Oriental Antiquity and Romantic Locality: The Gaze Backward and Inward

Abstract

The Romantic literary figures found in the distant antiquities of the Orient, of Greece, and Arabia, irresistible attractions embodying the underlying genuine history of Western civilization and culture. Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, the Arabian Desert, and Egypt reflected a world of antiquity, which provided the Romantics with the opportunity to gaze backward and, consequently, explore remote otherness—itself responsible for shaping present Western Self. The Romantic artists and literary figures believed that this region enfolds within its antiquities the mysteries of the mind. They found in the tranquility of Oriental antique places, whether in reality or through the power of their imaginative faculties, possible prospects of hidden realities essential for self receptiveness, which had been despondent amidst the contradictions and complexities of the urban civilizations of Europe; i.e. those remote places, whether directly or indirectly gazed at, provided them with the opportunity to personally experience and perceive fundamental realities, which may have been underside Western civilization. To them, to dig into the mysteries of Self, they had to locate Self in Oriental antique sites. Crossing the demarcation line between the present and the past was an irresistible venture, which set in motion the recreation or location of Self by transcending its consciousness (the present or West) into the sub-consciousness (the past or East). Accordingly, the gaze backward was indeed a gaze inward..