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Emil Du Bois-Reymond: Greatest Unknown Intellectual of the 19th Century?
- pmoriarty 7y agoThe 19th Century was a fascinating time. One of the most colorful characters from that era, who's little remembered now (though he still has some ardent fans), was Richard Francis Burton[1] -- adventurer, explorer, spy, translator, ethnologist, linguist who spoke 29 languages, geologist and botanist, sword master (an art he wrote a treatise on), sexologist, physician and poet. He was the first European to see the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and live to tell the tale, something he accomplished by disguising himself as and adopting the language and customs of a wandering Dervish -- a daring feat which risked certain death if he was discovered. He managed to repeat the feat with various other forbidden cities around the world, though not without injury. He produced, to my mind, by far the most entertaining (though apparently far from accurate) translation of the Thousand and One Nights, and the erotic classic, the Kama Sutra, along with various other works. "Throughout his life, Burton continually sought passionately for "Gnosis," which he pursued around the world in myriad forms. He was a student of the Kaballah and of Hermeticism. He was an initiated Nagar Brahmin and Kadiri Dervish; he became a member of the Ismaili sect, which claimed decent from the Assassins; and he was at various times a formal convert to Hinduism, Tantrism, Roman Catholicism, Sikhism and Islam."[2] He was a founder of The Cannibal Club[3], where men (of course they were all men) could openly discuss "subjects deemed deviant by society". He was also a through and unapologetic racist and colonialist, almost to the point of caricature, which makes his works (which typically contain many personal notes and digressions) hard to swallow for most modern readers. After his death, his wife burned much of his unpublished work and diaries (presumably because of their frank sexual content), so we may never see his most scandalous work. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton [2] - https://hermetic.com/sabazius/burton https://hermetic.com/sabazius/burton [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannibal_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannibal_Club
- Steve44 7y agoHis tomb is quite spectacular, it's based on a Bedouin tent and is in a small Churchyard in Mortlake, not far from Richmond in West London. https://www.london-walking-tours.co.uk/secret-london/sir-richard-burtons-tomb.htm https://www.london-walking-tours.co.uk/secret-london/sir-ric... http://burtoniana.org/tomb/index.html http://burtoniana.org/tomb/index.html
- EdBR 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountains_of_the_Moon_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountains_of_the_Moon_(film)
- chewz 7y agoGreatest Unknown Intellectuals will remain unknown by definition. Read Stanislaw Lem..