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aventure de jeunesse as had been the case of young René Leys, the intriguing adventurer, the mythomaniac hero of Segalen's best novel, the secret lover of China's last Empress.
Segalen's novel may allow me to say one more word on his unusual cultural itinerary, which began in Polynesia where he was searching for old Polynesian myths and also for Gauguin's manuscripts, and which ended up in China with René Leys and his cryptic poems Stèles. China and the Pacific probably fascinated Segalen because of their mutual irreducibility. They utterly contrast one with the other, one in its historical as well as geographical compactness, the other in its marine immensity and its tiny, highly diversified societies. It is hardly surprising that so few Western intellectuals have combined an active interest in both. My own intellectual detours between Chinese studies and the problems of the Pacific have probably brought me closer to Segalen's rather unique position.
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All these lively but isolated figures have left us with highly valuable literary contributions. However, they expressed little interest in China's historical fate and political plight. They were concerned with China's essence. China for them, or most of them, was a kind of cultural and aesthetic curiosity. And I am not sure that Malraux does not fall into this category, whatever the political setting of his novels. The powerful voice of Victor Hugo, combining artistic concern and political involvement and condemning from his Guernsey exile the sack of the old Summer Palace in Peking in 1860, has remained distinctly isolated:
Somewhere in a dark corner of the world, there was a marvel of the world and this marvel was named the Summer Palace... It was a kind of frightening unknown masterpiece of Asian civilisation on the horizon of European civilisation.
All the treasures of our cathedrals would not match this formidable Museum of the East.
Two bandits once entered the Summer Palace... One of the victors filled his pockets, whereas the other filled his treasure chests... In the face of history one