The Idylls of the Khan: Part II

A follow-up to a previous discussion of orientalism in literature, perhaps to be entitled “The Idylls of the Kaiser”.

In Orientalism, the landmark essay that inspired this series of articles, Edward Saïd writes the following:

At no time in German scholarship during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century could a close partnership have developed between Orientalists and a protracted, sustained national interest in the Orient. There was nothing in Germany to correspond to the Anglo-French presence in India, the Levant, North Africa. Moreover, the German Orient was almost exclusively a scholarly, or at least a classical, Orient: it was made the subject of lyrics, fantasies, and even novels, but it was never actual…Yet what German Orientalism had in common with Anglo French and later American Orientalism was a kind of intellectual authority over the Orient within Western culture. 1

Saïd proceeds to use this argument as grounds to exclude the history of German orientalism from his study. And while Germany may not have had a colonial presence comparable to that of England, France, or America, cultural imperialism and orientalism have informed German Imperialism and have shaped the history of the west. Thus, in order to patch this gap in Saïd’s work, it is necessary to address the impact of orientalism on German culture. Let us follow this historical thread as it ties together Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, and the political climate of modern Europe, with special attention to a few key figures in German literature. 

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We first visit the Swiss-German novelist Hermann Hesse, author of Siddhartha. Hesse published this book in 1923, at a time of great upheaval for Germany: the empire had collapsed in the wake of the First World War and the Weimar republic struggled to stabilize the war-torn nation. The West, in Hesse’s view, was falling apart, so he turned his gaze towards the “Orient”, specifically Buddhism. The title character of Siddhartha shares a name with and resembles Buddha in background and beliefs, but Hesse makes it clear he is not the Buddha, even having Siddhartha and the Buddha meet towards to end of the novel. This is a curious narrative choice because it separates the tenants of Buddhism from their Eastern historical context. In this way, Hesse can take ownership of the ideas and appropriate them at will.

While Siddhartha is a good book – I enjoyed reading it and recognize that it serves, for many, as an introduction to Buddhism – I take issue with the way Hesse removes Buddhism from its original context. Siddhartha, as a fictional product of a western imagination, serves to position Buddhism in stark contrast to the Western reader. Yet, Hesse is not the only German to engage this sort of Orientalist reductionism, nor is he the most influential. For that, we turn to the work of Herr Friedrich Nietzsche. 

You may know Nietzsche as the philosopher who, according to an orange-haired chain-smoking girl with thick-framed spectacles and a pierced septum you met in Oregon would “change your life, man”. On the other hand, you may know Nietzsche by the context in which we’ll address him here: as the author of Also Sprach Zarathustra. Published in parts between 1883 and 1891, the philosophical novel follows the titular prophet (also known as Zoroaster) as he ostensibly espouses the tenants of Zoroastrianism. In reality, this fictionalized version of the historical Persian prophet serves as a proxy for Nietzsche’s philosophical vision. Zarathustra develops the ideas of the übermensch, the will to power, and the death of god, ideas that are characteristic of Nietzsche’s oeuvre, but not necessarily of Zoroastrianism.

The internet has high opinions of Herr Nietzsche.

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Nietzsche and Hesse both write in response to a western world they see as morally flawed and deeply corrupt. Contrast this with the Orientalist writings of Calvino and Coleridge where the Khan as “other” is hallucinatory, bizarre, and dreamlike. Nietzche and Hesse, through Zoroaster and Buddha, respectively, establish a moral high ground by appropriating the “otherness” of the Orient.  To borrow the words of orientalist scholar and LSU historian Suzanne Marchand, “the ‘primitivism’ of the East had become a positive virtue, and the Orient no longer seemed weak or weird. It was now the West that was degenerate and idolatrous, abandoned by God and the Weltgeist.” 2 In Nietzsche’s case, the moral weight of his narrative choice allowed the Zarathustra motif to persist in German culture, inspiring Richard Strauss’ famous 1896 symphony, and, more insidiously, “contributed heavily to Aryanophilia.”3

In short, and to borrow the words of Suzanne Marchand, “the Orient had…been enrolled in a highly significant revision of German rhetoric about identity formation.” 4 This is a uniquely problematic form of appropriation. When a western empire separates “oriental” thought from its context and subsequently appropriates and integrates such thought into its own culture, then it can easily move from this cultural imperialism into what Saïd would call “actual” imperialism. We see most frightening example of this in how German infatuation with the Aryan people – that is, the Indo-European people of Persia and India who lived during the time of Zoroaster – led to ideas of Aryanism, racial superiority, anti-semitism, and Nazism. 

But there are less recognized signs of cultural imperialism that still persist today. If you walk through the Pergamon Museum, you can see the fabled Ishtar Gate from Babylon, in modern day Iraq, which was dismantled by archaeologists and rebuilt in Berlin. Yet, if you monitor the current refugee situation in Europe, you see a double standard of “Yes, bring us your cultural heritage, but keep your people”, an attitude that was mirrored five years ago during the Greek financial crisis.

The Ishtar Gate, Pergamon Museum, Berlin

This history of orientalism has lasting consequences, and while I have focused on Germany, I have done so only to patch what I see is a glaring gap in Saïd’s historical analysis and not to suggest that other western empires, particularly contemporary America included, are without blame. In fact, if we shift to a more modern perspective, present-day America is perhaps even guiltier of dangerous cultural imperialism. Return next month as we cover that topic in “The Idylls of the Khan, Part III”. 

Read more of Vernon's work on Floodmark.

1. Orientalism by Edward Saïd (1978), 27.

2. “German Orientalism and the Decline of the West” by Suzanne Marchand (2001), 472.

3.  Marchand, 466.

4.  Marchand, 473.