Anca Mitroi
176
de partie intégrante de l’Empire ottoman, et non point comme à un
Etat roumain, à un peuple qui a des bonnes et utiles aspirations.”
16 In
order to oppose this inclusion in the Orient, he added: “La Roumanie a
prouvé à l’Europe qu’elle veut et qu’elle peut marcher dans la voie du
progrès et de la civilisation occidentale [….] Les Roumains sont de
race latine.”
17 However, the clichés of an “Oriental Romania” were
too picturesque to be easily effaced: Raoul Perrin’s 1839 Coup d’œil
sur la Valachie et la Moldavie, for example, portrayed Bucharest with
countless Turkish baths managed by turbaned genies identical to those
known to French readers from Antoine Galland’s translation of the
One Thousand and One Nights.
18 According to the same traveller,
when not greeting each other the Oriental way, with a “Sélam alékoum”, the inhabitants of these countries either spoke a mix of Slavic,
Italian, Latin and barbaric words,
19 or just made various fearsome
growls and snarls,
20 a view which differs significantly from Verne’s
insistence on the Latin origin of the Romanian language. According to
Perrin, the Romanians’ clothing was described as an exotic mix with
no individual identity: “the Walachian worker may wear a Turkish
turban, a Greek fur cap, Armenian sandals, a Bulgarian belt, a Crimean coat and Albanian pants, so that for the Europeans, this bizarre
confusion provides a show more attractive than our cheap carnivals”,
21
while for Verne, the costumes worn by Miriota or judge Koltz are perfect definitions of their Romanian nationality. For French readers
seeking hair-raising thrills, Perrin and other travellers provided more
exotic accounts of the bestial tortures being inflicted by the same carnival-like turbaned Romanians: cut eyelids, clothes sewn to the sufferer’s skin, macabre bowling games with the victims’ heads and, of
course, thousands and thousands of deaths by impaling.
22
If none of these gory scenes or exaggerated exotic costumes
appear in Verne’s Carpathian village, it is not necessarily because the
Western opinion of Romania had dramatically changed by Verne’s
___________________________
16 Mihail Kogalniceanu, Acte si documente din corespondenta diplomatica a lui Mihail Kogalniceanu relative la rasboiul independentei Romaniei 1877-1878, (Bucharest: M. Kogălniceanu, 1893), p. 47.
17 Kogalniceanu, Acte si documente, p. 44.
18 Raoul Perrin, Coup d’oeil sur la Valachie et la Moldavie (Paris: A. Dupont, 1839).
19 Perrin, Coup d’œil, p. 5.
20 Perrin, Coup d’œil, p. 15.
21 Perrin, Coup d’œil, p. 24.
22 Perrin, Coup d’œil, p. 28.
176
de partie intégrante de l’Empire ottoman, et non point comme à un
Etat roumain, à un peuple qui a des bonnes et utiles aspirations.”
16 In
order to oppose this inclusion in the Orient, he added: “La Roumanie a
prouvé à l’Europe qu’elle veut et qu’elle peut marcher dans la voie du
progrès et de la civilisation occidentale [….] Les Roumains sont de
race latine.”
17 However, the clichés of an “Oriental Romania” were
too picturesque to be easily effaced: Raoul Perrin’s 1839 Coup d’œil
sur la Valachie et la Moldavie, for example, portrayed Bucharest with
countless Turkish baths managed by turbaned genies identical to those
known to French readers from Antoine Galland’s translation of the
One Thousand and One Nights.
18 According to the same traveller,
when not greeting each other the Oriental way, with a “Sélam alékoum”, the inhabitants of these countries either spoke a mix of Slavic,
Italian, Latin and barbaric words,
19 or just made various fearsome
growls and snarls,
20 a view which differs significantly from Verne’s
insistence on the Latin origin of the Romanian language. According to
Perrin, the Romanians’ clothing was described as an exotic mix with
no individual identity: “the Walachian worker may wear a Turkish
turban, a Greek fur cap, Armenian sandals, a Bulgarian belt, a Crimean coat and Albanian pants, so that for the Europeans, this bizarre
confusion provides a show more attractive than our cheap carnivals”,
21
while for Verne, the costumes worn by Miriota or judge Koltz are perfect definitions of their Romanian nationality. For French readers
seeking hair-raising thrills, Perrin and other travellers provided more
exotic accounts of the bestial tortures being inflicted by the same carnival-like turbaned Romanians: cut eyelids, clothes sewn to the sufferer’s skin, macabre bowling games with the victims’ heads and, of
course, thousands and thousands of deaths by impaling.
22
If none of these gory scenes or exaggerated exotic costumes
appear in Verne’s Carpathian village, it is not necessarily because the
Western opinion of Romania had dramatically changed by Verne’s
___________________________
16 Mihail Kogalniceanu, Acte si documente din corespondenta diplomatica a lui Mihail Kogalniceanu relative la rasboiul independentei Romaniei 1877-1878, (Bucharest: M. Kogălniceanu, 1893), p. 47.
17 Kogalniceanu, Acte si documente, p. 44.
18 Raoul Perrin, Coup d’oeil sur la Valachie et la Moldavie (Paris: A. Dupont, 1839).
19 Perrin, Coup d’œil, p. 5.
20 Perrin, Coup d’œil, p. 15.
21 Perrin, Coup d’œil, p. 24.
22 Perrin, Coup d’œil, p. 28.