- Pierre Loti
Louis Marie-Julien Viaud (
January 14 ,1850 -June 10 ,1923 ) was a writer, who used thepseudonym Pierre Loti.Biography
Viaud was born in
Rochefort, Charente-Maritime ,France , to an oldProtestant family.This article is derived largely from the "Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition " (1911) article "Pierre Loti" byEdmund Gosse . Unless otherwise referenced, it is the source used throughout, with citations made for specific quotes by Gosse.] His education began in Rochefort, but at the age of seventeen, being destined for the navy, he entered the naval school in Brest and studied onLe Borda . He gradually rose in his profession, attaining the rank of captain in 1906. In January 1910 he went on the reserve list.His pseudonym has been said to be due to his extreme shyness and reserve in early life, which made his comrades call him after "le Loti", an Indian flower which loves to blush unseen. Other explanations have been put forth by scholars. It is also said that he got the name in
Tahiti where he got a sun burn and was called Roti (because he was all red like a local flower), he couldn't pronounce the r well so he stuck with Loti. He was in the habit of claiming that he never read books (when he was received at theAcadémie française , he said, "Loti ne sait pas lire" ("Loti doesn't know how to read"), but testimony from friends and acquaintances proves otherwise, as does his library, much of which is preserved in his house in Rochefort. In 1876 fellow naval officers persuaded him to turn into a novel passages in his diary dealing with some curious experiences atIstanbul . The result was "Aziyadé ", a novel which, like so many of Loti's, is part romance, partautobiography , like the work of his admirer,Marcel Proust , after him. (There is a popular cafe in current-day Istanbul dedicated to the time Loti spent in Turkey.) He proceeded to theSouth Seas as part of his naval training, and several years after leavingTahiti published the Polynesian idyll originally named "Rarahu" (1880), which was reprinted as "Le Mariage de Loti ", the first book to introduce him to the wider public. This was followed by "Le Roman d'un spahi " (1881), a record of the melancholy adventures of a soldier in Senegambia. In 1882, Loti issued a collection of four shorter pieces, three stories and a travel piece, under the general title of "Fleurs d'ennui" ("Flowers of Boredom").In 1883 he entered the wider public spotlight. First, he publish the critically acclaimed "
Mon frere Yves " ("My Brother Yves"), a novel describing the life of a French naval officer (Pierre Loti), and a Breton sailor (Yves Kermadec), described byEdmund Gosse as "one of his most characteristic productions". Second, while taking part as a naval officer in the undeclared hostilities that preceded the outbreak of theSino-French War (August 1884 to April 1885), Loti wrote an article in the newspaper "Le Figaro " about atrocities that occurred during the French bombardment of the Thuan An forts that guarded the approaches to Hue (August 1883), and was threatened with suspension from the service, thus gaining wider public notoriety.In 1886 he published a novel of life among the Breton fisherfolk, called "
Pêcheur d'Islande " ("Iceland Fisherman"), which Edmund Gosse characterized as "the most popular and finest of all his writings." It shows Loti adapting some of the Impressionist techniques of contemporary painters, especially Monet, to prose, and is a classic of French literature. In 1887 he brought out a volume "of extraordinary merit, which has not received the attention it deserves", "Propos d'exil", a series of short studies of exotic places, in his characteristic semi-autobiographic style. The novel of Japanese manners, "Madame Chrysanthème "— a precursor to "Madame Butterfly " and "Miss Saigon " and a work that is a combination of narrative and travelog— was published the same year.During 1890 he published "Au Maroc", the record of a journey to Fez in company with a French
embassy , and "Le Roman d'un enfant" ("The Story of a Child"), a somewhat fictionalized recollection of Loti's childhood that would greatly influenceMarcel Proust . A collection of "strangely confidential and sentimental reminiscences", called "Le Livre de la pitié et de la mort", ("The Book of Pity and Death") was published in 1891.Loti was on board his ship at the port of
Algiers when news reached him of his election, onMay 21 ,1891 , to theAcadémie française . In 1892 he published "Fantôme d'orient", a short novel derived from a subsequent trip toIstanbul , less a continuation ofAziyadé than a commentary on it. He described a visit to theHoly Land in three volumes, "The Desert", "Jerusalem", and "Galilee", (1895–1896), and wrote a novel, "Ramuntcho " (1897), a story of contraband runners in the Basque province, which is one of his best writings. During 1898 he collected his later essays as "Figures et Choses qui passaient" ("Passing Figures and Things").In 1899–1900 Loti visited British
India , with the view of describing what he saw; the result appeared in 1903: "L'Inde (sans les Anglais) " ("India (without the English)"). During the autumn of 1900, he went toChina , as part of the international expedition set up to fight against theBoxer Rebellion . He described what he saw there, after the siege ofBeijing , in "Les Derniers Jours de Pékin " ("The Last Days of Peking", 1902).Among his later publications were: "
La Troisième jeunesse de Mme Prune " ("The Third Youth of Mrs. Plum", 1905), which resulted from a return visit to Japan and once again hovers between narrative and travelog; "Les Désenchantées " ("The Unawakened", 1906); "La Mort de Philae " ("The Death of Philae", 1908), recounting a trip to Egypt; "Judith Renaudin" (produced at the Théâtre Antoine, 1898), a five-act historical play that Loti presented as based on an episode in his family history; and, in collaboration withEmile Vedel , a translation of "King Lear", produced at the Théâtre Antoine in 1904.He produced a play at the
Century Theatre inNew York City in 1912, "The Daughter of Heaven", which had been written several years before in collaboration with Judith Gautier for "Sarah Bernhardt ".He died in 1923 at
Hendaye and was interred on theÎle d'Oléron with a state funeral.Loti was an inveterate collector, and married into the money that helped him support this habit. His house in Rochefort, a remarkable reworking of two adjacent bourgeois row houses, is well preserved as a museum. One elaborately tiled room is an Orientalist fantasia, including a small fountain and five ceremoniously draped coffins (with the desiccated bodies inside). Another room evokes a medieval banqueting hall. Loti's own bedroom is rather like a monk's cell, but mixes
Christian andMuslim religious artifacts. The courtyard described in "The Story of a Child", with the fountain built for him by his older brother, is still there.Works
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