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.