Part One: Exploring Jewish Jokes and Speaking of Tibet
The
following essay has been deleted from my forthcoming book on Jewish
Intellectuals for misread their place in the gentile society they think they
have assimilated into. Its immediate
context is a scene in which the short-story-writer, journalist and Symbolist
critic, Mardcel Schwob goes on holiday with his friend Léon Daudet, the son of
Alphonse Daudet (author of Lettres de mon
moulin). The scene is described by
the younger Daudet, an anti-Semite (like his father) who later becomes a
collaborationist under the Nazi Occupation of France a generation later. He is unaware that his friend has just been
diagnosed with a mysterious disease that will slowly kill him over the next ten
years.
According
to a French language Wikipedia entry, in 1891, following explorations in French
Indochina in 1881 and in West Africa along with Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza[1]
in 1883, returned to his service in Ministry of the Marine working on maps and
plans, Dutreuil de Rhins
…décide d’organiser une
mission d’exploration en Haute-Asie.
Commence en 1891, elle est principalement centrée sur le Turkestan
oriental (Xinjiang) et le Tibet. Il
n’aura cependant pas la possibilité de la mener à bien en totalité, puisqu’il
est tué lors d’un accrochage avec des Goloks près de la localité de Tom-Boumdo,
dans ce qui est aujourd’hui la province du Qinghai, le 5 juin 1894.[2]
…decided to mount an expedition in the Central
Asia. Begun in 1891, it was principally
centred on eastern Turkestan (today Xinjiang) and Tibet. There was no way ot could have completed as
he was killed during a misunderstanding with the Goloks [Gologs] near the
region of Tom-Boumdo in what in today the province of Qinghai on 5 June 1894.
On
the one hand, at the surface, the old Jew, Salomon Ignace did not know the full
story of Dutreuil’s death, mistaking his expedition into Central Asia for
earlier trips into West Africa,[3]
and thus alluding to colonialist slanders concerning cannibals, whereas
explorations of Turkestan and Tibet were of a different order altogether. As Svetlana
Goršena puts it:
Les relations entre l’Asie et l’Europe n’ont jamais répondu au schéma
univoque “professeur-élevé,” calqué sur un système comprenant des centres de
progrès et des zones de diffusion. Elles
suivent plutôt le principe du dialogue réciproque, dont l’orientation, d’une
époque à l’autre, varie en faveur tantôt de l’Europe, tantôt de l‘Asie…[4]
The relations between Asia and Europe never
corresponded to a univocal scheme « teacher-pupil », matched on a
system comprising centres of progress and zones of diffusion. Rather they followed the principle of a
reciprocal dialogue, whose orientation, from one epoch to another, varied
sometimes in favour of Europe, sometimes of Asia.
Unlike
the politically correct—and therefore usually wrong or at least incorrectly
applied—of Edward Said’s Orientalism,
the encounter between East and West did not take shape around racialist,
colonialist or politically expansionist intrusions.[5] Explorers from France, Britain, Russia and
other European nations did not march in with a sense of manifest
superiority.
Les ruines dont les voyageurs du XIXe siècle en Asie
reconnaissent déjà la majesté évidente offrent une påle reflet de cette civilisation. Nulle part, dans les déserts, les steppes or
les massifs montagneux, ces voyageurs ne semblent s’être sentis comme des
maitres ou représentants d’une culture supérieure, comme cela avait souvent été
le cas avec les peuples de l’Afrique ou de l’Amérique, dont l’héritage culturel
est paru au premier contact comme primitif et dépourvu de racines profondes.
The majestic ruins which the nineteenth-century
travellers saw in Asia were recognized as a pale reflection of this
civilization. Nowhere in the deserts,
steppes or huge mountain ranges did these travellers feel themselves to be the
masters or the representatives of a superior culture as often tended to be the
case with the peoples of Africa or America, whose cultural heritage seemed at
first contact to be primitive and deprived of deep roots.
Whatever
the ordinary citizens in the metropolitan centres back in Europe may have felt
about the great world being opened up to their own explorers, with whatever
misunderstandings and misconceptions carried over from encounters with more
primitive and backwards tribes, this was certainly not the case with the
explorers themselves—and with the governments they represented.
Parvenu au centre du continent asiatique, l’Européen rencontrait une
civilisation fondamentalement différente, qui lui était mystérieuse et
incompréhensible, mais il savait qu’elle avait été remarquable dans le passé,
en y ressentant alternativement surprise, accablement ou ravissement. Sous
les guenilles poussiéreuses de vieillard—image de l’Asie récente—tout regard curieuse pouvait saisir l’éclat
des vêtement impériaux de l’autre Asie, celle de la splendeur de l’époque
médiévale. Une parcelle de mémoire
complaisante et d’imagination vive suffisait alors pour en sortir l’image du
néant, malgré la rareté des témoignages des voyageurs revenus de ces contrées.
Once arrived at the centre of the Asian continent,
the European encountered a civilization fundamentally different, which was
mysterious and incomprehensible, but he knew that in its past it had been
remarkable, and sensing in himself alternatively surprise, awe and
ravishment. Under the dusty rags of an
old man—the image of the recent Asia—his full attention could grasp the
brilliant imperial vestments of the other Asia, the splendour of its medieval
epoch. A small degree of generous memory
and imagination were sufficient to draw the image out of nothingness, despite
the rarity of witnesses returned from these countries.
As
well-argued as this position seems to be, it leaves us at least two factors
that are essential not only for understanding what happened to Maurice Schwob’s
friend Dutreuil de Rhins, the man he knew from visits as a journalist to the
Explorers Club in Paris, but also for the misconceptions that underlie the
confrontation between the young writer and Salomon Ignace, the elderly
gentleman he met on his visit to Guernsey with Daudet. The first factor is that the newly opened
“Mysterious Orient” was more than an illuminating and enlightening experience
for Western explorers as Svetlana Goršena writes; it was also a series of
sometimes romantic adventures, frightening encounters with the wild and untamed
peoples beyond civilized norms, and manifestations of those inner demons—dreams
and hallucinations–such as poetic symbolism, occult spiritualism and scientific
psychoanalysis—that were opening up to cosmopolitan eyes at the close of the
nineteenth century. A modern account of
the “Les voyages de Dutrueil de Rhins et Grenard” given by Jean Dif[6]
and based on Fernand Grenard’s Mission
scientifique dans la Haute-Asie 1890-1895[7]
speaks of the natives in the region entered by the two French explorers in less
than flattering or respectful terms :
Le Tibétain, rude comme la nature, malpropre et déguille, au moral
faible, nonchalant comme dans tous les fables, défiant et peu sincère, qui
plait cependant par sa gaité, possède un caractère médiocrement équipé pour
faire face aux défis de la vie et triompher des confrontations avec ses
voisins, le musulman grave et conquérant, le chinois industrieux et imbu de sa
supériorité, l’Hindou souple et actif.
The Tibetan, uncouth as nature, dirty and in rags
and tatters, with a feeble morality, listless as in the fables, defiant and
insincere, yet who pleases with his gaiety and possesses a character moderately
equipped to confront the challenges to his life and to triumph in
confrontations with his neighbours, the grave and conquering Moslem, the
industrious Chinese imbued with his own superiority, the sly and agile Hindu
In
other words, though somewhat hinted at in Goršena’s essay, there were also a
middle people in the high mountains and deep valleys who lived apart from the
surrounding civilizations and whose precarious life was marked by a
ruthlessness and duplicity that threatened the European travellers. These folk were neither the noble savages of
Enlightenment myth nor the idealized and overly refined Orientals of
sophisticated longings.
Thus
the second modification to the paradigm set out by Svetlana Goršena must be
seen as the distrust and hostility of the indigenous people whom the explorers
encountered in these strange and long-isolated regions (re-idealized in James
Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon as “Shangri-la”). These Tibetans were ever suspicious of
outsiders, especially those whose appearance, habits and attitudes struck them
as threatening, and in what the anonymous writer on Grenard’s published account
of the expedition calls a text full of prejudices and amusing tales at the
expense of the native tribes, shows as actions (such as catching, cooking and eating
wild hare) or attempts to parley with them, presuming on the naïve good will of
the locals, while the beasts of burden carrying the explorers’ supplies grazed
on the sparse grasses and in other ways disturbed the tranquillity of the
settlements they infringed upon. The two
Frenchmen arrived late, tired, many of their supplies depleted, and in no mood
for compromises.[8]
According
to a brief synopsis of the expedition into Upper Asia by Fernand Grenard, who
returned and edited a three-volume account of this trip, the fatal episode
occurred in this way:
In 1893, Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, left
Xinjiang in order to cross Tibet and reach Xining in Qinghai. In December,
they reached Lake Namtso, the men and animals exhausted and their supplies
run out after a journey that had taken them three months longer than
anticipated. The authorities refused them permission to enter Lhasa and ordered
them to turn back, in spite of the bitter cold and lack of supplies.
The following summer, Dutreuil de Rhins was wounded
in a skirmish with a group of Golok bandits in lawless country near Tom-Boumdo
(province of Qinghai). Grenard tried to save him but in the end was forced to
leave him to his death. All the expedition's papers were stolen but eventually
Grenard persuaded the Chinese authorities to take action against the criminals
and the papers were recovered.[9]
In
Grenard’s original text, it is possible to see him as more self-serving than
Dif shows. The failure of the expedition
and the death of Jules-Léon Dutreuil de Rhins are blamed on the victim more
than on the situation or Grenard himself.
Dif’s
report supplies a few further details, such as how Dutreuil de Rhins and
Grenard sought to trade for more camels as many had been lost on the arduous
journey to Naktchou; they gradually approached a place of unknown dangers,
first entering the area populated by adherents of
Bõn, ancienne religion du Tibet, est toujours pratiqué ; ils sont
bien accueillis par les bonpos charmés de voir parmi eux ces Européens qui le
Dalai lama déteste ; tout ce qui déplaît au pontife tibétain les
réjouit ! Plus tard, on approche du
territoire ou les farouches Goloks font régner la terreur en enlevant les
animaux, les femmes et les enfants, au cours de sanglantes razzas.[10]
Bõn, the ancient religion of Tibet, still being
practiced ; they were welcomed by the Bonpo people who were charmed to see
among them those Europeans whom the Dalai Lama detested ; everything which
displeased the Tibetan pontiff made them rejoice ! Still later, they approached the territory
where the ferocious Goloks maintained a reign of terror by stealing animals,
women and children, during bloody raids.
It
was there amongst the blood-thirsty Goloks that Dutreuil met his end. Going in the direction of Xining, Detrueil de
Rhins ran into great resistance from the locals and merchants at a fair where
he attempted to gain much-needed supplies:
…il arrive au pied d’un
monastère auprès duquel se déroule un important marche décrit de manière
pittoresque et réalise par Grenard; malgré la présence de nombreux marchands,
l’expédition ne peut rien se procurer; le lama de monastère a défend a ses ouailles
de fréquenter les étrangers et de leur rendre le moindre service: les Chinois
eux-mêmes, qui professent un profond mépris pour les Tibétains, se refusent à
vendre quoi que ce soit aux explorateurs, de crainte de se mettre à dos le
puissant abbé et de compromettre leur fructueux commerce.[11]
…he came to the foot of a monastery where an
important market was taking place described as picturesque and illustrated by
Grenard. Despite the presence of many
merchants, the expedition was unable to procure anything. The lama of the monastery forbade his
congregants from mingling with the strangers and rendering them the least
services. The Chinese themselves, who
professed a profound dislike of the Tibetans, refused to sell what they had to
the explorers out of fear of placing them at odds with the powerful abbey and
compromising their fruitful commerce.
Though
we have to recall that the text is not only filtered through the secondary
person on the expedition, Grenard, but the modern synopsis made by Dif. It seems that the version Grenard tells is
mostly in accord with other documents, such as they are, and more importantly
presents us with the story as most Frenchmen would have come to know it. The two explorers meet with a resistance that
could only have inflamed their desperate attempt to restock their supply of
food, material and animals. They may
have begun with high deals and may have originally appreciated the special
nature of the ancient cultures they would encounter, but the lack of respect or
courtesy shown them probably came as a big surprise. ”[12]
The circumstances
which led to the attack through a misreading of the intentions of the Gologs
was one thing, but also there is a consideration of the moral state of the
French explorers and why they became vulnerable at this point and so were
unable to assess the threats or prepare a proper defence. Holdich, who at first follows Hedin, who
seems more sensitive to the problems to be faced—writes:
Possibly the effects of hard work and exposure in a frame already much
enfeebled by pain and sickness had told upon him and dimmed his perceptions of
the urgent necessity for that “equal mind” which Horace tells us we should be
specially mindful to preserve in face of adversity ; for we read previously,
that at Jyekundo he had threatened to pull the ears of the chief official in
the town if his wishes and demands were not complied with. Anyhow, the end soon
came.[13]
Then the perspective
shifts to that of Grenard and reverts to a self-justifying rationalization of
what happened after Dutreuil de Rhins was wounded:
The caravan was attacked, and De Rhins was mortally wounded by a Tibetan
bullet before they had proceeded far from the village. There can be little doubt,
from M. Grenard'is account, that the attack was organized by the village
authorities, and countenanced by the officials at Jyekundo. After De Ehirva
fell, the party was broken up and scattered, and it appears that De Rhins,
alive or dead, was thrown into a small affluent of the IHohu river. M. Grenard
escaped with difficulty into Chinese territory. This happened in June, 1894,
and the news reached Sven Hedin the following January, On arrival at Sining,
Sven Hedin was shown, amongst other curiosities, the skull of De Rhins'
murderer, but it must be extremely doubtful if the individual who fired the
fatal shot was ever identified.
In
other words, turning back to the primary documents, in the face of such a
negative welcome at the Tibetan monastery, Dutreuil de Rhins inopportunely—and
unwisely from Grenard’s perspective—decided to change his plans and go to
Guiergoundo where he hoped to have better luck.
[L]a tâche n’est pas facile car son guide connait mal le pays; ce jeune
home, un moine mendiant affame, ne suit
le caravane que pour nourrir des entrailles de moutons rejetées par les
musulmans de l’escorte comme une viande impure ; les nomades rencontre se montre de plus en
plus soupçonneux les moines leur enseignent que les Européens sont des démons,
experts en sortilèges, dont il convient de se méfier ; en maintenant à l’écart du monde
ces simples gens qui les engraissent, les religieuse espèrent maintenir sur eux
lueur emprise. [14]
The task was not easy because their guide did not
know the country well. He was a hungry
mendicant monk who only joined the caravan in order to nourish himself on the
discarded sheep entrails the Moslems who served as escorts rejected as impure
meat. The nomads they met showed themselves increasingly suspicious, the monks
having taught them that Europeans were demons and experts in magic, who it was
proper to hate. And now away from the
outside world, the religious hoped to control these simple people to do their
bidding.
Then
comes the first attack against the group who were finding themselves
increasingly considered to be inhuman monsters and wicked magicians. What in
the earlier versions we cited seemed some vague misunderstanding, here becomes
clear: a challenge to the religious integrity of the locals. Albeit committed without malicious intent by
the Europeans, the locals did not know this, were already suspicious from past
experiences reported to them, and from fears that the Europeans were in league
with other outsiders, including the Chinese and Russians. The act seems to
confirm the hostile intent of these strangers, that is, they were all that the
Buddhist monks claimed they were.
Un jour, les membres de l’expédition, sont assaillis a coups de pierre
par des forcenés au moment où ils entrent dans un tente; ils se dégagent en
tirant en l’air une balle a blanc; dans la tente repose un malade, accompagne
d’agneau charge d’éloigner les mauvais, ce qui en fait un lie tabou pour les
Tibétains.[15]
One day, the members of the expedition were attacked
with stones by a group of madmen at the moment when they entered a tent; they
were able to get out by firing a blank shot into the air. In the tent a sick person was resting,
accompanied by a lamb meant to keep away evil spirits, which made them place
taboo for the Tibetans.
This
violation of sacred space proves to be fatal for the success of the French expedition. But not all at once. Several intervening adventures occur before
the end comes to the main character. Again we owe it to Grenard for the pacing
of the text, whether this may have required doctoring with the truth cannot be
fully ascertained because he is the main source—and sometimes the only—of our
information on the expedition. Each step
along the way towards the climax takes the explorers and the readers closer
into a world where the easy generalizations of their contemporary and our own
expectations are not fully met, so that the violent conclusion comes as
something of a shock to all concerned.[16]
[1] Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was the first
Commissioner General for the French Congo in 1886 and united Gabon to the Congo
Territories in 1888.
[3] See the French Wikipedia entry for “Congo français” online at
http//fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Congo_fran%C3%A7ais.
[4] Svetlana Goršenina. « Les Voyageurs francophones en Asie
Centrale de 1860 à 1932 » Cahiers du
Monde Russe, Russie, Empire russe, Union Soviétique, Etats Indépendants 39 :
3 (1998) 361.
[5] Edward Said’s pernicious books and the their
spawn of Orientalistic writings have
taken on an increasingly anti-Western and anti-Semitic burden in the years
since his death. As Julie Kalman writes, such polemical discourses masquerading
as objective post-modern scholarship “does not allow space for marginal voices,
for protagonists’ self-doubts, or for intimacy and entanglement between
deascriber and the described”; in regard to Jews, who were part of the landscape
being described, they have been more than marginalized, they have been erased
from the scenery, just as, for the most part, Jews as travellers and readers of
travel books have been excluded, when not denigrated in the polemic against
anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and anti-Zionism. See Julie Kalman, “The Jew in the Scenery:
Historicising Nineteenth-Century Travel Literature” French History 27:4 (2013) 517, As much as possible, I have
eschewed such faulty concepts, tried to censor out of my own writing the
neologisms, jargon and fatuous locutions that make up such ideological
arguments. In the instance discussed in
the ody of this chapter, I have attempted to see the anti-Semitic context in
which Marcel Schwob’s conversation with the elderly Alsatian Jewish advocate is
reported by his friend Daudet. In other
contexts, I duscuss the state of Schwob’s health and his increasing interest in
morbid and depth psychology. Much more
is implied rather than made explicit.
That is my way of responding to the charge made by Kalman: “Rather than
consider the ways Jews played central roles in stories of imperialism and
colonialism, it would appear that it has been seen as preferable not to allow
space for them” (517), my silence having a different tone and function in
returning Jews to their proper place; they return like Aby Warburg’s revenants
and Nachleben images through the
smoke and ashes of history.
[6] Jean Dif, “Les voyages de Detruiot de
Rhins et Grenard” Online at http://jean.dif.free.fr/ images/Tibet/ Chrono/Grenard.
[7] Jules-Léon Dutreuil de Rhins, Mission scientifique dans la haute Asie
1890-1893, 3 tomes (Paris : E. Lerroux, 1897). The
first volume is entitled « Récit du Voyage (18 février 1891-22 février
1895” and does not have the name of Fernand Grenard on the cover, although he prepared the books
on behalf of the deceased M. D urteuil de Rhins. An English version, extracting relevant
chapters, is found online and does identify the author as F[ernand] Grenard, Tibet: The Country and Its Inhabitants, trans. A Teixra de Mattos.
(London: Hutchinson, 1904). Selected passages from this English translation are
available from an online reprint ( London: Forgotten Books, 2013). 152-3; at https:// archive.org/details/cu31924062697804
[8] Feldman, Introduction to The Jewish Writing of Hannah Arendt, citing her Origins of Totalitarianism: “”The result was that the political
history of the Jewish people became even more dependent upon unforeseen,
accidental factors than the history of other nations, so that the Jews stumbled
from one role to the other and accepted responsibility for none” (pp.
xlvi-xlvii).
[9] Anon, « Fernand Grenard »
Wikipedia online at http :en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Grenard
[10] Dif, “Les voyages de Dutreuil de Rhins et
Grenard”.
[11] Dif, “Les voyages de Dutreuil de Rhins et
Grenard”.
[12] From
studies that have taken into account the reports of the Swedish explorer Sven
Hadens on the events that followed, it is important to note how the situation
should have been better appreciated before they became impossible to control: “there were unmistakable signs of hostility on the part of
the authorities.T. H. Holdich, ”Sven Hedin and Dutreuil de Rhins in Central Asia” Geographical Journal 13 (1899) 103.
[13] Holdich, « Sven Herdin and Dutreuil
de Rhins » 104.
[14] Dif, “Les voyages de Dutreuil de Rhins et
Grenard”.
[15] Dif, “Les voyages de Dutreuil de Rhins et
Grenard”.
[16] Feldman, Introduction to Hannah Arendt’s Jewish Writing : « Consequently, the Jews
became ignorant of conditions in the real world and incapable of recognizing
new opportunities and new threats to their survival as they arose » (p.
xlvii).
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