Arabic Cultural Heritage in Nineteenth-Century Spain in Vasily Botkin’s Letters about Spain: Exoticism as an Aesthetic of Diversity

• Yastremski, Slava I. ^[1]
  1. [1] Bucknell University

     Bucknell University

     Borough of Lewisburg, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Mundo eslavo, ISSN 1579-8372, Nº. 13, 2014, págs. 113-127
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In the present paper I argue that an interpretation of Spanish culture and national character presented in Vasily Botkin’s Letters about Spain offers an alternative to the Orientalist picture of Spain in writings of his West European contemporaries. Botkin’s interpretation comes close to the notion of Exoticism as Diversity developed 80 years laterby a French cultural theorist, Victor Segalen. Traveling through an unknown space always involves an encounter with the Other who is translated into the cultural idioms of the home country. Botkin sets out on his Spanish journeyin search of the romanticized “ideal of Spain” but this preconceived ideal is altered by the discovery of Andalusia, where the presence of the Moorish culture was the strongest and which became for him the quintessence of Spain.In his search for the African origin of Spanish culture Botkin travels to Africa, finding the contemporary culture of the Arabs, living in exile in Tangier, lacking the splendor of the glorious Moorish past. After Tangier Botkin returns to southern Spain ending his journey in Granada, the “lost Paradise” of the Moors, where he regains his connection with the Arabic Exotic Other. And Botkin intends to keep this Paradise forever, translating it into his home space. Botkin inscribes himself in this exotic space and conceives himself as Segalen’s diverse Other, who is simultaneously the one and the other with this space.