Iceland Fisherman (1886),
Viaud's fifth novel, has yet a different relationship to the
pictoral art of its time. Unlike the Near East and Tahiti,
Brittany, the land setting of much of the work, was known to many
of its potential readers. For reasons that I have dealt with
elsewhere ("Different Contexts, Different Sexualities: A Gay
Reading of Loti's Pêcheur d'Islande," Dalhousie French
Studies 44 (Fall 1998): 65-80), Viaud had reasons for wanting
to make the images in his novel less precise than they were likely
to have been in the minds of readers who already had clear, often
experience-based mental pictures of much of what he was
describing.
To this end, Viaud turned to contemporary painting, and very
specifically to the Impressionists, for techniques that would
render the subjects of his writing imprecise. He sought
verbal equivalents of Monet's painterly style to suggest, rather
than describe, the settings in this text.
Nowhere is this more true than in his descriptions of the view
from the fishing boats when at sea. Everything is "almost," "more
or less," "probably," "perhaps," "it seemed," etc. In addition,
the text focuses on things that cannot be depicted precisely. The
following passage, typical of the style in this novel, comes from
the first chapter:
But it was a pale light, pale, resembling nothing; it
trailed across things like the reflections of a dead sun. Around
them, an immense emptiness suddenly occurred, one that was of no
color, and beyond the planks of their boat, everything seemed
diaphanous, impalpable, chimeric.
The eye could barely grasp what must have been the sea: at
first it took the appearance of a kind of trembling mirror that
had no image to reflect; as it stretched out, it seemed to become
a vapor plain, -- and then, there was nothing more: it had neither
a horizon nor contours.
. . . . above, formless, colorless clouds seemed to contain
a latent light that could not be explained. (Part I, Chapter
1).
All this is extremely reminiscent
of the style of Claude Monet (1840-1926). Monet's 1873 painting,
"Impressions: soleil levant," first exhibited thirteen years
before Iceland Fisherman, with its play of light,
indefinite forms, and soft tints, a work that lead to the creation
of the term "impressionism" to describe this type of painting, is
a particularly striking painterly example of the effects that
Viaud achieves through his own medium, language.
The Thames at Westminster 1871
Gare St. Lazare 1877
Rouen cathedral 1894
Other examples of Monet's use of light to create indefinite forms
and colors:
As you can see, Viaud had a painterly contemporary who was busy
doing with oils exactly what the novelist wanted to achieve with
language.
Though much of Iceland Fisherman is set at sea, which
made it particularly easy for Viaud to create a world of no
definite colors or shapes, the author also managed to suggest such
an atmosphere even when describing the scenes that took place
ashore, in Brittany. When Gaud recalls her return to live in
Brittany, the text remarks:
the train coming from Paris had deposited them, her father
and herself, in Guingamp, on a misty and whitish, very cold early
morning, still on the edge of darkness. . . . This quiet pace of
life with people of another world going about their tiny little
business in the fog! . . . They, her father and she, had traveled
the whole afternoon of that same grey day . . . passing . . .
under the ghosts of trees that sweated fog in fine little
droplets. (Part I, Chapter 3)
Yet another Monet painting,
"Poplars on the Epte" (1891), captures the uncertain image that
Viaud suggests in his descriptions of Brittany, in particular the
"ghosts of trees that sweated fog in fine little droplets."
The Paimpol dock . . . was full of people. . . . The ships were
leaving two by two, four by four. . . . (Part V, Chapter 2)
Monet's 1874 painting of "Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbor, Le
Havre" captures both the scene of and Gaud's mood at Yann's
departure on the Léopoldine, near the end of the novel.
You could see sketched out, far in the distance, one after the
next, all the breaks in the coastline, Brittany came to an end in
notched points that stretched out over the tranquil nothingness of
the waters. (Part V, Chapter 8)
"Coast of Portrieux," an 1874
painting by Eugène Boudin, one of Monet's teachers, captures both
the setting and the atmosphere of the Brittany coast as Gaud sees
it while waiting for the return of Yann and the Léopoldine.
Four Breton Women 1886 -- the year of Iceland Fisherman
Young Swineherd, Brittany 1888
Breton Landscape 1894
Breton Village in Snow 1894
Breton Peasants 1894
While Viaud presents Brittany, like the North Atlantic, as a place
of almost constant mist and fog, not all artists saw it like this.
It is interesting to note, for example, that Gauguin, who made his
famous trip to Tahiti in part because he was inspired by Loti's
earlier novel, The Marriage of Loti, presented Brittany in
his art in a very brightly lit, clearly focused fashion, as these
paintings illustrate.
The Fight between a lion and a buffalo 1909
Scout attacked by a tiger 1904
The Repast of the Lion 1907
Not all of Iceland Fisherman is set in the North Atlantic
and Brittany, however. When Sylvestre Moan, one of the members of
the Marie's crew, arrives in Viet-nam as part of his military
service at the beginning of Part III, his world changes entirely.
So, appropriately, does the style of the novel. Gone is the soft
impressionism used to describe Brittany and the North Atlantic.
Viaud replaces it with a world of primary colors, bright light,
and violence. (See, in particular, Part III, Chapters 1 and 3.)
Again, there was a contemporary equivalent of this in the visual
arts, in the works of French painter Henri Rousseau (1844-1910).
Rousseau's paintings, with their sharply defined forms, violent
primary colors--and violence itself--and depiction of a jungle
setting, are a perfect visual equivalent for the scene in Part
Three, Chapter 1, where Sylvestre is shot during a military
skirmish with "natives," and show how clearly Viaud managed a
visual contrast to highlight the change in Sylvestre's world.
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
