of all humanity: The Orient is a world! The Orient is more than that. It is the cradle of humanity and its destined grave. It is the birth of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism: Paradise and Hell are found there. It was there that the first man was born, and it is there where his final judgment awaits. There, the footsteps of the Son of God have been etched. Eden and Jehoshaphat are

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there. Adam and Mohammed came from its opposite ends. Good and evil rule reign everywhere. Such is the Orient, just as unknown by South America as it is by Europe. (Obligado 1873: 57, our emphasis )

Obligado partially distanced himself from European Orientalism and did not adhere to its continuity as Sarmiento had previously done. Somehow, he was searching for another approach to Eastern cultures, to build another heritage, to trace a new genealogy conceived apart from the heavy, negative weight of European Orientalism. This noteworthy effort was possible because he belonged to a different culture. He was aware that South America could not pretend to have the same notion of the East as Western Europe. He also knew that he belonged to the marginal South American cultural universe, whose history was very different from that of the United States. This presumption, which we see outlined in Viaje a Oriente, would be confirmed shortly thereafter in his travel book on the United States (1877).4 Finally, for Obligado, the East was like an open book from which almost everything was yet to be learned. He also thought that Westerners overlooked more than they realized; therefore, he insisted on the enumeration of the archeological sites that were being discovered daily (Nineveh, etc.) and underscored the complexity of a religious and cultural universe whose fine points seemed to escape Western eyes. The passion with which he described Eastern richness is characteristic of an Orientalist avant la letter. He was extremely respectful of the cultures he discovered, his tone was far from the disdainful reverberations of the Romanticists and Rational Ideologists. Obligado condemned ex professo the type of South American travelers who believed the world ended in Paris. “All this and a thousand other things too difficult to enumerate are not enough to draw the attention of those who, having been to Paris, believe they have seen the world…. The Orient too holds treasures of unparalleled richness on its lands and seas” (1873: 59). His South American outlook is the antithesis of that associated with European colonizers. He was not interested in the material wealth that the East could offer him; rather, he was exclusively interested in its cultural, anthropological, and spiritual history. Nor did he aspire to acquire the fame or celebrity of great travelers. It was with this modest attitude that he 4 This book was published without mention of author or year; the publisher was Carlos Casavalle.

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made his way to the Levant. “But it was not profit or the desire for these riches, always foreign to us, that fueled our enthusiasm for such distant voyages, nor did we undertake them to make a name for ourselves. Far from fame, always an unknown concept to us, we were not even trying to lift our names out from peaceful obscurity” (1873: 60). In fact, Obligado traveled to the Levant to realize a childhood dream: to become personally acquainted with the Gospel’s “stage to that grandiose drama,” instilled in him by his mother. Likewise, his personal motivation was compatible with the notion of a Positivist, socially utilitarian journey that could be decisively beneficial to others. The Middle East presented the perfect opportunity for a spiritual and educational journey, an initiation; Obligado believed that this learning could and should be transmitted to the entire society of the River Plate region.

Interrogating the Ruins Babel Is a Mediterranean Port The voyage to the Levant can be made from two different directions: from north to south, that is, from Greece or Constantinople, through Syria and Palestine, to Egypt; from south to north, that is, from Alexandria or Cairo, through Palestine, to the Ottoman Empire or Greece. Chateaubriand followed the former route; Volney, the latter.5 Obligado chose the latter as well, with three countries of utmost importance to him: Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. Each taking up six, two, and two chapters respectively. It is curious that he excluded the Sultan’s city. Then, the entire region was ruled by the Turks because the British would not occupy Egypt until 1882. Obligado arrived in Alexandria after a five-day voyage from Naples; he immediately noticed two things: its natural cosmopolitanism (not Sarmiento’s colonial description) that made it an open city and the exceptional autonomy enjoyed by the consuls representing the European powers. The parallel power of the Europeans in a Turkish domain was the prelude to the subsequent English conquest. Here is how Obligado described the “Babel of the Orient” with its many polyglots:

5 We must specify that Chateaubriand then continued his voyage by going through the north of Africa to Spain, thus visiting most of the Mediterranean region; Volney, ending his trip in Lebanon and Syria, never reached Constantinople or Greece.

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It is surprising to see how these coastal inhabitants, these entirely illiterate people, incapable of reading or writing in any tongue, can speak four, five, and up to seven different languages without knowing any in depth, but just enough to guide the English, French, Italians, Germans, Russians, Americans, and Turks. This proves that if Alexandria, given its geographical location, is a true cosmopolitan city, then its port is the true Tower of Babel, not because of its proximity to that biblical city where one language became many, but because of the hundred or so different groups who inhabit it. (1873: 68)

He maintained that he had even heard Spanish spoken there, a language that he had not heard since leaving the Iberian peninsula. Subsequently, he described the different ethnic neighborhoods (Arab, Jewish, Greek, Turkish, European, Abyssinian, etc.) and was taken aback by the beauty of Consulate Square, by the size and grandeur of its buildings, and of the excessive political purview held by foreigners. Obligado explained this last point thus: It is amazing how each consulate in the Orient is endowed with extraordinary powers, and that the local authorities, wishing to avoid problems with the Europeans, allow their diplomats such wide jurisdiction. In fact, in certain cases, they are permitted to impose the death penalty. Foreigners with no representation there can avail themselves of any consulate to have their rights protected; even some local natives have often resorted to these diplomats to defend them from their despotic authorities’ arbitrary actions. This may be observed throughout the Levant. (1873: 70)

This recourse to Middle Eastern despotism partially explained the existing sociopolitical problems. A second explanation was the growing strength of the European powers in their relations with a weakening Ottoman Empire. Among the many foreign flags flying over the city, Obligado noticed that of the United States and, shockingly, the Brazilian one as well (Brazil’s Emperor had just visited Alexandria). Aware of the expanding consular power, he felt quietly alarmed because he began to believe that certain ties of collusion existed between the Ottoman East and the European West. Such an arrangement resulted in that local despotism was benefiting from the unchecked rise of the great European powers. In other words, the confirmation of despotism locally justified a rise in foreign political interference.

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Another subject examined by Obligado was the enormous social contrast found in Alexandria: splendid palaces proudly dominate the skyline of a city comprised mostly of the dreadful poor. He did not mince words when describing the natives, an awful crowd of “human and inhuman figures,” whom he described in these terms: “the most tightly knit swarm of mosquitoes, of buzzing bloodsuckers, is tolerable in comparison to the rude and unbearable ruckus made by such a filthy and foul smelling crowd” (1873: 71). These natives eked out an existence under the most squalid of conditions, in a city whose palaces numbered in the hundreds. Obligado travels through the city in the company of a young Argentinean lady who was then residing in Alexandria; both were invited by the owner to one of the palaces. On their way to the site, the contrast was even more striking. Hundreds of abandoned palaces dotted the landscape because the viceroys or Khedives, (Arabic title meaning invested with all power), customarily never resided in the palaces of their predecessors. Obligado observes that “while a ragged and dirt-poor population dies from thirst, fatigue, or hunger… majestic, yet desolate palaces stand proudly at every point of the horizon, now lairs of lizards and beetles” (1873: 78). Obligado then expands on these social inequalities. As a South American, he believed that this incredible contrast was not limited to the Middle East, but that it also existed in the West, though Europeans in general tended to ignore it. This extreme poverty, he observed, did not exist in South America (“On the streets of Alexandria, awful and ragged crowds exhibit such poverty the likes of which is unknown in South America” [1873: 73]). He, writing still for the “large village” that was Buenos Aires, summarized this dire poverty in an effective formula: “among the living, the dead.” Obligado proceeded to observe what few Europeans had noticed until then, that is, the close relationship between Eastern despotism and European Absolutist despotism whose essence survived within monarchical and imperial regimes: “Such a contrast is not the monopoly of the semi-barbaric, uncivilized Orientals because, in our notes about what monarchies have cost Europe, we noticed that in Portugal alone, where beggars in capes and tuxedoes beg for alms, there are many palaces with more than enough rooms to lodge its entire population” (1873: 78). Of course, this criticism had come up during the Enlightenment, but was never directly framed and, even when considered by writers like Montesquieu in Lettres Persanes (1712), Eastern despotism was presented as more archaic and tyrannical than the European model.

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Essentially, European absolutism was always portrayed as being more toned down and benevolent than Eastern despotism. Being a sincere and articulate Christian, Obligado later experienced the same bewilderment while visiting ostentatious Roman churches; he later took up Humanist criticism by stating: In Rome, we have also found, in the cloisters, cells and annexes of its three hundred fifty-six churches, convents and basilicas, plenty of lodging for its two hundred thousand inhabitants. While hundreds of these, after returning from their daily exhausting occupations, performed under a blistering sun on the arid Roman wastelands, spend the night under the porticoes of these enormous convents, most of which take up an entire city block and are only occupied by a half-dozen of religious persons.

Following this comparison, he then concluded: In Europe, as well as in the Orient, I felt the same bewilderment. The poor are dying and beg in the fields as idle monarchs, devastating palaces and turning them into ruins, exhaust and impoverish the proletariat to maintain their useless lavishness. (1873: 78–79)

From these words, we can also infer that Obligado was alluding to the bloody repression of the Commune de Paris that took place shortly before his trip to the Levant. At the time, terms like “proletariat” or Old World “idle monarchs” were new in the Argentinean context. This is even more obvious if we compare this discourse to Mansilla’s and Sarmiento’s. In his writings, Mansilla virtually ignored all the social realities of those Eastern countries he visited, but did not forget to note the colorful, urbane social life to which he was welcomed in France, from the parlor of the Marquise de La Grange to the aristocracy of the Second Empire, from Montesquiou Fesenzac to Rostand or Verlaine. Instead, Sarmiento succeeded in eliminating the social issue by concealing it under his bipolar model of civilization versus barbarism. The main strategic interests of modern civilization tended to ignore social differences within the civilized camp and even among barbarians. For Sarmiento, the struggle was defined in terms of civilization and never in terms of social interests or class distinctions. However, Obligado not only observed his surrounding reality, but he also perceived it within a social struggle model, even within a class struggle model (aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and proletariat) whose interests were all well-defined. According

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to his plan, civilization did not encompass social struggle. Obligado actually did not extol proletarian virtues but was aware that the world where he lived entailed new social forces doing battle among themselves, going beyond an exclusively national framework. For him, the ideal model for a country had shifted from Europe to the United States, a fact that he would later explain in his book on America. This shift coincided with Volney’s predictions in Les Ruines de Palmyre in which he proclaimed that a new transatlantic nation would one day rise from the ruins of Europe. The French political model, which generated such enthusiasm during the revolutionary phase, was ultimately discredited by the excessive nineteenth-century turn of events (Viñas 1998).6 Pyramids, Despotism, and Modernity Obligado’s perception of Egypt was more complex than the simple, classical Orientalist design that constantly highlighted negative examples. Despite this, his general assessment of Egyptian society and its customs was not very positive. He started from these verified traditional postulates: despotism was retrograde, Eastern women found themselves under a heavy yoke, prevalence of material backwardness, relative moral decomposition, and a lack of education that resulted in widespread ignorance among the lower classes. However, he was a Positivist who steadfastly believed in technological and human progress. His conviction, a product of his faith, gave him a more balanced tone and optimism regarding the East’s immediate future. The richness of Obligado’s analysis resulted from the complexity of social and historical processes as found in multiple outcomes. According to his logic, this vision of the East did not blame all its evils to a single culprit, nor did it assume that impediments to progress exist exclusively within Levant societies. He confirmed the existence of important external factors that is, “Western ones,” geopolitical in nature or owing to powerful colonial interests. Above all, he saw in ancient Egypt a country of many wonders: “birthplace of the arts and the sciences” that gave us the first model of a unified state. The palpable evidence of this view was its ruins and all the traces of those remote times. 6 Viñas did not study the testimony of Obligado in particular. He analyzed other trips of the Generation of 1880, such as Paul Groussac, Eduardo Wilde, Miguel Cané, Jr, Vicente Gil Quesada and Estanislao Zeballos.

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Modern Tyranny If despotism was a perceptible reality in Egypt, this was not necessarily the outcome of Middle Eastern fatalism. On the contrary, it was the product of a precise historical evolution that, after an era of cultural and scientific dissemination along with political supremacy, experienced a phase of decline that was largely due to the interference of foreigners: Macedonians, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, Romans, Arabs, Turks, and, more recently, French and British colonialists. Obligado’s vision of the Egyptian historical process was detailed in his lengthy Chapter 8 (“El Egipto”), where he obviously limited himself to somewhat reductive explanations. We are not interested in objectively reconstructing the political history of Egypt here, but instead in how Obligado assimilated that history. “Since then, Egypt … has consistently been submitted to the cruelest, most tyrannical rule, first by their own, then by the Romans, Arabs, and Turks, all stunting its civilized progress to the point of practically destroying it” (1873: 175). Since the eighteenth century, the European diplomatic game often worked to perpetuate the despotic political system, aiming to maintain the Ottoman status quo in the region as described in our Chapter 2. Obviously, Napoleon and Kléber’s military campaign had no agenda for modernizing Egypt; instead, it was pursued for pure colonial interests. The pressure exerted by Great Britain since the 1750 s was driven by its desire to maintain commercial stability along its sea routes to India—this concern motivated the 1882 British conquest of Egypt. Obligado detailed these facts in Chapter 9, (“El Canal de Suez”), where he explained the reasons for the fierce joint opposition of the British and the Ottomans to the construction of the Suez Canal (1873: 183–184). This canal facilitated maritime communication among Europe, Asia, and the Far East, a fact that, apparently, did not counter British interests. Nevertheless, Great Britain feared losing its commercial monopoly over the route to India as well as its military and sea supremacy in the region. However, the Sultan understood, and justifiably so, that the canal would lead to his loss of control over Egypt (also Syria) because, since Mehemet Ali’s rebellion, the province openly wished for independence.7 Great Britain, the civilized nation par excellence, did not hesitate to make use of the most archaic arguments: raising superstitious panic among the locals and 7 We are referring to the explanation given in footnote 9, Chapter 4, regarding the Sultan and Mehemet Ali.

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“proclaiming throughout the press that the opening of the canal to the Mediterranean Sea would cause sudden floods in all the valleys and their population centers” (Obligado 1873: 179). Despite the narrow limits within which local history had evolved, Obligado was convinced that Ismail-Pasha (grandson of Mehemet Ali) embodied a genuine effort to modernize the country, even though he maintained a formal relationship of subservience with Turkey. Not without its contradictions, this modernization process required the rapprochement of the Pacha with the European powers. So, “the current Pasha, [Ismail], still a young man, well-traveled, European educated, is not lacking in knowledge and, in relation to his predecessors, is much more cultured and progressive” (Obligado 1873: 90). This ruler attempted to modernize the nation, develop its educational system and revamp its political institutions. He also founded the Boulaq museum (headed by the great Egyptologist August Mariette-Bey), as well as scientific academies; yet he maintained a stranglehold on the press, a basic component of any modern free society. Obligado severely condemned this flaw, criticizing the essence of absolutism that combines a ruler and a state into one entity. On a social and political level, his assessment was bitter, but his optimistic nature made him realize that, in comparison to former governments, Ismail-Pasha’s leadership was indeed progressive. We must emphasize the remarkable difference between the individual assessments of Obligado and Sarmiento regarding the figure of Mehemet Ali. For Sarmiento, Mehemet Ali illustrated the perfect example of Eastern despotism, that is, an individual capable of carrying out the most devious treachery (against the Sultan), motivated by a desire to hoard power to create a new dynasty for his descendants. Obligado, however, believed that Mehemet Ali embodied Egypt’s return to its former territorial unity; that is why he read the alleged “treachery” as rather a “liberating event” and that despotism was exclusively practiced by the Turkish Sultan. According to him, Mehemet introduced modernization to a country where all progress and the very idea of change were at a standstill. For him, this lack of drive was explained by the “strength of Eastern customs, where nothing ever changes” (1873: 166). Let us examine these characterizations more closely. Sarmiento assigned the same dichotomy to the East—country life versus city life, barbarism versus civilization—that he applied to his interpretation of Argentina. Within the Eastern context, the city of Constantinople was

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civilized, but the remainder of the Ottoman Empire was not. Consequently, he considered the uprising by the Egyptian Mamluks, led by Mehemet Ali, as a new caudillo revolt and proof that barbarism was overcoming civilization: “in exchange for not being eventually dethroned, the Sultan invested the title of Egyptian Pasha to Mehemet Ali so that he could later be recognized as heir to the throne” (1999: 103). For him, Mehemet Ali was a “Tartar” caudillo, one more in a series of tyrants. Obligado viewed these events quite differently because he knew that, in the negotiations to save the Sultan’s throne, Western interests were not excluded. He thought that Mehemet Ali could have overthrown the Sultan “if certain European powers (namely England), had not been opposed to his noble designs” (1873: 176). The political autonomy won by Egypt was viewed as progress, not as a confirmation of despotism. Mehemet Ali’s modernizing was globally received as positive, even if his despotic regime remained unchanged. Consequently, Obligado previously opined that, regarding domestic politics, the IsmailPasha government’s situation remained drastic: “modern Egypt has not progressed much because its new ruler takes better care of his oxen than of his subjects, whom he exploits and starves by continuously raising their taxes” (1873: 152). This shows that the modernization drive undertaken by the Mamluk rulers was almost exclusively directed at those abroad. Without excusing them of their responsibility, Obligado observed that the involvement of European nations in these countries was far from being a civilizing enterprise. Great Britain repeatedly defended interests that went against those of civilization. He even considered the British as pillagers in Egypt when he cynically affirmed that “the English are the most dangerous admirers of the pyramids” given that they have taken hundreds of important Egyptian relics back to London (1873: 112). Often, Obligado’s characterization of the Turks and Arabs, (whom he considered occupiers), was more negative than his views on Egyptians. Both were portrayed as being commercial cultures and, after observing them in bazaars, he concluded that “such an indolent life that of the Turks whose existence is reduced to buying and selling, to being born and dying” (1873: 73). This damning tone carried a moral and material load, since Obligado’s Positivist spirit was such that he looked down on those who lacked a truly productive culture and profited exclusively from commercial activity. On his way through Alexandria, while standing before the site where the ancient library once stood, he recalled with consternation the prophet Oman I, who ordered Amrou Ibn-al-Ass to

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conquer Egypt, by referring to him as “the barbarous scimitar prophet” (1873: 80; Báez 2004: 62–63). While witnessing the dire poverty of the Egyptians, Obligado divined a vanquished people, deprived of fundamental pride by years of submission to various conquerors, and who elicited his pity and commiseration regarding their fate. Therefore, he ultimately shifted the responsibility for the ongoing despotism from the natives to the Arabs and Turks, without discerning that the Egyptian people he saw and to whom he alluded as “the ragged crowd” was comprised of Arabs and Turks. Women Inside and Outside the Harems As an enlightened absolutist monarch, Ismail-Pasha officially abolished female slave markets in Egypt—those that Mansilla described while in Constantinople. Nevertheless, Obligado noticed that these markets, while no longer present in the bazaars, still existed semi-clandestinely and that human trafficking was still a common form of currency. Though belatedly, he concluded that the freedom of the people would inevitably triumph. He opined that “this unstoppable tide moves, advances, invades, and penetrates as it breaks, crushes, drags, and renews everything” (1873: 99). Though female slave markets had been officially abolished, Middle Eastern women did not enjoy true freedom. The portrayal of the female condition as depicted by Obligado was dramatic and reflects the most negative viewpoints of classical Orientalism; yet, for the first time, he shied away from Romantic Orientalism’s concept of the harem that had earlier held such a determinant position. Even today Eastern women have no political representation, nor are they aware of their own dignity. They are not things, they are not entities, but they are even less as persons. They remain as the most despicable and abject of beings, still sleeping in the shadows of endless ignorance. They are born, give birth and die, without ever giving any thought to what motivates them …, aware of nothing, as though they were speedy shadows traversing this world. The government does nothing to protect them, nor do their country’s customs teach them anything but to try to see the world through their eternal blindfolds, nor does their religion give them any hope for the hereafter. (1873: 95–96)

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On the scale of Eastern social injustices, Obligado viewed the condition of women as the worst. The lack of government policies in this regard was exacerbated by Islam’s dogma that offers women no escape or possibility of redemption, in this world or in the afterlife. That is why he stressed the huge gap existing between Middle Eastern women as images of eroticpoetic exaltation and their reality: It may be said that Mohammed created a religion uniquely for men. No rights, no duties, no purpose in life, no sorrows, no rewards, not even the slightest hope for Islamic women. They are, however, the very reward of the believers who have faithfully adhered to all the precepts of the Koran. Seven beautiful women, seven Huri in the seventh heaven, there where Allah dwells, are the supreme delights bestowed for their blind faith. From the beginning of time, women have been extolled by poets, deified by pagans and even by Easterners because, to men, nothing is more precious in this world. Women are therefore awarded as the ultimate prize in a Muslim afterlife. Yet these same women, among them Christ’s mother [Mary], are today looked down upon and treated cruelly. (1873: 96–97, our emphasis )

Obligado believed that Islamic religious tenets weighed heavily on women and that the hardships impeding Egypt’s modernization were attributed to the country’s inability to accord any social space to women. His portrayal was exclusively sociological and theological, stripped of any fantastic semblance of Eastern female eroticism. Consequently, the harems and the polygamy of the Romanticists are almost not mentioned with one exception: when he tried to stress the point of a harem’s incarcerating nature in the modern period. He described the mother of the Crown Prince (the monarch’s wife) as she moved around Cairo surrounded by her retinue of eunuchs and soldiers, and to whom people bowed to better belie the falseness of her power: This woman, so honored by the Egyptian army, was in no way a ruler. Satisfying even the most innocuous of her desires was beyond her reach. She, constantly under guard inside the harem, surrounded by Abyssinian eunuchs who carried her around, and spied upon by order of the Pasha like his other concubines, is not even a lady, though she gave birth to the Crown Prince who is systematically kept from her. (1873: 97–98)

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The image of a harem as a secret space forbidden to Westerners has no poetic connotations here, but simply sociological ones, insofar as it illustrates the intense environment where Middle Eastern women lived. The image of the Pasha’s harem as a lavish prison reminded Obligado of the “beautiful canary in the gilded cage” metaphor for not even in their dreams could those women envision the freedoms then enjoyed by South American women. He also emphasized the strong contrast between Middle Eastern and American women, who were even more emancipated than those in Europe. A great example of the nineteenth-century liberated woman was a traveler with whom the Obligados shared a few days in Cairo and Giza. Alice, an American tourist, was a young woman who had rounded the world twice and shared, wherever she went, the exceptional freedom American women enjoyed. She averred that “it is from submissive women that these slaves around us are born insensitive, stupid, and wretched.” From this observation, she immediately drew a political correlation: “it is the superiority of women that engenders the amazing prosperity of the great American Nation.” Furthermore, concluding in a judgmental tone, “without educated women, like in this Egypt we are now visiting, only half of a civilization exists” (Obligado 1873: 122, 124, 126). As the perfect 1980 s tourist, Obligado felt safe because he limited his travels to a small cosmopolitan world, comprised of the same social group to which Mansilla belonged. Unlike his compatriot, however, Obligado definitively rejected the mundaneness around him. He did not travel around the world to gather anecdotes to be used for the amusement of his readers; rather, he traveled to gather knowledge to educate them or, at least, to usefully share his experiences. Obligado was no dandy. Quite the opposite, he exhibited the gravitas of one who sets out to accomplish a historical and pedagogical mission. He was a passionate foot soldier of human progress. Thus, as justification for his travels, he heaped on his friends and readers an overwhelming amount of historical, urban, anthropological, social, statistical, religious, scientific, and even practical information. We assume that this information came from his avid readings of travel guides (Le guide de Joanne), from various dragomans (Obligado called them dromagno), from his readings of classical and contemporary history, and perhaps even from literary references. Nonetheless, he scrupulously hid his sources, except for the epigraphs heading his book chapters. On other occasions, he collected his information in situ, directly from specialists or Egyptologists such as August

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Mariette-Bey and his disciple Gaston Maspero, both of whom he met and visited (1908: 302–305). Brought up as a Christian, a faithful and practicing Catholic, Obligado tried to compare biblical versions of history with rational explanations of the same occurrences as, for example, when he detailed his theory on the separation of the waters of the Red Sea when Moses and his followers fled Egypt to Palestine (1873: 168–169).

Visit to Syria and Pilgrimage Through Palestine The last two sections of Obligado’s book address Palestine (“Joppa,” “Salem”) and Syria (“Baalbek,” “Damascus”). The chapter devoted to the Holy City is by far the most extensive. The change in narrative tone upon his arrival in Palestine is indisputable. He diverged from the Positivist and sociological discourse that he maintained during his Egyptian phase and plunged into a more personal and intimate type of discourse closer to his religious convictions. Thus, he explained to his readers the fundamentals of his discursive change that also implied a change concerning his motivation for traveling. Suddenly, the objective considerations of his Middle Eastern journey became the living testimony of a spiritual “pilgrimage.” It is in these terms that he related the objectives of his undertaking: Since our departure, [Jerusalem has been] the goal…. At this time of religious indifference, we must state, before going any further, that I am Christian, a Roman Catholic. The faith that my mother lovingly instilled in me, far from being erased by life’s vicissitudes, has now been strengthened … so no one should be surprised that the following pages reflect Biblical legend, whose most deeply rooted tradition is present among these Middle Eastern people. (1873: 204–206)

Shortly afterward, he sarcastically challenges nonbelievers and atheists: “however, for those who do not believe in the mysteries that these Holy Sites celebrate …, they cannot, at least, avoid being struck by doubts” (1873: 207). This radical change in discursive tone is even more convincing since, in his preceding chapter devoted to the port at Jaffa (Joppa), Obligado reaffirmed his scrutinizing and impartial vocation as a Positivist traveler, one deeply reflective on all that he observed and felt. “I observed and reflected on the various popular customs, on their diversity and changes that, after all, were our study’s objective” (1873: 191).

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Within the program’s breadth, he is particularly interested in the “social structure of all peoples” that he described thus: … to question the future of all societies, their intellectual cultural differences, the reasons behind their social development and its relation to religion, and their national character in relation to their arts and customs; to delve as deeply as possible into historical mysteries; to clearly contemplate, face-to-face, humanity’s entire life (1873: 191)

The similarity of Obligado’s sociological program with that which inspired Volney’s book after traveling to Syria and Egypt is noteworthy. Although he belonged to a post-Romantic generation, Obligado nonetheless adhered to the synthesis elaborated by the Romanticists of the River Plate region, who reconciled science with spirituality, now enriched by Comtian contributions. Indeed, it is unsurprising to encounter passages in which August Comte’s readings and imprint are explicit: As children, countries are credulous in their infancy long before becoming thoughtful … It is at a mature age that reflection, inquiry and, perhaps, the ability to conjecture, to calculate or to attain convenience occurs. (Obligado 1873: 52)

Comte observed that human spiritual and intellectual development resulted from history’s philosophical laws that underwent three stages: (a) The theological stage, in which humans explain phenomena as supernatural manifestations of and emanations from God—insofar as the individual, this phase corresponds to childhood, a stage in which naïveté prevails and faith is only natural, in which beliefs and social ethics can be instilled. (b) The metaphysical stage that begins with monotheism and in which the causes of phenomena become abstract ideas. This is a stage when negative criticism and rebelliousness predominate, one related to the dissolution of secular and spiritual powers, and when social forces lean toward anarchy due to the upsurge of dissolving forces created by intelligence—a phase corresponding to adolescence and youth.

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(c) The positive stage, in which metaphysical speculation is replaced by a deliberate, reflexive action that attempts to research phenomena within the framework of multiple social and natural determinations and that transcends the intermediate critical phase. As a result, spiritual power is left to those who are wise and secular power to the industrialists. (this phase parallels individual development with maturity). For Obligado, Middle Eastern people found themselves between the first and second stage, in a kind of limbo between the juvenile theological stage and the monotheistic metaphysical stage, not yet having attained the critical positive stage of maturity. Behind these Comtian concepts, one can detect in Obligado a smack of Saint-Simon because, above the deep personal religious beliefs8 that these concepts encapsulate, a humanitarian and all-encompassing idea of religion stands out, one that advocates for obligatory charity and is consistent with the ideals of social justice and the concept of fraternity. These new sociocratic morals likewise placed sociological knowledge at the top and center of science. This discipline was initiated to precisely establish collective relationships; all other disciplines (physics, biology, theology, and philosophy) are sine qua non for focusing on social studies. This end-all concept of Comtian Positivist sociology, although eradicating metaphysics, did not exclude idealism. As Korn explained, “Positivism does not lack idealistic fervor because, unconsciously paradoxical, this philosophy, which denies any final cause, pursues the dream of a harmonious and fraternal humanity, one in control of the planet and led by science towards the accomplishment of its highest destiny in its infinite progress” (Korn 1983: 203). Obligado undoubtedly prolonged this tension between Positivism and idealism. 8 Toward 1830, the Saint-Simonians shifted toward a religious sect that believed to have found the “Mother,” a kind of mystical spouse of “Father,” Enfantin, the last leader of this Middle Eastern group. For this reason, Enfantin’s disciples first settled in Constantinople between 1833 and 1836, whence they were quickly expelled by the Sultan. They proceeded to Egypt, where they benefitted from the protection of Mehemet Ali. There, they spent much energy in trying to bring about modern industry and women education. Moreover, they left numerous writings of their journey through the Middle East. One of these writers, Ismayal Urbain, a mestizo originally from Guyana, converted to Islam and married a native woman, thereby displaying race and religious mixing. We allude to this because we think that Saint-Simon’s thoughts can be discerned in Lamartine’s deliberations, to be later resumed by Obligado. For a selection of these writings, see: Sarga Moussa (2004: 810–845).

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The last noted influence in Obligado was that of French travelers, particularly Chateaubriand and his successors. (He acknowledged this intellectual debt in the last chapters devoted to Baalbek and Damascus.) Standing at the base of the Baalbek ruins, Obligado recalled his childhood along the banks of the Paraná, where he would while away the hours reading Lamartine. Shortly afterward, he discovered Chateaubriand: We had never suspected the existence of a book like the Genio del cristianismo [“Christianity’s Genius”]. A completely new form of poetry was revealed to us in its wonderful pages; no longer did we find ourselves among nymphs or satyrs in the woods, but instead before angels and genies of the forest…. Such was the emotion that this book aroused in us for a long time …, which, for a long time, only us disciples of Chateaubriand read. Thus, we met Monsieur de Lamartine and, thanks to his Voyage to the Orient, have been to the ruins that, at the age of fifteen, we had promised ourselves to one day visit. (1873: 259–260)

In this monograph’s initial pages, we mentioned that, given the similarities among French nineteenth-century travelers, there are substantive differences between Chateaubriand and Lamartine. Most noteworthy is that, while the former introduced a discourse condemning the East, the latter opted for a course of reconciliation between East and West. Certain observations by Lamartine exemplify his course as, for example, when he speculated on the possibilities that a European country could seize and colonize the Ottoman province of Syria. After criticizing Muslim inertia before God, he lively defended the tolerance of Islam: We must recognize the merits of the sect of Mohammed for it is a very philosophical sect that only imposed two great duties on mankind: prayer and charity, These two great ideas are indeed the two loftiest truths of any religion; hence, Islam creates the tolerance that other sects have cruelly excluded from their dogmas. In this sense, Islam is more advanced on the path to religious perfection than many others that insult or ignore it. This religion can enter, painlessly and effortlessly, into a system of religious and civil freedom…. It is a moral, patient, resigned, charitable, and naturally tolerant religion…. Within the humanist, political and ambitious European civilization, we could easily make room for mosques. … (Lamartine 2000: 424–425)

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Without imagining the same possibilities of conquest and adaptation articulated by his mentor, Obligado took from his model the same spirit of positive reconciliation. The East, despite enormous differences, finally bridged the gap with the West since both then shared a common cultural source: monotheism. He was confident that this undertaking of conquest and unification could be cultural and spiritual in nature, not military. Obligado confessed in Baalbek: “We traveled through such magnificent ruins with Monsieur Lamartine’s book in hand.” The awe he felt before these wonders was identical to that which his mentor had previously experienced. However, the similarities go even further. First, the titles: Obligado’s Viaje a Oriente (1873) and Lamartine’s Voyage en Orient (1835). The two are only dissimilar in their prepositions. Secondly, after having made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Obligado embarked on the same voyage as Lamartine, that is, he disembarked at the port of Beirut and, from there, he made his way to Baalbek and Damascus, crossing the mountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. His description resembles that of the Frenchman’s, so much so that plagiarism might be suspected. All that was described by Lamartine in the capital of Syria was included by Obligado, following the same order and with practically the same words: the city’s description and its architecture, a detailed inventory in Damascus of house interiors, tapestries, colors, etc. If we are to consider that it was not plagiarism, then we must believe that the Frenchman had profoundly influenced Obligado’s subconscious. The wording with which the latter described the Jupiter Temple and Sun ruins at Baalbek are also very similar to Lamartine’s.9 However, his thoughts on the ruins are less political and philosophical than those of Volney; they are more focused on the aesthetic impressions to which his senses were subjected. Let us remember that Volney visited the Baalbek ruins before arriving in Palmyra, even though it was the latter that inspired his book. Curiously, Obligado, after his sojourn in Damascus, continued his trip to Palmyra, but did not write a single chapter on these famous ruins in the Syrian desert. We know that

9 Due to lack of space, it is impossible to lists all the texts here, but interested reader should consult them (Obligado 1873: 255–264, 265–270; Lamartine 2000: 421–454, 455–481).

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from Tadmor (Palmyra’s former name) he wrote a long letter to his friend, Archbishop Marino Marini, but we believe it was never published.10 Obligado’s 1872 visit to Palestine during Easter yielded him a mixture of religious exaltation and melancholic rapture. He experienced a twofold reaction: on the one hand, his visit to the holy sites of Christianity, there where Jesus Christ was crucified, gave him immense satisfaction and intense emotion; on the other hand, beyond these elegiac religious emotions, coming into contact with the city of Jerusalem as it was, plunged him into a funk that he found difficult to overcome. Above all, Obligado, having acknowledged and reaffirmed his religious principles, wanted to offer us an intimate pilgrim vision that excluded radical religious involvement. As mentioned, he was a modern believer, that is, a secular one whose Christian convictions avoided proselytizing endeavors. Wherefore, he founded it necessary to distance himself from any fanatical or evangelical mission: We must shy away from fanaticism because we are convinced that, in religion as in politics, as in everything He warns us about, it is the worst guide and most blinding approach in searching for the truth…. We are not fanatics, but we also did not leave our faith behind as we exited the Holy Sepulcher … we have simply told what we have seen while visiting those holy places where Christ once walked. (1873: 209)

Obligado therefore sought to frame his pilgrimage’s account in objective terms while avoiding effusive religious descriptions. He detailed Jerusalem’s history with its three overlying monotheistic religions as well as his own visits to the Holy Sepulcher, the Climb to Calvary, the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Omar Mosque, the ruins of Salomon’s Temple (Wailing Wall), etc. He meandered through the Holy City accompanied by two unexpected converted guides: the first one, María Alfonso de Ratisbonne, a French rabbi who, having embraced Catholicism, settled in Jerusalem to convert Jews to the “true” faith; the second, his Excellency Hazan-Bey Nouret, a European Catholic converted to Islam out of self-interest: to further his career there and to 10 The letter is entitled “Las Ruinas de Palmira,” like Volney’s homonym book (Obligado 1873: 285). Exhaustive research on the diverse number of journals, with which Obligado then collaborated in Europe and the East, remains pending. He declared to be sending correspondence “to La Epoca, La Tribuna, La Nación and other newspapers in Madrid, Montevideo and Buenos Aires” (Obligado 1873: 284).

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become governor of Suez. Both revealed to Obligado the city’s secrets and the subtleties of their respective religions. With these individuals, he seemed an attentive and neutral listener who weighed the advantages of each religion. After warning him that “for humanity, the worst religion is to have none,” Hazan-Bey Nouret warned him against making hasty evaluations of Islam, sarcastically informing him thus: “May Allah enlighten you, young traveler! One must not take lightly a sect so large in followers without first becoming aware of its doctrines” (1873: 249). Afterward, the governor of Suez asked him to think about the similarities between Muslim expansion in Africa, Asia, and Europe and the Spanish and Portuguese conquests in Latin America carried out by evangelizing swords. He then adds that “it is with blood that the Word is imposed everywhere” (1873: 249). Yet, his aesthetic evaluation of Jerusalem was rather grim. We sense an air of utter disappointment when he compared the Omar Mosque’s beauty with that of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople or Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome—he experienced the same disillusionment upon visiting the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. With sociological precision, Obligado informed us about the various communities sharing the city and relations among them. Living conditions for Jerusalem citizens were extremely wretched, as well in all the large cities of the Levant. Its Jewish population, living in the most abject poverty, was referred to as “that plaintive and tattered crowd” (1873: 251). However, this criticism of the material conditions under which this population lived did not lessen the genuine emotion he felt in the Holy City: The inner city gives the same general impression as all Middle Eastern urbs; poorly paved, narrow, steep, winding streets…. Houses in the Christian quarters, usually tall, are few, silently gloomy, and joyless. The Muslim and Jewish quarters are filled with wretched shops and dirty people. In this city, everything contributes to saddening visitors and to causing them profound melancholy.

He then continued with this dark urban sketch: A pale grey sky, overhanging bare and whitish peaks, parched valleys, scorched hills, arid and barren fields, ubiquitous caves, cleft rocks …, a damaged city, painful memories everywhere. All this is what most impresses here.

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At chapter’s end, he concluded this dismal overview as follows: The absorbed traveler cannot help but recognize that something mysterious, something bleak that stretches like a funereal black ribbon over this region, a place where one, with a heavy heart, yearns to breathe the fresh air of more open horizons. (1873: 253–254, emphasis ours )

Death’s lexical field is extensive and varied in this excerpt. Through his descriptions, Obligado seemed to be saying that all travelers unmotivated to visit the Holy Land have no reason to remain in Jerusalem; furthermore, they should leave the city at once. Even believers like him, who had been looking forward to this pilgrimage since childhood, felt haunted by profound weariness. Among the most salient characteristics of Jerusalem, Obligado pointed out was its heavy surrounding silence along with its geographical dryness and deprivation that seemed to unequivocally reject the qualifier of “The Promised Land.” In this glum depiction, not even the Catholic Easter celebration could help in lifting the veil of this city’s dominant sadness.

Conclusion Obligado’s book ends rashly, its publication in Rome cut short by a journey that would take him to the 1873 International Exposition in Vienna. He nevertheless promised to resume his account of his Middle Eastern experiences (“later, as soon as it is possible to continue its interrupted narration” [1873: 272]), a promise that remained unfulfilled for many years until, in the last volumes of Tradiciones argentinas, he recalled some earlier anecdotes, such as meeting the famous Emir Abd-el-Kader when the Algerian leader invited him to Lebanon to rest under his pitched tent near Stora,11 or his nostalgic recollection of the Garden of Gethsemane, or some site close to the ruins of Karnak. Some remarkable comparisons between the Egyptian desert and the Argentinean Pampas are scattered throughout the book along with 11 Obligado’s “Lealtad” (1920). Abd-el-Kader (1808–1883) was a fearless Algerian Emir

who harassed French colonial troops in the region of Mascara from 1840 to 1847. After his eventual surrender, he lived in France from 1848 until he left for Syria in 1852, promising never to return to Algeria. Having ingratiated himself with the French, he finished out his days in Syria. Sarmiento often referred to him as the best example of barbaric caudillismo.

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comments about trait similarities between Bedouins and gauchos. “In the African desert and in the vast Argentinean Pampas, one finds so many similar qualities and obvious coincidences between Arabs and gauchos as, for example, their indolent and defeatist nature,” affirmed Obligado (1873: 89). The negative association between Arabs and gauchos put Obligado on the same ideological plane as Sarmiento. Except for this quotation and unlike Sarmiento, he did not think along these lines; whereas Sarmiento made it political, Obligado made it sociological. This quotation is perhaps the only similarity between the two. For even though Obligado accepted general ideas regarding the Eastern disposition inherited from European Orientalism (immobile society, moral indolence,12 deplorable condition of women, despotic governments, productive incapacity, etc.), he, in a measured way, set limits to such risky comparisons by constantly maintaining a critical attitude toward the European model. The desolate vastness of Egypt and the Pampas were also conducive to a consideration of the infinite for they reified the eternal (Obligado 1873: 107). On another stopover, Obligado also compared the Nile with the Paraná because both rivers represented the central force that organized the social life of their respective countries (1873: 133). In short, Obligado developed a different view toward the East, different from his previous ones. And even though in this last perception of the Levant he conflated discourses (neo-Romanticism with Positivism, the sociological with the spiritualist, the aestheticized with the sociodemocratic, the secular Christian with the humanitarian religious), it was clear that he forged a personal evaluation, one removed from Sarmiento’s ideology and Mansilla’s worldliness. Despite his harsh criticism, his vision was globally positive because, instead of traveling to corroborate what he already knew (Sarmiento) or to amuse and entertain (Mansilla), he did so to learn and transmit knowledge and, like Lamartine, to discover common areas between civilizations that were declared at odds by the dominant political discourse of the time. Consequently, Obligado represented a notable change from his predecessors. In his “Las ruinas,” no longer was there any excuse for the moral condemnation of the East or

12 In the surrounding area of Baalbek, the voyager and his spouse met the Syrian Pasha, who invited them to his tent. After this meeting, Obligado united the subjects of immobility and indolence in concluding that “Soubhi-Pasha enjoys twenty women and one hundred thousand pesos of monthly income, but he will die from inaction and boredom. Premature indulgence in pleasures is consuming” (Obligado 1873: 264).

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the erroneous observations of “flaws” that allowed for the justification of colonial aggression in the name of civilization. Of course, Obligado did not defend barbarism at the expense of civilization. He was a Westerner, a civilized man, a fervent modernizer, a Positivist, and an idealist who truly believed that humanity had the wherewithal to unify around its common destiny. Therefore, after each step he took, he stopped to admire the beauty and magnificence of the Levant countries and to become aware of his surroundings, whether in gardens, among simple people, among remnants of the past, in religious surroundings, and even among Middle Eastern women whose hidden calling was to obtain freedom. In this sense, it could be said that he erred on the side of Positivist optimism. As a child, he dreamt that the 1873 International Exposition would be a first step toward the realization of a universal understanding between East and West. In Vienna, Obligado thought, like Lamartine, that the rulers of both worlds would meet and “for the first time, the West will shake hands with the East. May the union of these two worlds uplift and extol humanity. It is with this fervent wish that he saluted and honored those wise few who, on both sides, would someday fulfill it” (1873: 272).

References Báez, Fernando (2004). Historia universal de la destrucción de libros. Barcelona: Destino, series Imago Mundi. Barthes, Roland (1957). Mythologies. Paris: Seuil. Basch, Sophie (1998). “Henri Clouard contre Louis Bertrand: la poétique des ruines revisitée, ou le double procès du philhellénisme et de l’archéologie,” in Sophie Linon-Chipon, Véronique Magri-Mourgues & Sarga Moussa (eds.) (1998). Miroirs de textes. Récits de voyage et intertextualité. Nice University Press: Faculté de Lettres, Arts et Sciences Humaines of Nice, New Series, nº 49: 357–375. Basch, Sophie (2004). Les sublimes portes. D’Alexandrie à Venise, parcours dans l’Orient romanesque. Paris: Honoré Champion, series L’Atelier des Voyages. Bertoni, Lilia Ana (2001). Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas. La construcción de la nacionalidad argentina a fines del siglo XIX. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Cortés, José Domingo (1876). “Noticia sobre Pastor Servando Obligado,” Diccionario biográfico americano. Paris: Imprenta Lahure, 2º ed. Gasquet, Axel (2002). L’Intelligentsia du bout du monde. Les écrivains argentins à Paris. Paris: Ed. Kimé.

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Gasquet, Axel (2005). “Escuela y normalización idiomática en la formación de la nacionalidad argentina (1852–1910),” in Thomas Gomez (ed.). École, culture et nation. Nanterre: Grecun-Publidix, 61–84. Korn, Alejandro (1983). “Positivismo,” Influencias filosóficas en la evolución nacional. Buenos Aires: Solar. Lamartine, Alphonse de (2000). Voyage en Orient [1835]. Paris: Honoré Champion, series Textes de Littérature Moderne et Contemporaine. Edition by Sarga Moussa. Moussa, Sarga (2004). “L’apport des saint-simoniens,” in Sarga Moussa & Kaja Antonowicz (eds.). Le voyage en Égypte. Anthologie de voyageurs européens de Bonaparte à l’occupation anglaise. Paris: Robert Laffont, series Bouquins. Obligado, Pastor Servando (1873). Viaje a Oriente, de Buenos Aires a Jerusalén. Paris: Imprenta Americana de Rouge, Dunon & Fresné. Obligado, Pastor S. (1888). “Villanokoff,” Tradiciones Argentinas, 1ª serie. Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Martín Biedma, 385–410. [Abbreviated reprint: “Soldado argentino, general en Rusia,” in Doctor P. Obligado (1903). Tradiciones argentinas. Barcelona: Montaner & Simón Editores, 142–150.] Obligado, Pastor (1908). “Una argentina en Karnack,” Tradiciones y Recuerdos, 7ª serie, illustrated. Buenos Aires: La Semana Médica Imprenta Spinelli, 301– 309. Obligado, Pastor (1920). “Reminiscencias de Gethsemaní,” “Tres milagros en un viaje” & “Lealtad [Abd-el-Kader],” Tradiciones Argentinas, 10ª serie. Buenos Aires: Rinaldi Hnos. Editores, 131–136. Pagés Larraya, Antonio (1955). “Pastor Obligado y las ‘Tradiciones Argentinas’,” in Pastor S. Obligado. Tradiciones Argentinas (selection). Buenos Aires: Hachette. Palma, Ricardo (1872). Tradiciones peruanas. Lima: Imprenta del Estado. Palma, Ricardo (1898). ‘Prefacio’ to Pastor S. Obligado, Tradiciones de Buenos Aires, 4th series. Buenos Aires: Imprenta Chacabuco, vii–xii. Peña, David (1912). ‘Prefacio’ to Pastor S. Obligado, Tradiciones Argentinas, 8th series. Buenos Aires: Compañía Sudamericana de Billetes de Banco, iii–xii. Sarmiento, Domingo F. (1999). Facundo, Civilización y barbarie [1845]. Madrid: Cátedra, series Letras Hispánicas. Edition by Roberto Yahni. Viñas, David (1998). “Eduardo Wilde: ecologismo y misantropía,” De Sarmiento a Dios, Viajeros argentinos a USA. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 113–120.

CHAPTER 7

The Hygienist Modernity of Eduardo Faustino Wilde

Nothing develops selfish feelings as much as traveling and, as a result of one of those contradictions abounding in nature, it is by traveling that the other tendency manifests itself most, the altruistic tendency of humanity. Eduardo Wilde, Por mares i por tierras (1899a) The key to Victorian gentlemen was that they saw themselves as the signifiers of progress and, being inveterate organicists, only through their counsel would foreseeable “decadence” be resolved. David Viñas, De Sarmiento a Dios (1998) What a great nation this England is! Wherever a group of its children go, civilization becomes, in fact, rooted, established, fertile, powerful and transformative. Where no pressure, proof, or reason manages, practical patience and example do. Eduardo Wilde, Por mares i por tierras (1899a)

Eduardo Faustino Wilde (1844–1913) played, like Obligado, a less prominent role in the literary sphere of the Generation of 1880 but, in addition to being an epidemiologist and physician, he accomplished a determining political feat. The sparse knowledge about his life and works is mostly due to two powerful enemies who were responsible for his lengthy exclusion: the Catholic church, which never forgave him for his

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1884 defense of a mandatory, free, progressive, and impartial education.1 His second enemy was Mitre who, through his caustic jokes, attacked Wilde’s type of liberalism as well as newspaper (La Nación) criticisms of Mitre’s so-called “doctrinal” action. Both enemies largely contributed to overshadowing the importance of his activity and of shaping an official vision of his accomplishments that only partially corresponded with his biography. Yet, as was typical of his generation, Wilde labored feverishly in the areas of medical science, public health, and politics as well as in his multifaceted works. It has often been pointed out that Wilde’s humorous and skeptical tone chronicles revealed how he distanced himself from reality. Nonetheless, the “skeptical” label was placed on him by his Catholic opponents who sought to discredit all liberal agnostics and atheists. Adolfo Prieto affirmed that Wilde’s “unbeliever” tone was more “stylistic,” specifically generational, than proof that these writers had lost touch with reality (Prieto 2003: 189).2 Wilde was a man of modern science who felt fortunate to be part of a fast-changing world. He witnessed and was an essential part of Buenos Aires’s transformation from a large village into a cosmopolitan city. In addition to his decisive educational proposals, his urban and sanitation initiatives were no less significant as, for example, his role in the founding of the researchoriented Hospital de Clínicas, the Teatro Colón [“Columbus Theater”], and the construction of Buenos Aires’s sewer system. On the legislative plane, he was the upmost promoter of the civil marriage law, a role that intensified Catholic opposition against him. The resulting virulent attacks and, as Interior Minister under Juárez Celman (1886–1890), his continued controversial actions forced him to resign in 1889, shortly before the 1890 revolution. Perhaps because he was born and raised in Tupiza, Bolivia, during his Unitario parents’ exile and educated in the Colegio Nacional de Concepción del Uruguay, Wilde did not display the evocative and nostalgic tone of his Buenos Aires colleagues like, for example, Miguel Cané, Jr. He was

1 Law 1.420 (see Chapter 5, footnote 3), when he was Minister of Justice and Culture and Public Education under the first presidency of Julio A. Roca (1880–1886). Law 1.420, which established free and secular education, was ratified on 8 July 1884. Wilde thus continued Sarmiento’s work regarding education (Wilde 1883; Weimberg 1956; Gasquet 2005: 68–73). 2 Prieto indicated that Wilde was “probably the most representative writer of this generation” (Prieto 2003: 184).

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a modernizer and astonishingly progressive; he even came to despise any recollection of the past. His fully Positivist conviction, inspired by Herbert Spencer3 and sprinkled with dashes of humor, dark at times, was indeed revealed in his chronicles and travel narratives.

Demolishing Past Ruins A seasoned traveler like all his cohorts, Wilde however did not set out in his first European journey until 1889, at the late age of forty-five, just after his resignation as minister. Henceforth, both at the personal and official levels (he returned to public service in 1898), he did not stop traveling until his unexpected 1913 death in Brussels while serving as ambassador to Spain and Portugal. Despite having resided in Europe for many years, Wilde was never a Francophile like many other members of the Buenos Aires elite, nor was he a Europeanist like most of his compatriots—unusual for a Generation of 1880 member. His models for modernizing the country were Japan and the United States,4 not the old European nations. He felt a certain aversion toward old ruins and the past and believed that Europe was a prisoner of its own history. Of course, he also mentioned the dynamic aspects of European society but, in his judgment, these were minor given that its overall traditions constituted a heavy and useless drag. He then saw Europeans as a people struggling to foster modernity when, in fact, they remained tied down to their past and strapped in by a string of outmoded values. His intelligent distancing from Europe was made clear in his first travel book, Viajes y observaciones [“Trips and Observations”] (1892), essentially made up of his contributions to the newspaper La Prensa along with some letters to friends. This eight-hundred-page volume was the outcome 3 In an 1893 letter addressed to Roca, Wilde referenced Herbert Spencer thus: “the greatest intellectual power in the world” (quoted by Terán 2000: 85). For a study of Wilde from the perspective of an earthy Positivism, see Ricaurte Soler (1968). It is noteworthy that Spencer always refused to be identified with the Positivists, though many of his followers viewed him as such (Tort 1996: 18–20). 4 In 1902, José Ingenieros, the most illustrious representative of Argentinean Scientism, upholds Wilde’s principles: “The people’s spirit is always old for a young individual and, naturally, more childlike the longer its existence in places where it has been the least reformed. Hence American and Japanese youthfulness; hence Spanish and Ibero-American old age” (Ingenieros 1987: 130. Our emphasis ).

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of an authentic European tour that led him to frantically visit the principal European and Levantine cities in less than a year (1889–1890).5 Although this tour could be viewed as including the classic itinerary of South American travelers then, his appreciation of it was far from the traditional values of his generation. In addition to sharing their elitist and confidential attitude (close followers belonged to his social class),6 his “logbook” resulted in a condemnation, not a celebration, of a decadent European culture. Henceforth, it was obvious that his judgment of the Old World was subjective and tinged with self-promotion. This trait, far from being typical of his generation as Viñas argued,7 was a substantive and general feature of travel literature through time and space. All travelers spoke more about themselves than about what they witnessed or, better said that the objective universe and the subjective world are indiscernible and inseparable. Likewise, the causerie was not a genre invented in the River Plate region by a generation of “conservatives” (Mansilla, Cané, Jr., or Wilde); rather, it often cruelly copied Sainte-Beuve’s model. In any case, Old Europe was no longer the guiding North Star for South American travelers, nor the place for all sensual pleasures. For Wilde, the prototype of modernity was the United States and, from 1897 on, so was Meiji Japan. Wilde’s idea about end-of-century European decadence, outlined with other conditions in Friedrich Nietzsche’s historical philosophy, is the modest precursor to what Oswald Spengler would later introduce sensibly in The Decline of the West (1918–1922) [Der Untergang des Abenlandes ]. The great novelty was that Wilde leveled this criticism of European decadence from a rationalist perspective, not from an irrationalist one as may be found in the Nihilism of Arthur Schopenhauer and his successors. 5 He visited Madrid, Rome, Milan, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Geneva, and other cities in Great Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and Russia. He also visited the Balkans, Greece, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Egypt and, capping his grand tour, the East Coast of the United States. 6 David Viñas said: “Given that he addressed the director of the newspaper [La Prensa] and the director’s friends by their first names, we understand it as being a collection for his friends who traveled and, at the same time, it is of a paradigm of the dandy voyager in the sense that this is a ‘distinguishing’ characteristic, and especially pertinent in relationship to those who do not have the means to travel” (Viñas 1998: 117). 7 Viñas affirmed: “‘The impressions’ of Wilde are like those that would be found in a novel about him – in the sense that each place he visited is reflected in his own image … multifaceted, from several different angles” (Viñas 1998: 117).

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During his European travel, Wilde developed an authentic “antipoetics of the ruins,” thereby assuming an opposite perspective of all classic discourse in travel literature from the Renaissance to the Romanticists. If in the authors studied here we have rigorously observed a “poetics of the ruins” (a source of knowledge and inspiration for the purpose of transmitting a legendary past, etc.), Wilde would contradict this notion by affirming that the ruins were not only bothersome and frustrating to him, but also that the excessive dialogue with the past served to separate humans from their most vivid reality, that of their time, which then meant scientific, technical, Positivist, industrial, and public health projects. In short, having an excessive attachment to the past only served to derail people from the path to human progress. Thus, Wilde did not waste his time in “taking stock of the European cultural landscape,” as Cristina Iglesia maintains (2002: 174). In other words, it was not art museums, temples and cathedrals, triumphal arches or historical monuments that mattered, but rather those spaces that signified modern social progress, such as asylums, hospitals, educational institutions, medical and scientific research universities, factories, publishing houses, along with women and children’s social condition. As Wilde implores, “may Divine Providence prevent me from entering into descriptions of cities, towns, and hamlets” (Iglesia 2002: 175). This Europe, anchored to its past, was agonizing in its present behind the false trappings of nostalgic empires. Consequently, he believed that the center of European importance had moved from France to Germany that, in his eyes, was the only European country truly capable of aspiring to real modern development. For Wilde, taking inventory not only involved counting what really was but, above all, of unambiguously pointing out what was “missing” from a modern perspective. And it was in this sense that, for him, “Europe was an intolerable gathering of flaws and errors,” according to Iglesia (2002: 176). Europeans, immersed still in their cultural past, are viewed as grave defilers instead of devotees of progress. Their huge libraries were therefore perceived as sanctuaries of the past and their users like aliens from a bygone era. “Libraries are cemeteries where the ancestral souls sleep, being exhumed [their books] from time to time by some curious madman determined to rummage through the gravesites of human thought,” affirmed Wilde in Viajes y observaciones (Iglesia 2002: 177).

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In this modern portrayal, few European cities escaped his caustic and cutting criticism starting with Paris and Rome. The perception of these mythical places was saturated with those fictional and historical accounts that had been juxtaposed over centuries. Wilde intended to scrutinize the modern European reality and not weigh its past. Paris, as described by South American travelers and those from other parts, was not the city that then really existed, but a distortion created by Romantic and Symbolist homilies, from Chateaubriand to Victor Hugo, from Madame de Staël to Stendhal,8 from Eugène Sue to Verlaine. The legendary city that all claimed to see was the ghost of a reality that did not exist. To again sum up Iglesia’s impressions, “Paris is a city that can be read, but cannot be seen” (2002: 183). Likewise, Rome is a concentration of all that is antithetical to modern development. It is an extremely dense historical superimposition and therefore indecipherable. Since the Renaissance, Rome has borne the weight of infinite discourses on its shoulders; its buzz always proved unintelligible to travelers with their feet planted in the present. Because of such total immersion in the past, the modern present receded, and those who were busy examining the ruins ended up becoming ruins themselves. Consequently, for Wilde, these cities were hostile places that offered visitors no real incentive to linger for very long, turning themselves into transit cities that, as immense escape routes, were interconnected by the rhythmic succession of train changes. From his point of view, the only European city that had some grace was Munich. In Bavaria, he felt as though he had been relieved of a heavy load since he did not feel overwhelmed and, for the first time, he could rest. It is this same sentiment of the “antipoetics of the ruins” that dominated Wilde’s observations during his various Eastern outings. We shall ignore the stacks of notes for his first travel book about Egypt and the Levant (Wilde 1939: 214–241, 251–300). We then intend to exclusively analyze the lengthy chapters about the French Maghreb, southern Asia and the Far East included in the second volume of his travel accounts, Por mares i por tierras [“By Land and by Sea”] (1899a), paying close attention to his views on China and Japan. We shall see that, for Wilde, the concept of human progress (more so than material progress) placed matters concerning public sanitation, social hygiene, and municipal education at the center of modernizing policies that aspired to solidify a new 8 All these authors developed a poetic of the ruins (Mortier 1974: Chapters 13, 14, 15).

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morality among the popular classes. These topics recurred in practically all his travel observations and became the cornerstone of his evaluation of human progress in those countries that he visited.

Racial Prism and Rationalist Conjecture in the Maghreb Wilde began his journey to Algeria and Tunisia (the former, a French colony, the latter, a French protectorate) in Cartagena, Spain, from where he embarked on 3 December 1892 with his wife and Bautista, an Argentinean friend. The trip ended three weeks later with their return to Marseilles on Christmas Eve. After a rough crossing, they arrived in Oran on December 4. The small group closely followed the Mediterranean coastal line of North Africa without ever venturing into the foothills of the Tellian Atlas, which open the way to the semidesert zone and, farther south, to the Sahara. Wilde and his companions did not go into the Mascara region, as Sarmiento had done while in search of Emir Abdel-Kader’s birthplace. The French colony now found itself experiencing a phase of relative social tranquility, far from the turbulent early period of its occupation. Wilde’s impression of the city of Oran was, however, like that of his predecessor, that is, he witnessed a commercial city that was very active and cosmopolitan on account of its different languages, nationalities, and its considerable mixture of races and religions. The image of Babel immediately came to his mind: “The languages spoken almost exclusively in that Tower of Babel are French, Spanish, and Arabic; one is unable to tell which of these is the most common” (1899a: 30). His description of the city was dry, basic, and general. He, avoiding aesthetic considerations, dedicated himself to examining its social and racial makeup and to emphasizing the natives’ passivity and the Arabs’ spiritual degradation: Oran is a city in full progress; we can see it sprouting, if one may say that, and its buds forecast a great capital city soon. Its weather is delightful; its seaport lends itself to commercial development. In general, its population is made up of three large groups: French, Spaniards, and Arabs, with Spaniards being the apparent dominant group. The Arabs, original owners of the land, now serve more as spectators to the spreading of a foreign civilization and put up no opposition; their ethnic group is mortally wounded and incapable of surviving in an environment created by the invasion of European customs. Their religion, their customs, and even their physical appearance put them at a disadvantage. (1899a: 30. Emphasis ours )

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In this excerpt, we observe a somewhat eclectic position regarding race, halfway between Darwinian biological determinism (Arab’s weak physical constitution) and Ernest Renan’s notion of race, which is lumped together with a cultural definition, as developed by the effort of the various human groups to understand the world and their relationships within it (Rétat 2003: 321–328; Renan 2007). In his “modern” evaluation, Wilde immediately moved on to the biological and hygienist analysis, whose underlying racism is even more patent than that included in the previous passage: Their dress, so distinguished and solemn, is unsuited for the mechanical functions of today’s social life. In general, Arabs are of a weak constitution, not very intelligent, and rather lazy. Were they not, and had they not always been thus, they would not have allowed themselves to be conquered. They must now submit to the implacable law of the predominance of the strongest; to be stronger is to be more intelligent, healthier, more active, and more innovative. (1899a: 30. Emphasis ours )

Wilde visited different quarters of the city, community by community, and especially the Arab casbah whose dwellings were described as “damp and repulsive artificial caves,” where he had to exercise great caution to steal a fleeting glimpse of veiled women. Wilde finally managed a peek at a few of these elusive women surprised by his incessant inquisitive gaze and whose ugliness amazed him: “I have never seen such unpleasant and hideous faces.” And as to those unveiled few whom he saw on the street, he denied all femininity and even their gender: “they were all black or brown, many had tattoos and there was not one among them whose appearance would allow her inclusion among members of the ‘fair sex’” (1899a: 31). Wilde’s modern racism is thus expressed by his acceptance of Lombroso’s physiognomic theories that had been largely accepted by Argentinean hygienists, mainly by Doctor Ramos Mejía, author of Las multitudes argentinas (1987: 61–67).9 As excessive as these remarks appear, it is important to point out the extent to which these racial prejudices were then accepted by the Western and South American minds. Although Wilde, unlike Sarmiento, did not establish an immediate parallel between Arabs in the Maghreb and Pampas 9 For a detailed analysis of Argentinean hygienist studies, see Oscar Terán (2000: 83– 133).

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savages (Indians and gauchos), the evaluations of the former undoubtedly had repercussions on the ghostly concept of the latter. Wilde derived certain demographic hypotheses: the weak Arab physical constitution coupled with the religious aberration that was Islam, so resistant to any modernization, would inevitably lead to a demographic decrease. In the meantime, the Caucasian race, “strong, healthy and intelligent,” would also gain ground through its demographic power. Meanwhile France, with its colonial expansion, is renewing its strength in these countries, where its children, in living more comfortably, are freely growing in numbers, are more successful in their labors, enjoy a certain wellbeing, see their properties increase, and are laying the foundation for their collective wealth. French descendants on African soil are larger in numbers than those of their relatives in Europe. (1899a: 31)

In this social hierarchy, which overall resembled a strictly racial hierarchy, Spaniards filled the middle ranks. Being White and European, they innately have a capacity for entrepreneurship and exhibit a collective intelligence that, while being inferior to that of the French, is superior to that of the natives. This led to some speculations on the part of Wilde: “If Spaniards were to focus a little more on what is in their interest, they would establish direct steamship lines between their coast and these regions; within a few years, its population would surpass that of the other Europeans” (1899a: 31). On board a train to Algiers, Wilde and his entourage became acquainted with Mister E. Carriol, a traveler of distinguished appearance who turned out to be one of the French engineers who built the line. A dialogue soon ensued and, according to Wilde, Carriol “told me who were the Arabs and showed me the disastrous outcome of their fatalism” (1899a: 33). Next, he meticulously transcribed his dialogue with the engineer who turned out to be more pessimistic than he was regarding the possibility of civilizing the natives. The discussion addressed two topics of Orientalist fondness that were part of the same phenomenon: social passivity and religious fatalism. Despite his shared prejudices with the engineer, Wilde differed with him by noting that religious “fatalism” included Christianity and not just Islam. As Wilde argued from an atheistic Positivist viewpoint, Carriol would retort basing his views on Christian superiority:

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For the same reason, they sow enough seeds to barely fill their immediate needs. They do not work, they do not have the least foresight or learn by example and, due to their religion and routine, they are incapable of any progress…. They fully know that irrigation fertilizes the soil but, still, they wait for water to fall from the sky.

To which Wilde replied, exhibiting his implacable Positivist logic: But that fatalism is irrational All religions, even Christianity, teach it. Providence to Christians means “fate” to other religions. Truly speaking, the entire world is fatalistic because men know that all events are independent of will, that they obey natural laws. Well-understood fatalism is philosophical and highly scientific … and it is absurd to suppose that free will can change any event. (1899a: 34–35)

Carriol’s biological determinism was also applied to Jews who received the same treatment as Muslims: “A Jew, a son of a Jew, is born with a brain made for thinking as his ancestors thought and thinks only like them,” he alleged. To which Wilde countered, with an argument taken from Renan, that race, rather than being a biological fact, is an unstable phenomenon, permanently in mutation and tied to cultural norms. Lowering his voice, he then confessed his profound Rationalist skepticism thus, “Common courtesy has kept me from objecting. I now fear all objections after reading this impartial aphorism in a book by Renan: ‘behind every objection, there is an element of hatred and disbelief’” (1899a: 36–37). Another traveler, a naturalist professor, then joined the conversation, making the debate a bit more philosophical. The three men then began discussing whether a Creator existed. Wilde and the professor acknowledged the uncertainty of such a possibility as Carriol maintained the opposite. Wilde then brought the debate to a close with a forceful diatribe against Christianity and its theological mystification. He maintained that the concept of God is based on emotion and, as such, it is only a symbol. Hence, the bitter observation that the existence of a Creator who, according to the Gospels, by retaining anthropomorphic traits, happens to be the repository of all human virtues and vices. As Wilde states: It is we who create our God. The Christian religion, which is the most fashionable at this time among civilized people, creates a God who encompasses human qualities, both good and bad, and then inflates them: omnipotent, perfect, infinitely wise, merciful, impartial judge, steadfast,

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the supreme beauty, and a thousand other things, all exaggerated human notions. However, in getting down to the sect’s details, one sees something more: God is susceptible to adulation, to corruption, he is sensitive to praise, vindictive, rancorous; God has favorites and protégés, listens to go-betweens, changes his mind through prayer or a religious mass. His earthly agents and his heavenly relatives are self-interested. (1899a: 40)

The Creator is made in the image and likeness of man, not the contrary. It was for this reason that the professor responded to Carriol’s tirade on reason with the same agnostic Positivist logic as Wilde: Reason either understands or it does not, but by understanding or not understanding, facts cannot be created or destroyed. There are facts in nature that, until now, have not entered the realm of reason as others have that, previously judged as impossible, are now evident. (1899a: 41)

The agnostic pessimism of Positivists, devoid of Christian faith, was compensated by the optimism that science provides. The agnostic did not despair because Reason had not yet solved all enigmas to which religion supposedly provides answers. He was confident in the unlimited ability of Reason and the expansion of human knowledge that scientific progress was gradually realizing. Positivists had to learn to overcome the anguish caused by ignorance in many domains: Scientific ignorance, we are told, is an insufficient reason to throw ourselves into the arms of a religious faith that only provides false answers (irrational). The professor refuted Carriol’s arguments thus: “Finally, if there is an omnipotent God, creator of everything, and a man who does not rationally believe in him, who is at fault? God. What would it cost Him to change the man’s brain?” And Wilde continued his defense of science as opposed to faith, in a tone clearly resonating Volney’s words: … the world began to advance in the sciences when men started putting aside theological discussions, puns, misleading arguments and pure inventions…, and began to study how to be a part of this world and its natural laws. Henceforth, we saw the birth of physics and chemistry, natural history, astronomy, and all the branches of these sciences. (1899a: 42–44)

Carriol, being on the defensive, attempted a final counterattack by accusing his interlocutors of propitiating the collapse of morals. He told them: “Your reasoning leads to the negation of all beliefs, the destruction of the moral system and of the noblest sentiments.” Wilde’s final

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rejoinder included arguments based on organic biology, which were so common among Positivists of his time: No sir, the conduct and morals of men do not emanate from their rational convictions; instead, from their organic makeup. Nobility, charity, compassion, horror of crime and cruelty are all innate sentiments that require no religion, no sect, no belief nor any philosophical system…. Syllogisms, whether accepted or rejected, do not create morality in men. (1899a: 44. Emphasis ours )

The travelers finally get off at the Algiers train station and went their separate ways. Wilde had a favorable impression of the city and emphasized its dynamism and cosmopolitanism, as Sarmiento once did. He also mentioned the commercial and strategic importance of its seaport. Except for the upper neighborhoods, the urban design was modern, buildings interspersed with public gardens, avenues were lined with trees, and native and exotic vegetation abounded. The colonial capital was very clean and accounted for “thousands of educational institutions, museums, libraries, churches and mosques.” Wilde emphasized a surprising fact: there were no beggars like those found in most major European cities. The popular markets were extremely lively, comfortable hotels were numerous, and traffic was hectic. “We have visited the city up and down, from left to right. Nothing is more picturesque, more varied, or more animated.” Farther on, he summarizes, “in Algiers, no creature comfort or even luxuries are lacking” (1899a: 45–46). He promised Argentinean readers further conjectures and “musings” on this city. He never did. His train trip to Constantine presented the occasion for another debate with a retired French military officer, Colonel Amade, who turned out to be a follower of Spiritualism and therefore believed in the transmigration of souls. This gave Wilde the opportunity to bring up his favorite biological arguments upon explaining to the Colonel the life-and-death cycle as conceived by scientists: A spermatozoon enters an ovule, determines changes in the plasma, dissolves itself, and a new life begins that will be neither an ovule nor a spermatozoon; once these elements are transmitted, it receives as a legacy, the physical or moral properties of their ancestors and the environment where they lived, that is, the general character of the nation, the race, and the degree of civilization acquired in predisposed form. (1899a: 47. Emphasis ours )

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Having heard such a lecture, the Colonel remained pensive while staring at Wilde with disbelief, as if he wanted to say, “I have never heard such asininities.” Wilde reaffirmed his profound organicist convictions, biologically deriving racial “moral and physical properties,” as if it had been largely a genetic inheritance issue. Like Renan, Wilde was convinced that this moral and racial legacy could be modified or, better said, that it could evolve if individuals would rationally apply themselves to embracing progress. From an epistemological viewpoint, this belief in evolution and human progress implied the definitive elimination of the idea that inheritance is unmodifiable. Inheritance is indeed a part of the human genetic makeup; this is true for all people and races but, through effort, it may be altered. Human history was thus not conceived as being merely genetic determinism or racial fatalism, although cultural heritage carries an enormous weight on the shaping of individuals and their group. Constantine was depicted as the perfect antithesis of Algiers. Wilde described the Kabyle capital as extremely unsanitary, “we stayed two days in Constantine and by then we had seen everything; I will only mention one thing: the Arab and Jewish quarters are filthy and ugly” (1899a: 49). Even in its splendor, the Palace of Bey was considered terribly ordinary. The Rumel River, running at the bottom of a precipice, divided the city into two. The tourist promenade had been improved by the French. The large Kabyle city was, to him, the antinomic incarnation of the cosmopolitanism of Algiers. Besides it not having a seafront, Constantine was provincial and homogenous in its human composition. His entourage stopped for the night halfway between Constantine and Tunis in a horse town called Hammah Meskoutine, where they checked in at a makeshift inn run by the train station manager who, along with his family, was a French settler. Wilde exclaimed: “The hotel! It was the house of the father, of the Moorish woman, of three more Moorish women, of the young coachman, of the mother of those youths, as well as the lodging chosen in perpetuity by the man who seems to be the mayor” (1899a: 51). It was the only time when the three travelers came into direct contact with local customs. Despite the rough quarters, they were well received, and all got along. The guests were invited to spend a week in order to celebrate Christmas together. While the temptation was great, the doctor, both surprised and calm, rejected the invitation on grounds that, in such overcrowded conditions, the inn did not offer the most basic sanitary conditions to the travelers or to the family.

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On the way to Tunis, the three tourists came across a New Yorker and a friendship rapidly ensued. As had happened with Mansilla, a sort of New World solidarity was established, characterized by a certain modernist identification coupled with an empiricist conception of the world and an attitude devoid of all respect for those traditions observed in Europe and the East. The American, William Kahnweiler, proved to be a cultured individual and up to date with the most recent scientific literature. According to Wilde, “he had read Herbert Spencer, was acquainted with the works of famous economists, and showed a certain practical interest in the human race” (1899a: 56). Kahnweiler then proceeds with them to La Goulette and the Carthage ruins. On the way, they stopped in an Arab village that Wilde described in this manner: What desolation and sadness! Its few inhabitants sitting in the doorways of their caves or shops, idle and apathetic, just letting time pass without any hope for change; while the outside world is aroused by its huge struggle for a better life, these people stand for nothing except for a distressing and appalling inertia. (1899a: 55)

The uneasiness expressed in this portrayal once again reflects Eastern quietism and inequity, topics that were developed and repeated by the European Orientalist literature of Boulanger, Volney, and their successors. The East comes across as defiant, obstinately resisting modern progress. Wilde was no more interested in the Carthaginian ruins than of those in Rome (“All or almost all dates from Roman times and it is, to me at least, of very little interest. Churches and chapels do not deserve the time anyone spends in going to see them” [1899a: 56]). Yet, he would readily stop to examine the few modern French constructions like the huge reservoir of potable water (le château d’eau) that he described with mathematical precision. Tunis merited a succinct three-line description: “Tunis is a city where there are many Arabs, many Italians, few attractions, and many bazaars lacking in restrooms and their characteristic stench” (Wilde 1899a: 57). His sporadic encounters with the locals were disappointing and, from this brief Tunisian excursion, he only recalled the tribulations he shared with the American whose views he takes as his own: “‘This is not New York,’ I said to my companion. ‘No, certainly,’ he replied. He undoubtedly shared my impression of Tunis” (Wilde 1899a: 55). This traveling companion, once again, was the mirror in which Wilde saw himself, to the point

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that he was able to verify the symmetry of the modern discourse of the 1980s regarding American modernity. He compulsively strove to forget “tradition” so that he could better get on board with secular progress. Hence, we believe that his description of the American here is a type of self-portrait. He approached philosophy, theodicy, morals, aesthetics, and literature, not to obtain metaphysical propositions, but to obtain statistical data and knowledge that could be transformed into industrial output and that could contribute to the well-being of any man, whether peasant or king. And he spoke thus about everything…, with such democratic disregard…. That is indeed a practical, humane, and useful way to end this century. That is what it is to be truly educated. (1899a: 56)

Again, the Mediterranean East appeared in an inverted mirror of what the Argentinean elite in the 1880s aspired to become. Eighties modernity, except for its cultural frills and spiritual ornamentation, was essentially characterized by it embracing the ideal of a productive, industrialist society.10 Yet, for end-of-century Argentines, modernity was still a rather distant reality. This two-face mirror (one side, American industrialism; the other, an immobile and subjugated East) seemed equally unreal to an Argentina that had neither side. The Eastern prism proved finally to be a pair of binoculars to watch the distant homeland, a repository of all national illusions and personal desires, but whose reality was always inferior and definitively distorted. As it was with Mansilla’s, Wilde’s Eastern journey was partially fortuitous. Mansilla believed that his trip to India was a gesture of deliberate freedom, but it was not, because his hurried departure resulted from the anti-liberal anger of his Uncle Rosas. Likewise, Wilde traveled to the Maghreb, not on account of his country’s democratic expansiveness, but because of the intolerant treatment that he received from the reactionary Catholic opposition and the aristocratic conservatives.

10 Noé Jitrik says: “Schematically, modernity around 1880 could be defined as a collection of signs providing a conduit to an industrial sense of life or a civilization decidedly industrial” (Jitrik 1998: 68–69).

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Ceylon or Exotic Eden The great journey to the Far East, undertaken by Wilde and his wife, began in Naples, where they embarked for Japan on 20 January 1897. They went through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, with layovers in Aden, India, Ceylon, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Their small entourage boarded the Preussen, a German steamship, whose comfort and cuisine Wilde found to be exceptional. Being that cuisine was a favorite topic of voyagers in the 1880s, his description of on-board delicacies was detailed and took up several pages of his chronicle. Layovers in the Egyptian Levant were superficially described. The few details provided tend to demystify the region’s characteristics: We are on the Red Sea where, according to all travelers and chroniclers, a great calmness reigns and the heat is unbearable. Here, a surprise awaited us. If there is anything blue in the world, it is the blue of the Red Sea water; it is cold as hell and its strong winds cause huge waves. Thus, the Red Sea is not red, there is no such heat or calmness. (1899a: 264)

In Suez, they received some alarming, last-minute news on the ship: in Bombay, the plague was ravaging the population, thus the layover there was immediately canceled. Wilde then had to change his initial itinerary, which included coming ashore in Bombay and going across country to Calcutta before resuming his voyage to China and Japan from there. He regretted being unable to visit cities like Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, and Benares, which he had yearned to see for a long time. On January 25, during the Aden layover, Wilde fell into a foul mood. Becoming bored with making the same sanitary observations everywhere, he refused to disembark to visit such a lowly place: According to what I have heard, the only places worth seeing here are the water reservoirs or the cisterns. I am not getting off. I have no desire to see another water reservoir besides those that I have already seen; furthermore, theirs are probably inferior to ours and to the analogous ones that can be seen elsewhere in the Orient, like Solomon’s wells, the large cistern in Constantinople, or the magnificent reservoirs in Carthage. (1899a: 265)

On February 1, they finally arrived in Colombo, a city that at first glance was described as the “Garden of Eden.” However, once again, this biblical paradise was inconsistent with the delirious imagination of

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Western minds. He argued that Adam and Eve would not have recognized their first home, because “tigers, lions, hyenas, and tamed animals are entirely missing from the scene, or else very rare…. However, there are steamships galore, enormous sailboats, a railroad, a magnificent harbor, tricycles, and rickshaws” (1899a: 265–266). He was left with the impression of having witnessed a vibrant, modern, tropical British colony. Nevertheless, the pleasant and inviting first homeland of humans was besmirched by Wilde’s racist observation: “[Adam and Eve] would regret their past, not so much for having given birth to the human race in general, but by finding their descendants to be the natives of Ceylon: somber, ugly, unkempt, and preposterous in appearance” (1899a: 266. Emphasis ours ). Influenced by Western iconography, in which the forefathers of humanity are always represented by the White race, he found it inappropriate for the descendants of Eve to have another skin color. This modern racism, so prevalent then (it did not startle Western readers because their prejudices seemed harmless and shared by all), hides a paternalistic tone. The natives, seen as little wild animals, savages (“adults play like children”), and lacking any trace of civilization, basically had good souls. The White man, belonging to a superior race, was obliged to protect subordinate groups. Wilde’s tone implied that the White superior race, has the ultimate responsibility of protecting subordinate races, just as good shepherd should take care of their flocks. Essentially, racist paternalism is yet another variation of Rousseau’s “noble savage.” This type of racism was practiced openly when it came to children, who were described with tenderness and profound kindliness. Colombo did not disappoint Wilde, who considered it a constituent part of the Garden: “the lively, bustling city, its wharves with thousands of boats and, finally, the wide avenues with rows of palm trees, and lined with country houses, villas, and roundabouts…. Colombo is a garden” (1899a: 266–267). Wilde rejoiced at this colonial latticework because, behind Ceylon’s unsurpassed exoticism, stood the modernity brought by British colonists. From a narrow racial viewpoint, women’s beauty was judged with macho severity: “The women are very ugly; the young and pretty ones do not go out, so say the natives. In my opinion, this is just an excuse, because they are all ugly, whether they go out or not.” He only found the youngest girls to be lovely and kind: “certain adolescent girls are the exception to the rule and, moreover, they can be very affectionate; they call all men ‘father,’ and all women, ‘mother.’ A little girl came up to me, bright and delicate as a rabbit, whom I would not reject even though she was

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from Colombo.” Yet, with this paternalistic and unambiguous disposition, he was still capable of recognizing Colombo’s multicultural, social composition, and its creation of a new melting pot: “the population is very heterogeneous. There are Buddhist, Catholic, Taoist, Hindu, and Protestant places of worship…. Many natives speak English, pronouncing it in their own way. In time, they will create a new language” (1899a: 267). Their stopover in Singapore was brief. They arrived on February 6 and left the following day. The British presence here was discreet, as in their other overseas colonies, but Wilde recognized the distinctive, guiding British hand in the urban design, the colonial institutions, and the flourishing commerce. This invisible hand lent a civilizing veneer to an island where most of its people were Chinese. The city’s crowning jewel was its vast and lush botanical garden.

The Middle Empire: Between Hell and Purgatory On February 13, the voyagers disembarked in Hong Kong, having arrived at their destination. Immediately, Wilde frantically flung himself into the colony’s social life where he felt perfectly at ease under the protection of Queen Victoria’s lions. “Naturally, the English already have their clubs, their sport matches and their entertainment here, with horse racing being one of the principal attractions,” he affirmed. He and his wife enjoyed, for three days, having front-row seats at the horse track thanks to its owner, a Mr. Gray, thereby sharing the small world of the White colonial elite. His comments and conclusions are lackluster: “The races were, like everyone else, boring; what was entertaining and lavish was lunch or tiffin, as it is said here, given by the Commission to distinguished society members” (1899a: 271) who, by proxy, Wilde and his wife belonged. The urban outlay was appropriately colonial: the high class lived in the heights, making themselves visible as little as possible, while the lower classes lived in the port’s vicinity and in the low areas. Each community was a closed circle. If the throngs of Chinese did not frighten him, it was because he lived in the colony’s heights, as did all Westerners and highranking British officials along with a few affluent Chinese families who had assimilated to the Whites. Mr. Gray’s hospitality was a sort of letter of introduction for Wilde, opening doors to Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan elite, “a high society of foreigners, composed of businessmen, employees, diplomats, and military officers,” into which “the Chinese were not

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inclined to belong, preferring instead to be among their own” (1899a: 272). In the meantime, Wilde seemed to have set aside his obsession with hospitals, industry, and modern life to fully dedicate himself to enjoying the surrounding benefits of this cosmopolitan world and its exoticism. He made it clear that “as far as comforts are concerned, one can live in Hong Kong without missing anything from civilized cities” (1899a: 272). His initial impressions of the Chinese in the streets on market days were brushstrokes that denoted his own confusion in the Far East. “Streets are literally overflowing with men, women, children, rickshaws, and palanquins. The latter are driven at full speed by coolies, wherever they can circulate. All this confusing mass is aimlessly moving in various directions, but without colliding or even getting in each other’s way” (1899a: 271. Emphasis ours ). Wilde failed to understand how traffic in this Eastern society flowed, but did sense that behind the apparent confusion, there must have been some sort of order unknown to him. On 19 February, while traveling to the city of Canton, the little retinue suddenly grew when some Argentinean businessmen, Juan Storni, Torcuato Trucco, and Leandro Mataldi joined them. They were coming from Japan where they had just purchased merchandise, “choosing, as will be seen in Buenos Aires, tasteful articles of intrinsic quality, and unconventional beauty. At times, they acted more like artists than merchants” (1899a: 272–273). As a 1980s man, Wilde wished that business would come across as an art form, with its mysteries and prestige, and not as a crude and vulgar activity, only interested in venal and materialistic matters. Therefore, business here should be a testimony to the fulfillment of loftier souls. He gradually left behind the “civilized” sites of this colony as he traveled deeper into China, whose mysteries he was unable to decipher. Such befuddlement left him at a loss for words when it came to describing what it was that he was experiencing: “whoever has not been to Canton will not understand this bustling and alarming place, they will not believe what they are told and, even believing it, they will still be unaware of the truths because no written word is capable of relating them….” (1899a: 273–274). Wilde’s effusiveness in portraying (wrongly or correctly) previous destinations had reached its limit. He lacked the proper intellectual resources for deciphering the Far East’s secret codes, as he had previously done in the Levant or the Maghreb. Intuitively, he felt that, to obtain a clear understanding of the Far East, he needed additional conceptual tools, tools that were missing in the Orientalist arsenal inherited from Europe. In his Positivist mindset, this incomprehension

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began to give way to a growing fascination for Far Eastern cultures. The Western guides who led them at every stopover in China were also agents or representatives of banks that had given them monetary advances on their letters of credit, banks like Hans Schubart, Frederick Salinguer, et al. In Canton, the cultured digression that had begun in Hong Kong ended, and Wilde resumed the instructive and edifying portrayal that he had intended for his readers. Henceforth, he created sociological depictions of Chinese society, providing numbers and statistics about the city that he considered “the most important and most typical in China.” Wilde again tenaciously began to take inventory on everything: demography, geography, marital status, birth certificates, the institution of marriage (divorce and polygamy). Much of the factual data was derived from Robert K. Douglas’s book, Society in China (1894) (Douglas 1894), which he peppered with his own personal observations. This discourse, intended to be instructive, was above all a self-explanation; he was trying to shed light on a society whose meaning escaped him and overtly challenged his Positivist logic: “in the Celestial Empire, everything is strange, contradictory, and illogical as I see it” (1899a: 282). Wilde repudiated the general condition of Chinese women, whose inferior position in a patriarchal society placed them in a situation not far from domestic slavery. In his own words, “little boys have toys, the girls do not, boys are better dressed and fed than the girls and, under identical circumstances, boys are punished less severely than girls. Females are despised in every sense of the word because they allegedly embody all human flaws and vices…. Only men can shape the existing society” (1899a: 284–285). However, Wilde’s passion for inventory taking did not stop there; he incessantly reviewed funeral rites, dueling practices, urban norms, etc. On these reviewed customs, he again took up his inquisitive hygienist outlook: “Chinese cities are labyrinths of dirty and narrowly winding streets,” overcrowding and promiscuity are widespread and adequate lighting and fresh air are lacking. “House designs are reminiscent of Tartar tents and seem to stem from them” (1899a: 290, 293). Conversely, however, he knew that in Beijing there were wide streets and numerous public squares but, given the difficulties of reaching the Chinese capital, he declared: “It would be necessary for me to see these places to be able judge their hygienic conditions, but the journey is now too difficult” because Beijing’s bitter winter has turned its roads too icy for travel. Thus given the inconveniences in reaching Beijing, Wilde concluded that “the sacrifice would be worth it if, in the end, one could find something very

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typical of Beijing, but its unique attraction worthy of a visit, the Emperor’s Palace, is open only to dignitaries, nobles, and courtly members; yet, what is accessible to the public is identical or inferior in style to everything that one sees in Canton” (1899a: 291). His verdict did not take long in coming: Canton and its surroundings did not come close to having Hong Kong’s observable modernity. Wilde unrelentingly continued his hygienist inventory while carrying Douglas’s Society in China. All passed by as in a kaleidoscope; it was not in vain that he was the first Argentine to venture into these lands or, better yet, the first enlightened Argentine who left written testimony of his adventure. He thereby devoted nearly one hundred pages in portraying the multiple aspects of China’s routine social life because, paraphrasing Douglas, he affirmed that there “nothing is ancient except routine.” Its architectural richness was described in very few lines, “in China, there is no scientific and aesthetic knowledge of architecture.” Household comforts are few and basic: “home interiors include no comforts but do meet the needs of their undemanding dwellers. Actually, sanitary facilities are unknown” (1899a: 292–293). Dejected, he proceeds, “rooms are unhealthy, their floors damp but, to avoid the dampness effect, they wear shoes with very thick soles” (1899a: 294). He then opines that “the Chinese do not have a clue of what comfort is and show it in all they do” (1899a: 341). He then emphasized the downplayed influence of Feng Shui in making sure that their houses faced a southernly direction.11 Engineering requirements were minimal, since in China “there are no roads, bridges are lacking and detestable, canals are few…. The country has no seaports or dikes, it is unable to own large ships and, as it has shown, it is undefended on account of neglect” (1899a: 297). He continued his China inventory by reviewing the complex and subtle culinary art of providing potable water, as well as various topics that range from the dinner table to general sanitation, from popular attire to footwear for the elite; from social protocol on visitations to the various types of popular entertainment (theater, kite flying, etc.); from moral science to legal notions (“[they are] no more advanced in jurisprudence than in civil engineering or other sciences” [1899a: 347]); from

11 Feng Shui in Chinese means “the wind and the water.” It is an ancient Chinese concept that seeks to harmonize energy with the home environment to promote good health, well-being, and prosperity among its occupants.

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contemporary criminology to current torture practices; from how to evaluate students to civil engineering (“you cannot mention public works in China….” All is primitive and rudimentary…. Roads depend on nature, not on civil engineering. For this reason, traveling in China is almost impossible for us …, there are no roads to speak of”) and a thousand other subjects related to astronomy, mathematics, physics, superstition, and religion…. The result was always the same: Wilde observed a general backwardness in the development of these subjects on account of their most thorough incompetence and disdain (1899a: 340). Feet deformation during childhood for certain females deserved special attention. This custom took Wilde’s morbid curiosity to its limit. He qualified this ancestral tradition as “barbaric torture,” as he described here: It now seems appropriate to speak on the barbaric and cruel manipulation and torture to which the feet of a certain social class of women are subjected from childhood to life’s end. This fact constitutes a complete aberration and obfuscation, not only from an aesthetic viewpoint, but also from any rational perspective, to a point that the perpetrators of this monstrosity cannot give, or try to give, an explanation or excuse for it. (1899a: 310)

As a medical doctor, Wilde felt so perturbed by this habit that he became obsessed with the idea of examining the feet of one of these women. During his journey, he tried to do so several times, even offering money to several women to show him their feet, but all refused. Finally, after a twist of fate and the assistance of a Dr. Jordan at Hong Kong’s Alice Hospital, the opportunity arose to examine a woman whose feet he sketched several times. His indignation turned to eloquence: “… and I would ask anyone in China whether they found these feet attractive and, should they not, to what extent did they find them monstrous and repulsive. However, Chinese like them like that! It is true perhaps that, because they never do see them, this might be the explanation for such taste” (1899a: 311). He then details in several pages his medical observations on the deformation of female feet and the medico-social consequences of this practice. Wilde in no way attempted to disguise his moral condemnation of this cultural and anthropological curiosity.

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Prisons, asylums, and hospitals were also included in his detailed Chinese inventory, which completed the picture of this country’s profound and premodern backwardness. Prisons are filthy, foul, infected, damp, and dark. Vermin, parasites, germs and poisonous insects attack the prisoners’ torture-inflicted wounds, adding to their infernal suffering and causing death. It is appropriate that prison facades display this inscription: Abandon all hope ye who enter here,12 a fact indeed. Chinese justice is a carryover from the Inquisition in force during the European Middle Ages and afterwards. (1899a: 350–351)

Conditions in Chinese prisons reflected the disintegration of the social and political body, given that prisons are a product of the justice system. To Wilde, it was clear that social and scientific backwardness had plunged China into medieval obscurantism. In Canton, he feigned illness as an excuse to visit a typical Chinese clinic where he was prescribed some herbal powders. After a thorough explanation of this experience, he systematically criticized Chinese traditional medicine, which he qualified as “empirical superstition.” “Thanks to this personal experience and my research, which has led me to interview European long-time residents, I have concluded that there are no doctors in China, only superstitious empiricists” (1899a: 352–353). He then compared in detail the false beliefs of traditional Chinese medicine held by Western medical science: descriptive anatomy, general anatomy, physiology, internal and external pathologies, general diagnostics and therapeutics, surgery, toxicology, etc. The absence of hygiene astonished him as well as their belief that cholera or dysentery could be cured by “casting spells.” The general prophylaxis of the population led Wilde to make demographic remarks of a Malthusian type: In China, hygienic conditions, both public and private, are deplorable. Dire poverty, a horrible diet, filth and humidity, combined with excessive work and lack of shelter should lead to a significant annual population decrease. Meanwhile, China only attests to a birthrate that would be alarming in the rest of world…. (1899a: 259)

12 This famous citation is taken from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

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Wilde’s scarce optimism, leading him to hope for the possibility of an imminent modernization of China, stemmed from the effective “civilizing” European project that, after colonialists obtained commercial concessions from China along its coastline, was put into effect. According to his judgment, China did not yet deserve the qualifying noun of “nation” that only applies when progressive minds and a modernizing desire are present. Unlike his observations on the Middle East and the Maghreb, Wilde believed that, regardless of how superstitious and backward the Chinese were, their civilization could still advance because of the civilizing actions of outsiders (Europeans and Japanese) coupled with local traditions. He noted that, despite the marked dissolution of the Imperial Order, there were certain dynamic elements beginning to take hold in China with the emergence of a new government elite: Despite its exceptional stasis, which seems destined to remain through the centuries, this colossal conglomerate, one that I would not call a nation for it lacks that entity’s genuine characteristics, will see great innovation in centuries to come. This inert mass has already been cracked, the fissure is visible, and a breach has opened in the Great Wall: the English, French, and Germans are in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tientsin. Allied foreign troops have entered Beijing and now the Japanese have forced the Son of Heaven, the sole emperor, to sign a peace treaty under deplorable conditions. However, statesmen, (and I have seen them in China) have begun to worry about the future, and in certain branches of social life, movements are surfacing that exhibit a promising new tendency for growth, and whose goal is to bring China into the community of advanced nations by virtue of the universal action its social forces. (1899a: 360. Emphasis ours )

Although slightly indignant at European colonial abuses, Wilde recognized that, in general, these were positive for the Far East because they helped to implement various internal factors that would promote the development of Chinese modernization. Besides the fact that he again displayed a Eurocentric and Positivist imperial vision in his analysis (especially by praising the civilizing effect of Anglo-Saxon liberalism), it was unique that he could foresee the bases for future Chinese vitality at a time when most Western travelers were content with merely confirming China’s extreme poverty and general backwardness without discerning any of the underlying forces affecting Chinese society. Nevertheless, Wilde’s portrayal of China would have been incomplete had he not taken interest in the moral aspects derived from his criticism of

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social hygiene. The ultimate intention of every hygienist discourse was a moral regeneration of society, not just a social one. He therefore devoted a separate chapter to the “Vicios y crímenes ” (“Vices and Crimes”) in the Celestial Empire, with a particular focus on gambling and prostitution. Games of chance and brothels constituted a veritable social epidemic that had to be treated before it turned gangrenous: Gambling is the national vice; they gamble on anything. Roulettes, dice, cards, morra, all kinds of animal fights. Bets are made on any matter of probability: whether it will rain, whether the sun will come out, whether a river will rise, whether a tree will grow leaves were all opportunities to bet money, an article of clothing, or a day’s meals. Food sellers even provided dice so that consumers might gamble on their food. (1899a: 366)

Wilde hesitated to qualify prostitution as a “vice” because, in his view, it was socially necessary in a society characterized by dire poverty. In his words, “it is the seal of poverty, of need, of despair and indolence, of a disregard for the human body, more so than of sexual arousement and lust, which are proper to vice.” Wilde saw Chinese brothels to be devoid of voluptuousness, almost stripped of sexuality. According to him, the Chinese are bereft of sensuality, limiting intercourse to an animal level, mechanical like. “I do not mean to insinuate that they do not partake in those depravities common in Europe, but these same excesses seem to be purely mechanical in China” (1899a: 366). In this context, prostitution deserves to be called “a sin against chastity.” Their women were passive, but so were men, and this attitude seemed to be the result of their being “accustomed to subjugation,” to their laws of atavism and to the crippling weight of their traditions. For research purposes, Wilde visited several brothels and, besides the destitution found inside, he noted the terrible oppression of women whom he regarded as being dispossessed of even the smallest of pleasures: “I have already said that Chinese women have no rights; now I am adding to this denial their absence of orgasms during intercourse” (1899a: 367. Emphasis ours ). Along with the preponderance of prostitution, there were other crimes. Wilde mentioned that, among the most common, he found theft, murder, child abduction, and infanticide to be the most common—the last two being very closely linked to familial promiscuity and to the trafficking of girls, even boys, for the brothels (1899a: 368–370).

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In conclusion, Wilde tried to balance Chinese flaws with their positive characteristics. To avoid misunderstandings, he took certain precautions: “you cannot assign all the people in one country the same character; nevertheless, taking this warning as a given, you can witness certain shared characteristics among them that are representative of their nationality” (1899a: 388). Broadly speaking, those defects observed by Wilde are of a social order; their attributes, on the other hand, are of an individual order. Among the former, he underscored Chinese reticence, their lack of altruism, their vanity, their physical weakness, their dearth of tenacity and extreme sluggishness, their unsympathetic and scarcely protective attitude toward women, and a felt repulsion toward foreigners. Among the latter, he pointed out their great chivalry, generosity, and honorability. But what was most surprising to Wilde was their moral duality. In other words, that which bound them in individual terms did not do so in collective terms, an ambivalence that he qualified as “incomprehensible foolishness.” This duality led Wilde to wonder whether China was a nation (in the modern sense) because, in his opinion, its population had no notion of patriotism. Is China a nation? I do not know. Sometimes it appears to be, but judged by other measures, it does not have the makings of an autonomous entity, as per our notion of what constitutes a sovereign state, a people or a nation…. A nation appears to be a conglomerate where its parts conform to certain facts and contradict or are indifferent to others. (1899a: 389)

He acknowledged the existence of an empire and of an emperor, as well as an administrative hierarchy, but none of these seemed to function as they should have within what was expected from a government for “the government is a maze with no rules, without checks and balances, without jurisdiction, without norms and laws.” The people of Shanghai disregarded what was happening in Canton and vice versa; people along the coast were indifferent to what happened in the interior, and vice versa; “no Chinese is grieving over the humiliating defeat of the so-called imperial army.” According to Wilde, the fundamental obstacle to the existence of a modern China was the fact that it had no citizens, but rather simple inhabitants. Likewise, the lack of affectivity of individuals seemed to be a determining feature. He thus observed: “Patriotism is absent. Love of home, of the land, has been profoundly altered because it is essential to patriotism. Heartfelt religion does not exist, but religion that is

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conveyed, common, current, and practiced does” (1899a: 391). In the end, Wilde used a synthesized image to summarize his in-country experiences: “China would be perfectly represented by an elephant without nerves, whose ear could be cut off, a foot amputated, or its tail burned without the animal feeling it ” (1899a: 390. Emphasis ours ). This metaphor of an anesthetized pachyderm is the most appropriate one he could conjure for portraying the material and moral decadence of the Celestial Empire, which he predicted would experience a resounding demise in the too not distant future.

Dawn of the Empire of Japan The journey through the Japanese archipelago was the most extensive part of the Far East voyage for Wilde and his wife (Wilde 1899b). They spent exactly two months and six days there, from 16 March to 22 May 1897. Their intercity jaunts were frequent and included Yokohama (and Kamakuna), Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara (and Todaiji), and Kobe. They returned to Yokohama, described as “this singular Venice,” on April 14. On April 17, Wilde found himself in Tokyo for the purpose of being officially introduced to some high-ranking authorities like the Marquis of Tokugawa.13 Consisting of 214 pages, the chapter was dedicated to Japan, and it is the book’s most expansive. As Lila Bujaldón de Esteves has observed (1995: 459–460) the work can be divided into two parts: the first is a kind of logbook or diary, with his observations in chronological order; the second contains a methodical presentation of Japanese sociocultural characteristics following the example of American missionary Arthur H. Smith’s books on China, whom Wilde explicitly recognized as his model for this section (1899a: 369–505, 505–610). Japan made an exceptionally positive impression on Wilde, unlike his China one. He viewed Japan as a thriving country that, since the 1868 Meiji dynasty, had begun to modernize at an extremely intensive pace by bringing in Western scientists and techniques and by sending to Europe

13 Among other important figures, Wilde was introduced to the Marquis of Sajonji, to the Minister of Public Instruction (Marquis of Hachisuca), to the Viscount Enemoto (1899a: 439). Marquis of Tokugawa provided him with a known guide for his entire sojourn, Customs Inspector Sho Nemoto, who became a close friend of Wilde by journey’s end.

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future Japanese elites to be educated. Nevertheless, despite the vertiginous speed of the changes that were taking place, Wilde believed that the Empire of Japan knew how to preserve its soul and traditions. As in all countries he visited, he reached his opinions after exhaustive visits to social institutions that denoted the extent of that country’s progress. Though he made some tourist visits to Yokohama, Kyoto, Nara, and Tokyo, he never lost sight of his objective: to observe the judiciary, cultural, industrial, public health, educational institutions, etc. Wilde’s passion for enumeration and description reached its pinnacle in Japan; he only excluded from his readers minute details about temples and sacred places; he believed these to be incidental and without immediate relevance regarding the country’s growth. We notice that Wilde’s observations did not solely stem from his personal impressions and his perusing learned studies and travel guides; instead, they were formed through his direct access to almost all described institutions with which he became familiar through frank dialogue with their various directors. Unlike in China, where he had been largely limited in being able to observe their institutions, in Japan he had the good fortune of knocking on the right doors. Letters of recommendation opened the tightly closed doors of important ministries and public institutions; moreover, he interviewed everyone, from top officials to ordinary civil servants, in English or French (Quartucci 2006: 31–37). In China, Wilde was shackled by his inability to speak Mandarin, but he was also limited by the stringent restrictions of his narrow social circle. Consequently, he only conversed with certain Western commercial or banking agents. And whereas Wilde never succeeded in completely solving the China riddle, he managed to delve deeply into Japanese society. Japanese travel escorts were individuals in high standing: ministers, professionals, foreign diplomatic envoys; those of lesser standing belonged to the large group of Western expatriates. Wilde had free access to all institutional and social ranks in Japan, an opportunity denied him in China. Also, he had ease of mobility: Japanese means of communication (railroads and highways) were modern and efficient. As a matter of fact, he became acquainted with a country that was modernizing at full throttle under the Meiji Dynasty. Here he conveys this point after returning to Tokyo from traveling through the archipelago for a month, constantly aware of being a privileged witness to this progress:

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To convince myself that I am not dreaming about strange scenes, I continuously remind myself that “I am in Japan, in Tokyo, very far from Buenos Aires, and all I see is real and positive, authentic, and specific to this exquisite part of the world, which I had so wished to know. I am witnessing the transformation of a people and I have arrived at the best time to witness as two civilizations face each other to part company: the ancient one immerses itself in the memories of the past; the modern one, with the consent of its children, is moving forward….” (1899a: 437–438)

Wilde dedicated himself with passion and dedication to the discovery of Japan. Day after day, he unrelentingly visited different schools, public and private (for children and young women), orphanages, hospitals (“up to the standards of any good European hospital” [1899: 450]), universities, medical schools, nursing schools, civil courts, libraries, city planning facilities, architecture, etc. He analyzed the educational system carefully, a fact that allowed him to call Pierre Loti a “liar” thus: “Mr. Pierre Loti said nothing about this in his clever slandering of Japan” (1899a: 454).14 He pored over the curricula of Japanese postsecondary schools and stressed their secular education, tacitly contradicting Argentinean Catholics who so harassed him during the harsh Law 1.420 debates fifteen years earlier: Religion is not taught in schools. Besides, what religion would be taught? All? Then it would be within the domain of history courses. The Japanese have understood that the religion of each person, the one practiced, the one that shapes the internal moral code and is manifested externally by individuals and their family, does not lend itself to technical study. One can study geometry, algebra, and morals because there is only one geometry, one algebra and one set of morals, but one cannot teach religion because each person has their own through which they believe or understand world phenomena that they link to assumed or proven causes…. What the Japanese teach about religion is its historical side. (Bujaldón de Esteves 1995: 457)

14 Bujaldón de Esteves (1995) studied in detail the impact of Pierre Loti’s Orientalist novel on Wilde’s Argentina, especially the novel Madame Chrysanthème (1877), which strengthened the concept of “Japonism” in the European and South American imagination by establishing a series of stereotypes that Wilde rejects outright.

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He constantly underscored the wondrous industrialism of the new Japanese society, which produced almost all the technical products the country needed without having to import them. For example: scales, medical and surgical equipment, printers, paper, etc. Wilde also emphasized their social, urban, and aesthetic aspects. The special care offered children, the education they received about the precepts of order and love for the emperor was, for him, the living example of the Positivist motto according to which a just social order leads to the entire population’s intellectual, spiritual, and material advancement. His fascination with Japan was such that he often called attention to its aesthetic, artistic, architectural elements, and to its humanity and harmonious spiritual life. “By nature, the Japanese have a love for beauty, are cultured and distinguished, artistic, inspired by ideals, and mix poetry with daily life” (1899a: 601). Such an understanding contrasts with European pessimistic views at century’s end. Only once did Wilde criticize the Japanese: when, during his visit to the Uyeno museum and seeing a monument dedicated to their victory over the Chinese, he condemned their excessively zealous patriotism: “All people are the same … when it comes to ridiculous vanity!” (1899a: 456). The urban and the rural overlapped harmoniously, with no hostilities. Thus Tokyo “is both a rural town and a city” in its city center and in its suburban neighborhoods. He observed that, generally, children are pampered. They are overly protected and not reprimanded or punished—“Japan could be called a children’s paradise” because “the amount of happiness given to them from birth is never reduced” (1899a: 603). In Wilde’s view, the Japanese maintained a perfect balance between humor and delicateness, an ability that he shared: “They are amusing and spiritual without showing any ill will, but these good qualities do not make them flippant. They are at times what the English refer to as funny; however, many of them are truly humorous, that is, they have mastered a certain philosophical sarcasm, which is at once profound and pleasant” (1899a: 602). Wilde displays this same benevolent attitude in his description of Japan’s two principal religious currents: Buddhism and Shintoism. Japanese religious sentiment is based on profound tolerance, a quality that he placed above all ritual matters. “The two sects live in peace and sanctified harmony, and it is there that one finds one of the

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most surprising proofs of religious tolerance to be observed among any people…. Japanese Shintoists do not know, nor do they wish to know, whether other Japanese practice Buddhism, or whether they are Muslims or even Jewish, because they do not want to be offensive or make anyone uncomfortable when it comes to religion. Tolerance means respecting the gods of others and becomes transcendent after reaching its peak: indifference” (1899a: 585). In addition, Wilde disputed the idea that the Japanese were idolaters, a Christian allegation, in opposition to those who professed their faith in Jesus Christ. He was keenly aware that, by addressing these “considerations with which many of my truly sectarian readers will not be in agreement,” he was leaving himself wide open to harsh criticism. However, his agnostic and rational principles prevailed over all the religious deceptions that he fought against. As a medical doctor concerned with health issues, Wilde could not help but to touch on Japanese prostitution in his chronicles. During his first trip to Yokohama, he had the opportunity to visit one of the traditional Japanese bordellos called Yoshiwaras. His stares were kind on account of the good manners and delicateness exhibited by the young ladies here involved in the sex trade (Wilde 1899a: 412). He concluded that this was an open practice that was not socially condemned. As in China, prostitution was viewed as more sensual than lascivious and, to him, the Japanese were “lovesick sentimentalists”: It is not lust that predominates in these relations, at least not in the unhealthy way we know it in the West; here, it is simply a carnal business, inspired by the original sense of the term; in this sense, these relations are viewed differently than in the West where it is categorized as a “vice.” (1899a: 591)

Wilde noticed a certain liberal attitude among Japanese families whose tolerance allowed a daughter to live for a time with her lover under the family roof without scandal so long as discretion was maintained. “Young girls who do this are not considered prostitutes, as are European or New World women who cohabit with their lovers, even if the change lovers, so long as they do not do so with obvious frequency” (1899a: 592). Parallel to these so-called sexual relations, which were called “private,” others took place known as “secret” and “tolerated.” “Secret” relations involved the regular extramarital affair of a man with a woman who did not have a police record or was being sought by the police. “Tolerated”

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relations were those that involved registered women, those legally allowed to practice prostitution. The latter were divided into three categories, as Wilde explains: According to different criteria, the pleasure women, as they are called, are divided into three categories: The Jogoku – women without a license. The Shogii – prostitutes. The Geishas – dancers, musicians, theoretically chaste and pure. (1899a: 592)

The Yoshiwaras ’ apprentices were recruited through a freely established contract arrangement between the parties, including parental consent, and under strict police control. The brothel administrator or its madam would subsequently give a significant sum of money to the girls’ families; apprentices returned to their normal lives once they reimbursed their families within a three-year period. Nevertheless, Wilde had to recognize that an apprentice’s primary motive for admission into one of these establishments was to escape dire poverty: “the reasons why a girl (“mousmé”) entered such a shameful practice are varied, but among them two main reasons stood out: wretched poverty and contagious imitation….” (1899a: 595). He described geishas as “the most pleasant of the three categories of easy women.” They were well-educated girls, knowledgeable in the arts, and possessing high-society manners, who performed in private wealthy homes or enlivened parties and special events. In earlier times, geishas were supposed to remain chaste and pure though, at the time of Wilde’s visit, that was no longer so. In conclusion, he specified that “being a noted geisha’s lover was quite a coveted honor” (1899a: 596). Wilde assessed the Japanese justice system as modern and civilized because it had undergone just slight adaptations from its ancestral social codes: “In Japan, justice administration and court organization conform with European and New World customs, except for those details needed to adapt the law to the country’s character and conditions” (1899a: 443). Yet, he did not provide details as to its specific functioning, thus making his assessment cursory and incomplete. In keeping within the purest 1880s spirit, Wilde was keenly interested in the subject of immigration. He learned through his guide and friend Sho Nemoto that Viscount Enemoto had been assigned the responsibility of setting in motion some projects dealing with Japanese immigration to

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Ibero-America. Given his positive view of the Japanese people, Wilde, during a social event attended by the Viscount, immediately tried to convince him to include Argentina in these projects. “While smoking, we talk about everything, but mainly immigration. The Viscount is currently in charge of sending immigrants to Brazil and Mexico. I encourage him to also send them to Argentina and offer to send him a copy of our laws and policies regarding immigration” (1899a: 473). This quotation indicates that Wilde was undoubtedly an original player in the establishment of bilateral relations between Japan and Argentina and not just on immigration. Bujaldón de Esteves confirmed that the first treaty of “Friendship, Commerce and Navigation” between the two countries, signed in 1898 (Bujaldón de Esteves 1995: 463; Laumonier 1990: 90), led us to assume that Wilde played an important role after returning to Buenos Aires on 10 December 1897. In 1900, shortly after the publication of his travel chronicles, both governments officially established relations after exchanging diplomatic delegations. Just before leaving Yokohama, Wilde had the rare privilege of being honored by Tokugawa who bestowed him with an “honorary medical degree, the first one ever given in Japan to a foreign professor, right after I sent him proof of my degree for bureaucratic purposes …, the honor befell me of giving rise and motive to that novelty. The possibility of receiving such a diploma had never arisen until now” (1899a: 479).

Conclusion Within Wilde’s Orientalist scheme, two extremes were made clear: the Far East and the Maghreb region, both profoundly asymmetrical examples. The first extreme, associated with Japan, represented a traditional society that knew how to modernize while holding on to its soul. This modernization was driven by internal societal forces. The second extreme, the French possessions in North Africa or the Maghreb, modernized due only to the introduction of European forces and their achievements in terms of civilization, could quickly disappear because they are not based on internal dynamizing factors. To this bipolar Orientalism a middle ground was added, a sort of limbo, composed of countries such as China and other British colonies (India, Ceylon, Hong Kong) whose status was undefined, that is, they could advance toward modern civilization, but they might never attain a preeminent state of modern development, namely industrial civilization. Both the Maghreb and the middle ground lacked an advanced

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national spirit that could cement the modernization enterprise associated with secular societies. These countries could display different degrees of nationalistic reflection but lacked a homogeneous and ingrained sense of patriotism. A relative degree of national identity was a determining ideological component of modernity. This meant that the purely material aspects of modernization could not alone lead a country in the edification of a society centered on progress. Modernity was in large part judged by the degree of progress in the construction of a defined, world-integrated national identity. Of course, Wilde’s concept of secular modernization applied not only to the standards by which Eastern societies were measured and observed, but also to the degree of tacit progress in his own country. Despite having been very critical of Mitre’s liberalism and having opposed the otherworld Catholic factions, he optimistically looked at the progress reached through several decades in his country. On this point, he was as enthusiastic as any of his other 1980s colleagues. Nevertheless, he differs with them, among other things, regarding the adoption of the Japanese model as a feasible plan for modernization, instead of the mentioned Western models (Europe and the United States) proposed by other elite members. Wilde distanced himself from the European model15 ; he only retained some of the “modern” elements of European civilization while rejecting in mass the heavy burden of European traditions in said countries. He elaborated on the advantages of the American and Japanese models by indicating that the former was not required to constantly battle against the burden of traditions; the latter, well ahead of the Europeans, had found a harmonious balance between materialism and spirituality, between the modern future and the traditional past. The whole of Europe, though counting on an undeniable dynamism, was beset by a host of internal social contradictions that put at risk its civilization’s preeminence over the rest of the world. Although Wilde had not completely turned away from the most common racial prejudices of his fellow Positivists, he had the ability to tone down his speech and could recognize the greatness of civilizations other than those of Christian Europeans, as he did with that of Japan. His friend, Cané, Jr., for example, thought that favoring Chinese immigration would be detrimental to Argentina. Other progressives and/or 15 Bujaldón de Esteves points out that Wilde’s “severe criticism against ramshackle and moldering Europe, set him apart from his generation” (1995: 463).

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Positivist Argentinean scholars (Carlos Octavio Bunge or José Ingenieros) would later exhibit similar racial prejudices. As Francisco Morán noted, the prejudice directed at Asians, and particularly the Chinese, was more widespread than imagined within all Ibero-American cultural and political circles,16 not just Argentina. In short, as Wilde reproduced the dominant Orientalist discourse on the Middle East and the Maghreb, he also improved the raw perception (or distorted, as with Pierre Loti) that Argentines could have regarding Far Eastern cultures, like that of the Japanese. In addition, he judged Argentinean society by the same Positivist standard as he did European, African, and Asian societies. Although his criteria for sanitary progress were often narrow, he had the virtue of applying those same criteria to all countries that he visited without favoring Western nations. This allowed him to discern the decomposition of the Chinese imperial society and to ascertain the strength of the modernizing transition undertaken by the Meiji in Japan. Another distinctive element, though secondary, of his appraisal of the Far East was his high aesthetic and artistic appreciation of these exotic countries. This point would become increasingly prominent among future travelers. The difference in tone between Wilde and Sarmiento was obvious. Although Wilde exhibited the same level of urbane cosmopolitanism as his contemporaries and showed off his rather Positivist racism, he never resorted to official sophistry to gain fame as Sarmiento had done. On the contrary, he was aware that having been a government minister did not entitle him and that his duties as such did not give him an advantage over high-society international travelers. Self-assured and certain of the values he embodied, Wilde claimed to gain the appreciation of his readers through his own merit; this was true wherever he went. Behind his caustic humor and flagrant arrogance, the following quotation depicts him as the eternally banished opponent who traveled through far-off regions: The lives of foreigners of average rank in Tokyo are as pleasant as in any other capital, provided they know how to adapt to the nature of things…. I do not hold an official position or am I able to dispense favors. I do not even possess wealth to garner adulation. I am and have always been nothing 16 Morán particularly analyzed the case of Benjamín de Céspedes, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, and José Martí (Morán 2005: 389–405).

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because having been or being a minister in my country does not translate, before the popularity protocols and rules of travelers, into being or having been chief steward at the Bristol hotel in London or on the steamship Teutonic of the “White Star Line”; however, whether in Tokyo or anywhere outside my country, I always receive a warm welcome. (Wilde 1899a: 468. Emphasis ours )

References Bujaldón de Esteves, Lila (1995). “Eduardo Wilde and Japan: The Japanese Image of an Argentine Writer in the 19th Century,” in Earl Miner, Toru Haga, Gerald Gillespie, Margaret Higonnet & Sumie Jones (eds.). ICLA ’91 Tokyo: The Force of Vision, II: Vision in History; Vision of the Other. Tokyo: International Comparative Literature Association, 456–465. Douglas, Sir Robert Kennaway (1894). Society in China. London: A. D. Innes & Co. Gasquet, Axel (2005). “Escuela y normalización idiomática en la formación de la nacionalidad argentina (1852–1910),” in Thomas Gomez (ed.). École, culture et nation. Nanterre: Grecun-Publidix, 61–84. Iglesia, Cristina (2002). “Eduardo Wilde: Tiempo que perder,” La violencia del azar. Ensayo sobre literatura argentina. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 171–187. Ingenieros, José (1987). “¿Adónde vamos?,” in Oscar Terán. Positivismo y nación en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Puntosur. Jitrik, Noé (1998). El mundo del 80 [1968]. Buenos Aires: Editores de América Latina. Laumonier, Isabel (1990). La otra Inmigración. Buenos Aires: Asociación Universitaria Nikkei. Morán, Francisco (2005). “Volutas del deseo: hacia una lectura del orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano,” Modern Language Notes, vol. 120 (2), Hispanic Issue. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 383–407. Mortier, Roland (1974). La Poétique des ruines en France; ses origines, ses variations, de la Renaissance à Victor Hugo. Geneva: Droz. Prieto, Adolfo (2003). La literatura autobiográfica argentina. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Quartucci, Guillermo (2006). “El idioma inglés en el Japón de Meiji,” Tokonoma n° 11. Buenos Aires, 31–37. R amos Mejía, José María (1987). “Biología de las multitudes,” Las multitudes argentinas [1899], in Oscar Terán. Positivismo y nación en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 61–94.

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R enan, Ernest (2007). Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? [1882], in Roland Breton (ed.). Marseille: Le mot et le reste. R état, Laudyce (2003). “Renan et la symbolique des races,” in Sarga Moussa (ed.). L’idée de “race” dans les sciences humaines et la littérature (XVIIIe et XIXe siècles). Paris: L’Harmattan, 321–328. Soler, Ricaurte (1968). El positivismo argentino. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Terán, Oscar (2000). Vida intelectual en el Buenos Aires fin-de-siglo (1880– 1910). Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Tort, Patrick (1996). Spencer et l’évolutionisme philosophique. Paris: PUF, series Que sais-je? Viñas, David (1998). “Eduardo Wilde: ecologismo y misantropía,” De Sarmiento a Dios, Viajeros argentinos a USA. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 113–120. Weimberg, Gregorio (ed.) (1956). Debate parlamentario sobre la ley 1.420 (1883–1884). Buenos Aires: Raigal. Wilde, Eduardo F. (1883). La cuestión religiosa en el Congreso argentino. Discurso del Ministro de Justicia, Culto e Instrucción Pública al discutirse en la Cámara de Diputados la Ley de Educación Común. Buenos Aires: Imprenta y Litografía de La Tribuna Nacional. Wilde, Eduardo F. (1892). Viajes i Observaciones. Buenos Aires: Imprenta de La Prensa. [Reprint in: Obras completas, vol. 12. Buenos Aires: Imprenta Belmonte, 1939.] Wilde, Eduardo F. (1899a). Por mares i por tierras. Buenos Aires: Peuser. Wilde, Eduardo F. (1899b). “De Hong-Kong a Yokohama,” Prometeo y Cia. Buenos Aires: Peuser, 2º ed.

PART IV

Mirages of the East

CHAPTER 8

Arabesques and Chinoiseries in the Imagination of Leopoldo Lugones

Japonaiseries! Chinoiseries! For luxury and nothing else. Rubén Darío, Azul (1888) I am like a dream that comes from the Orient, On the back of a dromedary loaded with aromas And pearls from Ormuz. Francisco Villaespesa, “Kasidas,” El mirador de Lindaraxa (1908) … for me, a man returning from Japan is always interesting…. He is coming from the country of dragons, rare things and people who seem to have fallen from the moon… Rubén Darío, Preface to De Marsella a Tokyo by Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1906)

Modernism and His Vision of the East The Ibero-American Modernist tendency found one of its greatest inspirational sources in Eastern themes. Orientalism was often linked to Hellenism and Neoclassicism, which jointly influenced the poetry of the first Modernists. Criticism on Modernism abounded and often included Orientalist themes, focusing principally on the works of Rubén Darío,

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José Juan Tablada, Arturo Ambrogi, and Enrique Gómez Carrillo.1 However, this criticism neglected to study Eastern subjects in Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1938) whose role in Modernism and his vast work output also derived inspiration from Orientalist sources. We will not dwell on young Lugones’s participation, along with Rubén Darío’s, in the Modernist movement because it has already been largely documented. Mentioned criticism as well as other criticism that was less specific may be divided into two groups: (a) Those who proposed that the Modernist Eastern motif complied almost exclusively, with a willingness to escape the Ibero-American reality by finding inspiration in exotic places and cultures. This assessment characterized Modernist Orientalism as a late French epiphenomenon (Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Nerval) that attempted to imitate the Symbolist or Parnassian schools (Verlaine, Mallarmé, Leconte de Lisle, de Heredia) as well as French travel chronicles and novels (mainly Pierre Loti). Such a reading only saw Ibero-American Modernists as having an exaggerated desire to replicate French exoticism whose Orientalist imitation was obsequious and copied the ideological substratum of its European models. (b) Those who, more recently, observed that the Modernist Eastern motifs were not simple hasty imitations of the European model for they brought forth original, basic elements, even if these were certainly not devoid of ambiguities. This criticism took the time to study the particularities of the Modernist Orientalist model by comparing them with their European counterparts, then concluding that Modernism, in several determining aspects, was notably distant from the colonialist Old World vision. Araceli Tinajero intelligently defended this thesis by pointing out that the Modernists took a different approach to the East than that of Ibero-American literary elites, including the Positivists (in line with the European) by developing a critical discourse on the conventional character of a negative and prejudiced Western Orientalism stained by colonial interests. According to this view, Modernist Orientalism was essentially perceived as a reading from a marginal place (Ibero-America)

1 For a total overview, see two outstanding works: Tinajero (2003), Hajjaj Ben Ahmed (1995). The following works are often cited: Asuero (2004), Morán (2005). For Iberian modernist orientalism: Min (1981), Cardwell (2002), Correa Ramón (2000), Djibilou (2000).

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of another marginal place (Asia), a reading that avoided being pulled into the Eurocentric Orientalist discourse. In our judgment, both tendencies not only pointed out factual aspects, but also purely arbitrary ones. The flaw of these interpretative approaches can be summed up thus: the first one overlooked the most original and creative elements of Modernist Orientalism and seemed unable to rid itself of the idea that Modernists were a simple, downgraded copy of their European models. The reach of the second one was limited because the certainty of its arguments could only be applied to a Modernist discourse that was interested in the Far East (China and Japan). We think that it is impossible to make an equitable assessment of Modernism’s Orientalist contributions without assuming that the Orientalist motif had two strands that could be witnessed within the same author: one that concerned itself with the Maghreb and the Levant; another with countries in the Far East. This division may have also corresponded to religion and not just to geography, that is, on the one hand, there are Muslim cultural areas and, on the other, the cultural regions of Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian followers. If this disassociation is accepted, one can observe that in the first case Modernists largely adopted the European discourse, including all clichés and negative stereotypes; in the second, the Modernist discourse was essentially different from the Eurocentric one because it expressed itself in an original fashion when it came to its form and content. According to our interpretation, the Modernist Orientalist discourse was clearly two-faced, as opposed to unambiguous, because its characterization depended on the enormous geographical versatility of the East. Perhaps this duality may be explained by extraliterary reasons of a sociological nature: Nineteenth-century Ibero-America, while searching for external models to further its own political, social, and economic modernization, found certain similarities with the Far Eastern modernizing model (partially in China’s case, with its colonial-style, coastline development enclaves, but especially in the Japanese example) that followed paths of development different from those of the European secular model. In this context, the Modernists (with a Positivist such as Wilde) made a distinction between the Arab-Ottoman East and the Far East. According to them, the first model left no hope for secular modernization and remained attached to a narrow theological framework; the second showed industrious dynamism and a religious tolerance. Consequently, Modernists adopted the European clichés relative to the Maghreb and the Middle East. Yet, on the contrary, their satisfaction with the process

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of “modernization within tradition” undertaken by the Meiji in Japan was perceived as contradictory in relation to the Quietist and anti-secular Arab-Muslim plan. The rejected Middle Eastern elements resembled those to be avoided within the Christian tradition: the smothering influence of religion in a world striving to advance toward secularism and the separation of Church and State. We have seen, as Wilde did, that Japan offered the alternative of a practical tolerance, perhaps irreligious, but certainly secular along with the added benefit of not belonging to the Western cultural framework. Asian examples illustrated the fact that a nonEuropean modernity was possible, one that retained the best elements of Western science while not abandoning the humanistic and spiritual values found in local traditions. It should not be forgotten that Modernists fervently opposed the urbi et orbi push of Positivism, whose triumph they feared. The Modernists reconnected with the anti-Enlightenment side of Romanticism, mainly the French. The Enlightenment engendered Rationalist Materialism, which had in turn peaked with Positivist Industrialism; this was achieved at the price of abandoning Humanism. Despite the quick diffusion of Modernist literature, this movement was limited to elite intellectuals who never aspired to write for the public at large. A distinctive sign of Modernism is that it distanced itself from the rest of society through its tendency to “hierarchize.” Modernists developed an acutely elitist sense of the mission for which they were responsible, and which emerged most strikingly in the works of Darío and Lugones. This distancing from the masses was often interpreted as “the poet seeking to escape” reality at any cost. And for those attempting to escape, the imaginary destination chosen could be neither banal nor ordinary. Modernist Orientalism operated within this rationale: it was a pretext for exploring beauty, one turned material by the cult of exoticism. Exotic places were viewed as original and, precisely for this reason, they attracted Modernists poets. Ibero-American Modernism, not exclusively deriving its inspiration from French literature, had other important sources: The considerable influence of the Iberian Orientalist tradition (Mozarab themes and Spanish Romanticists), as well as the enormous impact, since the eighteenth century, of The Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights in its classical translations by Galland, Mardrus, Lane, and Burton that

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strengthened the narrative model of the Princess of Scheherazade (Borges 1992: 107–138).2 This work occupied the Modernist imagination to such an extent that Abdellah Djibilou wrote the following: Abd Al Razzaq, indignant at the harmful influence of Scheherazade, writes: “Dear Sir of the Orient; they speak and are truthful about Scheherazade … Scheherazade … and here the Orient, without conviction, remains silent because it knows that this witch of The Thousand and One Nights has brought this hateful knowledge. It is her shady, prodigal, useless, corrupt, and bloody personality or, more precisely: the woman, the wine, the gold, and the blood. This is the Orient in the opinion of some Western writers. And this is how it is, up until now, by criminal Scheherazade’s actions.” (Djibilou 1986: 44)

The distortion introduced by the circulation of The Thousand and One Nights in the West, which the Western tradition unquestionably inherited, fitted perfectly with the aesthetics of the new Ibero-American poets. These only sought to recreate a modern “attitude,” absolutely disinterested in the degree of accuracy that this tradition could reveal. The idea of an Orientalist authenticity was completely foreign to the Modernist mindset that only dreamt of impacting the reader. Modernists could not have cared less about human, political, and social problems in the Muslim world of the nineteenth century. Scheherazade embodied the reductive and aesthetic image, that of luxurious palaces (recall the popular expression “Asian luxury”) and courtly intrigues that were far from the turmoil and noise of the Arab crowds. The traditional vision of the East held by Modernists was reinforced even more by the fact that only a few of them came into direct contact with the Islamic world or the Far East. Even when they did travel through these regions, their experiences were always sporadic, fleeting, and superficial. Their opinions were not based on the reality of these peoples, nor were they the outcome of personal experiences.3 2 Cf. Las mil y una noches (2006). 3 Darío and Pío Baroja only briefly visited the city of Tangier (under Spanish control

at the time). The Spaniard Villaespesa only made one visit to Oran. Zayas Beaumont just traveled inside Turkey and Lugones set foot in none of these places. Mexicans José Juan Tablada and Efrén Rebolledo only visited Japan. Salvadorian Arturo Ambrogi also visited Japan with a quick side trip to China. The only one among them to travel to both the Middle and the Far East was the Guatemalan Enrique Gómez Carrillo.

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If it is logical to include Gómez Carrillo in the Modernist movement, let us add that he occupied a very particular place in its ranks. In the first place, he was not a poet or a scholar; instead, he was a chronicler and a journalist. In the second place, he was a professional traveler, not an idle tourist. He did not travel with grant money, nor in an official or diplomatic capacity, but as a journalist. For example, his Japanese chronicles were published regularly in La Nación of Buenos Aires and he was sent to Morocco and countries in the Maghreb by the Madrid newspaper ABC (Hajjaj Ben Ahmed 1995: 463, 513; Gómez Carrillo 1906a, b, 1926). Obviously, being a newspaper man did not discredit his portrayal of the East that focused on his questioning the veracity and bitter criticism of the Eurocentric discourse. His motivation was quite different from that of José Juan Tablada while in Japan. Gómez Carrillo subscribed more to the international reporters’ tradition—as Albert Londres or, to a lesser extent, Joseph Kessel did later—than to the Modernist main-stream canon. Gómez Carrillo’s travel chronicles were strongly conditioned by the public for which they were intended and that included, in descending order, Latin American, Spanish, and French readers. Aníbal González describes his role as cultural mediator thus: “Gómez Carrillo’s writings served to disseminate among his readers a certain lifestyle: frivolous, worldly, of the boulevard; … he was ‘our man’ in Paris, a literary mediator able to represent Latin America in France and, simultaneously, France in Latin America” (González 1983: 165). Therefore, he was trying to capture “the soul of the countries” through which he traveled by means of a subtle and refined prose that would elicit good feelings among his readers. The limitations and conditioning of this Modernist Orientalism did not, however, undermine its main asset, namely, its certain distancing from the obvious criticism of the European model even though it included many of its clichés. We will now illustrate this through Lugones’s Orientalist works. In the words of Djibilou: “Modernist Orientalism is perhaps the only movement that adopted the noblest attitude towards the Oriental world” (Djibilou 1986: 47). Even when reproducing many of the West’s prejudices, the Modernists radically shied away from the imperial and colonial subterfuges underlying European Orientalist texts. Even though Spanish American Modernists presented an idyllic and distorted image of the true East, they were constantly trying to portray a positive aesthetic image of these people globally and accepted a certain cultural relativism that, without it, exoticism would have vanished.

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Poetry with an Orientalist Twist As mentioned, Lugones’s knowledge of the East was entirely bookish because he never traveled there and had no intention to do so. In the first place, we noticed that in his vast polygraph production, the Orientalist theme is incidental and plays a lesser role than it does in the works of Darío. As with Espronceda, his Orientalist poetic experimenting was always sporadic, never systematic, and varied according to his mood. His Eastern poems were spread over different books and collaborations. In the second place, this small Orientalist body of literature was articulated along with a stronger passion: his declared Hellenism, a discipline and subject matter that he would explore everywhere throughout most of his life by means of his verses, prose, essays, and translation (Fürstenberger 2004: 101–109). This thesis deserves some explanation and clarification. First, Hellenism and Orientalism are often confounded in European Romantic literature. As seen in the canonical works of Lord Byron and Chateaubriand, the passion for Ottoman-dominated Greece would constitute an important chapter in their respective Orientalist creations. This model would endure well into the nineteenth century, in and out of Europe, at a time when a trip to the East had to go through the Aegean Sea. This notion of a Hellenic-Eastern pilgrimage was continued by Argentines like Mansilla, Obligado, and Wilde. It was with the obvious disintegration of the Ottoman Empire on one side, and the rise of European and Mediterranean nationalism on the other that, toward the end of the nineteenth century, Greece, now progressively integrated into the West, began to be viewed as separate from Turkey, a country that invariably leaned eastward. The mentioned distinction between the Hellenic and the Eastern world had been well established in Lugones’s strong Hellenic leanings. This was due to two reasons. First, the cultural, ideological, political, and social context at the beginning of the twentieth century was radically different from that which prevailed during the Romantic period. The rise of Western nationalism was then at its peak and the very notion of a “West” was consequently based on a common heritage, that is, the GrecoRoman past of European cultures. Since the 1885 Berlin conference where the major European powers agreed on the colonial distribution of Africa and Asia, the assertion of Greece’s membership in the West was an indispensable ideological prerequisite to any colonial enterprise. Second, Lugones’s Neoclassicism also served as a cultural-ideological basis

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for his endeavor to create an Argentinean literary hall of fame. Though this undertaking had no colonial aims like those of the Europeans, its founding presupposed the integration of Argentinean culture with the Western tradition whose foundations were based on a Greco-Roman past (Roger 2004: 111–119). Moreover, let us point out two other elements that, from a generational viewpoint, tied Lugones to Modernist Orientalism. On the one hand, his total vision of the East, as included in his poems, contained the mentioned general characteristics. That is, he was aiming for an ideal of exotic beauty that accumulated oriental images, just as a Baroque architect accumulated ornaments for purely decorative purposes. Under these conditions, Eastern themes merely served as pretexts for his aesthetics whose essential worth was centered around exotic beauty. Exoticism was here defined as the fundamental resource that allowed for the creation of an idealized distance. This may be illustrated by a stanza from the sonnet “En color exótico” (“In an exotic color”) included in Los crepúsculos del jardín (“Garden Twilights,” 1905): With your oval display of rare bulrush, Your long pins and your flowers Made you appear brimming with splendor, An ambiguous musme from Yoshiwara. (1980: 17)4

The last line introduces the beauty of the musme with the obvious intention of creating an exotic distancing, in no way pretending to indepth address the Oriental motif. From our chapter on Wilde, we learned that the Yoshiwaras (“Yoshivara”) are Japanese brothels. The allusion to the musme was not intended as a condemnation of prostitution. On the contrary, it was meant to idealize the musme’s job by making her the embodiment of the feminine erotic ideal and by providing her with a positive image that conformed to an aesthetic ideal. The second observation had to do with the constant intertextuality included in the work of the Modernist poets that developed into a truly collective continental mindset. Like the Romanticists, who quoted and praised each other, Modernists resorted to the same intertextual practices. 4 “Con tu pantalla oval de enea rara, / Tus largos alfileres y tus flores, / Parecías,

cargada de primores, / Una ambigua musmé de Yoshivara.”

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The sonnet, “En color exótico,” is part of a series titled, “Los doce gozos ” (“Twelve delights”), which was devoted to the Mexican Modernist José Juan Tablada.5 In this sense, the wink and nod given to the “musme of Yoshivara” takes on another meaning and is clearly referencing Tablada’s Orientalism (Tablada was the first Modernist to travel to the Far East; he traveled to Japan as a chronicler for Revista Moderna.6 ) Lugones was obviously aware of his articles on The Empire of the Sun. It was said that Modernist trips were in response to Positivist ones and, in this sense, Modernists criticized all defended by travelers, like Wilde, who only had eyes for technical, social, health, and judiciary advancements. This critical mission of literary Modernism was as successful to writers who traveled to the East (Tablada, Ambrogi, and Gómez Carrillo) as to those who did not (Lugones) or traveled there occasionally (Darío). Those who went were disappointed by the outward signs of European influence on these countries, a development they strongly criticized. They were saddened as they watched the East’s traditional essence rapidly disappearing and being replaced by a Western type of modernization whose impact could be noticed in the people’s daily lives, attire, work schedules, cultural input, production, architecture, culinary arts, etc. Those who had not traveled depicted in their poetry and essays a totally idyllic East that only fulfilled their desire for exoticism and that did not reflect the concrete reality of these countries. Under close examination, both attitudes— critical and idealizing—were fundamentally complementary because they stemmed from the same abstract model. Regarding the Orientalist poetry of Lugones, Jorge Luis Borges stated that his: predilection for The Thousand and One Nights and Islamic poetry is reflected in Las tres kasidas [“The Three Kasidas ”] and in certain narrative poems like Romance del rey de Persia [“The Persian King’s Ballad”],

5 Borges mentions that the sonnets of “Los dos gozos,” which had been the object of an accusation of plagiarism by Rufino Blanco-Fombona to the detriment of Julio Herrera y Reissig, that were published in Argentinean literary reviews in 1898 before being reassembled in Los crepúsculos del jardín. This detail leaves us to presume that the dedication to Tablada, dated from 1905, is posterior to the date of the writing given for the latter (Borges 1965: 85–86; Torre 1943: 181–220). 6 Tablada’s collaborations were assembled by him in 1919 (Tablada 2006).

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Tonada [“A Tune”], El beso [“The Kiss”]. Their exotic veneer must not fool us; Lugones is much closer to these poems than, for example, some descriptive exercises that he cultivated in the Odas seculares [“Secular Odes”]. (1965: 44–45)

However, Borges’s examination is not exhaustive. Lugones composed eleven poems with an Eastern theme: Seven of them are brief poems or sonnets (“El Oriente” [“The Orient”], “La Sobremesa” [“Afterdinner Conversation”], “Kasida I,” “Kasida II,” “Kasida III,” “La palmera” [“The Palm Tree”], “El hombre orquesta y el turco” [“Oneman Band and the Turk”]); the remainder are narrative poems (“Los dos jardineros,” [“The Two Gardeners”] “Romance del rey de Persia,” “Tonada,” “El beso”). These poems were published in various volumes of poetry (1917–1928).7 The first three poems employ hackneyed images of the East, with plenty of palm trees, camels, Bedouins, and oases. Behind all these stereotypical images, it is not only the idyllic vision of the Arab world that is reflected, but also plenty of prejudices as contained in “La sobremesa”: It is when the camel driver orders the hajji to halt in the name of Allah. It seems in the unanimous and submissive genuflection as in the prostration, with immemorial fatalism the desert space flattens on itself. The dromedary pours the infinite plains into the sandbag hanging from its hump, while a metaphysical thistle, enraptures its Islamic mysticism.8 (Djibilou 1986: 75)

Allusions to “immemorial fatalism” and to “Islamic mysticism” (of the dromedary, not of the Bedouin!) are meaningful. They come of the use 7 The compilation of almost all these poems is found in Diwan Modernista (1986). Our quotations are from this volume, (except for a special mention that is pointed out between parentheses) of the original book from which they were derived. 8 “Es la hora en que a los hadjis el camellero da/ la voz de alto en nombre de Alá./ Parece que en la unánime sumisión de rodillas/ y de jarretes en cuclillas,/ con inmemorial fatalismo/ el desierto se aplana sobre sí mismo./ Derrama el dromedario la llanura infinita/ en la bolsa de arena de su joroba,/ mientras un cardo metafísico, arroba/ su misticismo islamista.”

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of Orientalist clichés that reinforce the idea of time standing still—the inherent immobilization of the Muslim society. The implicit similarity between the desert and the plains is also noteworthy. This simple comparison is proof of Lugones’s ignorance about African or Asian deserts because these are rarely flat. However, we have mentioned that accuracy was not of special interest to the Modernists. The poems, “El Oriente” (El libro de los paisajes, 1917) and “Las Tres Kasidas” (Romancero, 1924) do not require commentary because they are brief and unimportant—the former is of an evocative nature (Djibilou 1986: 69); the latter, a love poem (1969: 79–81). “La palmera” is another poem of assertive love, but barely allusive to its Eastern setting: “With tender delight / even the most versatile nomad / the sweetness of a date / from her amber fingers he kisses” (1969: 64–65).9 “El hombre orquesta y el turco” deserves consideration because the Orientalist theme is here tied to the regional and popular poetics. This poem describes the vivid childhood memories of two characters wandering around the Cordoba countryside, perhaps in Villa de María del Río Seco, the village where Lugones was born: It involves a oneman musician who is playing at a local fair and a traveling merchant, a Turk, who is selling his wares vociferously, thus competing with the musician. The East here appears conflated with the subject of immigration in Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century and with the occupations that these men held in accordance with their ethnic origins: the musician “who was called Pascual / and was an native of Basilicata”10 (Djibilou 1986: 89) an Italian region near Calabria; the Turk, a generic nickname given to the Syrian-Lebanese immigrants in Argentina, practiced an occupation identified with his immigrant community, that of traveling merchant. His description combines in a few lines those elements associated with the idyllic vision of a Modernist East; therefore, he was depicted as a Ibero-American Bedouin whose fantastic figure seemed, to the local children, to have come straight “from The Thousand and One Nights / (Because we already knew something of Aladdin / And Sinbad the sailor; / Though in our peasant fable, / One was a Ladino Boy /

9 “Y que con deleite blando,/ hasta el nómade versátil/ va en la dulzura del dátil/ sus dedos de ámbar besando” (Romancero, 1924). 10 “Que se llamaba Pascual/ Y era oriundo de Basilicata” (Poemas solariegos, 1928).

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And the other was called Sinibaldo Medina)”11 (Djibilou 1986: 88). The small group of children became dazzled and frightened by the presence of the Turkish merchant whose description entirely encompassed Eastern despotism: Was this Turk with blue crescents tattooed hands Not carrying a print As he displayed his prodigious tulles, With his forehead covered with awful wrinkles, Those of a sultan’s executioner, Like those of the man in the print that he was selling Who, in an unmerciful heresy, Was cutting off Saint John’s head? …12 (Djibilou 1986: 88–89)

Noteworthy are the many prejudices packed into this poem in which the “wonders” of the East were combined with the “dread” that its emissaries awoke in the imagination of River Plate children. The image of the tattooed hands with the “blue crescents” was clearly alluding to the Islamic faith of the merchant whose “awful wrinkles” above his eyebrows recalled a “sultan’s executioner,” a fantasy that, in a child’s innocent mind, was confirmed with the contents of the print where a Muslim executioner was beheading Saint John. In the West, this image simultaneously represented and nourished the ancestral Christian fear of Muslims that led to wars and to irreconcilable cultural differences. Two of the four poems are informative on this subject, as they illustrate the Modernist alchemy that combined Modernists’ attraction for the East’s aesthetic exoticism with its despotism clichés that inspired fear and distrust of the Islamic culture, a culture that was perceived to counter Western values. “Los dos jardineros” recounts the different fates of two gardeners from Iraq (Djibilou 1986: 180–183).13 One gardener was the illustrious Mutákabar, a horticulturist from Baghdad who, after having 11 “De Las mil y una noches / (Porque sabíamos algo de Aladino/ Y de Simbad el Marino;/ Aunque para nuestra fábula campesina,/ Uno era el Niño Ladino/ Y el otro se llamaba Sinibaldo Medina)” (Poemas solariegos, 1928). 12 “¿No llevaba consigo hasta ese turco/ de las manos tatuadas con crecientes azules,/ Que desplegaba prodigiosos tules/ Y tenía en la ceja un terrible surco/ De verdugo de sultán,/ Como aquel que en la estampa que él mismo vendía,/ Con despiadada herejía / Le cortaba la cabeza a San Juan? …” (Poemas solariegos, 1928). 13 Included in “Poesías diversas” (Lugones 1949: 1261–1264).

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been favored by the Caliph (named him “grand vizier of the gardens”), fell into disgrace and was executed for daring to steal tulips from the Sultan’s harem. The other gardener, pious Mutawadi, was a poor country laborer who, after his death, the most flowery mausoleum of all Islam was built for him. The only point in common between their fates was the monarch’s arbitrariness. In the first case, the despot, after having promoted Mutákabar to vizier, sentenced him to death for stealing tulips; in the second, he, recalling kind Mutawadi’s anonymous life, rewards him with the construction of a unique burial site filled with floral wonders. These extremes proved the ruler’s arbitrariness and reinforced the belief of a legendary East ruled by fragile passions and where the best and worst acts took place. The “Romance del rey de Persia” follows this line of thought and reinforces the concept of Eastern despotism.14 The King of Persia, taciturn and melancholic because of his unfortunate love for a Christian princess, a captive in his palace (sold by a pirate), orders his ministers, Nisalmulmulk and Abdul Hassan, to convene the kingdom’s best poets to determine who among them could end his heartache by means of his charming verses. He decrees that the poet who meets his charge be awarded “two years of taxes / from Syria and Iraq, and whatever profits another two years of overseas ventures bring” (1969: 83).15 Nisalmulmulk first convenes the poet Firdusi, whose poems disappoint the king. Then the minister introduces Omar Khayyam to the Court, who also does not provide the poetic remedy for the monarch’s ailment. Another two poets, Hafiz and Sadí, follow and yield the same negative results. Then the king cries out before his viziers and the Court: “Why do you sing of happiness, / glory, and a liberty to me! / Do you not see that I

14 This romance is dedicated “to the Emir Emin Arslán, a descendant of Persian kings.” As a journalist, he first arrives in Argentina as an Ottoman diplomat and settles permanently in Buenos Aires after the fall of the Ottoman Empire (1919) and died there in 1943. He headed the literary review La Nota (1915–1920) in which Modernist and PostModernist writers contributed. Arslán diffused Orientalism among Buenos Aires literary circles, publishing various books and pamphlets on the subject. La verdad sobre el Harén (1919), Misterios de Oriente (1932). For a complete study his works and contributions to Argentinean Orientalism, see Gasquet (2015: 287–317). 15 “El tributo de dos años/ de la Siria y del Irak,/ y los dos más rentaren/ las gabelas de la mar” (Romancero, 1924).

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am dying? / And that I do not want to be cured? …”16 (1969: 94). Despite his disappointment, the monarch rewards each of the successive poets with significant riches (three sacks of gold, six of silver and a ceremonial costume “of incomparable quality”). After his king’s many disillusionments, Nisalmulmulk begins to fear for his life. He humbly bows in submission before the monarch and, awaiting a fatal outcome, he says: “Take sir, this head of mine / If it pleases you. / The king agrees and summons / the executioner to appear immediately; / the executioner appears / and meekly submits to the monarch’s will”17 (1969: 95). However, moments before the sentence is to be carried out, a sweet and distant “Song of love and pain / lost in complete solitude” is heard coming from the courtyard with the mysterious phrase of “Some invisible shepherd, / was perhaps singing it to himself”18 (1969: 95). The king suddenly stops the execution and says in a magnanimous tone: And raising the prostate vizier, he pardons and as he orders: “Go, Nisalmulmulk, and very quickly return here with that man.19 (1969: 96)

By deciding to flee, Nisalmulmulk saves his own life: Because the singing shepherd, Was never found and the vizier who went looking for him Never returned either.20 (1969: 96)

The monarch’s servant had to betray his master to save his own skin because, if he had returned empty-handed, his fate would have been 16 “¡A qué me cantan la dicha,/ la Gloria y la libertad!/ ¿No ven que estoy muriendo/ Y que no quiero sanar?…” (Romancero, 1924). 17 “Toma, señor, mi Cabeza/ si eso puede agradar./ Bien lo halla el rey, que dispone/ que el verdugo venga ya,/ y el verdugo comparece,/ dócil a su volundad” (Romancero, 1924). 18 “Canto de amor y pena,/ perdido en la soledad”; “Algún pastor invisible,/ lo iba entonando quizás” (Romancero, 1924). 19 “Y alzando al visir postrado,/ perdona y ordena al par:/ - Ve, Nisalmulmulk, y al punto/ vuelve con ese hombre acá” (Romancero, 1924). 20 “Porque al pastor de la copla/ nunca pudieron hallar./ Con que, el visir que buscaba,/ tampoco volvió jamás” (Romancero, 1924).

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sealed. What is interesting about this narrative poem is that the topic of despotism is at its core, as related by the former king’s protégé of after falling from grace. Lugones created this scene from his reading of The Thousand and One Nights, relating the incidence of the beheading of Jaffar and his family (the illustrious Barmecides) as ordered by Caliph Harun El-Rashid in eighteenth-century Baghdad.21 This episode’s calamity was even more significant because the Caliph Harun and his minister Jaffar were “milk brothers,” that is, they had been breastfed by the same wet nurse. This historic anecdote, known throughout the entire Muslim world through many texts and in the West by The Thousand and One Nights, reinforced and deepened the allegation of Islam’s political arbitrariness (Dakhlia 2005: 7–18). A despot’s unpredictability was founded, to paraphrase Goethe, on the “elective affinities” of the passions existing between the tyrant and his protégé; passions very often forbidden (only in public) because they were suspected of being homosexual practices. Lugones made a series of modifications to his work, yet he kept its historical basis: the Baghdad Caliphate’s events were shifted to Persia, making them more poetic and substituting Jaffar with Nisalmulmulk (historical character to be discussed). In his Romance, he also changed the ending of the historical anecdote: unlike Jaffar, the vizier is not executed. He manages to escape, and this small modification changed the “betrayal” act. Historically, it was the king who betrayed his favorites, while in this narrative poem it is the vizier who betrays the monarch’s confidence by fleeing. This displacement does nothing to lessen the enormous despotic onus that falls, in both cases, on the tyrant-king—in Lugones’s poem, Nisalmulmulk’s betrayal is relative; he betrays the king’s confidence to save his own life. The classic model of Eastern despotism, adopted here by Lugones, correlates the monarch’s politics with the arbitrariness resulting from the passions within him. These passions in the poem prevailed to such an extent that his government adopted an irrational base, that is, one that was based on his emotional shifts and removed from all rationality. Treason, within this context, was a symptom or expression of the king’s emotional weakness and, on a political level, it created an unreliable government. The generous rewards bestowed on the poets who 21 The “Romance of the king of Persia” was inspired by “Noche trescientas ochenta y seis: Harún al-Rasid y los tres poetas” of Las mil y una noches (Anonymous 2006: 1285–1260).

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unknowingly failed in their mission was further proof of an exemplary uncertainty. Another collateral element associated with this traditional topic of European Orientalism was the Caliph’s psychological makeup; it portrayed him as a ruler who, having become blasé about all pleasures and excesses, turned melancholic and taciturn in love matters. In this sense, let us recall the description by Pastor Obligado of his meeting with the Soubbi-Pasha in the outskirts of Baalbek22 (Obligado 1873: 264), where the Sultan appeared possessed or overcome by indolence. Here Lugones insists on tracing the same legendary portrait of the king of Persia, with the addendum that the “forbidden love” here is not of a homosexual nature (as with Harun and Jaffar), but one entirely devoted to a Western captive whose deep blue eyes had made the monarch her slave: Why, when I come before her, am I only capable of stammering? ............................ I smitten, to offer her, My own captivity.23 (1969: 93)

The Queen of Sheba The figure of the captive also served to represent the sentimental dilemma of Belkiss, Queen of Sheba, who fell madly in love with King Solomon and abandoned her kingdom to join him in Jerusalem. We know the story of the Queen of Sheba from the Bible.24 This legend was taken up by Portuguese Symbolist Eugenio De Castro (1869–1944) in his narrative drama, Belkiss: Queen of Saba, Axum, and Hymiar 25 whose

22 See: Chapter 6, note 13. 23 “Por qué cuando llego ante ella / solo acierto a balbucear. / … / Para ofrecerle

rendido / mi propia cautividad” (Romancero, 1924). 24 The Queen of Sheba is rarely mentioned in the Bible: only thirteen verses in the Book of Kings, mentioned again in the second book of the Chronicles and, lastly, she is alluded to in the Gospel of Saint-Matthew. However, it was with the Romanticists, and especially the fantasy writer Charles Nodier (La fée aux miettes, 1832), that she began to be widely included in literary and artistic works. 25 Original edition: Eugenio de Castro, Belkiss: Rainha de Sabâ, d’Axum e do Himyar. Coimbra: s.n, 1984. The piece was first translated into Italian by Vittorio Pica in 1896. Lugones’s text dates from his youth and was never reexamined.

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1897 Spanish translation was published in Buenos Aires with a remarkable preface by Lugones (Lugones 1897: iii–xxi). According to Lugones himself, in 1896 he and Darío read De Castro’s historical drama in Portuguese, only a short time after the two had met. Darío even gave a lecture in Buenos Aires’s El Ateneo in 1897 titled “Eugenio De Castro and Portuguese literature.”26 This event attested to several particulars: first, to the well-known influence of the French Symbolists on both IberoAmerican Modernists and Peninsular literature; secondly, to the noted existing dialogues between young Ibero-American and European poets, even before Darío’s first voyage to Spain and France (1898); thirdly, to the emergence of a generation of real shared consciousness among the young writers of both worlds. The very young age of these individuals was rather astounding: Darío was twenty-nine years old, Lugones was barely twenty-two, and De Castro was twenty-seven. Nevertheless, De Castro already had a considerable number of poetic works to his credit (Tiresias, Sagramor and Salomé e outros poemas ) that were then circulating quite extensively on both sides of the Atlantic. He was quickly accepted as one of their own by Ibero-American Modernists. Encouraged by De Castro’s groundbreaking aesthetic experimentation, Luis Berisso’s translator critical notice as well as Lugones’s preliminary speech abounded in bombastic praises that sought to integrate De Castro into Modernist poetry. Lugones tried to make all things very clear: Within the enduring climate of our native barbarity, to preface a book like this one means to run the gauntlet of a failed edition. However, here we are, precisely to make sacrifices. Certainly, ignoble business behemoths are in charge…. We are in Zola’s best market and nothing should surprise us…. (1897: xx–xxi)

As a Symbolist, De Castro’s entire energy was concentrated on the construction of an anti-naturalist poetics. Yet, this risky editorial bet had some success because De Castro’s drama reached, in less than two years, a second edition. The first-edition reviews bear witness to the enormous circulation of Berisso’s translation throughout all of Ibero-America.27 26 This event is mentioned by the translator, Luis Berisso, in his “critical mention” (De Castro 1897: xxv). 27 With endorsements by intellectuals like the Mexican José Juan Tablada; Argentines José María Gutiérrez, Eduardo Wilde, Alberto Ghiraldo, Carlos Guido y Spano, and Pedro

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Lugones was interested in De Castro for several reasons: (a) for his anti-naturalist stance and his poetic and stylistic works that recalled Modernist innovations: “the extraordinary rhythms of his verbal orchestration” … “his verse-filled prose” (1897: xiv); (b) for his emotional tone (De Castro refused to speak from an abstract Rationalism and aimed to astonish readers by stressing emotion and lyricism); (c) for his idealistic nature that absolutely exemplified pure art and that aimed to develop an exclusive council of elite initiates that would be far removed from the world’s cacophony. The terms employed by Lugones on this subject constitute a counter-manifesto to Zola’s Naturalism: We, today’s intellectuals, are individualists because we are idealists. Reaction against democratic egalitarianism leads us to the most intransigent of aristocracies within an absolute acracy. It is necessary to confess with violent haughtiness that, from this point on, logic is heading, in the current social order, to a denial of duty and the use of explosives like dynamite. (1897: xviii)

(d) De Castro’s pagan works, characterized by a profound denial of Christianity, represented death to Lugones. De Castro reengaged with pantheism’s vitalist tradition that upheld that life took its source from Eros’s love affairs. Belkiss is unable to resist the “violent demands of sex” (1897: xvi). As a former heresiarch, he wrote a piece for Lugones containing late-medieval imagery that adhered to the heretical mysticism of the tabooed millenarian sects that abounded in prodigious bestiaries. De Castro’s bestiary evinces its connection to the true medieval natural history. Lugones enumerated his creatures thus: … of four-eyed Ethiopians, of the Peking man, of griffins that covered themselves with their enemies’ skins. And of monsters: the manticore, whose blood-colored head has four rows of teeth and green eyes, and B. Palacios (Almafuerte); Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó; Salvadorian Arturo Ambrogi; Peruvian Clorinda Matto de Turner; and Rubén Darío, himself. Among these notables we find a few Modernists who will later explore the Orientalist literary sphere; we also have verified that the dissemination of this book went beyond limited Modernist circles (Rodó, Almafuerte); it reached recognized Positivists (Wilde) and some precursors of Andean Indigenismo (Matto de Turner). See the reports reproduced in the 2nd edition of 1899, under the rubric “Belkiss” en América. Extractos de cartas y juicios críticos con motivo de la primera edición, which appears without pagination at work’s end and that we have numbered [209–225].

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whose lion’s body ends with a scorpion’s tail; satyrs with horse-like feet and bird-like heads; ostriches, with goose-like heads, crane-lie bodies, and calf-like feet; tigers, from which hikers escape by throwing a mirror at them; rhinoceros that become gentle at the sight of a young girl’s breast. (1897: xi)

De Castro’s “The Orient,” defended by Lugones, was an ideal composition that acknowledged its fantastic elements and claimed its unreal character, thereby challenging the Naturalist tendency that was anchored in the real world and in man’s basic material needs. In short, a tendency sustained by an ethical notion that Modernists repudiated and viewed devoid of life and disconcerting. His “The Orient” gave new breath to the chronicles of Marco Polo. Therefore, Belkiss “is a medieval poem because of its obviously fantastic nature. What is old-fashioned is its ‘bubbling fountain’ scene, Eastern metaphors, and superb and imposing colors. There are traces of the Song of Songs in its shouts of love, and of The Thousand and One Nights in its ostentatious vision” (Lugones 1897: viii). For Lugones, De Castro brought to the stage the diadems and glamor that others such as Gustave Flaubert or Leconte de Lisle had only thought to record or caricaturize. De Castro reestablished the radiance of the imaginary East, whose essential virtue was its ideal character. Thus, Lugones linked his own desire to the same reality. The East, more than ever, was not the distorted image that the East itself provided the West, but rather an elaboration of an imaginary platform where a picturesque scene of the East, as conceived by a Western poet, would be staged. According to Lugones, the Orient served as a scenographic pretext for Verdi’s opera Aida. I imagine myself as King of Hastinapura, of Babylon, or of Luxor, performing in a hypostyle room, large enough to contain two storms, an impossible play…. The stage ought to have elephants, palm-tree gardens, part of an ocean, a sunset with a stream of golden light, and thirty thousand slaves. The first act would be of emerald color; the second, ruby; the third, turquoise, and the fourth, topaz. The fifth act would end in an opal splendor. That type of play is staged in the marvelous country of China, in the Japan of the samurai, in fabulous India…. Only the East sees these plays. Pantheist or symbolist peoples are the only ones capable of conceiving those marvelous pieces. (1897: v–vi)

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Scheherazade, Omar Khayyam, and Saint-Fidelity Lugones devoted an essay each to Scheherazade and Omar Khayyam that constituted the essential part of his Orientalist prose.28 These two works are significant because they give a conclusive description of his career as a Modernist and further develop his true convictions on ethical and religious matters. “El tesoro de Scheherazada” [“The treasure of Scheherazade”] dates from 1924, at a time when he began to feel the need to adjust his political militancy toward an ethical and moral discourse. To him, the princess represented the center of gravity of The Thousand and One Nights. Lugones was thoroughly conscious of the fact that the work is a masterful synopsis of fantastic literature and not a political treatise. As a Modernist, he rightfully defended the irreducibly imaginary character of its tales. This distancing from reality was perceived as positive because it was only thus that The Thousand and One Nights could have been included in the cultural heritage of civilization. The book was important to Lugones because of the promises that fueled and ignited the imagination of all who read it. In the following terms, Lugones made it known that he appreciated the cultural value of this literary heritage: “… a totally unique poem because it exhausted all the wonders of the imagination before the magnificent, yet jealous, sultan; it defines the princess’ legacy, a legacy that Princess Scheherazade gave her people by melding all those treasures with the divinely unique wonder of an emerald: hope”29 (Djibilou 1986: 259). It is the work’s unreality and its fantastical character that definitively imparted hope and faith to an entire nation. For Lugones, every country should have had this book at hand, as a kind of absolute legacy. The Thousand and One Nights was the book of the Arab people, just as Martín Fierro embodied the Argentinean soul. But this hope was only a type of compensation for their miserable, ordinary life: “for imaginative and sociable people like the Arabs, such tales are life’s consolation” (Djibilou 1986: 259). Thus, Modernist idealism subverted the real order

28 We are excluding here “El vaso de alabastro” (1923), “Los ojos de la reina” (1923), and “Nuralkámar” (1936), compiled by Pedro Luis Barcía in Leopoldo Lugones, Cuentos fantásticos (1988: 194–207, 208–230, 231–243). In this collection, the oriental theme is circumstantial for it finds itself at the service of a fantastic plot development. 29 “El tesoro de Scheherezada” (Filosofícula, 1924).

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by believing to see in Scheherazade’s narrations a cultural treasure trove capable of redressing the dire poverty of the lower classes: … the last beggar will mitigate his hunger by dreaming of the possibility that the fairy will appear as it is customary; the poor woman who, having given birth to a child in the worst poverty and pain, can easily hope, with positive satisfaction, that her pitiful child will one day be king. So much the better if the prodigy does not make it … and, therefore, miserable humanity spends its days like someone who is walking on a magnificent carpet. Does “to make it” matter? Death is the only real attainment. Life is beautiful because of the illusion that it entails, just like the sky makes a landscape’s horizon. Does that sky seem less beautiful knowing that we will never reach it? (Djibilou 1986: 259. Emphasis ours )

In an idealistic and intuitive way, Lugones discovered the power of the social imaginary (here reinforced thanks to its literary legacy) as well as its ideological function in any unjust social hierarchy. For this reason, it did not matter to him whether this imaginary desire was met; life is inherently beautiful, not for its intrinsic values, but for the illusion with which one lives and endures its most trying times. Scheherazade’s tales functioned as a guiding fiction that brought Arabs together. In this ideal and not material sense, the legend was democratic because it impacted on everyone equally: “For those who live together, all evil stems from inequality. Legends promote equality…. Legends are faith, hope, and charity. Those heart-hardened men who look down on legends say that ‘they are false,’ unworthy of beauty and grace” (Djibilou 1986: 260). The world is for only a few and a legend’s role is to consolidate the belief (only illusory) that imagination is the same among all people, people who perhaps one day may caress the sky with their hands. We see in Lugones a surprising mixture of avant-garde elitism and political pseudo-egalitarianism that, in the case of The Thousand and One Nights, lead him to tacitly recognize (clearly resigned) the profound inequalities in the Arab-Muslim societies and to place a tiny glimmer of hope (idealistic) in this book’s cultural legacy. Of course, this faith is only wishful thinking since most of the Arab population, then illiterate, had no access to the book that “represented” them, except perhaps through the traditional oral narrations of Middle Eastern storytellers. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh identified with Lugones when affirming: “how did the Arabian Nights interact with Arabs? We will never know. What is important and surprising is that The Thousand and One Nights interacts with us” (Bencheikh 1988: 15). Even though

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we do not share Lugones’s idealist approach, we must point out the reception that he and the Modernists gave a text30 whose reading definitively departs from the phylogenetic treatments that tried to restore the original historical relationship of the Muslim people with this book. Lugones criticized the Positivist Materialists, those “heart-hardened” individuals who “would have wanted the legends’ pearls, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and topazes to have truly existed. They did not realize that, had this been the case, there would have been a master and they would have been victims of oppression, pride, resentment, and envy. In the legends, however, these precious stones belonged to all and made all happy” (Djibilou 1986: 260). For Lugones, the spiritual supremacy of The Thousand and One Nights, with its imaginary glamor, mitigated social inequalities in the Middle East—though its reality went unchanged. Lugones’s essay on Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam illustrates his viewpoint even better. This extensive piece, “El collar de záfiros,” [“The Sapphire Necklace”] was published in La Nación of Buenos Aires on 28 March 1926.31 To set the tone of his essay, Lugones explained why he chose this title: “these precious stones symbolized freedom and loyalty to ancient jewelers” (Djibilou 1986: 172). Khayyam’s short work (qualified as an “absolute poem”) appealed to Lugones because of its nihilist conception of life with which he identified. This wisdom, a sort of lucid pessimism, was central to Khayyam’s literary production and coincided with Lugones’s spiritual search in the 1920s. Before analyzing its quatrains, Lugones recalled how similar Khayyam’s biography was to that of Hassan-ben-Sabah, the founder of the mystical sect of Persian “assassins” (derived from hachichin) known as the Order of the Assassins.32 Moreover, this sect became a classic Orientalist subject 30 See Rubén Darío’s statement defending the translation of Doctor Mardrus: cf. Rubén Darío, “Las mil y una noches” (in Djibilou 1986: 261). 31 The entire text of “El collar de záfiros” is included in Djibilou’s book. Lugones spells the name as “Kayam,” but we prefer to spell it according to the attested modern variant, “Khayyam.” Rubaiyat is spelled differently in English than in Spanish: Las Rubaiatas, Las Rubaitas, Los Rubayata, etc. 32 Ismaili Hassan-Ben-Sabah (c. 1034–1124) was known in the West as the Old Moun-

tain Man, a nickname Marco Polo gave him in Il Milione. He founded the Order of Assassins after having taken possession of the Alamut fortress circa 1090 in the Persian mountains of Elburz, north-east of Tehran. The hired assassins’ mission was to exterminate members of opposing sects and were trained by means of brainwashing: they were kept in a garden resembling a paradise and were trained in the use of knives; they were

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in the West whose mention, since the Crusades, has always reinforced the betrayal stereotype associated with Islam. According to Lugones’s somewhat inaccurate remarks, Hassan-benSabah, Nisalmulmulk (Nizam-al-Mulk), and Omar Khayyam were disciples of Shiite Mowafek (sic) who taught science and philosophy in Nishapur. They were committed to mutual help if any of them attained an influential post in the Court. Once Nisalmulmulk became vizier to Monarch Alp Arslan first and then to Tartar heir Malik Shah (Malek), Omar Khayyam became director of the Observatory and Hassan was appointed Minister of Finance. It is with these flattering words that Lugones concluded his short analysis of their friendship: In the history of human culture, there is nothing more remarkable than the simultaneous appointments of those three former disciples of the eminent Mowatek (sic) at the University of Nishapur. Their qualifications, alone, would be enough to conclude that Saint-Fidelity could not be a group of assassins. Gangs of thieves do not endure for nine centuries, nor do they engender Orders like that of the temple or nations like the Druze. (Djibilou 1986: 164)

Although Nisalmulmulk betrayed Hassan-ben-Sabah when the Mongols conquered Persia (the reason why the latter founded SaintFidelity), Lugones devoted himself to the unconditional defense of each of the three former students, particularly to that of Khayyam who, having stepped aside from Nisalmulmulk, persisted in defending science during tough times. Consequently, Lugones placed himself in the crosscurrent of the diverse Orientalist references that considered Vizier Nisalmulmulk a traitor to brotherly loyalty and to the fatherland (collaborated with Tartars) and considered Hassan-ben-Sabah as the perverted creator of the infernal sect of assassins. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a time when Islam was gradually taking hold in Persia. However, what interested Lugones was the pantheistic traces in Khayyam’s quatrains,33 that stood counter to any theological reductionism. The years of Khayyan’s life then encouraged to regularly consume hashish and were sent out to accomplish their mission under the promise of eternal life in a paradise similar to the one where they were kept (Frère 1973). 33 A philological debate is currently underway concerning the real literary contributions of Khayyam regarding several quatrains that have been attributed to him (Robin 1994: 102–105).

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were reminiscent to those of political turbulence in Argentina during the first government of Hipólito Yrigoyen (1916) when the beginning of the end of an aristocratic liberalism begun in 1880 was first noticed. Lugones began in the 1920s an about-face from Republicanism to the political ultraright, a change that, around 1924,34 led him to eventually adhere to an authoritarian model (“sword” and “strong fatherland”) whose underpinnings were those of Mussolini-style fascism. Many were the political and even psychological factors that partially explained his about-face; but it was undeniable that his public enthusiasm toward nationalist ideologies, which included certain socialist egalitarianism dating from his youth, brought him close to a profoundly nihilistic state of mind. For Lugones, psychological depression and political exaltation were complementary, like the two faces of Janus. This period of turbulence was similar, in more ways than one, to the turbulent period of political and social unrest that the Persia of Omar Khayyam underwent nine centuries before. In any case, we suppose that this is how Lugones experienced the distant echoes of the quatrains. Lugones identified with Khayyam in questioning monotheism as he expressed here: … “the religion [Muslim], being monotheistic and of similar theology to Christianity, would place Omar in a very similar situation to ours” (Djibilou 1986: 165). In the end, the Modernist movement was not represented within the framework of cosmopolitanism; rather, it showed nationalistic (Lugones and Larreta) and authoritarian tendencies (as in Rubén Darío’s praise of Guatemalan dictator Estrada Cabrera).35 Political inconstancy and ideological flipflopping were recurrent elements in Ibero-American Modernism. On the political level, Lugones may have embodied the most dramatic Modernist case, but he was far from being the only among its members. His affinity for fascism was certainly linked to his fascination with the aesthetics and politics of the avant-garde. According to their understanding, the elite class was responsible for guiding the masses. 34 On 23 November 1924, Lugones traveled to Lima to replace Rabindranath Tagore, who had fallen ill in Buenos Aires and could not proceed with his journey to Peru, in the festivities celebrating the Centenary of the Battle of Ayacucho. There Lugones delivered a speech, “La hora de la espada,” that elicited a international-wide uproar. He would go on to publish this work a few years later as La patria fuerte [The Strong Fatherland], (Lugones 1930). 35 This was the dictator who provided sanctuary to the Peruvian, José Santos Chocano, who found asylum in Guatemala after his demise in his homeland under the dictatorship of Augusto Leguía.

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Returning to the Rubaiyat, Lugones saw his own pantheistic vocation in these verses that aimed to reduce all theological monolithism to ashes. In Khayyam’s philosophical paganism, he discovered some exemplary precedents to his own spiritual pursuits. According to Lugones, “this is the foundation of his ethics: the moral of beauty as practiced by paganism.” Thereafter, he transcribed the irony of this quatrain: “Formerly, I assiduously frequented mosques. / If I did not pray, I would return filled with hope, / Now I continue to go / to the mosque whose shade makes sleep pleasant”36 (Djibilou 1986: 166). Khayyam’s lucid pessimism became the touchstone of his own enlightened disenchantment that did not abide by “either God or law.” From this perspective, Lugones considered nihilists as the most radical of revolutionaries because they shredded all the intrigues woven by human intelligence and affirmed that “knowledge is the antidote to pride.” He then included these two quatrains: The vast world, a grain of dust in the universe. The science of men, words. Countless people, beasts, climate plants, spectrums, and at the end of your perpetual meditations, nothingness. Life is a monotonous game where you have the assurance of two gains: pain and unholy death. Blessed is the child who at birth died. And he who came into this world, luckier yet.37 (Djibilou 1986: 167)

Khayyam’s pessimism was considered “vital” by Lugones and, consequently, far from a simple destructive concept. This nihilist vitalism was the principal teaching that the East could offer to the West around the eleventh century. Lugones judged, and not incorrectly, that the then Christian West was immersed in the purest of monotheistic barbarisms and that it had purged from society any trace of hedonistic pleasure and of 36 “Otrora las mezquitas frecuenté con empeño./ Si no rezaba, rico de esperanza volvía./ Ahora voy todavía/ a las mezquitas donde la sombra es grata al sueño” (El collar de záfiros, 1926). 37 “El vasto mundo, un grano de polvo en el espacio./ La ciencia de los hombres, palabras. La miríada/ de pueblos, bestias, plantas de los climas, espectros,/ y el fin de tus perpetuas meditaciones, nada.// La vida es un monótono juego en el que estás cierto/ de aquellas dos ganancias: dolor y muerte impía./ Dichoso el niño que al nacer ha muerto./ Y el que vino al mundo, más feliz todavía” (El collar de záfiros, 1926).

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dedication to contemplative beauty. He concluded that Khayyam’s absolute poem was the expression of a “civilized” society, obviously more advanced than that of the West. To this noble philosophical pessimism, which far from being frightening, instils the healthy, practical optimism of a happy life—only fools and the conceited want to live in harmony with ideas and not with feelings – that corresponds to a well-defined concept of vital evolution, or transformism, that seemingly already existed in the eleventh-century East and that reveals the scientific basis of Omar’s skepticism. (Djibilou 1986: 170)

This assessment by Lugones, claiming the supremacy of feelings over ideas, appears curious. In this context, asserting emotions is equivalent to claiming the predominance of arbitrariness, which goes together with pleasure and mood swings. According to him, the rejection of enjoyment is precisely the most unpleasant aspect of monotheistic cultures. In his opinion, this pleasure principle spawns an ethical lineage that embraces fatalism. Humankind, unable to change the world, should surrender to given pleasures. Pagans perceived a high compatibility between the worship of their Gods and devotion to pleasure. Not so with monotheists who consider these options as mutually exclusive. Lugones continued: It is necessary to insist on that ethical outcome of skepticism that the morality of beauty on the enjoyment of life and on the infinite tolerance of all human flaws constitutes, a morality that we call fatalism or, in other words, fate acceptance… Destiny is the very universe…. To understand or modify it, it would be necessary for the part to contain the whole, an absurdity since… All that happens has been in preparation since eternity and it is the result of the conception of the Universe. To judge is a vain illusion. And, consequently, we can only empathize with each other within evil and misfortune. (Djibilou 1986: 172)

The vital skepticism that Lugones observed in Khayyam had the specific capacity to oppose monotheistic theology and Rationalist discourse with equal force. Lugones intuited, along with the Modernists, that there was some similarity between Positive philosophy and theological monotheistic discourse; they were both linked to the same psychological and historical space and that the former’s belief in science had supplanted the latter’s belief in God. Whatever one says about them

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clashing with each other, science and religion are part of the same creed and the same notion of the world. Lugones deduced the following: A warning: philosophic pessimism, that is, complete disbelief regarding the results of theological and rational speculation does not affect the cordial delicacy of feelings. In fact, quite the contrary, only fanatics or, as one should say, the systematic exclusives of faith or reason turn ruthless in their intention of aligning life with ideas. Such is the objective of the Rationalist and theological systems. (Djibilou 1986: 173)

According to Lugones, radical skepticism is on the side of life. Monotheisms and Rationalism are epiphenomena of the inability of humans to adapt to the constant vital overflow. Wherefore, theology and reason are negative from the viewpoint of creative fertility; they destroy what they cannot control, thus engendering human fanaticism. Fanaticism is a result of the despair felt before the absence of life-guiding ideas; thence its senseless obstinance. However, intelligence is only a statistical organization and reasoning is a systematization of doubt. Therefore, they create nothing and only yield negative results. Creation is an act of beauty, just as life is an act of strength, both instinctive manifestations whose purpose escapes the standards of intelligence and reason. (Djibilou 1986: 173)

This is Khayyam’s Rubaiyat basic legacy, a lineage of lucid and vital skepticism, with which Lugones liked to be identified. It was for these reasons that the Argentinean Modernist placed his personal utopia in the imaginary East, which was the place where “in the absence of religion, the purest morality rules, one that is based on perfect equity” (Djibilou 1986: 174). This appropriation by Lugones of the East, arising from a sensibility contrary to European Orientalism, saw in Khayyam’s pantheistic legacy a unique force incapable of evolving in the West and whose Rationalism insisted in forcefully dislodging this thread of creative lucidity. That was why Khayyam’s vengeance ended with some critical allusions concerning the imperialist role of the European powers in the Levant. France, Great Britain, and the cultures arising from them, like the Tartars in the past, were forces of a negative morality. France hounded the heirs of the Order

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of the Secret Doctrine38 : “And it is that Druze nation … that socialist radicalism, in the name of secularism and liberty, tried to suppress with their blaring imperialist canons, thus compromising, perhaps forever, the prestige of a liberating France.” Meanwhile, the British did just as much against the Wahhbites, the Order allies on the Arabian Peninsula, who led the resistance against the hostile powers that “now, in turn, Great Britain commands” (Djibilou 1986: 174).

Conclusion: Between Idealism and Paganism The perception of Lugones regarding the Orient is of a dual nature. On the one hand, he adopted the typical oriental stereotypes concerning topics such as that of the foolhardy Arab, the innate despotism of the Arab people, social misery, arbitrariness, fanatical proselytism, captivity, etc. When dealing with these Eastern themes, Lugones proved himself to be less innovative than his fellow Modernists as well as more limited since the subject of the Far East was almost completely absent from his work. This lack of originality and audacity could be partially attributed to his lack of interest in the East and its cultures. However, his attraction for the Orientalist motif was always limited by the aesthetic elaboration of some of his prints that served as poetic “excuses”; He was not motivated by a genuine enthusiasm for ethnographic or cultural accuracy. To him, Orientalist themes were simply decorative elements and did not need to be expanded. Despite this “sumptuary” approach, we have seen some passages in his narrative poems allow for an inference of a series of Eastern common places that he shared with his generation and previous ones. Other than this, he contributed no major personal innovations. Where Lugones did distinguish himself was through his purely idealistic interpretation of The Thousand and One Nights, a book that he considered to be the most relevant cultural legacy of Muslim culture along with Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. A study of his quatrains provides some clues of his personal spiritual exploration during a period of profound social and institutional crisis. It provides an interesting interpretation of skeptical vitalism that he countered to what he thought were the two main

38 The Secret Order refers to Hassan-ben-Sabah’s heirs, the Druze, Not to be confused with Helena Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy (1888).

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enemies of artistic creation: monotheistic theology and Rationalist scientism. It should be emphasized that his approach to the Rubaiyat was not only aesthetic, but perhaps even more relevant, it was philosophical. This absolute poem embodies the culmination of a disenchanted vision of the world, but one that is profoundly vital and positive. Khayyam was a fierce critic of monotheistic religions and placed himself in a position beyond theology; but he actually took a pre-theological stand that proposed a return to pagan pantheism. This is important because he did not represent traditional Muslim culture, but expressed a profound, internal criticism of Islam that was not removed from what could have been considered heretical. Khayyam’s lineage that he shared with the other Mowafek’s co-disciples, Nisalmulmulk and Hassan-benSabah, constituted a lateral or marginal legacy of the mystical Islamic tradition. However, in the purest theosophical essence and well known to all, Lugones explored all religious dissent along with the traditions of Jewish Cabalism. We have here excluded Jewish mysticism in Lugones’s works, a topic that deserves a detailed analysis to expose his Orientalist traces. We suppose that he frequented Cabalistic circles in Buenos Aires. This legacy and the constant rereading of The Thousand and One Nights probably constitute an interesting point of departure for deepening his appropriation of the Rubaiyat. In conclusion, it is important to remember that Lugones represents a turning-point in the Argentinean Orientalist perception. With him, a rather positive evaluation of this cultural lineage was established, favored by the undeniable literary and philosophical influence of the East that began to appear in the twentieth century.

References Anonymous (2006). Las mil y una noches, vol. I–II. Barcelona: Planeta, series Grandes Obras Clásicas. Translation, Introduction and Notes by Juan Vernet. Asuero, Pablo Martín (2004). Descripción del Damasco otomano (1807 –1920), según las crónicas de viajeros españoles e hispanoamericanos. Madrid: Miraguano Ediciones. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine (1988). Les Mille et Une Nuits ou la parole prisonière. Paris: Gallimard, series Bibliothèque des Idées. Borges, Jorge Luis (1965). Leopoldo Lugones. Buenos Aires: Pleamar, series Arquetipos.

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Borges, Jorge Luis (1992). “Las traducciones de las 1001 noches,” Historia de la eternidad. Madrid: Alianza-Emecé, 107–138. Cardwell, Richard A. (2002). “Modernismo, Orientalismo, Determinismo and the Problematical Case of Isaac Muñoz Llorente,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 79 (2/3), Glasgow: 307–330. Correa R amón, Amelina (2000). “Ensoñación y conocimiento del oriente islámico: el caso de Isaac Muñoz, escritor y periodista finisecular,” in Gonzalo Fernández Parrilla & Manuel Feria García (eds.). Orientalismo, exotismo y traducción. Toledo: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, series Escuela de Traductores de Toledo, 93–108. Dakhlia, Jocelyne (2005). L’Empire des passions. Paris: Aubier, series Historique. De Castro, Eugenio (1897). Belkiss. Reina de Saba, de Axum y de Hymiar. Buenos Aires: Jorge Kern Editor. Translated from portuguese by Luis Berisso. Foreword by Leopoldo Lugones. Djibilou, Abdellah (1986). Diwan modernista. Una visión de Oriente. Madrid: Taurus. Djibilou, Abdellah (2000). “Marruecos y algunos componentes de la Generación del 98,” in Gonzalo Fernández Padilla & Manuel Feria García (eds.). Orientalismo, exotismo y traducción. Toledo: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, series Escuela de Traductores de Toledo, 121–130. Frère, Jean-Claude (1973). “L’ordre des assassins,” Hasan Sabbah, le Vieux de la montagne et l’ismaélisme. Paris: Culture, Arts, Loisirs. ¨ Furstenberger, Nathalie (2004). “El peso de las tradiciones en el incipiente nacionalismo lugoniano,” in Daniel Attala, Sergio Delgado y Rémi Le Marc’hadour (eds.). L’écrivain argentin et la tradition. Rennes: University Press of Rennes, series Mondes Hispanophones 28, 101–109. Gasquet, Axel (2015). El llamado de Oriente, historia cultural del orientalismo argentino (1900–1950). Buenos Aires: Eudeba, series Ensayos. Gómez Carrillo, Enrique (1906a). El alma japonesa. Paris: Garnier. Gómez Carrillo, Enrique (1906b). De Marsella a Tokyo. Sensaciones de Egipto, la India, la China y el Japón. Paris: Garnier. Gómez Carrillo, Enrique (1926). Fez la andaluza. Madrid: Renacimiento. González, Aníbal (1983). La crónica modernista Hispanoamericana. Madrid: Porrúa Turanzas. Hajjaj Ben Ahmed, Karima (1995). Oriente en la crónica de viajes: el modernismo de Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1873–1927). Ph.D. Dissertation. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Faculty of Philology. Lugones, Leopoldo (1897). “Discurso preliminar,” in Eugenio De Castro. Belkiss: La reina de Saba, de Axum y de Hymiar. Buenos Aires: Jorge Kern Editor, iii–xxi. [Reprinted in Axel Gasquet (2007). Oriente al Sur, el orientalismo literario argentino de Esteban Echeverría a Roberto Arlt. Buenos Aires: Eudeba, series Ensayos, 31–323.]

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Lugones, Leopoldo (1930). La patria fuerte. Buenos Aires: Círculo Militar. Lugones, Leopoldo (1949). Obras poéticas completas. Madrid: Aguilar. Lugones, Leopoldo (1969). Romancero [1924]. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, series Austral, 6° ed. Lugones, Leopoldo (1980). Los crepúsculos del jardín [1926]. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, series Biblioteca Argentina Fundamental. Lugones, Leopoldo (1988). Cuentos Fantásticos. Madrid: Clásicos Castalia. Edition by Pedro Luis Barcía. Min, Yong-Tae (1981). “Tres etapas del orientalismo en Juan Ramón Jiménez,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, n° 376–378. Madrid, October–December, 284–301. Morán, Francisco (2005). “Volutas del deseo: hacia una lectura del orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano,” Modern Language Notes, vol. 120 (2), Hispanic Issue. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 383–407. Obligado, Pastor Servando (1873). Viaje a Oriente, de Buenos Aires a Jerusalén. Paris: Imprenta Americana de Rouge, Dunon & Fresné. R obin, Armand (1994). “Ce qu’en 1958 on peut savoir d’exact sur les Quatrains d’Omar Khayam,” in Omar Khayam. Rubayat. Paris: Gallimard, series Poésie, 102–105. R oger, Julien (2004). “Leopoldo Lugones, constructor del panteón argentino,” in Daniel Attala, Sergio Delgado & Rémi Le Marc’hadour (eds.). L’écrivain argentin et la tradition. Rennes: Rennes University Press, series Mondes Hispanophones 28, 111–119. Tablada, José Juan (2006). En el país del Sol. New York: Appleton, 1919. [Critical edition: “En el país del sol,” Obras Completas, vol. VIII. Mexico: UNAM, 2006.] Tinajero, Araceli (2003). Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Torre, Guillermo de (1943). “El pleito Lugones-Herrera y Reissig,” La aventura y el orden. Buenos Aires: Losada, 181–220.

CHAPTER 9

The Moorish African Fiction of Roberto Arlt

Africa, it is the moon. Roberto Arlt, Sobre África (1938) In rereading the notes that he wrote in Morocco, and the tales he derived from them, one notices that Arlt found in Africa the images that he carried with him of his previous readings of The Thousand and One Nights. Eduardo González Lanuza, Roberto Arlt (1971) The one who brought misfortune to the ship was the sinister Ab-el-Korda who knelt in the direction of Mecca and prayed every afternoon at sunset, rolling his shiny, almond-shaped eyes. Roberto Arlt, Un viaje terrible (1941)

Certain and Uncertain Africa The collection of Eastern writings by Roberto Arlt (1900–1942) were largely ignored by critics who considered them minor works; however, in the last few decades, the stories in El criador de gorilas [“The Gorilla Breeder”] (1941) have reached many of his readers. Now critics are showing a growing interest. The same is true with the play África (1938), which Leónidas Barletta staged at the Theater of the People. Since then, it has inexplicably fallen into oblivion and many years have passed since

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its last edition. The same may be said about the ten Moroccan chronicles that were published under the subtitle “Morocco” in Aguafuertes españolas (1936) [“Spanish Chronicles”].1 The downplaying of these writings stems from a substantial lack of global interest. Indeed, their thematic contents are radically removed from the urban atmosphere and geography of Buenos Aires that Arlt evoked in his first successful novels, as well as the human types depicted by his characters, or even the values he defended and his daily life portrayals. For a long time, these writings were considered unclassifiable and, within his overall woks, intrinsically marginal by critics and to be far from his natural milieu; thus, appreciation of their creative importance remained pending. It was not until the 1980s that critics took notice of the shift by Arlt, then at the end of his life, toward a fantasy-type narrative with an exotic plot, not as a rejection of his initial literary production, but as a narrative development that, despite its Eastern exoticism, maintained strong links with the rest of his works. Raúl Larra and Raúl Castagnino were the first to notice in Arlt’s earlier works the superficial “traditionalist” character that they linked to a carnival spirit (Larra 1962; Castagnino 1964: 65–69). From the first exegetical works by Eduardo González Lanuza or Omar Borré to Sylvia Saítta, this perception changed. As a result, his entire production is today viewed as a whole and, therefore, includes those writings once considered minor (González Lanuza 1971: 87–90; Borré 1984: 9–25; Gnutzmann 1993: 127–134; Trastoy 2000: 85–95; Saítta 2000: 145–157; Santa 2004: 459–468). Whatever we think of these writings, his trips to Spain and Morocco, taken between 1935 and 1936, undoubtedly exerted a determining influence on Arlt’s life and in his literary production, a fact that led to new paths of exploration. We know the details of his visits to Spain and

1 Arlt’s African tales were published between 1936 and 1940 by Mundo Argentino and El Hogar. The first edition of El criador de gorilas was published in Santiago, Chile, by Zig-Zag publishing house in 1951, its first Argentinean edition (Futuro Editorial). Aguafuertes españolas compiled just some of his Iberian chronicles—only ten of the fourteen original Moroccan chronicles, published in El Mundo from the 30 July to 21 August 1935. Articles excluded from the volume edited by Lorenzo Rosso in December of 1936 are: “El agente nº 80 y su sustituto” (30 July); “¿Dónde está la poesía oriental? Las desdichadas mujeres del Islam. Mugre y hospitalidad” (2 August); “El arrabal moruno. Mis amigos los tenderos. Saludos, genuflexiones y parásitos” (18 August) and “Visita a la escuela musulmana.” “Hay que saber el Corán de memoria. El palmetazo es en la planta de los pies” (19 August). África was first published in Roberto Arlt, Teatro completo (1968).

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Morocco, undertaken while he was a correspondent for El Mundo newspaper. His African phase was brief but intense: on 12 July 1935, he embarked at Algeciras toward Tangier with a stopover in Gibraltar. From Tangier, he proceeded to Tetouan by way of Ceuta before returning to Spain through Malaga. This was the first and last time that he left South America.2 For Arlt, whose parents were European immigrants, this voyage was his only opportunity to experience the social environment of the Old World before the Second War. The trip shaped his apocalyptic vision of Spain, then in the prelude to its civil war, a vision he immediately broadcasted throughout South America. His opinion of Europe was important because it displaced the binarism of a civilized West and a barbarian East. It is true that his vision of the Maghreb and of Sub-Saharan Africa reinforced the negative Orientalist clichés of the Europeans, based on their profound disenchantment with Western civilization and its modernizing agenda. For Arlt, Europe, where the inequality created by the privileged classes ruled, was the living image of social backwardness. Noteworthy is his opinion described in a letter to his mother Ekhaterine and his sister Lila: Europe is only a beautiful sight to Europeans who have left their homeland and feel nostalgic. It is socially a pigsty. The workers live like animals in horrible buildings like those described in Dickensian novels. The only ones who live well are the aristocrats…. I do not know how the poor manage to survive. People talk about the joys of a sun they never see. Beggars from both sexes are everywhere. Blind people abound. The only remarkable things worthy of being seen are the churches because of their stone masonry, or the ancient Arab palaces that represent a civilization destroyed by Catholicism. However, you will admit that it is a bit absurd to travel two thousand water leagues to come admire stone churches. Peasants in the Andalusian countryside live in straw huts…. There are plenty of soldiers, civil guards, police, fat monks, priests, and nuns. All these scoundrels suck the blood from the country while the poor have nothing to eat…. Here there are no garbage trucks because there is no garbage. Nothing is discarded. (Quoted by Larra 1962: 102)

Even though Arlt’s opinion might seem exaggerated because of his hasty generalization of the Old World, in large part he was accurately 2 In 1930, as journalist, he was sent to Uruguay and Brazil, and in 1941 he resided several months in Chile.

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depicting the social situation in Spain on the eve of its civil war, emphasizing the feeling that a new world conflict was inevitable. This vision, reflecting his profound disillusionment, was essential in showing the absence of a civilization model that Arlt could then compare to the reality he found in Morocco and its Spanish territories. To Arlt, so much social and political disillusionment was ameliorated by the empathy he felt with Spaniards, with whose extreme poverty and suffering he identified in his chronicles. What means did Arlt employ to interpret the African and Moroccan reality? Like numerous Argentines of his time, he filled his imagination of the East with assiduous readings of Flaubert’s Salammbo and of The Thousand and One Nights.3 For him, the latter constituted a basic interpretative sieve, an essential means of understanding the East, as he attested in his chronicle “El mercader oriental y Las mil y una noches ” [“The Eastern Merchant and The Thousand and One Nights”] (Arlt 1971: 87–89) to be analyzed later. Arlt’s Eastern universe was constructed by the recounted tales of its different narrators and characters, like Baba the blind man, a kind of Scheherezada, whose narration combines the various adventures of the five acts comprising África. Moreover, this original piece contains some classical resonances. Victoria Cox has pointed out that the tragic scene in the first act of África, in which the father hangs his son, El Mockri, for having conspired against the Caliph, is an inverted interpretation of the Oedipus myth. Arlt recreated a fiction that syncretized the Eastern and Hellenic traditions (Cox 1996: 375–377). He surely must have been familiar with the popular books of Emir Emin Arslan that, in the River Plate region, circulated the archetype of the wonderful and adventurous East, an incredible mixture of splendor and destitution as well as pomp and misfortunes.4 His iconographic imagery was largely influenced by the East, but it was also inspired by Hollywood cinematography through films such as The Son of the Sheik (1926) with Rudolph Valentino or the role of the Egyptian “femme fatale” played by Theda Bara in her famous interpretation of Cleopatra (1917). Arlt openly recognized that Boris Karloff’s The Mummy (1932) inspired his “Historia del señor Jefries y Nassim el Egipcio” [“History of Mister Jefries and 3 His daughter reported that her father used an English version of The Thousand and One Nights as a textbook for his English classes (Arlt 1963: 22) and González Lanuza insists that it was one of his bedside books (González Lanuza 1971: 87–88). 4 See Chapter 8, footnote 14.

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Nassim, the Egyptian”] (Arlt 1994: 163) and acknowledged this actor in his own appreciation of Tangier’s local types (Arlt 1971: 73). He also alluded to films like Georg W. Pabst’s Atlantis (1932) and Joseph Von Sternberg’s Morocco (1930). When he arrived in Tetouan’s Moorish quarters after having visited its modern Spanish neighborhoods, Arlt exclaimed with exotic jubilation: “Here … here is Morocco. The Morocco that you gentlemen know, that of Von Sternberg’s film” (Arlt 1971: 104, 106), starring Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper. It is easy to recognize that his depiction of the East was swayed by all these cultural elements. Moroccan etchings were picturesque because, above all, they emphasized local color as well as its popular folklore that, from the start, Arlt perceived as exotic, portraying their daily customs, diverse habits, contrasts, medieval “backwardness,” etc., that is, he saw them through a series of predefined clichés. This vision may be observed in chronicles such as “Tánger” [“Tangier”], “El narrador de cuentos” [“The Storyteller”], “La danza voluptuosa” [“The Voluptuous Dance”], “Casamiento morisco” [“Moorish Marriage”], “Tetuán, ciudad de doble personalidad” [“Tetouan, a City with a Double Personality”], and “Salida de Tetuán” [“Departure from Tetouan”]. Certainly, Arlt was aware that Tangier and Tetouan were not entirely representative of traditional Moroccan cities. Both cities were international enclaves where European and North American intelligence services were preparing for the war that was soon to follow. The port of Tangier particularly presented him with a display of daily life where one could observe scenes rarely seen elsewhere. Small and large markets seemed right out of an El Bosco painting with their displays of medieval fairs, artisans comingling with merchants, improvised guides, street vendors, children, veiled women, beggars, tourists, spies, street dancers, colonial officials, expatriates, traffickers, etc. Within this setting, there were no shortage of pimps or of gentlemen provocatively displaying their “French prostitute, naked under see-through silk dresses,” and pederasts could examine their potential clientele in broad daylight. This strategic African port located at the gateway to Europe, whose control ensured Mediterranean hegemony, was reminiscent of Boccaccio’s shocking descriptions: We are in Tangier, gentlemen, a Tangier coveted by powerful nations and where the most extraordinary vices coexist in total harmony. Here all is allowed; a fat old man with a pointed beard passes by, gently leaning on a slim young man with a coquettishly tipped fez and a gazelle’s gaze. Then a

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blond American woman in gray pants passes by smoking a cigarette rolled in chocolate paper. (Arlt 1971: 74)

Tangier is Morocco, but its soul is foreign and anachronistic. Its heart is torn between nearby Europe and encompassing Africa. The same goes for Tetouan. An alleged Spanish spy, Luis Morente, warned Arlt “not say Morocco. Say Africa.” However, this innocent suggestion metaphorically reinforces Arlt’s Orientalist concept; he immediately extended it to include the entire continent and even beyond, to the most remote lands of Islam. In this new, fictional imaginary, the extreme north of Morocco would become synonymous with the entire Middle East. Arlt remained a prisoner to his own picturesque precepts. In contact with Morocco, he deployed and consolidated his critical contradictions. In Buenos Aires, as a witness to its dire poverty engendered by a dehumanizing capitalism, he would severely criticize the city’s surrounding modernity. In Morocco, he observed that modernity was not universal; he vehemently criticized a society that, for a lack of a better definition, he qualified as medieval. While strolling through the Moorish center of Tetouan, he reflected thus: “The Middle Ages. I find myself in the presence of lifestyles here that my ignorance had considered obsolete for several centuries. Here, everything is primitive, antiquated, and backward. All functions as it did in the time of Charlemagne, Al-Mansur, or Phillip II” (Arlt 1971: 112). Past bad habits were undoubtedly no better than those of modern times. However, these “backward” and “primitive” scenes caught Arlt’s attraction that was not devoid of nostalgia while he simultaneously condemned the social backwardness of an intrinsically unjust system: Africa, the Africa that arouses and extracts the most contradictory emotions from our hearts. An Africa that, at times, seduces us with its color and, at others, exudes from its entrails a bestiality so repulsive that is terrorizing. (Arlt 1971: 81)

Arlt, a qualified critic of the existential disintegration of Argentinean modernity, once challenged by the East, recognized the same values in the West: “My Western sensibility is derailed, as though I were in a pipe dream” (Arlt 1971: 105). Modern social injustices were negligible in comparison to the archaic society he scrutinized, even more so when keeping in mind that Tangier and Tetouan perfectly illustrated

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unequal development mixed into the coexistence of economic modernity and social traditionalism. Astounded by the living conditions of children and women, industrious stalwarts of a slave and patriarchal society, he alerted his readers to the obvious limitations of representing that society adequately: “We Argentines are less capable of imagining the appalling conditions under which Moroccan peasant women live than a blindman understanding the optical difference that separated one color from another” (Arlt 1971: 99). His vehement description of the reigning morals turned into a sharp condemnation of an archaic society, a faithful tribal holdover from historical antiquity. Chronicles such as “El trabajo de los niños y las mujeres” [“Women and Children’s Work”], “Casamiento morisco” [“Moorish Wedding”], “Noviazgo moro en Marruecos en el año 1935” [“Moorish Courtship in Morocco in the year 1935”], or “La vida campesina en la ficción y en la realidad” [“Peasant Life in Fiction and Reality”] were particularly devoted to portraying this aberrant social order. Dismayed and deeply saddened, Arlt observed with tearful eyes a wedding procession with the bride locked in a silk cage. “Is this a wedding or a sacrifice? I do not know.” The bride’s car moved forward during the revelry, “announcing a permanent and bloody sacrifice, while she, unrecognized, distant, and squatting remained there inside the dark silk cage” (Arlt 1971: 92). In these social chronicles, Arlt broke with the Impressionist perspective, abandoning the colorful, filigreed portrayal to plunge into the miserable and unspeakable reality of the country. He admonished himself and his readers for sharing an erroneous and fantastic Eastern imaginary, one forged in the nineteenth century through literary lies and restored in the twentieth century by filmmakers. Feeling a keen sense of the cruel discrepancy between the Eastern imaginary and the reality of this universe, he speculated that “one of two, or am I the most antipoetic being on Earth and therefore incapable of appreciating its delicate beauties, or did those who wrote about Eastern poetry give free rein to their fantasies and completely forgot reality.”5 Wherefore he proposed amending this imaginary distortion, by focusing on a realistic and social chronicle, which he attempted but failed, to go beyond superficial picturesque descriptions:

5 Roberto Arlt, “¿Dónde está la poesía oriental? Las desdichadas mujeres del Islam, Mugre y hospitalidad,” El Mundo, Buenos Aires, 2 August 1935. As quoted by Sylvia Saítta (2000: 153).

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I am now going to talk to you about Moroccan peasant women, in Africa; not in central Africa, but here on the African Mediterranean coast that has paved roads, in the Africa at the gateway to Europe, in the Africa where films with Joan Crawford are seen, where courses are taught by correspondence and radio stations truly broadcast. (Arlt 1971: 99)

This portrait breaks with the nostalgia for the Romantic bucolic life and the passion for bygone days common among those who endorsed aesthetic superiority over aberrant social reality. Arlt did not criticize modernity from an aristocratic position; on the contrary, he proclaimed and defended democratic values (with socialist echoes) and condemned all social stratification based on exploitation. Moreover, he was much more critical of capitalist modernity, and asserted that its inconsistencies and profound hypocrisy were more harmful than its relatively few advantages. He was essentially a skeptic who, having lost all faith, could no longer maintain the illusion of an improved human condition. Hence, in many passages of his fictional texts and in his etchings, a depreciative annoyance arose that might be attributed to his generalized nihilist feelings and not to a categorical judgment that the Arab, Moroccan, or African cultures deserved. Western characters in his prose do not enjoy a great deal of compassion. They even seem vile and despicable in their flight or profit motivations as, for example, René Vasoier in “La cadena del ancla” [“The Anchor Chain”], Guillermo Emilio in “El cazador de orquídeas” [“The Orchid Hunter”], or Piter in “Ven, mi ama Zobeida quiere hablarte” [“Come, My Lady Zobeida Wants to Talk to You”]. The consternation and severity he exhibited in many of his portrayals arise from this fundamental skepticism clouding his work, not from any resistance to Muslim culture. These necessary precautions for interpreting Arlt’s words did not exempt him from flagrant contradictions. He condemned a Western imaginary of the East that led to a misleading vision of the East while fatally sharing, without admitting it, a number of those presuppositions. Although stubbornly trying to end his obstinacy, Arlt was a prisoner of his cultural heritage. He pitied the condition of women and children whom he likened to cattle: “I think that on those nights when peasant women give birth to baby girls, they must cry bitterly for having brought one more beast of burden into this world” (Arlt 1971: 102). He recognized the enormous human graciousness of the Maghrebians, but underlying this attitude was his cultural bias of contempt and mistrust of the natives.

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“The Arab, even when infested with lice, is a paragon of courtesy…. one that, nevertheless, did not prevent me from buying a fine-toothed comb to daily delouse myself” (Arlt 1971: 107). Like Janus, Tetouan was a two-faced city to Arlt. Its ancient Moorish casbah in its center was surrounded by modern Spanish neighborhoods. He indulged himself by taking strolls to appreciate the authentic beauty of its primitive life and the profoundly human character of its men and women. With the each passing day, he was able to unravel some of the city’s mysteries. Upon his departure, he began to miss this city like no other that he had visited. Tetouan … Tetouan! When I pronounce your name, my heart brakes. The most beautiful city in the world. The city unknown to all, that no one mentions. The city whose streets are celestial catacombs and whose men smile kindly at you…. When I left Tetouan, I had to bite my lip so not to cry. (Arlt 1971: 117)

However, Arlt did not always feel joyous and nostalgic in his strolls through the casbah. Not all was pleasurable there; he often felt lost and that he was walking around in circles, sensations that lead to his fear of becoming a potential victim. He imagined being a contemporary protagonist in Scheherazada’s fantastic adventures. Admiration and mistrust of the exotic were simultaneous sensations. After repeatedly returning to the same spot in the Medina, feeling continuously spied on by avid eyes hidden behind jalousies, he felt a sudden panic. “And suddenly, I tell myself that, here, one could be murdered without anyone finding out. And hurriedly, I start to walk again back in search of White man’s face” (Arlt 1971: 111). This is a good example of the mistrust that Moroccans caused Arlt; he thus viewed the White man as a haven. The fundamental point of his social criticism was centered on the inhuman living conditions of those women and children (described as beasts of burden) who represented the only dynamic and industrious sector of Muslim society. Men were always depicted as lazy, prone to idleness and supported by their entourage of slaves, women, and children who assured the material side of their livelihood while the “lords” spent their days doing business, managing their workshops, or bumming around cafes. Within this criticism, the institution of marriage and the family is held as the epitome of a social injustice (“Muslim marriages are

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synonymous with domestic prisons” [Arlt 1971: 96]) that was a fundamental mechanism for maintaining the inequalities of the Maghrebian patriarchy. Arlt’s essential subject in his criticism of the North African patriarchal society was quietism or male immobility whose characteristics (as already seen) had its roots in the Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Despite the myriad of characters and situations described in The Thousand and One Nights, Arlt thought that it was “a static, immobile book,” the product of a Middle Eastern imagination that “systematically revolves around a sofa,” as if it were a Ferris wheel. This work “resembles an Arab tapestry of a thousand colors that reflects, in its weave of gold and silver threads, the almost static life of its creators” (Arlt 1971: 87). According to Arlt, quietism’s natural perpetuation of The Thousand and One Nights abounded among Arab merchants who spent their lives lounging around on cushions at homes, shops, and cafes. He believed that this contemplative attitude was conducive to their imaginative fantasy development because, ultimately, it was “the line of least resistance.” The tales tend to have a magic outcome, like that of “Open Sesame,” without ever managing to create true literary heroes (typical of Western culture, in its purest Greco-Roman tradition). Arlt thought that the cliché of the “flying carpet” was symptomatic of Eastern narrative outcomes. His trip throughout Morocco helped him in reinterpreting The Thousand and One Nights: “Through serious analysis and by being physically there, … we discovered that what characterizes the Eastern imagination is precisely its lack of vision and imagination” (Arlt 1971: 89). Arlt traveled with a philosopher’s disbelief, disheartened by the false authenticity that he encountered. In Tangier, he observed a parade of “purse vendors whose products portrayed Arab landscapes but were made in Barcelona; yet, they were passed off to tourists as having been made in Morocco” (Arlt 1971: 68). With unrelenting criticism of the ostentatious “authenticity” of the natives, he never missed the opportunity to disapprove of their tourist industry. Consequently, the change in register between his etchings and his fictional texts seems surprising. Although he begins his chronicles with a tone characteristic of the traditional comedy, he slowly began to shift toward social themes and denounced the implausibility of the Eastern imaginary conveyed by literature and cinema. Conscious of the inconsistency between the real East and its Western-conceived image, he tried to correct the latter through his testimonials on social life. It is therefore

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startling that in his fictional narratives, Arlt opted for the same Orientalist clichés that he earlier condemned in creating picturesque backgrounds for his fantastic adventures, that is, his etchings’ serious social issues (inhumane condition of women, etc.) now appeared reduced to simple exotic motifs.

Maghrebian Phantasmagorias The thematic unity of Arlt’s Orientalist fiction was fueled by the Islamic culture whose narrative epicenter he mainly placed in Tangier and Tetouan and, occasionally, in Sub-Sahara Africa or Asia (the Congo, Madagascar, Egypt, Ceylon, Java, etc.) by always portraying Muslim characters.6 The nuclei of the different narratives were built around a plot or a conspiracy, either political (pan-Islamic nationalism or European foreign interests) or private (sordid interests of traders, traffickers, and smugglers). His characters’ psychology revolved around systematic betrayals, the only way to survive in a world where even stones could be plotting some sort of deception. Characters, whether commoners, slaves, or aristocrats, who are cold and calculating and who, under the full guise of religion (constant quotations of Koranic sutras), derive extraordinary personal advantages, like Abdullah el Susi in “El hombre del turbante verde” [“The Man in the Green Turban”]. Every smile hides a betrayal, every committed word is counterfeit currency.7 In this irreverent universe, even among children is innocence feigned and includes a deceptive game, like that of the charming boy Abbul who serves as a decoy in “Los bandidos de Uad Djuari” [“The Bandits of Uad Djuari”]. 6 Arlt published at least ten other Orientalist stories that were excluded from El criador de gorilas: “La pista de los dientes de oro,” Mundo Argentino, 20 January 1937; “La venganza del mono,” El Hogar, 7 May 1937; “Los cazadores de marfil,” Mundo Argentino, 18 January 1938; “El joven Bernier, esposo de una negra,” Mundo Argentino, 9 March 1938; “La venganza de Tutankamón,” Mundo Argentino, 15 May 1938; “El octavo viaje de Simbad el Marino,” El Hogar, 3 June 1938; “Un chiste morisco,” Mundo Argentino, 15 March 1939; “Jabulgot el farsante,” Mundo Argentino, 17 January 1940; “La palabra que entiende el elefante,” Mundo Argentino, 20 March 1940; “Historia de Nazra, Yamil y Farid,” Mundo Argentino, 10 May 1942. Some of his tales have been studied by Domingo Luis Hernández (1995). 7 The connection between Islamic morality and money was pointed out by Trastoy: “The devious interpretations of the sacred book of Islam, frequently found in Arlt’s ‘African’ texts, are also related to the theme of money and, above all, to that of usury, thereby further defining a questionable morality” (2000: 91).

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In this human landscape, Cox and Saítta have recognized continuity with Arlt’s primal narrative universe (Cox 1996: 370; Saítta 2000: 156). His characters are driven by double standards, cynicism, and duplicity. They entrust themselves to occult precepts and the most pious among them are liable to commit the basest of acts. With his Eastern tales, Arlt fully entered the realm of the fantastic; more precisely, a fantastic element appeared in the confrontation between two imaginaries, the Western and the Eastern (Santa 2004: 461). The revelation of the exotic Eastern world, with its trove of miracles, beliefs, and singular customs, created a favorable framework for the deployment of the fantastic, as can be seen in the short story “Odio desde la otra vida” [“Hate from the next life”]. The Arltian fantastic presupposes the connection between two opposing cultural entities. The fantastic universe of these short stories rests on three thematic pillars: the adventure, a Lombrosian8 approach to criminology, and the absence of laws. The first pillar, the quest for adventure, constitutes the head engine that generates the action, though the latter can be of a remarkably diverse type: for example, the botanical passion and corruption in “El cazador de orquídeas” [“The Orchid Hunter”] and the mystical curiosity of Jefries in the presence of Nassim the Egyptian, in the homonymous account. The second pillar, which we call “Lombrosianism,” alludes to the monstrous characteristics inherent in most of the protagonists on account of their criminal activity. Among the handicapped or somewhat disabled, those living on the fringe or self-marginalized, we find Baba the blind man, Salem the eunuch, Halid Majid the burned victim, Bukapi the mutilated, Hussein the lame, Ganan the hunchback, and Agib the oneeyed boy. However, the sight of these characters is not limited to their physical appearance. They all suffer from moral Lombrosianism: they are thieves, usurers, smugglers, heathens, etc. In short, they are people of shapeable opinions, opportunists who, under any circumstance, turn to the Koran to justify the constant Machiavellian nature of their actions. Another manifestation of Lombrosianism is the subhuman or animalistic disorders found in other characters: Think of Black Tula, the nurse of the baby chimpanzee in “La factoría de Farjalla Bill Alí” [“Farjalla Bill Ali’s 8 The term is derived the Positivist Italian criminologist, Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), whose theory, founded on deterministic biology and social eugenics, opposed the notion that crime was inherent in man. He instead defended the idea that inherited criminal proclivities could be traced to physical appearance and flaws.

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Trading Post”], or the Liberian cannibals of “Los hombres fieras” [“The Wild Beast Men”], etc. Finally, the absence of legal regulations among human relationships along with the lack of legal authority is another underlying pillar in these texts. All his stories include vengeance and sordid betrayals, often in multiple forms, created under semi-confidential circumstances that presuppose a complete lack of any legal framework in Middle Eastern societies. Dispute resolution is performed on a strictly personal basis. Men address injustices without mediation of third-party institutions. There is no legal apparatus, only a shallow outline of human justice as defined in the Koran: “… a head for a head, a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye.” The risks taken by those who break the law are purely individual; they expose themselves to the subsequent “justice” of the victim who, by taking revenge, restores the balance of forces between good and evil, as it happens in “Acuérdate de Azerbaijan” [“Remember Azerbaijan”], in “Halid Majid el achicharrado” [“Halid Majid the Burned Victim”], or in “La Factoría de Farjalla Bill Alí,” among other stories. This primitive justice (“avenger justice”), as interpreted by Jocelyne Dakhlia (Dakhlia 2005), constituted one of the most important sociological and literary topics of European Orientalism. In Arlt’s stories, Morocco and its symbolic chain (Africa, Asia, and the entire Islamic sphere) are a space where political, social, and legal arbitrariness wins out. As Cox pointed out, “Roberto Arlt is conscious of the injustices inherent in this [social] system and, at times, he alludes to this fact through images of colonial oppression. Yet, the use of stereotypes and European conceptions of the East predominates in his works” (Cox 1996: 374). His descriptions of the urban topography, the countryside, or the Moroccan Rif region always emphasized immobility, the idea of time standing still, static and eternal, which corresponded with the traditional European perception of the East. His literary stories were less critical than his etchings, as they passively accepted those traditional Eastern topics forged in the Western imaginary throughout the centuries. Given that his 1935 chronicles chronologically preceded his fictional texts,9 we suppose that Arlt consciously chose to detach his African narrations from any explicit criticism. The predictable defiance of his arguments concealed and relinquished their critical nature, which was replaced with 9 His first Eastern tale, “La aventura de Baba en Dimisch esh Sham,” was published on 23 January 1937 in El Hogar; his last, “Ven, mi ama Zobeida quiere hablarte,” on 12 April 1940 in the same weekly.

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the melodramatic. Although brilliant, these tales primarily aroused a sense of extraordinary horror (not devoid of compassion) in readers, as they were not conducive to a calm examination of Africa’s daily life. Only twice does the sharp criticism, previously exhibited in his etchings, reappear in the stories like “La factoría de Farjalla Bill Alí” and “Los bandidos de Uad Djuari.” In the former, the Muslim owner of the post, located in Stanley (now Kisangani on the Congo River), is portrayed as a slave trader, a repulsive profession that he inherited from his family: Farjalla Bill Ali was a born scoundrel. He had a background that he could not deny. His mother’s grandfather had been hanged from a frigate’s mast for having been a slave trader. Farjalla’s father was killed by a merchant. His mother spent quite some time in ebony trafficking. During a nap, a furious elephant killed her with his tusks. Farjalla continued practicing his trade. (Arlt 1994: 25)

This character was so hated that, when he was cruelly executed by his White narrator (a lazy and bitter drunkard), the fact was presented to readers as an act of justice meant to make up for colonial damages. Arlt thus condemned the slave trade with this act and restored a certain balance between good and evil. This tale may be interpreted as a parable condemning the vestiges of the slave trade in modern Africa by denouncing the endurance of this reprehensible practice still followed by Arabs. Incidentally, he delineated in his African tales a rigid social hierarchy. Blacks made up the base of the social pyramid. Freedom deprived and brutalized, they performed manual or domestic slave labor. Muslims occupied the middle sector as craftsmen or merchants. Whites, the top of pyramid, were either idle and eccentric tourists (like Enrique Dogson in “Halid Majid el achicharrado” or Arsenia Spoil and Alberto in “Los banditos de Uad Djuari”), colonial functionaries or managers of the large colonial enterprise and, at times, adventurers running from a shady past (Doctor Piter of “Ven, mi ama Zobeida quiere hablarte” or the exlieutenant René Vasonier of “Cadena del ancla”). However, this hierarchy is seldom openly questioned. Arlt vigorously resumed his criticism of tourism, which he considered a curse brought on by the modern Western world in “Los bandidos de Uad Djuari.” This story recounts the kidnapping of Arsenia and Alberto, taken by a gang of thugs in the outskirts of Fez, by means of a trap set by young Abbul. The outcome is quite unexpected: during their captivity,

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they become acquainted with a “French scoundrel,” a Mister Lanterne, who tells them that the kidnapping was just a simple game and that, in fact, it was just a tourist activity designed for thrill-seeking travelers searching for intense excitement. The gang leader states: Ladies and gentlemen, among the many wealthy people who visit Morocco, eighty percent of them say that “it is really too bad that the colony’s civilization, police force, political leaders, and railroads have caused bandits to disappear. It is really too bad not to live in a time when one faced a terrifying adventure while wandering around a market.” Well, I and these honest believers who have kidnapped you have decided to devote ourselves to exploiting the emotion aroused by being kidnapped. As though we were authentic bandits, we violently detain tourists who, because of their nature, possess an inclination toward Romantic ideas. Afterwards, we release them without demanding ramson for their freedom that, for one dramatic moment, they believed to have lost. If the “kidnapped” wish to pay us for the effort that we have expended to excite them … , then we gratefully accept what they choose to give us. If they opt not to pay, then we equally wish them a lovely trip and place at their disposition the automobile that we have for tourists. (Arlt 1994: 153–154)

This story highlighted the enormous distance existing between the imaginary East (a Western conception) and the real East. Tourism was portrayed through a series of clichés about the East that, far from reality, fed into the desires of Western exoticism. Tourists never wanted to travel to verify Eastern reality, but only to corroborate their trite mental images about the wild and untamed East. In other words, without learning anything new, Westerners aspired to see their own acquired cluster of Eastern prejudices in the flesh; the natives’ only objective was then to confirm those preconceptions. This tale was a rare example of an Eastern portrayal that turned into a bitter criticism of Western tourism’s habits and the imaginary that this phenomenon entailed. In his 1935 chronicle on “Tangier,” Arlt only criticized the natives’ harassment of travelers without mentioning anything about the insatiable Western tourists.

Feminine Prints A most distinguishing aspect between the tales and the etchings was the treatment of female characters. We have witnessed Arlt’s strong censuring of the conditions under which Moroccan women lived. However, when

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he shifted from a journalistic to a literary register, his convictions seemed to have weakened because he thence limited his remarks to certain plain elements of the Eastern decor, with little or no critical commentary. This may be verified through the hierarchical position of female characters in his tales: these characters are relegated to a second tier (Enriqueta Dogson, Rahutia, etc.). It is only in África, that women play a more relevant role (Rahutia and her slave Aischa or Axuxa and her maid Menana), although they are no less affected by the duplicity, greed, or betrayal that characterizes his male characters. As Cox points out, a classical representation of Arab women in the Western imaginary was the “female sphinx” (Cox 1996: 373); Arlt continued this cliché in a rather conventional manner. His character development of Rahutia owed much to the Egyptian princess role that, in cinema, was portrayed by Theda Bara (1885–1955) whose 1917 characterization of Cleopatra established her as the undisputed vamp of silent films. This cinematic reference is essential in characterizing Rahutia who, according to Cox, is “a creature who perfectly corresponds to the characteristics of the femme fatale who ruins men’s lives and is even capable of causing their deaths” (Cox 1996: 375). The dancer, attractive and salacious, portrayed a man’s perfect double, thereby threatening to destroy him. Rahutia’s characterization appears much more polished in África than in El criador de gorilas, published on 20 May 1937 in El Hogar, ten months before the play was staged in the Teatro del Pueblo on 17 March 1938 (Castagnino 1964: 65). From the chronology, we infer that in África, Arlt reinforced the dancer’s vulgar features as included in the first version of his play. In “Rahutia la bailarina,” only one episode of África’s complex plot is revealed; his depiction of the female character is rather shallow, being reduced to the simplest form of expression, though Arlt’s future configuration of the femme fatale had been perfectly defined. Rahutia is África’s female protagonist, but she takes a back seat to the male characters. She has an exact narrative function: to weave together the various stories comprising the intricate triptych of the play, thus hastening the outcome when she saves her own life from Hussein’s revenge (El Mockri’s brother). Axuxa’s portrayal is also profoundly ambiguous in this drama. The story involves a teenager of extremely humble origins, Axuxa, who Hussein found on a street nearly dead. Having recovered and now an ambitious woman, she proves herself capable of committing the worst

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atrocities imaginable, as when she flogs and beats to death her slave Menana for having been disloyal. To accomplish her future husband’s desire for revenge, she becomes Hussein’s wicked tool when he orders Salem to amputate Muhammad’s foot. Female characters sink to the basest levels and have no clout at all. They are completely subjected to the will of men. From being a timid pack animal, Axuxa became a cold and murderous device, only concerned with fulfilling Hussein’s revenge and her own desire to become a woman (Hussein swore “not to touch her” until after taking revenge on Muhammad). Sexual drive and death are here combined with a criminal venture. Her initiation to love demands a sacrifice. To become a woman and wife, Axuxa must first become a homicidal weapon. By means of a crime, she transitions, without a moral conversion, from her initial subhuman condition to her new stature as a wealthy woman. Her character is a synopsis of the tragic and emblematic disjunctive that “Oriental” women face in Arlt’s fiction. These girls can only become women by tacitly accepting a criminal pact. The distinguishing element between Arlt’s African fictional writings and his etchings is that, in the former, readers neither object to nor identify with the characters. Yet, within his Romantic pessimism, the social portrayals filling his etchings move readers to empathy. Devoid of all social content, his Eastern plots are described to readers as profoundly alien and pleasantly exotic: Here the fantastic underlying layer is placed at the service of Orientalist exoticism. Readers’ identification, even a partial one, with any of his characters is clearly impossible. Arlt’s fiction replicates a basic quality of European Orientalism. The East is, essentially, the unassimilable “Other.” In the East, human primitive essence survived, stripped of the selections of Western modernity. In her assessment of her father’s singular dramatic piece, Mirta Arlt advanced this idea: África transports us to the plane of adventure among the characters of The Thousand and One Nights whose primitive psychologies and lives were destined for concrete and simple causes: smuggling, intrigue, theft, revenge, desire, conquest, and conspiracy. The psychological subtlety and the inner torments of Westerners have been removed and we are faced with beings inclined to fanaticism, whether in their ideas or through their intrigues or lives. The piece … emphasizes the performance and colorful language of circumlocution and Eastern judgment. (Arlt 1968a: 191, 193)

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Equatorial Latitudes Among the collection of tales comprising El criador de gorilas, a series of stories set in equatorial Africa or Asia, some show distinctive traits of the then Moroccan reality. We are referring to “La factoría de Farjalla Bill Alí” (Stanley, Congo), “Los hombres fieras” (Monrovia, Liberia), “Accidentado Paseo a Moka” [“Rugged Ride to Moka”] (Bioko, Equatorial Guinea), “El cazador de orquídeas” (Madagascar), as well as “Halid Majid el achicharrado” and “Acuérdate de Azerbaiján,” partially set in Java and Ceylon. These tales were composed with total imaginary independence from Arlt’s travels in Morocco; however, they contain a narrative axis like his Maghrebian stories because Muslims are the protagonists. There is evidence of an extension or contagion phenomenon produced by what Arlt had observed in Morocco: “To see part of Africa, with its creative fantasy, was the same as seeing the whole of Africa in its entirety,” said González Lanuza (1971: 89). It is as if these other equatorial tales also arose from the creative language of Baba, the main character in África, whose picturesque contours Arlt portrayed in his chronicle “El narrador de cuentos” after visiting the large market in Tangier (Arlt 1971: 75–80). Contact with the traditional Maghrebian culture renewed Arlt’s oral literature. Baba is a xej-el-clam (storyteller), and Arlt appropriated this model for his own literary creation. These tales interpret a situation of dual colonialism: the Western in Sub-Sahara Africa as well as the Muslim (for example, Farjalla Bill Ali), an essential ally of White colonial exploitation. The Black man was no longer a servitude slave as observed in Arlt’s Eastern tales and play. He has now taken us to the heart of Africa, with its animistic or syncretic tribal populations. If the Maghreb appeared to have had a degraded civilization in comparison to West, one that was configured as a radical (and exotic) otherness, the African continent was represented as a preeminent savage land. It was now not about men from the desert (Arabs), but men from the jungle (Blacks). The Moroccan tales are stories of urban intrigue while the equatorial series are comprised of rural accounts that describe men engulfed in nature, in a daily struggle against it to be able to deserve the qualification of “human.” These stories reveal a certain parallelism with the narrative strategies of Horacio Quiroga and Rudyard Kipling. Their protagonists not only engage in colossal struggles against jungle diseases and threats, but also against the dark side of human

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existence. These plots recreate neither treason nor earthly collusion among Muhammad’s false penitents, but the vicissitudes of men leading a near savage existence whose human condition lies closer to that of animals. In “La Factoría de Farjalla Bill Alí,” Arlt’s perception of Blacks is extremely crude because he has stripped them of all humanity. The feelings aroused by native suffering scarcely differ from the consternation felt in witnessing an animal in pain. Tula, a Black woman, compensates for the loss of her son by placing her maternal affection on a baby gorilla. When Judge Traitering, an African American minor lawyer from Florida (commissioned by Firestone, a tire and rubber company) settles in Monrovia, he is astounded by the fatality of cannibalism. The jungle’s natural force entraps and imprisons humans (Traitering at first, then his successor, young Denis). These judges, like the members of the Krus tribe, become deprived of their own human dignity and are thus reduced to a condition close to that of wild beasts. The “Bupies,” natives of Fernando Poo, are also described as near savages. Their customs are deemed barbaric and cruel. A White adventurer momentarily rescues the hero Bokapi from execution, a sentence reserved for adulterous women. Later, out of loyalty for her savior, she sacrifices herself by being devoured by a boa constrictor. Modernity finds it difficult to insert itself into the Moka Valley, regardless of the elderly narrator’s nostalgia: “How much, oh how much all this has changed! Africa is no longer Africa. My dear young man, Africa is dead” (Arlt 1994: 106). Despite his heroic gesture, the adventurer displays no sign of racial tolerance when, after rescuing Bokapi, he admits: “I usually place Blacks on the same level as beasts of burden” (Arlt 1994: 114). In “El Cazador de orquídeas,” Mother Nature’s full force returns directed at the men who offend her. This type of Edenic paradise defends itself by attacking the “Western” invaders who are trying to unravel its mysteries. Domingo Luis Hernández says that “the strange black flower that the characters are pursuing contains human characteristics; it is a beautiful, hideous, hysterical, and impulsive monster, like the femmes fatales who drive men to madness” (1995: 110–111). The poisonous snake that nests in the coveted black orchid is a sort of guardian of the sacred temple whose appearance makes men’s time stand still. This African fantasy of Arlt is remarkably like the story “Viola Acherontia” by Lugones given that both were inspired by Baudelaire’s idea of la fleur

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de mal [“The Evil Flower”]. Together with another tale having Conradian resonances, “Los cazadores de marfil” [“Ivory Hunters”]10 (a tale of botanical adventures in Madagascar), it is one of the most accomplished examples of Arlt’s fatalism. This fatalism assured that audacity, confrontation, ingenuity, transgression, or the desire for freedom on the part of his African characters was inevitably punished by death.

Conclusion A global assessment of Arlt’s Eastern writings yields mitigated results. Surely, we have seen that his use of traditional Orientalist clichés with exotic and/or fictional ends abounds, and that critical analysis diminishes when the written text shifts from a journalistic register to pure fiction. A clear example of this folkloric use of the East to the detriment of the psychological development of characters is the “exordium” from the theatrical piece África.11 Our general evaluation contradicts Perera San Martín’s opinion, when he states that: … in the tales of El criador de gorilas, Arlt’s fatalism, dressed in djellaba and disguised in Muslim metaphysics, denounces the worst evils of today’s world: racism, intolerance, overall excessive greed, an aggressive arrogance and incredulity on the part of Westerners that is exacerbated within the colonial context and the use of the entire inventory of traditional Orientalist “exoticism” derived from this wondrous story. (1982: 92)

We believe this interpretation to be incorrect because, although Arlt was aware of the evils that Moroccan society was experiencing, the purpose of these fictional stories was not to reinforce their denunciation, but instead to use the local color as a scenographic backdrop that would 10 This story is set in equatorial Congo and was not included in El criador de gorilas. See Footnote 6 above. 11 Mirta Arlt emphasized this cross-referencing with his other plays: “[In África] the playwright does not stop to delve into psychological anguish and metaphysical concerns; on the other hand, the subject allows him to change his attitude and to give preeminence to history, the fable, and the argument though, to do that, he had to distance himself from his own conception of the world and to allow himself to be seduced by another world with other laws and other men; naturally, the entire world seen from this new perspective is another world” (Arlt 1968b: 12). This appreciation, which exclusively observes the internal rupture within Arlt’s works, does not account for the external coherence of África with regard to the Western Orientalism that was being diffused during those years.

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allow him to display vivid literary adventures. Certainly, some passages from his stories (and to a larger extent, his chronicles) reveal considerable critical characterizations: For example, the weight of colonial rule is clearly noticeable in several stories. But this criticism does not register as a clear proposition. On the contrary, Arlt himself often embodied the Western arrogance that he criticized (not without reticence), in chronicles like “Tangier.” His usual criticism of modern urban society, on whose model the Buenos Aires suburbs was developed, appears many times in “Tangier” as a refuge from the social, economic, and political backwardness that prevailed in Morocco. Naturally, Arlt was skeptical enough to avoid falling into the naïvely traditionalist trap (nostalgic and reactionary) represented by Jorge Max Rohde who advocated for the maintenance or revival of the archaic structures of the past. However, it is obvious that considering the social medievalism in Morocco, the evils of modern urban society were painted as lesser evils. Perera San Martín minimized to no end his assessment of these Orientalist stereotypes: “Environments, situations, and characters are introduced with such a proliferation of exotic commonplaces that it is impossible to take them seriously” (1982: 104). We admit that a scant number of informed readers, having traveled to Morocco or to the East before Arlt, understood that these tales were a fictitious portrayal of these customs, one removed from a trustworthy depiction. Yet, most of Arlt’s avid readers must have assumed that the real East was very similar to his descriptions. Today it is undoubtedly difficult to determine to what extent Arlt’s writings contributed to reinforcing the literary imaginary of what Argentines “already knew” (or thought they knew) about the East. It must not be forgotten that Arlt was the first Argentinean journalist and popular writer who thoroughly dealt with the Eastern subject. Almost all travelers and writers we have discussed up to this point wrote for a limited public and their texts were distributed within a rather narrow literary circle. But, Arlt’s prior prestige assured him a wide audience. Of course, our analysis does not detract from a positive aesthetic and stylistic evaluation of his works. We agree with recent critics that Arlt’s collection of Eastern fiction should not be considered marginal and that it makes a relevant contribution to his literary production. In general, the style of these stories is excellent because it almost always reveals his effective, original, and surprising literary expertise; nonetheless, their conceptual composition continuously reproduces European Orientalist stereotypes. Consideration (not to be disdained one) remains open on

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whether Arlt truly believed the series of Orientalists clichés that recurred in his work. His specific and systematic use of these clichés, however, gave tacit approval to Eastern stereotypes of the European imaginary. For Arlt, a fierce critic of Buenos Aires’s modernity, very little or nothing seemed to be salvageable among Eastern cultures. The main virtue of these texts is that they were the first to register the Eastern motif within Argentinean fictional literature. Until Arlt, only in an episodic and tangential manner had this motif inspired the writers we have examined (for example, Echeverría, Mansilla, and Lugones) who mostly preferred to create their travel essays at the expense of literary fiction.12 Curiously, just when Argentinean travel chronicles on the East began to timidly break free from the classic European archetype on the matter, Arlt significantly included traditional Orientalist topics in these first fictional narrations. When the Eastern theme took hold for the first time in Argentinean letters, its fictional treatment took a step backwards regarding testimonial production. Arlt undoubtedly opened a new door. After his death, Orientalist fiction would soon be resumed by Bernardo Kordon who continued the African theme in his 1946 book, Tambores de la selva [“Jungle Drums”].

References Arlt, Mirta (1963). “Prólogo,” in Roberto Arlt. Novelas completas y cuentos. Buenos Aires: Compañía Fabril Editora. Arlt, Mirta (1968a). “África. Valoración crítica,” in Roberto Arlt. Teatro completo, vol. 1–2. Buenos Aires: Schapire, 191–193. Arlt, Mirta (1968b). “Presentación y ubicación de Roberto Arlt dramaturgo,” in Roberto Arlt. Teatro Completo, t. I. Buenos Aires: Schapire. Arlt, Roberto (1971). Aguafuertes españolas. Buenos Aires: Compañía General Fabril Editora. Arlt, Roberto (1994). El criador de gorilas. Un viaje terrible. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Edition by Teodosio Fernández. Borré, Omar (1984). “Prólogo,” in Roberto Arlt. Estoy cargada de muerte. Buenos Aires: Torres Agüero Editor, 9–25. Castagnino, Raúl Héctor (1964). El teatro de Roberto Arlt. La Plata: National University of La Plata. 12 We must add to this list Víctor Mercante’s essay, Tut-Ankhamon y la civilización de Oriente (1928), which recounts the details of this famous tomb’s discovery by British archaeologist Howard Carter in November 1922.

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Cox, Victoria (1996). “Viajes reales y ficticios: Roberto Arlt y su descripción del Oriente,” Monographic Review/Revista Monográfica, n° 12: 368–378. Dakhlia, Jocelyne (2005). L’Empire des passions. Paris: Aubier, series Historique. Gnutzmann, Rita (1993). “Viaje real y viaje mental en la obra de Roberto Arlt,” in Alun Kenwood (ed.). Travellers’ Tales, Real and Imaginary, in Hispanic World and Its Literature. Melbourne: Voz Hispánica, 127–134. González Lanuza, Eduardo (1971). Roberto Arlt. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, series La historia popular, n° 35. Hernández, Domingo Luis (1995). Los cuentos de Roberto Arlt. Tenerife: University of la Laguna. Larra, Raúl (1962). Roberto Arlt, el torturado [1950]. Buenos Aires: Quetzal, 3º ed. Perera San Martín, Nicasio (1982). “Distancia y distanciación en El criador de gorilas,” in Alain Sicard (ed.). Seminario sobre Roberto Arlt. Poitiers: Publications du Centre de Recherches Latino-Américaines, University of Poitiers, 87–110. Saítta, Sylvia (2000). El escritor en el bosque de ladrillos: una biografía de Roberto Arlt. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Santa, Eugenia R. (2004). “La mirada del extranjero en dos cuentos de El criador del gorilas,” Alba de América, Revista Literaria, July, n° 23 (43–44): 459–468. Trastoy, Beatriz (2000). “África, de Roberto Arlt: lo propio, lo ajeno,” in Osvaldo Pellettieri (ed.). Roberto Arlt: dramaturgia y teatro independiente. Buenos Aires: Galerna-Fundación Roberto Arlt, 85–95.

PART V

Building Up a Literary and Cultural History of Argentinian Orientalism

CHAPTER 10

General Conclusion

Oh! What a pleasure to travel, to live a for a while in Europe, the Far West, or the Far East, outside of one’s country! Never have I felt happier than at the antipodes of my beloved homeland. Eduardo F. Wilde, Letter to Miguel Cané, Jr.

The Oriental Ellipsis in Argentinean Literature Though a late comer, Argentinean Orientalism is a subset of the European model in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Specialists like Hernán Toboada point out that this intrinsic dependence on the Old World impoverished the contribution of Ibero-American Orientalism in terms of knowledge, laying bare an important scholarship dearth that “regretfully merged all the flaws with a few of the rare virtues that this model provided” (Taboada 1998: 305). It is difficult to disagree with this general assessment but, given the Argentinean authors examined here, we must temper it and put it in perspective because, from Modernism’s birth, we can verify that Argentinean Orientalist writers clearly manifested a determination to detach themselves from the European Orientalist matrix. Incidentally, this break was not sudden, but instead it may be described as “two steps forward, one step back.” On Orientalism, this dependence on Europe was not limited to Ibero-American; the same may be said about American Orientalism during much of the nineteenth century, even though it appeared much earlier than in Ibero-America © The Author(s) 2020 A. Gasquet, Argentinean Literary Orientalism, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54466-9_10

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and showed, around 1890, the same “imperial” vocation as its referents (Schueller 2001: 9–10). The greatest difference between European Orientalism and its South American imitation was precisely the fact that Ibero-American followers never had (then and now) a clear disposition for a political, ideological, and cultural conquest of the Eastern space. Regardless of its enormous flaws (intellectual snobbism of elites) and its limitations (absence of its own school of thought), South America’s peripheral affiliation to Orientalism became, through its impotence and omission, a virtue. This facilitated a certain openness toward an appreciation of the East because there were no economic or geopolitical interests that would put the continent at odds with Eastern or Western powers. At least in its phenomenological reading, the discourse of the European Enlightenment on the East contained little or no self-reflective attitude: for Europeans, the East never constituted, except in exceptional cases, a path to learn about themselves, an opportunity to learn about themselves, to inquire about the nature of their contradictions and flaws, particularly after the collapse of Absolutism and the triumph of Reason. In Montaigne or Voltaire, one still finds important vestiges of a time when the passion for the East was an overlapping and intelligent form of critical introspection. However, from the time of Volney and the ideologues, this introspective reflection from Eastern studies disappeared, to the point of falling into disregard within a generation. By the time European Romanticists had won, this self-criticism had disappeared. Chateaubriand abolished the East as a constituent part of the West and, from that moment on, Europeans would view the East as the embodiment of a radical alterity. Although somewhat attenuated, this concept could still be viewed in the works of Lamartine and Nerval. Gautier dreamt of the preservation of an earthly and primitive East, uncorrupted by Western influence. But this dream was only an inversion of the symbolic (moral) victory of Christianity over Islam that Chateaubriand believed to have observed and that would go no farther. As a global movement, South American Orientalism played, from the start, a self-reflective role: it searched among vague and exotic areas for support to either elaborate a new national political program or to configure local aesthetics. Echeverría and Alberdi realized the first unintended attempts at Eastern adaptation in the River Plate region. These attempts, with no other intention than to get to know Romantic authors like Byron, interfaced with the program to create a national poetics. We have analyzed

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the blindness, racism, and zealous determination of Sarmiento in relation to the East. His brief Algerian experience only worsened his prior opinions (in San Juan and Chile) about the barbaric and backward East. Despite such folly, we emphasized that his Orientalism, in contrast with European Orientalism of the time, was completely reflexive and introspective: the East constituted an essential figure in his conceptualization of Argentinean barbarism. His thoughts about the East served as a foundation to his national reflection. To think about that foreign and exotic universe that the East represented was, for Sarmiento, a colossal enterprise of political introspection on an Argentinean scale. This self-consciousness is less obvious in Mansilla whose wordy descriptions may be attributed to his frivolous character as well as to his youth and arrogance that accompanied him on his journey throughout Asia and Africa when he was barely seventeen years old. His trip throughout these territories was an absolute biographical accident during a time when his uncle’s tyranny was reminiscent of Ottoman rule. It remains to be seen whether this youthful experience weighted in his measured understanding of the “Argentine other,” the Ranquel Indian tribe, whose enormous humanity he was able to witness at a time when he was also condemning the pettiness of the White man. Obligado was the first Argentinean traveler of the tourist era to travel in the East. His testimonials were far from original; he gathered little firsthand information and extensively used French and English travel guides to describe an archeological East unbeknown to his readers. Nevertheless, in his rough portrayals, one could already detect an explicit tendency to distance himself from his European counterparts. In his chronicles, it is patently clear that this ambivalence of tone showed his rupture with the West. Simultaneously, he was unable to fully accept the imperial discourse of European Orientalism because, as an Argentine, he felt obligated to condemn the excesses of colonialism and preferred to highlight the positive aesthetic elements that he observed in Egypt and Palestine. Wilde’s travels through the Middle and Far East attested to a concern that differed with classical European Orientalism. He set out to explore these regions with the idea of disclosing all the signs of modernity that could be assimilated for fulfilling the process of political and institutional modernization that Argentina was experiencing at the end of the nineteenth century. We saw the tough assessment that he made of the Maghreb and the Muslim world. However, Wilde found the Japanese modernization model worth studying and adopting as an alternative to

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the model proposed by Europe and the United States. He was perhaps the first traveler whose musings aimed at breaking the triangular structure of peripheral Orientalism that gave South American travelers a second-hand view of an East as seen by Europeans. Wilde did not praise the social and political Old World model. Instead, he harshly criticized it for its imperfections, for preserving the bad habits of the former regime. Through Wilde’s testimonials, Argentinean Orientalism obtained significant autonomy with respect to the European archetype. Although it inherited numerous Orientalist clichés that served as “picturesque adjectives,” Lugones’s imaginary trip lengthened, in its own way, the distance from the European model. Tinajero noticed important differing points among Ibero-American Modernist writers like José Tablada, Ambrogi, or Gómez Carrillo. After the Orientalist deception, the Modernists outlined a certain critical and aesthetic independence. Lugones was caught between continuities and ruptures, like those of his Modernist colleagues. But, unlike his peers, he never traveled in these regions. His imaginary attraction for the East was therefore increased; yet, he had to adapt it to a certain local decoding, at a time when the Creole earthly imaginary was emphasized in Argentinian literature, almost as an indispensable requirement for the enormous task of building the national pantheon. Arlt was more constrained in his assessment of the East because his fiction only included Islamic countries, thus ignoring, with few exceptions, the Far East. His discourse was ambiguous because he continued to employ almost all traditional clichés about the Maghreb. His caustic social criticism, characteristic of some of his journalistic chronicles, disappeared completely in his fictional stories in which vivacious, picturesque plots prevailed. In his Eastern texts, Arlt seemed to defend the idea that Argentinean modernity was a lesser evil when compared to the calamities of the Islamic East. His fiction took an unusual direction, but the expressed ideas again take up the familiar topics of European Orientalism. Though this portrayal was not very favorable, Arlt did retain the honor of having been the one well known writer to launch the Eastern theme in Argentinean fiction. He was the first to give literary citizenship to an Orientalism that, until then, with the only previous exceptions of Carlos Muzzio Sáenz Peña (1916) and Álvaro Melián Lafinur (1927), had only existed in quotations, evocations, guides, travel journals, partial semblances, and inconstant causeries, but these inclusions were not considered genuine literary creations. The most interesting discovery we made during this study was that, from the beginning, other cultures, different from Western and

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autochthonous cultures, intervened in the formation of the Argentinean and Ibero-American imaginary. Certainly, the East does not hold the same importance as the Old World in the configuration of the Argentinean imaginary. Although the interest for the exotic East among Argentines was conditioned by their European readings, it was no less certain that their interest in the East was genuine; as such, we cannot dismiss this interest because it resorted to preexisting models. This observation is extremely important since it tends to break the traditional bipolarity (dialogue between the Old and the New World) in Ibero-American cultural studies, allowing us to understand that there was also an authentic motivation to discover other people and horizons, whether cultural and religious, outside the exclusive American-European binomial. We must underscore the constant presence of the Eastern theme in Argentinean literature since the generation of 1837. This examination, which tends to dismantle the idea of bipolarity in the Ibero-American cultural and political configuration, echoes recent historiographic developments around a multipolar globalization process that it is not just limited to trade or economic flow. For example, Serge Gruzinski is today trying to show that ever since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there has been a globalization bug among New World elites (Gruzinski 2004), whose commercial exchanges cannot be limited to the mother country but include Asia and Africa as well.

Desiderata of an East to the South Today the Eastern motif in Argentinean literature is of essential interest to literary criticism and the history of ideas: it extracts Argentinean culture from the self-referential history (Argentina and South America) and the bipolar (Europe and the United States) thereby contributing an additional element to the culture of miscegenation. The study of Argentinean Orientalism provides a decentralized vision on at least two levels: first, it breaks the cultural and ideological Spanish American hegemony, its Iberian roots, and “Arielismo” (Ibero-American myth)1 ; second, it opens

1 “Arielismo” is an ideological movement started by José Enrique Rodó, an Uruguayan Modernist, with his essay Ariel (1900). Basing himself on the characters of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Rodó defends the idea of an Ibero-America that inherited human and spiritual values from the Greco-Roman culture. This idea is embodied by Ariel, who opposes Caliban because the latter stands for a materialist, utilitarian, and dehumanizing philosophy

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a cultural dialogue between two regions that had been judged peripheral regarding the centers of economic, political, and cultural power. We have seen that this dialogue between peripheries was, and still is, largely viewed through the ideological lenses of the central powers. The independence of values, the true autonomy of the Eastern imagery, was not acquired beforehand. It was a difficult victory, one accomplished on a case by case basis. Since the nineteenth century, much of the Argentinean politicocultural debate has followed two main paths: one that placed its Hispanic roots over all the continent’s cultural heritage as well as another that favored the emergence of a Latin American discourse in defense of traditional values. These two currents have given rise to many attempts at cultural fusion as, for example, the Creole character (criollismo) or Ricardo Rojas’s Eurindia (Rojas 1951). However, these alternatives were all founded on a narrow concept, that is, on an opposition between the “interior” and the “exterior” that strengthened and added prestige to the concept of “Our America” so dear to José Martí. Ibero-American Orientalism (not just Argentinean) offers the advantage of resisting this bipolar delimitation, thus opening the way to multiple cultural determinations and interactions. In addition to a literary or ideological interest, Orientalism has a migratory handle in Argentina as well as in other countries on the continent.2 It provides a deeper cultural and social understanding of the phenomenon of migration from Japan, China, and Syria-Lebanon. Almost all these migratory groups were systematically considered as “a foreign body within the body of the nation, and as constitutively decadent both in the physical and moral sense,” as stated by Morán (2005: 385).3 The time has come to expand the study of this corpus. The significant numbers of Korean as embodied by the United States. Ariel is viewed as a heated defense of “Latinoamericanism,” which stands counter to the designs of American imperialism. This Manichean interpretation is founded on Latin American perceptions and corresponds to the racial and cultural theories developed toward the end of the nineteenth century as a result of the Spanish American War (1898). 2 Let us consider the Chinese immigration to Cuba and Peru; or the large Japanese community in Brazil, Peru and, to a lesser extent, Argentina; or the noted SyrianLebanese immigration to many South American regions; or the large number of East Indian minorities in Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and other Caribbean islands. 3 The author studied the anti-Orientalist spirit that involved a large part of the Latin American national discourse, especially at the end of the nineteenth century.

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(Kim 2016), Taiwanese, or continental Chinese immigrants to Argentina during the last few decades will soon require attention because its impact on the national culture will soon be manifested (Mera 1998; Mera et al. 2005). The job to complete the study of Argentinean Orientalist literature is vital. The winding red thread of the Argentinean Orientalist literature from 1940 until the present remains to be followed. We have in mind a follow-up to this study that should adhere to the analysis of three essential corpora: (a) the Orientalist assimilation made by various members of the Revista Sur group or its associates (Victoria Ocampo, Borges, Murena, Mujica Láinez, Silvina Bullrich, et al.); (b) writers who acknowledge the impact of China’s communist revolution (Juan L. Ortiz, Bernardo Kordon, or María Rosa Oliver); and (c) post-Chinese cultural revolution writers (Luisa Futoransky, Alberto Laiseca, Martín Caparrós, César Aira, et al.) These three groups of Argentinean contemporary Orientalism regrouped around two crucial center points whose obvious dividing line was Mao’s 1949 revolution. What was essential about the Orientalism produced by Revista Sur’s members was that it anteceded said political event and went as far back as the 1920s and 1930s (Gasquet 2008). However, since the 1950s, positive evaluations of this revolution have often been viewed as the emergence of a new model to be followed, one with an irregular impact on literary fiction. Since the 1970s, this appreciation of the Chinese model begins to erode, giving ground to a disillusionment that, at the same time, opens the door to Orientalist fiction. The unemotional studies on Orientalism, by Ocampo, Borges, and other conspicuous contributors to the journal and publisher Revista Sur, deserve a special monograph. Yet, we must aver that their intellectual approach significantly differs from that of this study. Likewise, it would be important to carry out a program that would examine the editorial framework of Orientalism’s dissemination in Argentina or Ibero-America. Productive efforts could certainly be made to include Orientalist research in other artistic disciplines, including historical thought (Espinar Castañer 2015). We hope that this work will someday elicit a continued debate, discoveries, and corrections, not only among literary critics, but also among cultural and philosophical historians and, finally, among interested readers who were the recipients of these old, as well as current, Argentinean Orientalist texts. We can legitimately ask ourselves whether this last, pending research is still part of the Orientalist subject. In fact, we may expand this question

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to include most of the authors studied in these pages. To what extent may we consider their writings Orientalist? The answer is not so simple. Given what has been detailed here, the continuities and the lags regarding Orientalist studies are numerous. Said’s main objection to Western Orientalism was that it was configured at the intersection between knowledge and power. Undoubtedly, Argentinean peripheral Orientalism cannot claim the same. In any case, knowledge and power were never at the service of an imperial project, a fact that changes the underlying political stakes. Nonetheless, this does not invalidate the fact that the national Orientalist discourse has contributed, in another context, to the building of an imaginary border in Argentina when, during key moments, it was seeking to establish a determinant national model. Knowledge and power must be read as determining elements for the appropriation (symbolic and material) of an internal geography (physical and mental) of the national territory. If South American Orientalism is affiliated to European Orientalism, it is no less true that the determination of colonial conquest that hid this discipline in Europe is also partially found in Ibero-America. To Europeans, barbarians were outside the borders of the Old Continent but, according to Sarmiento, barbarians were inside those of South American. During Ibero-America’s nation and identity building in the nineteenth century, the Eastern example served to conceptualize the idea of the “barbarian within,” a creature that set an imaginary boundary for new citizens. As the nation consolidated, the East was able to be slowly assimilated thanks to its positive aesthetic, spiritual, and creative values and no longer excluded because of its “otherness,” or its negative political, cultural, or anthropological characteristics. It is relevant to place this series of Eastern texts within the larger Orientalist ensemble, but only on the condition that this basic nuance is admitted: Argentinean Orientalism had symbolic, ideological, and political “internal” consequences, not “external,” as did the European colonial model. The appropriation of an Eastern imaginary played an important role in the Argentinean enterprise of delineating its own civilization project of “exclusion,” that is, one that was to exterminate or marginalize “barbarians,” whose qualities were derived from the original Tartar or Eastern model. Likewise, Argentinean Orientalism contributed to another main symbolic mission: the fight against Rosas’s dictatorship, whose government was likened by Sarmiento to that of an absolute Eastern despot, a Pampas version of Harun Al-Rachid or Pacha Mehemet Ali.

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According to European Orientalists, the mythical Eastern political model was founded on an arbitrary notion: an empire with clay feet, erected on shaky alliances made out of passion and the constitutive frailty of elective affinities. This model not only served to conceptualize Rosas’s dictatorship but, by contrast, to also envision the “civilized” nation that was meant to replace him after his 1852 overthrow. By the time of the liberal model’s victory, brought about by the Generation of 1880 around the time of the country’s Centennial, the urgent political and ideological need to conceptualize barbarianism and despotism had faded and declined. Since then, though many of the prejudices that circulated earlier remained, a new and enlightened outlook, both aesthetic and positive, emerged among the Argentinean travelers to the East (Gasquet 2015). Although more generous, this new perception was as unreal and distorted at the previous one because it was founded on a naïve transposition of The Thousand and One Night and a second generation of French Orientalist writers (Gautier, Flaubert, Loti, et al.). These new readings served to widen the imaginary geography by taking it for the first time to the Far East and its Hindu and Buddhist cultures. The return to polyphonic or anti-monotheistic spirituality, identified with the interval between the two world wars, brought about the adoption of a new type of Eastern influence on account of its pacifist and nonviolence theories. That important Orientalist chapter, which Lugones started along with some members of Revista Sur, remains to be studied, as is the historical chapter that began with the 1949 Chinese revolution whose influence, on the intellectual and artistic sphere of Argentines, was considerable. This particular way of “orientalizing the oriental” (as Said defined it) visible in Argentinean letters. Such a process, having met local requirements and having been filtered through European reflections, acquired a character of its own over time (Gasquet 2015). Whatever the evaluation, retrospective or contemporary, of the Orientalist theme in Argentinean literature, it has been the goal of this study to draw attention to the multiplicity of cultural horizons that contributed to establishing the foundation for the appropriation of a universal culture in Argentina. Through the curiosity of all the different readings, elitist or popular, and through the contact of travelers with people from faraway lands, the Oriental imaginary contributed to consolidate the well-deserved reputation of cosmopolitanism within Argentinean literature.

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Author Index

A Abd-El-Kader (Emir), 86, 161, 171 Abd-El-Ramen, 86 Abraham, 89 Aira, César, 269 Alarcón, Pedro Antonio, 135 Alberdi, Juan Bautista, 63, 65, 103 Alcorta, Diego, 57, 58 Alexander the Great, 73 Ali Bey (Mameluk), 18 Alix (Alexandre-Louis Félix), 76, 77, 92 Al-Mansur, 242 Alsina, Adolfo, 134 Altamirano, Carlos, 42, 49, 75 Álvarez Thomas, José Ignacio, 134 Amade (Colonel), 176 Amat de Palou y Pont, 27 Ambrogi, Arturo, 206, 209, 213, 222, 266 Andrews, 61 Antar, 50, 53 App, Urs, 14

Arlt, Mirta, 240, 253, 256 Arlt, Roberto, 4, 10, 237–258, 266 Arnault (General Hippolyte Renault), 89, 90 Arslan, Emir Emin, 240 Asuero, Pablo Martín, 206 Aurelian (Emperor), 19

B Balbi, Adriano, 58 Balcarce, Juan Ramón, 134 Bara, Theda, 240, 252 Barcia, Pedro Luis, 47, 50 Barletta, Leónidas, 237 Baroja, Pío, 209 Baron of Tott, François, 21 Barthes, Roland, 140 Basch, Sophie, 141 Bastiat, Frédéric, 58 Baudelaire, Charles, 255 Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, 225 Benjamin, Walter, 65

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Gasquet, Argentinean Literary Orientalism, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54466-9

291

292

AUTHOR INDEX

Ben Razin, Ban Hudheil, 81 Bentham, Jeremy, 28, 57, 58 Berisso, Luis, 221 Bernhardt, Sarah, 122 Bertoni, Lilia Ana, 137 Blancas, Manuel, 123 Blanco-Fombona, Rufino, 213 Blavatsky, Helena, 232 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 241 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 15, 21 Borges, Jorge Luis, 49, 209, 213, 214, 269 Borré, Omar, 238 Bossange, Adolphe, 23, 27, 28, 56 Boulanger, Nicolas, 13, 14, 24, 29, 33, 178 Buffon, 58, 60, 113 Bugeaud (Marshall), 89 Bujaldón de Esteves, Lila, 191, 193, 197, 198 Bullrich, Silvina, 269 Bunge, Octavio, 199 Burton, Richard Francis, 208 Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 5, 42, 47, 50–52, 58, 211, 264

C Cabanis, Pierre-Jean-Georges, 14–16, 28, 58–62 Calderón (de la Barca), Pedro, 50, 51 Cambaceres, Eugenio, 104 Campoamor, Ramón de, 135 Cané (father), Miguel, 57, 103 Cané (Jr.), Miguel, 103, 104, 134, 147, 166, 168, 198 Caparrós, Martín, 269 Capmany, Antonio de, 58 Cardwell, Richard A., 206 Caro, Miguel Antonio, 28 Carranza, Ángel J., 134 Carriol, E., 173–175 Carter, Howard, 258

Cassas, Louis-François, 19, 23 Castagnino, Raúl, 238, 252 Castelar, Emilio, 135 Cesar, 80 Céspedes, Benjamín de, 199 Champollion, Jean-François, 14, 22 Charlemagne, 242 Chassebeuf, Jacques-René, 16 Chateaubriand, René de, 5, 14, 33–35, 42, 43, 48, 50, 53, 58, 60–62, 106, 113, 139, 141, 143, 157, 170, 206, 211, 264 Chevalier, 58, 94 Chinard, 20 Choiseul, Etienne-François, 21 Comte, August, 155 Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de, 58 Condorcet, Nicolas de, 14–16 Conrad, Joseph, 13 Constant, Benjamin, 57, 58 Cook, Thomas, 50 Cooper, Gary, 241 Correa Ramón, Amelina, 206 Cortés, Juan Domingo, 137, 138 Cousin, Victor, 42, 58 Couvier, P.L., 58 Cox, Victoria, 240, 248, 249, 252 Crawford, Joan, 244 Cromwell, Oliver, 26 Cunninghame Graham, Robert B., 8

D Dakhlia, Jocelyne, 219, 249 Dante (Alighieri), 50, 51, 187 Darío, Rubén, 205, 206, 208, 209, 211, 213, 221, 222, 226, 228 Dawkins, James, 19, 25 De Castro, Eugenio, 220–223 Destutt de Tracy, Antoine-LouisClaude, 14, 15, 23, 28, 58, 59 Diderot, Denis, 15, 16, 28

AUTHOR INDEX

Dietrich, Marlene, 241 Diodorus (of Sicily), 13 Djezzar Pacha, 18 Djibilou, Abdellah, 214–216, 224–232 Donoso Cortez, Juan Francisco, 58 Douglas, Sir Robert Kennaway, 184, 185 Dumas, Alexandre, 58, 59, 94

E Echeverría, Esteban, 4, 9, 10, 41–44, 46–56, 58, 84, 93, 258, 264 Eco, Umberto, 3 El Bosco (Hieronymus Bosch), 241 Enemoto (Viscount), 191, 196 Enfantin, Berthélemy Prosper, 156 Espinar Castañer, Esther, 269 Espronceda, José de, 5, 54–56, 211 Estrada Cabrera, Manuel, 114, 124, 228 Estrada, José María, 135 Estrada, Santiago, 104, 134

F Ferdinand VII (King), 26 Ferrater Mora, José, 15 Ferry, Jules, 102 Firdusi (Ferdowsi), 217 Flaubert, Gustave, 5, 223, 240, 271 Fontán, Esteban, 123 Foster Rodgers, James, 111, 117–119, 121, 127, 128 Franklin, Benjamin, 16, 20 Frère, Jean-Claude, 227 Fürstenberger, Nathalie, 211 Futoransky, Luisa, 269

G Galland, Antoine, 208

293

García Delgado, José, 123 García Mérou, Martín, 104 Gasquet, Axel, 17, 45, 54, 102, 123, 128, 136, 137, 166, 217, 269, 271 Gaulmier, Jean, 15, 20, 21, 23–26 Gautier, Théophile, 5, 139, 264, 271 Ghiraldo, Alberto, 221 Gnutzmann, Rita, 238 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 42, 219 Gómez Carrillo, Enrique, 199, 206, 209, 210, 213, 266 González, Aníbal, 210, 269 González Lanuza, Eduardo, 238, 240, 254 Goyena, Pedro, 114 Gray (Mister), 182 Groussac, Paul, 104, 114, 147 Gruzinski, Serge, 267 Guglielmini, Homero M., 8, 99 Guido y Spano, Carlos, 104, 134, 221 Guizot, François Pierre Guillaume, 14, 42, 58 Gutiérrez, Juan María, 42, 82, 221

H Hachisuca (Marquis of), 191 Hadrian (Emperor), 19 Hafiz (Hafez), 217 Hajjaj Ben Ahmed, Karima, 206, 210 Harun El-Rashid (Caliph), 219 Hassan-ben-Sabah (Hassan-i Sabbah), 226, 227, 232, 233 Hatamleh, Mohammed Abdo, 47, 55 Head, Francis (Captain), 76 Heignecio, 58 Helvétius, Claude-Adrien, 15, 16, 19, 20, 24, 58, 59 Henríquez Ureña, Pedro, 49 Heredia, Alejandro, 62

294

AUTHOR INDEX

Heredia, José María de, 206 Hernández, Domingo Luis, 247, 255 Herodotus, 13, 16, 17, 24 Herrera y Reissig, Julio, 213 Hippocrates, 61 Hoffman, E.T.A., 42 Holbach (Baron), Paul Henri Thiry, 15–17, 24, 58, 59 Holmberg, Eduardo L., 72, 103 Hudson, William H., 8 Hugo, Victor, 5, 14, 22, 23, 33, 42, 50–52, 58, 59, 62, 76, 139, 170 Humboldt (Baron), Alexander von, 17, 60, 61, 113

I Ibn-al-Ass, Amrou, 150 Iglesia, Cristina, 54, 169, 170 Ingenieros, José, 167, 199 Isambert, Émile, 140 Ismail-Pasha, 149–151

J Jefferson, Thomas, 15, 20 Jitrik, Noé, 99, 103, 179 Joanne, Adolph-Laurent, 140 Jouffroy, 58 Juárez Celman, Miguel Ángel, 166

K Kahnweiler, William, 178 Kant, Emmanuel, 58, 64 Karloff, Boris, 240 Khayyam, Omar, 217, 224, 226–233 Kim, Junyoung Verónica, 269 Kingston (Duke of), 52 Kipling, Rudyard, 254 Kordon, Bernardo, 258, 269 Korn, Alejandro, 156

L La Bruyère, Jean de, 58 La Grange (Marquise de), 122, 146 Laiseca, Alberto, 269 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 5, 14, 33, 49–53, 58, 59, 62, 65, 136, 139, 141, 156–158, 162, 163, 206, 264 Lamennais, Félicité Robert de, 58 Lane, Edward William, 208 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 14 Larra, Mariano José de, 5, 54, 135 Larra, Raúl, 238, 239 Las Heras, Juan Gregorio de, 134 Lastarria, Victorino, 70, 87 Laumonier, Isabel, 197 Laurens, Henry, 21 Lavater, Gaspard, 58 Leconte de Lisle, Charles Marie René, 206, 223 Leguía, Augusto, 228 Lerminier, Jean Louis Eugène, 58 Leroux, Pierre, 42, 58 Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 82 Lévi-Provençal, Évariste, 81 Lista, Alberto, 55 Locke, John, 58 Lojo, María Rosa, 106 Lombroso, Cesare, 172, 248 Londres, Albert, 210 López, Lucio V., 103, 104, 114, 134 López, Vicente Fidel, 72, 73, 81, 94, 95 Loti, Pierre, 193, 199, 206, 271 Louis XVI (King), 20 Louis-Philippe (Prince of Orleans), 55 Lugones, Leopoldo, 4, 9, 10, 206, 208–216, 219–233, 255, 258, 266, 271 Lycurgus, 31

AUTHOR INDEX

M Machiavelli, Nicholas, 65 Mallagon, 18 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 206 Mansilla, Eduarda, 122 Mansilla, Lucio Norberto, 107, 122 Mansilla, Lucio Victorio, 4, 5, 9, 10, 99–102, 104–124, 126–129, 134–136, 139, 141, 146, 151, 153, 162, 168, 178, 179, 211, 258, 265 Manzoni, Alessandro, 50, 51 Mardrus, Joseph-Charles, 208, 226 Mariette-Bey, August, 149, 154 Marini, Marino, 100, 159 Mármol, José, 57, 58 Martí, José, 199, 268 Martínez de la Rosa, Francisco de Paula, 58 Martínez Villergas, Juan, 82 Maspero, Gaston, 154 Matto de Turner, Clorinda, 222 Mayer, Jorge, 63 Mehemet Ali (Pacha), 80, 148–150, 156, 270 Meiji (dynasty), 168, 191, 192, 199, 208 Mera, Carolina, 269 Mercante, Víctor, 258 Merlin, 58 Metaldi, Leandro, 183 Mitre, Bartolomé, 66, 102, 103, 134, 135, 166, 198 Mohammad (Mohammed), 31 Montagu, Edward Worley, 52 Montagu, Mary, 51, 52 Montaigne, Michel de, 264 Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat, 13, 14, 25, 28, 42, 58, 59, 61, 75, 145 Montesquiou Fesenzac, Robert de, 122, 146

295

Morán, Francisco, 199, 206, 268 Moréas, Jean, 122 Moreno, Mariano, 133 Morente, Luis, 242 Moreto (y Cavana), Agustín, 51 Moussa, Sarga, 33, 54, 88, 117, 156 Mujica Láinez, Manuel, 269 Murena, Héctor A., 269

N Naigeon, Jacques-André, 16 Navarro Viola, Miguel, 112 Nemoto, Sho, 191, 196 Nerval, Gérard de, 5, 33, 136, 139, 141, 206, 264 Nisalmulmulk (Nizam-al-Mulk), 217–219, 227, 233 Nodier, Charles, 220 Noirlieu (Abbot), 27 Nolin, Olivier, 21 Nouret, Hazan-Bey, 159, 160 Numa (Pompulius), 31

O Obligado, Antonio, 133 Obligado, Evangelina, 137 Obligado, Manuel Alejandro, 133 Obligado, Pastor Servando, 4, 10, 100, 129, 133–163, 165, 211, 220, 265 Ocampo, Victoria, 269 Oliver, María Rosa, 269 Oman I, 150

P Pacheco, José, 100, 135 Pagés Larraya, Antonio, 136, 137 Palacios, Pedro B. (Almafuerte), 222, 269 Palma, Ricardo, 134, 135

296

AUTHOR INDEX

Pardessus, Jean-Marie, 58 Pascal, Blaise, 42, 58 Paz, Octavio, 134 Pedro I (Emperor of Brazil), 57 Pellegrini, Carlos, 114 Peña, David, 134 Perera San Martín, Nicasio, 256, 257 Pérez Gras, María Laura, 99 Petrarch, Francesco, 50, 51 Phillip II, 242 Pica, Vittorio, 220 Plutarch, 24 Polo, Marco, 223, 226 Ponce, Aníbal, 122, 123 Popolizio, Enrique, 99, 111, 123 Pothier, Robert-Joseph, 58 Pratt, Mary Louise, 43, 53 Prieto, Adolfo, 99, 166 Pueyrredón, Juan Martín de, 134 Q Quartucci, Guillermo, 192 Quesada, Vicente Gaspar, 135 Quesada, Vicente Gil, 147 Quesnay, François de, 78 Quiroga, Facundo, 70, 75, 77, 79, 80 Quiroga, Horacio, 254 R Racine, Jean, 61 Ramos Mejía, José María, 172 Ratisbonne, María Alfonso de, 159 Rebolledo, Efrén, 209 Renan, Ernest, 172, 174, 177 Rétat, Laudyce, 172 Richerand, Anthelme Louis Claude, 58 Rivadavia, Bernardino, 57 Rivas (Duke of), 47 Robin, Armand, 227 Roca, Julio A., 166, 167

Rodó, José Enrique, 222, 267 Rodríguez, Martín, 134 Rohde, Jorge Max, 10, 257 Rojas, Ricardo, 81, 123, 268 Rosas, Manuel de, 47, 62, 65, 66, 70, 74, 75, 79, 80, 101, 102, 106, 107, 120, 179, 270, 271 Rossi, Pellegrino, 58 Rostand, Edmond, 122, 146 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 28, 57–59, 65, 107, 113, 120, 181 Roussel (Russel), Michaël, 76, 77 Roy, Fitz (Captain), 72 S Sadí (Saadi Shirazi), 217 Sáenz Peña, Roque, 114 Said, Edward, 6–8, 34, 35, 46, 270, 271 Saint-Didier, 20 Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin, 17, 104, 168 Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 17, 35, 59 Saint-Priest, François Emmanuel Guignard de, 21 Saint-Simon (Duke), Louis de Rouvroy, 58, 156 Saítta, Sylvia, 238, 243, 248 Sajonji (Marquis of), 191 Salinguer, Frederick, 184 San Martín, José de (General), 74 Santa, Eugenia R., 238, 248 Santos Chocano, José, 228 Sarlo, Beatriz, 42, 49, 75 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 3–5, 9, 10, 46, 54, 56, 64, 65, 67, 69–95, 100–102, 104–106, 110, 120, 129, 135, 136, 141–143, 146, 149, 161, 162, 166, 171, 172, 176, 199, 265, 270 Say, Jean-Baptiste, 58 Schiller, Friedrich, 42

AUTHOR INDEX

Schlegel, Friedrich, 42 Schubart, Hans, 184 Schueller, Malini Johar, 120, 264 Shakespeare, William, 42, 267 Sheba (Queen of), 220 Smith, Arthur H., 191 Soler, Ricaurte, 167 Solon, 31 Sophocles, 16 Sosnowski, Saúl, 99 Spencer, Herbert, 167, 178 Staël, Madame de, 58, 62, 170 Stendhal (Henri Beyle), 170 Sternberg, Joseph Von, 241 Storni, Juan, 183 Story, 58 Strabo, 13 Sue, Eugene, 123, 126, 127, 170 T Tablada, José Juan, 206, 209, 210, 213, 221, 266 Taboada, Hernán G.H., 263 Tacitus, 24 Tagore, Rabindranath, 228 Tamerland, 80 Terán, Oscar, 167, 172 Tertullian, 24 Thompson, Juan, 82, 90 Tinajero, Araceli, 206, 266 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 58, 92, 93 Tokugawa (Marquis of), 191, 197 Tort, Patrick, 167 Trastoy, Beatriz, 238, 247 Troplong, Raymond-Théodore, 58 Trucco, Torcuato, 183 U Unamuno, Miguel de, 135 Urbain, Ismayal, 156

297

V Valentino, Rudoph, 240 Valera, Juan, 135 Vélez Sarsfield, Dalmacio, 134 Verdevoye, Paul, 69, 77, 81, 89, 92 Vergennes, Charles Gravier de, 20, 21 Verlaine, Paul, 122, 146, 170, 206 Vico, Giambattista, 58 Vignety (Mister), 109, 110 Villaespesa, Francisco, 209 Villemain, Abel François, 58 Viñas, David, 99, 110, 147, 168 Volney (Chassebeuf de Boisgirais, Constantin-François), 3, 5, 14–34, 44, 47–49, 56–60, 63–66, 72, 76, 78, 85, 92, 94, 113, 114, 120, 141, 143, 147, 155, 158, 159, 175, 178, 264 Voltaire, 13–15, 28, 52, 264 Vyse, Richard William Howard, 118

W Weimberg, Félix, 54, 166 Wilde, Eduardo Faustino, 4, 10, 103, 104, 106, 123, 129, 136, 147, 165–200, 207, 208, 211–213, 221, 265, 266 Wood, Robert, 19, 23, 25, 57

Y Yrigoyen, Hipólito, 228

Z Zayas Beaumont, Antonio, 209 Zeballos, Estanislao, 147 Zenobia (Queen of Palmyra), 19 Zorrilla, José, 5, 54

Lok Index

A Acre, 19 Aden (Adén), 113–115, 180 Aegean Sea, 211 Africa (África), 52, 70, 71, 87, 90–93, 123, 124, 143, 160, 211, 242, 249, 250, 254, 255, 265, 267 Agra, 180 Alban (Hills), 137 Albarracín, 81 Aleppo, 18 Alexandria, 18, 19, 143–145, 150 Algeria, 46, 69, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87–89, 91, 92, 94, 100, 106, 140, 161, 171 Algiers, 82–84, 173, 176, 177 Alhambra, 160 America (América), 28, 147 Amsterdam (island), 108 Anjou, 16, 23 Antioch, 19 Arabia (Arabian Peninsula), 232

Argentina, 3, 6, 7, 42, 47, 57, 63, 66, 74, 86, 88, 91, 93, 100, 108, 122, 136, 137, 149, 179, 193, 197–199, 215, 217, 228, 265, 267–271 Asia, 7, 19, 23, 25, 29, 31, 34, 48, 52, 64, 67, 70–72, 78, 114, 129, 148, 160, 170, 207, 211, 247, 249, 254, 265, 267 Asia Minor, 16 Assyria, 138 Athens, 16 Austria, 20 Axum (Aksum), 220 Ayacucho (Battle of), 228

B Baalbek (Balbec), 19, 57, 154, 157, 158, 162, 220 Babylon, 223 Baghdad, 76, 216, 219 Balearic Islands, 82

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Gasquet, Argentinean Literary Orientalism, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54466-9

299

300

LOK INDEX

Balkans, 140, 168 Basilicata, 215 Bavaria, 170 Beijing (Pekin), 184, 185, 188 Beirut, 18, 158 Belgium, 56 Benares, 110, 111, 180 Bengal, 109 Berlin, 122, 168, 211 Bethlehem, 30 Blida, 82 Bolivia, 70, 166 Bombay, 180 Bordeaux, 66 Bosporus, 51 Boulaq (Museum), 149 Brazil, 56, 57, 63, 66, 126, 197, 239, 268 British India, 108 Brussels, 167, 168 Buenos Aires, 49, 50, 57–59, 65, 73–76, 80–82, 94, 101, 102, 104, 107–109, 112, 117, 123, 126, 128, 133–135, 137, 145, 166, 167, 183, 193, 197, 210, 217, 221, 226, 228, 233, 238, 242, 243, 257, 258

C Cadiz, 26 Cairo, 18, 117, 143, 152, 153 Calcutta, 107–111, 180 Canton, 30, 183–185, 187, 190 Cartagena, 171 Carthage, 71, 72, 178, 180 Caseros (Battle of), 102, 134 Caucasus, 6 Central Asia, 6 Chaldea, 72 Chandernagor (Chandernagore), 109–111 Chascomús, 107

Cheops (pyramid of), 118, 120 Chile, 69, 70, 72, 75, 81, 82, 91, 238, 239, 265 China, 170, 180, 183–188, 190–192, 195, 197, 207, 209, 223, 268, 269 Chivilcoy, 94 Colombo, 180–182 Concepción del Uruguay, 166 Congo, 247, 250, 254, 256 Constantinople (Istanbul), 20, 21, 51, 52, 127, 143, 149, 151, 156, 160, 168, 180 Córdoba, 94 Craon, 16, 19 Crimea, 23 Cyprus, 18

D Damascus (Damasco), 154, 157, 158 Dead Sea, 18 Delhi, 110, 111, 180 Dhour El Choueir, 18 Druze (region), 18, 227, 232

E Egypt (Egipto), 16–18, 20–22, 30, 46, 72, 77, 80, 111, 116–118, 121, 127, 129, 137–140, 143, 147– 156, 162, 168, 170, 247, 265 England, 26, 55, 150 Ethiopia, 6 Europe (Europa), 3, 4, 7, 13, 15, 26, 28, 41, 42, 44, 45, 64, 66, 67, 72, 74, 75, 78, 81, 84, 90, 91, 94, 105, 106, 108, 111, 120, 122, 135–137, 140, 145–148, 153, 160, 167, 169, 173, 178, 183, 189, 191, 198, 211, 239, 241, 242, 244, 246, 263, 266, 267, 270

LOK INDEX

F Far East, 6, 106, 140, 148, 170, 180, 183, 188, 191, 197, 199, 207, 209, 213, 232, 265, 266, 271 Fernando Poo, 255 Ferney, 15 Ferney-Voltaire, 15 Florida, 255 France, 5, 7, 20, 21, 24–26, 42, 43, 46, 47, 55, 57, 58, 64, 87, 89, 109, 126, 140, 146, 161, 169, 173, 210, 221, 231, 232

G Geneva, 15, 168 Germany, 47, 64, 169 Gethsemani (Gethsemane), 159, 161 Giza, 18, 118, 153 Glasgow, 77 Graecia (Magna), 16 Granada, 160 Great Britain, 7, 20, 26, 27, 43, 46, 47, 136, 148, 150, 168, 231, 232 Greece, 19, 72, 77, 140, 143, 168, 211

H Hagia Sophia, 51, 160 Halicarnassus, 16 Hammah Meskoutine, 177 Hebron (Habroun), 30 Hellas, 16 Himalayas, 110, 111 Holland, 26, 55 Hong Kong, 180, 182–185, 188, 197 Hooghly (River), 109 Hymiar (Himyar), 220

301

I Ibero-America, 28, 69, 70, 197, 206, 207, 221, 263, 267, 269, 270 India, 9, 26, 46, 72, 106–111, 115, 117, 148, 179, 180, 197 Indian (ocean), 6, 108 Ireland, 26, 168 Italy, 72, 137

J Jaffa (Joppa), 18, 32, 154 Jamaica, 123 Java, 247, 254 Jerusalem, 18, 77, 140, 159–161, 168, 220 Jesús María, 135 Judea, 72

K Kamakuna, 191 Karnak, 18, 161 Kobe, 191 Kuban, 23 Kyoto, 191, 192

L La Calera, 94 La Goulette, 178 Lahore, 110, 111 La Mitidja (“flatlands”), 84 La Rioja (Rioja), 77 Latakia, 18, 115 Latin America, 50, 135, 160, 210 Lebanon (Líbano), 143, 158, 161 Levant (the), 6, 19–21, 33, 34, 43, 46, 51, 53, 57, 65, 100, 106, 117, 127, 129, 135, 137, 138, 140, 143, 144, 146, 147, 160, 162, 163, 170, 183, 207, 231 Libya, 16

302

LOK INDEX

Lima, 228 London, 21, 26, 28, 34, 55, 64, 105, 108, 117, 118, 122, 150 Lucknow, 180 Luxor, 18, 223

M Madagascar, 17, 247, 254, 256 Madras, 110 Madrid, 26–28, 42, 159, 168, 210 Maghreb, 6, 46, 82, 170, 172, 179, 183, 188, 197, 199, 207, 210, 239, 254, 265, 266 Majorca, 82 Malaga, 239 Maldives, 110 Male, 110 Mar Hanna, 18 Marseilles (Marseille), 17, 19, 82, 124, 141, 171 Mascara, 82, 89, 90, 161, 171 Mauritania Tingitana, 85 Mediterranean, 6, 18–20, 140, 143, 171, 211, 241 Mexico, 197 Middle East, 9, 14, 17, 19, 21, 90, 100, 117, 120, 137–140, 143, 145, 156, 188, 199, 207, 226, 242 Milan, 168 Mississippi, 94 Moka, 113, 116, 254 Monrovia, 254, 255 Montevideo, 75, 107, 159 Morocco, 210, 238–243, 246, 249, 251, 254, 257 Moscow, 23 Mount of Olive, 77, 159 Mount Sinai, 114 Munich, 168, 170

N Nagoya, 191 Naples, 143, 180 Nara, 191, 192 New York, 26, 27 Nile (Delta), 18 Nile (river), 162 Nineveh, 142 Nishapur, 227 North Africa, 7, 75, 171, 197 O Omar Mosque, 159, 160 Oran, 82, 85, 89, 171, 209 Orontes (River, valley of), 18 Ottoman Empire, 21, 22, 25, 26, 80, 143, 144, 150, 211, 217 P Palestine (Palestina), 77, 139, 143, 154, 159, 265 Palmyra, 9, 19, 22, 23, 25, 57, 63, 85, 158, 159 Pampas (the), 42, 47, 50, 56, 66, 73, 75, 76, 78–81, 91, 162, 172 Paraguay, 63, 66, 135 Paraná (river), 162 Paris, 16, 18–20, 23, 25, 27, 28, 41, 47, 49, 51, 54, 55, 64, 82, 102, 105, 122, 137, 140, 142, 168, 170, 210 Patagonia, 7, 64 Pavón (Battle of), 102, 128, 134 Persia, 16, 19, 72, 140, 214, 217, 219, 220, 227 Peru, 70, 228, 268 Philadelphia, 26, 27 Phoenicia, 72 Point de Galle, 110 Polynesia, 77 Pompeii, 140, 141

LOK INDEX

Potomac (river and banks), 94 Prussia, 20 Pyrenees, 27

Q Qala’at ibn Maan (fort), 19 Quilmes, 134

R Ramallah (Ram Allah), 32 Red Sea, 113, 154, 180 River Plate, 3, 5–7, 14, 27, 28, 35, 41, 42, 44, 47, 53–57, 66, 74, 75, 78, 106, 108, 126, 136, 143, 155, 168, 216, 240, 264 Rome, 19, 82, 84, 85, 117, 137, 146, 160, 161, 168, 170, 178 Rumel (River), 177 Russia, 168

S Sahara (the), 91, 94, 171 Saint-Paul (island), 108 Saint Peter’s Basilica, 160 Saint Petersburg, 122 Salem, 139, 154, 248, 253 Salomon’s Temple, 159 San Juan, 54, 265 San Justo, 94 San Nicolás, 107 Sansinena Palace, 134 Santiago de Chile, 71, 94 Scotland, 124, 168 Singapore, 180, 182 South America, 4, 27, 28, 43, 45, 63–66, 70, 73, 75, 83, 84, 86, 90, 91, 94, 102, 113, 128, 129, 142, 145, 170, 239, 264, 267 Spa, 56

303

Spain, 26, 41, 42, 45, 55, 58, 70, 71, 143, 160, 167, 171, 221, 238–240 Spain (Iberian Peninsula), 144 Sri Lanka (Ceylon), 110, 180, 181, 197, 247, 254 Stanley (Kisangani), 250, 254 Sudan, 6 Suez, 18, 100, 104, 113–115, 117, 160, 180 Swiss (Switzerland), 15 Syria (Siria), 17, 18, 21, 25, 30, 31, 143, 148, 154, 155, 157, 158, 161, 217 T Tadmor (Palmyra), 19, 159 Tangier (Tánger), 209, 239, 241, 242, 246, 247, 251, 254, 257 Tellian Atlas (mounts), 171 Temperley, 134 Teruel, 81 Tetouan (Tetuán), 241, 242, 245, 247 Thebes, 18, 137 Tiberias, 18 Tokyo, 191, 192, 194, 200 Toulon, 21 Tripoli, 18 Tucuman (Tucumán), 59–62 Tunis, 177, 178 Tunisia, 140, 171 Tupiza, 166 Turkey, 20, 21, 52, 111, 140, 149, 209, 211 Tyr, 18 U United States (US), 20, 26, 27, 50, 71, 90, 105, 106, 142, 144, 147, 167, 168, 198, 266–268 Uruguay, 57, 63, 66, 70, 239

304

LOK INDEX

V Valley of the Kings, 18 Valparaiso, 82 Venice, 141, 191 Versailles, 20, 23 Vienna, 161, 163, 168 Villa de María del Río Seco, 215 Vuelta de Obligado (Battle of), 112

Y Yemen, 110 Yokohama, 191, 192, 195, 197

Z Zaragoza, 81