The Art of Travel - Alain De Botton [21]
SENTIMENTALITY:
ANIMALS—'If only animals could speak! There are some that are more intelligent than humans.'
COMMUNION—One's First Communion: the greatest day of one's life.
INSPIRATION (POETIC)—Aroused by: the sight of the sea, love, women, etc.
ILLUSIONS—Pretend to have had a great many, and complain that you have lost them all.
FAITH IN PROGRESS/PRIDE IN TECHNOLOGY:
RAILWAYS—Enthuse about them, saying, ‘I, my dear sir, who am speaking to you now, was at X this morning. I took the train to Y, transacted my business there, and by Z o'clock was back here.'
PRETENSION:
BIBLE—Oldest book in the world.
BEDROOM—In an old castle: Henry IV always spent a night in it.
MUSHROOMS—Should be bought only at the market.
CRUSADES—Benefited Venetian trade.
DIDEROT—Always followed by d'Alembert.
MELON—Good topic for dinnertime conversation. Is it a vegetable or a fruit? The English eat it for dessert, which is astonishing.
STROLL—Always take one after dinner; it helps with digestion.
SNAKES—All poisonous.
OLD PEOPLE—When discussing a flood, thunderstorm, etc., they cannot remember ever having seen a worse one.
PRISSINESS/REPRESSED SEXUALITY:
BLONDES—Hotter than brunettes (see also BRUNETTES).
BRUNETTES—Hotter than blondes (see also BLONDES).
SEX—Word to avoid. Say instead, ‘Intimacy occurred …'.
5.
Given all this, it appears to be no coincidence, no mere accident of fashion, that it was specifically the Middle East that Flaubert was interested in. It was temperamentally a logical fit. What he loved in Egypt could be traced back to central facets of his personality. Egypt lent support to ideas and values that were part of his identity but for which his own society had little sympathy.
(i) THE EXOTICISM OF CHAOS
From the day he disembarked in Alexandria, Flaubert noticed and felt at home in the chaos, both visual and auditory, of Egyptian life: boatmen shouting, Nubian porters hawking, merchants bargaining, the sounds of chickens being killed, donkeys being whipped, camels groaning.
In the streets there were, he said, ‘guttural intonations that sound like the cries of wild beasts, and laughter, and flowing white robes, and ivory teeth flashing between thick lips and flat Negro noses, and dusty feet and necklaces and bracelets. ‘It is like being hurled while still asleep into the midst of a Beethoven symphony, with the brasses at their most earsplitting, the basses rumbling, and the flutes sighing away; each detail reaches out to grip you; it pinches you; and the more you concentrate on it, the less you grasp the whole… it is such a bewildering chaos of colours that your poor imagination is dazzled as though by continuous fireworks as you go about staring at minarets thick with white storks, at tired slaves stretched out in the sun on house terraces, at the patterns of sycamore branches against walls, with camel bells ringing in your ears and great herds of black goats bleating in the streets amidst the horses and the donkeys and the peddlers.'
Flaubert's aesthetic was a rich one. He liked purple, gold and turquoise and thus welcomed the colours of Egyptian architecture. In his book The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, first published in 1833 and revised in 1842, the English traveller Edward Lane described the interiors typical of Egyptian merchants' houses:
Bazaar of the Silk Mercers, Cairo, lithograph by Louis Haghe after a drawing by David Roberts
‘There are, besides the windows of lattice-work, others, of coloured glass, representing bunches of flowers, peacocks, and other gay and gaudy objects, or merely fanciful patterns. … On the plastered walls of some apartments are rude paintings of the temple of Mecca, or of the tomb of the Prophet, or of flowers and other objects, executed by native Muslim artists. … Sometimes the walls are beautifully ornamented with Arabic inscriptions of maxims in an embellished style.'
The baroque quality of Egypt