“THE MURDERER OF problems and negotiate their relationship BANGKHUNPHROM”: THE with the West. SEMI-COLONIAL SIAM Introduction AND ITS EARLY LITERARY 1 ADAPTATIONS Translation played an important role in the colonizing process. The colonizers often Thosaeng Chaochuti 2 translated important texts such as religious and legal documents into local languages in order to allow the colonized to consume Abstract these texts and more importantly to submit to their authority. Vicente Rafael (1988) It has been widely acknowledged that gives an example of this use of translation translation played an important role in the in his book Contracting Colonialism: process of colonization. Colonizers often Translation and Christian Conversion in used it to reinforce their hegemony over Tagalog Society under Early Spanish the colonized who, in turn, employed it to Rule . He writes that in the 16 th century encourage either submission to or Spanish priests not only translated the resistance of that hegemony. Focusing on Bible into Tagalog but also preached in Vajiravudh’s translation, or more precisely that local language so as to facilitate the adaptation, of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The conversion of the local people, which was Murders in the Rue Morgue,” this article synonymous with the submission to the illustrates how the story reflects not only divinely anointed Spanish King. So the desire to be civilized like Westerners translation enabled, in this case, both but also the strategies that the Siamese conversion and colonization elite employed in order to achieve the simultaneously (Rafael 1988: 154–166). trappings of civilization, namely the Venuti (1998) also writes in The Scandals construction of a primitive Other and the of Translation: Towards an Ethics of imitation of Europeans. These strategies Difference that in the first decades of the were, however, inherently problematic. 20 th century the Dutch attempted to Imitation did not, for example, pave the undermine the nationalist movement in way towards acceptance but reinforced Indonesia by translating adventure instead the stereotype of the mimicking romances that were filled with racist natives. The article shows, however, that stereotypes such as novels by Rider the Siamese elite were able to use the Haggard and Jules Verne. They hoped, by tactic of adaptation, both literary and so doing, not only to decrease the otherwise, to navigate through these readership for radical writings but also to encourage the Indonesians to absorb the racist idea that they were inferior to white men and therefore needed to be guided by 1 This article was funded by the National Research University Project of CHE and the them (Venuti 1998: 167). Ratchadaphiseksomphot Endowment Fund (HS 1025A). Translation was not, however, a tool 2 Lecturer, Department of Comparative exclusive to the colonizers. It was also Literature, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn employed, to various ends, by the colonized. University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access “The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom”
Venuti argues that for them “translation European powers. What these narratives fashions images of their hegemonic others often neglect to point out, however, was and themselves that can variously solicit the fact that Siam was, similar to China, submission, collaboration, or resistance” forced by these very powers to make (1998: 159). To illustrate the use of several political and economic concessions. translation as resistance, Venuti (2005) Thus, the country was more properly a points in his article “Local Contingencies: semi-colony rather than a fully independent Translation and National Identities" to the nation. 3 This semi-colonial status meant example of China. In the second half of that translation was no longer a simple the 19 th century China was faced with both affair of “soliciting submission [...] or military and commercial invasion by resistance” against the hegemonic others foreign powers. After losing the Opium as Venuti argues. It became a complicated War to Britain in 1842, China had to grant matter that involved both the Siamese economic and political privileges to several nobility’s desire for and wariness of Western countries who then established farangs or Europeans. This paper seeks to colonies in various ports. Later in 1898– understand the complex role that 1900 the local movement against the translation played in Siamese history by foreign presence known as the Boxer examining Prince Vajiravudh’s Uprising had to be repressed by an translation 4 of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The international force. In this social and Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Poe 1969). political climate, Lin Shu and Yan Fu The first portion of the paper will focus on started translating Western literary works Poe’s short story. It will interpret the tale in the hope of encouraging their fellow as a struggle between a primitive Other countrymen to adopt some of the ideas that and a white man and will investigate the were espoused in these works and that strategies used by the former in order to they believed would enable them to resist overcome the oppressive self/Other, foreign invasion. Lin Shu’s preface to the civilized/uncivilized binary in which he novel The Spirit of Bambatse by Haggard finds himself inextricably caught. The suggests, for example, that “such Western second section of the paper will then literary texts are valuable because ‘they examine Prince Vajiravudh’s translation of encourage the white man’s spirit of the story. It will argue that since this exploration’ and can instill a similar translation involved major changes to the ‘spirit’ in his Chinese readers” (Venuti characters and the story-line, it qualifies 2005: 187). more as an adaptation and exemplifies a different and perhaps more effective Although Venuti focuses here on the means that the Siamese elite were, as discourse of resistance, one may perhaps question whether these translations do not 3 A semi-colony has been defined by Tamara demonstrate, at the same time, a kind of Loos (2006: 2) as a country whose status is admiration or even desire for the hegemonic between that of a sovereign state and a colony, Other. In order to explore the complexities a country that is “neither fully under the and ambiguities that are involved in the act authority of a foreign power nor completely in of translation, we will turn to the example control of its own population or territory.” of Thailand. Thailand or Siam was, as 4 Prince Vajiravudh (1881–1925) became the mainstream accounts of its history invariably Crown Prince of Siam in 1894 and ascended emphasize, never formally colonized by the throne as the sixth King in the Chakri dynasty in 1910.
31
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No. 18, 2009
semi-colonial rather than colonial subjects, figure appears to conform to contemporary able to employ in their dealings with views of the racial Other. Eighteenth- farangs. century naturalists believed, for example, that the natives in the colonies were “Aping” the white man: the morally inferior to them and their own attempt to transcend the self- people. Carl Linnaeus did, for instance, describe the Homo Afer as “phlegmatic, other binary in Poe’s “The cunning, lazy, lustful, careless, and Murders in the Rue Morgue” governed by caprice”6 (Haller 1971: 4). The same sentiment was echoed by One of the most intriguing features of plantation owners in Jamaica. According Poe’s tale is the fact that the perpetrator of to them, their African slaves were “an the horrific double murders turns out to be inferior species” who “were ‘addicted to an escaped orang-outan. The choice of this stealing,’ practiced ‘low cunning and particular animal is telling because it was contempt of truth,’ and were possessed often compared in the eighteenth century with ‘the greatest aversion to every species to the primitive people that the Europeans of labor.’ The blacks were, in other words, were encountering for the first time either lazy thieves and liars” (Baker 1970: 434). directly during their travels to the colonies This conflation between the racial and the or indirectly through accounts of those criminal Other is also found in Poe’s tale travels. English naturalist Robert Dunn where we have, on the one side, an orang- argued, for example, that the brain of an outan who commits two gruesome murders African, “in marked resemblance to the and, on the other, a law-abiding detective orang-outan’s, developed auspiciously at who subsequently solves these murders. first but never proceeded past that of the Caucasian in boyhood” (Haller 1971: 35). Poe further conforms, in his portrayal of Friedrich Tiedemann, a German anatomist, the murderous ape, to the contemporary similarly claimed that an African’s brain belief that the racial Other was irrational “closely resembled the structure of the or lacking in reason. In his attempt to brain of the orangoutan” (Haller 1971: 35). justify the war against the American Given this association between “the man- Indians, for instance, Francisco de Vitoria, like beasts and the beast-like men of a Spanish theologian, jurist and professor, Africa,” (Haller 1971: 30) one could wrote that “these barbarians are not argue, as critics such as Nancy Harrowitz altogether mad,” but “they are not far from and Ed White 5 have done, that the ape in being so” (Todorov 1999: 150). In a Poe’s tale is not just an ape but rather a similar manner, the narrator of Poe’s tale representation of the racial and primitive concludes, when asked to reflect on the Other. 6 Carl Linnaeus introduced in Systema naturae This interpretation is further corroborated a taxonomic system that divided mankind into by the fact that Poe’s portrayal of the four major groups based on skin color, namely Homo Americanus, Homo Europaeus, Homo Asiaticus, and Homo Afer. Linnaeus’ book 5 Please see, for example, Nancy Harrowitz’s was first published in 1735 and was revised “Criminality and Poe’s Orangutan: The and republished through the eighteenth Question of Race and Detection” and Ed century. The edition cited by Haller was White’s “The Ourang-Outang Situation.” published in 1806.
32
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access “The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom”
qualities of the murderer such as the only the murder but also the rape of the “agility astounding, [the] strength two women. Leo Lemay points, for superhuman, [the] ferocity brutal,” that “a instance, to the testimony of the physician madman [...] had done this deed—some that the large bruise on the daughter’s raving maniac, escaped from a stomach is produced by the pressure of a neighboring Maison de Santé” (Poe 1978: knee and that “the murderer of the older 558). The narrator has obviously arrived at woman must have been a ‘very powerful the wrong conclusion because an orang- man,’ wielding a ‘large, heavy and obtuse outan rather than a madman has weapon’” (1982: 177). He calls attention, committed the murders. Dupin, the moreover, to the newspaper account of the detective, still says to him, however, that drawers in the women’s apartment that his idea is “in some respects [...] not have apparently been rifled through and irrelevant” (Poe 1978: 558). By so saying, argues that the repetition of the word the detective is clearly drawing parallels “drawers” implies that it may refer to between madmen, who are obviously panties rather than a piece of furniture. defined by their lack of reason, and the Given these subtle suggestions, the reader is murderous ape, who stands, as we have encouraged, according to Lemay, to seen, for the racial Other. imagine the ape as a sex maniac who rapes and murders the two women. This characterization of the primitive Other is, then, used to separate him from While I agree with Lemay’s sexual his civilized counterpart, thus creating a reading of the crime, I would like to offer binary between the reasonable self and the a different account of its motive. Instead unreasonable Other. In his description of of imagining the ape as a sex maniac who one of the two victims, a journalist reports is driven to commit his crime by his inner that “her throat [was] so entirely cut that, compulsion, I would like to propose that upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell he might be viewed as a primitive Other off” (Poe 1978: 538). In the very next who deliberately rapes the women in order sentence, he describes how her body “was to overcome the self-Other binary in fearfully mutilated [...] as scarcely to which he finds himself. The raping of the retain any semblance of humanity” (Poe white women is, in this account, an 1978: 538). The head is normally attempt to mix with the white race and to understood to be the seat of reason. Thus, produce offsprings who would resist any the fact that a body without a head is easy identification of them as white or considered “inhuman” seems to show that non-white, civilized or uncivilized. They it is reason that characterizes civilized men would, in other words, challenge the purity and separates them from an unthinking ape of the white race upon which is predicated and all that is associated with it. the seemingly rigid self-Other bifurcation.
Given the clear dichotomy that Poe In addition to the rape and murder of the constructs between the civilized self and two women, which obviously constitute the the primitive Other, one can perhaps main acts of violence in the story, I would interpret the crime that the ape commits as also like to suggest that there is another an attempt to transcend this seemingly crime that the ape commits in an attempt insurmountable binary. Several critics to transcend the self-Other binary in which have argued that this crime involves not he is inextricably caught. This criminal act
33
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No. 18, 2009
takes place in the sailor’s apartment right translation actually exemplified one of the before the orang-outan escapes on to the strategies that the future king employed in streets of Paris. Poe writes: “Razor in order to achieve this very goal. hand, and fully lathered, [the ape] was sitting before a looking-glass, attempting Negotiating with the West: the operation of shaving, in which it had Vajiravudh and the Siamese no doubt previously watched its master through the key-hole of the closet” (Poe Sherlock Holmes 1978: 565). Shaving is, within the context of the story, clearly associated with the Thailand or Siam has long prided itself on civilized ways of the Europeans, thus the being the only country in southeast Asia ape’s imitation of this particular act can be that was never formally colonized by a interpreted as an attempt to leave its Western empire. As several scholars have primitive condition behind and to enter pointed out, however, this does not mean th into the state of civilization. Had it been that it was fully independent. In the 19 th successful in doing so, the ape would have and the early part of the 20 centuries, the threatened the superiority of white men by country was faced with a great amount of demonstrating that civilization was not political and economic pressure from their exclusive domain. Thus the different foreign powers especially from seemingly innocuous act of shaving takes the British and the French empires who on, in the story, the enormity and gravity were occupying its neighboring countries. of a crime against the white race. This pressure has, in traditional Thai historiography, been interpreted as a threat The ape fails, however, in its attempt to to the country’s independence. In order to overcome the self-Other opposition and is, deal with this threat, the Thai monarchs at the end of the story, captured and attempted to modernize the country so as punished for its crimes by being to minimize the colonial preconditions. “imprisoned” in a zoo. Its owner is, by The fact that Siam was, in the end, able to contrast, not held accountable for willfully avoid colonization proved, in this master taking the animal from its natural habitat narrative, a testament to the exceptional and for irresponsibly keeping it in his vision and talent of the Siamese kings. Parisian apartment. He is even rewarded with a considerable sum of money when Despite its dominance in conventional he sells the animal to the zoo. It seems Thai historiography, the need to escape then that the hierarchical order implicit in colonization was, as Thongchai Winichakul the self-Other dichotomy is restored after (2000) argues, only part of the reason having been temporarily threatened by the behind the country’s attempt to modernize. ape and its crimes. Given this bleak In “The Quest for Siwilai: A Geographical ending, it may come as a surprise that Discourse of Civilizational Thinking in the Prince Vajiravudh of Siam chose to Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth- translate the story at a time when he and Century Siam,” Thongchai argues that the his fellow members of the ruling class ascension of European powers and the were anxious to overcome the sense that defeat of India and China, the old axis they were, in Westerners’ eyes, primitive mundi, gave rise to a new consciousness and barbaric. I will, however, attempt to of the world in which each country was show in the next section how this act of hierarchized according to its level of
34
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access “The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom”
civilization. It was, therefore, necessary Europe was universally perceived as being for Siam to try to acquire the guise of at the very zenith of this civilizational civilization in order to avoid the order, the Siamese elite felt that they had embarrassment and the indignity of to imitate the ways of the Europeans in inferiority. This “desire and anxiety to order to remain relatively superior both keep up with the world” was, Thongchai within the region and within their own argues, a significant albeit often overlooked country. King Chulalongkorn’s two motivation behind Siam’s attempt to fulfill journeys to Europe in 1897 and 1907 were the requirements of modernity and perhaps ones of the clearest examples of civilization (2000: 534). this attempt at imitation. The trips were, as argued by Thongchai, “a genuine quest to How then did the Siamese elite try to experience the source of [civilization] become “civilized”? Thongchai asserts firsthand” (539) and involved, as that they did what the European colonizers documented by Maurizio Peleggi, “the did, namely they constructed an Other acquisition (through purchase and gifts) of against which to define themselves. luxury goods such as paintings and Thongchai writes that in order to construct sculptures in Florence, porcelain sets in this Other, the Thai elite travelled the Sèvres, Tiffany vases in London, Fabergé country and wrote ethnography on the objets in St. Petersburg, and jewelry in different peoples that they encountered. Berlin” (26–7). This attempt not only to The first group of people that they met familiarize themselves with but also to during their travel lived along the borders imitate the tastes and consumption patterns of the country and were called “chaopa, of Europeans was, according to both literally the jungle people or people of the Thongchai and Peleggi, a way in which wilderness” (Thongchai 2000: 535). the Siamese elite tried to present According to Thongchai these people themselves as modern and civilized. appeared to the Siamese elite strange and uncivilizable. By contrast, the second This desire on the part of the Siamese group of people encountered on these nobility to position themselves in the ethnographic expeditions were uneducated civilizational order is clearly reflected in and backward but not completely incapable “Phu rai kha khon thi Bangkhunphrom”7 of achieving the state of civilization. They were the “chaobannok” or the loyal, backward subjects who lived in the rural 7 According to Rattanachai Lueangwongngam, areas of the country. Against these two the story was first published under the pen groups of uncivilized people, the Siamese name of Nai Kaew Nai Kwan in 1905. It was ruling class was able to define itself as part of a series called Nithan Thong-in which more modern and civilized. consisted of fifteen short stories that were published in Thawi panya journal from 1904- 05. Prince Vajiravudh later revised eleven of In addition to this construction of the these stories and published them under the new primitive Other, the Siamese elite also tried pen name of Ramchitti in the weekly to achieve the semblance of civilization by newspaper Dusitsamit . The revised stories, emulating the West. As mentioned above, which appeared from April - December 1921, Siam had to contend, in the nineteenth were given the new name of Prapruttikan century, with a new world order in which khong nai Thong-in Rattananet (The Adventure civilization was the defining factor. Since of Mr. Thong-in Rattananet ). Rattanachai published these stories in book form under the
35
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No. 18, 2009
(The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom), which is a mythological creature whose Prince Vajiravudh’s adaptation of Poe’s defining characteristic is the lack of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The kneecaps and language capability (Vajiravudh story revolves around a Thai detective 2006: 169). Stereotypes of primitive named Nai Thong-in Rattananet whose people often include their supposedly child- help is solicited by the local police when like qualities and their unintelligible they are stumped by the mysterious languages. It is not surprising, therefore, murder of Nai Rod. In the end, Nai Thong- that the narrator should also call the in is able to solve the murder and to reveal animal a “khonpa,” a variation of the term that a pet orang-outan of a farang is “chaopa” that, as mentioned above, was responsible for the crime. Although the used by the Thai elite to describe the Thai detective is clearly not of noble birth primitive and uncivilized Other that they (hence the commoner title Nai), he encountered along the borders of the country arguably stands, as Rachel Harrison (2009: (Vajiravudh 2006: 169). 344) argues in “‘Elementary, My Dear Wat’—Influence and Imitation in the In comparison to this orang-outan, Nai Early Crime Fiction of ‘Late-Victorian’ Thong-in, who can in no way be described Siam,” for the Thai aristocracy or more as child-like and who speaks at least two precisely for Prince Vajiravudh himself. languages, naturally appears more civilized. Harrison writes: “Crown Prince He appears, in other words, much closer to Vajiravudh and his fellow ruling elite were the farang figure, whom Prince Vajiravudh deeply motivated by a quest for seemed deliberately to introduce as a point knowledge that was in turn a quest for of comparison, for the owner of the orang- power” over the many unruly Others outan in Poe’s original tale is actually of within the country. Thus, the detective the same nationality as the detective. This who embodies the ideals of superior proximity to the farang who, as mentioned reason and intellect can easily be seen as above, is perceived to be at the very top of standing in for this elite group of Thai the civilizational order is arguably nobility. achieved through imitation. An example of this imitation is the use of last name. In order to situate Nai Thong-in within the Although Thai people did not have last civilizational hierarchy, Prince Vajiravudh names at the time that the story was arguably used the same techniques that he written, Prince Vajiravudh decided to give and his fellow members of the aristocracy his detective one. So instead of the simple employed in real life. He did, namely, Nai Thong-in, the detective becomes Nai construct a primitive Other against which Thong-in Rattananet.8 This act of giving his literary alter-ego appears all the more his detective a last name could be seen as civilized. This Other takes the form of the an attempt to imitate a European custom murderous orang-outan that is conveniently so as to make him appear civilized. Walter found in Poe’s original tale and that is Vella (1978) proposes the same idea in described in Vajiravudh’s adaptation as Chaiyo! King Vajiravudh and the child-like and incapable of language. The Development of Thai Nationalism when he narrator calls it, at one point, a “tua-buea,”
8 Rattananet roughly translates as "gem-like same name in 2006, and the references in this eyes" and obviously refers to the detective's paper are taken from this edition. extraordinary power of observation.
36
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access “The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom”
writes about the 1913 law that required King not only abolished these practices every Thai person to acquire a last name. but also projected them into the remote The real reason behind this law was, Vella past and on to distant ancestors. argues, the emulation of the West, the supposed paragon of civilization. He The fact that the Thai elite tried to repress writes: “Vajiravudh’s syllogistic reasoning certain characteristics that were considered is clear: Western countries were progressive; barbaric or to project them on to their Western countries had surnames; Thailand, chaopa ancestors arguably explains why to be progressive, must also have the narrator of “Phu rai kha khon thi surnames” (1978: 131). “The King came Bangkhunphrom” feels that the ape is closest,” according to Vella, “to stating the different and yet uncannily familiar. The equation that surnames equal progress” narrator says when he first sees the animal: when he wrote: “Now we have surnames “the perpetrator of the crime is not human and it can be said that we have caught up at all, although his similarities to humans with people who are regarded as civilized” are unsettling”9 (Vajiravudh 2006: 169, (1978: 131). my translation). “His hands and feet are,” he continues, “very much like those of As we have seen, Prince Vajiravudh humans, and the way he sits down and employed in “Phu rai kha khon thi stands up is eerily reminiscent of a human Bangkhunphrom” the same strategies that being”10 (Vajiravudh 2006: 169, my he and his fellow members of the ruling translation). From these descriptions, it is class used in real life to situate themselves clear that the orang-outan represents for in the civilizational hierarchy. Both of the narrator something very much akin to these strategies were, however, revealed to what Sigmund Freud terms the uncanny. be inherently problematic. There was, first According to Freud, the uncanny is not of all, a persistent sense among the Thai something new or alien but something that elite that they were perhaps not as is deeply familiar that has been alienated different from the primitive Other as they from us through the process of repression. would like to imagine. When King Thus, when we re-encounter it, we Mongkut stipulated in 1851, for example, invariably experience it as frightening and that anyone who had an audience with him uncomfortably strange. 11 Given this had to wear a shirt, he said: “Aside from definition, we may perhaps interpret the the inferior Lawa people, Laotians, and ape as representing a part of the Thai elite. chaopa, people from other major countries It is a part that has been deemed primitive all wear shirts. Since Siam is also a major or barbaric and has consequently been country, the Siamese people should also repressed. Thus, when it returns in the wear shirts instead of following the form of the orang-outan, it inevitably takes example of their chaopa ancestors” on the characteristics of the uncanny. (Thiphakorawong 1961: 6, my translation).
The King was aware, as this statement 9 makes clear, that some of the current “ ก practices of his people were primitive and , ก ก barbaric in the eyes of the farangs. In order ก ” to convince these farangs as well as 10 himself and other members of the Thai " ก, กก " 11 nobility that they were no barbarians, the For more details, please see Freud’s 1919 essay entitled “The Uncanny.”
37
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No. 18, 2009
The attempt on the part of the Thai would still appear very much like a nobility to construct a primitive Other primitive Other or an ape who can only against which they appeared civilized was, imitate humans but can never become one. as has been shown, frustrated by the To find a way out of this dilemma, I would persistent sense that they were perhaps not like to suggest that the Thai nobility as radically different from this Other as attempted not simply to mindlessly adopt they would like to imagine. Equally the ways of the West but to adapt them as problematic was their effort to achieve the they saw fit. Thak Chaloemtiarana (2007) semblance of civilization through mere writes in his article “ Khwam mai phayabat imitation of the West. As we saw in the khong khru liam lae khwam than samai previous section, the ape in Poe’s original khong thai thi pen panha” [ Khwam mai tale tries to transcend the self-Other binary phayabat and the problematics of Thai by imitating the civilized ways of his modernity] that the Thai people routinely European master. This imitation does not, took ideas and innovations from the West however, lead to acceptance, and the and adapted them to fit their own culture. animal is, in the end, restored to his He gives the example of the use of cutlery. “rightful” place in the hierarchy. In Prince Thai people used to eat with their hands Vajiravudh’s adaptation of the story, it is, and only started using cutlery after they as we have seen, not the orang-outan but came into contact with the West. They did the detective who has to overcome the not, however, exactly imitate the way binary opposition that is potentially Westerners used forks and knives, which invoked by the introduction of the farang they felt was ill-suited to the kind of food figure. If he does so simply by aping the that they were used to consuming. Instead white man, we may question if he will not they adapted the Western custom and used remain in the eyes of the Westerners a instead forks and spoons, leaving out the barbaric Other who is no different from knives almost completely (2007: 70). the ape in the tale. Vajiravudh himself was Another example of adaptation is the “raj fully aware of the complications involved pattern” shirt. King Mongkut first in the act of emulation. After he became stipulated, as mentioned above, that the King, he wrote in an essay called “Latthi Thai people should start wearing shirts ao yang” (Cult of Imitation): “Westerners like other civilized people. King are naturally flattered when they are Chulalongkorn later remarked when he emulated. They look benevolently upon visited Burma and India in 1871 that the their imitators as one might upon a puppy Western suit was unsuitable to the tropical who has learned how to sit. But no matter climate. So the king adapted it and came what the puppy may think of himself, he up with a white button down shirt with a remains a puppy and never a human high collar that later earned the name “raj being” (1994: 44, my translation). pattern” (Phaethong 1997: 91).
It seems then that the Thai elite were faced In addition to these Western customs, the with a dilemma. If they remained Siamese elite were also exposed to Western unchanged, they would appear backward literary works, which they attempted to and primitive not only to themselves but translate in order to allow the rest of the also to the white man. If, however, they literate population to get to know the attempted to acquire the guise of West. They often chose, however, not to civilization by emulating the West, they translate these works faithfully, for to do
38
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access “The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom”
so would be to show a kind of stifling Westerner converse in English, which respect for them and their authors as well potentially points to an imbalance of as to risk the wholesale adoption of their power between the two, their conversation ideas. They attempted, therefore, to adapt is translated into Thai in the story, and the these works as they saw fit. Thak writes in pronouns that Prince Vajiravudh chooses “Making New Space in the Thai Literary for the detective and the owner of the ape Canon” that “Thai translators do not always reflect not only the highest respect that the see themselves as technicians of language, two characters have for each other but also but as artists, authors, and composers” the equality between them. (2009: 95). “In fact, the first Thai author/ translators exercised,” according to Thak, Translation was an indispensable tool in “freewheeling agency by including their the process of colonization. Critics have own stories and ideas that exceeded what noted how European colonizers used it to was actually in the novels themselves” reinforce their hegemony over the (2009: 95). It is this agency on the part of colonized who, in turn, employed it to the Thai translators that arguably allowed encourage either submission or opposition them and their readers to negotiate with to that hegemony. The case of Siam has the West. Thak writes: “many translated shown, however, that translation often works wrote into their compositions the played, for those who were in an inferior equality or even the superiority of Thai position in the power relations, a more culture over Western culture and practices" complex role than simply to enable (2009: 96). "Even though it was clear,” submission or resistance to colonial rule. Thak continues, “that the west was As semi-colonial subjects, the Siamese (or superior in many aspects, there was no more precisely the Siamese elite) desired need for the Siamese to feel totally to become civilized like the Europeans but inferior. To emulate the west did not were, at the same time, aware that they necessarily mean to submit to the west” could not achieve this semblance of (2009: 96). civilization through mere imitation. Thus, the Siamese nobility often chose, as we “Phu rai kha khon thi Bangkhunphrom” is have seen in the case of “Phu rai kha khon a good example of this kind of literary thi Bangkhunphrom,” to adapt Western adaptation. It is, as we have seen, based on texts rather than risk showing a stifling Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” respect for the texts and their authors as which revolves, as argued above, around well as the wholesale adoption of their the relationship between the white man ideas through a faithful translation. and his racial Other. To translate the story faithfully might be to risk endorsing the References superiority of the Westerners and their suppression of the more primitive people. Baker, William. 1970. “William So Prince Vajiravudh adapted the story, Wilberforce on the Idea of Negro transposed it to the Thai setting, and Inferiority.” Journal of the History of allowed a Thai detective to solve the Ideas 31.3: 433–440. crime. He did, moreover, make the owner of the orang-outan a farang who has to ask Freud, Sigmund. 1953. “The Uncanny.” for the Thai detective’s help in capturing The Standard Edition of the Complete the animal. While Nai Thong-in and the Psychological Works of Sigmund
39
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No. 18, 2009
Freud , edited and translated by James Peleggi, Maurizio. 2002. Lords of Things: Strachey, vol. 17. London: Hogarth. The Fashioning of the Siamese Monarchy’s Modern Image . Honolulu: Haller, John S., Jr. 1971. Outcasts From University of Hawai‘i Press. Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900 . Urbana: Phaethong, Benchamat and Rasi University of Illinois Press. Meenettri. 1997. “Khanopthamniam kan taengkai samai khrung Harrison, Rachel. 2009. ‘Elementary, rattanakosin” [Clothing Traditions in My Dear Wat’—Influence and the Rattanakosin Era.] Imitation in the Early Crime Fiction of Sinlapawatthanatham 18.10: 87–110. ‘Late-Victorian’ Siam. Chewing Over the West: Occidental Narratives in Poe, Edgar Allan. 1978. The Murders in Non-Western Readings , edited by Doris the Rue Morgue. Collected Works of Jedamski. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Edgar Allan Poe: Tales and Sketches, 1831-1842 , edited by Thomas Ollive Harrowitz, Nancy A. 1997. Criminality Mabbott, vol 2. Cambridge: The and Poe’s Orangutan: The Question of Belknap Press of Harvard University Race in Detection. Agonistics: Arenas Press. of Creative Contest , edited by Janet Lungstrum and Elizabeth Sauer. New Rafael, Vicente L. 1988. Contracting York City: State University of New Colonialism: Translation and Christian York Press. Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule . Ithaca: Cornell Lemay, J. A. Leo. 1982. The Psychology University Press. of ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ American Literature 54.2: 165–188. Thak Chaloemtiarana. 2007. “Khwam mai phayabat khong khru liam lae khwam Linnaeus, Carl [as Sir Charles Linn è]. than samai khong thai thi pen panha” 1806. A General System of Nature, [Khwam mai phayabat and the Volume 7. London: Lackington, Allen, Problematics of Thai Modernity]. and Co. Rathasatsan 28.2: 63–112.
Loos, Tamara. 2006. Subject Siam: ---. 2009. Making New Space in the Thai Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity Literary Canon. Journal of Southeast in Thailand . Chiang Mai: Silkworm Asian Studies 40.1: 87–110. Books. Thiphakorawong, Chaophraya. 1961. Lueangwongngam, Rattanachai. 2006. Phraratchaphongsawadan krung Preface. Praphruettikan khong nai rattanakosin rachakanthi 4 [The Royal Thong-in Rattananet [The Adventures Chronicle of Bangkok, the Fourth of Mr. Thong-in Rattananet], edited by Reign], Volume 2. Bangkok: Rattanachai Lueangwongngam. Khurusapha. Bangkok: Samosorn Nungsu Rahasakhadi. Thongchai Winichakul. 2000. The Quest for ‘Siwilai’: A Geographical
40
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access “The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom”
Discourse of Civilizational Thinking White, Ed. 2003. The Ourang-Outang in the Late Nineteenth and Early Situation. College Literature 30.3: 88– Twentieth-Century Siam. The Journal 108. of Asian Studies 59.3: 528–549.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 1999. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Vajiravudh, King. 1994. “Latthi ao yang” [Cult of Imitation]. Phraboromrachowat nai phrabat somdet phra chulachomklao chaoyuhua lae latthi ao yang—khlon tit lo phraratchaniphon nai phrabat somdet phra mongkut klao chaoyuhua [Speeches of King Rama V and Latti ao yang—khlon tit lo, Writings of King Rama VI] Bangkok: The Cremation Volume for Nai Wichian Phaerattakul.
---. 2006. Phu rai kha khon thi Bangkhunphrom [The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom.] Praphruettikan khong nai Thong-in Rattananet [The Adventures of Mr. Thong-in Rattananet], edited by. Rattanachai Lueangwongngam. Bangkok: Samosorn Nungsu Rahasakhadi.
Vella, Walter. 1978. Chaiyo! King Vajiravudh and the Development of ThaiNationalism . Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii.
Venuti, Lawrence. 2005. Local Contingencies: Translation and National Identities. Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation , edited by Sandra Bermann and Michael Wood. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
---. 1998. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference . London: Routledge.
41
Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access