Читать книгу Art in Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 124

George Forster (1754–94) accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, as a scientist on Cook’s second voyage. On the strength of his work during the voyage, and the book he published after his return, Forster was elected to the Royal Society at the age of twenty‐three, in 1777. The present extracts describe a range of ‘curiosities’ he saw at Tonga in October 1773 when the ships put in for provisions after journeying west from Tahiti. That the islands became known as ‘The Friendly Islands’ gives some idea of the reception they found. Forster talks about fishhooks, combs, personal ornaments, woven baskets and weapons. All of these he regards as ‘neat’ and ‘elegant’, testifying to workmanship and good taste. Once again, we find a favourable comparison with European artisanal skills. (His later response to the Easter Island stone statues, which, as it were, trespass on the territory of ‘Art’, is significantly different.) Forster’s positive response to Polynesian artefacts may be related to his sympathy with the radical politics emerging in Europe, which tended to view the ways of life of newly discovered peoples in America and Oceania as a point of critical leverage against the artificiality and corruption of contemporary Europe. After his journeys to the Pacific, Forster had a variety of academic jobs in his native Baltic states and Germany. In late 1792, after the French invaded Mainz, where he was librarian at the university, Forster became a founder member of the city’s Jacobin Club and helped organize the National Convention of the new Republic of Mainz. In 1793 he travelled to Paris to request the absorption of Mainz into the revolutionary French republic, but he died of illness there in January 1794. This extract is taken from George Forster, A Voyage Round the World [1777], edited by Nicholas Thomas and Oliver Berghof, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000, vol. 1, pp. 236 and 238.

Notwithstanding the engaging manners of the natives, we foresaw that we should make but a very short stay among them, because our captains could not obtain refreshments in any considerable quantity; which might be owing not so much to their scarcity upon the island, as to the difficulty of making our goods current for such valuable articles, when they could obtain them in exchange for arms and utensils. They had brought indeed a few yams, bananas, coco‐nuts, and shaddocks for sale, but they soon dropt that branch of trade. Our people purchased an incredible number of fish hooks made of mother of pearl, barbed with tortoise‐shell, but in shape exactly resembling the Taheitee fish‐hooks, called witte‐witte; some of which were near seven inches long. They likewise bought their shells, which hung on the breast, their necklaces, bracelets of mother of pearl, and cylindrical sticks for the ear. They had the neatest ornamental combs that can be imagined, consisting of a number of little flat sticks about five inches long, of a yellow wood like box, most firmly and elegantly connected together at the bottom by a tissue of the fibres of coco‐nut, some of which were of their natural colour, and others dyed black. These fibres were likewise employed in making a great variety of baskets, wrought with regular compartments of two colours, brown and black, or sometimes all brown, and ornamented with rows of round flat beads, which were made by cutting pieces of shells into that shape. The taste and the workmanship of these baskets were elegant in the highest degree, and varied into different forms and patterns. Those little stools, which serve as pillows for the head, were much more frequent here than at Taheitee; flattish bowls, in which they place their meat, and spatulas with which they mix up the bread‐fruit paste, were likewise in great abundance, and made of the club‐wood (casuarina equisetifolia), which had this name from supplying all the islanders in the South Sea with weapons. The clubs of the people of this isle, were of an infinite variety of shapes, and many of them so ponderous that we could scarce manage them with one hand; the most common form was quadrangular, so as to make a rhomboid at the broad end, and gradually tapering into a round handle at the other. But many were spatulated, flattish, and pointed: some had long handles and a blade which resembled the blade of a fleam; others were crooked, knobbed, &c. But by far the greatest part were carved all over in many chequered patterns, which seemed to have required a long space of time, and incredible patience, especially when we consider, that a sharp stone, or a piece of coral, are the only tools which the natives can employ in this kind of work. All the different compartments were wrought and divided with a regularity which quite surprised us, and the whole surface of the plain clubs was as highly polished, as if our best workmen had made them with the best instruments.