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PARTISAN REVIEW
Latin America. Others found redemptive nobility in the locales of
the great non-Western civilizations of Asia and the Middle East.
China, India, and Persia probably played this role in the
imaginations of the greatest number of Western cultural pilgrims.
What all of these expatriates had in common-no matter what the
destination of their actual or imaginary pilgrimages-was the
conviction that the West is sadly lacking in qualities to be found
elsewhere-light from the East, or true sensuousness from Africa, or
authentic dignity from the Bedouins.
In
many instances this stance
has included overt religious expectations: Asia, especially, for very
understandable reasons, has been perceived by many Westerners, at
least since the eighteenth century, as the repository of sacred wisdom
lacking in the West.
In
other instances the stance has been
secularized, as it were, while still retaining the aspect of awed
admiration for an allegedly superior culture. Thus one may no
longer look to China for the lost secrets of some Buddhist or Taoist
plan of salvation, but rather for superior taste, greater wisdom in
human relations-or, for that matter, the perfect realization of the
socialist ideal.
Paul Hollander, in his recent book
Political Pilgrims,
provides a
chronicle of the inanities pronounced by assorted Western visitors to
Maoist China. (He does so, incidentally, with very little of the
malice that this topic so richly deserves.) This sort of
chinoiserie
(to
use an eighteenth-century term) is not new. What Mao was to this
generation of supplicant barbarians visiting the Forbidden City, the
Dowager-Empress Tzu-hsi was earlier in this century.
In
The Last
Empress
Daniele Yare describes the effect this particularly wicked old
lady had.
It is not surprising that foreigners fell under the charm of her
personality. . . . They would feel the thrill of entering
forbidden precincts.... They would move through the
pavilions of the palace, among silent eunuchs in embroidered
robes, and they would gaze out over the lotus-covered lakes
while the breeze brought to them the muffled boom of temple
bells. And then, as at the touch of some fairy wand, the lure of
China would draw their thoughts away from all bitterness and
resentment. That magic appeal to the senses, that veil of
mystery, that charm of grandeur and riches and power
undreamt of-how could poor little Mrs. So-and-so resist? ...
A few hours later would find her at her desk, writing against
