"Before the Eve of my choice, which I have painted in forms and harmonies of another world, your remembrances have perhaps evoked a sorrow of the past. The Eve of your civilized conception makes you and the rest of us almost always misogynists; the old Eve, which in my studio frightens you, will perhaps smile at you less bitterly some day. This world of mine, which neither a Cuvier nor a botanist can find, will be a Paradise, which I shall have only sketched out. And from the sketch to the realization of the dream is very far. What matter? To envisage happiness, is that not a foretaste of Nirvana?
"The Eve that I have painted, she alone, logically can remain naked before one's eyes. Yours in that simple state could not walk without shame, and too beautiful (perhaps), would be the evocation of an evil and a sorrow."
In February, 1895, the pictures were sold bringing in twelve thousand francs. And shortly after the artist shook the dust of Europe from his feet and departed for his final voyage to Tahiti. As Morice says, he left Paris with a smile, and without turning his head to look back.
V
It was in the same spirit as that in which he quitted Europe finally, that Gauguin set himself the task of writing the story of his life in Tahiti. This story, which appears in the pages of the book he entitled "Noa Noa" (a native word meaning "fragrant"), is at once the best commentary on and the final analysis of his mind.
We do not know when Gauguin first conceived or executed the part of the book that is his. It may have been during his long hours of solitude on his first visit to the island; perhaps it was during his stay in Paris; perhaps it was after his return. The part of the book that is not his refers in passing to events that took place as late as 1897.
Gauguin wished to write the story of his conversion to savagery—the conversion of a man who realized that he himself was tainted with civilization, incapable of becoming more than half-a-savage, yet realizing utterly that savagery was naked, healthy and sound, while civilization was corrupt, over-luxuriant and decaying.
To accomplish this task, he sought for a style as free from literary artifice as possible. His aim was to state what he had seen in Tahiti, in the style of a folk-tale. He deliberately eschewed rhetoric, exotic ornament, all the devices of the tourist, the journalist, the professional litterature. What he wanted, above all, was to make others feel, in the incidents of a naïve story, the essence of Tahiti—the soul of the native.
It is therefore useless to ask whether the story of his return to savagery told by Gauguin in this book, has any basis in fact or whether it is largely allegory. It may be both or neither. It contains certain undoubted facts: first, that Gauguin saw on his arrival at Papeete the royal funeral and was struck by the attitude of the natives to that event; second, that he quitted Papeete and attempted to live as a native, abandoning European dress and speech as far as possible; third, that in the course of his stay in the island he entered into relations with one or more native women; finally, that he quitted the island, owing to money troubles and in the hope of obtaining a substantial triumph in France.