第8章 "EOTHEN"(3)

"Another lion gave another roar, And the first lion thought the last a bore."The popularity of "Eothen" is a paradox: it fascinates by violating all the rules which convention assigns to viatic narrative. It traverses the most affecting regions of the world, and describes no one of them: the Troad - and we get only his childish raptures over Pope's "Homer's Iliad"; Stamboul - and he recounts the murderous services rendered by the Golden Horn to the Assassin whose SERAIL, palace, council chamber, it washes; Cairo - but the Plague shuts out all other thoughts; Jerusalem - but Pilgrims have vulgarized the Holy Sepulchre into a Bartholomew Fair. He gives us everywhere, not history, antiquities, geography, description, statistics, but only KINGLAKE, only his own sensations, thoughts, experiences. We are told not what the desert looks like, but what journeying in the desert feels like. From morn till eve you sit aloft upon your voyaging camel; the risen sun, still lenient on your left, mounts vertical and dominant; you shroud head and face in silk, your skin glows, shoulders ache, Arabs moan, and still moves on the sighing camel with his disjointed awkward dual swing, till the sun once more descending touches you on the right, your veil is thrown aside, your tent is pitched, books, maps, cloaks, toilet luxuries, litter your spread-out rugs, you feast on scorching toast and "fragrant" tea, sleep sound and long; then again the tent is drawn, the comforts packed, civilization retires from the spot she had for a single night annexed, and the Genius of the Desert stalks in.