Kasbahs and Souks: Wyndham Lewis's Civilized Barbary

The study of an eccentric artist like Wyndham Lewis, a man of genius for T.S. Eliot and an ideologically unacceptable one for others, both because of his book Hitler, and of his ill-concealed anti-Semitism and homophobia, lends itself very well to an interdisciplinary work, especially because of its combining literature with the visual arts, narration with iconicity. Wyndham Lewis’s definition of his visit to Morocco as a Journey into Barbary clearly suggests his attitude towards an ancient civilization, inevitably influenced by prejudices, which the reader would not expect from a daring explorer of Modernity. Here, instead, he seems to embody the point of view of the traditional colonizer, who uncritically rejects the otherness of an ancient, elusive world. Whereas the arrogance and haughtiness which pervade the text make it often difficult to digest for the modern reader, the sketches are much more interesting, showing that, as a painter and an illustrator, Lewis found a fertile source of inspiration in Morocco. Within the travelogue Journey into Barbary, which includes Filibusters in Barbary, published in 1932 and of a group of essays entitled Kasbhas and Souks, originally planned as a second book and published posthumously in 1983, the latter are particularly interesting because of their experimental structure and internal organization which can be defined “vorticist”. From the “still point” (the Kashbahs of the Berbers), there develops a series of short essays or better fragments, which are chronologically and spatially disconnected, but are somehow unified. By the implicit question underlying them, “who are the Berbers?” they discuss a crumbling civilization which Lewis saw in some respects similar to the American and European one between the two wars.