Enchanted Realms. Exotic Influence in European Romanticism

CONTENTS

1. Reinterpreting Romantic Exoticism

2. Exoticism and Orientalism
2.1. Conceptual preamble – Meanings of the Exotic
2.2. The social and political context for the appearance of the literary and artistic exoticism
2.3. The cultural context for the appearance of exoticism in the European literature and arts
2.4. Confluences between exotic literature and arts

3. The Real and Imaginary Travel in the Romantic Period
3.1. Travel journals –a polyphonic genre
3.2. The Grand Tour in the Enlightenment Era
3.3. The Ruins – intermediaries between the human civilization and the natural order of the world
3.4. The Travel in the Balkans
3.5. The Romantic travel in Northern Africa
3.6. The Reverse Trip of the Egyptian to the West
3.7. “Persian Letters”- mirrors of the French society
3.8. The Imaginary Travel – induced by hallucinogenic substances
3.9. The Journal of the Oriental travel in Arts

4. Representations of the Arab Woman in the Arts of the Romantic Century
4.1. The Harem – the sacred space for the segregation of the exotic beauty
4.2. The Veil and the Mask – sources of the desire for knowledge
4.3. Rituals of the Harem life
4.3.1. The Hookah and Coffee Rituals
4.3.2. Musical Instruments of the Harem
4.3.3. The Slave Markets
4.4. Exotic gardens – The Décor for Feminine Beauty

5. Conclusions

Bibliography

List of illustrations

CHAPTER 1 Reinterpreting Romantic Exoticism

This study is the result of almost seven years of doctoral studies that tried to unveil a connection between the way we interpret the common elements of the literary text and the visual representation. More specifically, the question that guided my entire research stage was if we can interpret a specific theme, such as that of exoticism in the Romantic period, though the system of symbols common to the two arts: literature and painting.

The study of the Romanian researcher Alexandra Vrânceanu, entitled Literary Models in the Visual Narrative tries to clarify certain aspects of the problem. The author suggests that “the study of the relationships between literature and painting has had different approaches, along the times. From Aristotle, who equally sees poetry and painting as imitation arts, passing through the famous Horatian saying ut pictura poesis, or through the thematic similarities between the two arts highlighted during Renaissance and Classicism, up to Lessing, who tries to highlight the differences between them, visual arts and literature have been many times seen as siter arts”. [Vrânceanu, 2002]

Jean-Baptiste Du Bos, in his famous Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture tries to create a theoretical framework for the argumentation of the multidisciplinary study of literature and painting, starting from an emotional level. He supports the idea that the arts represent an imitation process and that the real model is a source of feeling and emotion. That imitation has an artificial existence, while the real force is represented by the force of nature where the imitated object exists. The same as Plato, Du Bos invests poetry with an indispensable social status, although from the point of view of the arts, painting cannot render them if there is no passion. [Du Bos, 1983, I, iii]

If the poem can decipher the feelings and their evolution, the painter renders a single feeling, and we, as interpreters of both texts, are caught in the middle of an artistic process of admiration. The painting is defined through simultaneity, while the poem through time, the first one retrieves its attributes from space, while the second one from time.

In poetry and painting characters, scenes, sequence of events must be organized in a single semantic unit, ensuring characteristics such as truthfulness or decency. Poetry gives the readers a special freedom to imagine the scenario, to integrate themselves with the literary composition, to vibrate at the emotions of the verse, while in the painting one must decode the meanings in order to reach the sense of the narrative. While lecturing the image, the effort is merely one of interpretation, of decoding the visual message, as well as an interception of the elements of detail.

The plurality of instruments offered by poetry in rendering feelings ensures its superiority upon painting; while painting is superior in its capacity to render nature. In Du Bos’ opinion, the visual is superior to the verbal, in the same way as the sensory surpasses the theoretical and induction is beyond deduction.

In Art and Illusion, Gombrich offers a definition of Iconology, as the science “which investigates the function of image in allegory and symbolism and their reference to what might be called the invisible world of ideas. The way the language of art refers to the visible world is both so obvious and so mysterious that it is still largely unknown except to the artists themselves who can use it as we use all languages – without needing to know its grammar and semantic”. [Gombrich, 1984, p.7]

He suggests that during the Romantic period the artist only interprets what he sees, with the help of the instruments at hand. In other words, the artist either creates his own image of the landscape that he has in front of his eyes, or recreates the space, based on previously made sketches, or he simply uses imagination, starting from an insignificant detail. It is the case of the oriental decors reproduced from memory by Romantic artists, upon their return from the initiating trips to the exotic realms.

The fundamental element of the 19th century is represented by the transfer of image from a piece of art to another, modifying the basic images, offering the multiple meanings, so that a new original work of art is created. It is only in this sense that we can talk about a convergence of the different perspectives upon the oriental-inspired painting of the Romantic period. Obviously, we will never find a direct correlation between Delacroix’s oriental descriptions and those of William James Mueller, James Holland, or the Romanian artist Carol Pop de Szathmary. Yet, research upon the direct influences and of the mediated ones allows us to find the common grounds between different European artists. These artists have different artistic approaches, they lived in different periods of the same century, but the two factors, the artistic and extra-artistic one, which Dan Grigorescu mentions in his study Aventura imaginii, are probably the unique connecting link. He is questioning if the influence is a series of direct bonds between the works of art, a continuum of ideas and shapes. Then he asks the question of the moment when we should study this uninterrupted flux, because the reconstruction of this chain does not necessarily lead to an understanding of the connections between works of art and artistic periods. [Grigorescu, 1982, p.97]

It is obviously impossible to reach a categorical conclusion upon the influences or parallel between works of art and the literary texts of the European Romanticism representatives, the present study being limited to the French, English and Romanian environment. But because they belong to the same stylistic orientation, adhering to a common aesthetic program and using similar imaging systems, we can talk about the circulation of the oriental theme all over Europe, literature being a suggestive instrument for the decryption of arts.

A new study upon the connections between literature and arts during the Romantic period is not only an element of novelty for the specialized research but highlights the difficulties of analysis compared to the previous epochs, because in the past, connections were tangible, easier to find and investigate. The interactions between literature and the figurative arts, during the first part of the 19th century are sometimes difficult to detect, focusing only on specific frames or in the study of details. Occasionally it is about the common elements related to technique, or we talk about a common theme, a similar approach to a theme, but imagination, as the common grounds, represents the most important aspect that I had in mind in this study.

The paper does not aim to periodize the European Romanticism and it is neither a detailed study of the works of art of a single artist or group of artists from the Romantic period. In a way it will be a game with the literary periods in an attempt to explain, as much as possible, the appeal to exoticism, during the Romantic era. Exoticism will be understood not only through reference to the Far East, as in the case of the English artist or to Northern Africa, as in the case of French literature and arts, but to any element of difference, an exotic décor, a reproduction of a landscape with a focus on exotic feminine representation.

If Wordsworth makes appeal to the East in order to unfold the mysteries of human interaction in the European culture, other poets consider the Orient just an alternative to Europe, a realm to be explored, able to argument the alienation.

A fragile bridge is created, between the approach of the travel theme in the French and English space, the two being understood as a unit of thinking. Both in the case of the French and English travelers the trip is a source for the description of exotic décor, that is related to the Balkans and Northern African territories, more specifically around the Mediterranean Sea. We have descriptions of traditional attire, of religious ritual, of bloody fights; the Arab typology, both masculine and feminine is presented. All these aspects allow us to talk about a European orientalism, as part of Romanticism, but without any separation of national schools of thinking, but as a common frame, without any temporal limits. [Haddad, 2002]

René Huyghe suggests that the work of art offers more than a simple perception upon equilibrium. It is the source of the artist who is in the position of a spectator, able to transfigure all that he sees and feels. [Huyghe, 1971, p.28]

The art involves three important partners: the nature, as a source for the raw materials of art, which also includes the inner feelings of the artist, the passive means used by the artist, the prepared surface of the work of art and last but not least the artist, who influences the nature in his search for the sources of inspiration. Paintings represents a rendering of the world around only of gives us the opportunity to see and understand the universe of the painter. The exotic trips of the romantic travelers had only one purpose, that of offering the artist a source which can become the basis of the personal world of the artist, equally coherent and homogenous with the real one. Any other intention used for the creation of the work of art represents just a footprint of the artist. Imagination becomes the engine of the creation. For the first time the artist reveals himself through the work of art and does not try to satisfy the taste of a demanding audience. He paints for himself, without copying the nature.

The present study starts from a clarification of the limits of the appearance of exoticism in the European culture, offering a set of definitions for the immediate meaning of the concept, while later on it will explore a few of the most important exotic themes, manifested in the literature and arts of the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe.

Victor Segalen, in his Essay on Exoticism offered in 1908 a very modern definition of exoticism: “Clear the field first of all. Throw overboard everything misused or rancid contained in the word exoticism. Strip it of all its cheap finery: palm tree and camel; tropical helmet; black skins and yellow sun; and, at the same time, get rid of all those who used it with an inane loquaciousness. (…) Then, strip the word exoticism of its exclusively tropical, exclusively geographic meaning. Exoticism does not only exist in space but is equally dependent on time. From there, move rapidly to the task of defining and laying out the sensation of Exoticism, which is nothing other than the notion of difference, the perception of Diversity, the knowledge that something is other than one’s self; and Exoticism’s power is nothing other than the ability to conceive otherwise”. [Segalen, 2002, p.18-19]

It is so modern this definition of exoticism, an exoticism understood as diversity and a wish to assimilate the elements belonging to an unusual environment, which otherwise could be confused for orientalism.

My study obviously starts from Edward Said’s Orientalism, but it also highlights the points of view of other researchers, such as Norman Daniel, Chris Bongie, Nigel Leask, saree Makdisi or Mohammed Sharafuddin, who all discuss the similarities between Christian and Islamic religion, studying them through the set of compatibilities, and not from a restrictive point of view, as in Said’s case.

Orientalism appeared at the end of 18th century as almost an institution responsible for the study of the East – issuing theories, giving authority to different perspectives, a sort of domination of the West upon the East. [Said, apud Jarvis, 2004, p.3]

My study clearly separates exoticism from orientalism, making reference specifically to the regions of Northern Africa, the Balkans and south of Spain, as the centers for the propagation of a spiritual enlightenment movement and of acceptance of the element of difference, which is no longer perceived through the lens of racism or slavery, but takes the form of the portrait of the woman, both western and eastern woman, as she appears in literature and arts.

Starting from the famous saying Ex oriente lux, I will try to argue the possibilities of Western art which is under the influence of the Eastern ar5tistic element, even if the instruments are not always the same. Going beyond the basic meaning of the aphorism, we have to understand that the Western world had a double function: on the one hand it was the civilizing force, which is seen as the European individual’s ability to travel, explore and leave a print upon the lives and people visited, and the second one, that of initiation, to which the European individual is subject to. By being exposed to a new cultural environment, with a totally different philosophical system, with a different life ethics, the European also experienced different emotional reactions, from anxiety, to anger, depression, as part of a cultural shock with consequences upon the entire artistic sensibility of the Romantic period.

In 1820 Madame de Stael observed that along the history of literature, the status of the woman was determined by the conception upon her inferiority towards man, and as a result of the fact that the classical world offered too little attention to the emotional relationships between men and women.

The story focuses mainly on deciphering the elements of exoticism of the Arab woman, in the literary and artistic representations of the Romantic period. The study highlights the harem representations and an entire system of symbols specific for this exotic world: the veil, the hookah, the tambourine and the lute or the slave market.

The harem represents a symbol of the masculine power of dominance, while the harem woman, through her beauty and artistic skills, is able to reach the position of a goddess, belonging to a secret space, able to incite the Western man, through all the flavors that surround her.

A new study of the representations of the harem star from a lack of reliable sources related to this environment. It is the result of the fact that most travelers who rendered their Eastern travels didn’t have the opportunity to experience this secluded space, because a representation of the harem that is not influenced by myth and prejudice was never achieved in the West, as a result of the political and economic power of the West upon the East. [Del Plato, 2002, p. 239]

Seen as an angel and demon, able to steal the hearts and minds of the Western traveler, the woman belonging to the Arab harem is perceived as a component of chaos and anarchy, symbol of lasciviousness, polygamy, and adultery. The entire arsenal of accuses against the Oriental woman had as a purpose the unfolding of an image of moral superiority of the Western woman, of the couple love and responsibility towards the man that she offers to obey for the rest of her life. The harem is a sort of locus of abnormal exotic sexuality, including sensuality and violence at the same time. [Fadwa El Guindi, 1999, p.27]

The last part of the research represents a study of exotic park and garden arrangements, during the Romantic period. Once the term exoticism entered the Western vocabulary, its connotations started to diversify, being used in conjunction with the landscape descriptions. The new landscaped gardens appear, being separated into two categories: the antique gardens, based on the Italian garden model, and the geometrical ones, inspired by the symmetry of the Persian gardens.

Making appeal not only to masterpieces, but also to less important Romantic pieces of literature or arts, the book is a journey through the European culture of the period, in the hope of discovering new and novel elements, that had been forgotten in times. Sister arts, literature and arts, will be brought into discussion, as imitation arts: literature as a spatial art, while poetry as an art of the time, as Dan Grigorescu suggests in his study, Constelția gemenilor. [Grigorescu, 1979, p.85]

The choice of images represents an element of originality of the present study, because it tries to accomplish a reading in a narrative key of certain literary texts that have been less studied by the literary criticism. As Alexandra Vrânceanu suggests “the image can be interpreted in a narrative key only if the viewer accepts to fill in the areas of indeterminacy of the painting, completing what he sees with what he knows”. [Vrânceanu, 2002, p. 49]

The notion of area of indeterminacy is a concept developed by Roman Ingarden who, in 1978, uses the term to define the set of elements specific for a poem or painting, which are only suggested by the author, only for the essential task to fall to the viewer, that of completing the interpretation with a personal point of view.

The paintings analyzed in the study have been chosen as the most suggestive for the chosen literary texts. An example in this respect is The Massacre of Chios by Eugene Delacroix, which is analyzed in detail in chapter two, an extremely narrative work of art, supported by the complex historical background of the Greek-Turkish War.

The works of art do not make explicit reference to the literary texts selected, but they illustrate, in a very suggestive way, scenes or even fragments from the chosen literary works. I have tried to highlight the similarities between the text and the painting, not only from a theme perspective, but especially emphasizing the narrative of the work of art, which plays an important role in the completion of the story.

The paintings manage to transpose in a visual field different state of mind, feelings and emotions, intensity, all these being doubled by a simple action. “Visual narrative can place at its center the action, and the dramatic side of the text can complete the text by imagining a new situation or can translate into an artistic language the atmosphere of the text”. [Vrânceanu, 2002, p.49]

The portraits of the Circassian women, that appear in the third chapter of this study, have transmitted a special state of emotion, doubled by a careful analysis of the social and political context of the violent mutations suffered by the North Caucasus population, during the Romantic period. Thus, the narrative image is swinging between the real events and the emotional states of mind. Obviously, the depth of the portraits or the emotional intensity transmitted by the canvas represent only the parts of a scenario, a complex structure, created by the artist with the purpose of extracting the maximum from a sometimes-dull context. An example in this sense is The Slave Market by Jean Leon Gerome, where the trivial fact of a slave market is transformed into an almost entire ritual of the selection of young women, to be sold in the open space.

Last but not least, we have to admit that any reference to the East, that will appear along the entire study, is strictly limited to the Middle Eastern region, because it was still part of the Western world, that of the Mediterranean. Fernand Braudel, a successor of Lucien Lebvre, one of the founders of the Annales School of history highlights the fact that the Mediterranean civilization, which is connected to the most important harbors, such as Venice, Alger, Marseille, Salonic, Alexandria or Constantinople. Braudel makes reference to the possibility of an export of civilization, which can propagate distant culture, suggesting that he Mediterranean was confronted not only with a single Europe, but with a multitude of Europes, if we can call them like this, referring to the different faces of the continent, influenced by religious, cultural and economic factors. [Braudel, [1939], vol. II, 1996, p.763]

CHAPTER 2 Exoticism and Orientalism

Exoticism drew the attention of researchers in the field of universal literature, being considered “an indispensable reactive in the chemistry of modern originality”. [Hăulică, 1973, p.3]

Seen from a geographical perspective, it is obvious that exoticism represented a fascination for the different literary and artistic periods, but it was not the distance between two geographical landmarks that mattered, but the gap between the different ways of thinking and believing that can be considered exotic. Africa, Asia or America have been considered exotic not only because they are far away, but because they are unknown, strange and different from the familiar universe. [Doinaș, 1973, p.101]

2.1. Conceptual preamble – Meanings of the Exotic

Exoticism, sometimes confused for orientalism, could be defined as the tendency of a culture, particularly of 19th century literature, a different geographical environment, placed beyond the visible borders of the society, created as a result of the French revolution (considered a political landmark for the entire Europe) and of the technological revolution, which marked the evolution of the modern society. The exotic project as Chris Bongie calls it in his study Exotic Nostalgia: Conrad and the New Imperialism has as a main purpose a recovery of the cultural values lost in the development of the post-revolutionary society. This movement continued along the entire 19th century, to be followed by a complete pessimism in the final part of the century: “The acute phase of territorial expansion referred to as the "New Imperialism," and most commonly associated with the scramble for Africa, marks the definitive crisis-point of exoticism how can one hope to step outside of a process that has become global, and apparently irreversible?” [Bongie, 1995, p.270]

The question finds a partial answer in Tzvetan Todorov’s book Nous et les Âutres (1999), where the Bulgarian French philosopher realizes an interesting description of the exotic world, through the eyes of Chateaubriand (at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century) of through Pierre Loti’s lens (at the beginning of 20th century). The two points of view clarify the evolution of the traveler’s pessimism in the exotic space, along the Romantic century.

Literature with an exotic theme is just an excuse for the exploration of a remote space, highlighting both the expansionist approach of the big European forces, but also by arts, which are more and more inspired by these exotic territories (Maghreb, India or Levant). At the same time we can talk about a literary exoticism, as a possibility for the exploration of feelings, emotions, memories, with a strong impact on the spectator.

Illustrations are not included in the reading sample

William James Müller - The Mahmudiya Mosque, Cairo c. 1838

William James Műller’s watercolor is a proof of the general interest of the Western society for the unique elements. In this specific case we are faced with an exoticism of landscape, the work of art being composed by superimposing the architectural structures specific or the Arab world (traditional Arabic houses with window decorations, the minaret tower, narrow paths, which can transfer the viewer into a world of mystery). From the point of view of the color palette, Műller uses pastel colors, by combining the ochre with orange and red, rendering the world in an exotic space like a desert of the senses.

“(…) Exoticism of a book or a painting is alive as long as all that is unfamiliar, different and strange continues to be the same: equally alien, different and strange. The lack of familiarity with the data of specific meridians or times, the strong impression that you are facing a world which appears as a real antipode of the world in which you live – this is the halo which remains untouched in any exotic work of art” [Doinaș, 1973, p.103]

Martin L. Wolf’s Arts Dictionary suggests that the literary exoticism represents a general term describing the special curiosity of foreigners for the distant realms, highlighting diversity and variety of thinking.

Exoticism has been confused along the centuries with the beautiful, the ugly, the tragic and the grotesque, sublime and comical, being endowed with several aesthetic attributes, defining different artistic experiences, that were specific for certain literary and artistic periods. It is true that, because of a confusion related to the aesthetic concept, the term refers to a landscape, work of art, literary text, religion, or ritual related to a distant space. But the taste for exoticism is strongly related to human attraction for other categories, opposing wilderness to rationality.

The meaning of the term has evolved so that in the present times exotic can be any form of out of the ordinary artistic manifestation, any evasion from the usual limits, towards a mysterious space, the preference for exploration of new techniques. The Romantic century is par excellence an exotic one, because most of the Eastern travels took place during those times. The first orientalists are the scholars of the 19th century, who started translating Eastern literature, based on the assumption that a real colonial force is based on vast knowledge about local people and territories. The idea of knowledge as power became a symbol of the European culture. Learning from the East, the Europeans managed to gain supremacy upon those spaces. Oriental becomes anything that has been researched, seen, observed, the research of an entire generation. On the other hand, the East had an experimental aesthetic function in the attempt to find viable alternatives to the poetic tendencies of the previous epochs. The east is passive, while the West becomes more and more active, not only politically, but also in literature and arts.

One of the most important signals related to an explosion of the interest for the East was offered by Friederich Schlegel in his 1800 discourse was inviting the artistic generation to an exploration of the East for a discovery of the most representative manifestations of romanticism. Thus, literary figures, such as Goethe, Novalis, Byron, Keats, Chateaubriand or Victor Hugo will open the gates towards these territories, where they will find the most exquisite sources for their writings.

In his chapter dedicated to exoticism, Todorov brings into discussion the Eastern pilgrimages as a source of reflection for the Romantic man. Starting from Chateaubriand’s two important travels, one in America in 1791 and the other one in Greece, Palestine and Egypt, between 18006-1807, the critic concludes that the American experience is strictly related to nature, while the Oriental one is related to culture. We have to mention that, as a result of the two journeys, Chateaubriand publishes a series of fictional works Atala (1801) and Rene (1802), revised and finally published in 1826 under the title Les Natchez, while the Eastern travel inspired the 1811 Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem.

Similar to Todorov, along the times there have been many researchers who confused exoticism with orientalism, or they put an equal sign between the East and the exotic experience. But the East was not limited to the Middle Eastern territories (Cairo or Jerusalem), but oriental meant Greece, Turkey, Sicily, Crimea, or the Caucasus. Spain was also at the center of the romantic fantasy because it was at the crossroads between the East and the medieval mentalities, a mix of gothic Christianity and Arabic traditions, combining chivalry with crusade in a very Romantic style. [Hoffmeister, 1990, p.114]

What it seems just an enthusiastic project at the beginning, focusing on the element of novelty, rendered by the travelling painter or writer, turns into a complete pessimism in the second part of the 19th century once the colonial powers become stronger and stronger in various parts of the globe. Territorial expansionism that Bongie mentions in his study under the name New Imperialism is associated with the battle for Northern African territories, bringing the term exotic to the expansionism force, but dressed in a sophisticated attire of traditional décor, minarets, painting, and writing.

2.2. The social and political context for the appearance of the literary and artistic exoticism

The social and political context is extremely important, because it marks the new temporal and spatial borders of exoticism. The East is talked about from a more political perspective since the 14th century. Aziz Atyia, in his study entitled Crusade, Commerce and Culture issues an interesting theory according to which the crusades should be seen from a wider perspective of the conflicts between the East and the West, going back to the antiquity: “The bone of contention was the undefined frontiers of Europe, otherwise described as the spiritual frontiers of the West vis-à-vis Asia” [Aziz, 1962, p.19]

Said develops a similar argument, considering that the wall of partition between the East and the West was already visible from the times of Iliad. [Said, 1978, p.56]

The word barbarian, coming from the Greek word Barbados was at its origins a concept applicable to all those that didn’t speak Greek language. It started being used to make reference both to the civilized and uncivilized worlds. Thus, the Greeks start considering the Persians a barbarian population, but the concept also includes meanings such as uncivilized, lacking culture, etc.

The Greeks have been strongly impressed by the Phoenician alphabet, by the Persian monetary system and by the Egyptian sculptures. Martin Bernal, in his study Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987), issues a pretty controversial theory, suggesting that the Greek civilization is derived from the Egyptian one. He speaks about languages of the world as organic elements, growing from the inside, and that the Greek civilization is the user of an organic language, borrowing different elements from neighboring languages that they were contemporary with, and that there is a real penetration of the Egyptian culture into the Greek society. [Bernal, 2006, p.364]

He observed many Egyptian influences at the level of vocabulary, in relation to everyday life, vocabulary related to food, breeding animals, reaching the level where he sees similarities between the Egyptian pharaohs’ mumification ritual (tarikheuō) and the funerary rituals of the Greek heroes’ burials (tarkhuō, ταρχύω). Bernal is basing his linguistic theories on the studies of the Egyptologist Werner Vycichl who supports the idea of an interference and phonetic loan from Egypt to Greece, during the period 3000-300 B.C. This intermingling between the Egyptian culture and West Semitic, Anatolian, Minoan, Mycenaean and later on Greek civilizations demonstrate the character of amalgamation of the Greek culture and civilization, so that in a period of around 3000 years, the entire Egyptian way of thinking could be totally assimilated by the Greek civilization.

At the end of the 17th century, Europeans’ interest into the Ottoman Empire becomes wider and wider, both from a diplomatic point of view, but also from a military pr commercial perspective. In the 17th century the Ottoman Empire was subjugating almost the entire Balkan region, except for Montenegro, which was still independent. The Turks managed to siege Vienna twice, first in 1529 and the second time in 1683. The Ottoman naval forces were dominating Eastern Mediterranean and were considered a real-world force.

It is very interesting that from a cultural perspective, Europe wasn’t very much interested in the culture of the Ottoman Empire, and this is suggested by the lack of the specialists, in the Western universities, who could study the culture and civilization of the empire. The only areas of interest were related to the commerce, starting from the second part of the 17th century, when Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Prime Minister during the reign of Louis XIV manifests a special interest into developing commercial relationships in the Levant. In 1671 the Levantine Company is founded in Marseille, being involved in the cotton acquisition from the Lebanese and Palestinian ports. We could observe a strong commercial presence in the port of Alexandria, while along the 18th century the ideas of a French occupation in Egypt appears for the first time.

The French Levantine Company was in direct competition with the British Levantine Company with the headquarters in Aleppo, in Northern Syria, at the crossroads between many important commercial routes related to India and Damascus, as part of the silk route. At the beginning of the 18th century, the British Levantine Company was in full decline, once the East India Company was becoming more and more prosperous. The rivalry between the French and the British split the European continent, culminating with the 7 Year War (1756-1763) when the two powers dispute their trade rights upon the former Mughal Empire in India. In 1761, during the final part of the 7 Year War, France is decisively defeated, British Company of East India becoming the strongest force in the region. Thus, a special interest for communication with local people is developed, the Company extending its interests in preparing employees in the study of the Arabic language, offering even financial stimulants to those who were able to pass the language examinations. Yet, United Kingdom remains tributary to the financial interests surpassing the cultural ones, thus we cannot talk about real research into the Persian language, grammar or literature. While the French were strengthening their commercial interest into the Mediterranean and the British were building up their Empire, under the name of the British Raj in India, the Dutch were colonizing the islands of Java and Sumatra, and the Russians were constantly extending into the Caucasus, to the detriment of the Ottoman Empire.

2.3. The cultural context for the appearance of exoticism in the European literature and arts

From a cultural perspective, among the world powers, the French were the only ones responsible for the appearance of serious research studies, either in the form of translation from Arabic, Persian or Sanskrit, or under the form of encyclopedias. The publication of the encyclopedia entitled Bibliothèque orientale by Barthélémy d´Herbelot represents a landmark for the development of an awareness of Arabic, Persian and Turkish history and literature. At the same time, the publication of the French version of 1001 Nights by Antoine Galland, the Secretary of the French Embassy in Constantinople, arouse the interest for the literary exoticism. The work appeared in 12 small volumes, between 1704 and 1717 and were immediately translated into English under the title Arabian Nights, in more than thirty consecutive editions in French and English, only in the 18th century. The almost immediate popularity encouraged the publication in 1707 of the Contes Turcs, Persian Stories and A Thousand and One Days by Francois Petit de la Croix, between 1710-1712. Bothe editions have been translated into English proving the great circulation of the oriental phenomenon on both shores of the English Channel.

Galland conceived his paper not as a simple literary exercise, but as an instructional work highlighting Eastern lifestyle, and as he affirms in the preface of the first volume, the pleasure of reading these stories means an opportunity to learn about Eastern customs and traditions, ceremonies, in a very familiar style, that brings us closer to the real life of the period.

At the beginning of the 19th century the East became the subject of interest not only from a political perspective, but also culturally. We are talking about historical events polarizing the interest of the Europeans for the East: the French Revolution, Napoleonian campaigns in Egypt and the English-Turkish War (1807-1808), by far the French intervention in Northern Africa being the most important.

In Paris, in 1795 Ecole spéciale des langues orientales vivantes is founded by Louis Mathieu Langlès and later on the work is continued by Silvestre de Sacy. Yet, we should not stress the word vivantes because, as we can observe, the researchers of the times were not particularly interested by the evolution of the languages spoken in the East. Still, on the long run, the school became the foundation for the new sciences, creating a spirit of rivalry and passion among the specialists. For a very long time there was no cohesion among specialists, with regard to orientalism. The first convention took place in Paris only in 1873. Moreover, in the 19th century, the orientalist societies did not help in any way the academic system. There were no procedures, there was no clear analysis or synthesis, and studies were not very rigorous.

In 1770 the baron François de Tott is sent by the French Ministry of External Affairs apparently on an inspection visit to the French positions in the Eastern Mediterranean, but in fact, he is sent there to research into the strengths and weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire at the time. The conclusion exposed in a memorandum presented in Paris in 1779 was making reference to the necessity of a French invasion in Egypt. In fact, the conquest of Egypt was supported by the French merchants who considered Northern Africa as a safe market for their produce. On the other hand, we should not forget that Napoleon Bonaparte had read Volney’s Ruins (1791), which opens as a meditation on the ruins of Palmira, in Eastern Syria. As professor Grigorescu suggests, in his study Povestea artelor surori (The Story of the Sister Arts), Napoleon’s campaigns open the horizon towards Mediterranean oriental civilization. [Grigorescu, 2001, p.208]

Napoleon is accompanied in Egypt by an impressive team of scientists, mostly scholars in the field of civil engineering. He is the founder in Cairo of an Institute of Egyptology, with four separate departments: Mathematics, Physics, Political Economy and one dedicated to Literature and Arts. In this last department we can include all the steps made for the creation of the famous archeological sites, as well as registration and move of the important masterpieces of the antique world to Europe.

Dan Grigorescu says that “for the romantics, the work of art is the most tragic proof of the power to destroy everything; and a very good example in this respect in the poem Ozymandias, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Shelley’s poem was inspired by the arrival at the British Museum of the head of Ramses II, which was brough from the archeological site built on the ruins of Thebe. The ruins, placed in a wild and arid territory represented the starting point which nurtured the entire project of French conquest of Egypt. But although the Islamic heritage represented a landmark in the development of Egyptology as a field of study, it did not decisively influence the development of Arab and Islamic studies in the Romantic period.

In his Essay on Exoticism, Segalen, despite an inner contradiction, repetitions and unsupported points of view, critically presents his contemporaries, who were focused mainly on developing the expansionistic capacities, which he clearly disagrees with. At the same time he makes a distinction between his own perspective upon exoticism and that of the pseudo-Exots, as he calls them. He considers that the Romantics had the tendency to mystify their relationship with nature, which in his vision is the prototype of exoticism. On the other hand, the appearance of the term diversity in the title of his essay, does not refer to the possibility of considering the existence of multiculturality, but brings to the forefront the differences of class, culture, and literary genre. But a study of the oriental influences upon European literature should start from Said’s point of view, considering that the study of man in society is based on the human experience and history, and not based on the abstract and obscure arbitrary laws. The opposition between the Islamic religion and the Christian one represents the starting point of the conflict between the East and the West. The long-lasting traumas Said names it was caused by the direct conflicts between the Islamic powers of the East and the Christian ones of the West.

Orientalism was one of the most important fields of study of the postmodern theoreticians, at the end of the 20th century. The term was discussed numerous times, with arguments and counterarguments, which confirmed of invalidated Said’s theories. As Daniel Martin Varisco suggests, after 1990, we are the witnesses of an entire “literary industry” and post-colonial study field, that is called Saidian research. [Varisco, 2007]

For Said, the orientalist is any specialist teaching, writing, or studying the East and has the status of anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philosopher, while orientalism is seen as a way of thinking based on the ontological and epistemological distinction between the East and the West. [Said, 1999, p.4]

Richard King, professor of the History of Religions at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, is the author of detailed studies on Indian philosophy, on the impact of the colonization of India, as well as in the post-colonial field, successor of Edward Said, who tried to argue upon certain controversial points of view, making corrections and clarifying different errors. The distinction between the East and the West is in King’s opinion an amorphous category, combining the different ways of thinking of those exigent specialists who split the world into two categories, without considering the nuances. [King, 1999, p.83]

For the post-Saidian schools, orientalism is the common ground for the development of daring intellectual projects. Among the specialists who dedicated their careers to the development of valuable theories we should mention Homi Bhabha, professor at Harvard University, a specialist in postcolonial studies, author of a research on hybridization, a term that describes different forms of multiculturality. His ideas continued Edward Said’s studies, clarifying, synthetizing, and in certain respects, contradicting Said’s ideas. He suggests that there are limitations and ambiguities in Said’s theories, despite their importance for the entire research in the field.

Post-Saidian schools, represented among others by Richard King or James Clifford, have tried to clarify different confusions, overpassing the fundamentalist Foucauldian line, militating for interdisciplinarity, and offering alternative theories that Said couldn’t have conceived. Said’s study omits to mention the importance of the German orientalist school, apart from the French, British or the American one. Sheldon Pollock, professor of Sanskrit at Columbia University, was one of the theoreticians who brought innovation into his theories, stressing the strong role of the German orientalism, which led to the appearance of the pure Arian race. This is the theory that pushed Europe towards a long and painful process of racial purification.

Among the researchers who opposed Said’s point of view we can mention Robert Irwin, Ulrike Freitag or James Brown. Robert Brown, in his study Dangerous Knowledge – Orientalism and its Discontents supports the idea that his study came from the need to express a contradictory point of view to the one exposed by Said. He disagrees with Said’s hegemonistic discourse of imperialism, constraining Western mentality upon the East, especially the Islam and Arab world in general, but appreciates Said’s efforts of legitimizing the connections between the East and the West.

In his study entitled The Arabs and Mediaeval Europe, Norman Daniel talks about the numerous collaborations between the Western Christians and Muslims, highlighting the differences between the two religions, but also focusing on the collaborations that existed between the two religions, which is solidly argued. The real danger for the Europeans was represented by Ottomans, Mongols and members of the Seljuk Clan, the real conflicts being not among religions, as the famous crusade specialists tried to prove, but more specifically on the clashes between the powers of the world. We shouldn’t forget the traumas previously caused by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and more recently the Germanic peoples.

Said insists on the limitation of Orientalism to the Western study of Islam, he considers that Western orientalism was never considered a study of the East based only on the research upon the cultural elements: "Yet never has there been such a thing as pure, or unconditional, Orient; similarly, never has there been a nonmaterial form of Orientalism, much less something so innocent as an 'idea' of the Orient." [Said, 1999, p.23]

To understand the complexity of the exotic discourse, presented in most of the French and English oriental theme poems, they have to be viewed through Edward Said’s lens, with regard to the Western power of dominance upon the East, but also as a confrontation of ideas, in a wider European context. The study of the oriental exoticism was from the very beginning under the strong nationalistic impact of the European powers, which claimed domination over those territories, out of which the Germans have been excluded.

The Romantics are not the ones discovering the Orient, but adapt it to the need for novelty, in a period dominated by exacerbated feelings and contrast, by a tumultuous history filled with wars and revolutions. The period reaches a certain saturation with information from the East.

The present study is talking about an exoticism that is presented neither in the somber colors offered by Said, nor in Clarke’s perspective focusing on power and dominance.

When Victor Hugo was publishing his Les Orientales (1829), and Lamartine was travelling to Egypt, Syria and Constantinople, the East was already a subject exploited by literature. And I am talking here not only about specialized literature, with focus on research in the field, translations of famous literary texts from the East, compilations of Oriental texts, specialized journals, but also travel journals. The translation of 1001 Nights by Antoine Galland and the opening in Europe of embassies for different Eastern countries, backed up by details about the travel notes, customs, attire, and language. We can mention the Persian Letters by Montesquieu (1721), A Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy (1718) by Daniel Defoe, Candide, by Voltaire, etc.

The romantics managed to render the specificity of the East overturning the theories of the above-mentioned predecessors, who considered the oriental man as a sort of European dressed in traditional trousers, and a convinced follower of the encyclopedists. [Anghelescu, 1975, p.117]

2.4. Confluences between exotic literature and arts

The style is such a strong means of communication that the arts critics are sometimes tempted to interpret the appearance of similar forms, in different parts of the world, as a proof of a direct contact and more profound that the reality. The artistic aptitudes and the techniques have the possibility pf propagation, without leaving any trace in different parts of the world. The painted pottery from the Chinese Neolithic, for example, might have been influenced by the Mesopotamian one, because in both cases special decorative motifs previously observed in the Middle Eastern art. But the two cultures mentioned before did not have any knowledge of each other, being separated by the nomad tribes which apparently did not find any interest in the painted pottery. So, there shouldn’t be a direct contact between Mesopotamia and China, because culture is a live organism, behaving like a carrier of the background to be transferred to a different new environment.

In many situations the transmission of the artistic becomes an answer to a specific need. It can be about a profound need, as the case of the Buddhist art in Eastern Asia, or it can be more insignificant, such as boredom or the taste for novelty. “Sick of Grecian elegance and symmetry, or Gothic grandeur and magnificence we must all seek the barbarous gaudy gout of the Chinese”, was writing in 1740 Lady Mary Montagu, one of the personalities who influenced the career of Lord Byron. [Montagu, 1837, vol. I, p.209]

Although the product of a cultural situation, the work of art is the result of the creative process of an individual, and the confluence between the East and the West takes place only in the mind of the artist. But the question is: what influences this option of either accepting or transforming a cultural model or that of integrating in the creative process a set of cultural symbols or a specific motif. The answer is partially dependent on history, but it is also the result of tradition and training.

As Ernst Gombrich suggested in Art and Illusion, the artist sees and paints what he was taught to see and paint. Beyond this point, the artist’s choice is determined by the pressure from the environment, by a specific order requested by a client, but also is the result of human relationships and personal experiences.

Drummond Bone suggests that there is something arbitrary in any connection between a poem and a work of art, even if at its origins it was conceived as an interpretation of the other. An attempt to compare the two arts as if they have accidentally happened forces the comparatist researcher to render one art through the grammar of the system of structures specific for the second one. [Bone, 1996, p.202].

The choice of texts and works of art chosen for this research are influenced by subjectivity, as an important tool, proving that sometimes the connections between the two arts are minor or unnoticeable. What unifies them is the romantic spirit felt at the level of the French and English culture.

The confrontation between Eastern and Western arts stems from the existence of major differences between the two worlds and only when we realize how deep or big these differences are we will be able to understand the artistic process. Along the times there have been different attempts to describe the differences between the expression mode and the concepts of the two worlds, an example in this sense being Herman Northrop Frye who, in his study, The Meeting of the East and West, affirms that the East resides in an “undifferentiated aesthetic continuum”, while the West exists in a “differentiated logical continuum”. The conclusion is that in the East the dominant component is the aesthetic one, while in the West the theoretical frame is more important than any other element. We can discuss many important aspects, but the differences between the two worlds are so striking that we can easily understand the reasons determining the artists, along the times, to take over different Eastern or oriental motifs, in order to build the works of art in a new and different epoch.

For poets and painters, and for their audience, at the same time, the East represented the whim, or the Romantic fantasy of the carefree young people. After a long period of moonlights and tumultuous nights we are now faced with the Orient, seen as a realm of pure poetry, which lacks gravity, a no man’s land which turns into the frame of the literary and artistic work of art. The light, already present in the 18th century Turkish art, turns into one of the strengths of the 19th century exoticism. The watercolor, with its fragile support, that cannot be readjusted, once the color is put on the paper, becomes the queen of exoticism, of the travels, sometimes with beneficial effects upon the oil painting. The East is a mystical realm, that was very little known, maybe a little more than what Flaubert used to say, when he was affirming that Damascus is a good place for the sword manufacture. Yet, nothing can explain the amplitude of the oriental phenomenon, which becomes a force in the Western arts of the 19th century, as the fascination with the East was not completely new. Painters have been receptive to the opulence and oddity of the East, starting from the biblical scenes to the antique history. But isn’t it true that the East is a symbol of the unknown, that universe of difference, that all artists, especially painters, wish to decode? It is almost impossible to explain the amplitude and intensit6y of the oriental phenomenon, which influenced 19th century European culture.

Rembrandt’s art influenced Orientalism so much, as an artistic movement, that we cand consider him a landmark for the entire oriental artistic movement. The contact with the Dutch traders, the first founders of the East India Company, as well as the connection with the Jewish community in Amsterdam, offered an entire repertoire of shapes and exotic characters.

Jean-Etienne Liotard and Jean-Baptiste van Mour who lived in Turkey in the 18th century offered more authentic images of the east. Yet, only in the 19th century Europe got involved more actively, from a political perspective, in the Middle Eastern area, when means of transport improved dramatically, Western travelers started their trips, that led to a specialization of the field of Orientalism in the 19th century.

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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn An Oriental, 1635

“Orientalism in arts is one of the directions of exoticism, only a pale reflex of the interest for the existence for far away people and for the scientific interest related to their history” [Sever, 1973, p.120]

Although these people propose a rather improbable version of the East, Western artists’ journeys to Constantinople will enlarge the dictionary of figures of speech and the imagistic portfolio. Among these painters of the Bosphorus, studied at the beginning of the 20th century by the French diplomat Auguste Boppe, we should mention Jean-Etienne Liotard, who accomplishes one of the most convincing works of art, including portraits of women dressed in traditional Arabic attire. Still, we should not underestimate the impact of the less known artists of the times, such as Louis-François Cassas, Jean-Baptiste Hilaire or Antoine-Ignace Melling, whose works of art, obsequious to the travel genre, gains ground in the following periods.

In arts, especially painting, more than elsewhere, this realm, sometimes called Orient, some other times entitled simply the East, becomes a convergence point for the research of the western schools of thinking. Italy, the European artistic epicenter, inaugurates the preoccupation for the East even from Gentile Bellini, who, in 1480, realizes a portrait of Mehment II, the Sultan of Constantinople.

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Gentile Bellini, Sultan Mehmet II, 1480

Germanic countries will remain a little behind, although the Bavarian dominance in Greece, as well as the archeological research produced by Karl Richard Lepssius in Egypt, open the whets the appetite for a new field of study, reaching its maximum level after the 1910 Islamic Art retrospective Salon in München. Although before the Civil War there have been few Americans who have ventured on the Eastern lands, after the year 1865 they play an important role, in spite of the fact that they are continuously influenced by their French counterparts.

It becomes obvious that the most important representatives of the oriental movement have been the French and the British, satisfying in part the demands for the colonial expansion of their rulers. The Oriental Problem, deriving from the confrontation of the Ottoman Empire, now in full decay, with the rival European nations, represents the core of the problem and the starting point for an entire series of curiosity trips. It was visible during the Egyptian campaigns, along the Greek Independence War. It is beginning with the establishment of relationships between Muhammad Ali Pasha and Europe that we can also observe an influence of the artistic productions of the times.

France played a crucial role, because here Orientalism has been present for a very long time in the society, being opened, after the end of the Napoleonian Campaigns, by the disciples of Jacques-Louis David and being continued up until the beginning of the 20th century by Henri Matisse. The Orient, and here I am referring especially to Egypt, represented for the British a sort of stop towards India, while for the French, due to the political situation, was more than that, was a direct contact zone. In the 19th century this opening towards the East finds a form of expression under the form of the live visual records of the important artists. Flaubert used to call the orientalists the stubborn travelers, and he was absolutely right, because we cannot talk about orientalism without a travel journey, even if sometimes these travels were only illusionary, or mediated by drugs, from the comfort of their painting shop.

The Ottoman Empire, from Turkey to Egypt, and up to the Danube Principalities, Northern Africa, and Persia comprise a more cultural than geographical Orient, an interesting mix between the Levant (countries of the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea) and Maghreb (countries of North-Western Africa). The exploration of these territories put the bases of the oriental movement through the observation of human nature and the surroundings, distinguishing between the so-called Turkish delights of the previous epochs and bridging the gap with a new type of initiating journey. Greece, considered before 1820 an integral part of the Orient becomes an interesting destination for artists. The journeys offer painters the subject matter, but it requires a total engagement of an entire artistic generation. These journeys created the rapture with the old artistic stereotypes, allowing artists to be free from the European muses, offering a new perception of the world, and a metamorphosis of the artistic self.

Arts critics have studied this complex phenomenon for more than half a century. A preliminary evaluation was caused by the 100th anniversary of the French occupation in Algeria. In 1930, Jean Alazard, the curator of the newly founded Musée des Beaux-Arts, published the study L’Orient et la peinture française au XIXe siècle, a serious and well documented study, which remained in history as a landmark for the specialized literature. This study was followed by Jean-Marie Carré’s: Voyageurs et écrivains français en Egypte (1932), a study on the oriental phenomenon, seen from a more literary perspective.

The year 1914 is a landmark in the history of culture, marked by Auguste Macke and Paul Klee’s journeys in Tunis, which represent a sort of end to the oriental trend: Do not visit the colonial exhibition, the surrealists were saying in 1931, denouncing the annexation of the North African territories by France. Initially conceived as a slander campaign against France, it resulted in the liberation in 1960 of the occupied territories from the colonial dominance, when André Malraux transforms the Musée de la France d’Outre-Mer into Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens.

From this moment forward, artists of the 19th century, who represented the Orient in their paintings, have been considered blind witnesses of the imperialist dominance. The theory was issued by the researcher Linda Nochlin who, in the 1980s, applied in the study of the history of arts, Edward Said’s theory, highlighting the ugly part of the Western world and the concept that the East is just a creation of the West.

For many years, even after the end of the Romantic century, all that was different represented a real threatening virus for the European world. Gerardo Mosquera, in his study The Marco Polo Syndrome talks about eurocentrism, as a disease of the Europeans who refused any intercultural dialog, any opinion different from the preexistent one, any attempt to bridge the gap. All was presented only from a European perspective, without any space left for a comment or different point of view. The error of the romantics was to consider their art the supreme one, the most valuable of the times, which should be considered the landmark. Without knowing it, they took over different clichés belonging to other cultures.

The notion of eurocentrism is relatively recent, the first idea appearing around the 18th century, but the term was extensively studied during the 19th century. Mosquera offers a suggestive explanation: eurocentrism is the only ethnocentrism, that was turned into a universal concept as a result of the power of dominance of a metaculture and based on the trauma caused by different dramatic economic, social and political processes that a certain part of the world imposed to the others. Thus, many aspects of this meta culture become more international than ethnic and are part of a culture that was shaped by the Western one. [Mosquera, 1985, p.219] Thus, we can understand the trap in which Romantic artists have caught us, encouraging the idea of a monoculture, by reshaping on the work surface, a world that they assume as their own creation. The fact that this phenomenon overlaps with the problem of territorial dominance and political authority of the Europeans upon the newly colonized territories, makes almost impossible the two-way communication. The intercultural engagements start from the idea of an acceptance of the element of difference, in an attempt to understand and enrich experience with the concept of diversity. But this process would mean a double process, of the colonized sharing values with the colonizer, thing which never happened during the Romantic period, and not even later. Only in the 20th century we can observe the idea of a cultural dialog between the East and the West, of the compromise and acceptance of different points of view, aimed at healing eurocentrism and allow us to understand territorial borders. ” Despite all its noble aspirations and achievements, we should acknowledge that the culture of modernity... has also been always (but not exclusively) a culture of interior and exterior imperialism.” [Huysses, 1988, p. 239]

All exhibitions and works published starting from that moment become the bases of reflection. We can mention in this respect the exhibition organized by David Rosenthal in 1982 in New York, followed by an exhibition in London in 1984, Dublin 1988 and Berlin 1989. They have enlarged our knowledge, making us understand better the phenomenon and the experience of the painters and artists of the Romantics.

The important role played by the historical element in the development of the orientalist trend is undoubted. Even from the 19th century, Jules Castagnary was suggesting that the starting point was the Greeks revolution and Lord Byron’s death. Key words like Missolonghi, Chios, Constantinople, Canaris, the Greek admiral are just a series of elements that pushed the limits of the understanding of the Eastern world. [Castarnagy, 1892, p.248]

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Thomas Phillips – Lord Byron in Albanian Dress, 1813

Attracted by the events and accompanying the military and diplomatic missions, a series of artists collaborated, through their sometimes-literary translations and empirical analyses of the political events, to a legitimization of exoticism in literature and arts. Their vivid stories, sometimes filled with local color, with regard to the oriental issues have determined the appearance of an artistic movement, which in different situations would have been considered a simple fashion, or a taste of the times. But it is exactly this trend with specific visual details of the political, social and artistic events presentation that caused the appearance of orientalism as a trend.

One of the artists that have been in Egypt along the entire Napoleonian Campaign in 1798 was Dominique-Vivant Denon, whose sketches have started being published immediately after the landing in Alexandria and played an important role not only at the times, but along the entire 19th century.

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Dominique-Vivant Denon - Femme égyptienne dans le harem-les cheveux épars, 1802

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Dominique Vivant-Denon - VOYAGE EN ÉGYPTE Arrosement des terres et ablutions à la suite de la prière du mati. (Eau-forte, 50 Exemplaires sur ce papier), 1802

Undoubtedly, the realm evoked by the artist was responsible for the immediate success, backed up by the passion for the discovery of Egypt, which became fashionable even in the 18th century, before Napoleon Bonaparte’s engagement in the territories. But Dominique Vivant-Denon works of art played a crucial role, he himself being a daring man, who accompanied an offensive campaign because of curiosity and having the ability to render the events in a very natural way.

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Musulmans et Santons en prère devant la mosquée Saint-Athanase Dominique Vivant-Denon (Eau-forte. 50 Exemplaires sur ce papier)

In a way his works of art anticipate Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, but at the moment Denon, the artist’s attention was focused more on the oriental people, satisfying in a way the public’s curiosity for the visual element. The gallery of portraits, which is sometimes accompanied by detailed notes of the identity, profession and even color of attire will be extremely appreciated at the times.

Strongly dominated by spleen, the romantics embark on a knowledge journey, rediscovering the self, local environment not being enough anymore. They live beyond the home horizon, talking about the new spaces with delicacy and evoking restless souls, far from vulgarity and pettiness.

Romanticism was a European movement that had a radical perspective upon literature and arts, society, and politics, stressing the importance of human freedom, individualism and imagination. The study of the exoticism during the Romantic century highlights the interdependence between literature and visual arts, during the period 1800-1840, when the relationship between writers, poets and artists was that of a total symbiosis.

The influence of literature upon painting and vice versa play and essential role. Thus, we can explain the role that Ossia, Byron or Walter Scott played in the development and improvement of the pictorial image of French romanticism, and not only.

The literary and artistic travel that appears in this study brings to light works of art, sometimes famous, some other time almost unknown literary texts, dedicated to a fascinating territory, from Levant to Algeria, which led to the development of a way of thinking and a form of visual expression of a high intellectual intensity. We will tackle the Western perspective upon this exotic world, which the Romantic explorer is so greedy to discover, trying to touch, making an impression of it, even if sometimes it is a false impression, but which overall, represented a real fascination for the modern times.

CHAPTER 3 The Real and Imaginary Travel in the Romantic Period

3.1. Travel journals –a polyphonic genre

18th century inherited the cult of travel journalism, which starts being cultivated beginning with the 17th century. Richard Lassels introduces for the first time the concept of grand tour in his 1670 Voyage to Italy. In 1785, William Bennet observes the utility of travel for literary reasons, suggesting that this represents the most useful way of development, not only moral and intellectual, but also social. Christopher John Murray highlights the pleasurable role of the travel, as opposed to the educational one. It is true that the second part of the 18th century (times when for the first time is used the term tourist) is a time of extensive travels. Grand Tour, as it is used from now on, comprises the initiating experiences of the t6ravellers, mostly young Europeans, whose trips depend very much on the regional fashion, because we are talking about trips to Vienna, Berlin, to the Netherlands, and culminating with the Italian travels. In fact, the trips are totally dependent on a certain aesthetic pattern of the writers of the epoch.

Beginning with the second part of the 18th century, travel journals begin to be translated and they circulate in French, Italian, Spanish, German and English, facilitating the very rapid access to information, spreading the works of Volney, Denon, Humboldt and not only, to the European public.

The travel represents both an evasion and an initiation experience, stimulating young artists to discover the architectonical elements, different customs and traditions or elements of simple lifestyle: “Finally, a curiosity about geographical areas which appeared untouched by modern life, including the physical and social changes that were being wrought by the Industrial Revolution, captured the French imagination. Mountains (the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Scottish Highlands, among others) and the countries of the Mediterranean basin, participated in the nineteenth-century fascination with the primitive ”. [Murray, 2004, p.1154]

We can deduce thus that the interest for the exotic spaces was determined by that primitivism specific for the Far East realms, such as India, Extreme East, or Northern Africa.

In the case of French literature, travel was an autobiographic characteristic of the romantic writer, because of the adoption of the personal journal and correspondence, as elements of authenticity.

Cristopher John Murray observes the detailed descriptions which become a characteristic of the French romanticism, which in a way satisfies the European reader’s thirst for exotic elements. He mentions in this respect authors such as François-René de Chateaubriand, Alphonse-Marie-Louis de Lamartine, Victor Hugo or Stendhal. Towards the end of the Romantic century, the fearless traveler of the beginning of the century is replaced by the tourist. Yet, François-René Chateaubriand is considered the first modern Romantic traveler [Todorov, 1973, p. 387]

Chateaubriand’s two travel journeys, which determined the dissemination of a real literary trend, one in America and the other one in Greece, Palestine and Egypt, brought to life two important volumes: Les Natchez (1826) and Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem published in 1811. The travel to America is strictly related to the exploration of nature, understood also as human nature, while the second one, to Levant, is an experience of maturity, highlighting a philosophical conception focused on history and culture. Reaching the Orient, Chateaubriand surprisingly realizes the degree of civilization that he would have expected in America, but he is extremely contemptuous towards the Arab world, either because of religious reasons, or simply because of the misconception that the French colonization led to the discovery of the archeological artefacts which otherwise would have been completely unknown to the wide public. Yet he forgets to mention the robbery committed by these discoverers. The same attitude is shared by the most majority of English travelers, who either aim at opening the pharaohs’ graves with the purpose of taking all the valuable artefacts, or they try to find some important Greek antique relics that could be brought back home as trophies of their journeys.

On the other hand, Chateaubriand makes some recommendations for his reader, suggesting that he does not follow the paths of his predecessors Chardin, Tavernier, Chandler or Mungo Mark; he mentions an egocentric approach, where the main character is the writer himself, who is unaware of the moments and events of the people he visits, but builds the text around his own character, who becomes the focal point of his book.

Romantic exploration literature gives a new sense to the concept of travel, focusing on the inner travel and putting an emphasis on the spiritual exploration, instead of the material one. It is interesting to observe that romantics have been among the first to explore the analogies between the real travel and the one induced by drugs, opium being the preferred one at the times. Subjectivity plays an important role during the Romantic era because the world can appear as a projection of the writer’s self.

Among the most important English travelers, worth mentioning, we could enumerate: Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), with Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), an argument in this sense being his poem Prelude or Byron with his Childe Harolds Pilgrimage.

In Germany we can talk about Wolfgang von Goethe who suggested in his Italienische Reise (1816-1817) that he would like to discover the self among the objects he sees.

France is by far the best represented with regard to the travel journeys: Alphonse de Lamartine with Voyage en Orient (1835), Gerard de Nerval with his Voyage en Orient (1851), Gustave Flaubert with his journals and letters, as well as the novel Salammbô (1862).

Romanticism coincided with territorial expansion, discovery, and colonization of new territories from India, Africa, Indian Ocean and not only, and inevitably, travel literature became an important tool for communication with the society, having the power to capture the dominance upon other people and creating a speech for the justification of the abusive occupation that was supported by the military forces in most cases.

As a result of the scientific developments, of extended railway infrastructure and the development of sea travel, the travel loses the main purpose of landscape description and focuses more on rendering the inner states of the writer who experiences a real culture shock, upon experiencing these new and different realms.

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Eugène Delacroix, Les joueurs d’échecs arabes (1847)

An example in this respect is Delacroix’s painting entitled Arab Chess Players, finished in 1847, which represents a dynamic composition, realized through the superposition of two plans with totally different emotions. At the forefront we have the woman with the jug on her shoulder, caught while moving, who seems almost incapable of observing the two chess players, while in the background we can see the two chess players, whose contorted faces because of concentration are extremely suggestive for the general state of mind of the entire composition.

As Alexandra Vrânceanu was observing in her long study upon the painting Death of Sardanapal, Delacroix’s paintings are accomplished on different narrative layers, depending on the spatial levels and types of activities of the characters. [Vrânceanu, 2002, p. 52]

The observer of the work of art is placed in the exterior, in an environment in which he/ she has complete access to all details of the painting, being able to make the fusion between the plans.

From a compositional point of view, vertical lines are dominant, being represented by the feminine character and the architectural silhouettes in the farthest plan, intersecting with the horizontal lines of the pavement.

The center of interest is represented by the masculine characters, the chess players, whose lines of force converge in an equilateral triangle. The chromatic range is represented by the brown and brick color, making contrast with the blue of the sky, an intensive décor, able to transfer the decoder of the visual text into an atmosphere dominated by aridity.

Delacroix’s paintings are maybe the best examples for the Romantic period, where the author, of the author of the visual text, as Pierre Francastel called them, assumes serious rhetorical risks. The traveler, and in this category, we can also include the decoder of the text, has the possibility to tell different stories, describe characters, individuals, customs, and traditions, which can be decrypted with a different system of symbols. Thus, in the romantic century we are faced with an extremely arguable message, excessively affectionate, but which is mandatory for an audience so eager to learn more about these exotic spaces. The purpose of this type of literature, along all literary periods, was to transfer the visual element into a topographic discourse. Secondly, we are faced with the analysis of a text belonging to a different culture, having almost nothing in common with the Western one, but coming from the natural need to explore the novel, the different, the new abstract or the theoretical.

As Chloe Chard suggests, the two main purposes of the travel literature are, on one hand the manipulation of language and to produce an imaginative seduction, while the second purpose is to order thoughts and offer practical advice. She suggests that at the crossroads between these two axes there is a network of theoretical and rhetorical strategies developed inducive of an imaginative topography or an imaginative geography. [Chard, 1988, p.10]

We also have to observe the fact that travel literature, genre which was specific for 17th and 18th century, was invested along the times with different types of discourse: from a simple description of towns, architectural monuments, customs or traditions, up to first person narrative, personal notes, philosophical theories, or fictional novels based on the initiating travel theme.

This present chapter tries to define the Romantic travel journal – but I must admit that it will not strictly make reference to the Romantic period, whose temporal limits have been set by the history of literature to the 1780-1830 period, but I will also investigate elements from the second part of the 17th century which significantly influenced the literary scene of the epoch, as well as elements dated after 1830.

I had in mind some of the most important literary works, the context that determined their appearance, as well as the way in which the Romantic travel literature unifies with arts, particularly in the reproduction of the exotic spaces, of the exotic realms. The comparative approach not only highlights the geopolitical context in which travel literature emerged, but also presents the intellectual context, the psycho-social frame that led to the appearance of a desperate need for travel, to the discovery and illumination of an entire generation of artists. We are talking about a new aesthetic and a cultural attitude associated for example in the English environment with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Byron, Shelley or Keats. [Thompson, 2007]

Finally, I must mention the fact that the travel stories are not limited to the classical grand tour, but this research makes reference to Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, an interesting mirroring of the decadent French society, which the author presents to his fellow citizens, after an initial shock of the reality surrounding him. It is in fact a painting depicting the frivolity of the French 18th century, marked by libertinism, which the false Persian traveler presents under the form of a travel journey.

At the same time there will be a reverse analysis, from the East to the West, presenting some of the most important travel journals of the Egyptian writers Abd-al Rahman al-Jabarti, Niqula al-Turk and Ahmad Faris al-Shidaq, whose opinion with regard to the degree of civilization of the Western man is laudatory, highlighting cultural models, in spite of the undisguised disapproval of the French occupation

3.2. The Grand Tour in the Enlightenment Era

The romantic approach of the travel refers to the journey as a personal adventure, which results in a rediscovery of the self, going beyond the usual geographical borders, gets in touch with a new world, different from the one that he left back home, a world that is full of risks and uncertainty. Travel literature during the Enlightenment era, the so-called Grand Tour, also brings into discussion topics related to aesthetics, geology, art criticism, botany, etc.

The itinerary is a sort of ritual for the young European belonging mostly to the high class of the society, with a higher level of education that also comprises a field training, in many different areas of interest. Although initially it is related only with British nobility, the phenomenon is adopted during the second part of the 18th century by members of the middle class of Northern Europe. The usual trajectory of the grand tour used to start from the port of Dover, towards Oostende in Belgium, or Calais and Le Havre in France. The next stop was Paris where the young noble would have been initiated into the secrets of dance, could attend classes of fencing and horse riding, at the same time being introduced into the secrets of arts, aesthetics, and diplomacy. Crossing of the Alps, towards Northern Italy was the next stage of the journey, with the towns of Milan, Florence, Pisa, Padova, Bologna and Venice as the last stops before the fulminating arrival in Rome, the destination of the journey. Beginning with the 18th century grand tour also meant an extension of the journey towards Napoli in Sicily, as a last stop before embarking on a boat journey to Greece.

Among the other favorite destinations of the young Europeans, we could also mention Spain, Portugal, Germany, and the Eastern part of Europe with the Balkans, but none of these destinations would have been so important as Paris or Rome. Once the railway system develops, after the French Revolution, the concept of grand tour is replaced with a new term, tourism.

Grand Tour represented a preoccupation of a limited group of writers, a t6rabnslation from north to south, followed by a return to the north, an initiating journey beyond the national borders, usually at the south of the Alps, and having as a final destination the city of Rome, understood as the cradle of European culture and a landmark for the European romanticism, a period when the individual becomes more tolerant, able to imitate nature, in the sense of applying the novel to the previously developed system of values.

A study of the travel literature in Europe represents an important step, which should be studied on different geographical layers, but Chloe Chard is the one who suggests that English and French writings share the same discursive rhythm and have strong connections that we cannot talk of English travel literature without making reference to the French travel literature and vice versa. [Chard, 1988, p.15]

Travel literature of the 17th century is marked by the historical past, compared to the romantic travel literature, where the past is an essential item, a landmark for the writer, who has the ability to convert historical time into a personal one. [Chard, 1988, p. 21]

Most of the travel texts represent non-fictional works justified by the need to answer an archeological and ethnographic curiosity, curiosity which Nigel Leask opposes to those serious works aimed at highlighting the missionary activity, botanical observations or texts related to slavery, a very sensitive topic in the epoch. [Leask, 2002, p.4]

One of the first examples of an author of non-fictional travel stories, where for the first time could be observed solid arguments for the educational function of the grand tour is Joseph Addison with his Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705), which is considered a sort of standard vade mecum of the English traveler. [Batten, 1978, p.10]

Numerous generations of English travelers have been inspired by Addison’s work when they started their trips to discover the most important aspects of Europe. Among them we should mention Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Horace Walpole or James Boswell, and later on, fictional writers such as Samuel Sharp with his Letters from Italy (1766) or Tobias George Smollett, with Travels through France and Italy (1766), the latter one being less of a fictional volume and more of an account of the experiences and impressions from his initiating trip.

Beginning with the 19th century, travel literature is more and more identified with the social and political preoccupations of a small group of the world powers: colonial interests, slavery trade and produce brought from the Atlantic zone. Between 1830-1880 we can observe a translation movement from north to south, especially from France to England, the two major European powers of the times, towards Africa and the Orient.

Royal Geographical Society is the initiator, in the British environment, of the exploration travels, bringing for the first time the notion of a culture of exploration, combining the tradition of travel journals with the initiating experience of the grad tour and the element of literary exoticism.

After 1800 travel literature responds to an inner need of the writer to satisfy a personal need for evasion in a previously discovered space, but which is now interpreted through a different set of values, adapted not only to the demands of the society, but also to the needs for exoticisms, that the entire society is asking for.

For the Enlightenment era, grand tour was a useful tool for the education of the young members of the French and English high class, and not only. We will limit the research to these two shores of the Channel Sea, because a wider comparative study would demand a more thorough research, while I am mainly interested in understanding the bases which determined, in the romantic period, the appearance of the exotic theme, the one that pushed romantics towards the exploration of the distant territories, as well as understanding the limits of the territories explored by the romantics.

3.3. The Ruins – intermediaries between the human civilization and the natural order of the world

The literary motif of the ruins, associated by literary criticism with fortuna labilis has appeared in literature since the antiquity, from the Bible to Ovid’s writings, and not only. In his Epistuale ex Ponto, Tristia or Metamorphoses, Ovid talks about the changing faith of the man, recalling the former glow if the cities of Sparta, Thebes, Athens or Troy, which turned into ruin and tombs of once successful people.

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Robert Hubert, Imaginary View of the Grande Galerie in the Louvre in Ruins (1796)

Ramiro Ortiz mentions the existence of a Medieval and especially Renaissance motif, in Du Bellay, Ronsard and Tasso’s works. Du Bellay is the first who imposes for the first time the ruins and tombs motif, at the end of 18th century and beginning of 19th century. Thus, Joachim Du Bellay, in one of his Sonnets evokes the glory and transience of the old Roman and Greek cities:

Duthier: would you know what this Rome is?

Rome is a public scaffold to all the Earth;

A scene, a theatre, where there’s no dearth

Of what proceeds from man’s activities.

Here’s the play of Fate: just as she may wish

To cast us down or make us men of worth,

Here each will show, regardless of his birth,

As he is, with the name the crowd makes his.

Here of false and true, the news is brought,

Here the courtesans make love, hold court,

Here ambition and finesse are rife,

Here freedom makes the humble audacious,

Here idleness renders the good man vicious,

Here the vile wretch repeats the facts of life. [ Les Regrets: 82 ]

Du Bellay was the poet who configured the main headlines and countenance of the ruins lyricism. [Macovei, 1982, p.40]

During the romantic period the ruins become important, although not necessarily as destination of an exploration travel, but more as an alternative to the city noise.

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David Roberts Ruins of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec (1861)

In 1802, Chateaubriand, in his Genius of Christianity, offers the ruins the same aesthetic meaning, suggesting that we all have a secret attraction towards the ruins. This feeling is related to our human fragility and rapid decay that we are subject to.

Volney, representative of the enlightenment and follower of the French Revolution, publishes in 1791 Ruins or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires, a book containing historical and philosophical meditations inspired by his travels to Egypt and Syria. In front of Palmira ruins, Volney has the feeling of transience of civilizations and human helplessness in front of life pettiness, everything being subject to the two important literary motifs: vanitas vanitatum and fortuna labilis.

Volney’s Ruins represent a landmark and a source of inspiration for the preromantic and romantic representatives, like Lamartine and Chateaubriand, who exploited in their works the motif of the vanity of life in front of the ruins. On the other hand, all references highlighting the emancipation and progress of people in the fight against feudal despotism became a sort of leitmotiv of the revolutionary romanticism.

At the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th century, the motif of the ruins is adopted by painting and poetry, under the direct influence of the Rococo artistic movement. Parallel to poetry, an entire artistic creation is developed by Jacob Van Ruysdael (1628-1682), inspired by the vestiges of the past, but in a purely artistic art, such as Ruins in a Dunes Landscape, or Landscape with the Ruins of Egmond Castle at Egmond aan den Hoef.

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Jacob Van Ruysdael, Ruins in a Dunes Landscape (c. 1650)

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Jacob Van Ruysdael, Landscape with the Ruins of Egmond Castle at Egmond aan den Hoef (c. 1655)

The somber atmosphere, the air of sumptuousness released by the Flemish artist’s artistic compositions, is amplified by the use of the cold tones, doubled by a special technique, borrowed from Italy, called impasto, through which the oil color is spread on the canvas in thick strokes, offering a three-dimensional sensation.

The general tendencies of the times are focusing on simplicity and conciseness, while the imagination is let alone to wander between the natural and artificial, people oscillating between the surrogates of nature and the authentic landscape. The movement from the classic style of landscape frame, populated with human and mythological characters, to the open space, the infinite perceived as a passing by, towards the eternal world, marks the beginning of a new literary movement. [Munteanu, 1998]

3.4. The Travel in the Balkans

The name of the Balkan Peninsula was given in 1809, by the German geographer August Zeune who, in his work, Gea: Versuch Einer Wiessenschaftlischn Erdbeschreibung, calls the peninsula Balkanhalbeiland. Among the authors who explored the peninsula and described in their works the people and places we can mention Chateaubriand, whose travels to Greece, Palestine and Egypt will be published in 1811 under the title Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem, or Byron who, two years after Chateaubriand, starts his initiating trip into the exotic world of the Mediterranean, on an extremely complicated trajectory, including Spain, Portugal, continuing with the discovery of Albania and finally to Greece.

Compared to other literary texts rendering the life of the Balkans, general opinion changes beginning with Byron’s arrival in the region, whose feelings and emotions are transformed in pure literature, a poetry full of sensibility, travel notes and letters for the ones at home, strongly influenced by the cause of Greece, that the poet embraces, promoting the region and opening the gates towards these territories. Vesna Goldsworthy calls Byron a Columbus of the Balkans, because of the great interest that started with the writers and poets inspired by Byron’s poetry and to update the opinion of the poet.

In a very short time, the interest is moved from the political cause to the description of the Balkan lifestyle, highlighting the exotic elements: women’s status in society, harem descriptions, regional architecture, religious aspects (the Mosque and Muslim rituals), exploring the preoccupation with customs and traditions, as well as superstitions of the Balkan region.

The travel deep into the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Greek islands’ region, was not initially part of the Grand tour. Among the most important travelers in the Balkan region we can mention, before the romantics, Nicholas Revett who, together with James Stuart embark in 1751 on a trip to Greece, a four-year journey, which resulted in the publication of the volume Antiquities of Athens (1762). The text represents a review of the most important architectural monuments of the region, reviving in the English environment the Gusto Greco. But it was not before 1760 Napoleonian wars that the British seriously start considering the travel to Greece and Levant, as an alternative to the Italian and French Grand Tour.

Part of these travels resulted from the mere need of evasion from the everyday dullness, in the hope of exploring new territories, others had an artistic impulse, being stimulated by the vast Hellenistic culture, others, such as Viscount of Marcellus to simply get possession of different vestiges of the antiquity (Venus of Milo), which he brings to his home country, as it happened after the occupation of Norther Africa by the French forces, when numerous relics of the Egyptian civilization have been appropriated by the new colonizers. It is also the case of the English travelers, such as Edward Daniel Clarke, who enterprises a long trip to Greece, starting with the Scandinavian countries, continuing with Russia, the Holly Land and Cairo, realizing a ring cycle that closes with the exploration of the antique Greek civilization. He manages to achieve, in return for a telescope, a huge statue of Kristophoros of Eleusis, which today can be admired at Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Similar activities have also been undertaken by Lord Elgin who is appointed in 1799 ambassador in Constantinople. In return of a small amount of money he manages to buy marble fragments from Parthenon and Temple of Athena Polias.

The element that played an important role in the development of a travel literature with destination towards Constantinople and Asia Minor in general, was the political context that led to the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, beginning with the 16th century, and continuing until the 18th century, and naming of Turkey an absolute despotism and negatively influencing public opinion upon Islam in general. If during the enlightenment era the stories about Constantinople and Turkish lifestyle were filled with elements of novelty, such as local color, veiled women, the bazar and negotiations, Romanticism starts talking about Turkish tyranny that needs to be defeated. Byron becomes a supporter of the Greek liberation from the Turkish occupation. At the same time, the exotic realms offer an alternative to the social depravation that could be observed all along the European territories. In a way, this theme of the liberation from the Muslim ideology is synonym with the European desire to get rid of the totalitarian dominance.

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Eugène Delacroix, Le Massacre de Scio, oil on canvas, 1824

An example in this sense, which in a way connects sister arts in the attempt to create an awareness of the public opinion upon the Turkish problem, is the series of paintings by Delacroix, out of which The Massacre of Chios is extremely suggestive for the problem that the romantics are trying to bring to the forefront. We are faced here with a visual interpretation of a real event, from the history of our continent. The painting whose complete title is Scenes of the massacre of Chios: Greek families waiting their death or slavery, also called by Charles Blanc the massacre of painting was finished in 1824, being conceived shortly after the historical event, under the impression of Antoine-Jean Gros’ 1799 painting Bonaparte Visiting the Pesthouse in Jaffa.

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Antoine-Jean Gros, Bonaparte Visiting the Pesthouse in Jaffa, 1799, oil on canvas

The historical background tells us the story of Greece, which was under Turkish domination from the 15th century, that decides to start the movement of national liberation at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1821 the Turkish government decides to take severe measures and for the suppression of the revolution and thus we are faced with the massacre of 98.000 people who are killed or sold as slaves, out of whom only 2.000 people survived. It is again one of the dark pages of human history.

The suffering, the intense feelings and pain are probably the most important emotions that we can feel while looking at Delacroix’s painting. He accomplishes a composition with a relatively new theme at the times, lacking the grandeur and importance that the French public was asking. The focal point of the painting is not represented by a heroic historical character, but humans, simple people that are in pain, being crushed by pain, people on the verge of death, people who feel there is no hope for them in life. Delacroix’s talent is here full of maturity, particularly in the choice of color and expressiveness of faces. The background is lighted by the golden fires and the smoke that can highlight the intense feelings of the characters at the foreground of the painting. Another element of contrast is represented by the richness of colors used in the costume description, which is in sharp contrast with the pallor of the faces. But the general feeling that can be observed from every corner of the canvas is that of inner peace, acceptance and sacrifice, without any exaggeration or excessive dramatism.

Delacroix’s painting appears as a chapter from Walter Scott’s novels, with the only exception that Delacroix’s composition is just the result of the artistic imagination of the French painter, which is a poetic reconstruction of a historical theme. It is probably for the fisrt time in the history of arts when such an emotional and intense historical scene is presented on the canvas, full of dramatism where we are faced both with busy life that is condensed and poetic lyricism. The work of art offers us a record of the most dramatic victory, filled with sadness, confusion and hesitation, an unexpected success for the western warrior.

The Romanian researcher Marian Popa, in his study entitled Călătoriile epocii romantice (The Travels of the Romantic Epoch) creates a review of the most important Mediterranean travels. He mentions among others Thomas Shaw with his Travels, or Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant, 1772, Charles Thompson (1734), Jonas Kortens (1737), Richard Pococke with A Description of the East and Some Other Countries, 1743, Norberto (1740), etc. In the artistic field, one of the most important travelers, whose interest in the exploration of these territories is combined with the passion for arts and literature is Louis-François Cassas with his Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoénicie, de la Palestine, et la Basse Aegypte, 1795-1823. This book is filled with drawings from the cities of Palmira, Baalbek, Constantinople, reproductions of the pyramids, not to forget the personality of Chateaubriand, who is mentioned in the book, as a key figure of the times, and a landmark for the entire literature inspired by the exotic territories.

For the English space, the most important travelers seem to be Burke and Byron, whose travels towards the levant have been opened by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), wife of the English ambassador in Constantinople between the years 1716-1718. Here she had access into the community of women belonging to the Turkish high class. Her Turkish Embassy Letters, published in 1763 represent a very fruitful field material and a key source for Lord Byron, whose appetite for the exoticism of the Asia Minor is opened once he read these letters. Having the advantage of belonging to the same social class, Byron followed the path opened by Lady Mary Montagu, visiting the same places, accumulating, and disseminating personal experience that he will put on paper in the form of poetry, in such a way that we understand Byron as a real Greek soul, where he will find death.

Among the English painters who transpose on canvas the Greek cause, we can mention Charles Eastlake, artist and first Director of the National Gallery who, in 1833, presents at the Royal Academy the painting entitled Greek refugees. A second important artistic figure is Sir William Allen, Scottish historical painter whose Slave Market (1838) is the result of the travels to Greece and Constantinople.

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William Allen, Slave Market (1838)

This painting is a complex composition, populated with a large number of characters, created on different zones of shadow and light. The shadowed lateral parts converge towards the focal point, built around the male character riding the horse and the standing man, who stands out as a result of the unusual attire, dressed in white, wearing a caftan and turban, the dominant white creating a strong contrast with the dark color of the face.

Victor Hugo talks about two different types of Greece, the Homerian Greece and the second one, full of exuberance that is created with the help of Byron’s poetry, ”Grèce de Byron”.

Yet, Lord Byron was an idealistic character, being able to create a fresco like image of a country torn by war, unable to control the power, which needed much help from the powerful countries of Europe. Thus, Byron is a fighter for the rights of Greece, who supported, with the help of pamphlets and brochures published back home, an entire series of revolutionaries, ready to embark on the first ship to Greece, to embrace the cause of the Greek people.

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Louis-François Cassas , Muses Hill - Philopappos Hill

The East represented for the 19th century a return to the origins, to the lack of civilization that is much craved by the European society. He suggests that the aestheticism and politics represent the two most important characteristics of the travel literature of the 19th century, while the topics of the quest for religion, exoticism and need for evasion are the main source of inspiration for an entire generation of writers and artists. [Nash, 2006. p.57]

3.5. The Romantic travel in Northern Africa

Most of the romantic travelers to Egypt have mostly motivated by the discovery of the Egyptian civilization once Champollion was able to decipher the hieroglyphs in 1821-1822. Romantic times artists have been attracted mainly by the lifestyle of the people in Northern Africa, an area filled with customs and traditions that the Europeans were not familiar with and of course by the large number of monuments from the antiquity (ruins, tombs, and pyramids), which become an inexhaustible source of inspiration for literature.

The exploration of Egypt is a product of the 19th century, after the French occupation. Although based on different systems of education, sometimes with little knowledge of the country they were about to explore, travelers to the region have been able to influence the overall perception of the Europeans upon this country, laying the foundations of Egyptology, either through the development of a research institution, or simply by telling real life stories. The fact that not all explorers were famous people resulted in a reception of the country, culture and civilization in such a way that was very close to common people, allowing access to the most secluded corners of the bazar, inside the harem, in the lifestyle of simple people.

The first narration of Egypt date from the beginning of the 19th century, after Napoleonian campaigns and especially after the publication of Dominique-Vivant Denon’s paper Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte, in 1802, opening Europeans the gates for the study of this space. Hussein M. Fahim, in his study entitled European Travelers in Egypt: The representation of the Host Culture talks about the dual representation of a single culture. He mentions that this duality is caused by the fact that Egypt was represented like a country with two different cultures, one that is according to the tastes of the Europeans and the other one tat is filled with elements of exoticism. This dualism was in tune with the fascination for antiquity and Egyptian civilization. And in a way this dual image resulted in the development of a trend, for the 19th century European intellectuals who were trying to discover the meanings of exoticism, bizarre, unusual, trying to discover the of a non-European culture. [Sarkey, 2001, p.9]

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William Henry Bartlett The Sharia El Gohargiyeh, Cairo, 1860

As a result of this demand of the public opinion for the elements of exoticism, a series of European travelers embark on trips to Egypt, with the idea of reconstructing North-African orientalism, and in case that was not possible, exoticism could be imported from other regions, such as Turkey, Persia or India, or simply recreated from imagination, as it happened in many cases with the paintings realized in the workshop, by artists whose impression about the oriental world was the result of travel novel reading, correspondence or simply pure imagination.

French anthropologist Claude-Lévi Strauss suggests this passion for travel journals created the illusion of a world that should have existed in case it is not like the real world.

Stories about Egypt appeared in Champollion’s writings too, but Gérard de Nerval is probably one of the most important French travelers who presented it in his Voyage en Orient.

Among the English travelers whose field trips are turned into travel journals and memoirs we can mention Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer, with his book Travels in the Interior of Africa (1799), where he speaks about his experiences in West Africa.

The field stories of John Frederick Lewis, the English painter, are characterized by objectivity, emotional intensity, and a rich and accurate color palette. This is the direct result of the nine years spent in Egypt, from 180 to 1849, a period in which he adopts the local lifestyle, becoming the owner of a large property, in a quarter in Cairo. During this entire period he avoided contact with European residents in Cairo, trying to adapt as much as possible to local culture and civilization.

An important detail, and interesting at the same time, is that his most important paintings, that offer a detailed description of oriental world, have been created upon return to his home country, and are the result of a workshop activity, based on sketches made during the time he spent in Egypt. He fills these interior decors with imagined feminine characters, because we know from the times correspondences, that the vast majority of western travelers did not have access into the oriental harem.

Domestic scenes offer detailed descriptions of interior design, in an extremely authentic style, but in fat they all miss the most important element of authenticity, the real oriental woman. In spite of all these, the costumes seem very real, and this is the result of the long period of time spent there and of the numerous sketches made from real male and female models in Egypt.

The painting that is a representation of the harem is Harem life in Constantinople, where the suggestion of narrative is extremely profound. “John Lewis’s meticulous harem pictures were eroticized in their fetishization of the female body through luxurious fabrics, jewels, and even (arguably) the colored latticed windows”. [Del Plato, p.25]

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John Frederick Lewis Harem life in Constantinople, 1857

Another original element that could be remarked in Lewis’ work is the construction of his workshop, which is very similar to the original Arab one, created with the help of the trompe d’oeil, by adding columns, arches, fountains, and interior gardens, to create an atmosphere as close as possible to the North African harem.

Beginning with the French occupation in Algeria in 1830, we can observe the appearance of different literary notes, poems praising the heroism of the French soldiers and travel notes highlighting local color. Generally, we are faced with an extremely varied literary corpus, from poem to prose and correspondence of travel journal, some of which have very little literary significance. Marian Popa undertook a heroic work of enumerating some of the most important Romantic literary texts where there is direct or indirect reference to the French occupation of Algeria, inter-ethnic conflicts or simple landscape descriptions and local color. Numerous other books appeared, describing different journeys and voyages to Algeria, some of which are accompanied by visual representations.

Adrien Dauzats, French landscape, and Oriental subject painter travels in 1839 to Algeria, accompanying the Duke of Orleans in his military and political mission in the region. In 1844 Charles Nodier, influential French author, and predecessor of Nerval, who introduced the conte fantastique, published the volume Journal de l’Expedition des Portes de Fer, where the illustrations, comprising conflict scenes form the Algerian campaign are signed by Dauzats, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps and Auguste Raffet.

In 1832, Doctor William Beattie, Scottish physician and poet invites William Henry Bartlett to create the illustration for one of his books about Switzerland. From that moment further, Bartlett starts travelling very much on his enlightenment grand tour, on an initiating journey into the European culture. One of the most remarkable characteristics of his engravings is the quality of the architectural reproductions, with powerful skill on the effects of light and shadow.

The artist visits the Middle East: Beirut, Tripoli, the temple of Baalbek, the island of Rhodes, Turkey (1837-1838), creating a set of 83 metal engravings reproducing Constantinople, for the volume entitled The Beauties of the Bosphorus, published in 1839 together with Julia Pardoe, the English novelist and traveler. In 1842 he visits different provinces from the Ottoman Empire, along the Danube River: Serbia, Bulgaria and Romanian Principalities. At the same time, he embarks on a new journey to the East: Beirut, Jaffam Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Hebron, all along to the Dead Sea, with a final stop in Alexandria, upon return.

As a result of this long journey, in 1844 publishes the volume Walks about the City and Environs of Jerusalem. In 1845 he travels along the river Nile, to the Temple of Philae, and even further to Aswan, while at the end of the same year he travels along the eastern bank of the Suez gulf, towards Mount Serbal, located in Wadi Feiran in southern Sinai, and even reaching the archeological site of Petra.

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William Henry Bartlett Alexandria, 1837

Bartlett’s illustrations and engravings are more than simple reproductions of architectural elements. They are filled with emotions, able to recreate, with the help of light and shadow, the tensions of an extremely delicate geographical area, like a visual description of Julia Pardoe’s texts.

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William Henry Bartlett, The Plains of Lower Wallachia, cca. 1840

The fact that the two travelled together, allowed the development of a double reference that unifies the discourse. The trip started on August 15, 1837, and ended in March 1838 in Turkey, in Constantinople and the provinces of the Russian-Turkish provinces of the Empire, along the Danube River, from Serbia to Bulgaria, Moldova and Bessarabia, resulting in a series of 83 engravings. We are facing a complete unity of text and image, the illustration being able to translate in a way the travel impressions of the writer and completing the perspective, for a complete visual symbolism: reality and text.

As Reinhold Schiffer suggests in his research Oriental Panorama: British Travelers in 19th Century, Pardoe’s descriptions serve the visual representations, the order and selection being preceded by text. She creates the context through anecdote and reference to other travelers, and shares with Bartlett the same aesthetic elements: aesthetic distancing of the observant, interaction and fusion with the nature and elements of the domestic space. [Schiffer, 1999, p.176]

It is the perfect match between the text and image, that is so coherent and unified, giving us a sense of belonging to the book and understanding the emotions that triggered both the word and the line.

3.6. The Reverse Trip of the Egyptian to the West

Egyptian travels to Europe have been limited especially to France and England, supplying most of the information about the Western lifestyle, in a very person interpretation.

Ed de Moor, a specialist in Middle Eastern culture suggests that Egyptian travels to France have been a projection of the freedom and justice, France being perceived as the center of moral freedom and material sovereignty, while Paris is seen as the crown jewel, including all the qualities that included luxury, seduction, modern lifestyle, and vanity, characteristics that even Montesquieu mentioned in his Persian Letters. [Ed de Moor, 1992, p. 149]

One of the most important texts about western lifestyle belongs to Abd-Al Rahman Al-Jabarti (1754-1825), Egyptian scholar and historian who talks about the different moments of the French occupation. First of his three books, entitled Tarikh muddat al-Faransīs bi Misr, covers a period of approximately six months, where the author presents in a very ironical style, the French struggle to conquer and “civilize” according to Western values, the local Muslim population, by trying to impose Western lifestyle or forbidding polygamy, in an archaic world filled with strict religious doctrines.

Shmuel Moreh, professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem suggests in his study that Al-Jabarti’s accounts of the Napoleonic invasion highlights the differences between a young and dynamic society as the French one and the traditionalist and conservative lifestyle.

Scholar of then Khalwatiyya Sufi order, a revisionist sect based on the teachings of the Koran and Sunnah, and focused on a revival of Islam, during the Ottoman occupation of Egypt, Al-Jabarti is considered one of the most important Muslim historians. He admits in a way the strong military, cultural and social impact of the French occupation, considering it the end of a medieval way of life of the Arabs in the region. [Moreh, 2006, p.183]

Illustrations are not included in the reading sample

Antoine Jean Gros, Bataille d’Aboukir (1806)

The most important lesson learned by the Arab world once the French occupation was installed, was the acceptance of the decline of old values and principles, and Al-Jabarti is in a way the scholar able to accept the new values as better from different perspectives. In spite of the critics directed towards the French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte, Al-Jabarti enthusiastically talks about the level of culture of the French colonizing society, making reference to the numerous scientists, libraries, the amazing printing machines, mathematicians, astronomers, etc., not forgetting about French writers and painters that accompanied the occupation and who provided first-hand information about the evolution of the conflict.

Al-Jabarti is also fascinated by the number of translations from Arab language, the Quran included, being amazed by the knowledge showed by the French scientists, their level in foreign language speaking, grammar and is extremely impressed by the efforts made in learning Arab language.

In 1805, almost four years after the complete retreat of the French military forces from Egypt, Al-Jabarti’s point of view is more inclined towards the western civilization, highlighting the civilizing advantages offered to a very conservative Egyptian society. Of course, the direct contact with the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century had as a result the inevitable development of closer relationships between Egypt and Europe, mostly in the form of trade: Egypt was exporting raw materials, while Egyptian high class was interested in expensive, luxury products and weapons from the West.

Rifa’ a Rifat Badawi al-Tahtawi (1801-1873), student of the famous scholar Hassan al-Attar, was one of the first beneficiaries of a scholarship abroad, which allowed Egyptian intellectuality to access elements related to Western culture, an idea which in the past had been either idealized or seen as negative.

During the five years spent in Paris, al-Tahtawi studies philosophy and becomes a specialist in the study of French language, while upon his return in his home country to become professor at the newly founded School of Linguistics, being the initiator of a translation department, whose coordinator he becomes in 1841.

Among the most important studies we can mention mainly his journal, related to the journey in Paris, entitled Takhlis al-Ibriz ila Talkhis Bariz, the western translation being An Imam in Paris. At the same time, he is the author of a complete history of Egypt, in two volumes of numerous studies related to military techniques and the coordinator of a valuable translation after Western authors. He is considered by literary criticism as a predecessor of modern Egyptian prose, author of numerous essays, history studies and translations.

Along his studies in Paris, he had the opportunity to talk to different French orientalists, such as Silvestre de Sacy and Edme François Jomard, who had participated in the Napoleonian campaign in Egypt. Al-Tahtawi’s works present, in an amusing style, French society and public institutions, from the position of a spectator, but everything seen as unusual, highlighting especially the awkward elements, that could have become of a certain interest for the Egyptian audience. For example, he chooses to talk about the sewing system, kitchen utensils, the preference of the Europeans for the chairs, instead of sitting on the carpet, the heating system are just a few of the elements that he finds interesting and informative at the same time:

The more you go back in time, the more you see the backwardness of people in regard to human industry and the knowledges of civilization. And the farther forward in time we look, the more you can see their progress and advancement. And this progress can be measured in stages by calculating the distance from or proximity to this primitive condition—so all of humankind can be divided into several stages. [Ṭahṭāwī, 2004, p.96]

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1804-1887) is a writer, translator, journalist and traveler who lived in many countries around the Mediterranean Sea, in Egypt, Lebanon, Malta, as well as in Constantinople. He is representative for the present study because he also had the opportunity to travel to France and England, as his compatriot al-Tahtawi. During the period 1825-1834 al-Shidyaq lived in Egypt, where he got in touch with al-Tahtawi, who had recently returned from Paris. And whose impressions about the West determined him to enterprise a real initiating quest to the West, resulting in a very interesting volume published. Although he travels to Paris many years after al-Tahtawi, he recognizes the strong influence of his predecessor, and thus, his narrative is tributary to his mentor’s texts. But the breath of fresh air that he brings is related to the street life, shops, weather, men and women, children, elements related to more serious aspects, such as family life or prostitution, that would have been strictly forbidden to talk about, everything presented in a joyful and satirical style. [El-Enany, 2006. p.19]

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Filigree artisans in the Egyptian bazaar, Paris, 1867

Bibliothèque Nationale. Département deEstampes et de la Photographie

The autobiographical volume, entitled Al-Saq ala al-Saq if ma huwa al-Fariyaq (Days, Months and Years Among Foreign Arabs – in the English edition or Observations critiques sur les arabes et sur les autres peoples – in the French edition), includes a series of intimate confessions related to the strong impression that he has about the Western world. Yet critics consider his volume a parody of the Western world, based on comparisons, but what the critics did not understand was the background of the author, the impact of his travel and the huge cultural differences that determined such an approach and writing style.

An element extremely important for the present study is the author’s opinion of French women’s morals, that he presents in chapter 17 of the 4th book (Fi Wasif Baris – On the Description of Paris), which is more of a description of female morals than a description of the City of Lights. Rasheed El-Enany, an Egyptian literary scholar enumerates in his study the chapters in which al-Shidyaq talks about women, their beauty, the way they walk and talk, the luring aspect of their clothes, and about prostitution in Paris, with lots of details and considerable preoccupation. Yet, what is visible is lack of moral condemnation, on the contrary, the researcher talks about a certain joie de vivre and consent or approval, that in a way highlights cultural differences, austerity and inhibition of the Egyptian society. [El-Enany, 2006, p.20-21]

This discovery allows me to draw a line between the Eastern and Western mentality, in the sense that the Western traveler to the Orient is lured by the exotic woman that is seen as a temptation, luring her prey behind the closed doors of the oriental harem, while Western woman, that is known for practicing prostitution is just presented, in a consensual style by the Eastern traveler to the West.

What we can observe from a brief analysis of the travel literature written by oriental travel writers is an obvious articulation of the differences between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, not necessarily from the perspective of religious ideology, but more related to the degree of civilization of the overall society, the Ottoman Empire being in a free fall state and vulnerable, in comparison with the successful, colorful, and expanding France.

3.7. “Persian Letters”- mirrors of the French society

Literary critics consider Persian Letters a satire addressed to the French society, during Philippe of Orleans’ times. Montesquieu’s two Persian correspondents, Rica and Usbek, are the two sides of the writer’s character. Rica represents the humorous side and moderate sarcasm, while Usbek, the elder one, is the meditative and conscious personality of Monstesquieu. Considered an experimental novel, for the times, “ Persian Letters illustrate and fit into this overall coherence – whose design has been too often dismissed or badly misconstructed. Born and raised in a country deeply imbued with Cartesian teachings, Montesquieu was sufficiently a Frenchman and a modernist to stand opposed to oppressive prejudices of the past and to political despotism (…) sufficiently endowed with common sense To appreciate the role of history and culture, and hence to resist an abstract rationalism operating deductively from first principles”. [Dallmayr, 2009, p.253]

What is really interesting for the present study is not related to law and ethos but the letters making reference to the exotic realms, those far away territories, or at least as they were perceiver by the enthusiastic audience of the 18th century.

The stories of the two characters, Rica and Usbek, about the unusual and at the same time exotic customs, as well the narrative about unusual lifestyles, represent an extremely realistic component of the Parisian life and institutions of the times, created with the help of the distancing technique and irony.

One of the most important sources of inspiration for Montesqu9ieu in choosing the exotic theme, projected on the decadent background of the western world, is represented by the real experience of some of the most important Persian travelers in Paris, during the times of Montesquieu. Among the travelers we can mention Muhammad Riza Bayk (Persian ambassador in Paris, 1715-1716) and Mirza Salih Shirazi (graduate of the western school, who participated in the reform and modernization of the Iranian system of education).

Riza Bayk chooses to replace the oriental attire with western clothing in order to adapt faster to local customs, dressing code being the first element of alterity. It is a process of temporal distancing of the European imagination, as Mohamad Tavakoli Targhi suggests in his study. [Targhi, 2009, p.75]

The representation of the harem, Usbek’s conflicts with the two vives, Zelis and Roxana, represent a way of highlighting the malfunctions of the French system, but bringing into discussion the sometimes-irrational behavior of the Eastern civilization. He disagrees with polygamy, the existence of the harem, the seclusion of women behind tall walls, although in reality these environments were oases stuffed with amazing gardens and populated with exotic birds and plants.

The park arrangements of the Arab world are in Leaman’s opinion exactly like the Arab women, dressed in dark veils, inaccessible to people. [Leaman, 2004, p.124] Thus, we can associate the beauty of the Arab woman with that of the garden, both of them secluded, one behind the veil, the other one behind the thick walls, one dressed in long and wide clothes, covering her body down to the ankles, the other one hidden behind tall trees, with thick branches and evergreen leaves, that obscure the viewer. Intimacy is a key word in both environments.

James Dickie suggests in Leaman’s study that: “The difference in psychology between Muslim and European are accurately reflected in their respective garden traditions. The high walls of the Islamic Garden prevented its owner being seen from outside and insulated him against the glamour and dirt of the antipathetic life of the streets. There, inside his artificial paradise…he could enjoy in solitude the voluptuous pleasures produced by different perfumes, colors and shapes in endlessly varied combinations…the Islamic Garden betrays…an equilibrium of…the rational and the natural, in a felicitous compenetration where each one supplements the other”. [Leaman, 2004, p.124-125]

The Persian Garden represents the source of inspiration of the Romantic period, influencing the style of landscape architecture. In order to understand the changes that appeared in the park and garden architecture, starting from the 18th century, and more specifically to understand its exotic values, we have to start from the origins, explaining the structure, composition and usefulness of the Islamic Garden.

Darius’ paradise gardens (521-485 B.C.) played an important role in the development of the exotic landscape garden, that boosted in the West during the romantic period. Called pairidaeza, this Persian garden is surrounded by walls, had a rectangular shape, irrigation basins, and canals, being decorated with rare plants, brought from the Far East. After the year 637, when Persia becomes a Muslim country, Imperial gardens begin to be filled with Islamic symbols. In a couple of years, after the conquest of Persia, the Arabs occupy Syria, Egypt, the entire Mediterranean shore of North Africa, Turkey and Asia Minor, and this colonization obviously had a strong influence on architecture too. Yet, the Persian garden represents the main source of inspiration for any garden in the respective area.

Its symbolic division into four components represents in Christopher Thacker’s opinion, the main source of inspiration for the description of Coleridge’s Xanadu Garden in the poem Kubla Khan. The four corners of the Persian garden are decorated with flowers, perennial flowers, and bushes, all having symbolic connotations. In the Islamic religion the cypress and the platanus orientalis have a double significance, one is aesthetic, and the other one is symbolic. The cypress is the symbol of eternity, because it never loses leaves, while the platanus orientalis is the symbol of resistance of the individual in front of the difficulties of life. [Thacker, 1997, p.27-28]

There are situations when the four faces of the garden are divided once again, reaching a series of eight terraces, with fountains and pavilions. Thacker observes in the Persian literature, in the 13th century poem entitled Gulistan (Flower Land) a division into eight different compartments that gives the impression of a reconstructed Paradise. This arrangement in quadrants is still visible today in the floral compositions of the Persian carpets, that are a reinterpretation of the plant gardens.

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Persian Garden – carpet (A Shah Abbassi design rug, late 16th century, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C)

There are researchers who consider that even the Versailles gardens have on their bases the Islamic Garden model of park arrangement, because their architect André de Notre, had conceived the park not only as a perennial plant and flower arrangement, but he built it as a system of canals, fountains, and cascades, equipped with pumps and reservoirs for catching water, an extremely advanced technology for the 17th century Europe.

3.8. The Imaginary travel – induced by hallucinogenic substances

Marian Popa, in his study talks about the possibility of inserting the fiction into the voyage, which is done with the help of the verse. “The verse is a barrier against the exact description and against an indication of the impression” [Popa, 1972, p. 404]

He presents an entire series of preromantic and romantic poets, whose travel poems offer the impressions, the exact descriptions, or sometimes less exact descriptions, of places around Europe and not only. It is the case of Oliver Goldsmith’s Traveler (1764) or James Montgomery’s poem The Wanderer of Switzerland (1806), who open the gates towards a new mode of expression for the artistic feeling, that of an evasion, in an idealized space, sometimes hallucinating, full of exoticism and local color.

In 1797 Coleridge tastes for the first time from the ecstasy of opium. Nigel Leask carefully studies his case in one of his research projects dedicated to exoticism. He starts form a series of verses, dated 1795, which means two years before his hallucinogenic experiences, where the poet suggests that he leaves his home to embark on a political and religious fight, in the name of revolution:

I therefore go, and join head, heart and hand

Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight

Of Science, Freedom, and the Truth in Christ. [Coleridge, II60-2 in Leask, 1996]

Two years later, in a letter addressed to his friend John Thelwall, Coleridge makes reference to Hindu texts, identifying himself with Vishnu God, in the moments of reverie and ecstasy. Leask naturally questions the opposition between the two contradictory ways of thinking: on the one hand we are faced with Hindu mysticism, and on the other Coleridge is fighting with Christian political radicalism. Leasks wonders which of the two ways of thinking is more characteristic to Coleridge’s personality? Because on a closer look into the problems that the English romantic poet is coping with, we realize the need for evasion, in a space of musing, where sometimes drugs represent the channel of communication towards the exotic world, but which does not interfere in any way with the real world, with Christian individual conscience and verticality.

Kubla Khan (1816) is considered by literary criticism the most orientalist poem in English literature. [Leask, 1996, p.229] The poet suggests that it was composed in 1797, under the influence of a small amount of opium, which was necessary to cure him of dysentery. The drug was taken while he was reading Marco Polo’s travel notes on the Mongol Emperor Kubla Khan and his castle, Xanadu, in a work entitled Purchas his Pilgrimage. Yet, there is a huge distance from this paper and the fantastic theme imagined by Coleridge, which cannot be explained in any other way but as a necessity of the Romantic individual to create and recreate a wider, generalized space.

Nigel Leask draws the attention on a preexistent problem in the Romantic period, that of the excessive use, and sometimes in a wrong way, of some general topics, as this one, and which in many situations led to a confusion of the public opinion. Robert Southey’s poems, those of Byron or Thomas Moore are inspired by the travel journals of the scholars who traveled towards the East, catching in their poems the essence of exoticism, sometimes exaggerating proportions, and that only as a result of ecstasy and elation caused by opium or other hallucinogenic substances.

Fromentin and Gerard Nerval were hashish users, while Teophile Gautier was even a member of a club called Club de Haschichins.

In their study, Tim Fulford and Peter J. Kitson make a brief presentation of the most important late 19th century historical and social events, which marked the future evolution of the Western society: “(…) the years 1785-1830 were marked not just by the French Revolution, but by the loss the American colonies, the impeachment of Warren Hastings (the Governor of Bengal), the transportation of convicts to Australia, the campaign to abolish the slave-trade, the acquisition of new colonies in the Mediterranean and Africa, the development of Canada and the administration of older colonies in India, Africa and Ireland” (Fulford, Kitson, 1998, p.2) At the same time we are facing a constant need for the discovery of the African continent, from the Islamic north to the center of the continent, in the quest for the discovery of Timbuktu, backed up by the exploratory trips along the River Nile and Niger.

The authors of the study also highlight the increase in the economic relations with China, and conclude that the British Empire, at the end of the 19th century was the most important empire in the history of the world, at the times. Obviously, this had an important role in reshaping literature, like a subliminal message transmitted by the political power of the British Empire towards the writers of the times, who were capable of influencing masses even faster or more efficient than the politicians. It is the case of Coleridge, mentioned above, who somehow exaggerates a historical event that he read about in Marco Polo’s travel journal, creating the poem Kubla Khan, an illustration of a specific moment in the history of the world.

The relationship between the system of significance and the real and imaginary travel represented an essential preoccupation of European intellectuals along the centuries. Beginning with the Renaissance, when Thomas Morus in his Utopia talks about the imaginary travel over the ocean, towards new realms, and continuing with 17th century literature, up until the Romantic period, when the highest level of specialization is reached in what travel literature meant for the writer. During the 17th century “the interest in both imaginary voyages and imaginary languages was founded on a realistic basis: linguists were searching for traces of the originary or universal language that it was believed was shared by humankind throughout the world before Babel, while theorists and practitioners of the newly developing sciences were interested in the possibility – often worked out in experimental terms in the literature of imaginary voyages – of languages or other symbolic systems in which the relationship between sign and object was philosophically motivated”. (Scott, 2004, p.2) Thus, Romantic literature (1780-1830) bridges the gap between all that is new – geographical discoveries, new territory conquest, military force occupation and all that is old, represented by history. The metaphor, together with the hyperbolae are in the Romantic period a means of expression that relates the real with the imaginary.

According to Scott, travel literature is like a paradox, being understood as a transfer towards a different epistemological system, comprising a reevaluation of values and experiences, of the new and of the strange. “The theory of the exotic is given ultimate expression by late Romantic writers such as Segalen, after whom late twentieth-century travel writers either mourn the exotic’s passing or begin to explore, in a post-colonial context, new configurations of intercultural communication”. [Scott, 2004, p.6]

3.9. The Journal of the Oriental Travel in Arts

From an artistic perspective we can observe a wider freedom of movement for the painter, compared to the literary text producer. This is probably the result of a need to analyze and transfer on canvas more of the personal experiences, and less on the mediated ones. The East, which becomes the possible phantasy of an entire generation of artists appears now as a source of inspiration, is a whim of a series of so-called lazy loafers. We are now faced with an artistic boom, which is not really new. We have to mention artists such as Bellini, Veronese or even Rembrandt, a Dutch artistic belonging to a colonizing society, a fellow of the founders of the East and West India Society, having access to the information coming from the colonies, who played an important role in the early representations of the oriental theme in arts.

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Rembrandt Hamenszoon van Rijn, Man in Oosterse Kostuum, c.1635

The artist, focused on the research into new territories, full of exoticism os, compared to the Romantic poet, an explorer, a researcher and a discoverer of a totally different world, able to supply him with new themes, bit more than this, with the spectacular color tools, that he will transfer on canvas. Thus, European romantic painting is a travel painting, boosting at the beginning of the 19th century, which means a 50-year difference from literature, developing on the foundations of the travels to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Northern African countries (Egypt, Morocco, Algeria), Spain and Constantinople, which was considered the Gate of the East.

We cannot talk about an orientalist school, in the sense of the definition of a deep-rooted artistic trend, with a set of rules and specific features, but what is characteristic for the new artistic movement is the need to break the rules of academic style, of the restrictions and rigor imposed by historical themes. It is about the need to decode a secret, a mystery, which is extremely exciting for the Romantic artist. And as Christine Peltre is asking: can we imagine anything serious and solid happening outside London or Paris? [Peltre, 1998, p. 9] in other words, is the artist able to reproduce new themes, synthetizing a totally different lifestyle from the western one? The answer was given once artists started travelling in the distant territories of the globe.

Before 1800, exotic elements have been visible only in the influences related to the dressing code, in architecture or interior design, when for example Fragonard or Boucher start painting portraits of pachas or sultans. Among the first painters of the Bosphorus, as Auguste Boppe names the, we can mention Jean-Etienne Liotard, with his portraits of women dressed in Turkish clothes, as well as Jean-Baptiste Hilaire, Louis-François Cassas, or Antoine-Ignace Melling.

As it can be seen in Liotard’s painting entitled P ortrait d'une jeune femme en costume turc, the decorative element is the only one capable of supporting the composition. The work of art is supported by the organization of the traditional Turkish attire, worn by a European woman. Thus, the composition loses part of the traditional elements and is connected more with the artistic spheres. The fact that a woman misses the veil, be it hijab, niqab or burqa, all elements of the traditional attire of women in the Muslim world, makes us believe that the artist misses the knowledge related to the local customs and traditions, the composition being considered more of a game, where colors, expressiveness of the face and details of the suit are the only elements that matter in the context.

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Jean-Etienne Liotard, P ortrait d'une jeune femme en costume turc, 1737

In Europe, among the founding parents of the movement for the discovery of the East, we can mention Dominique-Vivant Denon, a traveler to Egypt, on 1798 Napoleonian campaign, who realizes a series of drawings and sketches which are included in the volume Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte, published in 1802. The works represent one of the most important sources of inspiration for an entire group of French artists, who are not ashamed to reveal their sources and who admit Denon’s talent, imagination and vision.

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Dominique-Vivant Denon, Scène du harem de Metubis (1803)

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Dominique-Vivant Denon, Portait d’un oriental avec turban, 1802

Denon’s sketches render with intensity and extraordinary accuracy the usual life scenes, portraits full of grandeur of the heroic characters of Egyptian history and who represent the element of novelty in the period. It is also the case of Antoine Jean Gros, who rakes over some elements of the pasha’s portrait, in the battle of Abukir, especially when we talk about the painting entitled The Battle of Abukir.

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Antoine Jean Gros, Les Pestiférés de Jaffa (1804)

Antoine-Jean Gros is inspired by Denon’s sketches when he creates the painting Les Pestiférés de Jaffa, but it is more visible in The Battle of Abukir.

The difference between the traveler painter and the stage manager painter, as in the case of Antoine-Jean Gros, is highlighted by the preoccupation for the study of details. If images reproducing the experiences of the traveler painter have a focus on event, states of mind, feelings, sensations, inner tensions of the characters that appear on canvas, the so called stage manager painters focus mainly on the décor, on the assembly of the decorative structures filled by color, where the focus is less on the front side of the work of art, but more on the background, with special focus on humanization, even of the negative characters. As Christine Peltre suggest, in this case we are faced more with a literary East, more than a realistic one. [Peltre, 1998, p.71]

In 1809 French government published a study entitled Description de l'Égypte (1809–22), where there is a detailed presentation of the newly colonized territories, offering topographic details, elements of architecture, as well as daily life details, customs, traditions and information about the society as well as Muslim religion. This work played an important role in modeling the French decorative style, being in fact a work of propaganda, which supported French imperialism in the period.

The travel to the East represented for most artists of the times a unique chance to change the artistic style, to create a new artistic pattern, influencing all future works. It is the case of Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856), Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803–1860), and William Holman Hunt (1827–1910).

Upon their return form the African travels they manage to reproduce in detail the world they had seen. They accumulate a wide number of artefacts belonging to the Arab world, but here we are not talking only of elements of the Arabic culture, but everything that is seen as exotic, mainly from the middle eastern countries, artefacts which will decorate the shops of the artists and which support the experienced world. As Lynne Thornton suggests in her study, compared to the French environments, the English space does not make use of the process of agglutination of an excessive amount of exotic artefacts, and offers in this sense an example, John Frederick Lewis who, upon his return from Egypt I 1851, bring only a couple of clothing garments, musical instruments and weapons, to be used for rendering the exotic atmosphere of the harem, compared to the number of Circassian pistols, knives, Arab guns, Damascus sword blades, silver and coral decorated weapons that could be found in Chassériau’s home. [Thornton, 1994, p. 11]

The case of Delacroix is a special one, as he was continuously preoccupied, along his entire Moroccan trip, by the depiction of male and female portraits. The trip, when accompanying The Earl of Mornay, lasts six months, during the period 1831-1832 and is marked by detailed notes and recordings in his journals and sketch books. His sketches, watercolors, travel impressions and letters addressed to the friends at home contain numerous details related to local architecture, portrait details, effects of light and shadow, as well as information regarding the local color. Nothing is too much; nothing is too little. At the same time, he observes the huge discrepancy between the experienced Est and the previous artistic representations, that he had created in his atelier in Paris. We have a series of studies on musical instruments, traditional attire, Arab faces expressivity, but very few landscapes. His entire journey is marked by the element of detail.

All these notes, allow us to record all Delacroix’s experiences, from Tanger to Meknès, from Spain to Algeria.

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Eugène Delacroix, North-African and Spanish Album, 1832, pen and colored ink, graphite and watercolor, 1832

One of Delacroix’s most remarkable discoveries, resulting directly from the African journeys, is represented by his specialization in the field of color, shadow and tone, abilities that impressionism and expressionism will transfer to the next level of encoding.

In the English space, the most representative artists of the oriental art are Sir David Wilkie, David Roberts, and John Frederick Lewis. But the East is not represented by India, Ottoman Empire or Northern Africa. The Englishmen travel first to Spain, which even Victor Hugo considers still the East, and exploit the Moorish architectural elements, that are transferred on the canvas.

In 1830, Roberts starts an almost one year journey to Egypt and the Holy Lands, where he will nurture the need for Oriental elements, rendered later on in such a way that differentiates British and French school of orientalism: “they did not view the Orient as history painters in the tradition of Gros and Girodet, which continued to hold sway until Delacroix: grandiloquence is totally absent from the work of Wilkie and Lewis, and it is rare in that of Roberts”. [Peltre, 1998, p. 102]

The relationship between cultural elements belonging to totally different geographical environments represents the decisive element, which led to the rearrangement of approach methods regarding the exotic themes in the Romantic period.

Very often we could observe a tendency towards the abstract, in the decorative elements that appear in the period in literature and arts, which led to an encoding and even a personal interpretation from the artist’s part, making possible the appearance of the impressionist movement. Thus, the East represented the background for the projection of the Romantic themes, preferences, passions, etc.

Orientalist artists were judged according to the authenticity proved by their art, so Orientalism is just an interpretation of the artist’s opinion of a culturally different space, particularly in the Ottoman Empire, which was available to them, from a geographical perspective.

Romantic art, as Antonio Garcia Berrio suggested, starts to be understood as a change of perspective, allowing a transfer of vision from the solid, tangible element, from the artistic perfection of the ancient world to a period of commotion and conflict, where the focus is mainly on feelings and emotions, on the capacity of expression and rendering of emotions filtered by the Romantic artist.

Romantic orientalism represented a multitude of forms of expression, unifying literature and arts, consciences and history, politics, economy, influencing modern civilization not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world.

And tell the believing women to lower their

gaze and guard their chastity, and not to reveal

their adornments[1] except what normally appears.[2]

Let them draw their veils over their chests,

and not reveal their ˹hidden˺ adornments[3] except

to their husbands, their fathers (…) Turn to Allah

in repentance all together,

O believers, so that you may be successful.

Quran, [24:31]

CHAPTER 4 Representation of the Arab Woman in the Arts of the Romantic Century

4.1. The Harem – the sacred space for the segregation of the exotic beauty

By definition, the Harem is a sacred space, inviolable, where access is limited or even forbidden to those that do not belong to the restricted social group that constituted it. Along the centuries the meaning of the harem was extended from that of the sultan’s residence, to an environment exclusively destined to Arab women.

In the 16th century, in the Ottoman Empire, the harem represented a sacred space. As Leslie Peirce suggested in her study, Mecca and Medina were the most venerated harems of the Islamic world. “One of the most important titles held after 1517 by the Ottoman sultan, like the sultans of the preceding dynasties before him, was the servant of the two noble sanctuaries (hadim ul-haremeyen ul-șerifeyn), a title proudly used today by the rulers of Saudi Arabia” [Peirce, 1993, p.5]

Initially the harem was the residence belonging exclusively to the sultan, but towards the end of the 16th century he organizes a second sacred harem, inside the Imperial Palace, which is destined to women and children, heirs of the royal house, which he calls the imperial harem (harem-i hűmayun), because it was only himself that had access into this secluded space.

Harem was the space of the wife or wives of the sultan, concubines, mother of the ruler, unmarried sisters, and children. Polygamy was rarely met in the Ottoman Empire, especially after the second half of the 18th century, due to the contacts with the west and modernization of the society overall.

Along the times, more specifically after the second part of the 17th century, harem receives a negative connotation, as there is an equal sign between the harem and Arab world promiscuity. Obviously, this meaning is totally wrong, and this is due to the wrongful understanding of the inequalities between sexes, of the inconsistencies influencing the relationship between the East and the West on matters such as: sexual differences, social space or political matters. In the Arab world there is a less visible distinction of the man vs. woman matters, public vs. private, and more on the sacred vs. profane, common vs. privileged.

The second part of the 19th century is the moment of the appearance of the so-called harem literature, which appeared as a result of the need to express views, to clarify problems and errors made before by the westerners, those who traveled in the exotic places of the Balkans or Maghreb. Either deliberately or because they lacked the knowledge, did not perceive local customs and traditions as normal elements in a society.

The error in the western world still, which was still persistent until the 19th century, had to do with misunderstanding the harem, as the space of segregation, where women have no access to education, culture, and civilization. The notion of private space, belonging to women, was wrongly interpreted by the European traveler, who had seen the harem as a secluded circle, where access is forbidden to outsiders.

[33:32] O wives of the Prophet, you are not like anyone among women. If you fear Allah, then do not be soft in speech [to men], lest he in whose heart is disease should covet, but speak with appropriate speech.

[33:33] And stay quietly in your houses, and make no dazzling display, like that of the former Times of Ignorance; and establish regular Prayer and give regular Charity; and obey Allah and His Messenger. And Allah only wishes to remove all abomination from you, ye members if the Family, and to make you pure and spotless.

The quotes from the Quran are extremely revealing in this sense, highlighting the status of women in the Arab world, submissive and merciful, listening the word of man and the Prophet, Allah’s representative in the mortals’ world.

In the study Art and Exoticism, Paul van der Grijp talks about the perception of the Romantic society upon the process of colonization, suggesting that the political discourse presented colonized regions as metaphorical representations of women. This is a sort of cliché, where women are dominated not only physically, but also intellectually by men, and this is one of the pillars of the western mentality of the times.

At this point we can observe the discrepancy between the real image of the Arab woman, as she appears in daily life, covered in veils and large gowns, covering her ankles, with the face covered, and the entire literary and artistic representation of the Arab girl, as she appears naked, leaning over the bathtub, in a provocative position, sending a codified message of a dominating mentality, with symbolic implications.

[33:59] O Prophet, enjoin your wives and your daughters and the believing women, to draw a part of their outer coverings around them. It is likelier that they will be recognized and not molested. Allah is Most Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) is an example of a western painter who had never travelled to the east, but felt the need to transfer on the canvas his own ideals, filled with erotic feeling, where oriental woman is the central character. For his oriental works he used as a source of inspiration 1714’s etchings published under the title Recueil de cent estampes représentant différentes nations du Levant. Another element of detail, observed by Christine Peltre is the fact that Ingres probably had read Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s letters, from the period 1716-1718, in a French translation, probably dated 1805, where the author narrates about her visit to a public bath in Constantinople.

Similar to the works of other artists, in Ingres’ art has a recurrent exotic theme, looking for the credible sources of inspiration so that the painting could describe a possible world, connected with the immediate representations of the world. On the other hand, his compositions contain an element of sensuality, which is the original print of the artist. This characteristic is in deep contrast with the real world of the Arab women, who are mainly characterized by decency and lack of any suggestion that could correlate them with sensual connotations. In general, French painting of the 18th century is filled with scenes where women are placed in moments of maximum intimacy, while bathing or during a sauna, being accompanied by their female servants.

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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres Le Bain turc (1862)

Le Bain turc is a painting that combines meditation with the oriental theme, being realized through the layering technique, where women are represented in different positions, on the sofa, hugging, around the coffee table, accompanied by musical instruments. Finished in 1862, the painting is a sublime composition, the result of many years of experimentation, which resulted in a change of frame, from a rectangular into a circular one, with the purpose of reinforcing the element of difference. The painting uses the distancing technique, specific for the 19th century painting, where the 20 feminine characters do not seem to interact with each other, as if they belong to distinctive plans of the painting, but which are finally unified in a coherent image. From a technical perspective, the composition combines oil painting technique with drawing, taking over elements of the artist’s previous compositions, as in the case of the woman with the guitar, which is based on a youth work, entitled La Baigneuse (1808), which mostly known after the name of the owner of the painting, Valpinçon.

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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres La Baigneuse dite Baigneuse de Valpinçon, 1808

This inaccessible exotic woman is just an erotic representation, which is different from the real ones. In 1717 Lady Mary Montagu is the first who speaks about the strct code of conduct for Muslim women, in a letter dated April 1, 1717, where she shares her impressions about the Turkish bath, and which specialists believe is a letter that had been read by Ingres, as one of the main sources of inspiration for the artist:

”It was full of women (...) without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with (...) majestic grace, which Milton describes our general mother with. There were many amongst them, as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess was drawn by the pencil of a Guido or Titian – and most of their skins shiningly white, only adorned by their beautiful hair divided into many tresses, hanging on, their shoulders, braided either with pearl or ribbon, perfectly representing the figures of the Graces. (...) to see so many fine women naked, in different postures, some in conversation, some working, others drinking coffee or sherbet, and many negligently lying on their cushions, while their slaves (generally pretty girls of seventeen or eighteen) were employed in braiding their hair in several pretty fancies, in short, it is the women’s coffee house, where all the news of the town is told, scandal invented, etc.” [Montagu, 1837, vol. 1, p. 231]

As it will later happen with photography, exotic painting centered on the beauty of Arab world women, behind the closed doors of the harem, represents an aesthetic point of view, a category which answers the demands of the western public, that was so eager to hear the glamorous and inciting stories stimulating the imagination of the receiver.

Paul van der Grijp talks about three categories of interpretation: a novel element, a colonial ideology and a repressed phantasy. We can thus talk about western cliches, visible in the visual representations, but which are more visible at literary level, where we discover the same pattern: the relationship of the colonizer, man, sailor, solider, with an indigenous woman, luring the young traveler. Gérard de Nerval in his Travel to Orient talks about the attire of the women in Cairo, Constantinople or Smirne, who look as if they are nuns, but who are totally enigmatic and inscrutable.

Dressed in habbara, the Arab woman is opulent if she is part of the higher strata of the society. If we are talking about a usual woman, she is always beautiful, wears golden jewelries, walking bare foot, and sometimes you can even see her arms. This is one of Nerval’s descriptions who mentions the name of Loiuis François Cassass (1756-1827), French painter and architect, who creates a series of etchings after traveling to Greece, Italy, Asia Minor and Syria, and who is a source of inspiration for the French writer.

There are four types of female character in French colonial literature: la négresse, the oriental woman, the feminine character from Indochina and the girl from the Pacific Islands. Nerval talks about four other types of women, placed in the region of Levant: Circassian, Armenian, the Jewish and the Greek. He portrays them beautifully, placing them closer to Julia Pardoe’s women discovered in Istanbul at the beginning of 1830s.

There was the Turkess with her yashmac folded closely over her face, and her dark feridjhe falling to the pavement; the Greek woman, with her large turban, and braided hair, covered loosely with a scarf of white muslin her gay-coloured dress, and large shawl; the Armenian, with her dark bright eyes flashing from under the jealous screen of her carefully-arranged veil, and her red slipper peeping out under the long wrapping cloak; the Jewess, muffled in a coarse linen cloth, and standing a little apart, as though she feared to offend by more immediate contact: and among the crowd some of the loveliest girls imaginable. [Pardoe, 1837, p.349.)

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Jean Léon Gérôme, An Almeh (1882)

For Nerval Circassian woman is extremely beautiful, with black eyes and delicate, wearing dark makeup and her hands being colored with henna. Circassian and Georgian women frequently appear in the oriental harem, due to the extremely pale color of skin, as they are considered the perfect slaves, who could even become Sultan’s wives. Very often confused with Christian women, although this is not totally untrue, because the provinces of Georgian and Circassia, from North Caucasus, became Muslim only in the 17th century. After this moment we can observe a combination between the Christian and Muslim religions, in a territory which was either under Ottoman domination or Russian Tzar’s domination.

Georgian and Abkhaz young girls were frequently sent to the Sultan’s palace as a gift from the local governors. They were bought from the slave markets, after they had been kidnapped or even sold by their poor families. Many families from North Caucasus were used to encouraging their young girls to become slaves, in the hope of ensuring a peaceful life, full of luxury, at the Sultan’s court. The slaves that were accepted in the Imperial harem were called odalisques if they were to become the Sultan’s favorites. They were educated and initiated in the secrets of erotic dance and were taught traditional musical instruments.

Armenian women rarely appear in literature and painting, mainly due to the political context, the Crimean War, when the Armenian community suffered a terrible genocide. Religiously speaking, most Armenian young women were Christian, some of them Orthodox, some others Roman-Catholic, but they would have never appeared in a harem, unless they were slaves, or prisoners. Nerval, in his Oriental travels volume describes Armenian women as less barbarian, with a slightly aquiline profile, pretty proud and serene.

Alphonse de Lamartine, in his Voyage en Orient suggests talks about the beauty of the Armenian women, who seems pale, but has a strong corporal structure and purity of the look:

”The high opinion I had formed of the beauty of the Syrian females, and my vivid recollections of the charms of the women of Rome and Athens, all vanished at sight of Armenian women and the young girls of Damascus. We everywhere saw features so exquisitely pure and delicate, that the pencil of the most expert European artist could scarcely render justice ot them: eyes in which the serene light of the soul is diffused in a somber azure tint, and with a softness of expression which I never saw in any eyes before, - there is an exquisite delicacy in their features, which the lightest pencil touch could not imitate, - complexions so transparent, that they vie with the most exquisite tints of the rose-leaf; the teeth, the smile, the grace of form and motion, the clear and silvery voice, all is harmony in these beautiful creatures. They converse with elegance and modest reserve; but without embarrassment, and as if accustomed to the admiration which they inspire. They seem to preserve their beauty to an advanced age. This may be attributed to the climate, and the peaceful lives they lead in the bosom of their families which I visited”. [Lamartine, 1839, pp. 303-304]

Extremely suggestive for Lamartine’s description is Charles Landele’s work, Femme armenienne, 1886. He was a French academist, specialized in oriental subjects, where the beauty of the character’s face is highlighted by a special, traditional attire, with main focus on the details of adornment worn by the character. The painting applies the chiaroscuro technique, specific for the Flemish Renaissance painters, the profile of the young woman standing out against the dark background. Her bright face, although severe, her majestic vertical posture completed with the sensitivity offered by the grace of her hands. Her characteristics are specific for the women of the North Caucasus, with thick eyebrows, straight nose and sensual lips. The attire is completed by the transparent veil allowing the viewer to grasp the red turban, in perfect tune with the complex attire.

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Charles Zacharie Landelle, Femme arménienne (1866)

At the beginning of the 19th century, with the territorial expansion, French and English literature started filling in with literary texts centered on the image of the woman, and for the first time in history of literature, the status of the Arab woman is taken into consideration. As Joan del Plato suggests, visual and literary texts have functioned as preservers of an exotic institution that the Harem represented during the previous centuries.

The society starts building and nurturing certain frameworks where the harem is perceived as a space of segregation and victimization of the Arab woman, and the theory is supported by ethnographic studies highlighting the fact that the harem belongs to an underdeveloped society, both from a cultural and religious point of view.

What the wester traveler did not understand about the harem was its role as a domestic environment, hidden behind the thick walls, inviolable and discrete. At the moment of the French occupation in Algeria, there were fewer traditional harems where polygamy was still practiced. Thus, the West felt the need to render an unusual environment, that travelers did not have access to. It is the case of Delacroix, who manages to enter a harem in Alger, but the painting Femmes d'Alger dans leur Appartement (1834) does not manage to accurately render the image of the field research. We shoud not forget that in the Japanese culture, the tradition of the onsen, the culture of bathing is still tributary to the custom of separate bathing spaces for women and men, and the bathing process still implies naked access into the bathing spaces. Probably western travelers were not prepared for the entire serenity discovered at those times in these sacred spaces.

Because oriental woman is not as lascivious as she appears in French painting. She is not vulgar in any way, but probably she is not so cultivated enough for the European standards. Still, Arab women had access to information, as it happened in the Ottoman Empire, where women had power of political decision, being capable of influencing the high level devisions of the Sultan. This period of the Imperial harem is known as Women’s Domination (Kadinlar Sultanati). The engagement of queen mother in politics, at high level, had the effect of a reduction of the Sultan’s power, which resulted in the final fall of the Ottoman Empire.

On the other hand, the way in which Western society starts talking about the problem of the Arab woman is part of a politics of criticizing, doubled by a refined irony, on the lifestyle standards of the Arab world in general, on the religious canons, highlighting the expansionist powers of the West.

Once entered on the North African territories, the French start a camping promoting wester lifestyles, including Christian wedding. In this way, in my opinion, the Arab world, with all its traditions full of seclusion, are brutally violated, being bombarded with a type of unnecessary and unwanted information.

The Harem is similar to an intercultural aberration in Joan del Plato’s opinion, but it highlights the superiority of the European bourgeois. This perspective is influenced by demographic elements, such as age, sex, social class, religion, education, but is also a direct result of the travel experiences of the receiver.

Among all stories about Arab women’s lifestyle, those of Lady Mary Montagu are probably the most credible, because she is the only one to have had access to the women’s harem in Constantinople, before 1800. The accuracy of the stories and the interest that she has are reflected in the number of texts related on this topic. Mohammed Sharafuddin believes that Mary Montagu’s stories are a combination of vague exotic elements, sometimes naïve and hedonistic, aimed at shocking the conventional society, but filled with a realism that none of the later narrators have had. [Sharafuddin, 1996, p.219]

Lady Mary Montagu is the first to have introduced in the English culture the Turkish attire. Researchers enumerated a series of women belonging to the British high class, who, following Mary Montagu’s tradition, started appearing in public in exotic costumes. It is the case of Philippa Elizabeth Dorothea Rooper, Lady Sunderlin, whose portrait was created by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Besides this example, in the period appeared a series of portraits of women dressed in traditional Turkish attire, as the case of Jane Lady Cotrell, whose portrait was also made by Sir Joshua Reynolds, or the portrait of the American wife of General Thomas Gage, a portrait that was made by John Singleton Copley.

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Sir Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Lady Sunderlin wearing a “Turkish” costume (1786)

Even though after 1770 the fashion for Turkish awkward elements starts diminishing, the East still represents a source of the design elements, of the displacement of European characters in an exotic environment, like people dressed in caftans, with turbans, wearing cashmere shawls, woolen mantles, etc. in the case of Lady Sunderlin, the depth of the landscape surpasses the plain characteristics of the canvas, and this is due mainly to the gaze of the observer. As Rudolf Arnheim suggests: ”Since the vector of the gaze meets the plane of the painting perpendicularly, it strives to continue in the same direction to traverse the dimension of depth. The gaze confers upon the pictorial position an additional axis, which reinforces any vector directed towards depth provided by the composition itself, for instance, by central perspective. This means that just by looking at the painting, the viewer endows the structure of the work with a greater depth than it inherently possesses”. [Arnheim, 1995, p.73]

Lady Sunderlin suggests the feeling of nature, a melancholy related not only by the landscape, but also by the face, characterized by a vague pathos. We can speak about an injection of the concept of sublime in the painting, in a way foreshadowing the Romantic taste for nature and restlessness.

This mature painting proves a refined knowledge of the feminine sensitivity. The painter carefully studies the character’s states of consciousness, that is continuously tormented by the feeling of love. The lady’s chest trembles with pain, the veil struggles together with the body in the autumn breezes. The tones of ocher and pearl of the dress are in tune with the decomposing nature and warm sunset of the beginning of fall. Besides the symbolism of color, an important part is played by other elements, like the tree, as a symbol of cosmic life. With its meanings, such as consistency, evolution perceived as a regenerating progress, the tree turns into a symbol of perennialism, of eternal life. We are thus faced with a balanced image of the space, proportionally harmonized, in which emptiness counterbalances fullness. [David, 2005, p.198]

We are also faced with an abundance of chiaroscuro, insecure tones, strong contrasts between light and darkness, all elements highlighting individual’s sensitivity, that gives the sensation of restlessness. This is a painting from the Bath period, when fluidity was one of the main characteristics, supported by the curved and broken lines. In Reynold’s painting, feminine beauty benefits from a boost of spiritualization and refined finesse, the result being an autumnal feeling of harmony, sublime and feast for the eye of the viewer. [Friedlander, 1983, p.231]

The women of the times were surreal goddesses of nature, because they were always placed in the middle of nature, covered in a veil of mystery, or hidden in the dimness of a room, behind a doric column, in a state of reverie. This atmosphere is created with the help of a subterfuge, nature background, able to communicate emotions, highlight features and offer mystery to the characters. With the help of the wit, the painting becomes a psychological adventure, the interpreter of the visual text having the ability to enhance nature with feelings and share part of his or her feelings with the nature.

Painting in general has the capacity to transfer objects related to the spirit, and the eye is the instrument helping us capture the message issued by the painting. Any work of art, be it musical or visual, implies a connection with the author, and colors and sounds represent the language of nuances. Oil painting has the capacity to bring light even in the darkest corners of the painting. This unique technique is the oil, which can be found between the particles of color, offering depth, by contrast with watercolors, or even ink, which seem washed out, even dead. Colors are in tune with our states, and the significance of color is universal, being related to the personality of the artist and his/ her state of mind at the moment of the artistic process.

As René Berger suggests, we need to separate ourselves from ethnocentrism, and try to understand culture outside hierarchies, in order to be able to find coherence, because “acculturation refers to the set of phenomena resulting from direct and continuous contact between groups of individuals and different cultures, with the subsequent changes in the cultural patterns of one or more of the groups”. The definition captures the dynamic and ongoing process that occurs when different cultural groups interact, leading to changes in cultural identities. We are thus faced with a sort of contamination, or blending, that allowed a deeper understanding of the norms and values, of the customs and traditions, during the Romantic period. Translated this way, the harem can be understood as a fantasy, involving field research and transposition on the canvas. The second perspective involves an understanding of Western culture through the lens of the Eastern world. It is the time of the artificial portraits, where Western characters get dressed in Oriental attire and mimic the traditions, rituals and gestures of a narrow mentality around the Mediterranean.

Both literary and artistic representation highlights the differences between the Eastern and Western woman. Nerval, but also Lamartine, consider Eastern women as savage, even unable to compete with Western women for a position in society, at a time when the rights and responsibilities of women start flourishing in other parts of the world. When Nerval purchased a slave, that he brings to his home country, he very fairly asks himself: “How can she become my equal?”. In other words, the writer is almost unable to put an equal sign between his Oriental slave and a possible wife.

Oriental women play musical instruments, the smoke pipe, are scantily clad, lazy on sofas and soft pillows, while Western women spend time reading, in front of a cup of tea, in a position of dignity, or walking freely, sometimes by themselves, without a male companion, which gives them a sense of independence.

4.2. The Veil and the Mask – sources of the desire for knowledge

The study of Oriental femininity starts not only from the multidisciplinary perspective, which was opened by Said, but takes into consideration different metaphors, such as race and culture, that Madeleine Dobie analyses in her study Foreign Bodies: gender, language and culture in French Orientalism. The parallel between literary texts and works of art, belonging approximately to the same artistic period highlight the common point of view of the Western world with regard to the Muslim culture, as it is sometimes generally perceived; sexual differences and gender relations were among the most common sources of amazement for the Western man of the times. But as researchers have continuously proved along the fifty years, and I strongly support, oriental elements are seen only through the window of everyday life, as the excessively analyzed image of harem women has only one plausible explanation: the need to understand multiculturality, at the crossroads between “domestic and global, metropolitan and colonial”. [Dobbie, 2002, p.xiii]

Because of the colonial power, and as a result of the territorial dominance over certain exotic realms, Western world has the ability to extract sets of role models, of prototypes, that become a standard of analysis. Here is an extract from Nerval’s “Journey to the Orient”, where he offers a fair opinion on these Oriental women, placed at the contact zone between the East and the West:

“ There is something very seductive about a woman from distant and strange lands, who speaks in an unknown language, whose clothing and customs strike by their sheer oddity, and who finally lacks any of those small vulgarities that familiarity reveals in the women of our country. I felt for a while this fascination with local color, listened to her chatter, watched her flaunt her richly adorned clothing: she was like a magical bird in a cage; but could this impression endure?” [Nerval, 1977, p.189]

Beginning with the 19th century, la femme Orientale becomes a verbal stereotype, a metaphor of the East, and of the process of modernization of the East, a character surrounded by mystery, but also a promise for a deciphering of the mystery. That is why the literature of those times embarked in a daring process of changing mentalities, promoting a modern, Western lifestyle, which started with the most sophisticated process of unveiling feminine beauty.

The veil, also known in the Arab world as hijāb, represents an accessory, like a curtain in a theatre play, an element of separation, as it is perceived in the Islamic world with this final meaning. Along the history of civilizations, women around the world have always worn veils. It is the case of antiquity, in countries like Persia, Mesopotamia, Greece or the Holly Land, but also in the pre-Islamic countries. By carefully studying Jāhilī poetry (pre-Islamic Arab poetry), the researcher Yedida Kalfon Stillman discovers a series of concepts that have a similar meaning with that of the veil: sitr, siif, naşīf, all as exclusive garments of the noble women.

An interpretation of the use of the veil refers to the man’s desire to control feminine body that belongs to him, a component of the moral and social ethics governing social life of men and women. [Heath, 2008, p.29]

Yet, the Quran speaks about modesty, both for men and women, the veil being a symbol of morality. Although the exact time in history when the veil became a religious norm is not specified, probably after the year 1200, and especially in the big cities of the califate, hijāb is replaced with another type of veil, called niqāb, which completely covers the face, with a simple cut in the eyes area, and which is the result of the appearance of the fundamentalist thinking in the Islamic world.

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Jean-Léon Gérôme, Femme circassienne voilée (1876)

In Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting we can observe the portrait of a young woman whose face is completely covered in a dark transparent veil, a special veil made of a thin fabric, dressed in a shiny silk caftan, which is a clue that she belongs to the high class. She is holding her hand against an oriental motif decorated surface, while her fingers are in a delicate position, but slightly artificial, coming as an elongation of the chibouk. The face oval is perfect, surrounded by the curly dark hair, with thick eyebrows, straight nose and sensual mouth.

The metaphor of the veil represents the essence of pure femininity, anywhere around the world, where this piece of garment is worn, be it a regular veil, a wedding veil, ceremonial veil, hijāb or niqāb.

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Jean-Étienne Liotard, Dame franque de Galata et son esclave (c.1740-42)

Modern ethnographic research has revealed three important functions of the Oriental attire:

- Decorative function;
- Protective function;
- Hiding or masking function.

In her study Veil – Modesty, Privacy and Resistance, Fadwa El Guindi speaks about the decorative function, which is absolutely obvious for clothing items, anywhere on the globe. She supports her point of view on the theories of the psychologist and anthropologist Granville Stanley Hall, who considers ornamentation a simple hypothesis of the surrounding world. Thus, we can justify the elaboration of the traditional attire and the need to attach or detach precious metals decorative items, as adjuvant elements of the feminine beauty.

The protective function refers to the need for covering the body, with the help of the pieces of clothing that are appropriate for a specific geographical area and for the regional climate. Thus, ethnographic specialists suggested the use of the turban, as well as the natural fiber pieces of clothing, in pale colors. This function connects the attire with nature and creates the perfect balance between man and the surrounding world.

The third function, which for the present study is the most important, is the hiding or masking function, which starts from the idea that there is a level of involution of a society, from a state of barbarianism, resulting from the transformation of woman into a property of the man. And this way clothing has a sort of protective function, keeping the woman away from the physical and moral attack. [Crowley, 1969, p.41]

On the other hand, there is a sense of mystery of the Arab garment, which is in tune with the ludic feature of hiding, that the wester mask has, especially when we talk about the carnival mask. It seems as if the Arab woman interprets a role. Sometimes she is hiding behind the veil so that she cannot be recognized and smiles when the interlocutor cannot guess her identity. Some other times the Arab woman is secluded behind the veil in order to hide her identity, as the case of Byron’s feminine character Cynthia, the harem fugitive.

Another important characteristic of the veil is the fact that it can be easily maneuvered, in such a way that it can quickly mask the identity of the wearer. Thus, feminine beaty becomes more attractive for the romantic man.

To Conrad turns her faint imploring eye,

She drops her veil, and stands in silence by;

Her arms are meekly folded on that breast,

Which – Conrad safe – to fate resign’d the rest.

Though worse than phrenzy could that bosom fill,

Extreme in love or hate – in good or ill,

The worst of crimes had left her woman still! [Lord Byron, The Corsair, 1814, p.41]

Wester traveler perceives the veil as a component of tge segregation mechanism, but in reality, it is just an element of the fighting arsenal against any tendencies of the Western colonizing tendencies.

Romantic literature offers a new value for the veil, which this time is not worn by a woman, but by a man. It is the case of the poem Lalla Rookh, published in 1817 by Thomas Moore, and inspired by the oriental tales of Lord Byron. The romantic story is made up of four parts in poetry, Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Paradise and the Peri, The Fire-Worshipers and The Light of the Harem, unified through a prose fragment. It is probably for the first time in literature that the metaphor of the veiled prophet appears. [Sharafuddin, 1996, p.138]

In The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan Thomas Moore speaks about Hakim Ibn Hisham, also known in the Islamic world as Al Mokanna of Khorassan (mokanno in Persian meaning veil). In this particular case, the veil has a hiding function, that of masking human ugliness, Al Mokanna being bald, with only one eye, an ugliness that is hidden from the eyes of the people that worship him. As the face is hyperbolized, in order tot turn the human being into a prophet. In this case the veil is an element of power:

The Great MOKANNA. O’er his features hung

The Veil, the Silver Veil, which he had flung

In mercy there, to hide from mortal sight

His dazzling brow, till man could bear its light. [Moore, 1817, p.9]

Thus, the veil is a reflection of the mask, with the sole function of hiding the face of the wearer, the use being deliberate and not a norm in society. On the other hand, the veil has the function of supreme protection, allowing the person that wears it to reach a closer position in the relationship with the divinity, by putting an equal sign between “political despotism and religious fanatism”. [Sharafuddin, 1996, p.141]

Upon his couch the Veil’d Mokanna lay,

While lamps around – not such as lend their ray,

Glimmering and cold, to those who nightly pray

In holy Koom, or Mecca’s dim arcades, -

But brilliant, soft, such lights as lovely waids

Look loveliest in shed their luxurious glow

Upon his mystic Veil’s white glittering flow. [Moore, 1817, p.30]

Another interesting detail is the use of the word veil with capital letter, an unusual technique of investing the veil with mystical power, able to transport Al Mokanna closer to the divinity.

The veil and the mask, the two components of the masking process, have been analyzed from different perspectives. If we study the way in which the individual externalizes feelings, especially love, we reach the conclusion that men used to hide their feelings behind a mask, while women chose to isolate themselves behind the veil.

Another interesting point of view starts from the premises of a certain type of audience able to highlight the importance of the mask. Usually masks have a ludic function, highlighted by its extensive use during shows and carnivals. While the veils allow the users to lose themselves among the crowds and is enriched with the value of a protective shield, allowing the appearance of an imaginary barrier.

The veil is always associated with women, being seen as a translucent structure, made of natural fibers, such as silk or cotton, while the mask is exclusively a male tool (even when it shows the image of a woman, or is excessively decorated). The mask is considered sacred, as very often they were collected as works of art, but the mask and the veil are not necessarily restricted to covering the face, as they can become a protection for the entire body . [Heath, 2008, p.103]

Jennifer Heath argues the function of the mask, as a form on masculine veiling, and supports her theory starting from the premises that veiling has most often been connected with the Arab world of women, while in the case of men, the mask is a universal symbol of social status, or even major hierarchical position in the society. The crown is seen as a protective mask, making a clear delimitation between the leader and the subjects.

Some other times the mask has an offensive function, being worn by men in important battles, with a symbolic significance, protecting them against malefic spirits and opponents, and thus it becomes a weapon.

But there are other times in the history of the world, when the veiling was a ritual specific both for men and women and had the value of protecting the body against sandstorms. An example of men wearing veils is the Tuareg, member of the nomadic Berber tribes, from Central and Eastern Sahara.

The male members of this tribe used to wear a blue turban made of natural fabrics, called tagelmust, covering almost entirely the face. The tagelmust is a symbol of masculinity, that young members of the tribe used to receive, together with a double-edged sword, at the age of sixteen. It is about an initiatory ritual to which the Tuareg man is subjected. What is more interesting is the fact that after marriage, the Tuareg man had to wear the veil permanently, even while sleeping, being invested with a spiritual function, of removing evil forces. Besides all these aspects, there is a communicative function of the veil in the Berber community: the veil is worn on top of the head and covers the face entirely when the Tuareg is surrounded by male companions, while it is loosely worn when the man is surrounded by strangers.

Because Tuareg society is matrilinear, the woman is more independent and is not forced to wear the veil. It only has a protective purpose, during the sandstorms, or as a sign of modesty and respect towards other people.

Wedding veils on the other hand belong to a special category of accessories, with a more symbolic value and a history that dates back in time, since the Roman Empire. Roman women used to wear a painted veil, or a veil embroidered with golden thread, called flammeum, during the wedding ceremony, with the purpose of removing evil spirits around the bride. In time it became a symbol of chastity, and the unveiling at the end of the wedding ceremony had the significance of sense of belonging. We should not forget that even today, in different parts of the world, the man is not allowed to see his bride until the wedding.

In Judaism, the tradition of the veil dates back from the bible times, when it is mentioned for the first time at the moment of the meeting between Rebeca and her fiancé, Isaac. As she gets closer to him, she starts covering her face with a handkerchief, in this context face covering with a veil being a symbol of modesty and intimate space of the individuals. Even today, during the wedding ceremony, there still is the badeken ritual, when the groom covers the face of the bride with a veil that she used to wear during the wedding ceremony. The veil symbolizes the fact that the groom is less interested in exterior beauty of his future bride, and more in the interior one, that she will never lose.

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Fabio Fabbi, Matrimonio al Cairo

4.3. Rituals of the Harem Life

4.3.1. The Hookah and Coffee Rituals

The coffee and the hookah are two constant elements in the Western representations of the harem. They are perceived as basic elements of a well determined human community. The hookah or the pipe, called chibouk, seldom appear in the harem scenes. The chibouk represents the type of long, rigid pipe, with a small pot at one ending, while the hookah is elaborately built and having a history of hundreds of years in the Arab world.

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Jean-Baptiste Van Mour (1671-1737) Turkish Woman Smoking (1714)

Van Mour’s etching represents an interior scene, with a Turkish woman sitting in a relaxed position, smoking chibouk. She is reclined on the golden green silk pillows, while the chibouk is leaning on the wooden table, carved with Arabic motifs, with the arches specific to the Islamic mosques. She is a woman from the high class, and this element is highlighted firstly by the color of her skin, and richness of attire. From a chromatic perspective the decorative elements on the walls are balanced with the wooden carved table.

The hookah represents one of the elements specific for the Arab world, used both by men and women. Originally from India, it was adopted by the Persians and later on by the rest of the Arab world. In the Ottoman Empire the hookah, together with the coffee ritual, reaches a maximum level of po;luarity during the reign of sultan Murat IV (1624-1640).

Joan del Plato creates an interesting analysis on the two traditional items, that she invests with a special function: men are associated with the chibouck, while women with the hookah. The chibouk is in her opinion a symbol of masculinity, and she offers as a support of her argument a visual representation, the painting by Richard Parkes Bonington, A Seated Turk, where the pipe is in the character’s lap, a man in a state of reverie, probably induced by the inhalation of certain hallucinogenic substances.

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Richard Parkes Bonington , A Seated Turk (1826)

In the particular case of Ingre’s Great Odalisque, the chibouk is smoked by a woman, which suggests maybe the absence of a male companion, or a better possibility, that Ingres hadn’t known that the chibouk was smoked only by men and not women.

The painting is based on the chromatic component, the combination of Sienna ochre and indigo blue, a combination of complimentary colors. The exotic atmosphere is accomplished not only from the perspective of the portrait, but mostly from the perspective of the décor: a feather fan, an oriental motifs curtain and of course, the chibouk. The entire masterpiece offers a general feeling of softness, materiality and velvet like feeling. The semi profile of the naked woman, her hair carefully arranged, under a sort of improvised turban, using again, as in the case of many other artists, the technique of the contre jour.

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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres - Grande Odalisque (1814), oil on canvas

It is interesting that the representations of the hookah, also known as nargileh, are made in the proximity of women, and not around men, while the reverse process appears in the above-mentioned painting.

If we carefully study the harem representations where the hookah or the chibouk appear, we can conclude that the hookah represents a symbolic motif, characterized by multifunctionality. On one hand we are talking about the opposition between power and sensitivity, male power versus female sensitivity. On the other hand, we can talk about the exoticism of this object, specific for the Arab world, and last but not least, we can talk about the fetish function, which the hookah is invested with, as a symbol of the dominating masculinity in the Arab world.

Here is what Julia Pardoe wrote about the hookah:

The narghilé, or water-pipe, which is seldom used until after the mid-day meal, and which greatly resembles the hookah of Hindostan, is always filled with Shiraz tobacco, sprinkled with rose-water, and frequently rendered still more odoriferous by having a scented pastille placed on its summit, while the water through which the vapor passes is impregnated with the perfume of some flower or spice. [Pardoe, 1837, p.35]

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Jean Léon Gérôme - L 'allumeuse de narghilé (1898)

The coffee ritual, together with that of smoking, represents the second essential component of the exotic lifestyle. In the Arab world, coffee represents a symbol of hospitality, which has been kept and exacerbated in some parts of the world, until today, and continues to be transmitted from generation to generation. For them the coffee ritual is not very different from the tea ceremony in the Japanese culture. The term coffee is derived from Arabic language, kahwek in Turkish , or qahwa in Arabic, had the basic meaning of the wine of the coffee beans, or intoxicating liquor.

Another possibility is related to the name of the Kaffa kingdom, in Ethiopia, where coffee plant is supposed to be originating. Another credible option is related to the ritual of the coffee in Yemen, and then is transferred to the neighboring countries in Northen Africa, in Egypt, then Persia and the Ottoman Empire. From the Muslim countries coffee is borrowed to Italy, which is the entrance gate into the European culture. Later on, coffee is transported by the Dutch to Latin American countries, where it started being successfully grown. The first coffee shop is open in Venice in 1645, when part of the Muslim tradition of the coffee ritual is brought on the continent.

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Eugen Giraud , Intérieur de harem égyptien (1874)

Giraud’s interior harem presents us two women in relaxed positions, reclined on some lower sofas, also known as divans, covered in traditional, colorful carpets. But the most important element is the interior décor, created by the background panel, with half-open wooden windows, that allow a few shades of light into the interior space, creating a warm, almost suffocating atmosphere, that completes the state of euphoria of the character on the right. The corner table is the focal point of the painting, with the coffee pot and the two cups without spouts, specific for the Levantine region. The atmosphere is fulfilled with the help of the other two elements, the chibouk and the tambourine.

Here is how Lady Mary Montagu described the atmosphere of the Istanbul harem, where coffee ritual was almost indispensable from the daily life routine:

(...) to see so many fine women naked, in different postures, some in conversation, some working, others drinking coffee or sherbet, and many negligently lying on their cushions, while their slaves (generally pretty girls of seventeen or eighteen) were employed in braiding their hair in several pretty fancies. In short, it is the women’s coffee-house, where all the news of the town is told, scandal invented. [Motagu, 1837, p.356-357]

Coffee is in the Muslim world extremely important, being considered a holly potion, Apollo’s potion, being used by the dervish monks in order to cope with the prolonged religious rituals. Even today coffee is associated, in different Muslim countries, with religious rituals, magic or even fertility rituals.

An interesting element brought into the public attention by Joan del Plato is the element of hierarchy in the coffee ritual, which is highlighted by romantic painting. Most of the times, the harem representations depicted the coffee ritual, with the slave standing in front of her master and the guests, serving coffee.

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Amadeo Preziosi, Ritratto di una dona ricca turca (1858)

Preziosi’s painting is interesting because of the three clichés of the harem life: the hookah, coffee and the lute, the traditional oriental musical instrument, but Del Plato offers another suggestive example, John Frederick Lewis’ Life in the Harem, Cairo (1858), a painting where the coffee is served by a European female servant, which turns upside down all societal hierarchies, at the same time with a change in the conventions and mentalities of the European man towards the Arab world. The structure of the painting is vertical, the main central character and the two secondary characters building a right-angle triangle. The point of interest is at the crossroads between the vertical and horizontal lines of the painting, but the main focus is on the details of clothing, rich oriental interior decoration, shiny décor, etc.

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John Frederick Lewis – Life in the Harem, Cairo, 1858

John Frederick Lewis is a special case in the history of culture because he recreated his own harem, in his workshop in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. He equips the new décor with elements that he purchased during his journey to Cairo male and female traditional attire, decorative objects, also adding the sketches created along the entire journey, field trip photos, etc. Thus, the element of authenticity is in perfect tune with the imaginary element, that will lead to some of the most beautiful oriental paintings in the entire English art.

He is also a special case because along the 10 prolific years, from 1841 to 1851 he gets in touch woth daily life of the city of Cairo. He lived in Esbekieh quarter, in a Mamluk house, whose interiors continuously appear in his paintings and sketches. An interesting detail is the fact that Nerval, in his Voyage en Orient, mentions the fact that he lived in the same Esbekieh market, which is the same as the one where Lewis had lived during his stay in Cairo.

He reproduces the exotic world only upon his return home, where he creates his masterpieces, oil on canvas, which are reproductions of the watercolors and sketches that he created during the time spent in Egypt. Christine Peltre remarks a combination of Vermeer’s compositional schemes and faces that remind her of Velásquez. [Peltre, 1998, p.133]

His harem life representations are very realistic, extremely luminous, and the element of difference is represented by the large number of details, which somehow distinguish his works from Delacroix’s Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, or Ingres’ Grande Odalisque, where eroticism is the main characteristic of the painting. If the French representation of the exotic worlds is purely carnal, in the case of John Frederick Lewis we can talk about an ethnographic approach, focused on the decorative elements, costume, hairstyle, hair décor and interior design (sofas, pillows, carpets, etched protective screens, dark windows, coffee tables, slaves and servants, etc.).

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Eugène Delacroix, Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, 1834

The different approach between France and England is the result of the competition that existed between the artistic schools, although both of them had common sources of inspiration: travelers, merchants, both European and Arab, politicians and big tradesmen.

In the case of Eugène Delacroix’s painting, we are faced with a superposition of various layers, where the four female characters are placed. Sensuality is the main characteristic of the work of art, where we can distinguish a set of exotic elements: the décor with painted tiles on the walls, the Quran inscription next to the slave, the mere presence of the female slave standing behind the ladies, the hookah and numerous decorative elements, such as jewelry and pieces of clothing. The viewer is intoxicated by the thick layers of color, which is an element of Delacroix’s technique, with focus on detail, richness of color, elements of décor and wide variety of objects and details.

4.3.2. Musical Instruments of the Harem

The third component of the Arab harem is represented by the presence of a musical instrument in the immediate vicinity of the woman. Music played a very important role in shaping a full image of the Arab harem. Whether we talk about a traditional musical instrument, which appears solitary in the paintings of the romantic era, or we see depicted on canvas a young woman playing such an instrument, the role of the object is to draw attention to a special exoticism, loaded with erotic connotations. Oriental musical instruments also began to appear in the literature of the romantic era, so Thomas Moore, in Lalla Rookh, mentions the lute several times, imbuing it with sentimental connotations. It is about a non-verbal message of love, which different musical instruments are capable of transmitting to the couple in love:

The Georgian’s song was scarcely mute,

When the same measure, sound of sound,

Was caught up by another lute,

And so divinely breathed around,

That all stood hush’d into the air,

As if they thought to see the wing

Of Israfil, the angel there; -

So pow’rfully on ev’ry soul

That new, enchanted measure stole.

While now a voice, sweet as the note

Of the charm’d lute, was heard to float

Along its chords, and so entwine

Its sounds with theirs, that none knew whether

The voice or lute was most divine,

So wondrously they went together. [Moore, Lalla Rokkh, 1864, p.221]

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1714 after Jean-Baptiste Van Mour (1671-1737) Turkish Woman Playing Lute

The lute, which in the past was one of the most popular musical instruments, is used today only in the Middle East. Its name derives from the Spanish word 'laúd,' which in turn has its origins in the Arabic 'al-‘ud' – branch. Initially, the pear-shaped lute had four strings, but the Andalusian singer Ziryab added two more strings in the 10th century to improve his musical performances.

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Jean-Baptiste Van Mour (1671-1737) Turkish Woman Playing Zither (1714)

In Van Mour’s engraving, a young woman is depicted playing a musical piece on a traditional Arab instrument, quite rare, known in the Western world as a descendant of the harp. Originally, it was called the 'qanun,' which translates to ”law” and it reached Europe starting in the 12th century under the name “zither”. It has a trapezoidal shape, equipped with 81 strings of different sizes, and is held on the knees or on a special table. The instrument is also known in Romanian culture under the name 'ţiteră,' which entered our language through the German channel.

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J. Etienne Liotard - L a f emme turque avec un tambourin (1738-43)

The tambourine is the third traditional musical instrument, which appears depicted in the paintings of the era, in the proximity of the oriental woman. Known as 'riqq' or 'daff,' the sound of the tambourine forms the basis of Arab music, especially classical Arab music, consisting of a wooden circle, on which calfskin is stretched, and having small metal discs attached to the wooden frame, which produce the specific sounds.

What strikes in all representations of the Arab woman, both in literature and especially in painting, is the element of naturalness. This is probably the most important feature of the Arab woman, which the arts have strived to highlight over the centuries, even bringing it to a level of encryption and abstraction. Although not much was known about the Arab woman, primarily due to religious prohibitions that did not allow Westerners to enter the intimacy of this sacred space, the arts tried to answer an essential question: how much of what happens in reality behind the closed doors of the harem is real, and how much is imaginary?

Joan del Plato stated that “space is more than a neutral container used for collecting individualized objects and figures”. We can conclude that the Arab woman is more than a model to be analyzed; she is the essence of a linguistic, historical, and geographical analysis, in which the artist has invested soul and energy. Although full of eroticism, the Arab woman has a distinct individuality, being the exponent of the colonial space, where local customs and traditions are preserved, and the ultimate desire of the Westerner is to decipher the unknown, including the personality of the mysterious woman, enclosed in dark chambers, who smokes from a hookah, plays unusual musical instruments, and demonstrates more naturalness than the Western woman.

4.3.3. The Slave Markets

The issue of slavery in the Middle East was never disputed, as it happened with the global controversy over the slavery in North America. In the Mediterranean area, slavery is not perceived through the lens of victimization of the individual subjected to an oppressive regime, but rather the emphasis is on the gain that the slave obtains. It should be noted that the issue has some justification if we refer to young female slaves, for whom slavery, as mentioned earlier, represented a form of liberation from poverty and a hope for gaining material wealth, social status, and perhaps even eventual liberation from slavery. It has often been said that Arab women were capable of enduring countless humiliations, including being traded publicly and sold in slave markets, in order to dream of a peaceful and quiet life within the walls of an imperial harem.

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John Frederick Lewis Harem, 1876

Very often, young women from the poor areas of the Ottoman Empire resorted to this stratagem to secure their future. On the other hand, if we think about the status of Western women during the Romantic era, there were many situations in which they were subjected to a process of transaction between their family and a potential suitor. And it was not uncommon for the one who offered more, or the one who accepted a smaller dowry, to win the young woman's hand. However, the literature of the Romantic era exaggerates these situations, which were quite rare after 1830, when young women of Arab origin were kidnapped or forced to join a harem without their masters providing financial compensation to the family or even ensuring the young girl a decent living.

From a historical perspective, there are several important moments in the history of the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Egypt concerning the abolition of slavery. Starting on May 1, 1806, with the passage of the law on international slave trade through the British Parliament, slavery was abolished throughout the Empire. Prior to the documents signed by the English in 1806, Europe, through the voices of Montesquieu and Locke, raised the issue of individual freedom, advocating, even if only theoretically, for the eradication of slavery.

However, the Quran encouraged inequality between master and slaves, as well as concubinage. There were two situations in which an individual of lower rank could become a slave: either they were born with this status, from slave parents, or they became a war captive, as was the case with most Greeks, who only managed to free themselves from slavery after the Greek War of Independence. Although the British Parliament ratified the document abolishing slavery in the Balkans in 1806, the issue began to be taken seriously only after 1830. Initially, the Ottoman Empire acted with skepticism, even adopting an attitude of complete denial of Western realities. However, under the influence of British, French, and Russian armed forces, the issue began to be taken seriously, even though at first, it was only discussed as a protectorate over women. Slavery was completely abolished in the Ottoman Empire in 1887 through an Imperial Decree, which stipulates the fact that the Imperial government does not recognize slavery, as all human beings should be free.

In the era before 1830, female slaves had to meet certain criteria to be traded:

- First, beauty, which is also linked to the region from which the young woman originates. As mentioned earlier, skin and hair color were the most important criteria capable of raising or lowering the young woman's trading price.
- A second important element is related to the skills the slave could demonstrate: dancing, voice quality, ease with which she could play certain musical instruments, clothing, and the way she wore her clothes all contributed to determining the final price.
- The third element was the geographical area of origin: young women from the North Caucasus region, known as Circassians or Cherkess, were sold at the highest price, which could reach up to several hundred pounds, followed by young Greek women, while the lowest prices were for girls from the Nubian region, along the Nile River in southern Egypt and northern Sudan today, whose price rarely exceeded 20 pounds.

As Reinhold Schiffer states, after the massacre of Chios in 1822 and “with the destruction of the city of Aivali on the Aegean coast, women began to be sold like animals, and the treatment they were subjected to was similar to that of cattle traded in fairs and animal markets. The degradation and suffering, the suicide out of shame of Greek women, violently torn from their families and then sold as slaves, are more related to the atrocities of war than what can be called today human trafficking” [Schiffer, 1999, p.188].

Illustrative in this sense is Delacroix's painting, in which a young Greek woman is chained to the horse of the Ottoman invader and subjected to inhumane treatment, being essentially a mere war captive, probably sold as a slave upon return to the country. There is an intensity of emotion here that other paintings on the same theme do not possess. Although it is just an imagined experience, Delacroix not having witnessed such an event, not even during his trip to Morocco, he has the ability to invest his canvas with an almost superhuman sensitivity and emotion. The same emotion, but this time transposed onto paper, appears in the travel account of Richard Robert Madden, an Irish-born doctor and writer, and a fervent advocate for the abolition of slavery, in his 1833 journal. Full of sensitivity, he talks about the precarious situation of young female slaves, providing illustrative details about how they were treated:

No scene of human wretchedness can equal this: the girl who might have adorned her native village, whose innocence might have been the solace of an anxious mother, and whose beauty might have been the theme of many a tongue, was here subjected to the gaze of every licentious solider, who chose to examine her features, or her form, on the pretence of being a buyer. [Madden, 1833, p.5-6].

A different emotion appears in Jean Léon Gérôme’s Slave Market, a work of art created by overlapping several plans that converge towards the center of interest, represented by a young woman, probably of Circassian origin, or maybe Georgian, if we consider the color of her skin and hair.

This detail belongs exclusively to the originality of Jean Léon Gérôme, because according to the accounts in the travelogues of the time, even at Madden, young slaves never appeared completely naked in public markets, much less Circassians or Georgians. They came dressed in expensive, diaphanous clothes, which highlighted their forms, but at the same time allowed a trace of decency to be seen in the general appearance. This had a double function, of highlighting the beauty and raising the price of the slaves, who could thus even end up in the imperial harem. Young black women were clothed only from the waist down, being bought even at a price ten times lower than that of the Georgian young women.

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Jean Léon Gérôme - Le Marché d'esclaves (c.1867)

We thus observe that the literary and travel accounts of the time do not perfectly overlap with the visual component, which is meant to convey the atmosphere and emotion of the era. This is primarily due to the painter's need to transpose some of the personal opinions onto the canvas, which, unaltered by a real experience of the described world, are also imbued with a note of indecency and voyeurism, bringing sensationalism to the Romantic era. This fact is particularly specific to the French artistic space.

Schiffer offers a very pertinent argument regarding the issue of the harem and slavery, as it appears in the English and French spaces, or more precisely, on how the two are perceived in Europe. He suggests that the British people do not offer any subtlety related to violence, sadism or suffering, but by contrast, they offer an ideology of respectability, décor, paternalism, more specifically the values of the Oriental bourgeois, which the French are totally missing from the arsenal. [Schiffer, 1999, p.189].

There is always a painful and revolting association connected with this idea of slavery, and an insurmontable disgust excited by the spectacle of money given in exchange for human beings; but, (beyond this, and assuredly this is enough!) there is nothing either to distress or to disgust in the slave market of Constantinople. No wanton cruelty, no idle insult is permitted: the slaves, in many instances, select their own purchaser from among the bidders; and they know that when once received into a Turkish family, they become members of it in every sense of the word, and are almost universally sure to rise in the world if they conduct themselves worthily. [Pardoe, 1837 p.129]

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David Roberts - A Slave Market in Cairo (1848)

Another important element that must be considered in the analysis of the visual representations of the slave market is the architectural component, the space where this activity takes place. It is about that labyrinthine world of the slave bazaar in Istanbul, filled with the strong smell of aromatic plants and spices that spread across all the shadowy alleys, which is perceived by the Western man through olfactory sensations, and less through visual ones. It is about an almost enclosed space, immersed in darkness, where slave transactions often take place clandestinely, with the human being subjected to a humiliating process of transaction.

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Jean-Léon Gérôme, Fest albanais, 1856

There is a shocking contrast between the world described by Nerval in the grand bazaar, where traditional Turkish and imported products, spices, and other valuable items were sold, and the Avret bazaar, where Istanbul's slave market was located. This distinction becomes evident in a comparative analysis of Amadeo Preziosi's painting, Turkish Bazaar, and William James Muller's painting, entitled Slave Market in Cairo. Nerval's accounts are in most situations extremely evocative, relying especially on convincing visual images, by listing specific architectural details of the oriental world, which ensure the unity of the whole. Nerval speaks about the labyrinth of the bazaar, built in byzantine style, with huge galleries where one can admire from carpets to slippers, gold and silver, weapons and jewelries. So many details, so much information, beautifully combined in a suggestive piece of writing.

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Amadeo Preziosi Turkish Bazaar (1854)

Amadeo Preziosi's work is a dynamic decorative composition, in which we seem to decipher Nerval's literary text, the satisfaction of being in the immediate vicinity of valuable items (carpets, jewelry, weapons, decorative objects), and the physiognomy of the characters depicted on the canvas, which describe the state of mind of the viewer of this complex spectacle. The Turkish bazaar is that agora, a mix of olfactory and visual sensations, diametrically opposed to the painful reality reflected in the depiction of the slave market in Muller's painting. In the 19th century, every city in Egypt had a slave market, the largest being located in Cairo, Wakalat-al-Jallaba, near the al-Azhar Mosque and very close to the Khan-al-Khalili market, where most goods were traded: textiles, carpets, leather goods, ivory, feathers, tamarind, ebony, rubber, being considered a very lively market.

The still unresolved debate is whether slavery was abolished for humanitarian reasons, or simply because it had become an unprofitable trade. Researchers in the field place themselves on a middle ground between the two possibilities, because, especially in the case of England, towards the end of the Romantic era, there was a movement to mobilize the masses with the help of public meetings and supported by advertising materials, distributed free to participants. Given the entire body of anti-slavery literature connected with English Romanticism, we can say that we are dealing with an era full of contradictions: on one hand, we have individualism and the democratic principles of a civilized society, and on the other hand, we talk about exoticism and the overvaluation of cultural and racial differences that dominate Western mentality. [Richardson, 1998, p.467]

4.4. Exotic gardens – The Décor for Feminine Beauty

In the Romantic era (1780-1840), garden arrangements began to pay tribute to the notion of the exotic. This refers either to plants from distant lands that reached Europe via trade routes between East and West, or to the arrangement of different types of vegetation in layers, as in Japanese gardens, for example. It should be noted that before the publication of Charles Darwin's book, The Origin of Species (1859), the Romantic man felt the need to clarify the different species of plants, which later became a source of inspiration for literature. Literature drew inspiration from nature, as did painting, and by the end of the Romantic era, we obtained a complex landscape, entirely exotic, with a profound element of originality.

The 19th century is marked by the emergence of a new type of garden, in which novelty is harmoniously combined with tradition, exoticism with modernity, opulence with simplicity. The garden, like that in antiquity, begins to become a calling card, reflecting the social status of its owner. With the rise of a new social class, consisting of bankers and industrialists, the nouveau riche, the art of gardening became specialized under the impact of exploratory and tourist travels to distant territories, from where rare plants, new cultivation methods, and obviously, with the advent of technology, the maintenance of plants became increasingly easier. [Taylor, 1998]

As a result of the increasing number of specialized publications, including Garden Magazine (1826), Gardens Chronicle (1841), and Ladies Magazine of Gardening (1841), culminating with Darwin's work, public interest in the art of gardening and the decoration of noble gardens and parks has been increasingly stimulated. With the introduction of the notion of exotic into the vocabulary of Westerners, nature becomes idealized; through nature, we begin to understand man, experiences, emotions, euphoria, ecstasy, we relate to the surrounding world and become aware of our limits.

The garden also begins to be represented in literature and painting, but not before the 16th century, when Joachim du Bellay spoke of natural beauties in one of his sonnets published in 1549.

Andrei Pleșu, in his study Picturesque and Melancholy, highlights the appearance in 1780 of two volumes of engravings titled Details of New Fashionable Gardens: English Chinese Gardens by G. L. le Rouge, in which the author notes the similarities between the two types of park arrangements, the Western one being directly inspired by the Far Eastern garden.

Built around the Yin and Yang elemenets, the Chinese garden creates confusion, is different, hard to understan and occasinlly grotesque. As Maggie Keswick suggests, it is a sort of cosmic diagram highlighting a profound perspective of the world and civilizations. [Keswick, Jencks, Hardie, 2003, p. 14]

William Chambers, the author of the work Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, visited China twice before publishing his volume in 1772 and very well anticipated the Romantic taste for the exotic element, thus bringing some modifications to Kew Gardens by introducing a pagoda and a pavilion with panels decorated with scenes from the life of Confucius. However, the English and French lost interest in the Chinese-style garden with the French Revolution and the return to classicism.

From the Chinese, Europeans adopted less of the architectural landscaping element and more of the exotic plants, which they adapted to the climatic conditions of the continent, leading to the appearance of glass-walled greenhouses to protect delicate plants during winter. The three types of gardens that William Chambers speaks of are: the pleasing, the terrible, and the surprising.

“Acclimatization is the novelty of the 19th century, even if it was not the invention of this century”. [Constantinescu, 1992, p.276] From China have been imported some of the most exquisite plants: wisteria, chrysanthemums and peonies, anemones, gardenias, or jasmine, camellias, honeysuckle, yellow bells, as well as countless varieties of decorative fruit trees, such as cherry trees or plum trees. The novel Dream of the Red Chamber, by Cao Xue Qin is a proof of the rich garden treasures, of sacred atmosphere and beauty.

Chambers also remarks the pleasant appearance of the Chinese-style garden, with hedge bushes and flowering trees, water channels over which are arched bridges and pavilions, that seem the source of inspiration for the poem Kubla Khan, by Coleridge:

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Nigel Leask suggests that the first thirty-six lines of the poem make reference to the landscape garden, an artificial décor, the result of the poetic imagination, which is less inspired by the reality of the British gardens of the time. Compared to Kubla Khan’s gardens, as they really appear in Marco Polo’s travel reports, they are closer to the European perspective upon Orientalism, in the 18th century, that speaks about the Chinese garden of the English bourgeoisie, which is also known as the Anglo-Chinois Jardin. [Leask, 2006, p.184]

With the help of alliteration and assonance, Coleridge creates an incantation of a dreamed world, a Paradise in the shape of a fantastic garden, surrounded by thick and tall walls, that could be compared to the walls of the Islamic Garden. Yet, the poem makes reference to Xanadu, the summer residence of emperor Kubla Khan, in Central Mongolia, a magical world that Marco polo visited in 1275 while exploring those realms, and which is characterized as opulent and grandiose.

Nigel Leask creates an inventory of the most important literary texts that refer to the Chinese style gardens. He mentions Sir William Temple, Joseph Addison, Horace Walpole and Oliver Goldsmith, important representatives of the 18th century, that mark the beginning of the Oriental studies in Europe.

In literature and even in certain religious texts, the garden is hyperbolized, endowed with supernatural traits, which are able to increase the sense of mystery and the feeling of romantic reverie, dominated by exoticism. Laila guides Thalaba along the paths of such a garden in Southey’s poem:

She took him by the hand,

And through the porch they pass’d.

Over the garden and the grove,

The fountain streams of fire

Pour’d a broad light like noon;

A broad unnatural light,

Which made the rose’s blish of beauty pale,

And dimm’d the rich geranium’s scarlet blaze.ious verdure of the grove

Now wore one undistinguishable grey,

Checquered with blacker shade. [Southey, 1814, p.136(XIV)]

Beginning with this moment, European gardens become tributary to the exotic garden model. We can talk about three different channels of communication of the information: on one hand we can talk about the extreme Eastern influences in park and garden architecture, more specifically the Persian garden as a source for the French park arrangements, on the other hand we have the Moorish model of garden and the Italian style gardens.

Italy represented one of the main sources of inspiration for the generations of European artists. As mentioned in the second chapter, The Grand Tour had as a final destination Italy, with a quick stop in Switzerland. Italy is a symbol of the individual’s transcendence.

Full of opulence, extravagant, richly ornated, and based strictly on geometrical elements, the Italian style garden can be found in the Stourhead park arrangements, being the primary source of inspiration for William Turner’s painting Rise of the River Stour at Stourhead (c. 1824). Stourhead was the perfect location for the 18th century recovery of the Virgilian Arcadia. The architectural elements created by the famous English architect Henry Flitcroft included temples, statues and grottos, such as the temple of Apollo, the temple of Flora and Pantheon. Stourhead is the perfect place for the mediation of the picturesque and exotic style of garden architecture, in a purely romantic sense. Turner’s paintings reproducing British gardens and park arrangements successfully combine influences taken from Poussin and Lorrain and guide the viewer towards an imaginary world. Mainly watercolors, Turner’s works show transparency and subtlety, extreme color variation and a somber atmosphere, that according to Kenneth Clark reveals an element of poetry in Turner’s work.

The gardens of the times used to be decorated with ornamental constrictions, the so called fabriques, taken over from the Egyptians. The obelisk, as a symbol of the solar forces, the pyramid, with somber death connotations, the temple, as a somber place for meditation, the sphynx, with protective values, Isis, as a symbol of revival and regeneration of the individual, all have symbolic mythological meaning and are elements of an enlightening philosophy focused on meditation and spleen.

The garden becomes a reflection of the states of mind, of the taste of an entire epoch marked by grandeur and opulence, lacking any emotion in relationship with the societal problems, political conflicts of spiritual fracture.

Symbols such as the obelisk, the pyramid or the sphynx, suggest an exoticism targeted exclusively to the initiated. The obelisk at Stourhead dates from 1746 and was erected by William Privet, and was ordered by Henry Hoare II who wanted a perfect garden, that could replicate the Arcadia. Humbert observes the use of the expression Et in Arcadia Ego in relationship with the British garden architecture, as a combination of symbols related to happiness, love and death. [Humbert, 2006, p.195]

Lady Mary Montagu, in her writings where she speaks about the culture of the Ottoman Enpire, makes a very suggestive connection between feminine beauty and the beauty of the gardens, highlighting the character of seclusion of both:

(...) the women’s apartments are alwais built backward, removed from sight, and have no other prospect than the gardens, which are enclosed with very high walls. There are none of our parterres in them, but they are planted with very high trees, which give an agreeable shade, and, to my fancy, a pleasing view. In the midst of the garden is the kiosk, that is, a large room, commonly beautified with a fine fountain in the midst of it. It is raised nine or the steps, and enclosed with gilded lattices, round with vines, jessamines, and honeysuckles, make a sort of green wall. Large trees are planted round this place, which is the scene of their greates pleasures, and where the ladies spend most of their hours, employed by their music and embroidery. [Montagu, 1837, p.401]

Illustrations are not included in the reading sample

William Turner View of the Bolton Abbey

The entire romantic period is dominated by artificiality in the landscape architecture. Although we are talking about the primary source, the nature, plants are arranged artificially, creating surreal, based on geometry, which suggests more of a material harmony, instead of the spiritual one.

As Jack Goody states in his study titled The Culture of Flowers, the channel through which the tradition of Persian gardens was transmitted to Europe is also through North Africa, with the Mediterranean acting as a mediator. We can say that exotic elements underwent a process of mutation from south to north, leading to the formation of a European taste for novelty and exoticism, not only in painting and literature but also in architecture. The Islamic garden migrated to the northern part of the African continent beginning in the 9th century, being pushed towards our continent with the Moorish occupation of Spain, which lasted until the 15th century. Nevertheless, the influence of the Moorish gardens spread into the interior of the continent, particularly through the assimilation of the tradition of the rose garden and the introduction of flowers previously unknown to Europeans, such as the tulip or carnation, which would find an important place in European culture from that moment onward. Jack Goody also observed the way in wich roses are grown in such a perfect way as in the Islamic world. [Goody, 1993, p.103]

We must note an interesting detail related to the different structure between the Orient and the Occident concerning park arrangements, and this refers to the structuring of the garden based on climatic criteria. It is evident that Westerners tried to copy the Oriental Garden model, but it did not perfectly adapt to the climatic conditions of the northern part of the continent. The gardens of the Sintra Palace, the most successful example of Portuguese romantic architecture, are built on the Moorish model, capturing sunlight vertically, with ponds constructed in the shade of evergreen trees brought from the Far East, Australia, or America (Ginkgo biloba, Sequoia sempervirens, Thuja plicata, Cupressus Lusitanica, Camellia sasanqua) that filter the light, allowing it to decompose.

"What the English garden offers is primarily the feeling of freedom, the sensation of being liberated from any constraint; the vegetation, clearings, solitary trees, the immense lawn in the middle, the hidden paths—all seem arranged for people who come to rest, to contemplate the elegant movement of horses grazing on the lawn, to enjoy the sun so cherished in a land where the sky is mostly overcast.” [Constantinescu, 1988, p.283]

With territorial explorations in the Orient, a growing group of botanists began studying various exotic plants, attempting to acclimate them to the European environment. A well-known collector, Robert Fortune, sent from China and Japan a collection of the most famous garden flowers: anemones, azaleas, chrysanthemums, gardenias, jasmine, camellias, honeysuckle, yellow bells, and different varieties of ornamental plums and cherry trees.

The garden or park becomes a space for reverie, where the individual can isolate themselves from the world and experience the most contradictory sensations. This led to a specialization in architecture, based on the principle of harmony of forms, where palaces were built with gardens and parks of exceptional beauty, but above all, of great importance for one of the most relevant trends of romantic taste: the Oriental element. Thus, gardens were created where the temptation of the exotic becomes the key to deciphering the space, mostly inspired by the travel books of the era. The English garden has its roots in this, which would later inspire other European royal houses. In this regard, we can mention the Pena Palace Park in Sintra, Portugal, which Byron considered a glorious Eden.

“Whether descended from a Burlingtonian neoclassicism, accompanied by the idea of an Enlightenment-inspired freedom, as Rudolf Wittkower stated, the English garden was the one that mediated the emergence of picturesque and exotic architectures in a romantic sense, laden with symbolic, historical, or merely poetic meanings. These architectures, materialized in pavilions, kiosks, temples of all kinds, fountains, artificial grottos, and ruins inspired by England, would spread across French or German parks from Ermenonville, Le Raincy to Worlitz, Luxembourg, etc.” [Mărgineanu, 1990, p.22-23]

The Chinese garden, laden with symbolism, built on the Yin-Yang opposition, creates emotional effects, being “a kind of launching pad for the spirit toward the universal, the minimal ambiance, the most suitable props for a cognitive maneuver. It is conceived as a place that maintains the readiness for the absolute of the one who traverses it and, at some point, provokes the sudden manifestation of the absolute itself. The Chinese Garden is the space where one expects detachment from spatiality.” [Pleșu, 1980, p.111]

The European Garden, opposed to the metaphysical Oriental space, is like a passive spectator, awaiting the unfolding of a spectacle, experiencing the emotion but incapable of describing it through the senses.

The poetics of the landscape is supported by the idea that nature is the source of all stimuli to which the artist's sensations correspond, which he defines and communicates. Henry Focillon suggests that “the relationships that link the forms in nature cannot be random, and what we call natural life is, in fact, a relationship between forms so inexorable that without it, this natural life could not exist. The same is true of art: a work of art has as its fundamental principle the Universal Order.” [Read, 1971, p.37]

Leonardo da Vinci believed that the things in the Universe are designed in the spirit of nature, so there is cohesion, a continuous flow that sustains movement and has the role of restoring balance. It is precisely this nature, in perfect balance with human nature, that becomes the center of interest in the work of art, both in the visual arts and in the art of words."

CONCLUSIONS

Orientalism, for the Romantic era, meant bringing into focus fragments of a different daily life, where the individual was dressed in unusual clothing, characterized as exotic, and the woman was draped in long, flowing garments, with veils covering her face, enveloping her personality in an aura of mystery.

The Oriental experience of some writers and artists of the Romantic period would find reflection both on paper, but especially on canvas. Whether we speak of the Far East or the Mediterranean region, the journey to those lands meant for them a new lifestyle, a process of agglutination of traditions and customs, which would later be adapted to national specifics, restructuring and revalorizing old behavioral models.

The involvement of political power in different parts of the globe, the long-term occupation exercised by the most important powers of the era in strategic points such as India or Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria, played a decisive role in orienting the arts towards certain centers of dissemination. Added to this was the large number of translations and adaptations of Oriental literary texts, which began to be published in the second half of the 17th century and throughout the 18th century. The most important of these is by Antoine Galland, after the famous One Thousand and One Nights published between 1704 and 1712.

This work begins by establishing the limits of the emergence and development of exoticism in European culture, drawing on the complex system of connections existing between the literary text and the visual discourse, to then discuss the feminine prototype that emerges against the backdrop of the gender differences present in the Muslim society of the time. The workplaces particular emphasis on the element of seclusion of fragile beauty, often compared to the cherry blossom, subjected to masculine authority.

Of great importance for the Romantic period is the development of the Anglo-Chinese Garden, where exotic women used to unfold most of their daily activities. According to Michael Sullivan, an outstanding arts critic, the image of the Chinese garden, transmitted to Europe through Sir William Chambers was a form of reaction against the formality and geometry of the Italian style garden, and helped develop and individual style of architecture in the case of the English gardens.

Researcher J.J. Clarke draws attention to the richness of cultural exchanges between the two cultural spaces, particularly in the east-west direction, which does not allow for the drawing of specific boundaries or the separation of vectors of influence and interest. However, the exoticism referred to in this work geographically places us in the Mediterranean Basin, more specifically in the countries of North Africa—Egypt, Algeria, Morocco—on the eastern coasts of the Ionian Sea, and in Constantinople, with the limitation being imposed by the fact that the Near Eastern world, even though it was governed by different religious principles and was in a more precarious stage of civilization, was still part of the Western world. Fernand Braudel emphasized precisely the belonging of this Mediterranean Basin space to the West, speaking of a Mediterranean civilization, which he linked to the great ports such as Alexandria, Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Venice, Marseille, and Algiers.

In selecting the paintings analyzed in this work, I focused on those paintings that seemed representative of the chosen literary texts. The works of art do not explicitly refer to the selected literary texts, but they suggestively illustrate scenes or even entire fragments from the chosen literary works. I tried to highlight the similarities between the literary texts and the paintings, not only thematically but especially through the narrative nature of the latter, an element that plays an essential role in completing the action, guided by the theory of translating the atmosphere of certain literary texts into visual language.

The second chapter, titled Exoticism and Orientalism, provides the theoretical basis for the comparison between text and image, with the emphasis placed on the synchronic reading of the image, through the lens of visual semiotics, as well as on the diachronic, iconological approach. The selected images and texts collaborate precisely to guide the viewer towards certain meanings, which emerge from the multitude of associations made. First of all, we are talking about a landscape exoticism, which results from the superimposition of architectural structures specific to the Eastern world (the minaret tower, the bazaar, the marketplace) over the settings of the Western artist’s studio. This is because most of the painters of the era had not traveled to the Orient, but merely transposed onto canvas the literary exoticisms of travel journals. Thus, the iconic argumentation is based on a study of the image that includes a chromatic analysis, a study of the geometric arrangement of elements, texture analysis, and a topographic analysis.

The work also discusses the political context that influenced the drawing of the temporal and spatial boundaries of exoticism, synthesizing Braudel's theory on the boundaries between the Orient and the Occident.

Chapter three focuses on determining the minimal elements of visual narrative, and the important role played by the relationship between text and image, especially by making allusive reference to the paintings that are put in connection with the literary texts.

At the same time, I also conducted a reverse analysis, from the Orient to the Occident, presenting some of the most important travel journals of the Egyptian writers Abd-Al Rahman Al-Jabarti (1754-1825), Rifa’a Rifat Badawi al-Tahtawi (1801-1873), and Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1804-1887). Their opinions on the degree of civilization of the Western man are laudatory, appreciating the cultural models despite their undisguised resentment towards the French occupation.

The conclusion I reached from analyzing the literary works of these three writers, journalists, and historians is that Egyptian experiences in Europe were largely confined to the territories of England and France, providing mostly information about the Western way of life, with a very personal interpretation. The West is seen as a source of libertinism, but at the same time, of justice, civilization, and as a center of material superiority. Scenes from the time of the French occupation are captured, but the contact with the civilized world, beyond the erroneous interpretations of a society reluctant to embrace the new and modern education, presents Egyptian scholars with a thorny problem: the realization of the decline of old values and life principles.

This discovery allows me to draw a line of demarcation between the Oriental and Occidental ways of thinking, in the sense that the Western traveler in the Orient views the exotic woman as a temptation, who indulges in debauchery, luring her prey into the web of secret chambers in the Oriental harem.

Obviously, a reverse analysis also involved a study of Montesquieu's Persian Letters, which were themselves inspired by the travel journals of some Persians in Paris, contemporaneous with Montesquieu. Among them, we can mention the names of Muhammad Riza Bayk (the Persian ambassador in Paris from 1715 to 1716) and Mirza Salih Shirazi (a graduate of a Western school who participated in the process of reforming and modernizing Iran).

The key chapter of the work addresses, on one hand, the beauty of the Oriental woman as it appears in pictorial representations and in the travel writings of Lady Mary Montagu or in Julia Pardoe's journal. However, the novel element is the attempt to adapt a model of visual narrative analysis to the illustrated poem or novel.

The work discusses the issue of the status of women in the Arab world in contrast to that of Western women. This approach is based on the travel accounts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of the English ambassador to Constantinople between 1716 and 1718, who published a volume titled Turkish Letters in 1763, and is also supported by Gérard de Nerval's journal Journey to the Orient (1851). Nerval’s travels are a combination of fantastic and realistic elements, taken over from previous works by William Lane or Silvestre de Sacy, but he pushes the limits of the genre, through intertextuality.

We are dealing with a blend of dream and reality, fantasy, plagiarism, folk tales, and legends—elements that compose an entirely original way of perceiving a new, conflicting, and striking culture, defining art as a privileged cognitive instrument, allowing the unfolding of knowledge, and aesthetic is understood as a process of opening towards the world. [Azerad, 2008, p.67]

Most images of the Oriental harem, during the Romantic period, are seen through the lens of sexuality and promiscuity. But as can be observed throughout this work, such an approach is more a product of the romantic imagination than of field studies, as the majority of writers and painters of the era never traveled to the Orient and thus could not form a personal viewpoint on this issue.

Perhaps only the journals of Lady Mary Montagu or the travel accounts of Julia Pardoe can be considered authentic sources about the life of the harem in the Ottoman Empire, bringing to light everyday realities and ethnographic evidence of this world, which contrasts with the unrealistic, sexually charged image found in works of art inspired by the exoticism of the Arab world.

The efforts of Lady Mary Montagu, but especially those of Byron during the Romantic era, were driven by the need to explain or rather clarify the status of Arab women, drawing on both biblical texts—such as the Quran's references to the place Muhammad assigned to women—and translating onto paper the impressions left by the culture of the Arab world as experienced on the ground.

Regarding the image of the Oriental woman, researchers speak of a certain icon, or more precisely a set of symbols, among which the mosque and the camel are linked to Oriental femininity, with the harem serving as the central symbol of Arab society. [Yee, 2008]

Slavery, one of the most significant moral issues of the Romantic era, described by Coleridge in 1808 as “the wildest physical suffering”, is explored both through literary texts and the artistic representations of the time. Researcher Debbie Lee concludes that there was a certain degree of complicity between the Romantic writers, who tacitly accepted the perceived superiority of the civilized man over people of color, and the political representatives of the British Crown in particular.

The ease with which the entire civilized world of the late 18th and early 19th centuries discussed the issue of slavery was primarily due to a sense of detachment. The fact that most atrocities, including violence against both women and men, occurred far from the European continent led to indifference and superficiality, which in turn prevented a true understanding of the essence of this problem. This situation is clearly reflected in the paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, William James Müller, or David Roberts—artists from both sides of the English Channel—who shared very similar sentiments regarding Arab women of the time. While their work does not express overt disdain or compassion for the humiliating conditions to which Arab women were subjected, there is a tone of irony that emerges from their paintings. This can be argued by the lack of modesty shown towards the Arab woman, who is depicted stripped not only of her garments but also of her emotions, a portrayal that starkly contrasts with the reality of the regions depicted.

The work further draws a connection between the status of Arab women, subjected to the authoritarian system of the Muslim world as sanctioned by the Quran, and the enslavement of young Georgian and Circassian women who ended up in the imperial harem in Istanbul as war captives.

Ehud Toledano, in his study Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (1995), traces the journey of slaves who, dragged from their homelands, were subjected to lives full of humiliation. As noted in the chapter dedicated to the issue of slavery, there were two main categories of slaves: those born into slavery and war captives. However, Toledano argues that there were several categories of slaves based on nationality and country of origin. He discusses African slaves, who were displaced from their native territories (Central Africa—Waday, Bornu, and Bogirmi, as well as those from Sudan—Nile Basin, Kordofan, and Darfur). The second category refers to slaves from present-day western Ethiopia, from the Galla, Sidamo, and Gurage regions, and the final category concerns female slaves of Circassian and Georgian origin. From this moment slaves become a form of traded goods, sometimes for small amounts of money, which leads to a loss of respect for the individual, trivializing the inferior position of black people. Thus, the situation arises in which, in the pictorial representations of the era, the slave is depicted unveiled in a public market, with the gazes of all the men fixed upon her. This makes evident the necessity of using the veil to restore an attitude of respect toward women. Volney refers to women as “walking phantoms”, while Nerval concludes that the veil serves as a stimulant for the desire to know more. Literature becomes this way a source for decoding the visual message, which sometimes is coded, by a generation of tormented artists, in a contradictory world, that is continuously changing.

The book can be considered a multidisciplinary study, having at its core the image of the woman from different parts of the world, but a world understood as exotic and not only Oriental, as it appears in many other studies on orientalism and exoticism.

One of the original elements of this work is its focus on the issue of exoticism rather than orientalism in the Romantic era. As Joseph Twadell Shipley highlights in Dictionary of World Literature: Criticism, Forms, Technique, exoticism appeals to the element of novelty and even curiosity, associated with distant territories and unusual individuals, distinguished not only by their appearance but especially by their attire. In contrast to the term cosmopolitanism, exoticism emphasizes diversity and variety over unity and common humanity. [Shipley, 1943, p.224]

The abundance of literary works from the Romantic era, focusing on various aspects of the exotic—from pure exoticism, strictly related to landscapes, to philosophical exoticism—is further evidence of the West's dominating force, not only through military power but also through a subliminal message conveyed by the intellectuals of the time.

The study of the exotic elements in Romantic literature and painting aims at analyzing details such as: the motif of the ruins, beauty of oriental woman, park arrangements, with the help of Homi K. Bhabha’s theory regarding an awareness of a positional subjectivity – race, sex, generation, etc.

The focus on the elements of difference between the two worlds – Orient and Occident – allow the development of an in-between space, where we can place the different details offered by the book. When we talk about the traditional attire details, feminine portrayal, richly ornated Oriental interior design, or natural décor of the garden arrangement, we should not rush into reflecting on the cultural and ethnic values, leading us towards a process of hybridization of culture. [Bhabha, p.1-2]

The new political conflicts of the times, followed by the territorial annexation of the second half of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, elevate the occidental man on a position of power, allowing him access to the essence of knowledge, to a reinvention of the traditional elements and reconstruction of the personal taste.

This present study places the research on the exotic world between the Saidian theory on orientalism, perceived as a complex relationship of power, dominance and hegemony and that of JJ. Clarke, tributary to Voltaire’s conceptions, upon the honorable duty of the Western man towards the Orient. The book does not make any reference to the monstruous mysticism of the Orient Charles Sanders Peirce used to mention, or to the complex set of absurdities of the Arab world.

In my opinion we can talk about a transfer of the cultural elements belonging to the exotic world towards the West, mediated by the development of tourism and travel literature, but the real contributor was the art, the visual component through oil painting, watercolors, sketches, graphic design or photography.

These components bring at the forefront an unusual world, a real source of inspiration for the artistic generations, beginning with the 18th century. And I am not referring here at the social, political and intellectual influence of the West towards the East as a result of the territorial annexations, but strictly to the cultural component.

For many people the Orient is just an extravagant realm, exotic and mistic, but the present book offers more arguments, in the attempt to change a mentality still present in the modern society, upon the fascination exerted by the exotic world on the West. As Clarke mentioned in his study, the East represented a source of amusement, but I do not agree with the idea of a “Eurocentric narrowness of the intellectual historiography” but highlights more the key moments when Western mentality dives into the world culture. If many studies reach a conclusion on Western superiority, unquestionable in many fields of activity, my research bring the Western man into the visible world where individuals – men and women – should have equal rights.

We should not forget that modern times research appreciates a multidisciplinary approach, thus the manifestations of exoticism are viewed from different perspectives, with a special focus on the problems of the representation of femininity, and less on philosophical systems that surround the study of orientalism in general.

In in J.J.Clarke’s case we can talk about an analysis of the philosophical systems steeped in oriental culture, while Edward Said’s Orientalism is based on Foucault’s theory on the systems of operation between the East and the West, the East being seen as a negative inversion of the Western world, my paper starts from minor details, of everyday life of the exotic world, organizational and hierarchical structures of the Arab society in general, and of particular states in particular, where the woman is responsible for multiple activities, she is invested with the power of decision, and the veil is not an instrument of seclusion, but a symbol of an acquired social status.

A pure orientalism, lacking prejudice, impartial and detached is almost impossible, but we can talk about an exchange of ideas, a productive multicultural transfer, particularly in these troubled times, when the conflict between the East and the West is upsetting the modern society and political and military conflicts start to increase.

The direct contact between East and West led to the formation of an entirely new ideational system, focused on tradition and culture, independent from the process of agglutination and cultural assimilation of the previous eras. The new way of thinking and understanding of social contacts was able to improve imagination, open the gates towards multiculturality and tolerance between people.

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DICTIONARIES

- Cirlot, Juan Eduardo - A Dictionary of Symbols, Dover Publications, 1971.
- Cirlot, Juan Eduardo - A Dictionary of Symbols, Routledge, 2005.
- Hall, James - Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, John Murray Publishing House, 1980.
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- Wolf, Martin - Dictionary of the Art, Philosophical Library, 1951.
- The Dictionary of Art edited by Jane Turner, Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1996.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

- Allen, William – Slave Market, 1838, oil on canvas, 129x128 cm., National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, p.46
- Bartlett, William Henry – The Plains of Lower Wallachia, 1840, p. 51
- Bartlett, William Henry – The Sharia El Gohargiyeh, Cairo, 1860 , etching, after a watercolor by the artist, p. 48
- Bartlett, William Henry – Alexandria, 1837, Aquaforte etching, 19X12,5 cm, p.75.
- Bartlett, William Henry – Cairo and the Valley of Nile River, c. 1850, etching, 19,5X9,5 cm, p.75.
- Bellini, Gentile – Sultan Mehmet II, 1480, oil on canvas, 69,9x52,1 cm, National Gallery, London, p. 24
- Cassas, Louis-François – Colline des muses – Phlopappsos, drawing published in the volume Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce, 1809, p.46.
- Decamps, Alexandre- Gabriel – Terre nord-africaine, c.1840, oil on canvas, 45,72X64,77, Treadway/Toomey Galleries, p. 45.
- Delacroix, Eugène – Les joueurs d’échecs arabes, 1847, oil on canvas, 46x55 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburg, p.33
- Delacroix, Eugène – Le Massacre de Scio, 1824, oil on canvas, 300X340 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, p.43
- Delacroix, Eugène – Entrée des croisés à Constantinople, 1840, oil on canvas, 500x410 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, p.66
- Delacroix, Eugène – North-African and Spanish Album, 1832, pen and colored ink, graphite and watercolor, 19,3X12,7 cm, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Grafiques, Paris, p.66
- Delacroix, Eugene – Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, 1834, oil on canvas, 180 x 229 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, p. 93.
- Denon, Dominique- Vivant – Voyage en Égypte, 1802, Aquaforte etching, 50 copies on paper: Musulmans et Santons en prère devant la mosquée Saint-Athanase, p. 28.
- Denon, Dominique- Vivant Femme égyptienne dans le harem-les cheveux épars, Arrosement des terres et ablutions à la suite de la prière du mati, 1802, Aquaforte etching, p. 28.
- Denon, Dominique- Vivant – Scene du harem de Metubis, 1802, etching published in the volume Voyage dans la Base et la Haute Egypte, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Estampes, p.64
- Denon, Dominique- Vivant – Portait d’un oriental avec turban, 1802, etching published in the volume Voyage dans la Base et la Haute Egypte, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Estampes, p. 64.
- Fabio Fabbi, Matrimonio al Cairo, 1861, private collection, Bologna, p. 86
- Gérôme, Jean Léon – An Almeh, 1882, oil on canvas, private collection, 50x60 cm, c, p. 73.
- Gérôme, Jean Léon - L 'allumeuse de narghilé , 1898, oil on canvas, 26x21.5 inch, private collection, p. 89
- Gérôme, Jean Léon – Femme circassienne voilée, c.1876, oil on canvas, private collection, 40,5x33 cm, p.125
- Gérôme, Jean Léon – Le Marché d'esclaves, c.1867, oil on canvas, 84,8X93,5 cm, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Williamstown, Massachusetts, p. 99
- Gérôme, Jean Léon – Le Fumeur Egyptien, etching published in Paris in 1868, in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, p. 79
- Gérôme, Jean-Léon – Fest albanais, 1856, private collection, p. 101.
- Giraud , Eugen - Intérieur de harem égyptien , 1874, Mathaf Gallery Ltd., p.90.
- Gros, Antoine Jean – Bonaparte Visiting the Pesthouse in Jaffa, 1799, p.44
- Gros, Antoine Jean – Bataille d’Aboukir, 1806, oil on canvas, 578x968 cm., Musée National du Château, Versailles, p.53.
- Gros, Antoine Jean – Les Pestiférés de Jaffa , 1804, 715x523 cm, Musée du Louvre, p.65
- Huber, Robert - Imaginary View of the Grande Gallery of the Louvre in Ruins, 1796, oil on canvas, 115x145 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, p.38
- Hugo, Victor – La ville en pente, colored ink, Victor Hugo Museum, Paris, p.178.
- Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique – Le Bain turc, 1862, oil on wood, 108x108 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, p.70
- Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique – La Baigneuse dite Baigneuse de Valpinçon, 1808, oil on canvas, 146x98 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, p. 71.
- Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique – Grande Odalisque, 1814, oil on canvas, 91x162 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, p.88
- Jervas, Charles – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, after 1716, oil on canvas, 215,5x127,5 cm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, p.110
- Landelle, Charles Zacharie – Femme arménienne, 1866, private collection, p.75
- Lewis, John Frederick – Life in the Harem, Cairo, watercolor, 1858, Victoria and Albert Museum, p. 92.
- Lewis, John Frederick - Harem life in Constantinople, 1857, watercolor, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, p. 49.
- Lewis, John Frederick - Harem, 1876, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, p. 97.
- Liotard, Jean-Étienne - Po rtrait d'une jeune femme en costume turc, 1737, miniature, considered Laura Tarsi’s portrait, Louvre Museum, Paris, p.63.
- Liotard, Jean-Étienne – Dame franque de Galata et son esclave, c.1740-1742, drawing, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, Paris, p.82.
- Liotard, Jean-Étienne – L a f emme turque avec un tambourin (1738-43), oil on canvas, 63.5x48.5cm, Geneva, Musee d'Art et d'Histoire, p. 145.
- Műller, William James – The Mahmudyia Mosque, Cairo, c. 1838, p. 12
- Műller, William James - The Slave Market at Cairo, 1841, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England, p. 155.
- Parkes Bonington, Richard – A Seated Turk, 1826, oil on canvas, Yale center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, p.87
- Phillips, Thomas – Lord Byron in an Albanian Dress, 1814, oil on canvas, 76,5x63,9 cm, National portrait Gallery, London, p. 27
- Preziosi, Amadeo – Ritratto di una dona ricca turca (1858), Historical Picture Library, p. 91
- Preziosi, Amadeo – Turkish Bazaar, 1854, oil on canvas, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, p. 102.
- Sir Reynolds, Joshua – Portrait of Lady Sunderlin Wearing a Turkish Costume, 1786, oil on canvas, 236x145 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, p.77
- Rembrandt, Harmenszoon Van Rijn, Oriental, 1635, oil on canvas, Rijksmuseum, p. 23
- Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn – Man in Oosterse Kostuum, c.1635, oil on canvas, 102,8x78,8 cm, Chatsworth House, Duke of Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth, p.62.
- Roberts, David – Ruins of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, 1861, oil on canvas, 150x240 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, p.39.
- Roberts, David – A Slave Market in Cairo, 1848, private collection, p.100
- Turner, J.M.William - Roslin Castle, Midlothian, 26.2 x 41 cm., London, Fine Art Society, p. 161.
- Turner, Joseph Mallord William - View of the Bolton Abbey, 1816, oil on canvas, 24 x 17 inch, private collection, p. 107.
- Van Mour, Jean-Baptiste – Turkish Woman Smoking, 1714, private collection, p.86
- Van Mour, Jean-Baptiste – Turkish Woman Playing Lute, private collection, p.94.
- Van Mour, Jean-Baptiste – Turkish Woman Playing Zither, private collection, p.95.
- Van Mour, Jean-Baptiste – La femme turque avec une tambourin, 1738-1743, p. 95
- Van Ruysdael, Jacob – Ruins in a Dunes Landscape (c. 1650), oil on canvas, National Gallery, Londra, p. 40
- Van Ruysdael, Jacob - Landscapewith the Ruins of Egmond Castle at Egmond aan den Hoef, The Art Institute Chicago, p. 41.

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