Gary Inbinder’s Reviews > Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist > Status Update

His mummified self had been no other than Rameses II, he was to tell questioners later... His beaked nose had often been called Pharaonic. He had the two profiles photographed side by side, sending this double likeness to friends,

Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (p. 234). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

Since there was now no longer any façade of married life to be maintained, Blanche too had retreated into her own withdrawn world: Berternet, a large family estate she had inherited in the Dordogne. The parting was amiable, with no dramatics.

Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (p. 231). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

Once again, Loti’s reputation as le grand séducteur had taken over from the self-consciously middle-aged man who now preferred solitude or the company of his cats....


Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (p. 219). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

Illusion, reality, and disillusion; an elegiac melancholy pervades Un Pélerin d’Angkor. It is Loti’s farewell to the Far East and his last desires. ‘I have seen the evening star rise over the mysterious ruins of Angkor. The cycle of my life closes.’

Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (p. 212). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

Whether Blanche was aware of this second home from the beginning is doubtful. She was certainly aware of it later, for Crucita was to provide Loti with three Basque sons. When he set out on further travels in remote lands, Blanche promised to be responsible for them should he die. No husband could ask for more...

Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (p. 190). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

Contradictory as ever, he could never quite accept the idea of oblivion for himself. ‘It would be impossible to imagine that someone like myself could simply vanish,’ he remarked. Yet stronger than everything was the belief that all must perish in eternal darkness.

Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (p. 182). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

This decadent society also enjoyed a thriving intellectual life, celebrated poules de luxe following every new expression of the arts. Loti was always fêted in the capital, yet he remained lost there, as lost as when he was an unknown débutant of letters.

Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (p. 167). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

..photographers were..taking innumerable pictures of the tiny... corpse. On the last afternoon, a plastercast was made of one minuscule foot. ‘We had to hurry. I laid him in the pine box myself and shut the cover on him.. they took away my little son to the cemetery, to the tomb of my father...’

Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (p. 154). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

Just as Loti’s romantic life in Turkey had been the apogee of all happiness, so Pêcheur d’Islande might be seen as the peak of his achievement as a novelist. He had reached the watershed of life, love and fame. In his eyes, only a slow descent lay ahead.

Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (pp. 148-149). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.

But on each side of the ship we saw..the wake of.. sharks...devourers of the dead, circling... in the hope of some prey... In those same waters, on other ships bringing back our wretched sick from Indo China … how many were cast overboard, poor dead men, sacrificed by the criminal folly of colonizing politicians.’

Blanch, Lesley. Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist (p. 138). BookBlast ePublishing. Kindle Edition.