Seul dans l'Orient lointain: les voyages de Nerval et de Du Camp (review)

Lise Schreier's study of Gérard de Nerval's and Maxime Du Camp's writings about the Near and Middle East and Egypt is a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship dealing with Orientalism. She has identified an important and hitherto overlooked aspect of the subject: the tendency of French writers to portray their travels as having been undertaken alone, in a heroic confrontation by a courageous and solitary Western traveller with an exotic and alien Orient. Schreier notes that most nineteenth-century French travellers were accompanied by a close friend. Nerval travelled with the journalist Joseph de Fanfrède, and later with the painter Camille Rogier; Du Camp with Flaubert, but previously, to Algeria, with Lottin de Laval. Lamartine travelled with his wife Marianne and his secretary Charles Alexandre, both of whom contributed to his Voyage. Edmond About (Le Fellah: souvenirs d'Égypte, 1869) travelled with Lucien Prévost-Paradol, Jean-Jacques Ampère ('Voyage en Égypte et en Nubie', Revue des deux mondes, 1846–49) with Paul Durand, Théophile Gautier (L'Orient, 1884) with Noël Parfait, Eugène Fromentin with Armand Dumesnil, and Auguste Mariette with Ernest Renan. Only Joseph Michaud and Joseph Poujoulat, travelling together, openly recorded their shared experiences, in alternating chapters of their seven-volume Correspondance d'Orient (1830–31). Most writers simply eliminated their travel companions from their narratives. Schreier notes that critical studies have also tended to ignore reality:

Les études ayant pour thème l'autre et le double en Orient ne prodiguent pas plus d'informations sur la question: pour Jean-Claude Berchet, Véronique Magri ou encore Sarga Moussa, l'autre, c'est en effet toujours 'l'Oriental'. On ne s'imagine donc pas qu'il puisse être français et capable de tenir une plume.

(p. 11)

Whilst it has been widely recognized that writers were keen to portray the Orient as they imagined it, or reconstructed it from reading earlier accounts, less attention has been paid to investigating precisely how and why they invariably presented heroic versions of themselves as lone pioneers finding renewal and new identities amidst ancient lands. Following an insightful Introduction, the book is divided into two main parts: 'Du Rhin au Nil', on Nerval, and 'Du Nil aux égouts de Paris', on Du Camp. Schreier shows how both writers' journeys were portrayed as rites of passage: Nerval's Voyage en Orient was meant as a demonstration of his independence and sanity; Du Camp's four books were intended as proof of his Orientalist credentials as a photographer and meticulous scholar. Du Camp's Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie (1852), containing 125 plates, was the first book to be published that included photographs. Neither in this nor in Le Nil (1854) does he once mention Flaubert, whereas the latter, in his own Voyage en Orient, makes frequent reference to their many shared adventures. Schreier analyses various possible reasons for these differences of approach and her conclusions are plausible and interesting. Two areas mentioned in her Conclusion could profitably have been explored further: how attitudes of colonialist politics are reflected in these accounts, and possible differences in the insights and approaches of women travellers of the period, several of whose published works are cited in the detailed Bibliography.