Journeys from Scandinavia: Travelogues of Africa, Asia, and South America, 1840—2000

Introduction

xi Introduction The Danish-German explorer Carsten Niebuhr’s Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern (Travel Depiction from Arabia and Other Surrounding Countries, 1774) includes a copper etching by Georg Wilhelm Baurenfeind of seminude Egyptian women dancing in the sand to the sound of strings and cymbals.1 The composition consists of seven figures, including two women dancing in the middle and two similar female figures in the lower left corner whose turn to dance it might be next. The lower right corner shows an entirely veiled woman smoking a long pipe, and in the right top corner are two musicians, including the etching’s only male figure located farthest away. This man attentively accompanies the dancers on his stringed instrument, his monitoring stare redirecting the onlooker’s gaze back to the dancers in the middle. In the background is a cluster of palm trees. The picture exudes exoticism—in this context, geographic exoticism coupled with historic exoticism. That may be part of the reason it was reproduced on the front page of the book section of Denmark’s leading cultural paper, Weekendavisen, in August 2003, when Niebuhr’s travel depiction was first translated from German into Danish. The attention surrounding the publication is a clear indication of present-day interest in travel literature. It also signals nostalgia for a greater and simpler time when political correctness did not interfere with the urge to explore and depict foreign—and especially Arabic—lands. The review accompanying the picture in Weekendavisen is a shortened version of Danish literary scholar Frits Andersen’s article on Carsten Niebuhr’s travelogue arguing precisely this point. Whereas Renaissance travelogues focus on the cultural Other as simply bizarre, those from xii INTRODUCTION the late seventeenth century and beyond reveal an equally problematic romanticizing and Orientalizing view of the Other. In contrast, the preHerderian Enlightenment period allegedly holds up a few “honest” travelers and travel depictions.2 Niebuhr thus ends up playing a reassuring role, representing guilt-free Danish prominence. He is a scientific and literary national hero. His cartographic work was of international caliber and importance, and his travelogue can be considered “Danish world literature.”3 At the same time, his method was allegedly impartial and politically innocent. In short, Niebuhr is presented as a role model for how Westerners could—and still could learn to—interact with Easterners.4 Returning to Baurenfeind’s eighteenth-century copper etching, we may see it as illustrating some of the ethical and political issues—emphasized by postcolonial theory—involved in representing the cultural Other. Its focal point is the woman dancing in the middle. Although she is looking straight at the beholder (and is the only one of the etching’s seven figures doing so), she cannot be said to establish eye contact. Her gaze, soberly registering the beholder, is far less eye-catching than her rounded, right breast, peeking out above her robe. Her dancing—leaning, with outstretched arms—has caused her garment to drop, exposing her nipple. This seemingly inadvertent exposure is the composition’s true focal point—or rather, the tension between the emotionless gaze and the erotically revealed breast comprises the focal point. What is one to make of the discrepancy between the attentiveness of the facial expression and the eroticism of the perky breast? What is the woman ’s attitude to being exposed? What is the beholder’s? Is her sober gaze to reflect his presupposed impartial, unemotional, scientific, and thus innocent attitude? Is the relationship between Baurenfeind and the dancer— and subsequently the reader and the dancer—in any way mutual, reciprocal , and equal? Baurenfeind’s etching may be read as an emblem of cross-cultural representation with all the ethical and political issues this practice raises. The dancer’s undermined attempt at establishing eye contact is only too representative of the unequal relationship between subject and object. Mary Louise Pratt’s notion of a contact zone where “disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations INTRODUCTION xiii of domination and subordination” seems relevant.5 While the object in this case attempts to establish a relationship of reciprocal straightforwardness through her steady gaze, she is betrayed by the artist’s interest in her breast—or, we may choose to believe, by her own body and gender. Or perhaps she is not betrayed at all. The text accompanying the etching in Niebuhr’s travelogue...