Home » Bulgaria » Iliya Troyanov » Der Eistau Der Weltensammler (The Collector of Worlds))
Iliya Troyanov: Der Weltensammler (The Collector of Worlds)
This book is about Richard Burton, English explorer, army officer, writer and scholar, not the Welsh actor. Troyanov’s method of telling the story is to a great extent to have it told by a few people, namely persons he came in contact with, though there is certainly some third person narrative involved.
We first meet Burton as he arrives in Bombay, as it was then called, to take up a post as an army officer. Unlike his fellow army officers, he is not interested in their company but in exploring local colour and meeting the locals and their environment. He has already learned some of the relevant languages and during in his period here he makes a keen effort to study Gujarati with the aid of a teacher/guru so that he can converse with them on their terms.
A key event, however, is that he is approached by Ramji Naukaram who said he wishes to be Burton,s servant and becomes his servant. It is he that finds lodging for Burton, the language teacher for him, and indeed a concubine for him. To a great extent, we see Burton through the eyes ofRamji Naukaram. He is transferred toVadodara, then called Baroda, which isNaukaram’s home town andNaukaram takes advantage of this, exploiting his family and also giving them jobs. One of the many things Burton is famous for is sex particularly his translation of the Kama Sutra and The Measures of the Scented Garden. It is his concubine, who teaches him something about sex, for example that women have orgasms and that delaying the male orgasm is beneficial to both parties.
To a great extent, we learn that much of the story we are reading is being told byNaukaram to a professional scribe. Later on Burton and Naukaram will go to England and then to France where Burton’s parents live. Naukaram does not fit in and he is sent back home. He is using the scribe to write his version of the Burton story with a view to getting a job with another English officer, but the scribe gets carried away by the story and gives a much longer account than Naukaram had wanted.
However, before this we see Burton transferred to Sindh. There he works for Charles Napier and acts as a spy,
trying to find out who is passing is secrets to the enemy. He is so successful at disguising himself as one of the natives that he is even arrested by the British Army and not recognised as one of them. Famously had himself circumcised in order to pass as a Muslim and when the British Army see t that he is a circumcised, they insist he could not possibly be British. Burton does find the source of the leaks, but it is clear that he does not fit in with his fellow officers and eventually as we have seen, returns to England. The stories we are told about him are highly colourful, but also at times quite witty and mnay give us quite an interesting account of Burton, showing that he is definitely not a typical British army officer.
The next section concerns his famous visit to Mecca where he is disguised as an Indian Muslim and, of course, gets away with it
We follow two stories here. The first is essentially a third person account of how he prepared himself for the visit. He went to Egypt where he found an appropriate teacher and learned not only Arabic but all the ins and outs of being a Muslim pilgrim, so much so that he could easily pass for a Muslim. Indeed, he takes up the profession of doctor. He has considerable success as a doctor and soon works out that the secret is not just to identify the illness from the symptoms but, primarily with the rich people with whom he deals, to find out what their favourite afflictions are and seemingly treat them. Some of his dealings are quite amusing particularly when he is called on to treat a female patient.
The other story is told after his visit to Mecca and is an account by the Pasha who is somewhat concerned by Burton’s visit to Mecca, feeling, undoubtedly with some justification, that Burton is acting as a spy and that the British are planning to invade the region and take it over. Again with both of these two stories we learn a lot more about Burton and also a lot more about the region and the many other, often colourful characters comes across.
The authorities track down and interview many of various people who travelled with Burton or whom he met on the way and asks them whether they had any suspicions that he was a spy. One man claims to ave had such suspicions but is unable to confirm without reservation that this travelling Indian doctor was in fact and infidel. One of the few ways he does give himself away is when he shows sympathy for a Bedouin robber who is caught and condemned to be brutally killed. He also show some sympathy for the pilgrims, some of whom are very poor, get ill and even die in the centre of Mecca. However, on the whole, he seems to have behaved just as a Muslim pilgrim would have behaved. Of course we learn a lot about the.Hajj pilgrimage as well as about Burton.
The third and final episode concerns his travels in Africa with Speke . The journey starts in Zanzibar where we meet, much later, the local who guided him, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who is telling his grandson the story.
The purpose of the journey was to discover the source of the Nile but also to visit Lake Tanganyika, once considered the source of the Nile.
The travels are very hard. Both of them get malaria several times. There are problems with the porters, problems with weather, problems with the native people and also with the slave traders. Speke, it seems, is interested in shooting pretty well anything that moves and he shoots a wide variety of animals, not for meat but just for the thrill of the sport, leaving their carcases to rot in situ. On the whole , the two men do not get on too well.
There is a fair amount of discussion about the slave trade and we learn that it is not as straightforward as we might have thought.
To the annoyance ofSidi Mubarak Bombay they name every feature they come across – rivers, lakes, villages, hills, – even though these features all have local names. In the end Burton agrees to put on his map, in small letters the native name and they have great fun with him by inventing witty and vulgar names for all the features.
Speke went on a second journey to Lake Victoria which is the source of the Nile. fSidi Mubarak Bombay comments on why Speke was chosen for this journey rather than Burton. The short answer is that.Speke was considered one of us of us by the Royal `Geographical Society. Burton clearly was not.
This is a superb story of Burton and his travels in various parts of the world. He was clearly a special sort of man and one who was prepared to take great risks to further his ambitions to discover what the rest of the world is like, and their ways and customs as well as learning their languages.
Publishing history
First published in 2006 by Carl Hanser
First English translation in 2016 by Faber and Faber
Translated by William Hobson