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Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist
Dramatic travel writer, French naval officer who wore rouge and liked to disguise himself as a Turk or a Bedu, amateur acrobat and ebullient self-dramatist: Pierre Loti was a global celebrity before the concept was even thought of. His work was admired by his contemporaries Marcel Proust, Anatole France and Paul Verlaine. Henry James praised his 'remarkable genius.' When he died in 1923, he was given a state funeral, the only French writer to have received such an honour other than Victor Hugo. Loti lived what most romantics only dared write about.
His Protestant family living in Rochefort on the Atlantic Ocean fell into poverty, but his writing got them out of it. He married, but had a second Basque family. He loved women and men with intense passion and freedom wherever he went, and immortalized Aziyadé who left her harem at night to see him when he was stationed in Istanbul. As Lesley Blanch said: "It's awfully easy to say of someone who wears high heels and a painted face that he was a pederast. I think Pierre Loti was everything. He loved men and he loved women and if there had been a third sex he would have loved that one too."
An unorthodox writer, Loti’s most outstanding creation was himself. Adored and scorned by French society in equal measure, he spent his life escaping the constraints of bourgeois France — and in so doing redefined his age. He travelled the South Seas, Asia and the Middle East (his great obsession). Although loyal to France, by the end of his life, Loti’s opposition to Imperialism was despairingly vociferous. His writings were coloured by an Eastern glow as was his whole life.
NOEL PERRIN, WASHINGTON POST: Lesley Blanch has written an exceptionally good biography of an exceptionally interesting man.
PHILIP MANSEL: In this haunting biography Lesley Blanch shows herself a sympathetic historian, consulting manuscript letters and diaries as well as Loti's innumerable publications. Her book is a labour of love, an enquiry into a very complex man, as well as one brilliant escapist writing about another.
GABRIELLE ANNAN, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: What makes Loti so extraordinary and this book so enthralling is not that he was an escapist, but that he was an escapologist, getting out of scrapes and away with behaviour that would normally lead to disaster, disgrace, even death. Lesley Blanch is a most congenial biographer for this eccentric man . . . She has a natural sympathy with people who live out their fantasies . . . She also has the sense of humour her subject lacks, and is very funny without ever being unkind.
His Protestant family living in Rochefort on the Atlantic Ocean fell into poverty, but his writing got them out of it. He married, but had a second Basque family. He loved women and men with intense passion and freedom wherever he went, and immortalized Aziyadé who left her harem at night to see him when he was stationed in Istanbul. As Lesley Blanch said: "It's awfully easy to say of someone who wears high heels and a painted face that he was a pederast. I think Pierre Loti was everything. He loved men and he loved women and if there had been a third sex he would have loved that one too."
An unorthodox writer, Loti’s most outstanding creation was himself. Adored and scorned by French society in equal measure, he spent his life escaping the constraints of bourgeois France — and in so doing redefined his age. He travelled the South Seas, Asia and the Middle East (his great obsession). Although loyal to France, by the end of his life, Loti’s opposition to Imperialism was despairingly vociferous. His writings were coloured by an Eastern glow as was his whole life.
NOEL PERRIN, WASHINGTON POST: Lesley Blanch has written an exceptionally good biography of an exceptionally interesting man.
PHILIP MANSEL: In this haunting biography Lesley Blanch shows herself a sympathetic historian, consulting manuscript letters and diaries as well as Loti's innumerable publications. Her book is a labour of love, an enquiry into a very complex man, as well as one brilliant escapist writing about another.
GABRIELLE ANNAN, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: What makes Loti so extraordinary and this book so enthralling is not that he was an escapist, but that he was an escapologist, getting out of scrapes and away with behaviour that would normally lead to disaster, disgrace, even death. Lesley Blanch is a most congenial biographer for this eccentric man . . . She has a natural sympathy with people who live out their fantasies . . . She also has the sense of humour her subject lacks, and is very funny without ever being unkind.
278 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
Lesley Blanch
27 books45 followersA scholarly romantic, Lesley Blanch influenced and inspired generations of writers, readers and critics. Her first book, The Wilder Shores of Love — the stories of four ninteenth-century women who followed the beckoning Eastern star — pioneered a new kind of group biography focusing on women escaping the boredom of convention. An instant classic, it has remained in print in English since first publication in 1954. Lesley Blanch was ahead of her time and prescient in the way she attempted to bridge West and East.
Savvy, self-possessed and talented, Blanch did what she wanted and earned a good living at a time when women were expected to stay at home and be subservient to the needs of husband and children. She was glamorous and stylish and, in her own unique way, distinctly powerful.
She knew something of the Middle East as it once was, before conflict and turmoil became the essence of relations between the Arab World and the West. The places she travelled to and which obsessed her are still newsworthy today: Russia, The Balkans, The Middle East, Turkey, Afghanistan.
Savvy, self-possessed and talented, Blanch did what she wanted and earned a good living at a time when women were expected to stay at home and be subservient to the needs of husband and children. She was glamorous and stylish and, in her own unique way, distinctly powerful.
She knew something of the Middle East as it once was, before conflict and turmoil became the essence of relations between the Arab World and the West. The places she travelled to and which obsessed her are still newsworthy today: Russia, The Balkans, The Middle East, Turkey, Afghanistan.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 1, 2020
I'd never heard of Pierre Loti but bought the book on the recommendation of a bookseller in Istanbul. What a curious character! I found myself vacillating between liking and loathing the man, and still can't decide how I feel about him, although tending towards dislike. The biography was excellently written, tracing Loti's life in incredible detail. One black mark against the book is the author's language. Written in the 1980s, phrases such as 'primitive races' - the author's words, not a quote from Lot's writings - are inexcusable
August 2, 2020
I finished reading this splendid biography of Pierre Loti by Lesley Blanch. It is a marvelous book on an extraordinary French writer, acrobat, soldier and traveler. It talks of Loti's meeting kings and queens of Romania, France, Spain, Serbia and the UK; sultans of Ottoman Turkey and Ataturk, and many French politicians, and notable people and army commanders. It talks of his brilliant travels to Far East, India, China, Cambodia, Turkey – his beloved second country -, Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus, North Africa and the USA and how he disliked New York City. It also mentioned his love affairs with women and men alike, his marriage, and his secret second family from the Basque. The book mentioned his atheism, trials not to annoy his devote Protestant mother and his secret affection to Islam – because of the Turks he loved and how he took a mosque from Damascus and built it in his house. He kept a secret illegitimate family from the Basque. I found him strange with his liberal life, the books he deems immoral at the end of his life, yet his admiring Muslim call of prayer and building that mosque and even said to be directed to face Mecca upon his death. His life was quite strange and he was quite a character. I was surprised how he stood by Turkey till the end and even criticized the Armenians! There are details of his love affair with a married Circassian-Turkish woman – upon whom he wrote Aziyade – and then another love affair with two young Turkish women and a French journalist who claimed to be a Turkish oppressed woman. It was such a nice book and a great journey to explore.
Quotes:
Now that the furthest points of the compass can be reached in a matter of hours, the flavour of travel is lost.
Journeying in search of romance, and that, after all, is our business in this world. Joseph Conrad
Silver locks are the spray which covers the ocean after a tempest. Carmen Sylva
The atheist was, in reality, a profoundly devout man whose intellect had overcome his original, ancestral beliefs, leaving him stranded.
Who can look on Damascus for the first time and remain unmoved? Pierre Loti
There is a gloom in deep love, as in deep water; there is a silence in it. Walter Savage Landor
Quotes:
Now that the furthest points of the compass can be reached in a matter of hours, the flavour of travel is lost.
Journeying in search of romance, and that, after all, is our business in this world. Joseph Conrad
Silver locks are the spray which covers the ocean after a tempest. Carmen Sylva
The atheist was, in reality, a profoundly devout man whose intellect had overcome his original, ancestral beliefs, leaving him stranded.
Who can look on Damascus for the first time and remain unmoved? Pierre Loti
There is a gloom in deep love, as in deep water; there is a silence in it. Walter Savage Landor
February 12, 2021
Somewhere in Chapter 6 I gave up, and it took a damn long time to get even there. It wasn't that I liked or didn't like Loti; I didn't really give a shit about him. I found wading through her writing resulted in a disconnect from both the story (or history) and the person. Blanch struck me as haughty and disinterested in the reader. Her writing was hard to follow. I'm surprised that I disliked this book so much having read another of her's -- Journey into the Mind's Eye -- which I loved. In fact at one point I looked her up on the internet because I couldn't believe it was the same writer.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews