For a couple of centuries, great gates have been
swinging throughout the East at the behest of frigates and armed
merchantmen. And slowly, once again, Asia has been seeping into Europe.
Warm spicy gusts have been drifting over the West, steadily permeating
the air. At first, there appeared to be nothing serious in the
infiltration. The eighteenth century was apparently coquetting only with
Eastern motifs. If Chinese palaces put in their appearance at
Drottningholm and Pillnitz, in all portions of the continent; if
Chippendale began giving curious delicate twists to his furniture, it
seemed nothing more than a matter of caprice. The zest for Persian
letters, Oriental nouvelles, Turkish marches, arose apparently only
from the desire for masquerade. Gretry, Mozart, Wieland, scarcely took
their seraglios, pashas, bulbuls earnestly. But, gradually, with the
arrival of the nineteenth century, what had hitherto seemed play only,
began to assume a different shape. The East was indeed dawning upon the
West again. The mists were being burned away. Through Sir William Jones
and Friedrich Schlegel, the wisdom of the dangerous slippery Indies was
opened to Europe. Goethe, as ever the outrider, revealed the new
orientation in his "West-Oestlicher Divan" and his "Chinesich-Deutsche
Jahres-und-Tages-Zeiten.
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