LOTI Pierre (EN)

Pierre Loti, a writer and traveller

Born into a Huguenot family in Rochefort-sur-Mer (Charente-Maritime) in 1850, Julien Viaud enlisted at the age of seventeen in the French navy in 1867, the year he joined the École Navale in Brest. Appointed to the rank of officer in 1872, then naval lieutenant in 1881, his first travels took him to Tahiti, South America, Easter Island, Polynesia, and Africa. The missions he went on around the world, and in particular Asia, inspired an abundant literary output that remained constant throughout his life. In parallel to his career as a sailor, Julien Viaud, who wrote his first publications under the Tahitian pseudonym of Pierre Loti, earned a reputation as a literary man. His career as a writer began quite by chance: in the first place, his interest in drawing led him—for mainly financial reasons—to work on various journals as of 1872. From his earliest trips, he had produced many watercolour works, and works in pencil and India ink, sketching the landscapes and peoples he met along the way. Through his aunt Nelly Lieutier (1829–1900), a novelist close to Parisian journalistic circles, he managed to send his drawings—from abroad when he was on a mission—to the French press. Reproduced in engravings, they were often published anonymously in journals such L’Illustration, L’Univers, and Le Monde Illustré. In parallel to his career as a sailor, Pierre Loti also began a career in the French press. After this fruitful and productive period, which lasted until 1885, he gradually abandoned drawing to focus on writing. In 1873, he devoted himself to writing novels and articles for journals, which enabled him to put his extra-European adventures into words. Various French journals, such as La Revue des Deux Mondes and La Nouvelle Revue, published his articles. Pierre Loti gradually shifted away from journalism to independently publish novels and travel accounts, with the support of the publishers Calmann-Lévy, which published all of his works during his lifetime and which, in 1879, had his first novel published, Aziyadée, inspired by a trip to Turkey. From that year onwards, Pierre Loti’s literary output was abundant. In addition, the author wrote in diaries that inspired his literary works. Indeed, Pierre Loti was an assiduous diarist for more than forty years, recording his experiences every day. Hence, almost every one of his trips inspired a work. As pointed out by Magali Lacousse, ‘the experiences of the sailor nourished the inspiration of the writer’ (Lacousse, M., 1994, p. 189). These works, which comprised writings of various kinds—some describing his daily life in Rochefort, others his excursions abroad in the form of travel accounts—, enabled him to live his life as a writer at the same time as his life as a sailor. A member of the Académie Goncourt in 1883, and of the Académie Française in 1891, Pierre Loti became a well-known author, whose oeuvre was part of the movement of exotic literature, and played a major role in the intellectual sphere of his times.

Discovering the Far East

The writer and traveller became familiar with the Far East during the travels he undertook between 1883 and 1902. Sent on a mission to Indochina in 1883, on board the warship the Atalante, he discovered Asia for the first time. After a brief return to France, he left to join Admiral Courbet in Asia on 20 March 1885 on board the battleship the Mytho, to carry out a campaign in the Penghu Islands (Pescadores), in the Formosa archipelago (present-day Taiwan), during the Franco-Chinese War (1881–1885). After two months in the country, he went to Japan for the first time in May 1886, on board the ship La Triomphante, and stopped there for five weeks. He discovered this country in a more peaceful ambiance, and above all the port of Nagasaki, which was his principal Japanese anchor point. The country was a true revelation for him and inspired him to write the novel Madame Chrysanthème (1888) and Japoneries d’Automne (1889)—works that resulted from his rewriting of his notes in his diary and which described his Japanese adventures. Pierre Loti, who wrote down his impressions of travelling in a country that he was completely unfamiliar with, gave an account, in particular, of his marriage with a young Japanese woman, his daily life in a Nippon family, and his many expeditions. Travelling on the traditional tourist rail circuit adopted by foreign visitors, he provided an insight into the many cities visited, such as Kyoto, Yeddo (present-day Tokyo), Kobe, Yokohama, and the historical site of Nikko. He subsequently explored China in 1900 and 1901. At the age of fifty, he was dispatched on an official mission to Peking and joined Admiral Pottier on board the Redoutable after the Boxer Uprising (1899–1901). He discovered this country in a particularly troubled context, a China still torn apart after many civil wars. This stay was once again interrupted by sojourns in Japan, which were mainly in Nagasaki, followed by a four-day stay in Korea. This journey, which lasted a year, was his last on the Asian continent and inspired his travel account Les Derniers Jours de Pékin (1902), who recounted on a day-to-day basis his entire military expedition in twenty-nine articles, which were published in the Figaro in 1901. He portrayed a scarred and devastated China after all the traumatisms it had undergone. The writer wrote frank accounts of the repercussions of the Boxer War on the country and the horrors he experienced during the trip that took him to Peking, as well as the splendours of his ten-day stay in the heart of the Forbidden City, which was deserted at the time. The writer’s stay in the Purple City affected him greatly and inspired him to write his only theatre play, La Fille du Ciel, a Chinese drama in an imperial setting, written in conjunction with his poetess friend Judith Gautier (184–1917), the daughter of the writer Théophile Gautier (1811–1872).

Hence, Asia played an important role in Pierre Loti’s career as both a sailor and a writer. In total, he spent around four years traveling around Far-Eastern seas and lands. It gave him a chance to discover and familiarise himself with countries that were—from a cultural viewpoint—extremely different from his own. Furthermore, these trips gave him the chance to discover the realities of a country that he had an imaginary knowledge of. For, as Bruno Vercier pointed out, ‘Asia is one of the places that prompted [in Pierre Loti] childhood dreams of elsewhere’ (Vercier, B., 2006, p. 75) and which, amongst other things, led him to become a sailor. Hence, much of his writing contains imaginary details. In his book Un Pèlerin d’Angkor, the writer tells the reader that he decided that he wanted to live ‘a life of travel and adventure’, after seeing the objects and reading the notes in the journals brought back from Indochina by his older brother Gustave (1836–1865), a doctor in the French navy, (Loti, P., 1912, pp. 2–4).

Travelling as a means of collecting material souvenirs

For Pierre Loti, travelling, which was at the origin of his literary works, was almost systematically accompanied by the in situ collection of material souvenirs, objects, and artistic works. Although this activity was not the primary goal of his visits when he went on a mission for the French State, he did take the time, during his first trips, to collect hundreds of extremely varied works. The need to collect objects emerged early on in the life of the writer and traveller. In 1876, when he first began to travel, it was by adopting the same approach that the sailor systematically brought back several crates of various objects and exotic works of art. This arose from his desire to collect material souvenirs that enabled him to recreate in the house of his birth in Rochefort-sur-Mer something of the places he had visited abroad. Hence, by completely modifying the original layout of the house, he succeeded in creating an exceptional area, where historical architectures were combined, such as the Salle Renaissance and the Salle Gothique, and exotic ambiances created in memory of his trips, such as the Mosquée, the Chambre Arabe, and the Salon Turc. Most of the rooms created by Loti matched his desire to recreate a place in France that conveyed his souvenirs, evoking his past adventures or imagined ambiances. The Japanese pagoda, built in 1886, and the Salle Chinoise, constructed in 1903, enabled him to display all the objects and works of art—mainly Chinese and Japanese—, which he brought back from his Far-Eastern trips, in the manner of theatre sets. This exceptional residence, which became a municipal museum in 1973, housed—until the death of the writer-and traveller in 1923—the objects and works of art that he accumulated during his travels in a phantasmagorical and exotic decor, reflecting his atypical personality.

The constitution of the collection of Asian art

Pierre Loti was slightly familiar with Far-Eastern art before he even went to Asia. Indeed, living in France at the end of the nineteenth century, he could not have avoided the fashion for ‘chinoiseries’ and, later on, the ‘japonisme’ movement, as well as the numerous Asian objects that inundated the art market after the opening up of Japan and China to foreigners and which were displayed in the salons of his intellectual friends, such as the brothers Jules (1830–1870) and Edmond (1822–1896) de Goncourt and the actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923). But the cultures and arts of these Asian countries were truly revealed when he visited them. Hence, during his first trips, mainly in China and Japan, Pierre Loti actively collected works and objects. Nevertheless, although he was influenced by the tastes of his times, he compiled his collection in accordance with his own tastes. The objects were primarily chosen by Pierre Loti for their evocative qualities, rather than their aesthetics, as the collector was relatively disinterested in their authenticity and their artistic value. More than simple souvenirs, they constituted—like fetishes or amulets—supports for the recording of his past adventures and reflected the emotions he had felt in Asia. Furthermore, the Asian collection corresponded to Pierre Loti’s desire to create two Asian rooms in his residence in France, the Pagode Japonaise and the Salle Chinoise, which were used to house and display his finds and were the phantasmagorical showcases for his latest acquisitions. His writings, both his novels and diaries, provide details about his approach to acquiring these objects, as well as assessing their value for the writer. This collection, which is now dispersed to some extent—three auction sales were held after Pierre Loti’s death, in 1929, 1953, and 1980—, was partly donated and can be seen in the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Rochefort-sur-Mer.

In this Far-Eastern collection, it is important to distinguish the Chinese collection from the Japanese collection. Depending on the place they were found in, the objects were not acquired in the same way. In Japan, thanks to the free time he had, which enabled stopovers, Pierre Loti was able to assiduously frequent the bazars, art dealers, and antique dealers in the cities he visited, selecting the objects according to his personal tastes. During his first visit to Japan in July 1885, Pierre Loti began compiling his future Asian collection by making his first Nippon acquisitions in Nagasaki, a particularly important place for the trade in works of art. He had at his disposal a large variety of objects, mainly intended for a foreign clientele since the opening up of the country under the Meiji restoration of 1868. He indicated in his diary that, ‘in Japan, one of the great distractions of the country is the quest to find bibelots (ornaments)’, then specified that he mainly visited ‘the little old Japanese shops, in which one sat on mats and drank tea with the dealers’ (Loti, P., 1997, p. 167). One of Pierre Loti’s pleasures during this Japanese sojourn was filling up a rickshaw in the heart of Nagasaki. It was an enjoyable hobby that also had a social aspect, as he took the time to discuss the objects with the shopkeepers. In each city he visited he enriched his collection. In Osaka, he spotted many bazars where bronzes and porcelains were sold. Visiting Kyoto, he went to the shops alongside the temples, where one found ‘in the middle of the shimmering displays, fabrics and porcelains’, as well as shops that sold idols, ‘full of unimaginable figures’ (Loti, P., 1991, p. 245). Loti was constantly amazed by the originality of the Japanese objects and regularly used the terms ‘bibelots’ (‘ornaments’), ‘mièvreries’ (‘sentimental objects’), and ‘jouets’ (‘toys’) to described the articles he found in the bazars. The woks he collected during these two trips were representative both of the Japan of the Edo period (1603–1868) and contemporary Japan (from the Meiji era, 1868–1912). Hence, many bronzes, porcelains, theatre masks, lacquered objects, ivory objects, and textiles, as well as objects that he found in daily life enriched his collection. He purchased two imposing suits of Samurai warriors’ armour from antique dealers, dating from the Edo period, as well as several items of weaponry from the same period: sabres, lances, and ornaments from military parades. In his opinion these pieces were the material elements of a several thousand-year-old Japanese culture, whose modernisation he constantly deplored in his writing. Pierre Loti also collected many religious objects, such as Buddhist sculptures and religious altar objects. As the Meiji era had led to the delocalisation of Buddhism in favour of the Shinto religion, several Buddhist temples and monasteries were closed and a local market of Buddhist antiquities developed in 1868, which enabled foreign buyers to purchase these cultural heritage objects. Furthermore, wishing to make his Pagode Japonaise resemble a Japanese religious room, his purchases were motivated by a desire to make the decor as authentic as possible. One of the major pieces in this collection was the life-sized lacquered wooden sculpture of the demon Aizen Myōō, a divinity represented as a terrible red-skinned being from the Buddhist pantheon, whose purchase Pierre Loti documented with precision in Japoneries d’Automne: ‘I was absolutely captivated; I was fascinated and fell in love with it—I immediately understood that our destinies were inextricably linked’ (Loti, P., 1991 p. 109).

While a study of the constitution of the Nippon collection shows that it was exclusively compiled on the basis of purchases, the Chinese collection resulted from an entirely different approach, relating to the military context in which Pierre Loti went to China and Indochina in 1885. Due to the war, he illegally recuperated objects left in the possession of foreigners and took part in pillages, in particular in Peking during his ten-day stay in the Forbidden City, which had been sacked by foreign forces, in 1900. He mainly took works that happened to be at his disposal, without necessarily selecting them. Conscious of the immoral nature of his actions, he only very briefly documented this practice in his works. Although much reduced in size after the auctions held after his death, the collection includes several very well made objects that date from the second half of the reign of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912)—a period in which art attained a high level of technicity—, some of which came from the imperial collections. In Peking, Pierre Loti said that he went on several occasions to what foreigners called ‘the empress’s storerooms’, furniture depots installed in a church by the Empress Cixi before her flight, where many imperial objects and items of furniture were stored. The collection contained several items of wooden furniture, including a large carved wooden imperial throne, as well as precious and decorative objets d’art, such as Ruyi sceptres, clasps, archers’ rings, and so on. Pierre Loti also brought back around thirty Chinese ceramics, some of which dated from the Qianlong period (1736–1795), as well as several pieces of bronze crockery in the ancient style, some of which dated from the Ming era (1368–1644). Pierre Loti also brought back many textiles and accessories in order to complete his collection of costumes. Known for his love of disguises, the writer probably collected this kind of object in anticipation of his Fête Chinoise, which he held in Rochefort-sur-Mer on 11 May 1902. Hence, his collection was enriched with Manchu tunics, dragon robes and silk imperial tunics, functionaries’ hats, and theatre actors’ costumes.

Upon his return to Rochefort-sur-Mer, the many crates of objects and furniture he brought back enabled him to organise the two Asian rooms, the Pagode Japonaise, a replica of a Buddhist religious room, and the Salle Chinoise, refurbished to resemble a throne room like those he had seen in the Forbidden City. It was the writer’s way of immersing himself in the ambiance of the countries he had visited.

When the owner died in 1923, the Asian collection was gradually broken up. When his will, entitled ‘Recommandations suprêmes’, was read, it specified, according to each room in the house, which works he wished or did not wish to keep; with regard to the Pagode Japonais and the Salle Chinoise, its was evident that Loti was not really attached to anything. This raises questions about the writer’s attachment to this collection, which he housed at enormous expense in his residence. Perhaps Loti’s particular psychology led him to opt for dispersion rather than transmission. Incapable of selling or even partly reducing his collection during his lifetime, he entrusted his son with fulfilling this task after his death. Samuel Pierre Loti-Viaud (1889–1969), Pierre Loti’s sole heir and beneficiary, handled the sale of his father’s objects in auctions, and the Asian rooms were gradually emptied and dismantled. The objects that were unsold were mostly bequeathed to the town of Rochefort-sur-Mer. This collection was presented to the public during several exhibitions held by the town’s museums, which underlined the link the sailor had with the Asian continent. However, they failed to illustrate with the same intensity this link, which Loti endeavoured to highlight with style during his lifetime.