Department of English
Writing the Journey: June 1999
"Where Her Heart Lies: Alexandra David-Neel's "HOME" in the Himalayas"
Margaret E. McColley
University of Virginia
maggie58@hotmail.com
Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969), travel-writer and orientalist, was a French woman by birth, well-versed in the Tibetan language, and had strong cultural and linguistic ties to the English. In her introduction to My Journey to Lhasa (Harper and Brothers, 1927), she underscores the importance of these ties and thanks the English "for so many hearty welcomes in so many houses where kind ladies have endeavoured to make me feel as if I were in my real home."
In her Journal de Voyage (Plon,1975), a collection of Alexandra David-Neel's French letters to her husband at his fixed address in Tunisia, her knowledge of English becomes particularly noteworthy when she specifically and repeatedly employs the English word "home." She uses this term, for example, when questioning the importance of "cet instinct du 'home' qui est au fond de chacun de nous"(this instinct of 'home' which lies in the depths of each of our souls). Alexandra also uses this term when projecting the imaginary space that she and Philip will share when she returns from her many years of travel in the East.
Citing textual examples from both her travel narrative and her epistolary, I will analyze Alexandra David-Neel's tangible and metaphysical constructions of "home," comparing her various eastern homes on the trail to the imaginary home she hopes, one day, to return to in the West.
I will begin by tracing the linguistic parameters of "home" as she portrays it in her letters, exploring the ramifications of Philip Neel's silent role as epistolary audience to his wife's literary sketches of her desired home.
Then, drawing upon Edward W. Said's notions of "Self-hood" and "Cultural Home" as he explores them in his thought-provoking work, Orientalism (Random House,1994), I will probe the following questions: How does Alexandra David-Neel's notion of "home" reflect the way her identity has been shaped by eastern thinking? In what specific ways has her concept of home been shaped by her rugged life as a nomad? How does her idealization of Tibetan monastic life lead her to claim "a room of her own" after her travels, when she seeks, above all, a place to read and write about her eastern experiences?
By examining eastern and western notions of "home" and the way in which Alexandra David-Neel seeks to bring them together, I will draw conclusions as to why this western woman who claims to have an Asian soul feels so much more at home in the East. Finally, I will show how the "home" she builds at the end of her travels at Digne, in southern France, is ultimately a product of what she spiritually and intellectually carries home with her from the East.
My presentation will be accompanied by slides showing examples of her various homes on the trail during her travels and her final home at Digne (which now houses her archives,) the "Fondation Alexandra David-Neel."
Margaret E. McColley
2 Bueno Carriero,
13100 Aix-en-Provence,
France
maggie58@hotmail.com
RETURN TO CONFERENCE SPEAKERS, TITLES AND PROGRAM
Updated May 23, 1999