ENCHANTMENT / DISENCHANTMENT: CONCEPTIONS OF HAREM AND SERAGLIO IN SELECTED LITERARY SOURCES FROM 1608 TO 1852

STEFANIE STEINER (KARLSRUHE)

In 1938, the French philosopher Paul Valéry (1871-1945) made a try to give a general description of the 'Orient', probably not even aware of the fact that he actually described with an astounding lucidity the development of an oriental myth generated by (Western) literary fiction:

Pour que ce nom produise à l'esprit de quelqu'un, son plein et entier effet, il faut, sur toute chose, n'avoir jamais été dans la contrée mal déterminée qu'il désigne.Il ne faut la connaître par l'image, le récit, la lecture, et quelques objets, que de la sorte la moins érudite, la plus inexacte, et même la plus confuse. C'est ainsi que l'on se compose une bonne matière de songe. Il y faut un mélange d'espace et de temps, de pseudo-vrai et de faux certain, d'infimes détails et de vues grossièrement vastes. C'est là l'ORIENT de l'esprit.1

('For the Orient to develop its full scope in the mind, it is essentially important never to have travelled to the undefined region the term denotes. Illustrations, narrations, readings and a few small items should only give you the most inaccurate, unscholarly, even nebulous "knowledge" to deliver you with a good foil for your own dreams. It needs a blend of space and time, of ostensible truths and deceitful certainties, of tiny details and wide perspectives. This constitutes the ORIENT of the mind.')

Predestined for this process denoted by Valéry - an unstructured, unsystematic fictional approach towards a foreign culture mainly based on fantasy and dream - was the harem. This secret, hidden place, inaccessible to the Western male's curiosity seemed to be synonymous with promiscuity, with a promise to perfect sensual and sexual fulfilment - even if seen only from the outside. Its inaccessibility did not help at all to avoid wildest speculations, just the contrary: Lacking trusted facts about the real life in the harem, doubtful lores depending on western males' fancies were invented and presented for real in literary descriptions. The less you knew for sure about the harem, the better it was for projecting a lot of secret wishes and desires upon the empty canvas of the term.

In the following, I'd like to give an account of some examples taken out of selected literary sources. How is a fictitious harem scene literally constructed? What are the intentions of the authors? The selected examples are intentionally taken out of different countries and different literary genres, the spectre ranging from letters to travelogues, from romances to poems. The time frame considered extends over the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries.

FICTION AND REALITY

[.] Qu'entends-je au loin?. des cours. sont-ce des voix de femmes?

Des chants murmurés par des âmes?

Ces concerts!. suis-je au ciel? - Du sang. c'est le sérail!2

('[.] What do I hear from far away? . these choirs . are that women's voices?

These chants whispered from the souls?

These concerts! . am I in heaven? - Blood. this is the sérail!')

To western cultures, the 'Orient' often appeared as a menace as well as a strange, fascinating and seducing world. Reports of cruelties during the Turk wars were constantly perpetuated, myths of immeasurable treasures circulated in the Occident, and legends of the secret harem where hundreds of beautiful women were available to a mighty sultan's disposal ignited the fancy of western males. Especially the idea of polygamy attributed to the oriental world seemed to be very tempting - in fact, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at least two bills were introduced to the English parliament to legally allow multiple marriage.3 At about the same time, in the German speaking world some treatises defending the Vielweyberei ('polygamy') were anonymously published.4

On the other hand, there were conservative authors such as the Swabian clergyman Salomon Schweigger (1551-1622) who, in the year 1608, published a Newe Reyßbeschreibung auß Teutschland Nach Constantinopel und Jerusalem [.] Mit hundert schönen newen Figuren5 ('New description of the journey from Germany to Constantinople and Jerusalem [.] With Hundred fine new figures'). Though Schweigger never explicitely mentions the term harem, his book contains a detailed account of the seraglio building - from the outside.6 According to his vivid description, however, the daily life of the Turkish male does not seem to be too appealing; the Turkish husband is rather depicted as a deplorable person, mistreated by his wives who keep him on his toes all day long. While all the world shudders in the face of the Turkish army, their warriors shudder in the face of their 'house dragons' (or so Schweigger claims to know):

Eigentlich davon zu reden, sein die Türcken ihrer Weiber Trippelknecht, die da müssen die Haushaltung versorgen mit Brot, Fleisch, Kuchenspeis und ihnen allerlei Nahrung zutragen. In solcher Weil sitzen die Weiber daheim bei ihren guten Gespielen, verrichten ihr Geschwätz. Oder wenn sie gut Wetter haben und schön ist, spazieren sie hin und wider in der Stadt zu ihren Gespielschaften, ziehen rottenweis - etwan ihrer 10 oder 20 miteinander - oder gehen solcher Gespielschaft ins Bad. [.] Diese Gnadfrauen treiben kein Arbeit, weder mit Spinnen, Nähen, Stricken, Weben, Wirken oder dergleichen weiblicher Arbeit. Sie wissen nicht, was Haushalten ist - unsere Kinder in der Christenheit, wann sie mit ihren Docken und mit sich kurzweiln, können dasjenig, was zur Haushaltung dienet, besser und mit mehrerm Verstand anschicken (als Essen-, Trinkenkochen etc.) dann diese türckischen Schlumpen ihr Hauswesen -, sondern sitzen daheim im Haus wie ein Gast, der sich keines Dings annimmt. Jedoch haben sie viel Magde [.].7

('If it comes to that, the Turks are their women's servants who have to organize bread, meat, cake, and other types of food. Meanwhile, the women are sitting at home with their female friends, chatting away. Or, if the weather is fine, they go for a walk to their companions, assemble outside in groups of 10 or 20, or go to the hamam. [.] These idle women don't do any housework, don't spin, sew, knit, weave or do any other such female works. They don't even know what housework is - our children in Christianity, when playing with their spindles, are more competent of and skilled in housematters such as the preparation of drinks and food, than these Turkish slumps - they behaving like guests in their houses, not caring for anything. But they do have maidservants [.].')

Perhaps Schweigger, a protestant clergyman, slightly 'modulated' his report with intent to convince his contemporary readers of the nonexistent desirability of the Turkish harem life. So, many of his descriptions are indeed tinted by negative feelings towards the relaxed oriental approach to physicalness - describing oriental belly-dancers, for example, Schweigger declined their dancing as voluptuous, shameless, and even obscene.8

Die Weibsbilder haben ihre besondere Musicam - in jeder Hand zwei Hölzlein, ein jedes größer dann ein Messerheft. Solche regieren sie mit Greifen und Kläppern, gauklen im selbigen mit ausgestreckten Armen. Ihrer 2 oder 3 treten also gegeneinander mit üppiger, leichtfertiger Bewegung des Leibs, singen schandbare, unzüchtige Buhlerliedlein darein [.].

('The women have their very special music - two sticks in each hand, each of them bigger than a kniveblade. With these sticks, they are clapping, playing joyfully with their hands spread out wide. Two or three of them are confronting each other with lascivious, frivolous movements of their bodies, chanting disgraceful, obscene paramour's songs [.]'.)

To the severe Swabian cleric, singing and dancing (probably the joy of life in general?) must have appeared highly dubious. Accordingly, his travelogue also seems to be a deliberate sermon against a foreign culture. Schweigger's susceptibility towards the Orient as a world of its own rights, is considerably narrowed by his own upbringing in an environment of Swabian Protestantism. There is an interesting fact we should always keep in mind: every travelogue author was gravely influenced by his own educational and cultural background, religion and upbringing, and every author, hence following his own intentions (f.e. using the foreign culture as a strong contrast or even as a means to hold up a mirror to the own culture, as Montesquieu did in his Lettres persanes in 1728).

FEMALE VS. MALE APPROACHES

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an immense number of printed travelogues, novels, plays, opera libretti and poems dealt with oriental matters on very different levels and with very different intentions: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), for example, strove for an unprejudiced view of the foreign culture and manners in her letters from the Turkey embassy where she lived between 1717 and 1718 with her husband, the British ambassador. Her letters were only posthumously printed in 1763, but there were several manuscript copies in circulation.9 Montagu must have been a very remarkable person; she tried to get to know as much as possible of the oriental mind and manners, she learnt Arabic and Persian to be able to read the foreign-language poetry without distorting the original style of speech by translation.10 To her new, oriental...