Pierre Loti

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Pierre Loti on the day he entered the Académie française on April 7, 1892
Pierre Loti signature.svg
Smoking the nargile was a passion for Pierre Loti. The photo shows Loti in his favorite café in Eyup , Istanbul (1900).

Pierre Loti (* 14. January 1850 in Rochefort , department of Charente-Maritime , † 10. June 1923 in Hendaye , Pyrénées-Atlantiques , actually Louis Marie Julien Viaud ) was a French naval officer and writer . His innumerable novels include a number of bestsellers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Life

Loti came from a seafaring family; his father was a ship's doctor. In literature, Loti's addiction to travel is often justified with the death of his 14 year older brother Gustave in the South Pacific, who had lived in Tahiti for four years . Pierre Loti attended the French Naval School and took part in a Tonking expedition as an officer in the Navy in 1883.

Pierre Loti (right) with “Chrysanthème” and his friend Yves, Japan, 1885

In 1879 Loti published Aziyadé , his first novel, set in Istanbul and depicting his passion for the Orient and the Ottoman Empire.

In 1884 he went on a trip to Palestine to find out whether his soul, which was "one of the most tormented at this end of the century", could find relief in Jerusalem through a new spiritual experience. In the trilogy about the journey published in 1885 , he impressively tells of his failure in experiences that are understandable today. In 1892 Loti was appointed to the Académie française .

In 1900 he was an adjutant to Vice Admiral Pottier and a member of the French expeditionary force to suppress the Boxer Rebellion in China .

Loti repeatedly addresses the longing for death and greed for life in his works and is thus a representative of the fin de siècle . This aspect is particularly evident in his Japan trilogy ( Madame Chrysanthème , Japoneries de l'automne and La troisième jeunesse de Mme Prune ). With its exotic motifs, Loti u. a. Role model for Louis Bertrand and Gilbert de Voisins - at the same time he is criticized for his uncritically romanticizing perspective as exotic or oriental . His novel Le Mariage de Loti (1880) established a literary exoticism and impressionism of the South Seas, especially about Tahiti. The bestseller is still considered a classic of French exoticism and served as the basis for the libretti for the operas Lakmé by Léo Delibes and L'île du rêve by Reynaldo Hahn . Many of Loti's works have been forgotten today, even if he was one of the most widely read authors of the second half of the 19th century and shaped a considerable part of the French attitude towards other countries. In this respect, its cultural and historical influence is significant. Classics such as Le Mariage de Loti , Aziyadé or Madame Chrysanthème are still much-cited works today and have a style- defining place in French literary history.

Portrait of Pierre Loti by Henri Rousseau 1891 - Kunsthaus Zürich

Pierre Loti died in Hendaye on June 10, 1923; he received a state funeral.

Oddities

Loti's parents' house in Rochefort on the French Atlantic coast could be viewed until 2012. It has since been closed for renovation. Loti worked his whole life on the design and modification of this house - the passionate history connoisseur furnished each room in the style of a place or an era in which he was particularly interested, and in it exhibited exhibits that he had over the years during his travels acquired. The house is still in the original condition in which Loti furnished it. Inside, everything has been transformed into a fantasy world in a unique and impressive way: Among other things, a reception hall, a knight's hall and a mosque were created with attention to detail and using original structural elements in the walls of this town house - mainly around the bourgeois society of its time and to impress numerous lovers. There are also contemporary living spaces.

In the Istanbul district of Eyup , a café above the large Muslim cemetery is named after Loti. The square can also be reached via a cable car and offers an impressive view of the Istanbul districts on the Golden Horn .

Works

Pêcheur D'Islande , Paris 1887 (title page)
  • Aziyadeh (1990) French Aziyadé (1879)
  • Rarahu , later renamed Le mariage de Loti (1880)
  • Le roman d'un spahi (1881)
  • Fleurs d'ennui. Pasquali Ivanovitch (1882)
  • Mon frère Yves (1883)
  • Les trois dames de la Kasbah (1884)
  • Die Icelandfischer (2008, translated by Dirk Hemjeoltmanns & Otfried Schulze; 1902, translated by Carmen Sylva ) French Pêcheur d'Islande (1886)
  • Madame Chrysanthemum (1887)
  • Propos d'exil (1887)
  • Japoneries d'automne (1889)
  • Under the Sign of the Sahara (1991) French Au Maroc (1890)
  • A child's novel, French Le roman d'un enfant (1890)
  • Le livre de la pitié et de la mort (1891)
  • Fantôme d'Orient (1892)
  • L'exilée (1893)
  • A sailor (1899, transl. By Emmy Becher) French Le matelot (1893)
  • The desert (2005, translated by Dirk Hemjeoltmanns) French Le désert (1894)
  • Jerusalem (2005, translated by Dirk Hemjeoltmanns) French Jérusalem (1894)
  • Galilee (2006, translated by Dirk Hemjeoltmanns) French La Galilée (1894)
  • Ramuntcho (1897)
  • Judith Renaudin (1898)
  • Reflets de la sombre route (1899)
  • The last days of Beijing (transl. By Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski) French Les derniers jours de Pékin (1902)
  • L'Inde sans les Anglais (1903)
  • After Isfahan (2000, translated by Dirk Hemjeoltmanns) French verse Ispahan (1904)
  • La troisième jeunesse de M me Prune (1905)
  • The Disenchanted (1912) French Les désenchantées (1906)
  • In the Land of the Pharaohs (1922? Translated by Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski) French La mort de Philae (1909)
  • Le château de la Belle au Bois dormant (1910)
  • A pilgrimage to Angkor (1926) French Un pèlerin d'Angkor (1912)
  • La Turquie agonisante (1913)
  • La hyène enragée (1916)
  • Quelques aspects du vertige mondial (1917)
  • L'horreur allemande (1918)
  • Prime jeunesse (1919)
  • La mort de notre chère France en Orient (1920)
  • Suprêmes visions d'Orient (1921)
  • Un jeune officier pauvre (1923, posthumous)
  • Lettres à Juliette Adam (1924, posthumous)
  • Journal intime (1878–1885), 2 vol ( Intimate journal , 1925–1929)
  • Correspondance inédite (1865–1904, 1929)

literature

  • Pierre E. Briguet: Loti et l'orient . Ed. de la Baconnière, Neuchatel 1946
  • Hélène de Burgh: Sex, sailors and colonies, narratives of ambiguity in the works of Pierre Loti . Lang, Bern 2005, ISBN 3-03910-601-5
  • Christian Genet: Pierre Loti, L'enchanteur . La Caillerie, Génozac 1988
  • Gustav Hirschmann-Gunzel: Loti 's thought of death . Dissertation, University of Hamburg, 1930
  • Michael G. Lerner: Pierre Lotis dramatic works . Mellen, Lewiston, NY 1998, ISBN 0-7734-8247-4
  • Simon Leys: De Victor Hugo à Pierre Loti . Plon, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-259-19974-7
  • Hermann Engel: Chateaubriand and Pierre Loti . 1899 ( digitized version )
  • Nicolas Serban: Pierre Loti . Les Presses françaises, Paris 1924
  • Ralf Nestmeyer : French poets and their homes . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-458-34793-3
  • Lesley Blanch: Pierre Loti: travels with the legendary romantic , London: Tauris Parke, 2004, ISBN 1-85043-429-8
  • Richard M. Berrong: Pierre Loti , London: Reaction Books, 2018, ISBN 978-1-78023-995-8

See also

Web links

Commons : Pierre Loti  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Pierre Loti  - Sources and full texts (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monument: Pierre Loti's house. Retrieved December 7, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Loti, Pierre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Viaud, Louis Marie Julien (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French naval officer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Rochefort (Charente-Maritime)
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 1923
Place of death Hendaye