Journey to the Orient

More than just an account of his travels in Cairo Beirut and Constantinople in 1843 Gérard de Nervals Journey to the Orient is a quest for the unknown. If his narrator seems credulous in his retelling of legends of the origins of the pyramids and the mysteries of the Druzes it is with this purpose in mind. While the Orientalists of his day were confident of having in the words of Edward Said grasped appropriated reduced and codified the Orient Nervals Orient remains elusive impossible to grasp. Poignantly dramatized in the thematic centerpieces of the tales of the Queen of Sheba and the Caliph Hakim what takes shape in this visionary travelogue as the authors hopes are alternately disappointed and rapturously renewed is the story of the artists search for the ideal.