La, tout m'est absolument precieux [...] Je demande que l'on detruise [...] Je demande que l'on brule [...] je demande bien entendu qu'il soit aneanti [...]" (Quella-Villeger, Chez
Pierre Loti 116-17).
(8.) De Smet's perception of Loti would not have been an uncommon one, since "In England, America, France, and Germany, readers of Hearn's books and popular articles preferred his accounts to those of an earlier favorite (and a favorite of Hearn himself),
Pierre Loti, and to those of scholarly commentators such as Basil Hall Chamberlain" (Dawson xiv).
If the Gothic has its threatening, morbid Others, and the Orientalist its culturally "inferior" and often feminized Others, as in the work of
Pierre Loti, travel writing has a flexible cast of cultural Others--sometimes benign, sometimes dangerous, but all essentially and necessarily different from the travel writer's original culture, and that of his or her readers.
Michener's account of Hana-ogi's "Dear John" letter would have made
Pierre Loti proud:
Las visiones de Gomez Carrillo y
Pierre Loti. Una literatura nula.
Kipling, the great writer of the British colonies, strikes me as more interesting than his French counterparts,
Pierre Loti or Claude Farrere.
The first half of the show charts the various incarnations of the 1887
Pierre Loti novel into a David Belasco play and a Puccini opera.
If the mad Dutchman deserved your gratitude in any way, it was for being the first to whet your appetite for Polynesia, thanks to a little novel that fell into iris hands, and which he loved: The Marriage of Loti by an officer of the French merchant marine,
Pierre Loti. The book was set in Tahiti, and it described an earthly paradise before the Fall, where nature was bounteous and beautiful, and the natives free, healthy, and without prejudice or guile, abandoning themselves to life and pleasure with naturalness and spontaneity, full of primitive vigor and enthusiasm.
Puccini first took an interest in
Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysantheme (1887), but the story had already been transposed for the stage by Andre Messager, who had made it into an operetta (1893).