Pierre Loti Julien Viaud (1850-1923)

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Photography Pierre Loti:

French writer (1850-1923).

Julien Viaud its real name was a naval officer, friends and especially great novelist. His work, often autobiographical, we conducted in Turkey (Aziyadé), Senegal (Le Roman d'un spahi) or Japan (Madame Chrysanthemum) whose success was immense and that inspired Puccini, Madame Butterfly. He also traveled to Egypt to Tahiti via India... The framework of his novels has not always been so exotic, with fishermen of Iceland describes the lives of fishermen in Brittany, Ramuntcho lies in the Basque Country where he ended his life. He becomes rich, famous. At 42 years, he was elected to the French Academy against Émile Zola. He died in Hendaye. After his funeral in 1923, Lewis was buried in accordance with his instructions in the garden of ancestor, aunt, in the Island of Oleron, where he played little. In 1925 and 1925, his son Samuel published his diary.

«He was born under the name of Julien Viaud, 14 January 1850, Nadine Texier and Jean-Theodore Viaud, secretary of city hall in this famous house that will transform later. A Protestant family dominated by women, mother and aunts, whose Julien is the last son. The elder, Gustave, be fascinated admiration of his caddy, dies at sea in 1865, the same year as the best friend of Julien, Lucette Duplas. The following year, the father is unjustly accused of embezzlement and loses his situation. From the age of sixteen, the young Julien knows he will soon have to ensure the material salvation of his family. Received the Naval School in Paris, he goes to sea in 1870 as midshipman first class, following the example of his beloved Gustave.

Therefore, it will continue over the world traveled by boat, with long rest at his family home port of Rochefort, he embellishes collections of items bought or stolen. In 1872 he was in Tahiti where he was told, wrongly, that his brother had had two children of an indigenous. He even falls in love with some pretty Polynesian and receives the Queen's nickname Pomar Loti (name of a tropical flower), which will thereafter at one of its characters before making his own nickname of writer, the officer Julien Viaud is otherwise forbidden to write, held to a reservation incompatible with his temperament exalted.

Car Julien Viaud is a strange citizen, since adolescence, the age when he starts to keep his diary. It is itself the main focus and he does not love. It is very small, wearing high heels, sometimes mounted on springs, which give an approach to cricket. » (Excerpt from an article by Michel Braudeau, Le Monde, 28 July 2002).