Pierre Loti - Japan Corea

In this book Loti describes his second visit to Japan, and there are many charming pictures in the true Loti style: pictures of himself seated solitary on black velvet cushions, while two little Japanese maidens sing and dance for his sole pleasure: the lonely wood by the deserted temple, where he keeps a daily tryst with a Japanese child love; of the mountainside where the graves are; of a quaint fete day; of various tea-houses and of a visit to Corea and the Kings Court there.

Pierre Loti, perhaps the worlds most prolific, romantic and exotic travel writer and novelist, was born as Julien Marie Viaud in Rochefort in Western France in 1850. A childhood fascination with exotic lands across the seas led him to embark on a naval career that enabled him to seek love and adventure in many latitudes. He drew on these real life experiences when writing the romantic novels and travel books that made him one of the most popular authors of his day. Although his prolific output brought him both fame and fortune he remained a romantic escapist and never gave up his beloved naval career. He retired from the French navy in 1910 and died in 1923.

Siam

Aziyad

Egypt

Japan
Madame Chrysanthemum

Morocco

India

Japan and Corea

The Sahara to Senegal

Jerusalem and the Holy Land

Tahiti
The Marriage of Loti

The Iceland Fisherman

A Tale of the Pyrenees

A Tale of Brittany

Pierre Loti: Romance of A Great Writer
Edward B. DAuvergne

JAPAN STILL EXISTS. Frontispiece.

Saturday, December 8th, 1900.

THE horror of a winters night, through the blast of the wind and the storm of snow, in the open, shelterless, on the wild sea, full in the black commotion. A battle, a revolt of the cold and heavy seas against the great breath of the world which lashes them as it howls; a cataclysm of liquid mountains, upheaved, driven and beaten, that take to flight in utter darkness, crash together, foam with rage. A blind fury of thingsas before the creation of beings, in the primal shadows. an icy chaos surging as if it would boil over.

And there we were, in the midst of it, tossed about in the clamorous rout of these masses terrifyingly moving and engulfing, flung back from one to another with an all-shattering violence; we were there, in the heart of it, beyond all possible recall, delivered to it all, every minute plunging into gulfs darker than the night, themselves in motion like the mountains, which in their maddened flight each time threatened to overwhelm us.

We had ventured out into that, some hundreds of men together on an iron machine, an armoured monster, which seemed so enormous and so strong that, in calmer weather, one almost had the illusion of stability; one had even settled in confidently, with rooms, saloons, furniture, forgetting that the whole of it rested only upon that which evades and betrays, swift to snap you up and swallow you. But that night, how thoroughly one learned the instinctive disquiet and dizziness of being in a house that holds not fast, that has no foundation. In the immensity surrounding us there is nothing safe, nothing firm, whereto to escape, to cling; all is fluid, treacherous and moving. And down below, oh, below, lie in wait for one the bottomless abysses, where already one feels oneself plunging half-way between each wave-crest, where the grand determining plunge would be so terribly easy and swift!

In the shut and inhabited part of the vesselwhere, as you can easily understand, casual objects, in lamentable disorder, are roughly flung one on the other, stupidly jolting to and frowe were, so far, almost protected from the drenching of the waves, and the grand roar of the outer world, attenuated by the bulk of the iron walls, boomed but dully with a sinister monotony. But now here, in the very heart of the poor refuge, enisled thus by tumult and fury, a sudden noise, very different from the terrible encompassing symphony, a noise which bursts like a cannon-clap, accompanied by the rush of a cataract.

A gun-port has been battered in by the sea, and the water, black and cold, pours in a torrent into our quarters.

Of little importance for ourselves: but right at the ironclads stern is our poor admiral, lying this night between life and death. After long hardships endured in the Gulf of Petchili, during the disembarkation of the expeditionary force, we were carrying him to Japan for a short rest in a milder climate; and that black cold sea invaded the cabin where he was almost in his last struggle.

Towards one oclock in the morning, far, far down appears a little light, stableone, it seemed, which did not dance that death dance of all surrounding things; it is still far off; across the blinding gusts and snow one can scarcely pick it up, but it stands witness that in its direction there does exist the solid, the earth, the rock, a scrap of the framework of the world. And we know that it is the jutting point of the Japanese island Kiu-Siu, where soon we shall find a refuge.