In form our author’s books are varied, following rarely any preconceived plan, we may well suppose—only this, that the literary wanderer with his new book every year takes us by the hand and shows us the intimacies of his own life-experiences, discloses the little-known beauties and sadnesses he has uncovered everywhere, and turns into simple yet exquisitely wrought fictions the poignant truths that have entered his own heart. Not one novel, technically considered, did he write, but sketches strung like pearls upon a thread: vivid impressions of home and foreign life, longer or shorter stories of simple folk whose days dawned to labor and were twilit with weariness, colorful pictures of men and women living under eastern skies—and beneath and about all, the many-spirited sea.
It would require a volume to deal adequately with Loti’s many books; but one point invites mention: each new annual volume for a score of years discloses his life in some new land, or in the Brittany of his affection.
His first volume, Aziyadé (1879), is the record of his love for a beautiful Circassian slave while he sojourned in Turkey—the record, too, of how she died of grief after his departure. Rarahu—later issued as Le Mariage de Loti—recounts his loves in Tahiti, and much of charm and beauty besides. Le Roman d’un Spahi transports us to the Sahara and Senegal, Fleurs d’ennui to Montenegro, Madame Chrysanthème to Japan, Au Maroc to Fez and Tangier, and Le désert, and Jérusalem, and La Galilée, to Palestine.
I name these volumes not to attempt a catalogue of Loti’s works, but to show how world-broad were the scenes he chose for his impressionistic brush. Naturally, all of the foregoing works are more or less oriental in tone, and the moral code revealed is not that of “the most approved families.” But three masterpieces there are which breathe a more wholesome air—though heavy, each one, with the tragedy of life.
Mon frère Yves is the plotless account of “a splendid Breton sailor and the author, his officer.” They enjoy “a sort of companionship which finds its analogy—in a way—in the friendly relations formerly [held] between young master and slave in our Southern States.” No picture of the robust rollicking sailor—superstitious, drink-loving, adventurous, warm-hearted—could be more real, none more pathetic, and none more rich in fragments of narrative.
In Le livre de la pitié et de la mort eleven stories are brought together to harmonize with the saddening title—“The Book of Pity and of Death!” One of these, “The Sorrow of an Old Convict” is an impressionistic tale of an old highwayman who is being shipped away to exile. His only solace is a caged bird with a broken wing, and when one day the door is opened the little bird falls into the sea. That is all—but to read it is to feel with Yves the heart-break of that bereft old man.
“The Wall Opposite” is a study of human tendencies. A mother, a daughter, and an aged aunt are compelled by reverses to let out those rooms of their apartments that faced out upon the street, but their own little back suite had a cozy and intimate air. Its windows overlooked a court whose walls were covered with honeysuckle and roses. One day they were told that in the court a high wall was to be built which would steal away the air and hide the sun. They had no money wherewith to buy off the project, so in one short month a grayish-white wall—almost like a twilight sky of November—shut them in.
Long they had looked for an inheritance which would some day come to them. Then they would buy the house and tear down that wall—and always the old aunt used to pray that she might live to see that day. But the bequest was long in coming.
One day a young man came, introduced by friends, and for a while he sat at the table of these “three ladies without fortune.” He was handsome and high-spirited, and the young girl loved him, but she was poor, and for lack of sunlight the color had begun to fade from her cheeks. So he went away and never returned.
Twenty years passed—the aunt had died, the mother had grown gray, and the daughter was now past forty. Then at last the inheritance came. They sent away their lodgers, but somehow the two women remained in the little back salon. They had come to love it. At last the wall which for twenty years they had endured would be torn down. At twilight of the second day the wall was razed, but the mother and daughter sitting at their table were bewildered at seeing so clearly. The wall was gone—they had the light, the roses and vines! For twenty years they had hoped for this happiness, yet now—they were uneasy, something seemed to have gone wrong. A sort of melancholy had come over them.