Salammbo and Orientalism

I could not resist spending part of the day reading Salammbo to confirm Said's claims about Flaubert. Said begins “Orientalist Structures and Restructures” by revisiting the unfinished novel Bouvard et Pecuche. He considers at length Bouvard's idee recue of “Europe-regenerated-by-Asia” Said is critical of the positivist arrogance that assumes that “our” Europe and “our” Asia can be soldered together. Said explores the Oriental representations within 18th century European music, art and literature. He considers this one of the interconnected and secularizing elements that foreshadowed the Orientalist structures of the 19th and 20th centuries (expansion, historical confrontation, sympathy, classification). Said argues that Flaubert echoed the Orientalist modus operandi and fashioned himself “ a hero rescuing the Orient from its “obscurity, alienation, and strangeness through lexicography, grammar, translation and cultural decoding” (p.121) Said places a spotlight on the uses of the classical Orient and the traces of power. Said init8imates on p. 144 that Faubert's interest in the Orient was heightened by the Napoleonic expeditions to Egypt and the scientific speculations of Etienne and Isidore Saint-Hilaire . Said descibes Flaubert as a n example of European writers who embodied a distinctive consciousness : “ To be a European in the Orient always involves being a consciousness set apart from, and unequal with, its surroundings.” (p.157) I searched for this consciousness in Salammbo, but hesitate to declare that I found what Said expected to find. The daughter of Hamilcar Barca is a composite of exotic but recognizable traits that populate French literature. She resembles Corneille's Phedre in my mind. Said opines that Flaubert portrait of Salammbo is based on his reading of William Lane's Manners and Customs of Modern Egyptians. I think that this is a stretch. I believe there is an element of imitation (“The Orientalist can imitate the Orient”) but the historical fantasy of the Carthage face to face with Rome is a classical trope that every student of Latin would have been expected to know. Flaubert takes liberties with a tradition that glorifies Rome more than it villifies the Orient. I would name such a consciousness archaeological rather than Orientalist as there was a desperate need in the 19th century to get at the root of civilization, to behold in first person glory, the trajectory of history, the suspected parabola of time. I disagree with Said on this point: the nostalgia that he soft-pedals is born of disappointment with the trappings of modernity. The disenchanted novelist indulges in historical fantasy in the hopes of stumbling a more satisfyig Shangri La. With Flaubert however there is less of the conceit of Chateaubriand (p.173 " What matters about the Orient is what it lets happen to Chateaubriand, what it allows his spirit to do, what it permits him to reveal about himself, his ideas, his expectations.") or the triumphalism of Nerval. His adventure is literary license. The Carthaginian ruins beckon because Flaubert fancies himself a modern Ezekiel who can make dry bones speak. Carthage is more than topos, canvas or stage in Salammbo. It is the refuge of the epic and Barca's palace a sanctuary. I am not sure that the mythology which Said ascribes to Flaubert as "personal" (p.180)is accurate. I agree that the Orient functioned asa place of deja vu (p.180), but once again I think the vantage point is classical rather than modern. The richly suggestive "legendary" woman of his narrative is a reinvented Cleopatra. Flaubert inherited this discourse,even as he helped to transmit it. Said's contrast between latent and manifest Orientalism (p.206) may be helpful here. His distinctions presume a psychology of domination far less subtle than Flaubert's Salammbo