PIERRE LOTI (1850-) IERRE LOTI is the pen-name chosen by Louis Marie Julien Viaud, the French novelist and poet who was born at Rochefort, France, on January 14th, 1850, of an old Protestant family. He studied in his native town; and it was while at school that he received from his comrades the nickname "Loti," which he adopted later as a literary pseudonym. He was extremely bashful and retiring as a boy; and his playmates in derision called him Loti, the name of a tiny East-Indian flower which hides its face in the grass. He must have left school very early; for he was only seventeen when he entered the French navy, having obtained an appointment as midshipman (aspirant de marine). For several years he saw a great deal of active service, particularly on the Pacific Ocean, where his vessel was stationed; and this unquestionably gave him that love for and that knowledge of those exotic countries which he has so admirably and faithfully described in his books. Ever since he joined the navy (1867) he had given much attention to literature, and his fellow officers often teased him on account of his retiring and studious disposition. He was regarded by them as a dreamer; but no one had ever any criticism to make concerning the manner in which he performed his duties. PIERRE LOTI It was not until 1876 that he published his first book, 'Aziyadé,' although it is possible that some of the many volumes he has published since then were written before that time. Rarahu' appeared in 1880, and was afterwards given the title The Marriage of Loti.' Had the French author been familiar with Herman Melville's Typee,' he would have hesitated to write his own book lest he be charged with imitation. In 1882 the war with Tonquin broke out, and Loti distinguished himself in several engagements with the enemy. About this time he committed an imprudence which, however pardonable in a writer, was inexcusable in an officer on active service. He sent to 9204 the Paris Figaro an account of the cruelty of the French soldiers at the storming of Hué; and this so incensed the French government that he was at once placed upon the retired list. But by that time Loti was a public favorite, and there was a loud clamor for his reinstatement. The government, perhaps in an attempt to regain some of its lost popularity, gave way, and Loti was restored to his command the following year. Shortly afterwards (1886) he published 'An Iceland Fisherman'; a volume full of poetic feeling and dreamy impressionism, and which is considered by many critics his best work. It won for him the Vitet prize of the French Academy, and had the honor of being translated into the Roumanian language by the Queen of Roumania. In 1887 he was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor, and in this year he published one of the best known of his books, 'Madame Chrysanthème,'-less a novel than impressions of a sojourn in Japan. Loti was now one of the most prominent authors of his day, and his election to the Academy was looked upon as a matter of course. In 1890 he published another remarkable book, entitled 'Au Maroc'; an account of the trip to Morocco by an embassy of which the author made part. In 'Le Roman d'un Enfant' (1890), which is autobiographical in character, he shows how he was won over by modern pessimism; how, chilled by the coldness of Protestantism, he was for a moment attracted by the glittering ritual of the Catholic Church, only in the end to lose his faith utterly. Le Livre de la Pitié et de la Mort' (1891), contains reminiscences of the divers incidents and periods during his career which have cast shadows on his life and thoughts. On May 21st, 1891, he was elected to the seat left vacant in the French Academy by the death of Octave Feuillet, receiving eighteen votes out of thirty-five cast. He was on board the man-of-war Formidable when he was told of his election to the most august literary body in the world. The occasion of his reception at the Academy, in view of the social prestige that he had gained, was the most brilliant in years. His main works are as follows:-'Aziyadé' (1876); 'Rarahu' (1880), republished in 1882 under the title 'Le Mariage de Loti'; 'Le Roman d'un Spahi' (1881); 'Fleurs d'Ennui' (1882); 'Mon Frère Yves' (1883); 'Trois Dames de la Kasbah' (1884); 'Pêcheur d'Islande' (1886); 'Le Désert,' 'Madame Chrysanthème' (1887); Propos d'Exil' (1887); 'Japoneries d'Automme' (1889); 'Au Maroc' (1890); Le Roman d'un Enfant (1890); Le Livre de la Pitié et de la Mort' (1891); 'Fantômes d'Orient (1892); 'Le Galilée,' 'Jerusalem Matelot.' Pierre Loti's success has been largely due to the peculiar sympathy and charm with which he has depicted the simple, open, and naïve life of the Orient and of the far East. The sensations, the 9205 ideas, the types of civilization,-in brief, the whole life and manners of the people and countries,-successively set forth in 'An Iceland Fisherman, To Morocco,' The Desert,' 'Phantoms of the Orient,' and 'Madame Chrysanthème,' contrasted so vividly with the formal, complex, and sophisticated civilization of France, England, and America, and this life was laid bare with such penetration and insight, and withal invested with such spirit and poetry and romance, that it is slight wonder it appealed strangely and strongly to the overwrought and overstrained nerves of our Western peoples. Loti had apparently been one of those young spirits, so frequently to be met with nowadays, to whom the intense, highly developed, and artificial life of the time brought even with a first taste a pall of ennui. With a cry of anguish and discouragement he had fled to far distant lands. As a naval officer he was able to give rein to his antipathy, and the years that followed found him searching this corner and that of the earth in quest of the unconventional and the unique. It was awakening Japan which appeared to have given him his first literary impulse; and it was the curious and richly colored volume in which he describes his love affair with one of the daughters of that country, to whom he gave the fanciful title of Madame Chrysanthemum, which won for him his greatest acclaim in the field of letters. Other volumes of a similar character followed rapidly, and the young writer quickly found himself elevated in popular esteem to the first rank of French littérateurs. It was an open door and a step into the Academy. It is to be noted in passing, that the Orient and the desert- their life, their customs, their literature, and their religions-have always exercised a strong attraction for the French mind: a fact exemplified in the long line of writers from the stately declamation of Volney's 'Ruins, and the weird tales of arabesque and grotesque, down to the poet Leconte de Lisle, whose melancholy and majestic verse has so strongly influenced the poetry of the day. Loti caught a phase of this life which had been touched upon by no other writer. The East, to Volney, was the inspiration of philosophical reflections upon the rise and fall of nations; to Gautier, a land wherein his imagination and love of the antique might run riot; to Leconte de Lisle, a sermon upon the evanescence of all earthly things. To Loti it was none of these. With the eye of the poet and with the pen of a realist he saw and painted the lands and people which he visited. And into these pictures he infused a sympathy and a human interest which lifted his pages from the dull and commonplace routine of ordinary sketches of travel, into an atmosphere whose warmth and glow afforded a new and rare sensation to the reading public. Above all, there is in Loti's work a delicacy, a subtlety of understanding, a poetic instinct, and the play of a dainty and lively fancy, that lend to his descriptions a quality which is hardly elsewhere to be found. He is an admirable artist, some of whose work is tainted by morbidness and sensuality, but who at his ethical and artistic best-in 'An Iceland Fisherman' and 'The Book of Pity and of Death,' for example has great charm and power. THE SAILOR'S WIFE From 'An Iceland Fisherman: A Story of Love on Land and Sea.' Translated from the French by Clara Cadiot. William S. Gottsberger, New York, 1888. THE HE Icelanders were all returning now. Two ships came in the second day, four the next, and twelve during the following week. And all through the country, joy returned with them; and there was happiness for the wives and mothers, and junkets in the taverns where the beautiful barmaids of Paimpol served out drink to the fishers. The Léopoldine was among the belated; there were yet another ten expected. They would not be long now; and allowing a week's delay so as not to be disappointed, Gaud waited in happy, passionate joy for Yann, keeping their home bright and tidy for his return. When everything was in good order there was nothing left for her to do; and besides, in her impatience, she could think of nothing else but her husband. Three more ships appeared; then another five. only two lacking now. There were "Come, come," they said to her cheerily, "this year the Léopoldine and the Marie-Jeanne will be the last, to pick up all the brooms fallen overboard from the other craft." Gaud laughed also. She was more animated and beautiful than ever, in her great joy of expectancy. But the days succeeded one another without result. She still dressed up every day, and with a joyful look went down to the harbor to gossip with the other wives. She said. that this delay was but natural: was it not the same event every year? These were such safe boats, and had such capital sailors. But when at home alone, at night, a nervous anxious shiver of apprehension would run through her whole frame. 9207 Was it right to be frightened already? Was there even a single reason to be so? But she began to tremble at the mere idea of grounds for being afraid. The 10th of September came. How swiftly the days flew by! One morning-a true autumn morning, with cold mist falling over the earth in the rising sun-she sat under the porch of the chapel of the shipwrecked mariners, where the widows go to pray; with eyes fixed and glassy, and throbbing temples tightened as by an iron band. These sad morning mists had begun two days before; and on this particular day Gaud had awakened with a still more bitter uneasiness, caused by the forecast of advancing winter. Why did this day, this hour, this very moment, seem to her more painful than the preceding? Often ships are delayed a fortnight; even a month, for that matter. But surely there was something different about this particular morning; for she had come to-day for the first time to sit in the porch of this chapel and read the names of the dead sailors, perished in their prime. IN MEMORY OF GAOS YVON Lost at Sea NEAR THE NORDEN-FJORD Like a great shudder, a gust of wind rose from the sea, and at the same time something fell like rain upon the roof above. It was only the dead leaves, though;-many were blown in at the porch; the old wind-tossed trees of the graveyard were losing their foliage in this rising gale, and winter was marching nearer. Lost at Sea NEAR THE NORDEN-FJORD In the storm of the 4th and 5th of August, 1880 She read mechanically under the arch of the doorway; her eyes sought to pierce the distance over the sea. That morning it was untraceable under the gray mist, and a dragging drapery of clouds overhung the horizon like a mourning veil. Another gust of wind, and other leaves danced in whirls. A stronger gust still; as if the western storm which had strewn those dead over the sea wished to deface the very inscriptions which kept their names in memory with the living. |