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I danced with her at a dinner given by a consul, and when I spoke to her of Loti's visit to Fautaua with Rarahu, she said in French: "Why do you not go there yourself with a Rarahu! Loti is old and an admiral, and writes now of Egypt and Turkey and places soiled by crowds of people, but Rarahu is still here and young. Shall I find you her?"
The poor people who dwell here are silent and tenacious: their heart is full of tenderness and of dreams. Yann, the Iceland fisherman, and his sweetheart, Gaud of Paimpol, can only live here, in the small houses of Brittany, where people huddle together in a stand against the storms which come howling from the depths of the Atlantic. Loti's novels are never complicated with a mass of incidents.
In 1887 he brought out a volume of extraordinary merit, which has never received the attention it deserves; this is "Propos d'Exil," a series of short studies of exotic places, in Loti's peculiar semi-autobiographic style. The fantastic romance of Japanese manners, "Madame Chrysantheme," belongs to the same year.
In Loti's works, however, pessimism is softened to a musical melancholy; the style is direct; the vocabulary exquisite; the moral situations familiar; the characters not complex. In short, his place is unique, apart from the normal lines of novelistic development. The vein of Loti is not absolutely new, but is certainly novel.
The first appearance of Pierre Loti's works, twenty years ago, caused a sensation throughout those circles wherein the creations of intellect and imagination are felt, studied, and discussed.
The erudite one promptly lent him some volumes by Lafcadio Hearn and Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysanthème. He read the novel first of all. Rather spicy, wasn't it? Asako found the book. It was an illustrated edition; and the little drawings of Japanese scenes pleased her immensely, so that she began to read the letter press.
If we turn to modern prose-writers, we fail to find any really subtle treatment of Modern Love. Henry James himself shrinks from analysing it, even allusively and insinuatingly. Zola's handling of the love-theme is as primary as Pierre Loti's, for Zola has the eye for masses, not for individual subtleties.
There breathed forth from Loti's writings an all-penetrating fragrance of poesy, which liberated French literary ideals from the heavy and oppressive yoke of the Naturalistic school.
Such a type, like all others, has its strength and its weakness. Such a type, like all others, is implicitly in us all. It is fortunate that the translator has caught the subtle charm of Loti's style, so difficult to render in another speech, in an amazing degree.
It seems that the Martials de la Touche are depicted there without disguise. I will add to it Bourget's last, and Loti's, and France's, and two or three of the latest music hall hits. In the political word, they say the law about congregations will meet with strenuous opposition. Nothing much in the theatres. Would you care for it? In the country no one knows what to do.
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