Between The Book and The Lamp Imaginative Geographies of Egypt, 1849-50

Between the Book and the Lamp: Imaginative Geographies of Egypt, 1849-50 Author(s): Derek Gregory Source: Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1995), pp. 29-57 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/622723 . Accessed: 14/05/2013 03:50
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29
Between the book and the lamp: imaginativegeographies of Egypt, 1849-50

Derek Gregory
This essay comparesthe imaginative geographiesof Egyptproducedby Florence and Gustave Flaubert as theytravelled Nightingale up the Nile Valley and back to Cairo in 1849-50. Theirexperiences are used to emphasizethe physicality (rather thanmerely the textuality) of travelwriting. The differences betweentheir and in particular betweentheir of landscape, imaginative geographies representations the complexand fractured formation of Orientalism as a space and people, illuminate constellation of power,knowledgeand spatiality, and its entanglements with and variouscolonialisms. sexuality patriarchy, key words Egypt imaginative geographies Orientalism travelwriting
of Geography,University of British Professor, Columbia,217-1984 West Mall, Vancouver, Department British Columbia V6T 1Z2, Canada revisedmanuscript received 13 June1994
uneven and unequal, - a widespread not inarchaeology andfatal ing, a process of inscription, getlost Let's that preoccupiedSaid when he urged the critical I think, ofthecoming tendency, generation ... Gustave to LouisBouilhet, Flaubert geographies'. Cairo, readingofwhathe called'imaginative of place, space and landscape 27 June1850 These are figurations thatdramatize distance and difference in sucha way that 'our' space is divided and demarcatedfrom 'their'space. For Said, imaginative Introduction geographiesare discursive tenseconstellations ofpower, formations, thatare centred on 'here' My titleis indebtedto two awkwardcompanions: knowledgeand spatiality, Michel Foucaultand EdwardSaid. It was Foucault and projected towards'there'so that'the vacantor who positedthediscovery of whathe called'a new anonymousreachesof distanceare converted into forus here'.He derived thebasicidea from imaginative space' in the middleof the nineteenth meaning He suggestedthatconjuring but Said's particular century. up dreamsof GastonBachelard, purposewas the fantastic was no longerconfined to the stillness to show how such a poeticsof space - whichwas of the night but now took place in the hushed Bachelard's - is simultaneously concern a politicsof ofthemodern Hence his claimthat space. This fedintohis critique of Orientalism as a library. precincts 'the imaginary now residesbetweenthe book and discoursethatworkedthrough a representation of the lamp'.1This was a specifically as a Europeanspace, space in which the Orient was constructed at leastas Foucaultdescribed it,butwhen travellers theatrical its stage on whichthe Occidentprojected and desires.2 ventured beyond Europe theytook theirpre-texts own fantasies withthem.In fact, of course,theyhad done so for AlthoughSaid made no secretof his admiration centuries.The voyages of discovery and other forand indeedhis debtto Foucault, theconnections and explorations all tookplace within a between the two of them have always seemed expeditions
TransInstBr GeogrNS 20 29-57 1995 ISSN: 0020-2754 Printedin Great Britain
Forthephilosophy ofhistory, whatcountry stretches complexweb of textualizations in whichdreamsof outitshands facilities to press such uponus as Egypt? the fantastic were captured in intricate And display. Florence Letters 1849-1850 it is thatprocessof spinning, from Egypt Nightingale, and displaycapturing
30 to the have usuallydrawnattention Critics fractious. to of couplingFoucault'santi-humanism difficulties But I am more interested Said's own humanism.3 and herein theways in whichtheyinvokespatiality on thatbear directly I wantto maketwo comments Foucaultinsistedthathis prewhat follows.First, withspace was morethanmetaphorical occupation 'those pointsat and thatit enabledhimto identify and were transformed whichdiscourses in,through of power'.4In much the on the basis of relations on the remarked same way, Said has consistently of space and on worldlynatureof representations of powerin whichtheyare implicated: therelations
DerekGregory
who In sayingthis,I followthose critics positions. to be of Orientalism have foundSaid's construction too homogeneous.As he has since conceded,any account of its imaginativegeographies must of necessityattend to the uneven topographiesof For thisreasonI have thesediscursive formations.7 of Said's projectin foundLisa Lowe's reformulation Her use terms moreFoucauldian extremely helpful. is especially of Foucault'sconceptof heterotopicality in the presentcontextbecause it coninstructive and often veys the multiple, interpenetrating sites throughwhich various constelantagonistic are put lationsof power,knowledgeand spatiality in place. She thus treats Orientalismas heteroor beyond as noneof us is outside Just geography, and makes two main geneous and contradictory, over claims: thestruggle free from noneof us is completely and interesting is complex Thatstruggle geography. and cannons becauseit is not only about soldiers of an On the one hand,thatOrientalism consist[s] aboutimagesand but also aboutideas and forms, different across situations matrix ofOrientalist uneven each that andon theother, imaginings.5 andhistorical cultural sites, is internally of these Orientalisms complexand and theirdense unstable.8 It is those images and imaginings, of traveland colin the materialities imbrications thatare my main concernin the present My own view is that these multiplesites, instaonialism, assumea particular and ambiguities importI want to move critical discussion of bilities essay. in the theusual ance in the case of Europeantravelwriting to disrupt Orientalism beyondthelibrary, of class, where constellations between the text and the world,and nineteenth distinctions century, and gendercould be even more tense than recoverthe ways in whichthe physicalpassage of culture of distance at home,wherethe friction were and other they travellers landscapes through European other culturesmarkedthe very process of their between one site and anotherhad an insistently were often and whereidentities of those spaces. physicaldimension and theirrepresentations writing of the in course the and labile of accounts offer and Said subtly Foucault renegotiated both Secondly, of space that focus on what John passage.9 the production to mytitle in mindI return Rajchman has called 'spaces of constructed Withthesedifferences more somewhat it also because same to obliquely, are not the signals, Theirspatialanalytics visibility'. Florence companions: travelling be sure but theyboth focuson sites of enframing two even less likely servicewiththe British whose nursing and envisioning, strategiesof 'makingseen' and Nightingale, interestis in the Army duringthe CrimeanWar (1854-6) earned 'makingscene'.6 My particular production of imaginative geographies in the her the soubriquetof the Lady with the LamptheVictorian to her(premature) obituary, middle of the nineteenthcenturythat brought according miles a lamp 'through her carrying Egypt withinEuropean horizons of intelligibilitypublicpictured - and and so in muchthe same way I will of sick soldiersin the middle of the night' and visibility, one ofFrance's novelists, that ren- GustaveFlaubert, greatest examinea series of discursive strategies deredEgyptas a textto be read or as the objectof whose writings were in fact the immediate to of the library' forFoucault's'fantasia a gaze. inspiration These are the at the beginning. how- which I referred I accentuatethe pluraland the indefinite, in some principalsubjects of my paper. They travelled the tendency ever,because I wantto resist versionsof cultural theoryand cultural geography throughEgypt at more or less the same time, when of one another, to essentialize'the' text or 'the' gaze. Instead,I thoughquite independently letters In their late twenties. and visu- theywerebothin their insistthatthe processesof textualization and and othertravelwritings theymapped a series of alizationthatwereinvolvedin theconstruction in scored were geographies exactlySaid's sense of imaginative colonization of Egypt complex, one mightexpect,given their As that ages, and often phrase. subjectcontradictory throughmultiple
Between thebookandthelamp
31
and pleaded with her to considera bourgeois origins and the culturalbaggage of prostitution carriedwith career as a teacheror, betterstill,marriageto a nineteenth-century Europe inevitably and suitableyoung man.But in vain.Withherparents' them,they shared a numberof assumptions which was not shared by differences approval- a sentiment Butthere werealso significant responses. - one a woman, one a man; one between them - Florence other members of the family circle - thatmarked their constructions embarked one French on a tour to Egypt in the companyof British, in other, equally salient ways. I hope that my Charlesand Selina Bracebridge. They were wealthy who had takenFlorence travellers of their helps and accomplished emphasison the physicality journeys and all three and to Italywiththema fewyearsearlier, theirdifferent to foreground subject-positions in antiquity. thatframed their of themhad a keen interest the different degrees of freedom The Bracebridges, therewere experiences actions.In particular, togetherwith Florence and open to Flaubertwhich,by virtueof her gender,were her maid 'Trout', arrived in Alexandria on 18 This bears directly on the November1849 and a week laterthe partyset off denied to Nightingale. of Orientalism with other discursive by steamer intersections weeksat the forCairo.They spentthree on those critical terrainsin which, H~tel de l'Europeon theEzbekeiah, and thenhired formations, as Lowe says, class, 'race', gender and sexuality a dahabeeah (an Egyptianhouseboat) for the Nile one another. cross-cut or contradict reinforce, voyage. Although the boat had never carried - apparently and then Europeansbefore it had been builtfor I will begin withFlorenceNightingale - it was muchthe same as the other each of them a Bey's harem move to Gustave Flaubert, following of means fromAlexandriato Cairo and then tracingtheir houseboatshiredby Europeantravellers ofa day cabin, consisted voyagesup theNile Valleyand back(see Fig. 1). As (Fig.2). Its accommodation my argument proceeds,however,I will also tryto with a divan around the walls, and two sleeping of compari- cabins separated by a passage containinglarge layermy accountby makinga number sons between theirreadings.I will concludewith closets.The crewlived on the open deckand meals - little morethanan on the relations some generalreflections between were cooked in a smallkitchen imaginativegeographies and the productionof open box - at the prow. The dahabeeahwas charcolonialspace. teredforthree months at ?30 permonth. Provisions were storedin two chestson the deckand a basket of bread and two cages of orangesand meathung A world turnedupside down: Florence overhead.These supplieswere to be supplemented Nightingalein Egypt the voyage: the crewbaked bread in village during of his visitin 1843, ovens, CharlesBracebridge went out shooting, and 'Cairo',wroteEliotWarburton is now the crowdedthoroughfare of Englandand milk,butterand otherprovisionswere bought as allowed.The British to theArabsof circumstances India;ourflaghas becomeas familiar flagwas hoisted the Red Sea as to thepeople of Alexandria'. Bracebridge'scolours run up the By the at the stemrn, in Greekletters early 1840s there were regularP & O steamship riggingand Florenceembroidered servicesfromSouthampton to Alexandriaand, by the name they had chosen for the dahabeeahher sister'snamel - on a blue pennant the end of thatbusy decade,fourEnglishsteamers Parthenope, at the yardarm. The party set off of that fluttered takingpassengersup the Nile to Cairo; a string post-housesdotted the desertbetween Cairo and upriveron 4 December and, like other travellers, to make Aswan and the FirstCataractas servicemade its way intended Suez; and a regular steamship from Suez down the Red Sea to Bombay and fastas possible.Such a plan almostalwaysinvolved Calcutta.'o If most Britishtravellers who visited 'tracking' for much of the time,when the boat half of the nineteenth century would be pulled on a long rope by the crew; Egypt in the first wereenroute betweenBritain and India,however, an Florence claimedthiswas because theyhad no idea Most parties backat the number of themhad come to see Egypt. of sailingor tacking. turned increasing Cataract and saileddownriver withthecurrent, One suchwas Florence who was then First Nightingale, the antiquities and sites at theirleisure. 29 years old. She had alreadycaused her parents inspecting and Florence were determined her intention to But the Bracebridges by announcing greatconsternation become a nurse. Like others of their class and to travelup into Nubia and to get as faras Abu whichtheymade on 15 January 1850. They in earlyVictorian Britain, theyregarded Simbel, generation the nursingprofessionas at best a rung above returned slowly and were not back in Cairo until
32
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Figure 2. A dahabeeah (houseboat) on the Nile mid-March.The followingmonth the party left from Alexandria on their way home through continental Europeto England. My accountof FlorenceNightingale's travelsin thelong letters she senthome Egyptis drawnfrom from Cairo and the dahabeeah.Thereis Alexandria, no recordof the lettersthe partyreceivedwhile theywere in Egypt,althoughFlorenceoftenrefers to herpleasureat receiving them. The mailswere,of necessity, haphazard beyondAlexandria and Cairo, and Florence alwayskepta letter 'readyand sealed' in case of a chancemeeting withanother boat. She excused herbrief at one pointby explaindispatch ing that she was 'writing in the greatestpossible
34 haste for a steamer(!)which .. . is going on to Cairo'. Still,makingallowances for the uncertain of a Nile voyage,communication could be progress for example,Florence quite rapid. On 21 January, wrote:'At lastI have a letter from you - dated22nd musthave seemeda long November'.Two months all things timeto her,but it was reallyrather short, All herletters were sentto herimmediconsidered. ate family. She usuallyaddressedthemcollectively ('My people') but sometimes the letters were in any event, addressedspecifically to her mother; read by the entirefamily they were presumably because her sister edited and published them in 1854.12 privately It was by no meansuncommon forsuchletters to be circulatedin this way, but the prospect of publicationwas not uppermostin Nightingale's mindwhen she wrotethem.'3She looked upon the adventureas an occasion to gatherher thoughts For manyEuropeanvisitors, howabout herfuture. ever, the Nile voyage was fast becoming an extendedhouse partywithits own elaboratesocial For example: conventions.
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Derek Gregory
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thefirst 'dreadful plashof oars',leavinghis wifeand ourbut nobly sacrifice Florence to 'unwillingly selves to our duty'- though they soon learned limited these neverto serve tea, 'whichhas greatly one As Nerval cautioned, 'the moment visitations'. all is lost. meets one of these worthytravellers, Societytakespossessionof you'. Florenceand the theflagof the Bracebridges boat ascending theNile hoists Every understoodthat only too well: 'It is Besides to which itsproprietor this, very hard to be all day by the deathbed of the country belongs. eachtraveller, before Cairo, leaving adoptsa private greatestof your race', she wrote, 'and to come hisownname it at thehotels with andregisters flag, home and talkabout quails or London'.'" andthat ofhisboat.Thus, on arriving every stranger, for all The journeywas a serious undertaking what andfor at Cairo, learns whois 'up'theriver, flag reason and for this of three them, then, to look.14 also cast considerable letters lighton Nightingale's and the her views of the European Egyptian past of As thisetiquette most many perhaps implies, On severaloccasions she described Egypt theseEuropeantravellers soughtout the company present. as 'thetwo ends ofTime and Space' and and Europe of theirfellows.In Egypt,Nerval declared,'any the grid which through a Frank, I want to read her letters Europeanbecomes,in the eyes of another, in otherwords a compatriot', and 'the map of our this suggests (Fig. 3).17 The figurehas several even in this dramatically simplified little During implications Europe... loses its fine distinctions'.'5 to the way in I but will form pay most attention the day theirdahabeeahswould race one another at which she sought on the one side to establishan moored together and, if theyfoundthemselves and difference betweenEgyptand distance - as they usuallydid - invitations would be essential night other side while on the simultaneously Europe to theneighbours extended and,after tea,a game of that to annul separation. moving the day mightend withan bridgeor even dinner, The Parthenope entertaining display of fireworks. theEgyptian and difference: de-naturing - caught up in Distance was - inevitablyand unavoidably and landscape the signsof Europeantourism thesetrappings, had immense but forthe mostpartFlorenceand the In thefirst Nightingale colonialism, place,Florence the in comingto termswith- in finding avoided the companyof othertravel- difficulty Bracebridges for- the Egyptian lers.At Aswan, theystole away beforesunriseto terms landscape.'All the colours avoid the 'ruck' of Englishboats and, when the of Africaare those of preciousstones',she wrote, and any and the Nile itselfappeared to her (as it did to Hungariancount,the Germanprofessor as a sheet of 'molten social countless other travellers) of othervisitors made their one of a number of wonder, is of The sense astonishment, to at retired bed callsat Thebes,Charles gold'. Bracebridge
35
inItaly ofFrance', ortheSouth shewrote: But it was not to last long. These landscape unmistakable. had a materiality thetombs that was profoundly 'It is liketheghoulhaunting metaphors ...'22 She theisland ofElephantine thatthewhole valley described thus: She determined disconcerting. seemed The island looksas ifit werea worldturned upside and ... such a then stirred It was world as down, up - thedescriptions so unlike in nature of thegardens out of the cauldron of mighthave been turned theArabian withthe precious seem stones, Nights, Macbeth'sWeird Sisters... It was as if a devil had no longerherefantastic - it is the or exaggerated been there, heavingunderneath, tossing upturning, ofthecountry. description and tumbling it till everything was in atomsand confusion.23 And this'un-natural nature' soon produceda feeling of unease,even of dislike: called on Shakespeare's repeatedly I cannot a bright describe theunnatural line Nightingale colouring, Macbeth to this and terrible of yellow the or conjure Nile, strange up barley lupins, green bordering thehard a white brown of thedesert Buttheimage behind, never satisfied her.'It is ghastly world. fully Cairoin thebackground, dabs of Prussian-blue-andto try useless to describe these shewrote at things', trees stuck about. It looked as ifa child had Syene,'forEuropean gamboge has no wordsfor language it and did not knowhow,and had madeit them. painted How should when there is no such in it, thing unlike nature.18 Evenhere, ofcourse, was notfar and away, Europe
All other nature raisesone's thoughts to Europe? heaven: this sends them tohell'.24 women Although even these garish colours were bled Eventually, travel-writers of their typically despaired attempts fromthe landscape. 'The colourlessness of Egypt at - BillieMelmansuggests thatthey description strikes one morethananything', she wrote.'In Italy were awareof their own inadequacy as 'painfully thereare crimson lightsand purpleshadows; here writers' andrepeatedly confessed thelimitations of thereis nothingin earth, air,sky,or water,which their - Nightingale's of observation25 fruspowers one can comparein any way withEurope;but with tration turns notso much on theinadequacy ofher regardto absence of colour,it is striking'.'9 as on theinadequacy oftheir the object: descriptions This Egyptwas not only unlikeany 'nature'she It was,to her, a world turned Egyptian landscape. had everknownin its coloursand compositions. In of the ordered and upside down,an inversion contrastto the familiar, changing landscapes of Christian world of Europe:a Biblical landscape it seemedto herpetrified, mortified. where literally Europe, thedevilwas nowabroad. - 'an earth tumbledup The desert was diabolical The contemporary of Egyptwere inhabitants and down; not as ifProvidence had made it so, but identified with-and on occasiondirectly assimias if it had been created otherwise';'one almost lated to- this diabolical un-nature. When Arab fancies one hearstheDevil laughing'2- and it was andhawkers boarded theship atAlexandria, porters her heart.Her letters only the heavens that lifted shewas already that were'an interthey persuaded made muchof the oppositionbetween mediate accordingly race between themonkey andthe man'. On the beauty and the animation of the sky and the streets to her shore, hotel, dusty rattling through deadnessof the earthbelow. - apart thecity from 'theFrank where the Square' lived reminded her of 'a vast settlement Europeans While theearth inourcountry is so rich andvariegated ants'. shefound invillages huts 'all Upriver, with andcrowded with theskyabove ofwhite animation, light as animals together, contrasts up and down, on theother might the tumbled Here, hand, byitsdeadness. their without orplan'.In her nests, thelight is living ... One looksdown, build regularity skyis radiant, and the ungrateful earthlies there, ofAsyut, thecapital ofUpper hopelessand eyesthecity Egypt, a dying, withered desert.21 helpless, 'thesortof citytheanimals was no better: might havebuilt whenthey hadpossession oftheearth'. herimagery, as she passed Sailing Luxor shewas shocked at what Perhapsnot surprisingly awayfrom throughthe nightmare debasement' of the landscape of tombs and she tookto be the'voluntary turned from the un-natural to people.'To see human temples, increasingly darkness beingschoosing the spectral. The European aesthetic literally rather thanlight', to crawlupon the 'choosing desertedher. 'Travellinghere is nothinglike the ground likereptiles', 'itseemed as ifthey didit on touristseeing sights of beautifulart and sunny purpose to be as like beasts as they could': 'Itfelt as
Derek Gregory I must now its future. As had no claim on show, in a nest of reptiles'.26 ifone had trodden Then,at moregeneral rhetorical there was another, Durr,the capital of Nubia, the textualrecoil,the however, this articulated whichNightingale of revulsion becomespalpable: shudder strategy through discourseof negation. A sycamore shore,whichwas the by the river's - thewhite human was theonlything coffee-house, to antiquity: Passages landscapes supernatural themudwallswithout domesor bee-hives, windows, In the second effectively depopuNightingale place, a yard, in thecorners were of which which enclosed of their human inhabitants lated these landscapes naked thelairs of families, thenests of little children, between two stones(likenestsof young and it was by thismeansthatshe was able to annul squatting This was a at them, and the distancebetweenpast and present. foxes)-running awaywhen youlooked too, of course,and Mary Louise after about four familiar then like strategy jackals you... things baying I Pratthas identified ... Whether aboutlikelizards months of humanpresthe effacement old,climbing was Gulliver or CaptainCook, I don't know,but ence as a characteristic tropeof colonialdiscourse. all thiswas as muchout of our common 'The residents certainly turnup in the narraof the country as ifI hadbeeneither.27 habits ofthought tionmainlyas traceson the landscape',she writes, Butthisis as 'scratches on thefaceofthecountry'.3' and human given a peculiarpower in Nightingale's A sycamore tree'theonlything human', letters by beings living in 'lairs' and 'nests', 'baying like the metaphorical of native people into conversion jackals' and climbing 'like lizards': these were beasts and reptiles, she presumes by the identity of colonial discourse.28 hideous commonplaces In betweenthemand 'un-natural and also by nature', had preparedherself fact,Nightingale by reading the electiveaffinity betweenthis'dead nature'and Brucebut whatJohn of Mungo Parkand James theadventures a fantasy Barrell has seen as a death-wish, she was now persuadedthat theiraccountscom- of extinction of Victorian commonin the writings pletely failed to convey the 'debasement and travellers as he concedes,thisis in Egypt.Perhaps, she and only ill-considered of African misery' villages.At Elephantine hyperbole,a wish for silence her companionswere greetedby what she called and space in which to contemplate the sublime. 'troopsof South Sea savages' and,when she gazed Certainly, she oftenwished to be alone. And yet down on six otherhouseboatsmooredat Mahatta, perhapsit also signalsa realdesirefora violentend themas 'the to thehorrors she described below theFirstCataract, in Egypt, of thepresent: Nightingale likea wood-cut declared, it 'exactly fleet' and thought English and fora 'thereis sucha Past,no Present, in one of Captain Cook's voyages- the savage Future one can only hope forextinction!'32 scene,the neat Englishboats and flagsin the little Be that as it may, Nightingalesimultaneously bay'.29 of thedead withfigures theselandscapes repopulated and one drawn from Egypt's ancient past. And she did But there was a profounddifference which required a second rhetoricalmovement. so througha device that Walter Benjaminlater a rhetoric of negationas made centralto his vision of the Arcades Project: has identified David Spurr one of the characteristic tropes of the European the dream.Nightingale's simpleuse of this dream and suggests that it involves motif colonial imaginary, withBenjamin's bearslittle richly comparison both a 'negativespace' and a 'negativehistory'. about his but thereis something textured writings and on wishon dreamworlds on ruins, reflections as well as denieshistory of negation The discourse For on her turned back that can be writings. butalsodesig- images thepastas absence, constituting place, but a dreamworld was itself modernity Benjamin, a people as a negative that absence presence: nating within, exists is onewhich without onlyina negative one whose dreamscould be dispelledfrom history intothespace of canbe transformed mythology likethebareearth, sense; by so to speak,'dissolving they led in the opposite their own.30 make cannot butthey history history'. writings history, Nightingale's direction,dissolving history into the space of can also butheruse of thedreammotif But thiscould hardlybe deployed very effectively mythology, 'to overcome as an attempt of be read (withBenjamin) in Egypt, which was the cradle of antiquity, of social reality'.33 the deficiencies ancientcivilization; or, at any rate,it requiredthe and transfigure social reality? displacementof the present popu- But whose metaphorical It should be said at once that 'dreaming'had outof lation.'SouthSea savages' were thusliterally placein Egypt:theydid not belong to its past and an acutely personal significancefor Florence 36
thebookandthelamp Between herlate teensand intoher Throughout Nightingale. twentiesshe had been consumedby 'the habit of dreaming'.Her diaries document how 'she fell life' statesin themidstofordinary into"trance-like" and how she gave way (and here one imagines Nightingale and her biographer shuddering ecstasy of the drugtogether)'with the shameful taker'.By 1849, Cecil Woodham-Smith maintains, she was drawingtowardsa crisis: trances into Shefell became uncontrollable. 'Dreaming' oftime inwhich were shelostsense hours blotted out, herwill.In daily life shemoved andplaceagainst like hadbeensaid what an automaton, could notremember or even whereshe had been.Agoniesof guiltand that wereintensified by theconviction self-reproach and that she was fears werebeingrealised herworst goinginsane. to enddreamAgainand againshemaderesolutions it out'- butthey ing,to 'tearthesinout',to 'stamp werealways broken.34
37 Monicat has suggestedthat Bbnbdicte subjectivity. in the nineteenth century many women travellers that they could came to question theiridentities, 'neitherlocate themselvesin the contextof their ofwhat nor[were] existence" theycertain "previous their travels'. She argues they[had]becomethrough was characteristithatthisprocessof estrangement - thatit to a genderedidentity callylinkeddirectly from the norm of the was an 'estrangement thatboth of -and it is, I think, feminine' significant These sugher examplesinvolve dream-images.37 gestions might assume even greatersignificance hertravels in Egyptthat herebecause it was during determined thatshe had been 'called'to Nightingale nursing,which was itself coded, gendered and sexualizedin ambiguousand complexways.38But on a thread of theseare beads of speculation strung to attach too and I am reluctant autobiography in the muchweightto them.I am more interested for the connecconsequencesof the dream-image saw betweenancientEgypt and tions Nightingale modem Europe. To Nightingale,as to many other European world Cairo was the locus of the fairy-tale visitors, of the ArabianNights.39 Beforeshe set off upriver she set down her first impressions.
Woodham-Smithattributesthese 'dreams' to a - to a 'call fromGod' whose exact crisis spiritual natureremainedundisclosedfor years and which tormented almostbeyond endurance Nightingale to see a crisis of but it would not be difficult No oneevertalks about thebeauty ofCairo ever gives in themtoo. In any event, sexuality Egypt repressed you theleastidea of thissurprising city. I thought it herletters Although pushedherresolveto thelimit. was a placetobuystores atandpassthrough on one's home gave no outwardsign of hersecretagonies,I instead ofitsbeing the theroseofcities, wayto India, suspectthather recourseto the dreammotifmay ofthedesert, thepearl ofMoorish architecture, garden have been,in some measure, cathartic. It is importthefairest, thefairest below... really placeof earth inred those Moorish between the dreams and the Oh, couldI butdescribe ant to distinguish streets, and white of the latticed with marble; balconies, a link of but there is between stripes course, dream-images, little also latticed, out of shrines, octagonal sticking them. Woodham-Smith describes Nightingale's for theladies to lookstraight downthrough; the them, from dreamsas consolingvisions,as withdrawals in the innumerable andminarets; thearcades mosques the demands(and denials)of her everyday and life, insidesof housesyou peep into,the first storeys in Egypt her dream-images gave her access to a almost andyettheairwith overhead, meeting nothing and parallelworld thatwas, in its way, comforting in it, in thesenarrowest but fragrance of narrow perhapseven consoling. Butthere areno words to describe an Arabian wynds! The dream-image was a commonplace of no European words at least...40 city, Victorian travel writingbut it has a particular resonancein the case of FlorenceNightingalein This is a farcryfrom her harshimpressions of the her landscapeoftheNile Valleybutnoticehow herfinal Egypt.35It suggests both her inner turmoil, sense of disengagement and the disappointment sentencesituatesthe city.She is indeed dissolving she recorded in her small black notebook at historyinto the space of mythology - into the the effect present-day Egypt was having on her, space of the ArabianNights- and she laterunderbut also and, so to speak,redemptively, her prox- lines the distinction: 'Cairo is not Egyptian',she 'it is Arabian'.Her language failedher imityto Egyptianmythologyand its intimations announced, of (im)mortality.36 Entering into that parallel here,so she seemed to be saying,not because the world of the past was also perhaps a way experiencewas un-natural but preciselybecause - of mapping? - her shifting it was out of nature,beyond nature,virtually of comprehending
38 Whenshe returned to Cairoat theend super-natural. of her voyage she remained convincedthatit was to describe it. 'You mightas well tryto impossible record a dream',she wrote,'and I do not know whether thewakingdreamof the livingcitywithin or thesilent visionof thedead citywithout is most unreal'.41 And she presented the journeyupriver - as a which separated these two encounters voyage into the supernatural. You feel, as you lie on thedivan, and float slowly and theshores by,as ifyou along, pass you gently were carried river to some being alongsomeunknown unknown foreverall you had known shore, leaving - a mysterious before overyou,as ifit feeling creeps were thepassage to someother world ... You loseall ofdistance allfeeling ofidentity too,and [and] feeling becomes everything supernatural...42 barkwithits Indeed,'whenin theeveninga spectral in silently like a glassy whitesails comes standing phantom ship upon this molten sea, you fancy but in thisworld'.She and her yourself anywhere werebeing'carried away in a phantomcompanions countries' when and,laterthatnight, ship to Jinnee one of the crew roused himselffromthe deck, fireupon the waves fromhis hand',he 'scattering 43 looked 'likeanything but a man'.43 certainly Like other travellers, Nightingalesaw the Nile into directly passage openingtheEuropeanpresent the Egyptian had Warburton past. Six yearsearlier felt that 'as you recede fromEurope further and further on, towardsthe silentregionsof the Past, you live more and more in thatPast'.44Similarly, for Nightingaleand no doubt for many other thatthreshold was, in itsway,a crossing Europeans, from thatin any distinct 'perfectly limit-experience of our living countries' and yet at the (myemphasis) same time only accessibleto travellers those from places.
Derek Gregory of inhabitants Brushingaway the contemporary Egypt thus, she wondered at how she and her had 'becomeso completely inhabitants companions of another we wereliving age' and 'how completely in the time of 4000 years ago'. What made this the ruinsthemselves and partly possiblewas partly hereducatedsensibility. She marvelled at thepaintof 'all the ings in the tombsand theirdelineation detailsof everyday of it life';the sheerprosaicness all afforded what she saw as a 'magic lantern glimpseinto the domesticeconomyof 4000 years she realized,'everymonuago'. At the same time, mentis itsown interpreter' and thedecipherment of the hieroglyphs had made it possible foreducated but not, by implication, the European travellers- to human Arabswho livedamongtheruins barely appreciate Egypt'sancient pastand henceto claimit as their own.46 She herselfhad consulted with eminentEgyptologists, read widely in Orientalist literatures had set off and, accordingto her sister, forEgyptladen withlearnedbooks. And what did she find? At Beni Hassan she declared: All that is that one wants to know on this soilnearly 4000 or 5000 yearsago men stood who feltand like us ... I think the must havebeen thought Egyptian much like someoftheEnglish wives ofthe clergy very whopreach outoftheOld Testament and day, present make muslin curtains.47 Less extravagantly, she but otherwisesimilarly, foundit 'astonishing how alikethehuman heartis in all periods and climates';at Thebes she saw 'the same feelings we have in everysculpture and tomb and templehere'.48
Yet this double strategy of estrangement/ howeverconsolingits visionmay have effacement, with a was shot through been in personalterms, was frankly ambivalence. Nightingale there is not mesmerizing It is likegoingintotheSun,and finding as ifthey had appalled by most of what she saw of Egypt's oneliving butstrewed left; about, being all the present and not only the grindingpoverty and books, justbeenused,all thework, furniture, of the race,all the marks misery of ordinarypeople. She also hated the poetry, religion learning, fitted souland physicalviolence,the resortto the cudgel and the to giveonean ideaoftheir mind, heart, to makeone feelperfectly acquainted bastinado, imagination, and was takenabackby 'whatit is to be much with their andideas, more so a woman in thesecountries'. feelings thoughts, And she realizedthat than with ofmany those ofone'sownkin... Butstill, thiscould not all be laid at thedoor of thecommon is a deserted that is allbut thestar one ... [and] Egypt she supposed them uninhabited. The present raceno moredisturbs this people, however 'un-natural' thanwoulda race of lizards, scramblingto be and no matter how 'voluntary' their impression of She dismissed thesuccessiverulers a star. monuments ofsuch You would 'debasement'. overthebroken notcallthem no more do youthese.45 inhabitants, Egypt- Muhammad'Ali, Ibrahimand Abbas - as
and thephilosophy Ambivalence ofhistory
39
But the systemof identities and oppositionsset being as bad as one another, presidingover 'the kingdomof the devil', but she reservedher most out in Figure 3 had another consequence for for the presentPasha, Abbas, Nightingale'sphilosophy of history.Egypt and withering contempt whom she deemed 'below all sentiment, eitherfor Europe, antiquity and modernity, were opposing the glories of his templesor the miseriesof his poles and thismade it virtually forherto impossible Egypt'as it cameintobeing people'. On occasion,however,and in the margins recognize 'modernizing of tension.She was of heraccounts, she concededthattheseindignities at the centreof thisforce-field and horrors were presentin Egypt'spast too. She able to get her bearingson the Orient by using disliked thePyramids forthisveryreason: European constructions of Nature and Historyas intensely devices,but she deployed themin such a theywere a recordof 'themosthideousoppression sighting in the world', a monumentto tyranny, and so way thatthe idea of 'modemrn Egypt'simplycould she was not in the least surprised that her 'first not be thought within the compass of her concepat mid-century it was a blurred impression of them should be nothing but tual grid.Certainly, and jagged image.IfMuhammad'Ali had been the repulsive'.49 If these continuities could be held in suspense modernizing autocrat,opening Egypt to Europe, most of the time,so thatshe could findsolace of introducing new cash crops and new agricultural some kindin antiquity, itwas muchmoredifficult to practices, and deepeningirrigation canals, dredging and commonalities she pre- settingup new factories with modemrn negotiatethe identities machinery sumed between Egypt as the cradle of ancient and planning schemesforCairo,then improvement civilization and Europe- and most particularly his grandson,Abbas, was a reactionary despot. - as the climax of modem civilization. Britain For During his briefrule, 1848-54, he set his face of Europeanmodernity and theysurelycalled into questionthe verynotionof againstthe incursions inscribed within of abandonedmanyofhis grandfather's innovations.52 progress' Europeanconceptions And yet,in so manyways,it was too late. In 1843 modernity: it had takenWarburton four between days to travel - good for It is good for a man[sic] to be here British Alexandria and Cairo;in 1849 Nightingale was able to think, here was a nation more than to make the same tripon an Englishsteamer, pride powerful the we are,and almost as civilised, 4000 years ago - for Marchioness in just 24 hours.Where ofBreadalbane, havebeena nation ofslaves 2000years already they - others would have seen thisas a signof thefragility in 2000 yearswhereshallwe be?- Shallwe be like of the Orient, of the fading of its imaginative them?5o overgeography,and mournedits disappearance, written thebolderand brasher strokes ofmoderby Not surprisingly, thisadmonition soon turned into nity, Nightingale simplysaw the Orientcrumbling trepidation: underthe burdenof its own unchanging present.53 It cannot be a law thatall nations shallfallafter a At the end of her Nile voyage thereis a moment serveas a metaphor forherphilosophy certain number of years. God does notworkin that whichmight She is in hercabin as dusk falls, sort ofway:they must havebroken writing somelawofnature of history. which has causedthem to fall. Butare all nations to one of herlastletters from withthekhamsin Egypt, sink in that turn intoPicts raging outside and sand blowing in throughthe way?... AndwillEngland has turned intoArabs?5' again... as Egypt 'I could writemuch more easily on the shutters. tablewithmy finger', she tellsherfamily, 'thanon One mightexpect such concernsto have had a the paper withmy pen'.54 IS it undulyfanciful to of see in this an image of Egypt disappearing specialresonancein the wake of the revolutions in the ofpeoples' musthave dust,the inscriptions 1848; thatfamous of Europe struggling to make 'springtime seemed quite otherwiseto many membersof the themselves visible, only to be overwhelmed by the Even those separated from continental deadeningembraceof the desert? bourgeoisie. Europe by the English Channel had been rudely awakened by the spiritedChartistcampaigns of A fantasyof escape: Gustave Flaubertin the 1840s and, afterthe repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, the middle class was probably even Egypt more alienated from the British working-class GustaveFlaubert's about Egyptare textuwritings movement. thanFlorenceNightingale's ally more complicated
40 because their construction is so multiform. Flaubert two notebooks his travelsand he used kept during them to provide the raw materials for his letters home.The surviving consistsof 31 correspondence letters from Flaubert and, since thereis no traceof the 30 or so lettershe receivedwhile he was in Egypt,we have directaccess to only one side of these oftenintimate conversations. Each letter presentshis travelsto a different audienceand is thus composed froma different position.Althoughhe often one letter copied and reworked passages from to another, thereis a vivid contrast between the letters to his motherand those to his close friend, Louis Bouilhet.He wrote to Bouilhetmuch less often but at much greater length,returning to draftedin lettersto his motherand descriptions them, by whichI meannot onlygiving elaborating more detail- including eroticencounters whichhe - but also polishing and kept from his mother his prose. This is of the utmostimportperfecting mattered ance, for this correspondence greatlyto Flaubert. He was comforted hisfamily by newsfrom and friends and was always worriedwhen he did not hearfrom them buthe had other reasonstoo: he tormented himself withthethought thatsome ofhis own letters mighthave been lost in the post not because he intendedto make use of least,I think, them himself. He had promised to incorporate extractsfromthe lettersinto articlesfor the Revuede l'Orient et d'Algirie, the bulletin of the Soci~t Orientale de France, but soon afterhe in Egypthe decided'to publishnothing arrived for a long timeyet'.When Flaubert to France returned he re-read all the letters he had sent to his mother (he had instructed her to number themin sequence and keep themsafe), thoseto Bouilhet and probably perhaps even the notes taken by his travelling and thenused themin conjunction with companion, his own notes to composehis Voyage en Egypte. As he had said, however,this was not intendedfor It was a purely publication. private projectin which Flauberttriedto lay down his experiences like a future: 'to young wine to maturefor his literary makethe Orientintoa place of personalmemory, a sortof immense of images'.55 treasury FlaubertleftFrance in the fall of 1849 in the companyof Maxime Du Camp. Both men were in their late twenties and had been friendssince university. They had long been fascinated by the Orientbut it was Du Camp who took the initiative in making arrangements for the expedition.He theFrench to entrust each of persuaded government
Derek Gregory them with a diplomaticmission that he hoped would open variousdoors en route. The Ministry of Public Instruction endorsed his own proposal to and theirinscripphotographancientmonuments tions, while the Ministry of Agricultureand CommercechargedFlaubertwith collectingcommercialinformation. Du Camp took his task very - Flaubertoftendescribeshis companion seriously busy withplatesand negativeswhilehe sat around - and he eventually talkingor writing publisheda remarkable series of photographs.56 But Flaubert was quite uninterested in his own mission. He enjoyed the status it conferred upon him but in of the adventure, Cairo, at the verybeginning his ministerial instructions already 'seem[ed] to be forthe day I'll use themas toilet waitingpatiently paper'. They simplygot in the way of what he wantedto do. Towards the end of the journey, he confessed: I pay no moreattention to mymission thanto the To 'discharge I myduties' Kingof Prussia. properly shouldhave had to give up myjourney - it would havebeenabsurd... Can't town, yousee meinevery about about about myself informing crops, production, 'How much oil do you shit here? How consumption? do you stuff intoyourselves?'57 many potatoes Counter-discourse and contaminated geographies Flaubert's motiveswere complex.Like manyother and artistsof the time,he was European writers haunted and by thedesireto escape theconventions confinements of bourgeoisEurope. 'If Franceis in the same state as it was when I left',he wrote towardstheend ofhisjourney, 'ifthebourgeoisie is stillas ferociously absurdand publicopinionas base as it was, in a word,ifthewholekettle of fish smells as bad then I don't miss any of it'."5Perhapshe of Egypt hoped to findin the counter-experience the terms of what Richard Terdiman calls a counterdiscourse 'fromwhich the ennuiand the banality characteristic of Flaubert's lifeand his consciousness fora long timewould have been banished'.59 Like Florence Nightingale,there were also intensely personalreasonsforFlaubert wantingto get away from Europe- the death of a close friend,the - but,unlike mental illnessof hisbrother-in-law her, he had no desire to effacethe distancebetween himto and antiquity. Terdiman modernity compares in the first sentimentale: Education life Jules 'Modemrn to himand he returned began to seemtoo restricted to antiquity to find forpleasure and objects subjects of desire'.In Terdiman'seyes, Flaubert hoped to
Between thebookandthelamp hold thetwo apart, to leave theone and lose himself in the other, and realizea dream notso much ofnaturalizing within hisownwriting (in the formof some sort of curative the antidote) discourse of theOrient, butmuch moreradically of - almost himself in this himselfabsorbing obliterating other discourse.60
41 desire, but, on the contrary, wakefulness, untiring zealous erudition, and constant attention, vigilance. thevisionary arisesfrom the Henceforth, experience blackand whitesurface of printed the signs,from closedand dusty volume thatopenswitha flight of fantasies arecarefully inthe words; forgotten deployed hushed with with itscolumns ofbooks, itstitles library, on shelves a tight toform butwithin enclosure, aligned confines that also liberate worlds.The impossible now residesbetween the book and the imaginary lamp.64
The preoccupationwith antiquitywas scarcely novel and neither was its particularidentificationwiththe Orientbut in Flaubert's case these travelwritassociationsassumed a special form.I have men- One mightsay the same of Flaubert's He readwidelyin theliterature of Orientalism ings. tionedtheir in the first Education sentimenpresence tale,which was completedin 1845; they are also between 1845 and 1849, and these 'pre-texts' centrallyinvolved in Flaubert's Conte Oriental, enframedhis own texts.65 It is thus scarcely that,as Terdiman claims, whichwas his nextproject and whichhe abandoned suprising in order to work on La tentation de Saint-Antoine. whichstemsfrom a constant Despitethe plenitude This extraordinary text was set in Egypt and reference to places,monuments, and mores terms Flaubert completed a firstversion immediately whichwere exoticfor[Flaubert], thesetextsreally before his departure:the stinging criticismit anabsence theprotocols from ofthe ofrupture represent received from Du Camp and Bouilhet provided dominant discourse. On thecontrary: these protocols another reasonforhimto get away.6' But thiswas areunexpectedly inscribed at thecenter ofa modeof whose missionwas precisely to exclude more than an escape into the exotic. Eugenio writing them.66 Donato argues that Flaubert's 'nostalgia for (ifthatis what it was) was a longingfor antiquity' unmediated of writing' In Egypt, Flaubert found a modernityalways form original, 'an absolutely and thathis Orientwas constituted withina com- presentin his antiquityand an antiquityalways in his modernity. But- and thisis central to network that,among otherfunc- present plex metaphorical - thiswas morethana matter of thatit was, in my own argument tions,staged his own act of writing: It had the most 'a spatialmetaphor foran absolutedifference poetics, of textual enframing. effect, of dimensions too: which would permit a textually unmediated material representation'.62 The West,having Flaubert to theEast,is preceded And yet,as Donato also remarks, such was not himto record it there, likean unanticipated obliging (and could not be) the case for the Egypt of referent which forces itsrepresentation uponthetext La tentation or the Carthage of Salammbd,the whosefunction had nominally been to evade it ... first novel in which Flaubertdrew directly on his Thus it is thatFlaubert's textregisters its contamitravelsin the Orient: nation and moreor less by Europeas a systematic conscious of thismode of intervention and critique Between them andFlaubert thearchaeological domination. [stood] Itorganizes intheform itself ofa network museum and thelibrary and it is only of erudition, of tiny of European distributed over infection, points theMuseum andtheLibrary that themodernm its through as they seemto havebeenoverthemapof pages writer have accessto them.63 [could] theOrient itself. Such contaminated ittakes geography as itsmodel.67 Foucault capturedthese textualmediationsin his on the fantasiesthat fill La Terdiman's strikingreflection readingseemsto me largely persuasive, to whichI referred earlier: tentation, and I will make use of it in what follows, but it is Flaubert was responding to an experience of Possibly, thefantastic which was singularly modern and relaunknown before histime, to thediscovery ofa tively newimaginative This century. spacein thenineteenth domain ofphantasms is no longer thenight, thesleep of reason, or the uncertain void thatstands before Lowe drawsattention to the comhardlyinclusive. foliationsof Flaubert's plex, often contradictory texts:to thepreoccupation withdefining a coherent national identity,an 'imagined community'in Benedict Anderson'ssense of thatphrase, at a time when it had been called into question by the
42
DerekGregory
revolutions of 1848; to the eroticizationand And certainly he rarely presented panoramasin his sexualization of the Orientas femaleOther,differ- notes and letters or his novels,preferring to focus ent from and desired by a masculineEuropean on images of particular moments;but these had so intense to the a visual densityso vivid, a focalisation subject; and even, in his later writings, ironic counter-commentary on Orientalism as thatpassages in his travelwritings have reminded are severalcritics of an artist's rather thana My senseis thatthesethemes 'sentimentality'.68 sketchpad for writer's One eveningat Denderah, all present in his appropriations of Egypt. notebook."7 example, when Flaubertwas strollingunder the palms, gazing at the purple-redof the distant Landscapesand ruins of the blue of the Nile, the ultramarine mountains, Flaubertand Du Camp arrivedin Alexandriaon the sky and the livid green of the vegetation, 15 November1849, accompanied Corsican by their that the scene was he servant,Sassetti.The trio leftfor Cairo 10 days nothingmoving, imagined an immensestage set like 'a paintedcountryside, - perhaps travelling later on the same steameras made expresslyfor us'.72 But this was not the - and and FlorenceNightingale69 the Bracebridges artistic conceit of Florence Nightingale, who at the H6tel d'Orientand thenat the stayed first the landscape looked 'as if a child had H6tel du Nil, where they remained for over two thought it and did not know how'. Not only did months. They then hired a houseboat, a blue- painted Flaubert exultin theselandscapes; he 'painted'them smaller thanthe whichwas somewhat paintedcange and he did know how: in fact,one commentator Flaubert wroteto his mother, Parthenope. regardsthese as the great pages of his Voyage.73 were oftenacutelyphysical descriptions For quarters we have a roomwithtwo little divans Flaubert's in and intersecting their to ability convey changing eachother ... a large with room twobeds,on facing in whichvisionvirtually fadesinto there one side of which is a kindof alcoveforour arcsof sensation in back and their almost sound and again physical an English-type head;and baggageand on theother of the scene itself.Consider this a third where will room Sassetti finally sleepandwhich recomposition willserve as a store-room as well.70 had climbedto the afterFlaubert passage, written to wait forthe sunrise: top of one of the Pyramids Still,it musthave been capaciousenough;Flaubert had more than 1200 pounds of baggage. It was thewholevalley of The sunwas rising justopposite; inmist, white theNile, bathed seemed to be a still sea; and came with a crew of certainly well-equipped and the desert behind of sand, us, withits hillocks nine. But another itswavesall petrified. ocean, deeppurple, They set off up theNile on 5 February 1850 and, Arabian chain themist climbed behind the as the sun althoughthey were hit by a successionof storms intogreat shreds of filmy was torn gauze ... Everyforlong distances, and the crew had to track they andlooks thehorizon andus is allwhite between thing reached the First Cataract on 11 March. They The sun, it seems, andlifts. likean ocean;this recedes travelled up intoNubia as faras Wadi Halfawhich that aboveoblong clouds is moving fast andclimbing their on 22 March.As was thecustom, theyreached the ofan inexpressible swan's looklike softness; down, but it was made even return was more leisurely ... seemto be thevillages trees inthegroves around overlandacross the is perpenin theskyitself, fortheentire longerby a 10-day excursion perspective is the ... behind around, us, whenwe turn dicular; Keneh to the Red Sea at Koseir.They desertfrom a of desert waves sand, ocean.74 purple purple on to Cairo thenresumed their voyage and returned 25 June, wheretheystayedat the Hbtel du Nil for a week or so beforetravelling back to Alexandria. The passage begins with an image of arresting - is suddenly but the scene- the canvas? Alexandria there and left (for stillness They spenta fortnight cut by the sun and its compositionthrustinto on 17 July Beirut) 1850. not to be motion: even the trees are rotatedinto the sky. For the most part,Flaubertaffected of in either interested greatly Egypt'slandscapeor the Nightingalewas struckby the colourlessness But this apparent Egyptbut herewaves of colourwash over skyand ruins of its past civilizations. into his land, and one can almosthear themcrashing Soon after carefully. neglectneeds to be treated arrivalin Cairo Flaubertwrote to Louis Bouilhet the desertsand. It is necessary to be equally cautious about thathe was 'verylittleimpressed by naturehereAt Abu Simbel he flatly i.e. landscape, sky, desert (except the mirages)'. Flaubertand antiquity.
43
declared that 'the Egyptian temples bore me this was not to renderthemas flatand immobile and his notes on themas he returned surfacesbut to situate theirgeometrieswithina profoundly' almost kineticrepresentation of downriverseem to be increasingly perfunctory; multidimensional, there is certainlynothing in his writingsthat space that was intenselycorporeal.If Flaubert's of ruins that space is one in which places are crisscrossed by approachesthe endless descriptions filled Florence letters. Yet whatbored glancesin a geometric thoseglancesand Nightingale's quadrillage, was not so much the ruinsas their theirgeometriesare not disembodied.78 him, I think, On the Michel Butor suggests that Flaubert's incorporationwithin the increasinglyelaborate contrary, textualapparatusof Orientalism were shotthrough witha critique of and, in particular, travel writings withinthe discoursesof archaeologyand tourism what one might call the body-cultureof the For Flaubert. thatpoliced their 'Are theygoing to bourgeoisie. appropriation. in Brittany, become likethe churches the waterfalls The contemporary epoch,thatof the bourgeoisie, of the Pyrenees?' he demanded. thehuman it with clothes bodyby covering destroys andcutting it out.Generalised To do what to do; to castration.79 Oh,necessity! youaresupposed be always to thecircumstances (and what, according theaversion ofthemoment) ... a young man, When Flaubertdeclaresthat 'everything in Egypt despite or a tourist, or an artist ... is supposed to be!75 seems made forarchitecture', 'the planes therefore, of the fields, the vegetation, the humananatomy, Flaubert was genuinely moved at a number of sites, the horizonlines',his 'architecture' is not a formal mostnotably at Giza,Luxorand Thebes,and he had but rather an organicinteriority.s80 exteriority an eye fordetail so acute- sometimes muchmore so thanDu Camp- thatat leastone commentator is and representations ofspace passivity He was Physicality, sceptical about his show of disinterest. to landscapeand drawn to the figures shown on the frescoesand, I have made thispointin relation but it can be sharpened most acutelyin while he sometimes chaffedat the rigidityof antiquity, made intersect with attentionto its those otherfieldsthatFlaubert Egyptian art, he paid particular them. And it needs a to be in sharpened particular of the humanbody to the linesof representation - and, by nakedcaptivesdisplaying their handsand uncircum- way, as Butor'sinvocationof castration of desire- implies.There can be no cised penisesto the king,to the nakedwomen and implication, said himself, he was 'enorthe 'deliberately lubricious aspect of the[ir] thighs, doubt that,as Flaubert with the knee deeply inset'- as a confirmation of mouslyexcitedby the citiesand the people' and of them was a thoroughly what de Biasi calls 'the unchangeable of that his appropriation modernity Flaubert desire and eroticism'. Flaubert's own accountwas sensual one.8' Like FlorenceNightingale, landed in Alexandria the 'amid most deafening moreprosaic:'So dirty existedeven so far pictures unlikeher,however,when he back in antiquity?'76 But the point is, I think, uproarimaginable'; himself down a wholebellyful of 'gulp[ing] the same. Far frombeing unmovedby recorded essentially like a himself with he colours, donkey hay', filling the tracesof antiquity, Flaubert foundin their very He - at least in his response to and his applied the zoological metaphorto himself.82 physicality - whatNightingale of Alexandria saw as - the possibilityof soon tired renderingof that physicality of whiteants',Flaubert saw as a thatpastintohispresent. In muchthesame a vast settlement bringing adulterated and he city by roundly Europe death was not contained the lost worldsof way, by the temples and tombs.It was constantly all around declared that 'the Orient begins at Cairo'. He Flaubert and reachedout to touch him: thus dogs arrivedin the capitalat the end of Novemberand thelongerI stayhere, at the remains of a donkey;the muzzlesof foundthatcity'inexhaustible; tearing the more we find to In mid-January he discover'.83 with clotted blood in caked the hunting-dogs purple whilevultures wheel was still sun;camelsdyingin thedesert in thesky;theshrill criesofan Englishwoman in her overtheinitial bedazzlement. It is likebeing scarcely death agony; the dessicatedcorpseof an Arab,'the hurled while still ofa Beethoven asleepintothemidst mouth screamingwith every ounce of human with thebrasses at their most symphony, ear-splitting, strength'.77 thebassesrumbling andtheflutes away;each sighing When Flaubert wrotethatlandscapeand architecdetail reaches outto grip you;itpinches you;andthe ture 'seem the work of the same hand', therefore, moreyou concentrate on it the less you graspthe
44 DerekGregory all thisbecomes whole.Thengradually harmonious account of Flaubert's which he uses to sexuality, and thepiecesfall intoplaceof themselves, in accor- characterize Flaubert's as essenbeing-in-the-world thelawsofperspective. dancewith Butthefirst days, tially passive. Through his sexual encounters chaos of colours Flaubert by God, it is sucha bewildering tries his beingby constantly to 'recuperate' thatyourpoorimagination is dazzledas though by - literally himself in of others the hands placing continuous fireworks...84 so - and 'turning subhimself, through complaisant - once mission, As the physicality of the prose suggests into a fascinating object forhis executionforhimself'. The object of again, sound fadinginto vision and the details of ers and simultaneously the scene reachingout, grippingand pinching- thisrecuperation, is 'hispassivity so Sartre contends, Flaubert's Flaubert's responseswere more than mentalexer- itself';in anotherformulation, passivity I see', he 'desiresto become flesh cises. 'I try to take hold of everything underthemanipulations of wrote to his mother, and he was greatly exercised others'.For Sartrethis is indicativeof 'a secret of Flaubert'svision of himselfas an and corporeality of his femininity' by the sheer physicality in woman', and his sexual encounters 'imaginary encounters."85 This was truein themostliteral of senses.Where Egypt and elsewherereveal a desire to submit'in FlorenceNightingale was sickenedby the physical order to coincide in orgasm with his objective These are,I think, and tendentious claims, thatshe took to be partof everyday lifein being'."88 brutality withdiagnosby it. 'You would forseveralreasons.Less preoccupied Egypt,Flaubertwas entranced Said none theless seemsat role played by the ing Flaubert's sexuality, scarcelybelieve the important by Sartre's analysisand transcudgel in this part of the world',he wrote to his least half-convinced are distributed with a sublime lates 'passivity'into Flaubert'spenchantfor the mother. 'Buffets at its best, he writes 'this provides a always accompanied by loud cries;it's theatrical: prodigality, themostgenuinekindof local colouryou can think spectacularform,but it remainsbarred to the of'. He was amusedby the assaultshe witnessed Westerner's full in it'.In theOrient, so participation on one occasion his own servantsforcedanother Said claims, - 'likeso manyothers - felt his Flaubert man intothe ocean withtheir sticks and he and Du detached powerlessness,perhaps also his selfto enterand become partof and he 'like fools' and Du Camp inducedunwillingness, Camp laughed questionedthe Nazir of Ibrimabout the bastinado what he saw'.89 Ifone acceptstheseinterpretations, thenFlaubert But physicalwithsomething approaching relish.86 into Flaubert's in Cairo,dressing ity entered still more intimately up 'in a largewhitecottonNubian with little pompoms',shaving his images. A wedding processionwith 'two naked shirttrimmed but not head 'exceptforone lock at the occiput(by which oiled and wearingleather shorts, wrestlers, Day)', just striking by Mohammed lifts you up on Judgement wrestling, poses'; a performance with 'a tarbooshwhich is of a 'dancers[whose] gauze rippleson the hips like a adorninghimself wave with every move they make'; a screaming red',was doing exactlythat:dressing up transparent he visit to the baths, alone in the hot room, 'very (Fig. 4).90 'We look quite the pair of Orientals', thepoint. and thatwas precisely voluptuous... while the naked kellaascall out to wroteto Bouilhet, as theymassageyou'; a nightwiththe They were playinga part;theycould not be - and one another courtesanKuchukHanem, 'feelingof her stomach neither, I think, did they wish to becomeon the Towardstheend of their thanher 'Orientals'. ... hermoundwarmer journey againstmybuttocks heatedme likea hot iron';theclownofthe Nile they entertained themselvesby faisant les stomach, as sheikhs and asking crew dancing'a naked,lasciviousdance that con- sheikhs: portentous play-acting off questionsabout literacy, to buggerhimself', sistedof an attempt railwaysand the spread driving monkswho swam to theside of theboat of socialism.That this was, in part, a satire on mendicant by 'show[ing]them his prick and his arse and Flaubert'sneglected mission and, perhaps,on a thatmade the inhabitants 'modernization' to piss and shiton their strangers pretend[ing] heads'."87 does not detractfromtheir finds in in theirown country, thatSartre This is not quitethepassivity that but thefactremains of the 'informants' Flaubert and, althoughI cannotdiscusshis reading ridicule the thiswas not how Flaubert in the detailit deserves,I do need to establish and Du Camp conducted inter- themselves; Sartre's distancebetweenour two Flauberts. their did not relyon formal impressions I thinkthat de Biasi claims too and interrogatories.91 a mix of Marxism is derived from pretation was somehow psychoanalysis.Of particularrelevance is his muchwhen he assertsthatFlaubert
Betweenthe book and the lamp
45
Maxime Du Camp) Figure 4. Gustave Flaubertin the garden of the H6tel du Nil, Cairo, 1850 (photograph:
46
Derek Gregory
and thither, hither able 'to represent the otherin his or her alterity', the villagesand running making circles acquaintances thehermeneutic But it quickly oiA bon me semble'.97 since,as I will show shortly, in whichFlaubert's narrative moved were uneven became apparentthat,forall theirexcursions, she a sortof collective constituted and unequal.92Nevertheless, neitherFlaubertnor and hercompanions were Du Camp sought to insulate themselvesfrom moving eye on whichsuccessivesights/sites In much the same way, Flaubert local society and there are several passages in registered.98 which Flaubert records his contemptfor those boasted thathe and Du Camp lived who travelled through Egyptwithoutmakingany out all day on our in thegrossest stretched idleness, concessionsto theirsurroundings (most notably thatgoes by: camels, divanswatching everything - an Englishman and one hopes imaginatively to Cairo boats ofoxenfrom theSennaar, herds floating travellingin Syria who insisted on eating four tusks. andelephants' ladenwith negresses meals of roast beef a day and takingregularcold baths).93 and claimedthathis Du Camp went muchfurther in the companion adventures homoerotic Equally,Flaubert's of arousaland anticipabathsin Cairo were frissons consumtion but not, if we are to believe Sartre, outon ifhecould, stretched totravel, haveliked would satirized here too Flaubert mations.94 and ruins a sofaandnotstirring, Although watching landscapes, - 'Travelling of a mechanical himlikethescreen cities as we are foreducational his mission pass before panorama.99 and chargedwitha missionby the govpurposes, it our dutyto indulge we have considered ernment, - thiswas, I think, (as he was in more But Du Camp was beingless thanfair in thisform of ejaculation' of otherplaces). For thereis also a real than play-actingon his part. Flaubertwas not a number that intoEgypt'spresent plunging merelymakinga gestureto the symbolichomo- senseof Flaubert letters critics now see in is almostwhollyabsentfromNightingale's eroticism thatsome contemporary of morethana difference the colonial European encounterwith the exotic and whichis the product well-informed in style. I say 'almost wholly absent' for good East.95He seemed to be remarkably reason; the exceptionsare revealing.Soon after about the practical arrangements: and Selina theirarrivalin Alexandria, Nightingale the Bracebridge disguised themselves as Egyptian thebathforyourself...and skewer You reserve theones rooms... Thefinal ladinoneofthe masseurs, women in order to visit a mosque during the who come to rub you whenthe restis done,are to themselves Theyhad to confine prayers. We hadoureyeon one mid-day niceyoung boys. usually quite men 'the but womens' the (whether gallery, people' I reserved thebath near ourhotel. inan establishment crowdedroundthem, laughing wasaway or womenis unclear) I went, andtherascal for myself. exclusively and pointing.'That quarterof an hour seemed to that day! reveal to one what it is to be a woman in these 'a man countries', for was unsuccessfulencounter 'God save them, first recalled: Flaubert's Nightingale The sense of hopelessness - but he latertold it is a hopeless life'.100 in his fifties, ignoble,disgusting' 'thatbusi- was at once lessenedand heightened thathe did indeedconsummate Bouilhet by hervisitsto to do thesisters de Paul,who rana hospital of St Vincent ness at thebaths'and thathe was determined it again.96His admissionmay have been perfunc- and a school for the poor in Alexandria.Her torybut,when thesepassages are seen in the light engagements were mediated by a (feminized) thatnot only,I imagine, of the highlymobile,intensely helped apparatus physicalsexuality charitable it hardenherresolveto becomea nurse:as the sisters thatis so vividlypresentin Flaubert's writings, lifeof the in the everyday becomes difficult (for me, anyway) to treat his of the orderintervened horrorat her confirmed also so and intrinsias they of city, amply appropriations Egypt essentially of at whatshe tookto be itsculture Egypt'spresent, callypassive. made and indifference.1o1 was one sensein whichFlaubert's improvidence Thatsaid,there Nightingale Egyptwas as passive as Florence no secret of the fact that 'withoutthe past' she passage through and uninhabitable', Nightingale's.At the start of her voyage she conceivedEgypt 'to be utterly declaredthatshe was 'no dahabeeahbird,no divan she exultedin the 'absolutesolitude'of the Great because it provided in Templeat Abu Simbelprecisely and thatshe longed 'to be wandering incumbent' of one's fellow of of a 'the absence all any into nose own present, the desertby myself, my poking
Between thebookandthelamp creatures who contrast the past with thathorrible however,it was Egyptian present'.102 For Flaubert, - and,in particuan inhabited versionofthepresent of past and present, lar,the complextemporalities the sometimes grotesque, sometimes dazzling - thatwas so of thepast intothepresent irruptions exciting. And if one thinksabout Flaubert'stopoi,the places in which these experiencestake place and the representation of space withinwhichthey are and encounters are convened,thenhis experiences Flaubert scarcelypassive. In a letterto his mother wrotethatwhenhe galloped acrossthe desertwith Du Camp 'we were devouring space' and the image that I capturesthe sense of physicalengagement want to invokemore generally here.1o3 It is quite different from the way he has his mother the figure of He often that she follow suggested space Egypt. his progress on themap he had sentherfrom Paris, and at Philae he imagined her tear-filled eyes an empty lookingon 'thatmap thatonlyrepresents own space whereyourson is lost'.104Yet Flaubert's the image of his mother and space was not empty; hermap functions as a contrast thathas theeffect of that his Egypt was not an abstract confirming but rather a physicalspace constituted cartography as sensationand plenitude.
47 Francefeminized thoselandscapes. partsof western Of most directrelevanceto my own discussionis the suggestion that, in those early descriptions, theinterior of thisfeminine 'lightcirculates through desiresto become a landscape.. . and the spectator momentin that circulation'.107These are clearly heterosexual readingsand one needs to recognize (and make space for)the ambivalence of Flaubert's sexualitybut, seen like this, his view fromthe - or,rather, his act of viewing- becomes Pyramids not only aestheticized but also eroticized. Flaubert theskyand itsplay of lightas 'a medium represents thatenvelops,penetrates and transforms the body and subjectivity'.1o8 his writings about Throughout thecorpusofhisworkas Egyptand,forthatmatter, a whole, thissense of transubstantiation is usually achievedthrough of fluidity and liquidmetaphors ity. Gazing down on the city of Cairo froma forexample,across to the desert, the Nile minaret, and the Pyramids remarked how beyond,Flaubert 'the liquid lightseems to penetrate the surfaceof The metaphoris thingsand enter into them'.1o9 wateris almostalways associprecise;forFlaubert, ated withsexuality. In Cairo,thevoluptuousness of the baths is blended with and conveyed through their in theRed Sea, Flaubert 'lolledin its humidity; watersas thoughI were lyingon a thousand liquid breasts that were caressingmy entire body'.?10 What is particularly arrestingis that Flaubert invokeswaterto conveynotjustthecloudsfloating in the sky, the waves in the sea or the flowing currentsof the Nile but the desert too. Like he was fascinated manytravellers by themirage, by those of water withtrees in them, reflected greatstretches and at their farthest where limit, theyseemto touch thesky, a gray that to be moving ina vapour appears likea train rush,
This mustbe pressedfurther, because this however, space is constitutedin part through Flaubert's and thereare filiations betweenhis sexualwriting, ization of writing and his representation of space. The first is surely unexceptional. 'Literature!' Flaubert exclaimedto Bouilhet, in a vividlygraphic of the two, transposition
and representations ofspace Sexuality
Thatoldwhore! We must todoseher with try mercury andpills andclean heroutfrom shehas toptobottom, beenso ultra-screwed by filthy pricks!105 but his whole sense of the desert,of its oceans of The connections between sexualityand writing whichare scarcely to French critical foreign theory - are in generalor criticism of Flaubert in particular of courseconsiderably morecomplicated thansuch a casual, scatalogicalimage can convey.106 But if these connections are granted, thenit becomes all the moreimportant to ask about the gendering and sexualizationof Flaubert'simaginary geographies. Butor regards Flaubert's European travels as sketches forhis expedition to theOrientand argues that his descriptions of the Pyrenees, Corsica and
sand and waves of colour,was a liquidone. Riding back from the Pyramidsin the early evening, Flaubert describes the desertpavementthus: The small stones theground literally covering glitter, bathed inpurple itis as though onewere light; looking at them water so transparent as tobe invisible. through excursion to theRed Sea, Flaubert and Duringtheir Du Camp were enveloped in a dust-cloudas a caravanpassed themfrom the oppositedirection. It seemed to him
48
DerekGregory
that powers inhered in masculinityand patriarchy theground, werenot touching thatthecamels a ship-like movement,enabled him to make visible the spaces that aheadwith were breasting they above remained raised were thedust-cloud inside that high they to Nightingale.15 opaque ('impenetrable') in This makesit impossible were as though theground, belly-deep wading they his evident to disentangle clouds."' of his eroticization from pleasurein Egypt'spresent in which the Orient and thereis a sense, I think, intoEgypt'spresent was, at the plunging Whateverone makes of these images,they are Flaubert's quite dramatically different from Florence same time,an invasionand even an exploitation horrified recoil,groundedas it of Egypt: her land- that Nightingale's Nightingale'srepresentations to her.Flaubert denied an in was racism, unalloyed she mortified; dessicated, are hard,angular, scapes I do not found a place for bodies and subjects in his them. from distance a scrupulous maintains but theywere bodies and of all imaginative geographies mean to read her as somehowrepresentative of ways. literal most in the subjects is true but it that,by Europeanwomen travellers and large, women writersdid not eroticize the and there Underthesign of Europe whichtheytravelled landscapesthrough are very few passages in which Nightingale This is an unsettling readingand I need to make engenderedor sexualizedthe landscape. three further, explicitly First,I closely connected remarks. to theNile in the masculine hope it will be clear that- vivid and engaged as referred She constantly she Flaubert's but then so did most European travellers; thatit accountis - I do not wishto imply Cairo as 'a brideadornedforthemarriage' was somehow more 'real' than Nightingale's. described His and Egyptian 'nature' as 'an oriental queen in were carefully in whichthe wrought presentations gorgeous jewellery' but- as she more or less Orientwas scripted, and I meanby thismorethanan - these were common cliches of artful said herself There is of his notes and letters. re-working Orientalism.112If many women travellers adopted something about the way in whichFlaubert artful mode of set a 'confessional' whatSara Mills has termed in the first place. up many of his encounters and Nightingalewas no exception,her Julian writing, Barnesprovidesa wittyand erudite gloss on letters (like her experiences)were far removed Flaubert's thetop of thepyramid. view from Gazing Flauberteagerly down,Flaubert from the licentiousconfidences saw a smallbusinesscard inscribed shared with his young male friendsback in 'HUMBERT FROTTEUR' and he realized that France.13Her accountof herown visitto thebaths MaximeDu Camphad climbed up ahead ofhimand to Flaubert's left in Alexandria providesa vividcontrast And yeta fewlineslater forhimto find. it there 'haunting'of the baths in Cairo. She dwells on it turnsout thatthis 'sublimesurprise', this ironic 'the of sunlight, and the shafts the marbleinterior eruptionof the everydayinto the extraordinary, and had been planned by Flauberthimself, whole like an Arabian Night's description', who had likens the 'enchanted gardens' outside to 'the deliberatelybrought the card with him from sense Croisset. whereasFlaubert's Chatsworth conservatory', of enchantmentderived from more corporeal was whenhe left home, Flaubert, So, everstranger: architecture.114" later would which effects thespecial already preparing at least was able to disrupt And yet: if Flaubert the ofhowhe perceived characteristic entirely appear - to free some of the conventionsof Orientalism realities Ironies world. breed; recede.16 enframed himselffrom the abstractedgaze that a seriesof accountsand to construct Nightingale's Or again,he writesto Bouilhetof his visitto 'the in which inhabitants the geographies imaginative at Kena,wherehe walkedbackand whores'quarter' not as traces or of Egypt were indeliblypresent, to all the thestreets, forth 'givingbaksheesh through to able was he and subjects but as bodies imprints themcall me and catchhold of me'. women, letting do so, in large part,by virtueof the privileges But,he continues: constellation conferred upon him by a particular Not only did he and patriarchy. of masculinity thesweet to preserve inorder I abstained deliberately, more freedomof action than it deeplyin my have considerably sadnessof the sceneand engrave andhave - he was a young man travelling In thiswayI wentawaydazzled, memory. Nightingale than morebeautiful so. Thereis nothing remained not a young woman with a close male friend, of with had I If any women these gone you. calling the but the of friends family chaperoned by
Between thebookandthelamp a second havebeensuperimposed would them, picture on thefirst anddimmed itssplendour."'7 in Egyptfrom These were experiences constructed withina Europeanimaginary and with a European in mind. sensibility I have made muchof Flaubert's Secondly, physiof the Orient- 'gulpingdown a cal appropriation of colours'at Alexandria, bellyful space 'devouring in the desert and, I might have added, 'filling with sun and light' and 'inhaling the [himself] vastness'at Bulak1i8 of con- but thismetaphoric material intrusively sumptionhad an insistently, dimension too. Not onlydid Du Camp and Flaubert inscribe Egyptand carryit home withthemas the and recordsof an imaginative trophies geography; their stayin Cairo and their passage on theNile was withmanyof the assumptions and usages freighted of colonialconsumption. The moststriking imageis one that I have already cited withoutcomment. When Flaubertwatches 'boats floatingdown to it Cairo laden withnegressesand elephants' tusks', is surelynot his idlenessthat is so unsettling but the casual elisionbetweenthe objects of his rather gaze: betweenblack women- who, it seems from elsewherein his letters, were slavesdescriptions and animaltrophies.119 They were reducedto the same level, objectified and commodified, and these elisions enteredinto a complex chain of colonial and appropriations. Let me listjust some privileges of them:in Alexandria, soldierswere supplied to hold back the crowds when Du Camp set up his at Rosetta, thepasha enterphotographic apparatus; tainedthemto a dinner at whichtheywere waited on by 10 negro servantsin silverjackets;prostihairspangledwithgold piastres', were tutes,'their hiredto dance forthemat a partyon the river; in stood on their beds and,at a Cairo,hospital patients sign fromthe doctor,displayed the chancreson theiranuses to the entranced visitors;the French consul suggested they ask theirguide to have a blackwoman strip forthemat the slave market; Du withanother woman forher coral Camp bargained treated theirdonkey-drivers to a necklace;Flaubert by the aqueduct for 60 paras; upriver, prostitute men dived into the cataract to entertain them; Flauberthad tressesand ornaments cut fromthe heads of two women for 10 piastresapiece; and, Flaubertand Du Camp were enterclimactically, tainedby Kuchuk-Hanem, who performed an erotic dance and had sex withthem.'20 Terdiman's readof these is ing appropriations uncompromising:
49 which The textand theappropriative enerdynamic and entertainments to gizesit movesfrom spectacles women's to whole women: is made tresses everything the Occidental'slawful prize in that acceleratof the foreign whichstructures the ing absorption
Voyage.121
and As I have said,I acceptthattheseare invasions so, in his way, did Flaubert.'One curious thing 'is the respect,or here',he wrote to his mother, ratherthe terror, that everyone displays in the of "Franks", as theycallEuropeans .122But presence the practices whichthese incursions were through thanTerdiman put in place were morecomplicated seemsprepared to acknowledge. The slaves and the ivorywere not the exclusiveobjectsof a European economy, and Flaubertand Du Camp were not underthe sign of an all-powerful simplytravelling IfthetiesbetweenEgyptand Europeancolonialism. the OttomanEmpirewere frayed by the middleof thenineteenth century, Egyptwas none theless still a colonized country,ruled and policed by an Albanian-Turkish dliteunderthe nominalauthority of thePorte.And there wereothergridsofpower- that scored Arab of class, of religion, of gender society too. The practicesof colonial power in whichFlaubert and Du Camp were imbricated were thus multipleand interleaved with intricate local grids of power: thus local dignitaries suppliedthe soldiersand arranged dinners forthem, doctorsand donkey-drivers evidently had no compunction about using theirpower over patientsand prostitutesand, while thereis no way of knowingwhat the other people involved in these transactions made of them, it seems unlikely that these - however unequal- were all one-way exchanges affairs betweena dominant Occidentand a submissive Orient. Flaubert'sencounterwith KuchukHanem in particular was highly at once ambivalent, and it did not leave him disavowingand fetishizing,
unmoved.
and in some degreeagainstthe grainof Thirdly, the previousparagraph, Europewas neverfarfrom Flaubert's construction of the Orient.'You ask me whether the Orientis up to what I imaginedit to be', he repliedto his mother. than itextends far the Yes,itis;andmore that, beyond narrow ideaI hadofit.I havefound, delineated, clearly that washazyinmymind. Facts havetaken everything - so excellently theplaceofsuppositions it is so, that often as though I weresuddenly coming upon old forgotten dreams.z24
123
50 And later:
whois a little attentive rediscovers here much Anyone morethanhe discovers. The seeds of a thousand notionsthatone carried within oneself grow and become more definite, like so many refreshed Conclusion memories.'25 Flaubert constructedhis Egypt in advance, in of the view Europe: he even wrote a description from the top of one of the Pyramids beforehe left France. He arrived in Egypt with dreams of a timeless of a place which, because Orient, precisely it had escaped the compulsions and conventions of nineteenth-century Europe,had somehow stolen a marchon timeitself. His voyage was morethanan of course, and his travel more aide-mimoire, writings than a record of his dreamsturnedto sand and stone. But once he arrivedin Egypt,his idealized, exoticized Orient did not disappear;he was still enough of a Romanticto recognize(and even be entranced by) its shimmering images.And he was already enough of a realist to see that these vulnerable. imaginative geographieswere terribly For many critics, this oneiricprecariousness, if I may so call it, was the paradoxicalproductof an Orientalism thatboth valued the region'because it could be imaginedas unknown'and yet 'impregnated [it] by a textualnetworkso dense that it threatened to exhaustits own referent completely', to makeit strangely theplace of Flaubert's familiar, dreams'and 'refreshed 'forgotten memories'.~126 But nineteenth-century Orientalism was not selfit was articulated with the ideological sufficient; and one mightargue grids of capitalist modernity thatit was, in part,the immanent of disappearance - thatmade its the exotic- thefading of thedream revivalso desperately For the Orientto necessary. become a commodity like any otherin the age of its 'fictive had to be reprocommodities, othemrness' duced,those'worked landscapesoftheimagination' reworked.'27 Even this seems assiduously, artfully inadequate, however, because the presence of Europein Egyptwas morethantextualconceit:or, were also acutely rather,those textualizations material. Flaubertcomplainedendlesslyabout the left by previous European travellerson graffiti ancientmonuments but thesewere not only marks of their'unshakeable as he wrote to his stupidity', uncle Parain,they were also pettyinscriptions of the advent of capitalist modernity.'28 'It's timeto he wroteto Gautier: hurry',
DerekGregory In a little whiletheOrient willhaveceasedto exist. We maybe itslastwitnesses. You can'timagine how much ithas already beenruined. I've seenharems go by on steam boats.'29
Thatfinal Flaubert imagefrom juxtaposeswithgreat economy a timeless,traditionaland thoroughly exoticized Orient with a changing,modem and familiar increasingly Egypt.By the middle of the nineteenth the transition fromone to the century or more accurately the coincidence between other, was beginning to be registered a shift them, through in the European spatial imaginary. But it was a complicated, fractured ideological landscape. FlorenceNightingale and Gustave Flaubertshared - the commanding the same viewpoint heightsof - but their prospects were European modernity WhereNightingale looked back to vastlydifferent. the ruinsof ancient the Egypt,Flaubert anticipated ruins of present-dayEgypt; where Nightingale dreamedof the past,Flaubert saw the West as the executioner of its own dreams'.'30This makes it to generalizebut difficult, perhapseven foolhardy I want to make threefinalobservations about the of imaginative Europeanconstruction geographies of Egyptat mid-century. In the firstplace, the accounts that I have considered hererendered Egyptas a textto be read and as theobjectof a gaze. These strategies overlap and I do not think to any simple theycorrespond distinction between imaginative geographiesproduced by writersand those produced by artists. NeitherFlorence nor GustaveFlaubert Nightingale spent time sketchingin Egypt but there is an visual qualityto their intensely images.They were both caught up in what Linda Nochlin calls a of vision'which, as she shows in one ofher 'politics own essays,allows Said's critique of Orientalism in itstextual to bear on thevisual forms to be brought arts.'31 But I want to emphasize that, for both Nightingaleand Flaubert,this was a politics of or looking rather thanlistening and in this reading they were not alone. Most Europeanshad little choicebut to readthelandscapebecause theycould not speak the language. Many of the dignitaries or English, and it is perfectly theymetspokeFrench at learning true that Flaubert made some attempt Arabic script and thatNightingale had a lesson in Arabic fromthe EnglishConsul-General in Cairo; both of thempickedup the odd word presumably
51
traveller to Egyptand most seem or phrase in Arabic,perhapsin Turkishtoo. But the independent with to have takentheadvice to heart. WhenWarburton neither of themcould conducta conversation on cushions under a thick recalled 'We we are don't ordinary only sorry reclining awning, get people: on with our Arabic', declared an exasperated gazing at the landscape,'our books and maps ... what Nightingale,and a bemused Flaubert wrote of beside us, ever ready to explainor illustrate a commonexperience by interpreter'.132 'love-making we saw', he was describing Like other travellers, - of theNile voyage thatshapedthe they had to rely on a and expectation - a cicerone, - to act way in which it was appropriated.'37 an interpreter-guide dragoman European read theirtexts,wrotetheir as an intermediary, and even the best dragoman travellers journalsand could not overcome the one-sidednessof these lettersand, in the very act of doing so, enframed as at once a textto be transcribed took pride in his superi- Egyptitself and exchanges.He invariably and as a pictureto be composed and orityover the commonpeople, and oftenover his translated described thevillage Thus,whenFlaubert European chargestoo, but he also redoubledthe exhibited. an oriental of Nightingaleas a woman of Mahattaas being 'likean engraving, different expectations and Flaubert as a man. As I have repeatedly scene in a book', he was invokingone of the the conventions of bourgeoisEurope conventionsof Orientalism's imaginative geograemphasized, allowed Flaubertconsiderablymore freedomof phies.138 But it was a conventionthat,as I have manoeuvre than Nightingale but her 'priceless implied, gained muchof its power fromthe incurto sions and even corruptions of Europeanmodernity. cicerone' was also keenly awareoftheproprieties be observedby a womanin Egypt.He 'is so careful Nochlin suggests that the very notion of the ofme thathe won'tlet anybodycome nearme',she picturesque is premissedon its (creative)destrucsome dreadful form tion:'Only on thebrink ofdestruction, in thecourse wrote,and 'iftheydo, he utters of words, which I don't understand, and they of incipient modification and cultural are dilution, fallback'.'33How different from costumes and religious rituals of thedomiFlaubert, customs, instantly seen as picturesque'.'39 It is in thislight dressing aftera night in a Cairo brothel,who natedfinally recordshis dragoman 'Joseph's expressionamid all that I peer over Flaubert'sshoulder,as he and this'.134 Du Camp 'have translations of songs, storiesand In the second place, the textualization - everything made for[them] thatis most of Egypt traditions occurred in a number of different, and oriental'.'40 interlocking folkloric Nightingale Conversely, By the middleof the nineteenth century, welcomed the destructionof Egypt's 'horrible registers. not by modernity but certainly fromits European visitorscould invoke a dense web of present', textualassociationswhich constituted a collective privileged and even she succumbed to the position, 'fantasia of the library' in something likeFoucault's picturesque in Moorish Cairo. 'In ridinghome by sense of thephrase. As Said has shown,Orientalism moonlight', she wrote,with'theTurksitting crosswas inherentlycitationary:it re-presentedthe legged smoking undera low vaultedarch,thereis Orientless as a place rooted in history and geog- not a comrner thatis not a picture': at least,not to a embeddedin the sophisticated who had seen such raphythanas a chainof references Europeantraveller It was in thisspirit thatNightingale called sightsin books or galleries.'41 library.'35 the finest, the Alexandrian In the third Egypt 'a vast library, place,theseimaginative geographies of the world' and sprinkled her letters with cannotbe severedfrom the tangledbut tightening library references to Champollion, Lane and others.Simi- ties between Europe and Egypt. It was always a riven by political and larly, Flaubert often suggested that his mother complicated relationship, a book to get a better consult idea ofwhathe economicrivalries betweenEnglandand Franceand might was describing and severaltimesdrewherattention made all the more uncertain by the geopolitical to the plates in the Description de and to ambitions of imperial Russia and the shifting sands l'Fgypte Lane's Modern Egyptians.'36 But these references of the OttomanEmpire. 'At the first sign of trouble werenot onlyhelpful to the audienceat in Europe', Flaubertpredicted, injunctions 'Englandwill take home.They were also sighting-devices forthe visi- Egypt,Russia will take Constantinople, and we, in torsthemselves, a discursive thatenabled retaliation, will get ourselves massacred in the apparatus themto make(their) sense of what theysaw. of Syria'.142 mountains It did not come out quite Murray's Handbookrecommendedan essential like that,though several years later Nightingale in thethick of the Crimean War. ButI of some 30 scholarly books to accompany foundherself library
52 want to emphasize that the tottering balance of power between Europe and the Orient cannotbe measuredon the scales of profit and loss or in the of influence and intrigue alone. The readcurrency hereweremoments ingsthatI have been describing in the installation of what TimothyMitchellcalls He suggeststhatby the 'the world-as-exhibition'. it was a century, closingdecades of the nineteenth characteristic of European ways of knowing to render as objectsto be viewedand to 'set the things worldup as a picture it beforean ... [and arrange] audience as an object on display,to be viewed, and experienced'. This machinery of investigated was not confinedto the zoo, the representation - all Europeanicons of museumand the exhibition the nineteenth and all of theminvolvedin century the appropriationand re-presentation of the Orient- butwas, so Mitchell constitutive of claims, at large.The colonialprocess, Europeanmodernity he argues,re-ordered Egypt to appearas a worldenframed. Egyptwas to be ordered ... it was to be object-like up as something made picture-like and legible, to rendered available and economic calculation. Colonialpower political thecountry tobecome a book, in readable like required ourownsenseofsucha term...143 In other words, reading Egypt was never an innocent As I have triedto show in this metaphor. - and continues to implicate essay,it was implicated us - in constellations of power, knowledge and spatiality.
DerekGregory in French Boston (first 1958) published inThe 3. Forexample, Clifford J1988On Orientalism
2. Said E 1978 Orientalism London, Penguin 54-5; Bachelard G 1969 Thepoetics ofspaceBeacon Press,
of culture: twentieth-century predicament ethonograpy, literatureand art Harvard University Press,
Orientalism in White and mythologies: writing history theWestRoutledge,London 119-40 4. Foucault M Questionson geographyin Gordon C ed Power/knowledge: selectedinterviews and other and imperialism 5. Said E 1993 Culture AlfredKnopf,
MA 255-76; Young R Disorienting Cambridge,
is Harvester, 63-77;thequotation writings Brighton from p. 70
New York7 artofseeing in Philo6. Rajchman J 1991Foucault's

events: essays ofthe80s ColumbiaUniversity sophical
New York69-102 Press,
7. Said Culture and imperialism op cit.xxiv and British 8. Lowe L 1992 Criticalterrains: French a heterotopia London3, 15. Foucault defines as both
Orientalisms Cornell Press,Ithacaand University
a juxtaposition of 'several sitesthatare in themselvesincompatible' and as a spaceof compensa'a spacethat is [radically] M other': Foucault tion, to define this as other realspace, spaceas 'another as wellarranged as oursis as meticulous, perfect, messy',which mightseem out of joint with as a towards Orientalism butitgestures theOrient a spaceofambivalence in which both counter-site, andtheanxieties of theOccident thesuperiorities Foucault's own acountis not unare inscribed. and (in its closingparahowever, problematic, in particular) seemsto shadeintoits own graphs Orientalism to of travel is indebted 9. My understanding writing
16 22-7. He goes on 1986 Of otherspaces Diacritics
Acknowledgements
The research forthisessay has been supported by a grant from the Social Science and Humanities to ResearchCouncil.Earlyversionswere presented audiences at the University of BritishColumbia, at Berkeley, the University of California Rutgers and I and theUniversity of Washington, University am grateful and sugto themfortheircomments I am also grateful Alison to TrevorBarnes, gestions. Blunt,David Ley, GeraldinePratt,Michael Smith, and to two anonymousrefBruce Willems-Braun of the essay. successivedrafts erees forimproving
and imperialism: Blunt A 1994 Travel Mary gender New York; Mills and westAfrica Guilford, Kingsley an analysis S 1991 Discourses ofdifference: ofwomen's travelwriting and colonialism Routledge, London; and Pratt M L 1992 Imperial eyes:travelwriting transculturation Routledge,London and the cross: 10. Warburton E 1908 The crescent romanceand realitiesof easterntravel Maclaren,
44-9 JM Dent,London theGreek for the hadbeengiven name 11. 'Parthenope' and in this of Naples,whereshe was born, city Notes and Florence sense I supposethe Bracebridges under thesignof classical wereliterally travelling 1. Foucault M 1977 Fantasia of the library in antiquity Bouchard Donald F ed Language, counter-memory,
CornellUniverselected essaysand inteviews practice:
in Egypt theveil:British Sattin A 1988 Lifting society
in 1845) 196; see also London(first published
is from Ithaca87-109; the quotation sityPress, p. 90
A and G A 12. Nightingale F 1854 Letters from Egypt
from All myquotations are drawn Spottiswoode. the modern editionselected by SattinA 1987
Betweenthe book and the lamp Letters a journey on theNile 1849-1850 fromEgypt: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,New York.Details of the dahabeeah in the previous paragraphcome from pp. 45-6, 60, 68; details of mail deliveriesin this come from paragraph pp. 49, 106, 150 In fact, one of herbiographers says thatshe was not pleased at their publication,'but acquiesced and correctedthe proofs': Cook E 1913 The life of Florence Vol. 1: 1820-1861 Macmillan, Nightingale London 95 Warburton Crescent and cross op cit.87 en Orient Le Divan, Paris De Nerval G 1927 Voyage (firstpublished in 1851) Vol. I 389. De Nerval theseremarks, however, exemptedtheEnglishfrom 'fortheystay on an islandapart'. Sattin Letters en 120, 137, 139; de Nerval Voyage Orient op cit.254 See, forexample,Sattin Letters op cit. 123 Ibid.45-7 Ibid.81 Ibid.34, 49 Ibid.49 Ibid.72. The contrast between'travel'and 'tourism' was a commonone: see Buzard J 1993 The beaten track:Europeantourism, and the ways to literature culture', 1800-1918 Oxford University Press, Oxford. But I am not sure of its purchasehere. had visitedItalywiththe Bracebridges Nightingale in 1847-8, and she was surelynot implying thatit was a less intellectually serious destinationthan Egypt. See Keeler M ed. FlorenceNightingale in Rome American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia Sattin Letters op cit.86 Ibid.87 Orient: women and Melman B 1992 Women's English the Middle East, 1718-1918. Sexuality, and religion workMacmillan, London 213 Sattin Letters op cit.22, 24, 44, 61, 81 Ibid. 111-12 John Barrellsuggests that this reached its ugly climax in Martineau H 1848 Eastern lifepast and EdwardMoxon, London,in whichtheinhabpresent itantsof Egyptwere likenedto apes, ants,beavers, bees, camels,deer, frogs,pigs, rabbitsand sheep: and the Barrell J 1991 Death on the Nile: fantasy literature of tourism 1840-60 Essaysin Criticism 41 97-127, see p. 27 op cit.61, 86, 120 Sattin Letters colonial discourse ofempire: SpurrD 1993 Therhetoric in journalism, travelwriting and imperial administraPress,Durham98 tionDuke University Pratt Imperial eyesop cit.58-9 Barrell Death on the Nile op cit.115; Sattin Letters op cit.74
53 33. Buck-Morss S 1989 The dialectics Walter ofseeing: Benjamin and the Arcades ProjectsMIT Press, Cambridge 253-84; McCole J 1993 Walter Benjaminand the antinomies of tradition Comrnell Press,Ithaca292-5 University 34. Woodham-Smith C 1950 FlorenceNightingale 1820-1910 Constable,London 46, 76 35. On the dream-image and travelwriting see Buzard Beaten track op cit.181-2 36. Woodham-SmithFlorence Nightingale op cit.79. Her entries in hernotebookare tantalizingly which brief, is why I have had to relyon her letters 37. Monicat B 1994 Autobiography in women'stravel France: journeys writings in nineteenth-century Placeand Culture Gender, through self-representation 1 61-70; the quotationis from p. 68 38. Poovey M 1988 A housewifely woman: the social construction of Florence Nightingale in Uneven the ideologicalwork of gender in developments: mid-Victorian BritainUniversity of Chicago Press, Chicago 164-98 39. This world was firstintroducedto a European audience in the early eighteenth with the century of AntoineGalland'sFrench translation, publication which was almost immediatelytranslated into Englishand enjoyed considerable popular success. But Nightingale'simagery was almost certainly drawn fromEdward Lane's illustrated translation fromthe Arabic,The ArabianNights'entertainment 1839-41. All of these translations were highly expurgated, however, and in accentuatingthe fantasticand the fabulous they established the collection as a classicof thenursery and thedrawing room. It was not untilRichardBurton'stranslation of 1885-6 that the eroticism of the originalwas available to a wide (and oftenscandalized)English audience 40. Sattin Letters op cit.32 41. Ibid.187, 200. OtherEuropeantravellers, both men and women, also used the dream-image to evoke Cairo as the city of the Arabian Nights. For in example,'It seems as thoughone were travelling a dreamthrough a cityof thepast inhabited onlyby de Nerval Voyage en Orient phantoms': op cit. 163 42. Sattin Letters op cit. 48. The loss of 'all feelingof identity' may be an example of the 'estrangement fromthe norm of the feminine' identified more by Monicat Autobiography generally op cit.68. But it was not a uniquelyfemale 'All nature experience. seems so tranced',wrote Warburtonof his Nile thatwe voyage, 'and all the worldin such a dream, can scarcelyrealiseour own identity': Warburton Crescent and cross op cit.79 43. Sattin Letters op cit.65-8 44. Warburton Crescent and crossop cit.77 45. Sattin Letters op cit. 187-8
13.
14. 15.
16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
23. 24. 25.
26. 27. 28.
29. 30.
31. 32.
54 46. Ibid. 54-5, 161. Champollionhad decipheredthe hieroglyphsin 1822, but it was not until midthathis successorswere able to read more century thanthe odd cartouche 47. TIbid. 54-5. There is an interesting shiftin this - 'men who felt and passage fromthe masculine - 'like English thoughtlike us' - to the feminine wives ofthepresent clergy day' - whichis common in the writings of Victorianwomen travellers: see Blunt Travel, and imperialism gender op cit. 72-8. This may also speak to the 'estrangement from the norm of the feminine' proposed by Monicat op cit.68 Autobiography 48. Sattin Letters 131 49. Ibid.26-8, 39, 80, 84; see also pp. 170, 178-82 50. Ibid.63-4 51. Ibid. 74. Latershe confessedthat'the desireof the mindto find some law,to learnsome reason,forthis rise and fallof nations,is almostpainful in Egypt' (p. 85) 52. See Al-Sayyid Marsot A L 1984 Egypt in thereign of Muhammad Ali Cambridge UniversityPress, of Cambridge; Vatikotis P J 1991 The history modern Muhammed from Egypt: Ali to Mubarak4th edn Weidenfeldand Nicolson, London. A fuller accountwould have to nuance the contrast I make here. Muhammad'Ali's impacton the countryside was perhapsless revolutionary thanthisimplies and some historians would prefer to describeAbbas as Ottomangovernor': merely'a typicalconservative see Cuno K 1992 The Pasha'speasants: land,society and economy in LowerEgypt, 1740-1858 Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge;Toledano E 1990 State and societyin mid-nineteenth century Egypt Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. But Vatikiotis insists thatAbbas was indeeda 'reactionary despot' if seen 'in the context of the move inauguratedby the Muhammed 'Ali dynasty to state" in nineteenth-century develop a "modemrn of modernity was resumed Egypt'.The momentum with the accession of Said in 1854 and especially Ismail, 'the impatient Europeanizer', in 1863: Vatikiotis History ofmodern Egypt op cit.70, 508 - who asked the 53. Those othersincludedWarburton 'Naiads of the Nile' whethertheir'deifiedstream must now be harrowedup by a greasy,grunting liketheparvenues rivers of Europe'- and, steamship, as I will show later, Flaubert.See Warburton Crescent and crossop cit. 29, 183n; Sattin Letters op cit.29-31 54. Sattin Letters op cit.176 55. I have used the critical editionof Flaubert's letters editedby Naaman A Y 1965 Les lettres de d'Egypte Gustave Flaubert Nizet, Paris;thisis more complete thanthe versionscontainedin Oeuvres de complates Gustave srie (1847Flaubert: correspondence, deuxikme 1957) Louis Conard,Paris (first published1926). I
56.
57.
58. 59.
60. 61.
62.
63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.
70.
Derek Gregory have also used the critical edition of Flaubert G 1991 Voyageen Egypte edited by de Biasi P M about the Orient as a Grasset,Paris; the remark is de Biasi's and appears place of personalmemory on p. 13. Extractsfromboth of them have been editedby SteegmullerF 1972 as Flaubert in Egypt: a sensibility on tour Bodley Head, London,and since thisis so widelyavailableI have cited it wherever are my own possible.All othertranslations See Dewachter M and Oster D eds 1987 Un en Egypte vers1850: 'Le Nil' de Maximedu voyageur Paris Camp Sand/Conti, in Egypt SteegmullerFlaubert op cit.41, 199. For a discussion of theirmissions,see Starkie E 1967 Flaubert: the making Weidenfeldand of the master Nicolson,London 167-9 Naaman Lettres d'Egypte op cit.264 Terdiman R 1985 Ideological voyages: on a Flaubertian dis-Orient-ation in Discourse/counterdiscourse: thetheory and practice resistance ofsymbolic in nineteenth-century France Press, University Comrnell Ithaca and London 227-57; the quotationis from p. 232 Ibid.237 Flauberttold themthatif they did not 'roar with it will be because nothing is capable of enthusiasm, moving you!' Four days later they deliveredtheir awfulverdict: 'We think you shouldthrowit in the fire and neverspeakof it again'.See Troyat H 1992 Flaubert New York 92-3 Viking, Donato E 1993 Flaubert and the question of the Orientin Thescript history: of decadence: essays on the and the fictions ofFlaubert ofRomanticism poetics OxfordUniversity Press,New York 35-55 Ibid.41 Foucault Fantasiaof the library op cit.90 Bruneau J 1973 Le 'Conte Oriental'de Flaubert Denoil, Paris63-70 Terdiman Ideologicalvoyages op cit.234 Ibid.242-3 Lowe Critical terrains op cit.75-101 Sattin Lifting the veil op cit. 84 suggests that the and Florence were the 'Englishfamily, Bracebridges hideous' that Flaubertrecordsin his travelnotes, but there is no way of knowing. Even more is Flaubert intriguing, given theiritineraries, being taken to the rock-tombs of old Lycopolis: 'Our guide takesus by the hand and leads us withan air - to show us the printof a woman's of mystery shoe in the sand!She was an Englishwoman, therea few days ago'. This was at the end of February; Florence would have been therein December.Butit may be that theirguide's sense of time- or their See of what he said - was uncertain. understanding in Egypt op cit.35, 109-10 Steegmuller Flaubert Steegmuller Flaubertin Egypt op cit. 92, 106; Du Camp describes the crew on pp. 223-8.
Betweenthe book and the lamp
55
in Egypt 77. SteegmullerFlaubert would not have regarded Flaubert's op cit.63-4, 65, 75-6, Contemporaries 206 and cross baggage as excessive.Warburton Crescent de l'espace op 78. Ibid. 170; Bottineau Representation had op cit.220 explainedthat'theOrientaltraveller' remark about places and glances cit.89. Bottineau's of goods like those of an to take 'an assortment novel in whichFlaubert thefirst refers to Salammb6, comprisingevery article his various upholsterer, drew directlyon his Egyptian travels, but the froma tent to a toastingexigenciesmay require, in the fork'.The desire to recreatethe familiar has a widerpurchase observation 79. Butor M 1984 A propos des 'Voyages' in Impromidstof the exotic extendedbeyond these various Le Sphinx,Paris 43-77; the visations sur Flaubert of course, and was reflectedin accoutrements, does translation p. 51. My English quotationis from etiquetteand conduct: the hoisting of flags,the meansboth not conveytheFrench to bridge or tea, the shooting parties, invitations word-play: tailler to tailor('cut-out') and to 'cut':hence 'castration and a host of other social practicesthat helped in Egypt to bring a comforting op cit.58 Europe into an otherwise 80. Steegmuller Flaubert 81. Ibid.42 disconcerting Egypt 82. Ibid.29 71. Steegmuller Flaubert in Egypt op cit. 42; de Biasi 83. Sattin Letters P-M Introduction to Voyage en Egypte 24; Naaman Lettres d'Egypte op cit. op cit.64; see 143, 200, 307 de l'espace also Bottineau L 1984 La representation dans Salambb6in Masson B ed. GustaveFlaubert in Egypt 84. Steegmuller Flaubert op cit.79 I 85. Ibid.160 (my emphasis) modernes) Minard,Paris (Lettres 86. Ibid.33-4, 145-6 72. Naaman Lettres d'tgypte op cit.246 73. Sattin Letters op cit. 47; Bart B 1967 Flaubert 87. Ibid.39, 69, 85, 114-18, 127 88. Sartre J-P 1987 Thefamilyidiot:GustaveFlaubert Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 194; see 1821-1857 University of Chicago Press, Chicago also Bart B 1956 Flaubert's landscapedescriptions in Francein 1971): For Vol. 2 32-43 (first published Universityof Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI a commentary because 7-11. I ought to qualifythese remarks, by a criticpersuaded by Sartre's there is a sense in which scriptingthe voyage reading,see Barnes H 1981 Sartreand Flaubert University of Chicago Press, Chicago 77-82. learning through Egyptwas a process of Flaubert's Others are less well disposed. In a thoughtful sketchesand to 'paint'; but even his preliminary Ronald Aronson notes that the first commentary his experimental designs were far fromrough or untutored idiot are 'an endless two volumesof Sartre's Family and the in Egypt 74. Steegmuller Flaubert spiral of speculation'in which interiority op cit. 52. This pasimaginary'have become the pure elementof his sage is taken from de Biasi Voyage en Egypte Sartre: activity'.See Aronson R 1980 Jean-Paul 210-11 and closely follows a letterto Bouilhet: in theworld Verso,London325-54. Only Naaman Lettres philosophy 179-80 d'Egypte in the second two volumes does Sartre address 75. Steegmuller Flaubert in Egypt op cit. 142. Flaubert socio-historical but he largelyfails to formations, was running ahead of himself. Although the and exteriority. Bourdieuhas integrateinteriority Nile voyage was alreadypopular among wealthy a counter-reading offered but it is desperto Sartre, European travellers, and Sir John Gardner atelyin need of one of Said's contrapuntal - the forerunreadings Wilkinson's ModernEgypt and Thebes because it is almost hermetically sealed around - had appearedin 1843, ner to Murray'sHandbook Flaubert's Paris.See Bourdieu P 1992 Les rvgles de it took another 20 years or more for Egypt to et structure du champlittiraire Ed. du become scriptedas a site forpopular tourism. I'art:genise See Seuil,Paris Gregory D (forthcoming) Scriptingthe Orient: Said Orientalism 89. op cit.188-9 and tourism in late nineteenthmemory possession, in Egypt 90. Steegmuller Flaubert op cit.41-2 century Egypt Naaman Lettres 91. cit. 297-8 d'Egypte op 76. Steegmuller Flaubert in Egypt cit. de 142, 173; op 92. De Biasi Introduction op cit.64 Biasi Voyage en Egypte op cit.386: Dewachter and 93. Naaman Lettres op cit.142, 162 d'Egypte Oster Voyageur en Egypteop cit. 35, de Biasi idiotop cit.39-40 Introduction op cit. 60. Flaubert made a similar 94. Sartre Family Suleri S 1992 Therhetoric 95. See, in a different context, comparison in a letter to Bouilhet, where he of English India University of Chicago Press, in the rock-tombs describedfinding at Thebes 'a Chicago bordello scene froma dirtyPalais Royal pictureof in Egypt 96. SteegmullerFlaubert 1816'. He continued:'That gave us a good laugh op cit.84-5; Naaman Lettres and made with dizzy ... It's all so modernyou op cit.293 d'Egypte would almost think condoms must have been 97. Sattin Letters op cit.42 knownat the timeof Sesostris'. See Naaman Lettres 98. I have borrowedthis imageryfromPratt Imperial op cit.287-8 d'Egypte eyesop cit.59
56 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. in Egypt Steegmuller Flaubert op cit.126, 140 Sattin Letters op cit.26 Ibid.24, 204 Ibid.99, 139 Naaman Lettres d'Egypte op cit. 151 (my emphasis). Whereas FlorenceNightingalethoughtthe desert Flaubert was entranced an abomination, by it. 'His' Orient,he declared to Bouilhet,was not Byron's Orient, 'the Turkish Orient, the Orient of the curvedsword,theAlbaniancostumeand thebarred window looking on the blue sea' - which was probably also in large measure Nightingale's 'thebaked Orientof theBedouin Orient-but rather the and the desert,the vermilion depthsof Africa, See Sattin crocodile,the camel and the giraffe'. Letters op cit. 34, 63; Naaman Oeuvrescompletes op cit.255 Naaman Lettres d'Egypte op cit.255 in Egypt op cit.213 Steegmuller Flaubert See, for example,Bern J 1979 Dsir et savoirdans de Flaubert de la Neuch~tel l'oeuvre E~d. Baconnibre, Butor Improvisations op cit.48 De Biasi Introduction op cit.66 in Egypt op cit.47 Steegmuller Flaubert Naaman Lettres op cit. 291. For a fuller d'Egypte of waterin Flaubert's discussionof the significance et sensation work,see Richard J-P 1954 Littirature du Seuil,Paris 143-7 and passim Ed. in Egypt op cit.56, 182 Steegmuller Flaubert Sattin Letters op cit.41, 47 Mills Discourses ofdifference op cit.82 Sattin Letters op cit.22-3 Gillian Rose describesa masculinist conceptionof space that is 'absolutely knowable', in which to be or too different nowhereis too threatening made known and in which space is renderedas and geography: Rose G 1993 Feminism transparent: the limitsof geographical Polity Press, knowledge that Cambridge38-9. This is preciselythe effect but he does not do so Flaubertachieves,I think, denial of the male body', any 'masculinist through and betweengender,sexuality and the connections space seem to me more complex than Rose's discussionallows Barnes J 1985 Flaubert's parrotPicador, London in Naaman Lettres is described 69-70. The incident op cit. 153. Humbertwas a polisherwho d'Egypte had a shop in Rouen and was part of the comic and his circle of Flaubert mythology in Egypt op cit. 128-9 Steegmuller Flaubert Naaman Lettres op cit. 151; Steegmuller d'Egypte in Egypt Flaubert op cit.74, 89 in Egypt op cit. 126. Flaubert Steegmuller Flaubert encounteredthe slave trade in several places. In at Cairo,he and Du Camp visitedthe slave market; Asyut they met caravans draggingslaves behind them for sale to the gellabs (traders);and above
Derek Gregory boarded boats belonging Durr,the two Frenchmen to slave traders enroute to Cairo - 'theblackwomen - and bought are packedin,in all kindsofpositions' belts and amuletsfromthem: ibid. 67, 109, 131. Their seeming indifference was neitheruniquely Frenchnor peculiarlymasculine.Nightingalesaw the slave tradersbut the plight of theirvictims excited littlecomment:'The Ethiopianslaves are sold by their parents willinglyfor a couple of or a little box, and are oftenexposed handkerchiefs, and picked up. We passed a boatful yesterday, all women,half-naked ... Our crammedtogether, when it was sitting guide poked one withhis stick, down, as if it were a frog':Sattin Letters op cit.88 in Egypt op cit.30, 43, 47, 65, SteegmullerFlaubert 67, 76, 113-19, 146 Terdiman Ideologicalvoyages op cit.247-50 in Egypt op cit.29 Steegmuller Flaubert terrains Lowe Critical op cit.86-7 in Egyptop cit. 75. Cf. de Steegmuller Flaubert Nerval Voyage en Orient op cit.407: 'I had seen it so many times in the dreams of my youth ... It I in thefootprints seemedto me thatI was treading had made before;as I went along I said to myself: this "When I get past thiswall when I go through thething gate,I shallsee sucha thing..." and there was, ruinedbut real' in Egypt op cit.81 Steegmuller Flaubert Terdiman Ideologicalvoyages op cit.243 citiesof the East An Gilsenan M 1986 Imagined of delivered beforethe University lecture inaugural Oxford,May 1985 ClarendonPress,Oxford5 Naaman Oeuvres compldtes op cit. 243-4; in Egypt op cit.54 Steegmuller Flaubert Terdiman Ideologicalvoyages op cit.243 The phrasebelongs to Hentsch T 1992 Imagining the Middle East Black Rose Books, Montreal 151. with Although this capturesFlaubert'ssensibility Hentschwas in factreferring marvellous precision, en Orient to de Nerval Voyage op cit.408: 'Let us no more of it. That Cairo lies beneathashes think have of modernity and progress and dust;the spirit over it likedeath.In a fewmoremonths, triumphed the will have cutright theEuropeanstreets through thatnow crumbles old city,dustyand silent, peaceThe part that is fullyupon its poor inhabitants. of and growingis the quarter flourishing, glittering and thetownof theItalians, theFranks, Provencaux of British India. The Maltese, the future emporium Orient of formerdays is wearing out its old but it is in its old palaces,itsold customs, costumes, its last days... Nochlin L 1989 The imaginaryOrient in The art and essayson nineteenth-century of vision: politics society Harperand Row, New York 33-59. See also to Delacroix Stevens M A ed. 1984 TheOrientalists:
120. 121. 122. 123. 124.
104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110.
III. 112. 113. 114. 115.
125. 126. 127.
128. 129. 130.
116.
117. 118. 119.
131.
Betweenthe book and the lamp Matisse. European in NorthAfricaand the painters Near East Royal Academy of Arts,London 132. See Naaman Lettresd'Egypteop cit. 201 for Flaubert's at learning Arabicscript; Sattin attempts Letters frustration at her op cit.68 forNightingale's lack of Arabic;Steegmuller Flaubert in Egypt op cit. 40, forFlaubert's amorousinterpreter 133. Sattin Letters op cit. 44. Whethershe would have seen muchpoint in understanding themis a different in the remotepast and question:given her interest herbelief thatpresent-day had no interest Egyptians in,knowledgeof or claimto the ancientcivilization whose ruinstheyinhabited, it seems unlikely
57 134. Steegmuller Flaubert in Egypt op cit.40 135. Said Orientalism op cit.176-7 136. Sattin Letters op cit.183; Naaman Lettres op d'Egypte cit.229, 261 137. Warburton Crescent and crossop cit.83 138. Steegmuller Flaubert in Egypt op cit.124 139. Nochlin Imaginary Orientop cit.50 140. Steegmuller Flaubert in Egypt op cit.86 141. Sattin Letters op cit.39 142. Steegmuller Flaubert in Egypt op cit.81 143. Mitchell T 1988 ColonisingEgypt Cambridge Press,Cambridge33 University

Between The Book and The Lamp Imaginative Geographies of Egypt, 1849-50

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Between the Book and the Lamp: Imaginative Geographies of Egypt, 1849-50 Author(s): Derek Gregory Source: Transactions

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