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Exoticism Quotes

Browse 6 quotes about Exoticism.

Exoticism Quotes

“There were glamorous young men with dyed hair who rustled like old cellophane. Older men had airs of sophistication and cold grace, giving the impression that if they were not so terribly tired they would go to places (known only to a select few) where the conversation was more scintillating and the congregation more interesting. There were young women who had the exotic sheen of recently fed forest animals. Although they moved their fine heads languorously this way and that, nothing in the room excited their appetites. Unfashionable red lips cut across their white faces, and the crimson fingernails, as pointed as surgical instruments, heightened the predatory effect. Older, sadder women were more interesting to me. Voluminous skirts and imported shawls did not hide their heavy bodies, nor was their unattractiveness shielded by the clanks of chains and ribbons of beads, or by pale pink lips and heavily drawn doe eyes. Their presence among the pretty people enchanted me. It was like seeing frogs buzzed by iridescent dragonflies.”

MenAgeWomenBeautyYouthGlamourSophisticationExoticism
Book:Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
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“After two years' absence she finally returned to chilly Europe, a trifle weary, a trifle sad, disgusted by our banal entertainments, our shrunken landscapes, our impoverished lovemaking. Her soul had remained over there, among the gigantic, poisonous flowers. She missed the mystery of old temples and the ardor of a sky blazing with fever, sensuality and death. The better to relive all these magnificent, raging memories, she became a recluse, spending entire days lying about on tiger skins, playing with those pretty Nepalese knives 'which dissipate one's dreams'.”

DecadenceOrientalismDecadentExoticism
Author:Octave Mirbeau
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“Exoticism is the acute and immediate perception of an eternal incomprehensibility. What triumphs, then, is not the rule of difference and lack of differentiation but instead an eternal incomprehensibility, the irreducible foreignness of cultures, manners, faces, languages. If savour increases as a function of difference, what could be more savoury than the antagonism of irreducibles, the clash of eternal contrasts? The irredeemability of the object: 'The essential exoticism is that which the Object has for the Subject.' Exoticism as the fundamental law of the intensity of sensations, of the exaltation of the senses, and thus of living itself ...”

ExoticismIncomprehensibility
Book:The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena
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