An Iceland Fisherman

"An Iceland Fisherman" ( _fr. Pêcheur d'Islande, 1886) is a novel by French author Pierre Loti. It depicts the romantic but inevitably sad life of Breton fisherman who sail each summer season to the stormy Iceland cod grounds. Literary critic Edmund Gosse characterized it as "the most popular and finest of all his writings." "Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition", "Pierre Loti", by Edmund Gosse]

Loti's style is a combination of the French realist school, such as Emile Zola, and impressionism, such as Monet. As Jules Cambon says, Loti wrote at a "..time when M. Zola and his school stood at the head of the literary movement. There breathed forth from Loti's writings an all-penetrating fragrance of poesy [poetry] , which liberated French literary ideals from the heavy and oppressive yoke of the Naturalistic school."Jules Cambon, "Introduction", New York P.F. Collier. 1902 (see external links).] Loti uses a simple vocabulary, "but these words, as used by him, take on a value we did not know they possessed; they awaken sensations that linger deeply within us." [Rene Doumie. [http://www.archive.org/details/contemporaryfren00doumiala "Contemporary French Novelists"] . New York, Boston : T. Y. Crowell & company. 1899. Page 274.] The characters are humble and simple working class people, the incidents are normal every day affairs, dealing with the themes of love and separation.

Loti's greatest strength is in the depictions of nature, placing it center stage, as Jules Cambon says:

It was adapted to film in 1959 by French director Pierre Schoendoerffer.

Footnotes

References

*Pierre Loti. [http://www.archive.org/details/icelandfisherman00lotiuoft "An Iceland Fisherman"] . Translated from the French with a critical introd. by Jules Cambon. New York P.F. Collier. 1902. From Internet Archive.