AN ICELAND FISHERMAN(冰岛渔夫)

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AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

AN ICELAND

FISHERMAN

by PIERRE LOTI

Translated by M. Jules Cambon

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

PIERRE LOTI

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 author was one who, with

a power which no one had wielded before him, carried off his readers into

exotic lands, and whose art, in appearance most simple, proved a genuine

enchantment for the imagination. It was the time when M. Zola and his

school stood at the head of the literary movement. 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. Truth now soared on unhampered pinions, and the

reading world was completely won by the unsurpassed intensity and

faithful accuracy with which he depicted the alluring charms of far-off

scenes, and painted the naive soul of the races that seem to endure in the

isles of the Pacific as surviving representatives of the world's infancy.

It was then learned that this independent writer was named in real life

Louis Marie Julien Viaud, and that he was a naval officer. This very fact,

that he was not a writer by profession, added indeed to his success. He

actually had seen that which he was describing, he had lived that which he

was relating. What in any other man would have seemed but research and

oddity, remained natural in the case of a sailor who returned each year

with a manuscript in his hand. Africa, Asia, the isles of the Pacific, were

the usual scenes of his dramas. Finally from France itself, and from the

oldest provinces of France, he drew subject-matter for two of his novels,

/An Iceland Fisherman/ and /Ramuntcho/. This proved a surprise. Our

Breton sailors and our Basque mountaineers were not less foreign to the

Parisian drawing-room than was Aziyade or the little Rahahu. One

claimed to have a knowledge of Brittany, or of the Pyrenees, because one

had visited Dinard or Biarritz; while in reality neither Tahiti nor the Isle of

Paques could have remained more completely unknown to us.

The developments of human industry have brought the extremities of

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

the world nearer together; but the soul of each race continues to cloak

itself in its own individuality and to remain a mystery to the rest of the

world. One trait alone is common to all: the infinite sadness of human

destiny. This it was that Loti impressed so vividly on the reading world.

His success was great. Though a young man as yet, Loti saw his work

crowned with what in France may be considered the supreme sanction: he

was elected to membership in the French Academy. His name became

coupled with those of Bernardin de St. Pierre and of Chateaubriand. With

the sole exception of the author of /Paul and Virginia/ and of the writer of

/Atala/, he seemed to be one without predecessor and without a master. It

may be well here to inquire how much reason there is for this assertion,

and what novel features are presented in his work.

It has become a trite saying that French genius lacks the sense of

Nature, that the French tongue is colourless, and therefore wants the most

striking feature of poetry. If we abandoned for one moment the domain of

letters and took a comprehensive view of the field of art, we might be

permitted to express astonishment at the passing of so summary a

judgment on the genius of a nation which has, in the real sense of the term,

produced two such painters of Nature as Claude Lorrain and Corot. But

even in the realm of letters it is easily seen that this mode of thinking is

due largely to insufficient knowledge of the language's resources, and to a

study of French literature which does not extend beyond the seventeenth

century. Without going back to the Duke of Orleans and to Villon, one

need only read a few of the poets of the sixteenth century to be struck by

the prominence given to Nature in their writings. Nothing is more

delightful than Ronsard's word-paintings of his sweet country of Vendome.

Until the day of Malherbe, the didactic Regnier and the Calvinistic Marot

are the only two who could be said to give colour to the preconceived and

prevalent notion as to the dryness of French poetry. And even after

Malherbe, in the seventeenth century, we find that La Fontaine, the most

truly French of French writers, was a passionate lover of Nature. He who

can see nothing in the latter's fables beyond the little dramas which they

unfold and the ordinary moral which the poet draws therefrom, must

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

confess that he fails to understand him. His landscapes possess precision,

accuracy, and life, while such is the fragrance of his speech that it seems

laden with the fresh perfume of the fields and furrows.

Racine himself, the most penetrating and the most psychological of

poets, is too well versed in the human soul not to have felt its intimate

union with Nature. His magnificent verse in Phedre,

"Ah, que ne suis-je assise a l'ombre des forets!"

is but the cry of despair, the appeal, filled with anguish, of a heart that

is troubled and which oft has sought peace and alleviation amid the cold

indifference of inanimate things. The small place given to Nature in the

French literature of the seventeenth century is not to be ascribed to the

language nor explained by a lack of sensibility on the part of the race. The

true cause is to be found in the spirit of that period; for investigation will

disclose that the very same condition then characterized the literatures of

England, of Spain, and of Italy.

We must bear in mind that, owing to an almost unique combination of

circumstances, there never has been a period when man was more

convinced of the nobility and, I dare say it, of the sovereignty of man, or

was more inclined to look upon the latter as a being independent of the

external world. He did not suspect the intimately close bonds which unite

the creature to the medium in which it lives. A man of the world in the

seventeenth century was utterly without a notion of those truths which in

their ensemble constitute the natural sciences. He crossed the threshold of

life possessed of a deep classical instruction, and all-imbued with stoical

ideas of virtue. At the same time, he had received the mould of a strong

but narrow Christian education, in which nothing figured save his relations

with God. This twofold training elevated his soul and fortified his will, but

wrenched him violently from all communion with Nature. This is the

standpoint from which we must view the heroes of Corneille, if we would

understand those extraordinary souls which, always at the highest degree

of tension, deny themselves, as a weakness, everything that resembles

tenderness or pity. Again, thus and thus alone can we explain how

Descartes, and with him all the philosophers of his century, ran counter to

all common sense, and refused to recognise that animals might possess a

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

soul-like principle which, however remotely, might link them to the

human being.

When, in the eighteenth century, minds became emancipated from the

narrow restrictions of religious discipline, and when method was

introduced into the study of scientific problems, Nature took her revenge

as well in literature as in all other fields of human thought. Rousseau it

was who inaugurated the movement in France, and the whole of Europe

followed in the wake of France. It may even be declared that the reaction

against the seventeenth century was in many respects excessive, for the

eighteenth century gave itself up to a species of sentimental debauch. It is

none the less a fact that the author of /La Nouvelle Heloise/ was the first to

blend the moral life of man with his exterior surroundings. He felt the

savage beauty and grandeur of the mountains of Switzerland, the grace of

the Savoy horizons, and the more familiar elegance of the Parisian suburbs.

We may say that he opened the eye of humanity to the spectacle which the

world offered it. In Germany, Lessing, Goethe, Hegel, Schelling have

proclaimed him their master; while even in England, Byron, and George

Eliot herself, have recognised all that they owed to him.

The first of Rosseau's disciples in France was Bernardin de St. Pierre,

whose name has frequently been recalled in connection with Loti. Indeed,

the charming masterpiece of /Paul and Virginia/ was the first example of

exoticism in literature; and thereby it excited the curiosity of our fathers at

the same time that it dazzled them by the wealth and brilliancy of its

descriptions.

Then came Chateaubriand; but Nature with him was not a mere

background. He sought from it an accompaniment, in the musical sense of

the term, to the movements of his soul; and being somewhat prone to

melancholy, his taste seems to have favoured sombre landscapes, stormy

and tragical. The entire romantic school was born from him, Victor Hugo

and George Sand, Theophile Gautier who draws from the French tongue

resources unequalled in wealth and colour, and even M. Zola himself,

whose naturalism, after all, is but the last form and, as it were, the end of

romanticism, since it would be difficult to discover in him any

characteristic that did not exist, as a germ at least, in Balzac.

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

I have just said that Chateaubriand sought in Nature an

accompaniment to the movements of his soul: this was the case with all

the romanticists. We do not find Rene, Manfred, Indiana, living in the

midst of a tranquil and monotonous Nature. The storms of heaven must

respond to the storms of their soul; and it is a fact that all these great

writers, Byron as well as Victor Hugo, have not so much contemplated and

seen Nature as they have interpreted it through the medium of their own

passions; and it is in this sense that the keen Amiel could justly remark

that a landscape is a condition or a state of the soul.

M. Loti does not merely interpret a landscape; though perhaps, to

begin with, he is unconscious of doing more. With him, the human being

is a part of Nature, one of its very expressions, like animals and plants,

mountain forms and sky tints. His characters are what they are only

because they issue forth from the medium in which they live. They are

truly creatures, and not gods inhabiting the earth. Hence their profound

and striking reality.

Hence also one of the peculiar characteristics of Loti's workers. He

loves to paint simple souls, hearts close to Nature, whose primitive

passions are singularly similar to those of animals. He is happy in the isles

of the Pacific or on the borders of Senegal; and when he shifts his scenes

into old Europe it is never with men and women of the world that he

entertains us.

What we call a man of the world is the same everywhere; he is

moulded by the society of men, but Nature and the universe have no place

in his life and thought. M. Paul Bourget's heroes might live without

distinction in Newport or in Monte Carlo; they take root nowhere, but live

in the large cities, in winter resorts and in drawing-rooms as transient

visitors in temporary abiding-places.

Loti seeks his heroes and his heroines among those antique races of

Europe which have survived all conquests, and which have preserved,

with their native tongue, the individuality of their character. He met

Ramuntcho in the Basque country, but dearer than all to him is Brittany:

here it was that he met his Iceland fishermen.

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

The Breton soul bears an imprint of Armorica's primitive soil: it is

melancholy and noble. There is an undefinable charm about those arid

lands and those sod-flanked hills of granite, whose sole horizon is the far-

stretching sea. Europe ends here, and beyond remains only the broad

expanse of the ocean. 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. The

characters are of humble station and their life is as simple as their soul.

/Aziyade/, /The Romance of a Spahi/, /An Iceland Fisherman/,

/Ramuntcho/, all present the story of a love and a separation. A departure,

or death itself, intervenes to put an end to the romance. But the cause

matters little; the separation is the same; the hearts are broken; Nature

survives; it covers over and absorbs the miserable ruins which we leave

behind us. No one better than Loti has ever brought out the frailty of all

things pertaining to us, for no one better than he has made us realize the

persistency of life and the indifference of Nature.

This circumstance imparts to the reading of M. Loti's works a

character of peculiar sadness. The trend of his novels is not one that incites

curiosity; his heroes are simple, and the atmosphere in which they live is

foreign to us. What saddens us is not their history, but the undefinable

impression that our pleasures are nothing and that we are but an accident.

This is a thought common to the degree of triteness among moralists and

theologians; but as they present it, it fails to move us. It troubles us as

presented by M. Loti, because he has known how to give it all the force of

a sensation.

How has he accomplished this?

He writes with extreme simplicity, and is not averse to the use of

vague and indefinite expressions. And yet the wealth and precision of

Gautier's and Hugo's language fail to endow their landscapes with the

striking charm and intense life which are to be found in those of Loti. I can

find no other reason for this than that which I have suggested above: the

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

landscape, in Hugo's and in Gautier's scenes, is a background and nothing

more; while Loti makes it the predominating figure of his drama. Our

sensibilities are necessarily aroused before this apparition of Nature, blind,

inaccessible, and all-powerful as the Fates of old.

It may prove interesting to inquire how Loti contrived to sound such a

new note in art.

He boasted, on the day of his reception into the French Academy, that

he had never read. Many protested, some smiled, and a large number of

persons refused to believe the assertion. Yet the statement was actually

quite credible, for the foundation and basis of M. Loti rest on a naive

simplicity which makes him very sensitive to the things of the outside

world, and gives him a perfect comprehension of simple souls. He is not a

reader, for he is not imbued with book notions of things; his ideas of them

are direct, and everything with him is not memory, but reflected sensation.

On the other hand, that sailor-life which had enabled him to see the

world, must have confirmed in him this mental attitude. The deck officer

who watches the vessel's course may do nothing which could distract his

attention; but while ever ready to act and always unoccupied, he thinks, he

dreams, he listens to the voices of the sea; and everything about him is of

interest to him, the shape of the clouds, the aspect of skies and waters. He

knows that a mere board's thickness is all that separates him and defends

him from death. Such is the habitual state of mind which M. Loti has

brought to the colouring of his books.

He has related to us how, when still a little child, he first beheld the sea.

He had escaped from the parental home, allured by the brisk and pungent

air and by the "peculiar noise, at once feeble and great," which could be

heard beyond little hills of sand to which led a certain path. He recognised

the sea; "before me something appeared, something sombre and noisy,

which had loomed up from all sides at once, and which seemed to have no

end; a moving expanse which struck me with mortal vertigo; . . . above

was stretched out full a sky all of one piece, of a dark gray colour like a

heavy mantle; very, very far away, in unmeasurable depths of horizon,

could be seen a break, an opening between sea and sky, a long empty

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

crack, of a light pale yellow." He felt a sadness unspeakable, a sense of

desolate solitude, of abandonment, of exile. He ran back in haste to

unburden his soul upon his mother's bosom, and, as he says, "to seek

consolation with her for a thousand anticipated, indescribable pangs,

which had wrung my heart at the sight of that vast green, deep expanse."

A poet of the sea had been born, and his genius still bears a trace of the

shudder of fear experienced that evening by Pierre Loti the little child.

Loti was born not far from the ocean, in Saintonge, of an old Huguenot

family which had numbered many sailors among its members. While yet a

mere child he thumbed the old Bible which formerly, in the days of

persecution, had been read only with cautious secrecy; and he perused the

vessel's ancient records wherein mariners long since gone had noted,

almost a century before, that "the weather was good," that "the wind was

favourable," and that "doradoes or gilt-heads were passing near the ship."

He was passionately fond of music. He had few comrades, and his

imagination was of the exalted kind. His first ambition was to be a

minister, then a missionary; and finally he decided to become a sailor. He

wanted to see the world, he had the curiosity of things; he was inclined to

search for the strange and the unknown; he must seek that sensation,

delightful and fascinating to complex souls, of betaking himself off, of

withdrawing from his own world, of breaking with his own mode of life,

and of creating for himself voluntary regrets.

He felt in the presence of Nature a species of disquietude, and

experienced therefrom sensations which might almost be expressed in

colours: his head, he himself states, "might be compared to a camera,

filled with sensitive plates." This power of vision permitted him to

apprehend only the appearance of things, not their reality; he was

conscious of the nothingness of nothing, of the dust of dust. The remnants

of his religious education intensified still more this distaste for the external

world.

He was wont to spend his summer vacation in the south of France, and

he preserved its warm sunny impressions. It was only later that he became

acquainted with Brittany. She inspired him at first with a feeling of

oppression and of sadness, and it was long before he learned to love her.

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

Thus was formed and developed, far from literary circles and from

Parisian coteries, one of the most original writers that had appeared for a

long time. He noted his impressions while touring the world; one fine

morning he published them, and from the very first the reading public was

won. He related his adventures and his own romance. The question could

then be raised whether his skill and art would prove as consummate if he

should deviate from his own personality to write what might be termed

impersonal poems; and it is precisely in this last direction that he

subsequently produced what are now considered his masterpieces.

A strange writer assuredly is this, at once logical and illusive, who

makes us feel at the same time the sensation of things and that of their

nothingness. Amid so many works wherein the luxuries of the Orient, the

quasi animal life of the Pacific, the burning passions of Africa, are painted

with a vigour of imagination never witnessed before his advent, /An

Iceland Fisherman/ shines forth with incomparable brilliancy. Something

of the pure soul of Brittany is to be found in these melancholy pages,

which, so long as the French tongue endures, must evoke the admiration of

artists, and must arouse the pity and stir the emotions of men.

JULES CAMBON.

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ANICELANDFISHERMAN1ANICELANDFISHERMANbyPIERRELOTITranslatedbyM.JulesCambonANICELANDFISHERMAN2PIERRELOTIThefirstappearanceofPierreLoti'sworks,twentyyearsago,causedasensationthroughoutthosecircleswhereinthecreationsofintellectandimaginationarefelt,studied,anddiscussed.Theauthorwasonewho,withapowerwhic...

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