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  • Pierre Loti and the Theatricality of Desire
  • Richard M. Berrong
Turberfield, Peter James . Pierre Loti and the Theatricality of Desire. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. Pp. 264. ISBN 978-90-420-2363-5

Peter Turberfield sets forth his intent in his opening lines: "The key focus of this book will be an analysis of patterns of unconscious desire observable in Loti's work. Given the self-consciously semi-autobiographical nature of much of his writing I will also look at manifestations of these patterns discernable in accounts of his public persona" (9). Though he calls this "a new approach to a reading of Loti's work" (13), it is in fact just another variation on the life and works approach that has been the bane of writing on Loti for over a century, using the works of the author (né Julien Viaud) to hypothesize his psyche and his life to explain those work as if they are all one and the same. That this is problematic for any author we have been aware at least since Proust's Contre Sainte-Beuve. In Viaud's case it is particularly dangerous, however, since as Turberfield himself points out the author's apparently autobiographical works are very self-conscious; they are by no means spontaneous, unconsidered comments elicited by a trained psychoanalyst. Like his younger contemporaries Proust, Gide, and Colette, Viaud was both very conscious of shaping a public image with his apparently autobiographical works and very aware of the existence of his subconscious, so treating anything he published as an unmediated expression of the latter is highly problematic. (Michael Lucey's recent Never Say I, dealing with those three contemporaries, shows the complexity such a situation poses.) Turberfield offers few third-person "accounts of [Viaud's] public persona," so what we are left with is yet another attempt to psychoanalyze an author through his characters and what he (in Viaud's case only suggests that he) wrote about himself. No psychiatrist would accept the result as valid psychoanalysis of the man; whether there is any point in psychoanalyzing characters in literature is each reader's decision to make.

If Turberfield had focused on the latter and considered them as separate individuals there might have been something to be gained. He does start out by explaining that "I have, however, found it necessary to simplify my separation of the various identities that are so often misleadingly conflated. I have consequently reduced the distinction to two terms, using 'Loti' to indicate the position of implied author and public persona, and 'Loti' to designate his protagonist/narrator" (13, also 245). This is already confusing – why not call the public persona "Viaud"? – but it only gets worse, as Turberfield repeatedly mixes the two up, referring to protagonists in the novels as "Loti" (135, 164, 202, etc.) and Viaud as "Loti" (169, 215, 238, etc.; the book repeatedly evinces careless writing and proofing). In the end it doesn't much matter, though, as he treats Viaud and his protagonists as if they all share the same psyche.

This conflation of the author and his characters leads Turberfield to gloss over important distinctions. He repeatedly claims, for example, that what he calls the [End Page 336] "repeat[ed] scenarios of exotic romance and abandonment" (237; also 135, 247) in Viaud's novels – in fact, that really only describes the first two, Aziyadé and Le Mariage de Loti; his later treatments of cross-cultural relationships, such as Madame Chrysanthème, are very different – "can be interpreted [. . .] as an unconscious attempt to regain control of the distressing gypsy scenario" recounted in Prime Jeunesse. There is no proof that the affair between the gypsy and J., the narrator of that book, had any real-world counterpart in Viaud's life, however–the writer often mentioned the grotto where it takes place in his diary but never the gypsy; as Irene Szyliowitz pointed out in her Pierre Loti and the Oriental Woman, which figures in Turberfield's bibliography, the scene is "little more than a pastiche of commonplaces" (62) – so it can't be used to explain the author's actions and is of only dubious value in interpreting characters with other...

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