
Emil Du Bois-Reymond: Greatest Unknown Intellectual of the 19th Century? - anarbadalov
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-greatest-unknown-intellectual-of-the-19th-century/
======
pmoriarty
The 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After his death, his wife burned much of his unpublished work and diaries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
His 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-
ric...](https://www.london-walking-tours.co.uk/secret-london/sir-richard-
burtons-tomb.htm)

[http://burtoniana.org/tomb/index.html](http://burtoniana.org/tomb/index.html)

------
chewz
Greatest Unknown Intellectuals will remain unknown by definition.

Read Stanislaw Lem..

~~~
EdBR
I have. Stanislaw Lem read Emil du Bois-Reymond. He's the source of several of
the ideas in "Solaris."

~~~
EdBR
Hence the allusion to du Bois-Reymond's "Die sieben Welträthsel" in the title
of my article....

