Voyage to the Orient
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Voyage to the Orient (Voyage en Orient) is one of the works of French writer and poet Gérard de Nerval, published during 1851, resulting from his voyage of 1842 to Cairo and Beirut. In addition to a travel account it retells Oriental tales, like Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, in terms of the artist and the act of creation.
The chapters first appeared in the periodical Revue des Deux Mondes in 1846 and 1847, where the piece was called Scènes de la Vie Orientale. Later, when the chapters appeared together in book form in 1851, it was retitled Voyage en Orient, and a section was added which gives an account of de Nerval's travels through Europe before leaving for the Orient. In a later edition de Nerval added a series of appendices, the majority of the material taken directly from Edward William Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. In 1930 the book was translated as The Women Of Cairo by Conrad Elphinstone in two volumes, it included the material originally published in 1846–47. More recent translations exist but are abridged.
