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This book is dedicated to the memory of Tobin Siebers (January 29, 1953–January 29, 2015), with gratitude for his outstanding scholarship on the aesthetics of disability.
Part I. Representation
II. L ook
11. Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite Women’s Sports
Peg
Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser Part IV. Practice
12. B ody Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues
Yuriko Saito
13. White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Un-Suturing
George Yancy
14. Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating
Richard Shusterman
15. Sexual Desire, Inequality, and the Possibility of Transformation
Ann J. Cahill
16. Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness
Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin
List of Illustrations
1.1 Renée Cox. The Yo Mama, 1993. 16
1.2 Unknown maker, French. Nude study of a Black Female, about 1855. 19
1.3 Map from Henry Rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines. 23
1.4 Ernest Benecke and Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard. Zofia, Femme du Caire, 1853. 25
Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
1.5 Kara Walker. Detail of Camptown Ladies, 1998. 28
1.6 Kara Walker. Detail of Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, 1994.
1.7 Kara Walker. A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant, 2014. 33
8.1 Film still of Mary Duffy in Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back (1996), directed by Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell. Marquette, MI: Brace Yourself Productions.
11.10 Jean-Léon Gérôme. A Roman Slave Market, c.1884. 212
List of Contributors
Ann J. Cahill is Professor of Philosophy at Elon University. She has written extensively on the philosophy of the body. She is author of Overcoming Objectification: A Carnal Ethics (Routledge, 2010) and Rethinking Rape (Cornell, 2001), as well as articles including “In Defense of Self-Defense” (Philosophical Papers, 2011), “Getting to My Fighting Weight” (Hypatia, 2010), “Feminist Pleasure and Feminine Beautification” (Hypatia, 2003), and “Foucault, Rape, and the Construction of the Feminine Body” (Hypatia, 2000). She is the co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Social Philosophy dedicated to the theme of “Miscarriage, Reproductive Loss, and Fetal Death.”
Maria del Guadalupe Davidson is Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of Oklahoma. Her research areas include rhetorical theory and criticism, the intersection of race and gender, black feminism, and Africana philosophical thought. Her new book Black Women, Agency, and the New Black Feminism is forthcoming from Routledge. Dr. Davidson’s most recent publications include the co-edited volume Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classrooms: Scholars of Color Reflect (Routledge, 2014). Dr. Davidson is currently working on a book project about black women and curriculum design, and a larger academic and social project that explores the one hundred-year anniversary of women’s suffrage.
Stephen Davies is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland. He is the author of many articles and books, including The Artful Species (Oxford University Press, 2013). He is a former President of the American Society for Aesthetics.
A. W. Eaton is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of IllinoisChicago. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in both philosophy and art history in 2003. She works on topics in feminism, aesthetics and philosophy of art, value theory, and Italian Renaissance painting. Her special interests include the epistemological and ontological status of aesthetic value, the relationship between ethical and artistic value, feminist critiques of pornography, representations of rape in the European artistic tradition, and artifact teleology. Professor Eaton was a Laurence Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton’s Center for Human Values in 2005–6. She is the editor of the Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art section of Philosophy Compass.
C. Winter (Chong-suk) Han is Assistant Professor of Sociology/Anthropology at Middlebury College. He is author of Geisha of a Different Kind: Race and Sexuality in Gaysian America (New York University Press, 2015) and many articles about the intersection of race and sexuality, including “Sexy Like a Girl, Horny Like a Boy: Contemporary
‘Gay’ Narratives about Gay Asian Men” (Critical Sociology, 2008), “Asian Girls Are Prettier: Gendered Presentations as Stigma Management among Gay Asian Men” (Symbolic Interaction, 2009), and “They Don’t Want to Cruise Your Type: Gay Men of Color and the Racial Politics of Exclusion” (Social Identities, 2007). Prior to becoming an academic, he was an award-winning journalist and served for three years as the editor of the International Examiner, the longest continuously publishing pan-Asian American newspaper in the United States.
Sherri Irvin is Presidential Research Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of Oklahoma. She works on the philosophy of contemporary art, feminist aesthetics, the nature of aesthetic experience, and the connection of aesthetics to social justice. Her book Immaterial: A Philosophy of Contemporary Art is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Sheila Lintott is Associate Professor and the John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University. She is editor of Motherhood—Philosophy for Everyone: The Birth of Wisdom (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); with Maureen Sander-Staudt, co-editor of Philosophical Inquiries into Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering: Maternal Subjects (Routledge, 2011); with Allen Carlson, co-editor of Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty (Columbia, 2008); and author of a number of journal articles and book chapters on feminist philosophy, philosophy of art and aesthetics, the aesthetics of nature, and philosophy of friendship.
Barbara Gail Montero is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has published papers on a wide range of topics related to the mind and is author of a forthcoming Oxford University Press book, Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation. You can find out more about her and her research at <http://barbaramontero.wordpress.com/>.
Glenn Parsons is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University, Toronto. He is the author of Aesthetics and Nature (Continuum Press, 2008), Functional Beauty (with Allen Carlson; Oxford, 2008), and The Philosophy of Design (Polity Press, forthcoming).
Deborah L. Rhode is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and the Director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford University. She is the former chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession, and the former director of Stanford’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She writes primarily in the area of legal ethics and gender equity and is author or editor of twenty-seven books and over 300 articles. Her books on gender include What Women
Want (Oxford University Press, 2014), The Beauty Bias (Oxford University Press, 2010), Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies for Reform (with Barbara Kellerman; Jossey-Bass, 2009), The Difference “Difference” Makes: Women and Leadership (Stanford University Press, 2003), and Speaking of Sex (Harvard University Press, 1997).
Yuriko Saito is Professor of Philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her research fields are everyday aesthetics, Japanese aesthetics, and environmental aesthetics, and she has published a number of articles and book chapters on these subjects. Her book Everyday Aesthetics was published by Oxford University Press (2008) and she is currently working on a sequel for the same publisher.
Richard Shusterman is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at Florida Atlantic University. He has authored several books, including Thinking through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics (Cambridge, 2012), Body Conscious: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (Cambridge, 2008; translated into six languages to date), Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (Cornell, 2000; four translations), Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (Routledge, 1997; five translations), and Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Blackwell, 1992; 2nd ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2000; fourteen translations), and over 200 articles, many of which treat aesthetic and other philosophical issues related to the body. He is known as the founder of the discipline of somaesthetics.
Tobin Siebers was the V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan. He is the author of ten books, most recently of two volumes in the field of disability studies, Disability Theory (Michigan, 2008) and Disability Aesthetics (Michigan, 2010). In 2011 he received the Senior Scholar Award of the Society for Disability Studies.
Jill Sigman is a movement artist who works with live body and found materials. Her work lies at the intersection of dance, visual installation, and social practice art. Sigman has been pioneering in blurring boundaries between media and in exploring environmental issues and themes of sustainability through live performance. She has been honored as a Choreographic Fellow at the Center for Creative Research at NYU, a Creative Campus Fellow at Wesleyan University, a Choreographic Fellow at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, a Movement Research Artist in Residence, and through numerous other grants and residencies internationally. Sigman was trained in classical ballet, modern dance, art history, and analytic philosophy. She holds a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University, and has published in The Journal of Philosophical Research, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, TkH (Journal for Performing Arts Theory), and Contact Quarterly. Sigman is Artistic Director of jill sigman/thinkdance, founded in 1998 and based in New York City: <http://www. thinkdance.org>.
Shirley Anne Tate is Associate Professor in “Race” and Culture and Director of the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS) in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. She is also a Research Fellow and Visiting Professor in the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the Free State, South Africa. She is author of Black Women’s Bodies and the Nation: Race, Gender and Culture (Palgrave, 2015), Caribbean Racisms (with Ian Law; Palgrave, 2015), Black Beauty: Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics (Ashgate, 2009), Black Skins, Black Masks: Hybridity, Dialogism, Performativity (Ashgate, 2005), and several articles about feminism, gender, Black identity and “mixed race,” including “Playing in the Dark: Being Unafraid and Impolite” (European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2011), “Not All the Women Want to be White: Decolonizing Beauty Studies” (Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez et al., eds., Decolonizing European Sociology: Transdisciplinary Approaches, Ashgate, 2010), “Translating Melancholia: A Poetics of Black Interstitial Community” (Community, Work & Family, 2007), and “Black Beauty: Shade, Hair and Anti-Racist Aesthetics” (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2007).
Edward B. Weiser, MD, FACOG, FACS, is a gynecologic oncologist who is Adjunct Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Indiana University School of Medicine. He retired from the active practice of medicine in 2007 after more than thirty years. He is the author of many research articles on women’s reproductive health and clinical oncology in journals including Gynecologic Oncology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Radiology. He currently writes on topics in medical ethics, feminism, and aesthetics.
Peg Brand Weiser is an artist, Emerita Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), editor of Beauty Unlimited (Indiana University Press, 2013) and Beauty Matters (Indiana University Press, 2000), and co-editor with Carolyn Korsmeyer of Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics (Penn State University Press, 1995). Her articles on feminist art and aesthetics have appeared in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, and various anthologies. She currently chairs the Feminist Caucus Committee of the American Society for Aesthetics.
George Yancy is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He received his BA (with honors) in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, his first Master’s degree from Yale University in Philosophy, and his second Master’s degree in Africana Studies from NYU, where he received a distinguished Fellowship. His PhD (with distinction) is in Philosophy from Duquesne University. He has authored, edited, or co-edited seventeen books. His first authored book received an Honorable Mention from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, and three of his edited books have been selected as CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles. He is editor of the Philosophy of Race book series at Lexington Books. His
series of interviews on race that appears in The Stone at the New York Times is well known. He has twice won the Duquesne University McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship. His most recent edited book is entitled White Self-Criticality beyond Anti-Racism: How Does it Feel to be a White Problem? (2015).
Introduction Why Body Aesthetics?
Sherri Irvin
The body is a rich object for aesthetic inquiry. Bodies feature in many everyday aesthetic experiences: our own body is always available to us for aesthetic assessment (for better or worse), and we assess and respond to the bodily appearances of others both consciously and unconsciously. This practice can be a source of delight for both the subject and the object of the gaze. The body, whether depicted or actively performing, features centrally in aesthetic experiences of many art forms and sports as well.
A crucial thing about bodies is that they are not detachable from the persons whose bodies they are. The body is deeply intertwined with one’s identity and sense of self, and aesthetic consideration of bodies thus raises acute ethical questions. Notoriously, the aesthetic assessment of bodies can perpetuate a variety of forms of oppression. Women are disproportionately subject to narrowly defined standards of beauty that are, for many, difficult, costly, or impossible to meet; and compliance with these standards is unfairly used as a criterion for the allocation of a wide variety of social and economic goods (Rhode 2010). Standards of attractiveness in white-dominated societies are derived from norms related to white bodies, leading to judgments of exoticism and/or ugliness for members of other racial groups (Craig 2002; Hobson 2005; Tate 2012). People with visible disabilities may be seen as freakish and treated as asexual by virtue of the ways in which their bodies differ from societal norms of attractiveness (Garland-Thomson 1997; Wilkerson 2002). And people whose gender expression is thought not to fit with their presumed biological sex are sometimes subjected to harsh aesthetic judgments that motivate social penalties ranging from shunning to physical violence (Valentine 2007).
Aesthetic standards thus serve a disciplinary function, maintaining oppressive norms of race, gender, and sexuality. They also condemn those judged ugly to penalties in domains seemingly unrelated to attractiveness: worse education, parental care, and healthcare; diminished employment prospects and earnings; harsher punishment in schools during childhood and in the criminal justice system in adulthood; and reduced
Financial support was provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Office of the Provost, and the Department of Philosophy, University of Oklahoma.
likelihood of receiving needed help, among many others (e.g. Hamermesh 2011; Hatfield and Sprecher 1986; Rhode 2010).
Aesthetic theories focused on artworks and natural environments have tended to strive for objective standards of beauty, linked to an expectation that apt aesthetic judgments about particular objects will converge. Evolutionary psychologists have sometimes promoted a similar approach in relation to the body. We have evolved, it is suggested, to find specific bodies attractive because these bodies are the most reproductively fit; apt judgments about the aesthetic value of bodies will thus converge. But convergence of aesthetic judgments about bodies simply magnifies the unjust effects discussed above by concentrating them on a few people. Moreover, temporal and cross-cultural variability in standards of attractiveness may lead us to question the viability of objective standards of aesthetic value when it comes to the body—and perhaps when it comes to other objects as well. Since the nature and grounding of aesthetic value are fundamental questions in aesthetics, thinking about the body from an aesthetic perspective may thus occasion a fresh look at some of the most basic theoretical issues in aesthetics.
The aesthetics of the body goes beyond bodily attractiveness to include assessments of the body’s performance and functioning. This is obviously true in the arts: in dance and often in theater, the performer’s style of movement and physical presence may be crucial to the aesthetic success of the work. In sports, aesthetic assessment of the body’s functioning and sheer physical attractiveness can be tied up in complex ways with our evaluation of athletic performance. And in everyday life, the way in which one deploys the body can be more aesthetically efficacious than one’s looks narrowly construed. The aesthetic potential of the performing body thus deserves vastly more attention than it has received, particularly within philosophy.
The aesthetics of the body is not only about bodies assessed from the outside. It is also about how aesthetic experience is felt “from the inside.” While philosophical discussion of aesthetic experience was long focused on the visual and auditory domains, with other senses treated as too crude to be of interest, contemporary aestheticians have defended the idea that deeply somatic experiences involving the tactile and proprioceptive senses can also be genuinely aesthetic (e.g. Irvin 2008; Korsmeyer 2002; Montero 2006; Saito 2007; Shusterman 2008, 2012). The aesthetics of felt bodily experience is a rich vein for further philosophical attention.
This volume is divided into four sections which offer a sampling of several intellectual paths down which an aesthetics of the body may lead us, with special attention to connections with ethics and social justice.
Representation
Representation of the body in art, media, and culture shapes identities and oppressive practices. Representation can also be used to resist, reform, or undermine such practices.
As Maria del Guadalupe Davidson discusses in “Black Silhouettes on White Walls: Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern,” photography and even cartography have long been used didactically to propagate stereotypes about and forms of oppression against Black women. When contemporary artist Kara Walker deploys those same stereotypes in her work, she is sometimes accused of being complicit in white supremacy. But as Davidson argues, Walker’s works have an antiracist didactic function: in making visible the simultaneous violence and absurdity of the objectification of Black subjects, Walker instructs viewers that the copious residue of historical stereotyping must be not swept aside as an irrelevant relic, but actively faced and eradicated. Walker’s most recent work also lures viewers into expressions of racialized objectification, thereby forcing us to confront the fact that anti-Black violence remains fully alive today and cannot be dismissed as a mere figment of a racist past. Davidson thus demonstrates the power of representations both to reinscribe and to expose and undermine oppressive practices.
In “Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression,” A. W. Eaton takes on anti-fat bias. Aesthetic preferences for thinness are often constructed as natural and founded in evolutionary pressures, when in fact body-type preferences are culturally variable and historically malleable over the course of just a few decades. While concern for others’ health is sometimes used as a justification for fat-shaming and other forms of anti-fat discrimination, these forms of oppression impose health costs of their own, and are founded on ill-substantiated beliefs about the connection between fat and health.
Eaton advocates resistance to fat oppression via an Aristotelian strategy of altering bodily taste through the skillful selection and use of representations. As she notes, the strategy of consciously altering the kinds of representations consumed by an individual or a society can be extended to other forms of appearance-related oppression based in race, disability, age, gender identity, and other visible markers of “difference.”
Media representations are a major force in the construction of gender. As C. Winter Han argues in “From ‘Little Brown Brothers’ to ‘Queer Asian Wives’: Constructing the Asian Male Body,” the media shape our understanding of masculinity both by presenting exemplars thereof and by indicating who is excluded: particularly Asian men, who are systematically feminized. The construction of masculinity is thus also an exercise in the construction of gendered and racialized stereotypes. These stereotypes target both gay and straight Asian men: from Korean pop star PSY, whose heterosexual encounters in the wildly popular video for “Gangnam Style” are packaged as comical and asexual, to an ad by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, in which a gay Asian man is presented as the loving “wife” who supports his white husband wishing to serve in the military, Asian men are used to define the boundaries of masculinity by their placement outside those boundaries. The issue is not that these images are problematic in themselves. It is, rather, that media representations of Asian men are narrowly circumscribed within the domain of the feminine, and that feminized self-presentations and feminine roles are broadly stigmatized, especially when assumed by men. We thus
need not only a much more varied repertoire of media representations of Asian men, but also a dismantling of the evaluative judgments that accompany ideas of femininity and masculinity.
Look
Aesthetic judgments of the look of bodies are deeply woven into other domains of life. As Deborah L. Rhode argues in “Appearance as a Feminist Issue,” discrimination based on appearance is rife, with women bearing a disproportionate burden. Norms of appearance siphon attention away from women’s accomplishments, and attempts to comply involve substantial financial and health costs. Because norms of attractiveness are gendered, racialized, and classed, discrimination against those judged unattractive tends to reinforce gender, racial, and socio-economic class disadvantage.
Resistance to the norms creates a misogynistic backlash, as Rhode herself experienced through the hate mail she received after she authored a book (Rhode 2010) on the topic. Moreover, women have internalized societal norms of attractiveness, and may comply both because they find it pleasurable and because they wish to avoid the penalties for non-compliance. Rhode concludes that feminist attention should focus more on undermining appearance-based pressure and discrimination and less on condemning women’s individual choices.
Shirley Anne Tate inquires into how looks function as a signifier, especially of national identity and citizenship. In “A Tale of Two Olympians: Beauty, ‘Race,’ Nation,” she examines the use of two elite athletes, Jessica Ennis and Jeanette Kwakye, in branding campaigns for commercial products and for the Great Britain Olympic team. The body and face of Ennis, a relatively light-skinned mixed-race woman, were embraced as signifiers for beauty and national identity, whereas Kwakye, whose skin is darker, was selected to advertise cleaning products and to represent a campaign to clean up London prior to the 2012 Olympics—a troubling connection given the history of women of color as domestic workers within the power structures of white supremacy. As Tate argues, the relative positioning of Ennis and Kwakye conveys a complex message about Great Britain as a tolerant, post-racial nation that is willing to offer the benefits of full belonging to some who have been previously designated as “other”— but only some. Kwakye, with her darker skin, is not eligible to represent the nation in the way that Ennis can. While these athletes’ deployment in branding campaigns is meant to send a message of inclusiveness, it in fact reveals the ongoing racialization of notions of beauty and national identity.
In “The Merrickites,” Glenn Parsons considers the viability of one possible solution to the problem of oppressive and racialized standards of beauty. Parsons draws both on Naomi Wolf’s (1990, 291) idea that discourses of beauty should shift to “radiance,” or “light coming out of the face and body, rather than a spotlight on the body, dimming the self,” and on the wish of Joseph Merrick, known as the “Elephant Man,” to be judged
based only on his mind or soul and not on his body. Parsons asks what it would mean to care only about the self as it is expressed through the body and to abandon attention to beauty in the conventional sense, which he defines as “pleasing perfection.” To live up to Wolf’s and Merrick’s ideal, Parsons suggests, would require that we focus only on those aspects of the body that are naturally expressive of one’s self, soul, or character and cease to admire perfection of any other aspects of the body. If we consider a society of “Merrickites” governed by this ideal, Parsons argues, we should find it deeply flawed: since many aspects of bodily perfection, such as health, strength, and speed, are relevant to survival and autonomy, to abandon the pursuit of bodily perfection is to abandon ideals of a desirable life that are typically central to the structures of a well-formed society. We thus do have reason to strive for, and to prize, aspects of bodily perfection that may not be expressive of the soul or self.
In “And Everything Nice,” Stephen Davies offers a survey and critique of the current landscape of thinking about sexual attractiveness within evolutionary psychology. Davies argues that, in its focus on such things as facial symmetry and female hip-towaist ratios, evolutionary psychology has tended to overemphasize universality and minimize the factors that promote idiosyncrasy and divergence in preferences for sexual partners. Moreover, evolutionary psychology tends to construe sexual attractiveness as almost exclusively a matter of physical markers of appearance and scent, and pays little attention to the way that things like a person’s behavior, intelligence, and social interaction play into our judgments about them. Davies suggests that by evolutionary psychology’s own lights, sexual attractiveness should be a matter not just of who is genetically fit in a narrow sense, but of who will be a good parent, able not just to contribute gametes to healthy offspring but to nurture those offspring and foster in them the qualities that will make them into good parents themselves. Moreover, of course, evolutionary influences on our preferences are far from decisive; both culture and individual choices may play a very significant role in who we find sexually attractive. Davies concludes sexual attractiveness would be better understood as having less to do with looks (and smells) and more to do with a broader range of social and behavioral criteria that are associated with full personhood.
Performance
This section considers bodies in performance and how they function both aesthetically and ethically. In “In/Visible: Disability on the Stage,” Tobin Siebers begins by interrogating the very notion of visibility as it pertains to disability. Disabilities that are often spoken of as “visible” may go unnoticed in a context where observers lack experience with disability or have been socially conditioned to expect that everyone present is nondisabled. On the other hand, when an actor’s disability becomes visible on stage, it may be hypervisible, obscuring attention to other aspects of the production. Most often, however, disability is made invisible on stage by its very exclusion, because disability is understood as an aesthetic disruption or obstacle.
The theater, then, may seem to be governed by an aesthetic of “passing”: disabled actors can play nondisabled characters only if they are able to “pass” as nondisabled. In fact, though, when nondisabled actors play disabled characters, it may be aesthetically crucial that they not pass: the audience’s ability to manage the disruptive emotions associated with disability may depend on knowledge that the disability is only performed. Through the example of Mary Duffy’s performance as the Venus de Milo, Siebers advocates that we move beyond an aesthetics of passing and toward an exploration of the distinctive aesthetic effects that arise through the incorporation of disabled bodies in performance, resulting in a recognition of disability itself as a positive aesthetic value.
In “Live, Body-Based Performance: An Account from the Field,” artist Jill Sigman discusses why, in a society that prizes efficiency, the creation of cost- and labor-intensive works of dance and performance art, which must be seen live and can be presented only to a limited audience, is worthwhile. Sigman argues that live bodily presence plays an irreplaceable role in the cultivation of empathy, something that cannot be duplicated through the mediation of video. Live performance also lends itself to real-time experiences, since it cannot simply be fast-forwarded; and such immersive, durational experiences may lead viewers to be more connected to what is happening around them and more willing to engage with and through their own bodies. These forms of connection have a powerful ethical dimension, combatting forms of distance and disengagement that characterize much of contemporary life.
The role of body in these effects is complex. The “look” of body, in the traditional sense, may be of minimal relevance, and even the most specific details of bodily movement and functioning may not be crucial. Sigman suggests that the most critical aesthetic effect may, instead, be the performing body’s power to effect a change in the space itself, or in how we perceive that space.
In “Aesthetic Effortlessness,” Barbara Gail Montero examines a specific feature that is often identified as aesthetically relevant to performance. Finding neither Bergson’s (1889/2001) nor Spencer’s (1852/1892) account of effortlessness fully satisfactory, Montero offers a new account that considers the relationship of effortlessness with difficulty. Often, she suggests, we particularly prize the appearance of effortlessness because we know that the performance is in fact difficult. The full aesthetic effect, then, may require that difficulty be simultaneously revealed and concealed. The viewer’s epistemic position may be crucial: knowledge that the performance is difficult may make the appearance of effortlessness more impressive; yet if one sympathizes with the performer’s true effort too closely, one’s immersion in effortlessness, which may involve a sympathetic experience of ease in one’s own body, may be blocked. When one believes that the performer’s movement is genuinely without effort, this may prevent one from experiencing the movement as aesthetically effortless, unless one is indexing it to the level of difficulty it would have if one tried it oneself. Though effortlessness is somewhat out of fashion in contemporary dance, Montero suggests, we find it naturally rewarding; effortlessness thus deserves deeper aesthetic inquiry.
In “Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite Women’s Sports,” Peg Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser examine how race and gender interact with standards of attractiveness to produce injustice, specifically against female athletes. When athletes train for elite sports, their bodies undergo predictable changes as they become stronger and faster. One might expect that these changes would be seen as expressions of beauty, since they represent a honing of the body’s capacities. Instead, Weiser and Weiser note, increased muscularity and other changes in the appearance and style of movement of the female athlete’s body come to be read as “masculine,” and thus as incompatible with both beauty and femaleness. Since norms of beauty in white-dominated contexts are racialized white, this effect is exacerbated for Black athletes. Many athletes, as a result, have been subjected to invasive scrutiny and even excluded from competition because their bodies failed to satisfy aesthetic norms of what female bodies should look like.
Weiser and Weiser propose a new aesthetic approach to the athlete’s body, one that recognizes a unique form of beauty that is the result of intense athletic training and may bear little relation to conventional gendered and racialized beauty norms. We should reject gendered restrictions on what can count as beauty or as appropriate appearance, they argue: if we wish to tie beauty to aspects of identity while showing respect for persons, we should recognize that athletic identity may be far more relevant than gender identity.
Practice
Aesthetic body practices are extremely diverse, comprising cultivation of somatic aesthetic experiences, forms of aesthetic self-constitution, intentional reshaping of our aesthetic judgments of bodies, and practices of using the body aesthetically to achieve moral ends.
In “Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues,” Yuriko Saito discusses the moral resonance of aesthetic practices of bodily movement and performance. The moral quality of our actions lies not just in what we do, but in how we do it—or, to put it differently, how we do something is part of what we do, not separable from it. The style and manner with which we act is aesthetic: it consists of the perceptible qualities of our actions, including how they look, feel, and sound. Our style of action can be expressive of care and respect over and above the “what” of our action as it is generally construed. As Saito demonstrates, the separation between the “what” and “how” of action is much less prominent in several Asian traditions than it has often been within Western ethical and aesthetic thinking (though Schiller 1882 is a notable exception).
Concern with the style of our actions should motivate us to engage in active, physical cultivation of aesthetic practices of the body, Saito argues. Such practices may change our attitudes, as Nancy Sherman (2005) has observed, and also improve the quality of
our own experiences. But most crucially, they affect others by improving the experiences we cause for them; and this improvement may have a rippling effect, causing them to extend caring, respectful forms of engagement to others. Ultimately, Saito suggests, engaging in aesthetic practices of the body is a way to make a positive contribution to the world-making project in which we are all collectively engaged.
In “White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Un-Suturing,” George Yancy takes on the complex aesthetics of race relations. White gazing, he argues, is a perceptual practice embedded within white supremacy that constructs the Black body as an object of disgust and fear. Disgust, or the “white embodied revulsive response,” is an aesthetic response (cf. Korsmeyer 2011) corresponding to whites’ experience of the “disrupt[ion of] the harmony and symmetry of white space” when the Black body enters it: an aesthetic response that can and does erupt into violence that has taken the lives of Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, and Renisha McBride, among many others.
The practice of white gazing, Yancy suggests, is deeply woven into the fabric of the white self. Whites must, therefore, engage in a practice of self-making—or, rather, self-unmaking—that he terms un-suturing. Un-suturing involves embracing our mutual entanglement and somatic vulnerability, rather than reaffirming the impregnability aspired to by whiteness. White antiracism, then, necessarily involves an ethico-aesthetic project of self-reconstruction to root out racist practices of perceiving and responding somatically to the Black body. Yancy’s account functions as both exhortation and lament, given the many failures of white police officers and citizens to allow themselves to become un-sutured in acknowledgment of Black dignity and humanity.
While Saito and Yancy take on the aesthetics of world-making and self-making, the final three chapters consider aesthetic body practices in specific domains: eating and sexuality. In “Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating,” Richard Shusterman encourages us to think of eating as an aesthetic practice of the body. As Shusterman notes, most aesthetic attention to food has focused on the act of cooking and the qualities of the food itself. However, eating, the actual act of ingesting food, has its own aesthetic qualities that are far from fully determined by what is eaten. Eating is a deeply multisensory experience, involving, in addition to the taste, smell, and look of food, the sound of one’s own eating, and tactile and proprioceptive experiences generated by one’s posture, by the contact of food and eating implements with one’s body, and by one’s own bodily movements in the act of eating. Attention to eating as an aesthetic practice, then, is a way to hone one’s perceptual acuity, particularly regarding somatic experiences of inner parts of the body such as the mouth, throat, esophagus, and stomach. Moreover, each meal has its own structure, dependent on choices about what (and what not) to eat, how to time one’s eating, the sequence in which things are eaten, and choices about when to pause or stop eating. Specific aesthetic attention may be directed toward the construction and experiencing of this structure. Shusterman also notes that eating with others may generate a form of “communal choreography” that creates
pleasing aesthetic experiences that promote social cohesiveness. Eating itself, then, is worthy of aesthetic attention and of cultivation as a complex aesthetic practice.
The final two chapters in the volume deal with aesthetic practices of reforming one’s sexual tastes for certain kinds of bodies, where those tastes are found to be oppressive. In “Sexual Desire, Inequality, and the Possibility of Transformation,” Ann J. Cahill argues that while sexual tastes have often been treated as givens that are immune to criticism, they should in fact be subject to ethical assessment. In the service of her argument, Cahill expands the notion of sexual orientation beyond attraction to bodies as sexed or gendered, to include other aspects of sexual preference that may be even more powerful but often remain unnamed: for instance, preference for people of a certain age range, economic class, race, or range of physical or cognitive ability. Borrowing from William Wilkerson’s (2007) account of the dynamic process by which sexual orientations are formed, Cahill argues that sexual preferences are partly a product of interpretive acts which can be assessed ethically and reformed without feeding into the Western tendency to endorse a hierarchy of mind over body. While expressly rejecting the ethical or practical viability of “conversion therapy” that aims to undermine homosexual desire, Cahill advocates an autonomous aesthetic practice of transforming one’s sexual desires for the purpose of undermining structural inequality.
In thinking about the process of transformation, Cahill adopts, with Karen Davis (1990), an analogy between sexual desire and laughter. Though laughter is a somatic phenomenon and is often experienced as automatic, it occurs in a social and interpretative context and is subject to choice and reconsideration. Laughter, like sexual desire, can function either in concert with or in opposition to oppression; and where our laughter is oppressive, it seems we are obligated to change not just the laughter itself but the underlying disposition to find certain things humorous. Cahill supports her analysis through appeal to Shannon Sullivan’s (2006) and George Yancy’s (2008) arguments that anti-racism involves a deep commitment to somatic and affective retraining.
In “Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness,” Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin take on the idea that sexiness, as an aesthetic attribute, may be compromised by its history of implication in patriarchal, racist, ableist, and heteronormative systems of objectification. Like Cahill, Lintott and Irvin see sexual recognition as an important affirmation of one’s humanity, and thus better reclaimed than discarded in light of feminist concerns. After rejecting two oppressive notions of sexiness, the biological and the purely prurient senses, Lintott and Irvin propose that sexiness should be reformed through a concerted aesthetic practice. Rather than seeing sexiness as an aesthetic attribute of the body alone, they argue, we should treat it as an assessment of the whole embodied person that takes into particular account the person’s expression of sexual subjectivity. Moreover, while seeing someone as sexy involves aesthetically appreciating their body, this aesthetic appreciation should take the form of encountering each body with wonder (as Cahill 2011 proposes) rather than assessing it in relation to societal standards of physical attractiveness.
As Lintott and Irvin acknowledge, one cannot simply think one’s way into new kinds of aesthetic experiences of embodied persons. One must, instead, undertake a true aesthetic practice whereby one finds respectful ways to engage with and appreciate the embodied sexual subjectivity of others.
Conclusion
Philosophical inquiry into the aesthetic potential of the body has been sparse, even as inquiries into the body—aesthetic and otherwise—have exploded in other disciplines. Feminist philosophy, and particularly work by Peg Brand Weiser (Brand 2000, 2013), has urged us to take the body in general, and standards of bodily beauty in particular, more seriously; but the uptake by philosophers, even within aesthetics, has been quite limited. Scholars in other areas of philosophy or other academic disciplines have treated the aesthetics of the body much more extensively (e.g. Bordo 1993; GarlandThomson 2009; Hobson 2005; Siebers 2010; Tate 2005), but their work remains largely unknown within philosophical aesthetics. By bringing philosophical aesthetics into conversation with other disciplines, this volume points toward the rich potential of an interdisciplinary aesthetics of the body.
Despite the great diversity of topics addressed here, this volume scarcely scratches the surface of what a fully developed discipline of body aesthetics could be. Given the potential of systematic inquiry into the aesthetics of the body to challenge oppression and injustice, to enrich everyday life, to enhance social cohesion, and to deepen our understanding and experiences of art, as well as to refine our thinking about classic questions about aesthetic experience and value, it is puzzling that body aesthetics is not already well established as a line of inquiry bringing philosophy together with other fields. Fortunately, it is not too late.
References
Bergson, Henri. 1889/2001. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Translated by Frank L. Pogson. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brand, Peg Zeglin, ed. 2013. Beauty Unlimited. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cahill, Ann. 2011. Overcoming Objectification: A Carnal Ethics. New York: Routledge. Craig, Maxine Leeds. 2002. Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Davis, Karen Elizabeth. 1990. “I Love Myself When I Am Laughing: A New Paradigm for Sex.” Journal of Social Philosophy 21 (2–3): 5–24.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Title: Told in the gardens of Araby (untranslated until now)
Translator: Izora C. Chandler
Mary Williams Montgomery
Release date: March 24, 2024 [eBook #73256]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Eaton & Mains, 1905
Credits: Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for Project Gutenberg (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOLD IN THE GARDENS OF ARABY (UNTRANSLATED UNTIL NOW) ***
Told
in the Gardens of Araby
(UNTRANSLATED UNTIL NOW)
By IZORA CHANDLER and MARY W. MONTGOMERY
[Contents]
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM
[Contents]
Copyright, 1905, by EATON & MAINS [3]
[Contents]
PRELUDE
Memory swings backward to revel in a certain Garden of Delight; to picture the high whitewashed wall, topped with red tiles, and guarding within its quadrangle of acres clustering palms, grave cypress trees, the fig, quince, orange, pomegranate, and mulberry; also the gray olive, with roots twisted out of the soil as if by force and seeming to hint that, once upon a time, giant souls were imprisoned within each grizzly trunk and struggled themselves to death, in mad wrestlings after freedom.
Shielded by these varied branches, roses and cabbages, lilies and onions, jessamine and melons, the crimson-flowered oleander, pumpkins, tomatoes, and carrots mingle in a delightful democracy. Here the day wakens with sweet morning clearness, waxes into a scorching noontide, and burns onward, to be extinguished by the breath of a dewy twilight. Stars march slowly from out the vaulted shadows overhead, [6]to halt at awful distances. Distant mountain peaks stretch away beyond the city, in indescribable loveliness, and melt in the distance, like a veritable land of cloud. Upon the other hand lies the desert; become a sea of silver under the stern light of the stars. One stands impressed—oppressed and compelled to listen to the mighty, threatening silence. Small wonder is it that, today, in the interior of Arabia, like his forefathers during the time of Abimelech and Jethro, the lonely shepherd is a worshiper of the stars—poised, unchanging and serene, above the changing, tumultuous earth.
Through this Garden, in which Memory lies dreaming, a silvery stream flows from a marble basin. Into this basin play the waters from a tree-shaded fountain. Beside it sits a gruff old pelican, eyeing
dweller and guest with equal disfavor. This bird of desolation likes not his fair prison. Sweeter, to his ear, is the owl’s hoot than any music distilled by human voices.
At one corner of the great quadrangle stands the long, roomy dwelling. Its lower story comprises the general reception room, the kitchen, and stables. From contiguous windows in this last, two white heads lean out and gaze, wistfully, each into the other’s eyes. One is that of the snow-white ass, upon which the daughter of the house rides when, [7]attended by Ismail, she goes forth to pay visits. The other is that of the foal, shut into a separate stall because he has grown so large that he must be weaned. Here his greatest effort only succeeds in reaching up and resting his funny little head upon the window sill; where he must content himself with waving long ears and casting glances of entreaty across at the mother, who stands helpless in all but the expression of her sympathy.
Attention is fastened upon these patient dumb creatures. At this, the young hostess—who, by the way, speaks Arabic, modern Greek, French, German, English; who interprets Chopin with appealing sympathy upon the piano in the beautiful drawing-room; and, upon occasion, picks her mandolin to light, minor-keyed melodies— decides that the American lady must have a ride about the garden.
Ismail, a dark-skinned boy who has haunted our footsteps in readiness for service, and whose eyes and teeth are marvels of brilliancy, leads forth the petted beast and tricks her out with the most gorgeous trappings. Then the visitor is wheedled into mounting the high, smooth saddle. This she does gingerly and sidewise, after the fashion of her countrywomen. The baby donkey is let out to enjoy a bit of exercise, and crowds so closely to the side [8]of his adored parent as nearly to crush the ankles of her nervous rider.
The white beasts trot placidly over the graveled walks of the quadrangle, and the pastime is growing pleasant to the rider. But “Faster! faster!” commands the young hostess. “It is not with this sleep of the day that we should seek to amuse one who comes from the Land of Haste! Faster! Ismail, faster!”
Time is not given in which to explain that a mild gait is preferred; for the Arab boy at once enters into the spirit of his mistress—strikes a resounding blow upon each snowy flank, with such immediate effect that the unaccustomed rider slides from her insecure position and joins in the merriment.
“Alas! the Orient has broken your spirit! It is not like this that in your own country you would ride. Think you that I do not know?”
Hastily arranging her flowing skirts, the young girl sprang gayly astride the high, polished saddle; leaned forward and whispered, “Away! Babash!” During the next few moments, shadow and sunlight became a swift kaleidoscope of gayety and color. The little animal, divining what was expected of her, broke into a gallop of whose madness one never would have dreamed her capable; and which made it most comical to witness the wild attempts of her [9]poor little foal at keeping pace, and his bewilderment when, after viewing, with despair, her disappearance before him, his astonished gaze discovered her hastening toward him from behind, only to leave him again, a little farther on.
Meantime the surly pelican had waddled to an unfrequented corner, where the gravel, flying from delicate hoofs, could not reach him. Madame, the elder hostess, came out upon the balcony, which extended along the second story of the dwelling, to wave her hand in enjoyment of the sport.
At length, wearied with making exhibition of the speed which, in her opinion, characterized the home life of her visitor, the young girl tossed her reins to Ismail, commanded that coffee be brought, then conducted to a beautiful summerhouse, or kiosk, where were cushions and rugs in profusion; where the most comfortable corner hid its hand mirror and rose-water sprinkler, and over whose lattice climbed roses and jessamine.
Of these latter flowers—so precious to every woman of the Orient— three were gathered and tucked into the visitor’s belt. “Three, the Oriental number: one for health, one for wealth, and one for prosperity. If I wish you these and to you they come, what is there more, that for it you should ask?” was the compelling explanation, made in a [10]voice that was music’s own in quality and, like her manner—when not merrily exemplifying prevailing notions of American life—was gentle as the most fastidious aristocrat could desire.
The air was sprayed with rose water; we reclined upon the cushions. Quiet restored, the Madame descended and joined us. Coffee was brought—though not at once; for the moments do not urge, as in the Occident; they weave themselves, unnoted, into slow and shining hours. Resting thus, and, later on, tasting the cream tart of whose deliciousness the half has never been told, it was inevitable that we should fall into the custom of the country and relate, each to the others, tales of our native lands.
Story-telling is a most natural blossom upon the Oriental life tree. Silent, tropical, motionless days breed no restlessness of the life intellectual, no ravening after to-day’s knowledge and its fleeting fame, no feverish haste after anything. The past fades and the future becomes dim. It is a Land of the Present Moment. In the estimation of its people, the present moment, only, is to be compared with
Paradise. As consequence, the dreaming of dreams or the relation of marvelous tales, concerning adventures and intrigues of imaginary characters, serves to satisfy the indolent and luxurious character. Disinclination [11]to travel has found expression in “Better be a dog at home than a lion afloat.” And universal custom exemplifies the belief that it is better also to recline at ease, with coffee and nargileh; enfolded in such peace that any relation of turbulence and romance is rendered thrilling by mere force of contrast—far better is all this than to fare forth one’s self. One does not marvel that natures pent in such inactive bodies should require, to their better satisfaction with the stories told them, blood-curdling elements, violence, with strange interventions and achievements of the supernatural. By this means is poise maintained and the slothful soul drugged into dreaminess.
Action and progress are discouraged in the Orient. Until the authorities grant permission, a man may not rebuild his house after the flames have destroyed it; nor may he celebrate the marriage of a child. Only during the feast month of Ramazan is any woman permitted outside of her walls after sunset; and a man, without his lighted lantern, is in danger of trouble with the police. Indeed, the dwellers not only are expected, but themselves expect, to retire at sunset into their separate home worlds, without whose walls the strait-laced effendi likes not to have his women seen at any time. Yet, even when within the home, cards seldom are resorted [12]to; and games of chance everywhere are forbidden the good Moslem.
Then how should this be other than a land for reverie? Certain hours of every day are witness to the sun’s terrible triumph. Its atmosphere becomes of intolerable sultriness. Its climate renders the people indolent in action, while permitting their intellects to remain keen and their passions lively. They have, moreover, quick sense of the ludicrous; a childish, untutored taste for practical jokes; a refinement of cunning, and, often seemingly asleep, in reality they never lose
their sagacity. Only when in dispute are their voices and actions unsubdued. As a rule, they are not good in conversation; any point is made clear by the relation of some parallel tale; and always the men are ready to loiter and to loaf.
Although the dairy life of the women is enriched with the arts of cookery and exquisite needlework, it must become monotonous. They are passionately fond of the open air; but their fullest enjoyment of it consists in reclining upon rug and cushion, beneath some fragrant shade, while their slow, indolent eyes traverse the beauty of garden, sea, or sky, and the ear is soothed with some story which, at the same time, stirs the sense, gives wing to imagination, and satisfies the inaction of their present by calling up [13]visions of far-away activities, perhaps aided by the unseen and unknown.
One, for whom character needs not to consist in eternal effort, must find great charm in these people, with their childish love for the passing hour and readiness to give or accept friendliness. Often the youths are of ideal beauty. Usually the men are well built, healthful, abstemious. Always the women are splendidly robust and handsome. Nearly everyone is unmalicious, gentle in temper, leisurely—nay, more—loitering. Nobody is in a hurry. He who hastes is viewed with suspicion. Even punctuality in the payment of dues is decried; and no shopkeeper, worthy of a booth in the bazaar, will permit a customer to depart until after bewildering his sight with the most gorgeous properties upon the shelves. Should an unwary shopper ask the price of any article or permit his eye to linger upon it, coffee is at once served and the business call becomes a visit of ceremony.
With touching faith in his kismet—decreed fate—the peasant endures whatever of ill his days may bring. He receives every stranger with perfect faith; trusting that he may be the messenger of
some long-delayed good. The thought of seeking an occupation rarely occurs to him—however needy he may be. With only a few piasters in his pouch for [14]present needs, he becomes wealthy; for, may he not dream of hidden treasure which, when found, will supply splendors ineffable? Beside, were he to make strenuous effort in the hope of bettering his estate, he might thwart some beautiful oncoming providence. In this land where gentle consideration reigns, children treat their mothers with a royal deference, which but increases with every added year of their own lives.
The Osmanlis will have nothing to do with hereditary rank. The misfortunes and sins which constitute the unanswerable Eastern Question, arise from the fact that their Prophet failed to provide a law by which his successors might be determined. Members of the reigning family marry the simplest family; and the genealogical records are forgotten. Sentiment is opposed to class lines between ruler and people; hence, in their stories, the young prince is free to marry any maiden, be she ever so lowly.
However somber this life, the pious Moslem finds content in letting his mind dwell upon the bliss of that life beyond. He is profoundly submissive in the presence of death; accepts its coming with unquestioning resignation, since his Edjel—appointed death hour— and that of his beloved ones, was decreed by Allah and invisibly inscribed upon the [15]brow at birth. Dying means that one is bidden, by “the Cupbearer of the Spheres,” to partake of the joys of Paradise. Why, then, should one regret the summons?
Devotion is natural to him. Five times each day does the dweller in village or city obey a call to prayer—even though the muezzin who cries may be far from holy and his intrigues furnish the point for many a tale. According to Lady Blunt, “nothing gives so much distinction, in this land, as regular attendance at prayers.” The name
of Allah enters into every bargain, greeting, or conflict. To the really faithful, every living creature has some spiritual significance. The killing of a dog may cost a man many bushels of grain—perchance, his life. The stork and swallow are sacred. Even the unclean vulture must not be slain. His body is the abode of some sinful soul; and, if the bird be killed, the poor soul forever must perish.
The Land of Midian is a mysterious, dreary land of gloomy cliffs and broad deserts; of shadowless plains, narrow valleys, and monotonous wilderness regions. Its mirage allures to death; and the clear atmosphere suddenly may become dark with the burning heat of the simoon. Through its desert God’s Chosen People are believed to have wandered during their forty years of punishment and [16]preparation. Fiery serpents and scorpions made their passage hideous; and the undisciplined wanderers were “much discouraged because of the way.”
Over this indescribably romantic country—which has been inhabited since the earliest time and has undergone fewer changes than any other known upon the globe—a mighty Presence seems on patient guard. One is never freed from the sense of some Great Unseen.
At points the configuration is fantastic and weird in the character of its desolation. It is a region of gloomy cliffs, of granite hills, of detached, volcanic centers—like that of the true Mount Sinai—and over whose difficult passages the complaining camel seems fittest transport.
Each tribe, in this Land of Ishmael, claims descent from some one of the three members of Abraham’s family; and insists that social and religious status were overthrown by Mohammed, when he subjected them to his version of the law of the One God. To this it may be added that there are those who believe that the enmity of Christians
against the Jews prevented the great prophet from adopting the Christian faith.
Upon his possession of Arabia does the Sultan base his title of Caliph. With the downfall of those [17]rulers came a relapse into the former separate chieftaincies; so that every valley, between desert and coast, or mountain range, now supports its wandering band. For this reason, these people love that the stories told them should concern that time of the Caliphs; when the country flourished as never before or after.
Yemen, a central, fertile tract in southwest Arabia, is the Arab’s Arcadia. Here Alexander the Great determined to fix his court after he should have conquered India. His strong nature was attracted to this surprising land; where a single step may bear one from dreary somberness into the most luxurious vegetation—from the desert into an oasis, redolent with the scent of flowers, shadowed with orchards and musical with the insect’s drone.
In a land like this, among a people of courtesy and charm, it becomes gently imperative that the most barren imagination should indulge in bits of phantasy and the dullest sense become susceptible to passing beauty. A pure and refreshing fountain is certain to become a center of romantic interest that will unseal the lips of a traveler. And, since bachelors are looked upon with disfavor and not an old maid exists in all the country, it is to be expected that any relation should turn upon marriage. Nor need one fear that the tale will prove erotic, [18]since its creation was in a land where the modesty of a peasant will not admit even of his staring at a company of bathers; but sends his eyes to search the tree tops or distant mountains, until temptation is far passed.
Perhaps it will be well to begin these stories from the Orient with a relation of cruel intrigue and of patient revenge, aided by potent,
