Orientalism - autonomous learning

362 Notes
29. Ernest Renan, "Des services rendus aux sciences historiques par la
philo logie," in Oeuvres completes 8: 1228.
30. Renan, Souvenirs, p. 892.
31. Foucault, The Order of Things, pp. 290-300. Along with the discrediting
of the Edenic origins of language, a number of other events-the Deluge,
the building of the Tower Babel-also were discredited as explanations. The
most comprehensive history of theories of linguistic origin is Arno Borst,
Der Turmbau von Babel: Geschichte der Meinungen aber Ursprung und
Vielfalt der Sprachen und Volker, 6 vols. (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann,
1957-63).
32. Quoted by Raymond Schwab, La Renaissance orientale (Paris: Payot,
1950), p. 69. On the dangers of too quickly succumbing to generalities about
Oriental discoveries, see the reflections of the distinguished contemporary
Sinologist Abel Remusat, Melanges postumes d'histoire et littirature orientales
(Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1843), p. 226 and passim.
33, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, chap. 16, in Selected
Poetry and Prose of Coleridge, ed. Donald A. Stauffer (New York: Random
House, 1951), pp. 276-7.
34. Benjamin Constant, Oeuvres, ed. Alfred RouIin (Paris: Gallimard,
1957), p. 78.
35. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 29.
36. Renan, De l'origine du langage, in Oeuvres completes, 8: 122.
37. Renan, "De la part des peuples semitiques dans I'histoire de la civilisation,"
in Oeuvres completes, 2: 320.
38. Ibid., p. 333.
39. Renan, "Trois Professeurs au College de France: Etienne Quatremere,"
in Oeuvres completes, 1: 129. Renan was not wrong about Quatremere, who
had a talent for picking interesting subjects to study and then making them
quite uninteresting. See his essays "Le Gout des Iivres chez les orientaux"
and "Des sciences chez les arabes," in his Melanges d'histoire et de philologie
orientales (Paris: E. Ducrocq, 1861), pp. I-57.
40. Honore de Balzac, La Peau de chagrin, voL 9 (I!:tudes philosophiques 1)
of La Comedie humaine, ed. Marcel Bouteron (Paris: Gallimard, 1950),
p. 39; Renan, Histoire generale des langues semitiques, p. 134.
41. See, for instance, De /'origine du langage, p. 102, and Histoire generale,
p.180.
42. Renan, L'Avenir de la science, p. 23. The whole passage reads as
follows: "Pour moi, je ne connais qu'un seul resultat a la science, c'est de
resoudre l'enigme, c'est de dire definitivement a I'homme Ie mot des choses,
c'est de I'expliquer a lui-meme, c'est de lui donner, au nom de la seule
autorite legitime qui est la nature humaine toute entiere, Ie symbole que les
religions lui donnaient tout fait et qu'ils ne peut plus accepter."
43. See Madeleine V.-David, Le Debat sur les ecritures et I'hiiroglyphe aux
XVII" et XVIII' siecles et ['application de la notion de dechiDrement aux
icritures mortes (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1965), p. 130.
44. Renan is mentioned only in passing in Schwab's La Renaissance
orientale, not at all in Foucault's The Order of Things, and only somewhat
disparagingly in Holger Pederson's The Discovery of Language; Linguistic
Science in the Nineteenth Century, trans. lohn Webster Spargo (1931;
reprint ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972). Max MUlier in
Notes 363
his Lectures on the Science of Language (1861-64; reprint ed., New York:
Scribner, Armstrong, & Co., 1875) and Gustave Dugat in his Histoire deli
orientalistes de l'Europe du XII' au XIX· sieele, 2 vols. (Paris: Adrien
Maisonneuve, 1868-70) do not mention Renan at all. James Darmesteter's
Essais Orientaux (Paris: A. Levy, 1883)-whose first item is a history,
"L'Orientalisme en France"-is dedicated to Renan but does not mention
his contribution. There are half-a-dozen short notices of Renan's production
in Jules Mohl's encyclopedic (and extremely valuable) quasi-logbook, Vingtsept
ans d'histoire des etudes orientales: Rapports faits ala Societe asiatique
de Paris de 1840 il1867, 2 vols. (Paris: Reinwald, 1879-80).
45. In works dealing with race and racism Renan occupies a position of
some importance. He is treated in the following: Ernest Seillii:re, La Philosophie
de I'imperialisme, 4 vols. (Paris: Pion, 1903-8); Theophile Simar, I!:tude
critique sur la formation de la doctrine des races au XV Ille stecle et son
expansion au XIX" sieele (Brussels: Hayez, 1922); Erich Voegelin, Rasse
und Staat (Tiibingen: 1. C. B. Mohr. 1933), and here one must also mention
his Die Rassenidee in der Geistesgeschichte von Ray bis Carus (Berlin:
Junker und Dunnhaupt, 1933), which, although it does not deal with Renan's
period, is an important complement to Rasse und Staat; Jacques Barzun,
Race: A Study in Modern Superstition (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.,
1937) .
46. In La Renaissance orientale Schwab has some brilliant pages on the
museum, on the parallelism between biology and linguistics, and on Cuvier,
Balzac, and others; see p. 323 and passim. On the library and its importance
for mid-nineteenth-century culture, see Foucault, "La Bibliotheque fantastique,"
which is his preface to Flaubert's La Tentation de Saint Antoine
(Paris; GalJimard, 1971), pp. 7-33. I am indebted to Professor Eugenio
Donato for drawing my attention to these matters; see his "A Mere Labyrinth
of Letters: Flaubert and the Quest for Fiction," Modern Language
Notes 89, no. 6 (December 1974): 885-910;
47. Renan, Histolre genera Ie, pp. 145-6.
48. See L'Avenir de la science, p. 508 and passim.
49. Renan, Histoire gemJrale, p. 214.
50. Ibid., p. 527. This idea goes back to Friedrich Schlegel's distinction
between organic and agglutinative languages, of which latter type Semitic is
an instance. Humboldt makes the same distinction, as have most Orientalists
since Renan.
51. Ibid., pp. 531-2.
52. Ibid., p. 515 and passim.
53. See Jean Seznec, Nouvelles I!:tudes sur "La Tentation de Saint Antoine"
(London: Warburg Institute, 1949), p. 80.
54. See Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Philosophie anatomlque: Des
monstruosites humaines (Paris: published by the author, 1822). The complete
title of Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's work is: Histoire generale et
particuliere des anomalies de I'organisation chez I'homme et les animaux,
ouvrage comprenante des recherches sur les caracteres, la classification,
/'influence physiologique et pathologique, les rapports gem!raux. les lois et
les causes des monstruosites, des variites et vices de conformation, ou traite
de teratologle, 3 vols. (Paris: J.-B. Bailliere, 1832-36). There are some
valuable pages on Goethe's biological ideas in Erich Heller, The Disinherited
Mind (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), pp. 3-34. See also Jacob, The
Logic of Life, and Canguilhem, La Connaissance de la vie, pp. 174-84, for