Iceland fisherman [antikvár]

INTRODUCTORY NOTE Pecheur d'Islande, in English Iceland Fisherman, was Pierre Loti's seventh book, and the story that established his greater fame as a novelist and story-teller. He had been a sailor serving in the French navy many years when he wrote it, and his intimate understanding of the sea in all its moods, its northern and wintry aspects and its summer calms, was never turned to finer effect. His Breton strain aided in the interpretation of the characters who were like his hero Yann, both sturdy and wayward, or like the girl Gaud, simple and complex by turns. Those who know the Breton coast and its 'Sept Isles' and their azure setting, or its bleak moors and rocky coasts will recognize the truth of his scene-painting. His Paimpol and his Porseven become alive and real in his tale-teller's page. The touch of Celtic fatalism in the story may be traced to his temperamental reactions and the same early influences. Here and there possibly an ultra modern reader may question his use of the idyllic note and his frequent dropping into the minor key. But that too was typical of the man and his narrative method, for he could be gay and melancholy, with equal instinct; and he could not resist at the end of all a cadence that is almost too affectionately turned. When the final summing up of Pierre Loti as a French novelist comes to be made, it will be to the books in which his Breton and his seafaring early memories give fictive reality to the writing that the old Censor, Time, will turn—and in that earlier cycle of stories Iceland Fisherman will hold a sure place. E. R. vii