Victor Segalen, a multifaceted French writer, combined his experiences as a naval doctor and ethnographer with a profound exploration of diverse cultures and distant lands. His literary work is deeply informed by his travels, particularly his sojourns in Polynesia and China, where he delved into the intricacies of different civilizations and their artistic expressions. Segalen's prose and poetry consistently grapple with themes of identity, sensory perception, and the intricate connection between humanity and its environment. Through his distinctive narrative voice, shaped by his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, he offers readers an enriching and thought-provoking literary journey.
In this entrancing story of spiritual adventure, a Westerner in Peking seeks the mystery at the heart of the Forbidden City. He takes as a tutor in Chinese the young Belgian Rene Leys, who claims to be in the know about strange goings-on in the Imperial Palace: love affairs, family quarrels, conspiracies that threaten the very existence of the empire. But whether truth-teller or trickster, the elusive and ever-charming Rene presents his increasingly dazzled disciple with a visionary glimpse of "an essential palace built upon the most magnificent foundations."
Victor Segalen (1878-1919) was a doctor, a traveller (principally in Polynesia and China), and above all else, a great poet. An admirer especially of Gauguin and Rimbaud, the journey undertaken in this, his last and most important work, is that between the imagined and the real: 'neither a poem about a journey, nor the travel diary of a wanderer's dream'. Journey to the Land of the Real is the summation of the author's life as both traveller and poet, and a summation that is all the more surprising since he could know nothing of his imminent and mysterious death.
Works by the polymathic French author Victor Segalen, including a previously untranslated essay, a novel, and a libretto. Victor Segalen (1878–1919) had one of France's most curious literary careers, applying his imagination to musicology, ethnography, exploration, medicine, synesthetics, Chinese history, and the occult. This collection gathers together his previously untranslated essay “Synesthestics and the Symbolist School” and his novel In A Sound World , a work of fantasy concerning an inventor lost in his own immersive harmonic space. Segalen's medical training (he had a career as a ship's doctor) inspired an interest in the link between the prevailing Symbolism of the time and synesthesia, the condition whereby one sense affects the perception of another. This edition also includes an essay by the musician and cultural historian David Toop that explores the historical context of Segalen's ideas. Also included is Segalen's libretto for Orpheus Rex, a collaboration with the composer Claude Debussy, which he would use as an opportunity for further explorations of his synesthetic concepts. This book makes available all three texts for the first time in English.
The Other - source of fear and fascination; emblem of difference demonised and
romanticised. Theories of alterity and cultural diversity abound in the
contemporary academic landscape. This title encompasses Segalen's attempts to
define true Exoticism.
In "Die Unvordenklichen" schildert Segalen die Christianisierung Tahitis zwischen 1819 und 1839 aus der Perspektive der Ureinwohner. Diese erleben die Missionierungsversuche der Fremden mit Befremden, Belustigung und letztlich Angst, da sie mit dem 'rechten' Glauben konfrontiert werden, den sie nicht gesucht haben.
Im August 1909 brachen Victor Segalen und Auguste Gilbert de Voisins von Peking aus zu einer abenteuerlichen zehn Monate dauernden Reise auf, die in südwestlicher Richtung in die Provinz Sichuan und von dort den Jangtse stromab bis ans Ostchinesische Meer und schließlich nach Japan führte. Auf dieser viele tausend Kilometer langen und gefahrvollen Route entstanden die von Segalen ironisch als »Briques & Tuiles« betitelten Aufzeichnungen. Über ihre literarische und theoretische Bedeutung hinaus sind Ziegel & Schindeln ein einzigartiger Bilderbogen, der ein bis ins 20. Jahrhundert hineinreichendes archaisches China widerspiegelt, mit noch im Verborgenen liegenden monumentalen Grabanlagen und Tempeln, hinter verfallenen Mauern dämmernden Städten, spärlich besiedelten und im Westen noch weitgehend unbekannten Landstrichen sowie einer stupenden Vielfalt von Dschunken und Sampans auf dem Jangtse.
