128 ORIENTALISM discursive place of a pedagogical tableau, the Orientalist’s Orient was thereafter reluctant to emerge into reabty. Sacy was much too intelligent to let his views and his practice stand without supporting argument. First of all, he always made it plain why the “Orient” on its own could not survive a European's taste, intelligence, or patience. Sacy defended the utility and interest of such things as Arabic poetry, but what he was really saying was that Arabic poetry had to be properly transformed by the Orientalist before it could begin to be appreciated. The reasons were broadly epistemological, but they also contained an Orientalistic self-justification. Arabic poetry was produced by a completely strange (to Europeans) people, under hugely different climatic, social, and historical conditions from those a European knows; in addition, such poetry as this was nourished by “opinions, prejudices, beliefs, superstitions which we can acquire only after long and painful study.” Even if one does go through the rigors of specialized training, much of the description in the poetry will not be accessible to Europeans “who have attained to a higher degree of civilization.” Yet what we can master is of great vajue to us as Europeans accustomed to disguise our exterior attributes, our bodily activity, and our relationship to nature. Therefore, the Orientalist’s use is to make available to his compatriots a considerable range of unusual experience, and stiil more valuable, a kind of literature capable of helping us understand the “truly divine” poetry of the Hebrews.” So if the @rientalist is necessary because he fishes some useful gems out of the distant Oriental deep, and since the Orient cannot be known without his mediation, it is also true that Oriental writing itself ought not to be taken in whole. This is Sacy’s introduction to his theory of fragments, a common Romantic concern. Not only are Oriental literary productions essentially alien to the European; they also do not contain a sustained enough interest, nor are they written with enough “taste and critical spirit,” to merit publication except as extracts (pour mériter d’étre publiés autrement que par extrait).* Therefore the Orientalist is required to present the Orient by a series of representative fragments, fragments republished, explicated, annotated, and surrounded with stil! more fragments. For such a presentation a special genre is required: the chrestomathy, which is where in Sacy’s case the usefulness and interest of Orientalism are most directly and profitably displayed. Sacy’s most famous production was the three-volume Chrestomathie arabe, which was

Orientalist Structures and Restructures 129 sealed at the outset, so to speak, with an internally rhyming Arabic couplet: “Kitab al-anis al-mufid lil-Taleb al-mustafid;/wa gam’i al shathur min manthoum wa manthur” (A book pleasant and profitable for the studious pupil;/it collects fragments of both poetry and prose). Sacy’s anthologies were used very widely in Europe for several generations. Although what they contain was claimed as typical, they submergé aiid’ Cover the censorship of the Orient exercised by athe Orientalist. Moreover, the internal order of their contents, the arrangement of their parts, the choice of fragments, never reveal their secret; one has the impression that if fragments were not chosen for their importance, or for their chronological development, or for their aesthetic beauty (as Sacy’s were not), they must nevertheless embody a certain Oriental naturalness, or typical inevitability. But this too is never said. Sacy claims simply to have exerted himself on behalf of his students, to make it unnecessary for them to purchase (or read) a grotesquely large library of Oriental stuff. In time, the reader forgets the Orientalist’s effort and takes the restructuring of the Orient signified by a chrestomathy as the Orient tout court. Objective structure (designation of Orient) and subjective restructure (representation of Orient by Orientalist) become interchangeable. The Orient is overlaid with the Orientalist’s rationality; its principles become his. From being distant, it becomes available; from being unsustainable on its own, it becomes pedagogically useful; from being lost, it is found, even if its missing parts have been made to drop away from it in the process. Sacy’s anthologies not only supplement the Orient; they supply it as Oriental presence to the West.”* Sacy’s work canonizes the Orient; it begets a canon of textual objects passed on from one generation of students to the next. And the living legacy of Sacy’s disciples was astounding. Every major Arabist in Europe during the nineteenth century traced his intellectua] authority back to him. Universities and academies in France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and especially Gennany were dotted with the students who forned themselves at his feet and through the anthological tableaux provided by his work.” As with all intellectual patrimonies, however, enrichments and restrictions were passed on simultaneously. Sacy’s genealogical originality was to have treated the Orient as something to be restored not only because of but also despite the modern Orient’s disorderly and