„To przechodzi wszystko co widziane”. O brudzie i zapachu w dziennikach Pawła Sapiehy z podróży do Azji

Abstract

The article analyzes Paweł Sapieha’s travel journals from his journey to Asia (1888-1889), based on the assumption that in the age of colonial empires, European travelers hierarchized the senses – namely smell, taste, sound, and sight – in favor of the latter. Sapieha evaluates local customs, such as the culturally rooted practice of chewing betel leaves or the Parsi burial rites, from the perspective of European hygiene norms, constructing a narrative largely grounded in the affect of disgust. His visit to a prison in Canton reveals the deterministic foundations of his thinking, especially in his descriptions of local rulers and judges, to whom he attributes animalistic features and a tendency toward deceit. One of the subsections compares Sapieha’s account with Maria Konopnicka’s reportage, illustrating that despite being a product of his time, the Galician nobleman still had a choice regarding the perspective he could adopt. His role as a scholar of Asian cultures (a role he was framed in by the press) ultimately amounted to a one-time use of opportunity and the treatment of this leg of the journey as a kind of tourist attraction. Drawing on the work of Constance Classen, David Howes, and Winfried Menninghaus, the article argues that Paweł Sapieha’s journals do not significantly depart from the imperial narrative of the era, and that his travel account may have contributed to the stereotyping of Asians in the eyes of Polish readers.