Friday, December 13, 2013

Pierre Loti: The Desert


Elihu Vedder, The Sphinx of the Seashore (1879-80), Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco


Last year, the Times Flow Stemmed blog posted a terrific list of books about the desert to which others added nominations. I’ve made a project of reading these works, but as I keep learning of other desert books, my goal recedes like (if I may be so boldly original) a desert mirage. The latest interloper, a work I’d be thrilled to put high on my own such list, is French writer Pierre Loti’s plainly entitled The Desert (Le Désert, 1895), which, with fortuitous timing, came to my attention mere hours before I headed to the Mojave for a long weekend. Rarely has a book aligned so magnificently with the setting in which I read it.

The Desert recounts, in diary form, Loti’s month-long journey from Cairo to Jerusalem through the Sinai and Petraean deserts in the company of two European companions and twenty or so Bedouin. Translator Jay Paul Minn notes that Loti took the trip both to indulge his obsession with Islam and, hoping to find inspiration in Jerusalem, in an effort to reconcile his atheism with his mother’s Christianity. Rejecting the most commonly traveled routes, Loti opted for the more forbidding, dangerous passage through the Petraean, at the time beleaguered by internecine clashes and conflicts between Arabs and Turks.

The first pages of The Desert gripped me as few books have. Loti quickly plunges the reader into landscape and lightscape, evoking the desert’s emptiness and silence with impressionism turned to full burn:

…the desert does not disappoint, even here at this threshold where it is just beginning to appear. Its immensity overwhelms everything, enlarges everything, and in its presence the wickedness of human beings is forgotten.

And how quickly we have been taken prisoner by it! How suddenly have we been wrapped in silence and solitude!... Nobody and nothing anymore, as the desolate night descended…And suddenly all around us there was infinite emptiness, the desert at twilight, swept by a steady cold wind: the desert of a neutral and dead color, spreading under a darker sky that seemed to fall and crush it out to the edges of the horizon all around.

Turning to nearly any page of The Desert, one finds rapturous appreciations of color, light, space, the weirdly sculpted geology created by harsh, elemental forces, unexpected desert flowers, snakes and gazelles, lush oases, distant snow-capped peaks, the “permanent and ageless stars.” Loti’s descriptions come saturated in color; I suspect the book would still be fascinating were one to conserve only the passages involving pink. There is something pure about Loti’s encounter, a human presence so aesthetically and spiritually overwhelmed by mesmerizing light and shadow, by the vast, shifting sands, that for much of the book one would scarcely know other people were about. Loti’s attention towards his own unmediated confrontation with the desert masks the reality of his essentially traveling as a tourist. The Bedouin supply team so essential to Loti’s undertaking most noticeably appear when, almost comically, they streak past Loti and his companions each day at lunch in order to set up the evening camp, shouting greetings that briefly unzip the silence of the desert until they again ride out of sight.

Loti knows that he’s putting the human presence secondary, and to be fair, he does offer more than a few nods towards the people he meets. He details his frustrating negotiations with a functionary at Aqaba and the boredom of the outpost’s Turkish soldiers, sketches encounters with desert chieftains, Russian pilgrims and barefoot Bedouin children, and, upon arrival in Gaza, summarizes its place in history with a succinct power that replaces associations from today’s headlines with a tragic sense of the city’s rich, irretrievable past. Most captivating, though, is Loti’s account of the astonishing monastery of Saint Catherine high on Mount Sinai, where he spent a forced sojourn (due to snow!). Before reading Loti’s account, I knew nothing of this nearly inaccessible, ancient edifice, its monks going about their solemn daily tasks as monks have done there for 1,500 years, its vaults hiding innumerable priceless relics and manuscripts. Through Loti’s hermetic account, Saint Catherine’s comes across as remote and unexpected a religious refuge as the mystical mountain monastery featured as the culmination of Peter Brook’s hypnotic film, Meetings With Remarkable Men.

The Desert is a sui generis work of desert writing, its sumptuously romantic reveling in the desert’s colors, textures, and spiritual inducements (should anyone need to explain the concept of romanticism, Loti’s book could be an invaluable teaching tool) drifting occasionally towards the decadent and surreal. One scene exemplifying this aspect involves the shooting of an owl, which the Europeans, aggrieved over having dispatched such a magnificent bird simply for sport, decide to bury in “a little trench in the sand”:

When the owl is in the hole on its back, with its wings hugging its body like a monk’s cloak, it still stares at us obstinately, with an astonished expression of reproach that cuts us to the quick.
On the poor yellow eyes which will never be seen again, on the so well-groomed and beautiful feathers that will soon rot, we throw sand. Then we roll a heavy rock over to assure peace for this tomb…

Give in to Loti’s romanticism, and the staring yellow eyes become as potent a symbol as Ozymandias, left to gaze eternally out upon the lone and level sands. But slip out of Loti’s magic spell for an instant, and the scene could take on an almost laughable quality of kitsch.

Still, I can’t get that owl out of my head. A hundred years after its decay into nothingness, I envision it as an enduring presence, a fixed, disembodied stare somewhere out in the desert vastness. It seems to encapsulate the essence of Loti’s small book, his capturing, in limpid, crystalline prose, the unforgettable drama of seeing the desert, of having one’s eyes opened to its immensity, timelessness and power over one’s perceptions. For those of a romantic temperament (I’m not naming names), Loti’s book seduces and enthralls, a treasure to be luxuriated in knowing full well - and holding in abeyance one’s awareness - that it has little to do with the realities of the desert’s human face, and everything to do with the impressions that can bewitch one there and induce a profound, transfixing awe.

Loti’s book thus stands apart from, say, Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands, a divergent account of travel with Arab tribes that Times Flow Stemmed pegged as perhaps the greatest of desert books. If one seeks to grasp the palpable danger and grit of desert travel and the fundamental courage of the peoples who manage to live there, it’s doubtful one could do better. Thesiger might have cringed at Loti’s glancing, tourist’s appreciation of the desert tribes, but I suspect he would have identified with the spell the desert had cast. For Loti, perhaps better than any writer I have read, including Thesiger, conveys the experience of being absolutely smitten, humbled and transformed by the desert.

As I hiked that weekend through the Mojave,[i] everything seemed filtered through Loti’s gaze: the metamorphosis of light, of pinks and lavenders, yellows and grays, ochers and violets; an unexpected petroglyph left by a long vanished people; a chill wind sweeping a canyon as snow clouds closed upon distant peaks; glowing, faraway ridges and empty, interminable plains slowly engulfed by darkness. If, in rhapsodizing about the desert, Loti had expected to convey a profound, contagious appreciation, he’d succeeded spectacularly. An overwhelming sense of solitude and an “illusion of being united with universal permanence and time” took hold. Did it matter that some 20 million people lived within a few hours’ drive? I couldn’t think about that.






[i] A rare moment of advocacy for something other than books on this blog: Several of the areas I explored fall within the proposed Sand to Snow National Monument. Write your representatives to help ensure preservation of this stunningly majestic area where the Mojave and Sonoran deserts transition to the summits of Southern California’s highest range. UPDATE February 12, 2016. Sand to Snow (along with two other large areas of Mojave desert) has just been designated as a National Monumnet by President Barack Obama, a tremendous action that will ensure protection of these astonishing desert landscapes.

15 comments:

  1. That is an enticing list of books.

    This book sounds very good.

    A Google search for the monastery of Saint Catherine supports your assertion that it seems to be a place of particular interest.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That list is indeed enticing, as are the other suggestions supplied in the comments.

      And yes, I spend a good deal of time on Google exploring the Saint Catherine monastery after reading Loti's book - how fortunate that it still exists after a millennium and a half!

      Delete
  2. If you're ever looking for something geographically closer to the area where you were hiking then there's The Desert by John C. Van Dyke, which the blurb on the back of my copy refers to as, "this classic account of the aesthetic qualities of the desert environment of the southwestern United States." The author describes himself riding alone for days across the valleys; more recently they've found evidence that he took a train instead and the lone rider is a self-invention, but either way it's an elegant book.

    I think it's out of print but there's an excerpt here: http://ag.arizona.edu/oals/ALN/aln35/VanDyke.html

    "The shadows of foliage, the drift of clouds, the fall of rain upon leaves, the sound of running waters - all the gentler qualities of nature that minor poets love to juggle with - are missing on the desert. It is stern, harsh, and at first repellent. But what tongue shall tell the majesty of it, the eternal strength of it, the poetry of its wide-spread chaos, the sublimity of its lonely desolation!"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Umbagollah - I'm actually about halfway through Van Dyke's book right now. I've known of it for some time, but since Loti's translator noted that Van Dyke borrowed heavily from Loti's style (fairly evident once one starts into Van Dyke), I rushed out to get it right away, further spurred on a critical and engrossing appreciation of the Van Dyke in Reyner Banham's Scenes in America Deserta. I expect I'll post on Van Dyke's version of The Desert soon - how often does one get a chance to read two different books with the exact same title?

      Delete
  3. I wish your blog was easier to read... I always give up half-way through, when the eyes start tearing. I don't read from a Mac so your instruction above does not work for me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm really quite sorry about this, because I'm loathe to lose any reader, and if I'd known the appearance would have been off-putting to some readers, I would not have chosen it. I've had other readers say that they like the white on black, so what's a blogger to do? I've been considering, though, an overhaul of the site, and if that happens I will surely switch to an easier-to-read appearance. Unfortunately, such a switch is not a small undertaking. I do hope you'll keep reading in the meantime.

      Delete
    2. I really enjoy what I manage to read, and keep I returning. I love that the Paris stuff in particular. But my eyes are always under a strain after a few paras. I'll keep checking in and may sometimes will have to copy and paste in a Word doc so I can read every single word. (I hate to skim! But often have to.)

      Delete
  4. Translator Jay Paul Minn notes that Loti took the trip both to indulge his obsession with Islam and, hoping to find inspiration in Jerusalem, in an effort to reconcile his atheism with his mother’s Christianity.

    Such a funny set of motivations. What, no place for a bit of Judaism and Hinduism?

    The passages you quote take me back to passages in Paul Bowles' Their Heads are Green and their Hands are Blue,' he too felt tremendous awe in the desert, in the way it generates cosmic thoughts in people. I wonder, is the desert a natural destination for misanthropes? Its solitude and grandeur seems to induce men to forget the human dimension, to start philosophizing about great abstractions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Miguel - Loti seems such a curious figure, curious the way that word cuts both ways, and thus always indulging his myriad interests while appearing only to flirt with a commitment to them - such that, well, he could embrace Islam, Christianity and Atheism all at once.

      If I can get around to it, I may write about Reyner Banham's Scenes in America Deserta, which is the first "desert" book I've read that directly raises that question of misanthropy and tries to dig into exactly why people can be so fanatically awed by the desert.

      Delete
  5. Excellent post on a book I'd never even heard about before. The only flaw: the reminder that I've still yet to read Thesiger as well! Arghh. Liked your turn of phrase about "the landscape and the lightscape," by the way. Will try and keep this book in mind.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Richard - Thesiger and Loti are both great, but so different, like sand in your teeth compared to fluffy pink clouds. I had a great time reading both, though.

      Delete
  6. This wasn't mentioned on the list I compiled but it sounds wonderful.

    I have to find some other way of keeping up with your fascinating blog as my RSS reader seems to struggle with bloodspot blogs and I've been missing your posts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anthony - Thanks. I really have to do something about the blog appearance, if I can ever find the time.

      Based on your choices for your fantastic desert book list, I think you'll love Loti's book.

      Delete
  7. Loti was during his lifetime extremely popular and had a great influence on Proust - but today hardly anyone reads him. Glad that you wrote about him. Although he is labeled an Orientalist nowadays, I found his book Aziyade which I read recently surprisingly fresh and interesting: http://www.mytwostotinki.com/?p=621

    You can find also a review of Ibrahim al-Koni's The Bleeding of the Stone on my blog, another desert book that you will probably like if you'll give it a try. I intend also to do a piece on Isabelle Eberhardt in the future.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. I had a great time with the Loti book, and have been curious to read more, so I appreciate the Aziyade recommendation. I also read an al-Koni novel this past year (Gold Dust) and thought it was terrific, so I'll head on over and have a look at your review of Bleeding. I look forward to your comments on Eberhardt; I stumbled on a selection of her writings when I was about 15 and remember that it changed something in my conception of the world then.

      Delete