The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Iceland Fisherman, by Pierre Loti

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Title: An Iceland Fisherman

Author: Pierre Loti

Release Date: March 25, 2006 [EBook #2196]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ICELAND FISHERMAN ***

Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers

AN ICELAND FISHERMAN

By Pierre Loti

Translated by M. Jules Cambon

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
moun