Louis Marie Julien Viaud - Biography, Works, Bibliography, Reference

Writer and French naval officer, born in Rochefort, W France. He entered the navy in 1869, and served in the East, retiring as captain in 1910. His first novel, Aziyadé (1879), quickly gained the respect of critics and public alike. He continued to write throughout his naval career, using experiences and observations on his voyages as source material for his books. His best-known novel is Pêcheur d'Islande (1886, Fisherman of Iceland), a descriptive study of Breton fisher life in Icelandic waters. Other works include Rarahu, published in 1882 as Le Mariage de Loti (The Marriage of Loti) - a pseudonym he received from the women of the South Sea Islands.

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Louis Marie Julien Viaud (January 14, 1850 - June 10, 1923) was a French sailor and writer, who used the pseudonym Pierre Loti.

Biography

Viaud was born in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, France.

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. He proceeded to the South Seas as part of his naval training, and several years after leaving Tahiti published the Polynesian idyll originally called Rarahu (1880), which was reprinted as Le Mariage de Loti, and which first introduced to the wider public an author of remarkable originality and charm.

In 1882, Loti issued a collection of four short studies under the general title of Fleurs d'ennui (Flowers of Boredom). In 1883 he achieved the widest celebrity, for not only did he publish Mon frere Yves ("My Brother Yves"), a novel describing the life of a French sailor in all parts of the world - one of his most characteristic productions - but he was involved in a public discussion in a manner which did him great credit.

Passing over one or two slighter productions, we come in 1890 to 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 fictionalized recollection of Loti's childhood that would greatly influence 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) belongs to 1891.

Loti was on board his ship at the port of Algiers when news reached him of his election, on May 21, 1891, to the Académie française.

In 1899–1900 Loti visited British India, with the view of describing what he saw; He described what he saw there, after the siege of Beijing, in Les Derniers Jours de Pékin (The Last Days of Peking, 1902).

Loti was an inveterate collector, and married into the money that helped him support this habit.

Works

At his best Pierre Loti ranks unquestionably as the finest descriptive writer of his day.

In spite of the beauty and melody and fragrance of Loti's style, his mannerisms sometimes tend to pall upon the reader, and his later books of pure description can seem rather empty.

With all his limitations, however, Pierre Loti remains, in the mechanism of style and cadence, one of the most original and most perfect French writers of the second half of the 19th century. Among his later works were: La Troisième jeunesse de Mme Prune (The Third Youth of Mrs. Plum, 1905); La Mort de Philae (The Death of Philae, 1908);

Bibliography

1879 : Aziyadé 1880 : Rarahu 1881 : Le roman d'un spahi 1882 : Le mariage de Loti (Rarahu). Pasquali Ivanovitch 1883 : Mon frère Yves 1884 : Les trois dames de la Kasbah 1886 : Pêcheur d'Islande 1887 : Madame Chrysanthème 1887 : Propos d'exil 1889 : Japoneries d'automne 1890 : Au Maroc 1890 : Le roman d'un enfant 1891 : Le livre de la pitié et de la mort. Jérusalem 1894 : La Galilée 1897 : Ramuntcho 1898 : Judith Renaudin 1899 : Reflets de la sombre route 1902 : Les derniers jours de Pékin 1903 : L'Inde sans les Anglais 1904 : Vers Ispahan 1905 : La troisième jeunesse de Mme Prune 1906 : Les désenchantées 1909 : La mort de Philae 1910 : Le château de la Belle au Bois dormant 1912 : Un pèlerin d'Angkor 1913 : La Turquie agonisante 1916 : La hyène enragée 1917 : Quelques aspects du vertige mondial 1918 : L'horreur allemande 1919 : Prime jeunesse 1920 : La mort de notre chère France en Orient 1921 : Suprêmes visions d'Orient 1923 : Un jeune officier pauvre (posthumous) 1924 : Lettres à Juliette Adam (posthumous) 1925–1929 : Journal intime (1878-1885), 2 vol ("Intimate journal") 1929 : Correspondance inédite (1865-1904) (unpublished correspondence)

Reference

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Preceded by: Octave Feuillet

Seat 13 Académie française 1891–1923

Succeeded by: Albert Besnard