Originally Posted by
Kaputnik
Two posts in a row, here, but with nearly a month between them, I trust that's excusable.
A couple of days ago I finished Eothen, by Alexander William Kinglake; I seem to have trouble picking up anything written later than the 19th century these days. Published in 1844, this is an account of a trip the author had taken ten years before that in what we should now call the Middle East, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, and Syria, all within the Ottoman Empire at the time. There is also a brief stop in Cyprus. The book is apparently quite well known, but I only learned of it by chance earlier this year, and with a free E Edition available, decided to have a look.
The book is full of the confidence of a 19th century world traveling, Empire building Englishman. Kinglake is sharply observant of the people he meets and how they live, but he is also very conscious of himself, and what he is learning from his travels.
There are a number of fascinating passages. He visits the aging Lady Hester Stanhope, living in seclusion "among the Arabs"; their conversation is fascinatingly bizarre. Traveling toward Jerusalem, his guide badly misleads his party (through incompetence rather than malice) and his interpreter seriously suggests that they kill the guide, since he's useless. He doesn't go along with this, but reflects that if he did, nobody would question his right to do so.
Plague is a constant presence. In fact, when at the start of the journey, he leaves the Austrian domains for Turkey, there are quarantine regulations which would make it harder for him to return. In Cairo, he observes a death rate that seems staggering, but takes a fatalistic attitude, even when he feels a little ill and wonders if he has the plague. Of course, he is totally oblivious to the causes of the disease; germ theory is a long way away, yet, and effective treatments even further. But it's interesting how even in the cities affected by the plague (it is also at Istanbul during his visit) people just carry on with their lives. Kinglake, in the end, decides not to worry about it, and is lucky. That's just as well, since if he'd succumbed, he never would have gotten around to writing this book.
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