Background
Pierre Loti was born on January 14, 1850 at Rochefort, France.
("Every now and then turbaned figures would go by, followi...)
"Every now and then turbaned figures would go by, following the wall; and not a single female head was to be seen behind the discreet grills of the women's appartments, the 'haremlikes'. A dead city, one might have said. I thought I was perfectly alone; then I experienced a strange feeling, and realised that close to me, from behind thick iron bars at head height, two large green eyes were staring into mine. The eyebrows were brown, and the slight frown brought them so close that they met; the gaze suggested a combination of vigour and openness; it contained so much freshness and youth it could have been taken for a child's. The young woman, whose eyes these were, rose, and from her waist upward one could tell she was wrapped in the long, stiff folds of a Turkish-style cape, a 'feredge', made of green silk, embroidered with silver. A white veil carefully enveloped her head, revealing only her forehead and her large eyes. The pupils were indeed green: that shade of sea green, which was celebrated in the past by the poets of the Orient. The young woman was Aziyade." **************************************************************************** Other books available in North Star Ed. (Lettres Classiques, SF Anticipation, Fantastic) click on the link : "North Star Ed" under book title. See also our site : http://north-stared.wix.com/editions ****************************************************************************
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(This is the diary of a journey on camelback through the S...)
This is the diary of a journey on camelback through the Sinai desert by Julien Viaud (1850-1923) pseudonym, Pierre Loti artist, author, and prominent decadent eccentric. It was first published in French in 1895, and subsequently made available in dozens of French editions, but only now published in English (translation by Jay Paul Minn). Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
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Pierre Loti was born on January 14, 1850 at Rochefort, France.
In 1867 Pierre Loti graduated from navy school.
After graduation Pierre Loti went to sea as a midshipman, was promoted to lieutenant in 1881, and received his first command in 1898. Loti's naval career necessarily entailed long absences from France. He spent much time in Levantine ports and in the Far East. In the course of his travels Loti had various love affairs that, often with slight alterations, provided the plots of his exotic novels. His first book, published anonymously in 1879 under the title Aziyadé, told of his amours with a Circassian slave girl he had met during a stay in Salonika and Constantinople 3 years previously. Le Mariage de Loti (1880) related the less poignant, more sensual relations he had enjoyed with several native girls at Tahiti, where he had spent some time in 1872. It was followed by Le Roman d'un Spahi (1881), the action of which occurred in Senegal, and by Madame Chrysanthème (1887).
Loti's fin-de-siècle readers were captivated by the blend of gentlemanly eroticism and fashionable melancholia that his books exuded. The novels for which Loti is chiefly remembered, however, were set in France. Mon Frère Yves (1883) told the story of Loti's Breton friend Pierre Le Cor and the single vice—drinking—of which Loti succeeded in curing him. Its sequel proved to be Loti's masterpiece: Pêcheur d'Islande (1886) dealt with the heroic lives of the Bretons who sailed every year to dangerous fishing grounds in Icelandic waters, and with the lives of their wives and sweethearts, who often never saw them again. Ramuntcho (1897) has also retained its charm. Set in the Basque country, this story centers on the conflict between human love and the claims of religion.
In addition to his novels, Loti wrote a great number of travel books. The best include Au Maroc (1890)—he visited Fez before Morocco became a French protectorate—and Vers Ispahan (1904), which narrated a journey he undertook through Persia in 1900. These books present an interesting picture of certain Islamic countries immediately before they became subject to Western commercial exploitation and were overrun by tourists—developments that Loti deplored.
The French Academy elected Loti a member in 1891. He died, after a long illness, at Hendaye on the Basque coast on June 10, 1923.
("Every now and then turbaned figures would go by, followi...)
(This is the diary of a journey on camelback through the S...)
Académie française
Loti evoked the temporary marriage he had contracted with a Japanese girl at Nagasaki.