Matelot

by Pierre Loti

Roman, dans lequel le personnage nommé Jean Berny s'engage dans la marine marchande, comme simple matelot, après son échec au concours de Navale. Après Mon frère Yves et Pêcheur d'Islande, Matelot complèta en 1893, la trilogie des romans de la mer de Pierre Loti‎. Extrait : Leur profonde détresse, il ne la vit point. Quant à lui, il ne se sentait ni atterré ni surpris, car depuis longtemps il n’espérait plus, sachant mieux que personne qu’il avait flâné jusqu’à la dernière heure — et très mal passé son examen oral. Au collège mariste, ils étaient cinq ou six grands enfants comme lui qui, en présence de l’échec probable, avaient fait ensemble le serment de s’engager dans la flotte.

91 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1893

About the author

Louis Marie-Julien Viaud was a writer, who used the pseudonym Pierre Loti.

Viaud was born in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, France, to an old Protestant family. His education began in Rochefort, but at the age of seventeen, being destined for the navy, he entered the naval school in Brest and studied on Le Borda. He gradually rose in his profession, attaining the rank of captain in 1906. In January 1910 he went on the reserve list.

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. Other explanations have been put forth by scholars. It is also said that he got the name in Tahiti where he got a sun burn and was called Roti (because he was all red like a local flower), he couldn't pronounce the r well so he stuck with Loti. He was in the habit of claiming that he never read books (when he was received at the Académie française, he said, "Loti ne sait pas lire" ("Loti doesn't know how to read"), but testimony from friends and acquaintances proves otherwise, as does his library, much of which is preserved in his house in Rochefort. In 1876 fellow naval officers persuaded him to turn into a novel passages in his diary dealing with some curious experiences at Istanbul. The result was Aziyadé, a novel which, like so many of Loti's, is part romance, part autobiography, like the work of his admirer, Marcel Proust, after him. (There is a popular cafe in current-day Istanbul dedicated to the time Loti spent in Turkey.) He proceeded to the South Seas as part of his naval training, and several years after leaving Tahiti published the Polynesian idyll originally named Rarahu (1880), which was reprinted as Le Mariage de Loti, the first book to introduce him to the wider public. This was followed by Le Roman d'un spahi (1881), a record of the melancholy adventures of a soldier in Senegambia.

Loti on the day of his reception at the Académie française on 7 April, 1892. In 1882, Loti issued a collection of four shorter pieces, three stories and a travel piece, under the general title of Fleurs d'ennui (Flowers of Boredom).

In 1883 he entered the wider public spotlight. First, he publish the critically acclaimed Mon frere Yves (My Brother Yves), a novel describing the life of a French naval officer (Pierre Loti), and a Breton sailor (Yves Kermadec), described by Edmund Gosse as "one of his most characteristic productions".[1] Second, while taking part as a naval officer in the undeclared hostilities that preceded the outbreak of the Sino-French War (August 1884 to April 1885), Loti wrote an article in the newspaper Le Figaro about atrocities that occurred during the French bombardment of the Thuan An forts that guarded the approaches to Hue (August 1883), and was threatened with suspension from the service, thus gaining wider public notoriety.

In 1886 he published a novel of life among the Breton fisherfolk, called Pêcheur d'Islande (Iceland Fisherman), which Edmund Gosse characterized as "the most popular and finest of all his writings."[1] It shows Loti adapting some of the Impressionist techniques of contemporary painters, especially Monet, to prose, and is a classic of French literature. In 1887 he brought out a volume "of extraordinary merit, which has not received the attention it deserves",[1] Propos d'exil, a series of short studies of exotic places, in his characteristic semi-autobiographic style. The novel of Japanese manners, Madame Chrysanthème— a precursor to Madame Butterfly and Miss Saigon and a work that is a combination of narrative and travelog— was published the same year.

During 1890 he published 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 somewhat fictionalized recollection of Loti's childhood that would greatly influence Marcel Proust. A collection

Reviews

[Moka Aumilieudeslivres · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ils avaient confiance et se sentaient unis à présent plus que jamais, après cette crise mauvaise dont ils avaient tous deux souffert – et qui avait fait presque entrevoir, à elle, la déception suprême, le vide affreux de douter de lui."

[Jowmoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Une histoire de mer et de mort où l'on reconnaît bien le style de Pierre Loti et sa fascination pour les voyages et les escales en terres inconnues. Le personnage principal et la relation avec sa mère m'ont fait penser à La promesse de l'aube de Romain Gary.

[Elisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Il avait l'air vigoureux et sain, des traits réguliers, un teint de fruit doré, et des sourcils comme deux petites bandes de velours noir. Son regard, candide et rieur, était resté plus enfantin, plus bébé encore que ne le comportaient ses six ou sept ans, et le bleu de ses yeux, grands ouverts entre de très longs cils, étonnait, avec ce minois de petit Arabe."

"il se donnait vacances ce soir et encore demain, rien que pour rêver un peu."

"Mais elle ne le comprit pas; blessée dans son orgueil maternel, doutant de lui et de son cœur, atteinte dans tout, elle lui parla durement, à cette minute décisive où il l'aimait avec une tendresse infinie."

"Et des larmes parurent, au bord de ses yeux plus éteints, - de ces larmes de vieillard qui sont particulièrement amères, et lentes à couler du fond de leur source tarie..."

"Il lisait aussi, pendant ses longues flâneries prêtes à finir, - et le choix des livres ou plutôt des passages de livres, qui avaient, à l'exclusion dédaigneuse de tous les autres, le pouvoir de le charmer, indiquait, comme d'ailleurs son profil pur et ses longs yeux, de diffuses hérédités orientales."

"Et tandis qu'il était là seul, une jeune fille parut, grecque ou syrienne non voilée, - en qui tout cet Orient se personnifia pour lui."

"Mais, est-ce qu'on travaille, les soirs attiédis de printemps, lorsqu'on a de l'amour en tête?"

"Aucune haine n'avait jailli du croisement de leurs yeux, du heurt de leurs volontés contraires."

Matelot - Pierre Loti