Arabic Cultural Heritage in Nineteenth-Century Spain in Vasily Botkin’s Letters about Spain: Exoticism as an Aesthetic of Diversity

Abstract

In the present paper I argue that an interpretation of Spanish culture and national character presented in VasilyBotkin’s Letters about Spain offers an alternative to the Orientalist picture of Spain in writings of his West Europeancontemporaries. Botkin’s interpretation comes close to the notion of Exoticism as Diversity developed 80 years laterby a French cultural theorist, Victor Segalen. Traveling through an unknown space always involves an encounterwith the Other who is translated into the cultural idioms of the home country. Botkin sets out on his Spanish journeyin search of the romanticized “ideal of Spain” but this preconceived ideal is altered by the discovery of Andalusia,where the presence of the Moorish culture was the strongest and which became for him the quintessence of Spain.In his search for the African origin of Spanish culture Botkin travels to Africa, finding the contemporary cultureof the Arabs, living in exile in Tangier, lacking the splendor of the glorious Moorish past. After Tangier Botkinreturns to southern Spain ending his journey in Granada, the “lost Paradise” of the Moors, where he regains hisconnection with the Arabic Exotic Other. And Botkin intends to keep this Paradise forever, translating it into hishome space. Botkin inscribes himself in this exotic space and conceives himself as Segalen’s diverse Other, who issimultaneously the one and the other with this space.