Aziyadé
At the end of an overly busy year, I was in desperate need of an escape. My friend Chantal lent me this small, but rather dense, exotic novel. Goal achieved.
Pierre Loti, originally Julien Viaud, was a phenomenal lady-killer. A large part of his novels, and there are many of themis inspired by his affairs. But that of Aziyadé was the most striking. A beautiful woman from a Turkish harem, she has piercing eyes, thick curly hair, and a charming candor. She is bored all day long in a brothel, and knows nothing about life. The strange Westerner who comes to see her every night, at the risk of his head (and his virility), to whisper words of love to her that she does not understand, fascinates her. They escape every night, on the sea or on the land, to spend a few feverish hours together.
A strangely passionate love story. They fall in love even though they cannot exchange a word, because Loti does not yet speak the language. The latter, moreover, does not know himself why he takes so many risks for this woman: he is only "almost" in love. Indeed, he cannot do more. He is painfully melancholic, has an insatiable thirst for adventure and sex, and rejects women and their hearts without much remorse, like old socks. This novel is the episode of his life spent in Istambul, Turkey, of which he is so enchanted that he thinks of spending the rest of his life there.
But this unsympathetic narrator has an incredible writing, and we forgive him. He talks about landscapes as if they had a soul, mixes delicious Arabic words into his text, and creates for us colorful images, warmth, sounds and smells from abroad. A real pleasure to read aloud. The words sing, we take ourselves for a poet.
Also, get ready to take out your dictionary: your mental images will be all the more magical.
It was so colorful and bizarre, that it looked less like a reality than a fantastic composition of some hallucinated orientalist (p. 41).
And bon voyage...
—
Pierre Loti
Maxi-Livres
157 p.
Environ 24 $ en version papier, gratuit sur Kindle
