Volume 49, Number 13 · August 15, 2002
Making a Fetish of Mystery
By Ian Buruma
Essay on Exoticism: An Aesthetics of Diversity
by Victor Segalen, translated and edited by Yaël Rachel Schlick, with a foreword by Harry Harootunian
Duke University Press, 95 pp., $45.95; $15.95 (paper)
The corpse of Victor Segalen, the author of three published works, two of which were obscure documents on Chinese poetry and painting, was found still sticky with blood in a forest in Brittany. One shoe was off, revealing a wounded ankle wrapped in a handkerchief. Beside the body was a Complete Works of Shakespeare bound in blue Morocco leather, opened at Hamlet. Flies were buzzing in the dead man's eyes and mouth. The year was 1919. Segalen was forty-one.
Review, 3362 words
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