Projecting Parables of Poverty: Ruskin, Morris and the Arabian Nights

Along with other Pre-Raphaelite and Orientalist artists, John Ruskin and William Morris appear to sympathise with what Said calls ‘the primitive simplicity’ (Said 1977: 230) of the Asian people, revealing the same fellow feeling experienced by Karl Marx. Notably, with the theory of the Asiatic mode of production dating back to the early 1850s, Marx investigated Asiatic village communities that were held in thrall by a despotic ruling class in charge of public works. Furthermore, Marx was firmly convinced that colonies were a form of ‘primitive accumulation’ (Marx 2007: 847). In his view, the beginnings of the conquest of India, as well as the exploitation and enslavement of Africans, are to be seen as the first attempts at capitalism, at what he defined as ‘the dawn of the era of capitalist production’ (823).

Almost a decade later, in 1859, Ruskin published The Two Paths, in which he depicted the Arabians and the Indians as savage people who none the less excelled in the decorative arts. According to him, as reported in the lecture ‘The Unity of Art’, ‘the art whose end is pleasure only is pre-eminently the gift of cruel and savage nations, cruel in temper, savage in habits and conception’ (Ruskin 1869: 66). As opposed to the producers of European art, whose motto is ‘truth first and pleasure afterwards’ (66), denoting thoughtful, sensitive and earnest men, the Arabians and the Indians are savage people exalting primitive drives like violence and pleasure.

Morris, who was well acquainted with the art of carpet-making and defined Persia as ‘the mother of beautiful art’ (Mackail 1995: 5), likewise opposed the rough work of the Asian tribes to the modern, hand-made Western carpets that, in his view, should equal the Oriental ones in terms of material and durability. The following words exemplify Morris's vision of Asian people and the decorative arts: