YAEL SCHLICK

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On the Persistence of a Concept:
Segalen's Rene Leys and the
Death(s) of Exoticism
le ne saurai done den de plus. le n'insiste pas; je me retire (p. 13)
I'hesite, cependan< (p. 68) Je progresse (p. 83) I'apprends (p. 95)
Je vois, je deroule, j'elale, je liens el je possede (p. 106)
Je I'encerele, je le domine; j'equarris man ",il d sa forme; je le comprends (p. 107)
Je ne puis accepler . . . je n'acceple plus . .. je l'inlerroge (p. 193)
Je doule (p. 214) Je me reprends: je m'explique (p. 215)
Je n'en crois plus (p. 224)
"le ne saurai rien de plus . .. je me retire . .. If et ne velLt savoir rien de plus (p. 229)
I'ai relu ce monuscril ... Je m'accuse. (pp. 237-238)'
One could say the quotations above aptly summarize the entire plot of Victor
Segalen's Rene Leys, for these sentences reveal the core of the plot as well as
some dominant formal qualities of this modernist text.' First, one notices the
centrality of the "I" of the narrator who is in the process of writing his journal.
Second, the statements above represent the way the narrative is structured as
successive moments in the narrator's attempt to attain his exotic object (namely,
moments of despair, hope, elation and lastly disillusionment). Finally, these
quotations make apparent the lack of presence of the exotic object itself, which
is signalled so starkly above by the frequent absence of the direct object and
by the final, self-reflexive object (for example, the reflexive pronoun "me" in
"le m'explique", "le me reprends", "le m'accuse"). Rene Leys is in fact a
conceptual, first-person narrative about an individual's epistemological quest for
an exotic object. This quest ends with the narrator's doubt ("le doute"), his turn
away from acquiring further information about the exotic object ("et ne veux
savoir rien de plus"), and his final turn inward towards his very own journal as
the only source of reliable knowledge ("J'ai relu ce manuscrit"). Rene Leys is
therefore a novel about the failure of the quest for an exotic object, and
ultimately a paradoxical text-paradoxical because it appears to argue against the
possibility of exoticism as a concept when that concept is actually the author's
most important and treasured idea.
Indeed Segalen is one of the best-known champions of exoticism-"une
esthetique du Divers" as he called it--of the early twentieth century.' His first
novel, Les Immemoriaux, showed his concern for the disappearance of diversity
200 YaiH Schlick
in telling of the destruction of the Maori culture by missionaries. Segalen then
travelled to China, learned Chinese, and spent the rest of his writing career
working on his Essai sur I'exotisme and on works of prose and poetry inspired
by his stay in China and by his study of Chinese language and culture' He
considered himself an "exote": someone with a predilection for detecting and
taking pleasure in the exotic. Why then would he write a novel which seems to
admit that exoticism is a philosophical impossibility? Why would he suggest that
the multiple strategies employed in the effort to attain the exotic are a failure, and
that the only result of such a quest is a return to the subject, who is, furthermore,
a subject in a state of doubt? Is this novel a parody of a Loti-like quest for the
exotic, or is it a detailed account of the pitfalls of a more contemporary form of
exoticism?'
But the problem that Rene Leys disagrees with Segalen's own celebration
of the exotic is complicated by a further problem: that of understanding the
contradictions of Segalen's work as a whole within the context of exoticist
thinking during the early decades of the twentieth century. Many writers and
critics during this period were fascinated with exoticism. They wanted to rewrite
the romantic exoticism of the nineteenth century, and to address exoticism's
relationship to the reality of a vast French colonial empire. Authors like Marius-
Ary Leblond, Pierre Mille, Robert Randau, and critics like Louis Cario, Charles
Regismanset, and Roland Lebel wrote countless novels as well as works of
literary history and criticism which centred on the problematics of a modern
exoticism.' Distinguishing himself from these contemporary (imperialist)
exoticists, Segalen makes clear in his essay on exoticism that the aesthetic purity
of the exotic object is disturbed by its historicity. And yet Rene Leys is an
historical novel. Why choose to elaborate on the exotic quest within an historical
framework? In what follows I will explore these contradictions by examining the
plot structure of Rene Leys, by comparing Segalen's concept of exoticism to those
of contemporary exoticists, and by discussing the place of historj in Segalen's
writing. I will also seek to delve into the problematic nature of exoticism itself,
a concept which has persisted despite repeated assertions that it has no future.
Plot as Quest: Subject, Verb, Object
Rene Leys is the journal of a Frenchman living in Peking, a Frenchman
who is fascinated with the Chinese dynasty and wants to know what is hidden
behind the walls of the Forbidden City. He uses various strategies to gain
knowledge about this mysterious interior but is eventually-for both historical
and epistemological reasons-forced to give up his quest.
r
Segalen's m ~ Leys and the Death(sj of Exoticism 201
Object. The narrator's object consists of what is vaguely called "le Dedans"-the
interior of the Forbidden City in Peking-and "la magie enclose dans ces murs"
(p. 13)-' But the exotic object is not simply synonymous with the architectural
space of the Forbidden City since it also includes those royal personages who
inhabit it. Its specificity is, paradoxically, constituted by its invisibility, its
secretive nature. It is "le mystere" which fascinates him, as the narrator explains
to his Chinese tutor m ~ Leys (p. 33). But the object is never further explained.
It simply is, or rather, it simply is not, since the narrator also infonns us that his
quest is belated-by three years to be exact. These are the three years since the
death of the former Chinese emperor who represents the truly exotic object. What
the Imperial Palace now encloses is a mere child, the child-emperor referred to
as the Regent.
The narrator's sense of belatedness and of the impossibility of witnessing
the authentic exotic is not a new theme for Segalen, nor is the gesture to pursue
the quest despite such awareness.
8
In his first novel, Les Immt!moriaux, Segalen
had already taken great pains to describe the destruction of the exotic (here,
traditional Maori community) at the hands of Western missionaries. Since his
1907 text is dedicated "Aux Maori des temps oublies", it is evident that he
acknowledged the disappearance of the exotic as a result of Western colonialism
yet went on to write a narrative in which this disappearance was not yet
complete. Similarly, in Rent! Leys, Segalen gestures at his belatedness but pursues
his quest nonetheless. His fascination with his exotic object remains operative
because of a latent belief, a tenacious belief, in its persistence when its
persistence is precisely what is in question. In exploring the status of the object,
then, Rent! Leys has already placed us in a position to see its basic problematics,
a problematics worth exploring (even though the exotic object is absent) for two
reasons: Firstly, because the pursuit of the exotic in general seems to be defined
in disproportionate terms to its existence. To say that Segalen merely "kills off
what was already dead is to dismiss the concept of exoticism which perhaps
should be dead but is in fact very much alive. Secondly, for Rent! Leys in
particular, it will be important to follow the novel's own progression precisely
in order to see its own, reluctant demystification of the exotic as a process. .
Verb. The narrator deploys numerous strategies to know his object. Knowing and
possessing are synonymous in this text (hence my reference to his epistemological
quest). Initially, there are several sources of knowledge at the narrator's disposal.
There is Maitre Wang: his Chinese lessons slowly evolve, at the demand of his
pupil, into accounts of Palace life.' Language instruction is also provided by a
young Belgian polyglot named Rene Leys who provides the narrator with the
most spectacular and minute details about life in the Imperial Palace. With Leys,
the narrator is able to indulge more fully in his fascination with the "Dedans"
202 Yai!/ Schlick
because Leys reveals himself to be no less than a friend of the Regent, the lover
of the Empress, and a member of the Palace's secret police. By recounting his
adventures to the narrator he allows him vicariously to penetrate the palace. He
even "transports" him through his narratives to such an intimate place as the bed
of the Empress, referred to as "le cceur du milieu du Dedans" (p. 150). IQ There
is also the information the narrator acquires from Jarignoux, a French neighbour
and bureaucrat in the Ministry of Communications who is a naturalized Chinese
citizen married to a Manchurian woman (a rather poor political choice of a mate
considering the near end of the Manchurian dynasty in China). Early in the
narrative the narrator entertains hopes that this fellow Frenchman will introduce
him to important Chinese friends and will thus allow him to enter into the
Palace's social circles." However, on only one occasion does the narrator
himself have access to his object: when he is allowed into the Palace as part of
a French delegation.
The moment of the narrator's entry into the Imperial Palace is important,
because for the first time he is able to see the object of his fascination without
recourse to intermediaries. This event is also important within the novel in that
it reduplicates the narrative-it is a classic mise en abyme-by representing the
attempt to perceive the exotic object that is the stated theme of the novel as a
whole. The event is thus symptomatic of the novel and yet has a special stams
within it. As with the novel as a whole, this episode begins with misgiving and
a sense of failure, and ends with disappointment resulting from the lack of
sufficient knowledge gained about the "Dedans". Yet unlike the novel, this
episode reveals the narrator's confrontation with the physical, material objects he
invested with authenticity, and shows, paradoxically, his turning away from that
reality back to the world of knowledge mediated by others.
Strangely, from the very first moment the narrator sets foot within the
Palace walls it is apparent that he is less interested in "being there" and more
preoccupied, already, with retracing his steps:
Ensuite, j 'essaie de reperer exactement mon chemin.... Comment m'y
retrouver ensuite? Faut-il id, ou je suis conduit par la Diplomatie, me faut-
il demander le chemin?
Comment, sur un plan. retrouYer roes traces? Et surtout, comment
reperer ceci au l'on s'arrele, au l'on penetre ... _neeci" est une sorte
d'antIe civilise, mysterieux, cavemeux et absorbant comme la bouche a
peine entr'ouverte du Dragon intelligent: un Palais chinois, surbaisse, un
interieur de bleus sambres et de vens, meuble seulement d'une estrade
basse, -et qui serait vide, vide, it s'en inquieter, si les murs, laques de
rouge, les colonnes de bois Iaques de rouge, et surtout le pIafond lourd
et fiche, caissonne, ouvrage, nieHe. minutieusement compartimeme et
Segalen's Rene Leys and the Death(s) of Exoticism 203
menuise, ne meublait ce vide et cette absence a I'egal d'un tresor royal
attendant le souverain ... (p. 103, emphasis mine).12
Instead of taking pleasure in his ability, at last, to be within the interior, he is
already dwelling on what his knowledge will lack when he finds himself back
home. What the narrator is struggling to grasp, in other words, is not so much
his object, as ways of knowing it with certainty, and points of reference outside
that object that can help locate and fix it. For the exotic object seems always to
be that elusive something which is constantly displaced. If earlier in the narrative
it vacillated from being the Forbidden City to being the Regent or the "Dedans"
more generally, now, in the Forbidden City, face-to-face with the Regent and
firmly within the walls of the "Dedans", the object recedes yet again in favour
of ways of recovering it once it is lost.
Furthermore, once in the interior (supposedly in that place of full
revelation and plenitude), this very object appears, alarmingly, to be absent. The
paragraph quoted above makes evident a lavish setting, a sumptuous interior,
minutely decorated and furnished, but which is empty. When the Regent finally
appears, this space gains nothing, it seems, in fullness. Rather this becomes the
moment for the narrator to lament the lost etiquette of bowing to the Emperor,
to ruminate over the Regent's feeble presence ("gonfle d'une importance qui n'est
point tout a fait la sienne ... ", p. 104). And just then, the Regent disappears.
The visit is suddenly over. It is as if, once more, the narrator must confront the
empty sign, the lavish exterior which houses only "ce vide et cette absence". Yet
this is precisely the admission that the narrator refuses to make, just as he refused
to admit the belatedness of his quest in the first pages of the novel.
What then is the actual (if not the desired) object of the narrator? It is
perhaps not the "Dedans" at all, but rather any person or thing which reveals to
the narrator that the exotic object is knowable and reassures him of its presence.
Just as Rene Leys himself becomes the object of the narrator's fascination
because he represents access to the exotic Palace, so the entry into the Palace
shows the displacement of the object from the interior to the exterior." For this
journal entry about the narrator's experience of the Palace moves quickly into a
representation of the Palace in the form of a map:
Voila donc mon entree personnelle au Palais.... Je voudrais tant me
reconnaitre dans ce chemin parcouru! Et je deplie un plan a grande echelle
de la ville interdire, un plan europeen, compler en apparence, exact, au
centieme, colore, bourre de noms rranscrits, -un plan leve hativement et
puerilement par les troupes alliees, durantleur occupation pleine du Palais
en "dix-neuf cent" .... (p. 105)
204 Yael Schlick
Whereas the narrator's actual presence in the Palace leads only to disorientation,
the exactitude and clarity of the map--taken from a previous invasion of the
Palace during the Boxer Rebellion--Qffers certainty: "Et sur mes yeux, entre mes
deux mains ecartees ... je vois, je deroule, j'etale, je tiens et je possede, pour
un peu d'argent, la figuration plane de cette ville, de la capitale et de ce qu'elle
enferme ... Pei-king" (p. 106). Though the map is only a ''figuration'' of the real
space, the immeasurable delight the narrator takes in "possessing" the Palace
marks this as the moment when he is closest to his goal: "le l'encercle, je le
domine; j'equarris mon reil a sa forme; je le comprends" (p. 107). Paradoxically,
this is also precisely the moment when the object has faded into its mere
representation.
Yet if the perception of the actual physical reality reverts to a
representation of that perception in the form of a map (which itself represents a
former physical experience of the interior of the Forbidden City by the Allies in
1900), the chain of displacements does not end here. After his initial elation at
possessing the "Dedans" with the aid of the map and at the unique coincidence
of the object with its representation, the narrator is once more derailed: "Mais,
pratiquement, je ne sais m'y reconnaitre. Oil est la route la-dedans suivie? ... Oil
le Regent nous a-t-it r e ~ u s (pp. 107-108). Looking at the map, he realizes he
does not know where he was, and, therefore, cannot successfully retrace his
steps. Again he lapses into a state of confusion. This time he decides to seek
assurance and knowledge from Rene Leys.
I have spoken of this passage as a microcosm of the novel because what
follows is precisely a structural repetition of the journal entry detailing the
narrator's penetration into the Palace: the narrator, now so dependent on Rene
Leys as his informant, will in fact turn Rene Leys himself-just as he did the
map--into his object. And like the disappointment of the map, which fails to
represent that possession because the narrator is not in possession of what the
map represents, Rene Leys will turn out to be an unreliable informant. Thus any
vicarious possession enjoyed by the narrator through Rene Leys itself collapses.
Because the narrator can no longer rely on Rene Leys's stories, the narrator's
own journal entries become the sole remaining sources of information. What the
narrator will then have to do is to reread and reinterpret his own journal in an
attempt to gauge what he really knows.
Subject. In this way the narrative, which has been constituted as a fascination
with an exotic otherness, ends by reverting to and collapsing back onto itself and
onto the self: "Et je reviens", writes the narrator after Rene Leys's death, "et je
me retrouve face a face avec mon seul temoin valable: ce manuscrit" (p. 236).
What the narrator discovers in this "intra-textual" moment" is "I 'irrecusable
certitude de ma propre culpabitite" (p. 237). The narrator suspects, although
Segalen's Rem: Leys and the Death(s) of Exoticism 205
doubt is still predominant, that he himself was the author of Rene Leys's actions;
that in telling Leys of his own desire for knowledge he had also suggested to the
young Belgian the course of action he should take: "Tout ce que j'ai dit, Hl'a
fait." Thus the narrator's fantasy finds its realization in Rene Leys's actions,
although the fact that those actions originated with the narrator himself confirms
to him his own state of doubt as a result of having dictated his own exotic reality.
This last interpretation of the manuscript by the narrator makes plain a chain of
events that reveals himself to be the "author" of Rene Leys's adventures: for
example, the narrator telling Rene Leys about the existence of a secret police and
Rene Leys's claim that he belongs to that secret police only eight days later; the
narrator's discussion of poison as a means of death, and Leys's death from
poison only a few days afterwards. But there is still no certainty, no complete
coherence in the narrator's mind: "Restent des moments inexplicables ... des
ap
er
9
us
, des eclats, des eclaircies des lueurs, des mots impossibles ainventer,
des gestes impossibles aimiter " (p. 238). The materiality of some of Rene
Leys's adventures cannot be attributed solely to the narrator's desire as conveyed
to the young Belgian. What the narrator feebly concludes is that he, the narrator,
was at the very least a friend of a friend of the Emperor, and that as a friend he
is afraid to pronounce a final verdict as to the truth of Rene Leys's stories and
so to risk killing Rene Leys a second time.
It would appear from this that the quest for the exotic object is
inconclusive at best. Yet, despite the dubious status of the exotic object at both
the beginning and at the end of the novel, some change does take place in the
space of the text. Rereading the first line of his journal, "je ne saurai rien de plus
... je me retire", the narrator adds the words "et ne veux savoir rien de plus",
turning the initial sense of resignation about the knowability of the exotic object
to a new refusal to know, a closing-off of the quest and of the narrative at one
and the same time. The end of the novel finds the narrator in full possession of
nothing but his own doubt which he would like to leave unresolved:
-J'etais son ami, -devrais-je dire avec le meffie accent, le ffieme regret
fidele, -sans plus chercher de quoi se composait exactement notre amitie
... dans la crainte de le tuer, ou de la tuer une seconde fois ... ou -ce
serait plus coupable encore, -d'etre mis brusquement en demeure iI.
repondre moi-meme amon dome, et de prononcer entin: oui all non?
(p. 239)
These are the last words in the text and so the last gesture in the closing-off of
the epistemological quest. That quest is closed off for good-because the narrator
no longer wishes to know, but also, as I will show below, because the narrator
knows. What he knows is that his answer would in fact lead to the final loss, not
206 Ya!!l Schlick
only of Rene Leys (or rather his memory) and his friendship, but of the exotic
object itself. The narrative chooses to end with this "oui ou non?" rather than
deliver its final negation. Wilfully, Rene Leys (like Segalen's essay on exoticism)
shies away from concluding its trajectory because this conclusion is contrary to
its own desire.
Segalen and Contemporary Exoticists
Like Rene Leys, Segalen's manuscript on exoticism remained unpublished
during his lifetime. Begun in 1908, Essai sur l'exotisme was left incomplete when
its author died in 1919, but has since been published in fragment form. Despite
its incompleteness, this text successfully makes its basic points and manifests
several of Segalen's desires. His concept of exoticism in this work typifies
formulations of aestheticism more generally, and embroils itself in the same
struggles and paradoxes as aestheticism, which has been aptly characterized by
Terry Eagleton as a tendency towards abstraction all the while attempting to make
possible a non-problematic or "non-alienated mode of cognition"." As in many
theories of the aesthetic, Segalen's intent in formulating his concept of
exoticism-which must be seen as a sub-category of aestheticism-is first and
foremost to constitute his (exotic) object as something which is, which exists in
a pure and untainted form as an object of aesthetic contemplation. This is
apparent in Segalen's insistence that the word "exoticism" itself return to its
"purete originel1e" so that it will connote nothing but the "sentiment que I'on a
de la purete et de ]'intensite du Divers"." This attempt to constitute the exotic
as a pure object is the most difficult task in Segalen's text, but not, as he would
have it, because the concept and the perception have somehow obscured the
object or tainted it.
Most often when Segalen is speaking of what the exotic is, he does so in
the form of repeated sentence fragments. Over and over, the text repeats phrases
like "La sensation d'exotisme: surprise. Son emoussement rapide" (p. 29) or
"L'Exotisme universe!. Le pouvoir de Concevoir autre" (p. 33). By sheer
accumulation, these fragments seem initially to add up to a comprehension of the
meaning of the exotic. But their repetition is of a desperate nature, conveying
more than anything the difficulty or impossibility of arguing for the fullness of
exoticism as a concept. Rather, Segalen is caught in the common contradiction
of wishing for the purely aesthetic nature of his object which demands that it
remain "untouched", and the inevitability that any perception or rendering of that
object involves precisely the kind of contamination Segalen condemns. This leads
him at one point even to the logical but untenable desire to celebrate the
impenetrability of the exotic, its "incomprehensibilite eternel1e" (p. 38). What he
Segalen's Rene Leys and the Death(s) of Exoticism 207
tries but fails to argue for, as the critic Andreas Michel has made clear, is a
radical aesthetics which would resolve this paradox." Essai sur I 'exotisme is
forceful in its argument for such a possibility but is ultimately incapable of
presenting exoticism as a viable concept. Of this difficulty Segalen was surely
aware and it may be the reason why the book was never completed or published
during his lifetime.
Secondly, aside from the desire to constitute the exotic as a pure,
aesthetic entity, Essai sur I'exotisme also desires to dissociate itself and to
dissociate its central and celebrated concept of exoticism from both past and
present theoretical formulations about the exotic. This task comprises the largest
portion of the text, the portion which discusses what exoticism is not." On the
one hand, Segalen criticizes the exoticism of writers of the nineteenth century like
Loti (always the emblematic exoticist/fetishist of the fin de siec/e). Segalen caUs
people with this type of "mauvaise attitude exotique" (p. 60) "pseudo-Exotes" or
"Ies Proxenetes de la Sensation du Divers" (p. 46). On the other hand, he
distinguishes himself from contemporary colonial authors like Pierre Mille,
Rober! Randau; and Marius-Ary Leblond who saw themselves as rewriting
nineteenth-century exoticism and celebrating the "rebirth" of the exotic as a
component of the colonial enterprise. Segalen criticizes their writing on aesthetic
grounds-"L'exotisme n'est vraiment pas affaire de romanciers exotiques", he
writes, "mais de grands artisles" (p. 58).
But clearly Segalen's aestheticization of the exotic makes problematic any
admission of the historicity of the exotic in the first place. While he vaguely
periodizes and refers to unsuccessful writing about the exotic, he refuses
simultaneously any historical perspective on these writings as he refuses any
formulation of a necessary mediation between history and art. While his critique
of his contemporaries is largely driven by criticism of the colonial nature of their
work, colonialism is merely construed as one of the leading contaminants of this
aesthetic object, the exotic. Colonialism is one among several elements which
Segalen would like to "sweep away" in order to make room for and unveil the
truly exotic:
Deblaiement: le colon, le fonctionnaire colonial.
Ne som rien moins que des Exotes! le premier surgit avec le desir du
commerce indigene le plus commercial. Pour lui, le Divers n'existe qu'en
tant qu'illui servira de moyen de groger. Quant al'autre, la notion meme
d'une administration centralisee, de lois bonnes a tous et qu'il doir
appliquer, lui fausse d'emblee tout jugemem, le rend sourd aux
dysharmonies (ou harmonies du Divers). Aucun ne peut se targuer de
contemplation esthetique.
Par cela meme. la litterature "coloniale" n'est pas notre fait.
208 Yai![ Schlick
Or, paradoxalement, ceci nait a la lecture de "colonisateurs":
enthousiastes, les Leblond. (L 'Oue<f)
(Us pronent, je crois, ce qu'ils appellent la politique d'association.)
(p. 52)
Criticism of colonialism is made not on moral grounds, but with the notion of
opposing the intervention of any historical stain upon the aesthetic object. The
relationship of colonialism to exoticism (which authors like the Lebloncts saw as
unproblematic) is criticized most specifically in this citation with reference to the
figures of the colonist and the colonial civil servant. The colonist's interest in an
indigenous people, says Segalen, is a commercial one. But this commercial use
and value of the exotic cannot be reconciled with any alternative, disinterested
interest in it. As to the colonial civil servant, his object is to centralize his
administration. His task is therefore to counter or to be insensitive to the exotic!
diverse element with which he is constantly in contact. For him, the exotic is a
potential "disharmony" which must be eliminated. Neither of these colonial
figures can appreciate the exotic aesthetically. Because of this, continues Segalen,
colonial literature cannot have any relation to what is truly exotic.
Segalen makes the leap between colonial policies and colonial literature
by suggesting, at the very end of the paragraph cited (and in parentheses), that
writers like the Leblonds support certain colonial policies. Thus, he suggests,
they have a position with regard to colonialism. Ultimately these authors not only
lack the necessary aesthetic sensibility but, like the colonist and the colonial
administrator, they adversely affect the survival of the exotic by their promotion
of such things as "de[s] lois bonnes a tous" and the policy of association-a
policy more liberal than the preceding policy of assimilation. Compatible with the
centralizing instinct of the colonial civil servant, colonial associationism ideally
entails the mutual transformation of colonizer and colonized with a view to a
more cooperative fonn of colonial governance. As such it is seen by Segalen to
efface the differences which constitute the exotic. Though he does not take into
account the morality of such policies as associationism because this is not an
aesthetic criterion, he nevertheless attempts to erect the values of appreciation and
preservation of the exotic. Thus he is forced, despite his desire, awkwardly to
traverse his own divisions between aesthetics, on the one hand, and the effects
of history (Le. colonialism) on the other. Ultimately he is forced to abandon
explicit discussion of history's relation to the exotic altogether.
Exoticism and the Incursions of History
Though the Essai sur ['exotisme glosses over the historical context of
exoticism, the problem of history and its influence on the exotic is directly
Segalen's Rene Leys and the Death(s) of Exoticism 209
addressed in Rene Leys. Segalen chooses to situate his novel precisely at an
importam turning-point in Chinese history-a period of transition from one
emperor to another (this was the cause of the narrator's sense of belatedness),
which is also the time of transition from a dynastic to a republican form of
government (this is the cause of the narrator's final disillusionment). More
specifically, the novel is historically contextualized to include the rebellion of
Nationalist forces led by Sun Yat-sen which will bring about the eventual
abdication of the Regent. The disturbing name of Sun Yat-sen is hardly
mentioned in the first half of the novel, though already there are rumours of a
rebellion. But gradually, this irksome historical development diverts the exotic
quest and comes to occupy cemre stage, for the novel turns more and more to
political developments underway in the southern provinces and to the official
response to the rebellion on the part of the Regent.
The narrator finally begins to doubt his informam Rene Leys when he
turns to him in a desperate attempt to get information about the rebellion, because
this time the narrator experiences with his own eyes the discrepancy between
what is happening and what Rene Leys tells him. It is as if, with the entry of
historical events, the entire narrative were destined to collapse. The narrator
becomes convinced that Rene Leys is merely making up stories: "Ce qu'il dit ne
m'interesse plus. Le doute a porte ses fruits. Qu'il parle de ceci ou non. Qu'il
dit ceci ou cela ... " (p. 223). This doubt has several consequences: it leads him
to question his desire to penetrate the Forbidden City ("Pei-king n'est plus
l'habitat de mes reves" ,he exclaims, p. 228). It leads also to Rene Leys's
suicide, and finally to the end of the whole epistemological quest. This quest is
shattered because everything that constituted knowledge about tbe exotic object
is now in doubt, and because that object itself has receded into history: with Rene
Leys's death comes the birth of China as a Republic. What the narrator wished
to be a journal of his epistemological quest for the exotic object has turned,
despite his wishes, imo an accoum of historical events leading to the end of the
dynasty.
But how does the invasion of history imo the narrative rupture the exotic
quest? How does it become the subject of the narrative despite the desire of
the narrator? While there has been scant but periodic reference to historical
events all along, this point in the novel is the first time that the exotic object
cannot be considered as isolated. Initially, it is coveted precisely because of its
imperviousness. But as this interior, walled and protected within the Forbidden
City, is forced to confront and to react to the rebellion in another part of China,
its isolation is broken. It is not only threatened by the rebellion politically, but
invaded by the Nationalist forces who have shattered the capacity of the Imperial
Palace simply to be. The narrator can now only focus on a "Dedans" which is
preoccupied with the "dehors", and which is now striving to preserve itself as an
210 Yaiil Schlick
entity. Because of this new orientation, which signals simultaneously the
recognition of historical forces and the admission that the existence of the exotic
is contingent on the deployment of a politics, the "dedans" can no longer be the
object of fascination that it once was for the narrator. On 19 November 1911 the
narrator wakes up with the desire to know nothing more about it:
11 est peut":tre indiscret ou maladroit de se reveiller a cette heure ...
historique pounant. Et d'etre soudaio tout aussi lucide que le "grand cie! sec
de I'hiver". Je me reveille de tres loin. Pour la premiere fois, ce jour n'est
pas ce que j'attendais. Pei-king n'est plus I'habitat de mes reves. Et ma
mauvaise humeur envahissant et assiegeant le Palais meme, j'en arrive a
douter de mon desir d'y avoir jamais desire entrer!
Comme apres une nuit trop ivre de mauvais champagne beige, j'ai la
bouche -et surtout les idees, -mauvaises. Je voudrais avoir tres mal ala
tete, un pretexte a ee nauseeux etat de mes idees . .. J'ecris ceci d'une
plume grinchue, et sans risquer une enquete politique, aujourd'hui, je me
recouche une demiere fois dans I'aube de Pei-king. Ce soir ou demaio, je
bouderai mes malles.
Et d'un geste machinal, relisant le premier feuillet du manuscrit, je
souligne ces mats: "le ne saurai rien de plus . .. je me rerire ... "
Et j'ajoule d'une tout autre "'riture:
... et ne veux savoir rien de plus. (pp. 228-229)
This passage, which immediately follows the narrator's lament over the
abdication of the last Emperor of China, is truly the moment of the end of the
quest for knowledge (though it is not the end of the novel). Suddenly, and despite
himself, the narrator is both lucid and in a bad mood. His "mauvaise humeur"
invades and besieges the Palace, but the desire to enter the Palace has dissipated.
At this point, when the "Dedans" is practically a thing of the past, we learn that
it is no longer "l'habitat de mes reves". What the narrator regrets then is
strangely both some concrete place occupied by certain personages and the loss
of a dream. He can no longer dream because he has woken up, regrettably, at
this historical moment. Moved now to deny his quest in its totality, he inscribes
his lack of a dream, his lack of desire to know, in his journal. If his earlier entry
showed doubt and disappointment at an earlier historicaljuncture-"le ne saurai
rien de plus . .. je me retire . .. "-the latter entry is complete in its rejection
both of the desire to know and the existence of an object one dreams to know.
This latter moment, I would argue, is really the final moment of insight in the
narrative: the exotic object is gone. It is history. And this history has awakened
the narrator from a long dream. What follows-Rene Leys's death, the author's
reading of his manuscript in its entirety in his attempt to understand, and his
Segalen's Rene Leys and the Death(s) of Exoticism 211
resulting doubt about all that has taken place--shies away from the insights
revealed in this moment of awakening.
In the last portion of the text the narrator chooses to deny his insight and
to end on a note of doubt in order to resurrect the exotic object. This moment of
bad faith occurs only at the very end of the novel and constitutes a desperate
attempt on the part of the narrative to regain the lost ground upon which its
exotic object rested. It represents a desire, as I have argued above, to end with
doubt rather than with the finality so clearly delineated in the long passage I
quoted. This doubt does cover over the fact that the exotic object is lost forever.
But it can only stave off a final death by foregoing the final interpretive moment
which would be an answer to the question posed at the end: "oui ou non?"
This desire to deny insight and to hold on to doubt, precisely because one
knows, is best represented in the narrative by the narrator's response to the body
of Rene Leys himself. Believing himself to be the cause of Rene Leys's death by
having raised (and therefore perhaps suggested) the idea of death by poison when
he last saw him, the narrator nevertheless shies away from knowing the truth
about Leys's death. He explains: "Si je posais ce doute, les mectecins exigeraient
l'autopsie. L'analyse intestinale ... la profanation de ce beau corps que je revets
et recouvre ... le ne poserai point ce doute; je veux cependant, non pas en
mectecin, mais en homme, je veux savoir aquoi la mort est due" (p. 233). The
autopsy, which would provide the information the narrator seeks, is rejected
because it would destroy the aesthetic object, "ce beau corps". The knowledge
which this body contains within it is denied in favour of a body "que je revets et
recouvre": a body both covered over, and found again. Here the narrator plainly
admits his desire not to know. But at the very same time he reconstitutes his
quest for knowledge, explaining that he does not want to know "en mectecin,
mais en homme". What I make of this statement is a rather clumsy attempt to
reconstitute the integrity of the narrator's epistemological quest, to resurrect it
as still viable. And yet it is clear at the end of the text that just as the narrator
preferred doubt to what he considered the defilement of the beauty of Rene
Leys's body, he prefers to conclude the entire body of his text-also named Rene
Leys-with doubt rather than with knowledge. As in the concluding sections of
Essai sur I'exotisme, Segalen's fictional text shows a predilection for continuing
to affirm his exotic object at the expense of his own insights. As he ponders the
paradox of his perception of the exotic at the very moment of its disappearance
in his essay on exoticism (this would no doubt be a very difficult puzzle to solve
without the history of colonialism as one of its central pieces), he constructs a
narrative about an exotic quest which ends up pondering ("oui ou non?") rather
than drawing the conclusions it itself has arrived at.
In Segalen's work two different modes of defilement of the exotic object
are possible. The first is historicization in general: the aesthetic exotic object
212 fad Schlick
must be saved from history in general because this history threatens to reveal
both exoticism's wane and to explain that wane as a function of Western
colonialism. The second, more specific, way that the object can be defiled is by
contact with the history of colonialism in particular and with the influence of the
West. In Rene Leys the latter is seen as intruding upon and defiling the exotic
Forbidden City in the form of the revolutionary forces led by Sun Yat-sen, whom
Segalen sees as inspired by Western-style democracies and as bringing about a
Westernization of traditional Chinese society. The narrator himself clings to the
exotic, dynastic form of government which he desperately hopes will be
preserved. Democratization at the hands of the Chinese revolutionaries signifies,
for both the narrator of Rene Leys and the author of Essai sur I'exotisme, the
diminution of class distinctions and the influx of Western influence. Both of these
would cause differences between classes and between nations to wane. But the
narrator's stance is only possible because he chooses not to recognize that his
idea of exotic China is already the product of invasion and transformation, and
that he himself is situated in this history. For example, the very Manchu dynasty
the narrator imbues with aesthetic authenticity is itself a "foreign" intruder. It
would have been possible to conceive of the rebels led by Sun Yat-sen as
revolting against a foreign government and thus restoring Chinese rule of
China." Nor does the narrator question his delight in the map of the Forbidden
City, produced by the Allied forces during an invasion into this sacred space as
a reaction to the Boxer Rebellion which attempted to rid China of foreign
influences.
These aspects of Segalen's thought-seen in both Essai sur I'exotisme and
Rene Leys-reveal the reactionary nature of his concept of exoticism which
denounces Republicanism in order to preserve exoticism for the West. I would
argue that Les Immemoriaux was not a criticism of colonialism as such, but a
lesson in the need to preserve the exotic as an aesthetic, ahistorical enclave. What
Segalen's works reveal despite his desire, however, is that the exotic object can
not be aesthetically isolated.
The Politics of Exoticism and the Lessons of History
The concept of exoticism as generated by Segalen's contemporaries failed
because it was restricted to a mundane, politically-motivated description of
colonial life. But Segalen's tack was no more successful: he sought to define an
eternal, aesthetic exotic untainted by history and unaffected by change. This
proved to be an impossible task, as Segalen's own texts testify. The unfinished
essay on exoticism could not be completed for profound reasons. What was left
for him was to affirm nostalgia and doubt with regard to the exotic-increasingly
what he experienced to be the only possible attitude one could have toward the

Segalen's Rene Leys and the Death(s) of Exoticism 213
exotic object. That object remains elusive in his works, and its epistemological
evasiveness has to do both with the lack of definition and with historical
transformation.
That elusive thing called exoticism emerges not so much as "an idea
without a future" (Bongie) but as an idea which does not need a future to persist.
This does not necessarily mean that it is an idea without value. For the notion of
a heterogeneous, precapitalist world which underwrites the concept of exoticism
keeps alive the desire for the virtues of traditional community. If the nostalgia for
such a world is false, therefore, it may nevertheless have political meaning for
the present.'o But while this attitude is appealing, while one would like to be
able to be nostalgic, nostalgia cannot provide comfort when it is apparent that this
comfort is predicated simultaneously on a rejection of history (and of knowledge)
and on a complicity with colonialism. While one may prefer to be the inheritors
of the likes of a Segalen (champion of a pure exoticism) rather than the
inheritors of the likes of the Leblonds (upholders of an imperialist exoticism),
exoticism must finally be rejected as a helpful countering force to an increasingly
modernizing world, for it diverts quests for knowledge, and functions through
displacement because it has no object. The definition of the exotic itself is of an
entity which is always already elsewhere and must remain elsewhere in order to
persist. As such it does not address the reality of colonialism as it does not
address the reality of modernization. It offers rather, through its permanent
displacement, only an ideal which by definition must remain elsewhere.
Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario
Notes
I. ViClOr Segalen, Rene Leys, Paris, Gallimard. 1971.
2. This research would not have been possible without the generous support of the Izaak Wallan
Killam Postdocloral Fellowship at Dalhousie University and the Mary Isabel Sibley
Fellowship granted by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
3. See his Essai sur l'exolisme. Paris. Fala Morgana, 1978, discussed below.
4. Most prominent among these are Steles (1912) and Peintures (1916), the only two works
published during his lifetime apart from Les lmmemoriaux.
5. See Henry Bouillier's discussion of irony in Rene Leys in his Victor Segalen, Paris, Mercure
de France, 1961, pp. 323-324; see also Yvonne Hsieh's argument that Segalen is consciously
parodying Loti in his description of some exotic details in Rene Leys in her study Victor
Segalen's Literary Encounter with China: Chinese Moulds, Western Thought, Toronto,
University of Toronto Press. 1988, p. 160.
6. See for example Marius-Ary Leblond's Apres l'e:cotisme de Loti, le roman colonial, Paris,
Rasmussen, 1926; Louis Cario and Charles Regismanset's L 'E:cotisme: La Litterature
coloniale, Paris. Mercure de France, 1911; and Roben Randau's hOrigines de la litterature
coloniale
h
, Le Monde colonial illustre, n" 67, mars 1929, p. 82.
214 Yael Schlick
7. The is the "Cite violene" found inside the Imperial Palace, which is in turn inside
the VilIe Tartare. This space is both described by the narrator (pp. 14, 27) and represented
by a map at the beginning of the text. As we will see later, the two-dimensional representation
of the exotic "Dedans" is used briefly as a means of knowing the object itself. The map,
explains the narrator, was made during a short-lived invasion of the Imperial City. The exotic
is. in fact, often described and designated as a complex interior, an architectural space (as
with the description of interiors in Gustave Flaubert's Salammbo) so that its attainment is
figured in the form of a penetration, an invasion.
8. For a discussion of Segalen's overwhelming sense of belatedness see Chris Bongie, Exotic
Memories: Lirerature. Colonialism, and the Fin de Siecle, Stanford, Stanford University
Press, 1991, pp. 141-143.
9. See Rent Leys, pp. 36-38 and 83-84.
10. Here and elsewhere in this text, access to foreign women, who reside, funhennore, in remote
interior spaces, implies access to the exotic.
11. "le peux donc, en evitant ses avatars, participer (peut-etre) a sa recolte. 11 me fera des
relations. 1I me presentera ases neo-concitoyens, -ceux-ci ade hams fonctionnaires; ades
conseilleurs du trone ... ades Princes du sang ... " (p. 26). The narrator has devised here
a whole series of social introductions to increasingly select and increasingly important people,
all of which make his quest seem not unlike that of an "arriviste". This displays even more
starkly the aristocratic nature of the narrator's object.
12. Since Rene Leys is replete with ellipses, the reader should note that unless otherwise indicated
these ellipses are in the text.
13. See Jean Verrier's "Segalen lecteur de Segalen", Potitique, 27,1976, pp. 338-350, where he
discusses the way the narrator's interest in the Emperor leads to his interest in Rene Leys
(p. 341). Also peninent here is Yvonne Hsieh's discussion of the prevalence of doubles in
Rene Leys. Specifically she discusses the way the narrator and Rene Leys double the non-
fictional Victor Segalen and Maurice Roy, but also the way Rene Leys himself doubles for
the narrator. See Hsieh, op. cit., p. 169.
14. Verrier coins this as a useful term for examining Segalen's text because it is a text which
constantly mirrors or cites itself, a text which has no See Verrier, op. cit.,
p. 338.
15. Terry Eag1eton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, London, Basil Blackwell, 1990, p. 2.
16. Segalen, Essai sur l'e:cotisme, p. 68.
17. Andreas Michel, "En Route to the Other: Victor Segalen's Essai sur l'e:cotisme and Equipee",
Romance Studies, 16, Summer 1990, pp. 21-30. Michel's article examines the philosophical
underpinnings of Segalen's theory of exoticism.
18. See for example page 63. Many other such moments occur in the text.
19. Hsieh, ap. cit., pp. 254-256.
20. Bangie, op. cit., p. 20.