Pierre Loti: Travels with the Legendary Romantic

by Lesley Blanch

When Pierre Loti--traveler, acrobat, naval officer, celebrated writer--died in 1923, he was given a state funeral, the only French writer to have received such an honor besides Victor Hugo. This spellbinding storyteller--bohemian, exotic and fiercely romantic--spent his life escaping the constraints of bourgeois France, and in so doing redefined his age. He traveled the South Seas, Asia and the Middle East (his great obsession), he loved with intense passion and freedom, and he wrote some of the most exquisite novels and travel books of his time. As adored as he was scorned by French society, Loti led the life that most romantics only dared write about.

Genres: Biography, Travel, France, History

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

A 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.

Reviews

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[جلجامش Nabeel · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[Dvora Treisman · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.