18
Les yeux fixés au large et les cheveux au vent Nous nous embarquerons pour la Mer des Ténèbres Avec le coeur joyeux d'un jeune passager.
LL
Just as in the old days we would leave for China Our eyes looking out to sea and our hair streaming in the wind We shall sail henceforward for the Sea of Darkness Cheerful and lighthearted as a young traveller.
This is a major reversal, from the China ‘trip' into the Sea of Darkness. This is a remarkable and prophetic insight on the part of Baudelaire, a poetic formulation which is most relevant to our present-day intellectual crisis. We shall refer to it again a little later.
—
12
As the nineteenth century went on, as French political involvement in China and Vietnam became more effective, it was not unusual for French intellectuals to visit China and to empathize with her but always as isolated individuals. Such a one was Father Huc,1 a Catholic missionary whose minority voice, uncertain as it was, insisted on the specific values of Chinese culture and habits. China was a source of inspiration for diplomats posted there, such as Eugene Simon, whose book La Cité chinoise is a minor classic modelled on Fustel de Coulanges's standard essay La Cité grecque, and later Paul Claudel, a young consul in Tianjin, expressing his emotions in Connaissance de l'Est, a collection of poems in the Symbolist manner. French visitors to China included naval officers such as Pierre Loti, who had witnessed approvingly another sack of Peking by Western Allied forces after the Boxer Rebellion, or Victor Segalen, poet and archaeologist. Later still, intellectuals turned into revolutionaries, such as the young André Malraux who was involved in the 1926-27 Communist revolution in Canton, and who drew on this experience for his two major novels, Les Conquérants and La Condition humaine. Huc, Simon, Claudel, Segalen, Loti and Malraux had indeed very little in common except that they were somehow marginal figures on the French intellectual scene of their time. Even for those who were later to achieve international fame, such as Claudel and Malraux, China had not been much more than an
18
Les yeux fixés au large et les cheveux au vent Nous nous embarquerons pour la Mer des Tenebres Avec le coeur joyeux d'un jeune passager.
LL
Just as in the old days we would leave for China Our eyes looking out to sea and our hair streaming in
the wind
We shall sail henceforward for the Sea of Darkness Cheerful and lighthearted as a young traveller.
This is a major reversal, from the China ‘trip' into the Sea of Darkness. This is a remarkable and prophetic insight on the part of Baudelaire, a poetic formulation which is most relevant to our present-day intellectual crisis. We shall refer to it again a little later.
—
12
As the nineteenth century went on, as French political involve- ment in China and Vietnam became more effective, it was not unusual for French intellectuals to visit China and to empathize with her but always as isolated individuals. Such a one was Father Huc," a Catholic missionary whose minority voice, uncer- tain as it was, insisted on the specific values of Chinese culture and habits. China was a source of inspiration for diplomats posted there, such as Eugene Simon, whose book La Cité chinoise is a minor classic1
modelled on Fustel de Coulanges's standard essay La Cite grecque, -- and later Paul Claudel, a young consul in Tianjin, expressing his emotions in Connaissance de l'Est, a col- lection of poems in the Symbolist manner." French visitors to China included naval officers such as Pierre Loti, who had wit- nessed approvingly another sack of Peking by Western Allied forces after the Boxer Rebellion, or Victor Segalen, poet and ar- chaeologist. Later still, intellectuals turned into revolutionaries, such as the young André Malraux who was involved in the 1926- 27 Communist revolution in Canton, and who drew on this expe- rience for his two major novels, Les Conquérants and La Condi- tion humaine. Huc, Simon, Claudel, Segalen, Loti and Malraux had indeed very little in common except that they were somehow marginal figures on the French intellectual scene of their time. Even for those who were later to achieve international fame, such as Claudel and Malraux, China had not been much more than an
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