MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU

En 1716, una aristócrata inglesa llega a Constantinopla como esposa del embajador británico ante la Sublime Puerta. Lo que escribe desde allí desmiente buena parte de la imagen que Europa había construido del mundo otomano. Vestida a la turca y libre de prejuicios, Mary Wortley Montagu observa los bazares, las mezquitas, la vida en las calles y las ceremonias de la corte, pero tambien accede a espacios vedados a los hombres europeos: los baños, los harenes y la intimidad femenina. Sus cartas hablan de medicina introduce en Europa la vacuna contra la viruela, de costumbres, de placer y de poder, con una lucidez poco comun para su tiempo.Estas Cartas desde Estambul son una cronica vibrante y llena de humor sutil sobre Constantinopla y los paises que recorre antes y despues de su estancia: una mirada comparativa entre culturas que sacudio a sus contemporaneos y alimento durante decadas el imaginario orientalista en la literatura y las artes. Leidas hoy, conservan intacta su energia critica y su capacidad para cuestionar los relatos heredados sobre Oriente y sobre la condicion de las mujeres.

In 1716, Mary Wortley Montagu travelled across Europe to take up residence in Istanbul as the wife of the British ambassador. For two years she lovingly observed the Ottoman society around her with an astonishing lack of prejudice. Her wide-ranging letters about the life of Turkish women behind the veil, Arabic poetry, contemporary medical practices such as inoculation remain as fresh as the day they were penned. A self-educated intellectual, a free spirit, a radical and a feminist as well as an aristocrat, she was one of the first modern travel writers, studying and recording the culture around her on its own terms and through its own language.

Travelling through the wartorn Balkans with her husband on what proved to be a wholly useless diplomatic mission to Constantinople, Mary Wortley Montagu left a vivid, informative, clever account of her adventures in the mysterious, sophisticated culture of Ottoman palaces, bathing places and courts which - even as her husband's career was falling apart - she could not have enjoyed more. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

La imagen que Europa compuso en el siglo XVIII de la cultura otomana ya no fue la misma tras esta sorprendente correspondencia. Desmintiendo relatos de otros viajeros, cubierta con el yasmak [asmak], o velo turco, esta inglesa, no solo escribe la cronica de los bazares, las mezquitas, las ceremonias de la corte o la vida en las calles, sino que da noticia de la vacuna sobre la viruela o desvela la intimidad del haren y la voluptuosidad de los hamanes como ningun europeo lo habia hecho antes desatando un imaginario que transforma las artes y alienta la estetica orientalista. En el siglo de grandes damas e ilustres salonnieres, la inteligencia de Lady Montagu asombro a Voltaire que la consideraba por su cosmopolitismo muy superior a madame de Sevigne y sabido es que el pintor Ingres, un siglo despues, encontro en sus prolijas descripciones del haremlik inspiracion para sus cuadros de odaliscas y escenas de haren. Su energia y humor sutil aun provoca entre nosotros una fascinacion intacta como nos recuerda Juan Goytisolo.

Culta, inteligente, curiosa, estas maravillosas cartas pertenecen a una de las mujeres inglesas más interesantes del siglo XVIII. Su estancia en la embajada turca da pie a una vivaz y desprejuiciada correspondencia en la que corrige la imagen sesgada de otros viajeros —"me niego a mentir como hacen otros"— sobre la cultura otomana del momento y proporciona valiosas descripciones del mundo íntimo de sus mujeres. Sus cartas causaron la admiración de Voltaire y una auténtica conmoción en artistas europeos como Ingres, además de inspirar el nacimiento de la corriente orientalista.

Travelling through the wartorn Balkans with her husband on what proved to be a wholly useless diplomatic mission to Constantinople, Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) left a vivid, informative, clever account of her adventures in the mysterious, sophisticated culture of Ottoman palaces, bathing places and courts which - even as her husbands career was falling apart - she could not have enjoyed more.Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.