Exotic

“ There he sits, a strange exotic, transplanted from the delectable alcoves of the old manorial mansion, to take root in this niggard soil. No more do the sweet purple airs of the hills round about the green fields of Saddle Meadows come revivingly wafted to his cheek. Like a flower he feels the change; his bloom is gone from his cheek; his cheek is wilted and pale.
From the lofty window of that beggarly room, what is it that Pierre is so intently eying? There is no street at his feet; like a profound black gulf the open area of the quadrangle gapes beneath him. ”

“ Thoughts must come naturally, like wild flowers; they cannot be forced in a hot-bed—even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past—like exotics. ”

“ In that far-off mystic land of gold, and gems, and spices, and waving palms, and wondrous flowers, and miraculous fertility, will awake new forms of art, new styles of splendor; and the negro race, no longer despised and trodden down, will, perhaps, show forth some of the latest and most magnificent revelations of human life. ”

“ The most striking and bewildering thing is undoubtedly the medley that meets the eye everywhere: the conflict of races, the contrast of colours, the extraordinary brightness of everything, the glare, the strange sounds and scenes that cannot be easily taken in at a first visit; the variety of languages heard at the same time, and above all the striking beauty of some faces, and the luxurious richness of costume. ”

“ I only wish human beings were as diverse.’
‘It all depends,’ said the Poet, ‘whether you look lovingly or unlovingly, passionately or dispassionately. One must be intoxicated by scenery, in order to appreciate it. ”

“ Neither they nor their clothes have beauty, to the limited Western taste; they have strangeness, the charm of something which seems to us capricious, almost outside Nature. In our ignorance of their words, of what they mean to one another, of the very way in which they see one another, we shall best appreciate their rarity by looking on them frankly as pictures, which we can see with all the imperfections of a Western misunderstanding. ”

“ And if it be not, still, unbecoming to destroy the untouched sweep and grace of one of the most beautiful of creatures, and turn what is natural and decent into the indecently grotesque—what significance has all our talk of beauty, and all our so-called taste? ”

“ We get no pleasure from them except that of hearty anger and strong contrast. Their hot, raw, garish colour—the chalky dry skin of his women—the grinning leathern faces of his men—and the entire absence of toning—are as offensive to our eyesight as the heartlessness, the grimace, the want of all naturalness in expression or feeling, in his human beings, are to our moral taste. ”

“ She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic—a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon. ”

“ A very pleasant trait, to my taste, is the nearly universal frankness and candid look that nature has stamped upon their features, which, when accompanied by the softness of manner common to all Asiatics, is particularly gratifying in the fairer part of creation. ”

“ No contributions from a new and dubious foreign element had yet come to cheapen our taste, to disturb our nervous systems, or to throw upon the negro, the Hawaiian, or the Argentine the onus of a crass passion that one was more desirous of expressing than of acknowledging. ”

“ The principles which centuries of study have given us as the maxims upon which the grammar of ornament is based are those which are instinctive in every native workman. Every costume, every vase, every temple and bazaar in India, gives eye-witness that there is truth in the saw that the finest taste is consistent with the deepest slavery of body, with the utmost slavishness of mind. ”

“ To our way of thinking, such a face could scarcely be described as beautiful; but how much prejudice there is in our ideas of beauty! I soon came to find these brown faces, gleaming with health and fat, really pleasing. ”

“ The discriminating man recognises by the odour the numerous sandal-trees in full blossom in the glens of the mountains, as well as all creatures dwelling there.
31. All the beings living within the compass of the horizon or dwelling in the depth of the sea or in the bosom of the earth the discriminating man knows how to distinguish from the (peculiar) smell.
32. He discerns the gods and demons, and the daughters of demons; he discovers the sports of demons and their luxury. Such, indeed, is the power of his organ of smell. ”

“ The occult, the noble, the sublime, sense of hearing, has nature placed sideways, and half concealed. On the inferior part of the face, nature has bestowed a mask for the male, and not without reason, for here are displayed those marks of sensuality, which ought to be hidden. All know how much the upper lip betokens the sensations of taste, desire, appetite, and the enjoyments of love ”

“ Bodily beauty is, of course, particularly fascinating to a race which cannot be pronounced less susceptible to its charm than those European peoples—Greek, Italian, French—whose feeling for line and colour is reckoned a superiority in them to their Northern neighbours. ”

“ Now weariness leaves him, and his main purpose, self-recorded on lips and brow, shines forth before us. Or we catch an ancestral likeness, or a broad humanity, hitherto unsuspected, even as we see the contour of some receding landscape, generalised and softened. ”

“ It is an old and a true saying that variety is the spice of life, and the beauties of the different races of people appear to the greatest advantage where their separate traits of character most differ from one another. ”

“ So vivid and sharp is this law of association, that precisely the same bit of form and color which we would call beautiful while we supposed it to be an irridescent shell, would strike us with disgust if we suddenly perceived the little object to be a piece of very ancient meat. Beauty must belong—varying with its subject. ”

“ By its habit each kind is distinguished, in respect of each part and each phase of its existence, from all examples of other species. We may apply this useful notion of “habit” in our physiognomic of the grand organisms and speak of the habit of the Indian, Egyptian or Classical Culture, history or spirituality. Some vague inkling of it has always, for that matter, underlain the notion of style, and we shall not be forcing but merely clearing and deepening that word if we speak of the religious, intellectual, political, social or economic style [93] of a Culture. ”

“ His imagination leaped the centuries that separate us from the great races of the past who scorned humbug and hypocrisy, and held their dances in the deep shadows of great forests, without the draperies of tailors. These men and women looked Nature in the face and were not afraid, and did not try to apologise or lie about it. ”

“ The nomadic mode of life, the colour of the skin, the prominent cheek-bones, and the black hair and eyes, present a similarity of appearance which, at first, misleads an observer. By slow degrees, however, traits of character are developed, and peculiarities of manner exhibited, which proclaim a marked and striking difference. ”

“ His whole appearance is the most singular imaginable, and the perturbation of spirit in which he must return when it begins to grow dusk, and he reflects at once upon his own value, and his countrymen's taste for appropriation, must balance the enjoyment which his vanity receives from the admiration of the little boys in the Paséo. ”

“ We darkly behold (in the poetry of the obscurest eras) the forms of men,—such as can be seen afar through the mist,—no costume, no dialect, but for language you have a tongue itself. As for costume—we can dispense with that, the skins of beasts or bark of trees are always to be had,—what if the man is naked? ”

“ Among the various reasons why we prefer one part of her works to another, the most general, I believe, is habit and custom; custom makes, in a certain sense, white black, and black white; it is custom alone determines our preference of the colour of the Europeans to the Aethiopians; and they, for the same reason, prefer their own colour to ours. ”

“ For every thing has conspired to make the French the most sensual people in the world; and what can render the heart so hard, or so effectually stifle every moral emotion, as the refinements of sensuality? ”

“ But attention to sweet scents is a bait which draws us into sensual lust. For the licentious man is led on every hand, both by his food, his bed, his conversation, by his eyes, his ears, his jaws, and by his nostrils too. As oxen are pulled by rings and ropes, so is the voluptuary by fumigations and unguents, and the sweet scents of crowns. ”

“ Thus far do we defer to the claims of the human race, with its myriad of useful errands to be done, that we read most of our novels in the long sunny days, which call all beings to chirp and nestle, or fly abroad as the birds do, and permit the very oxen to ruminate gently in the just-mown fields. ”

“ What has been rendered sometimes supportable by circumstances, an extravagant taste, the desire of being distinguished from the crowd, or to command their attention; true taste, and especially the art of pleasing, has always proscribed. We meet with women every day whose features are shaded with this ornament of virility. ”

“ It would be hopeless to endeavor to describe all the peculiarities of native fashion and thought, many of which, indeed, are already disappearing under the advancing tide of western civilization. Like all idolatrous nations, the people are subject to rank superstitions and curious fancies, some of them gross or brutal, but more often whimsical in their extravagance. ”

“ We must read the authors who have treated these questions, and especially the great alienists of France, if we would learn what a mysterious and baleful energy is oftentimes brought into the world by the babe as it opens its eyes to the light of day—the poor, innocent, puny creature, which, for this brief moment of illusion, is the object of unbounded joys and blessings, and bright hopes! ”

“ Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others. These are, I believe, the properties on which beauty depends; properties that operate by nature, and are less liable to be altered by caprice, or confounded by a diversity of tastes, than any other. ”

“ Strange, symbolic correspondences between the seen and the unseen constantly make themselves sensible, in some unexplainable, magic way, while to the eye there are the manifold abundancies of mother earth, and this queer, dark, unchanging, and unchangeable race, whose psychological formula is unknown to us, inhabiting and using it all. ”

“ We then smile half in contempt and half in pity at his customs, which we call "barbarous;" but when we see around us customs equally injurious, equally outrageous against nature, we do not consider that they in any way derogate from our lofty position as the intellectual salt of the earth. ”

“ A meaningless jumble. Like life. Like Negro life. Kicked down from above. Pulled down from below. No cheer but dance and drink and happy dust . . . and golden-browns. Wine, women, and song, and happy dust. ”

“ They are in this matter, I do believe, all alike, these creatures. You may encounter one so ugly and mannish and grotesque that none but an Englishman could take her to his arms, and even she has the ineffable romantic gaze. ”

“ All these diverse races and peoples are picturesque to look upon, with their graceful draperies of brilliant colors and the myriad forms of turbans; but they are not an attractive, a winning, a sympathetic, or a lovable people. ”

“ The good taste by which our countrymen are distinguished, will lead them to prefer the native thoughts and unstudied phrases scattered over these pages to the more laboured elegance of his other works; as bees have been observed to reject roses, and fix upon the wild fragrance of a neighbouring heath. ”

“ The charms of novelty and variety are too attractive, even to the idlest and most listless, to render an unbroken harmony either pleasant to the eye or grateful to the ear. Diversities of temper, of understanding, of interest, are necessary to stimulate our love of existence ”

“ It is worthy, too, of note that, although in these enlightened days every relic of primitive culture is gradually fading from our gaze, the old superstitious fancies associated with this nocturnal visitor still survive with more or less vigor, retaining that hold on the vulgar mind which they formerly possessed. ”

“ Exuberant—unsophisticated creature!
WHITE. Oh, perfectly unsophisticated! I only wish he had not fixed on the only head dress in the room that gives a notion of positive value? No, no, I must not hesitate any longer. ”

“ We might as well believe that the addition of a nose, or a pair of eyes or ears—that the faculty of seeing, hearing, or smelling, in short, should make creatures wise or good, as that the arts of orthoëpy and orthography were the great panacea for all social and moral evil. ”

“ While the ear is charmed with the style, and the fancy riots on the luxuriance of description, which so intimately blend the charms of virtue and the fascinations of vice, they are not readily distinguished by all. ”

“ All we can do is to refer it to that strange infatuation incident to humanity which lies at the root of fashion and ornamentation, and which even in these later times civilization is not able to eradicate. ”

“ Here bestial and demoniacal sensuality, not content with human couples, nymphs, maenads, sirens and fauns, calls for beings half-brute, half-human, represented by centaurs and sphinxes, for black goats, cats, tigers, panthers, and so on, finally for obscene representations of antique legends, such as Leda and the Swan, Europa and the Bull, symbols and illustrations of the climax of perversion. ”