Reading Turcophilia: The Turkish Life of Pierre Loti in Aziyadé and Fantôme d’Orient

Abstract

Aziyadé (1879) and Fantôme d’Orient (1891), an autobiographical debut novel and a travel narrative by Pierre Loti, are key texts in French exoticist literature. Set in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of its disintegration, Loti’s debut novel illustrates a young man’s discovery of life à la turque through an account of his stay in Istanbul and his liaison with Aziyadé, a young married Turkish woman from a harem. The affair ended with his departure, but Loti’s fondness for Istanbul remained. He returned to the city ten years later, as a best-selling literary writer and a member of the Academie Française, to seek the traces of his past. Fantôme d’Orient is the account of his three-day stay in search of his Turkish life and a self-reflexive meditation on memory, loss, death, and distance. Loti’s Turkish persona and profound attachment to the country raise questions on affect and affinity, or on what it means to write as a Turcophile. Taking its cue from the links among exoticism, imperialism and travel writing, this paper illustrates the personal, the political, and the poetic implications of Loti’s assumed Turkish identity. Focusing on affect and rhetoric, it seeks to answer how affinity shapes discourses conditioned by power and empire, highlighting its poetic potential and political sensibilities

Keywords

• Travel writing
• memory
• orientalism
• Istanbul
• exoticism

References

1. Almas, H. E. (2011). Capitalizing Istanbul: Reading Orhan Pamuk’s Literary Cityscape. (Doctoral dissertation, The University of Amsterdam). Retrieved from http://www.dare.uva.nl/document/2/97299. google scholar
2. Armbrecht, T.J. D. (2003) The Nostalgia of Nowhere: Pierre Loti’s Utopian Spaces. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 36(4), 81-102. google scholar
3. Ashcroft, B., G. Griffiths, and Tiffin H. (Eds.). (2000). Post-colonial Studies: Key Concepts. New York: Routledge. google scholar
4. Barthes, R. (1972). Aziyade. Le degrezero de l'Ecriture. [Zero Degree of Writing]. Paris: Seuil. google scholar
5. Clifford, J. (1988). The Predicament of Culture, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. google scholar
6. Çelik, Z. (1986). The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press. google scholar
7. Deringil, S. (2003). ‘They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery’: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45(2) (April), 311-42. google scholar
8. Enginün, İ. Loti’nin Türklere Bakışı ve Edebiyatçılarımızın Yorumu [Loti’s Perspective on the Turks and the Responses of Our Litterateurs]. Pierre Loti Toplantı Bildirileri. http://ekitap.kulturturizm.gov.tr/TR,80378/inci-engunu.html. google scholar

9. Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. In J. Radden (Eds.), The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (pp. 283-94). New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. google scholar
10. Fuhrmann, M. (2020). Port Cities in the Eastern Mediterranean, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. google scholar
11. Genet, C. & Herve, D. (1988). Pierre Loti l’enchanteur, [Pierre Loti, the enchanter]. Aubin, Poitiers: la Caillerie, Gemozac. google scholar
12. Hargreaves, A. (1981). The Colonial Experience in French Fiction: a study of Pierre Loti, Ernest Psichari, and Pierre Mille. London: Mac Millan Press. google scholar
13. Hentsch, T. (1988). L’Orient Imaginaire: la vision politique occidentale de l’Est mediterraneen [Imaginary Orient: the western political vision of the Mediterranean East]. Paris: Minuit. google scholar
14. Hikmet, N. (2007). Piyer Loti. Bütün Şiirleri, Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları. google scholar
15. Hisar, A. Ş. (1958). İstanbul ve Pierre Loti. [Istanbul and Pierre Loti]. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2004. google scholar
16. Koloğlu, O. (2001). Büyük Dost Pierre Loti’ye Mektuplar [Letters to the Great Friend, Pierre Loti]. İstanbul: Pierre Loti Dostları Derneği. google scholar
17. Levi-Strauss, C. (1955) Tristes Tropiques. Paris: Plon. google scholar
18. Lewis, R. (2004). Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. google scholar
19. Loti, P. (1991). Aziyade suivie par le fantâme dOrient. Paris: Gallimard. google scholar
20. ---. (1990). Constantinople en 1890. Istanbul: Isis Yayınevi. google scholar
21. ---. (1924). Les Desenchantees. Paris: Calmann-Levy. google scholar
22. Moura, J.-M. (1997). L’Europe et l’ailleurs litteraire [Europe and literary elsewhere]. Paris: Presses Universitaires Françaises. google scholar
23. Quella-Villeger, A. (2002). Pierre Loti, Gezegen Seyyahı. Trans. Aysel Bora. [Pierre Loti, the pilgrim of the planet] İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları. google scholar
24. Pratt, M. L. (2008). Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. google scholar
25. Rosaldo, R. (1993). Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. google scholar
26. Said, E. (1994). Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage. google scholar
27. ---. (1978). Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin. google scholar
28. Şerifoglu, O. F. (ed). (2004). Hanedandan Bir Ressam: Abdülmecid Efendi [A Painter in Court: Abdülmecid Effendi]. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları. google scholar
29. Spurr, D. (1999). The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration. Durham: Duke University Press. google scholar