Monday, 11 August 1913

Morning stop at Canakkale in the middle of the Dardanelles.

At midnight, moored at the entrance to the Bosphorus, near Leander's Tower. Grand Stamboul is silent, close by, its minarets lit with Ramadan fire-crowns. From here, nothing has changed on the surface, despite the terrible dramas in which Turkey almost foundered and despite the two or three hundred thousand dead lain low by Christian bullets on the battlefields of Macedonia and Thrace.

Tuesday, 12 August 1913

Five o’clock in the morning. With a rose-pink colour, the rising sun lights up the palaces and the barred harems of the European side, which are still in silent slumber and which always seem to conceal all the old mystery of their oriental past. But the smoke and the modern hustle and bustle will soon start up towards Galata where we arrive.

At six o’clock, the steamship makes fast at its berth. On the quayside, I see banners, crowds, tubs of green plants and carpets all well-ordered to honour some grand personage; and all the police are armed. For whom is this display?

‘But I think it's for you, commander,’ Osman tells me, my faithful servant accompanying me to Turkey for the fifth time.

Delegations come on board, generals, sent by the Sultan and the princes, representatives of all the public bodies, imams, dervishes and priests from Arabia. It is indeed me they are singling out to welcome.

Court carriages are there waiting for me. I certainly had not expected such a welcome. As soon as I put foot on land, the crowd applauds and the banners are waved. As far as the Tophane quay where one of the Sultan's barges is waiting, the soldiers line my way, presenting arms and the crowd is still applauding. There is even a group of hamals, the worthy porters of Constantinople, who have come, carrying their huge green striped banners with white inscriptions, and they applaud me thunderously with their rough hands.

In the Sea of Marmara, Monday, 15 August 1910

Stanboul, which I have not seen now for six years, will appear this evening on the horizon; six years so short, so terrifying for having been so short; how time hastens more and more towards the decline of life!

As the steamer carrying me makes its way through the calm warm waters of the Sea of Marmara, my memories of this land become more vivid hour by hour, as if everything emanating from the approaching shore has awakened in me the whole of my Turkish past. I have often noticed this in other places too: it is enough to reach their approaches for all previous sojourns to be remembered clearly once again.

So, it is already six years since, one April evening at the entrance to the Bosphorus, I left the Vautourfor ever, a vessel I had commanded and sailed from the Adriatic to the Black Sea – into winter winds and rough seas. I now remember the smallest details, so it seems as if it were yesterday that I left. I think I can hear once again all the shouts and cheers of my sailors. They remained on board my ship and were throwing their caps into the sea as a sign of mourning in my honour, as I was being taken by boat to the Phrygie which was to carry me away. I remember especially when the steamer gradually broke free from the quay thronging with people. I remember clearly the covered carriage passing slowly through the crowd, allowing me to glimpse through the door two female eyes under a black scarf raised for just one moment.

What upheavals there have been in Turkey in these six years! Once more, I return on pilgrimage to places I remember, making a pious visit to certain tombs. Into the Bosphorus the same evening The sun is already low and the light somewhat yellow, when Stamboul begins to show its pointed spires and domes in the distance.

January 1921

I venture today to direct my appeal, my supplication, to England, and, as unlikely as this might appear, I am almost confident to do so. I know that I still have numerous friends in this country, which is such a tremendous rival of ours, and, thank God, I know they are not all soulless financiers over there.

I am certain too that there are thousands of people of dignity and heart, those with all the human feelings and who remain capable of showing compassion. I know too that there are thousands who take fright at being governed by relentless speculators and who, when feeling distressed, collect en masse in churches to contemplate and offer sincere prayers. This is the last time I speak out publicly, for I have terminated my insignificant role on earth; the supreme warning of a man about to go out into the night tomorrow always has a chance to be heard.

Without malice or hate, I beseech the English today to allow themselves finally to be moved by the unfortunate Turks who are defending themselves in extremis with such heroic courage. May the English reflect once again, before supporting to the bitter end and in their own self-interest these base insignificant Greeks! They are shameless hypocrites and liars who have committed, and will continue to commit, every imaginable act of cowardice and every imaginable act of treachery, and who are not even aware that their idiotic boastfulness is nothing more than repugnant buffoonery. No, the English, our still-unappeased rivals, but who at least possess dignity and nobleness, will not allow the few baneful leaders, whose intransigence has already provoked Ireland, India and Egypt beyond measure against them, to complete their work, inflicting on the entire English nation the blemish of having thus crushed those already dying. May they not trust in those politicians who are at this very moment adding beneath their name in indelible letters the following description: ‘unrelenting profiteers’!

In this my final appeal, I shall not go so far as to ask them to support the poor Turks.

It is with some misgivings and deep sadness that I undertake the writing of this chapter. When I was asked to do it, at first I wanted to decline; but that seemed to me a sort of betrayal of the land of Turkey – so I accepted!

Indeed, as things are, I would be less capable of writing an impersonal description with the detachment of an artist than ever. What is more, those wishing to follow me will have to resign themselves to looking through my eyes and it is almost through my soul that they are about to observe the great Stamboul!

Oh, Stamboul! Of all the names which still enrapture me, this is the most magical. As soon as it is uttered, a vision is sketched out before me: high, high in the air and first, in the distant vagueness, something huge is outlined, an incomparable silhouette of a town. The sea lies at her feet, a sea ploughed by ships and boats in their thousands, stirring it up without respite. It is also a sea from which the hubbub of Babel rises up in the all the languages of the Levant. The smoke floats like a long horizontal cloud over the ranks of black steamers and golden caiques and over the motley throng shouting out their business deals and their haggling; the incessant smoke covers everything with its veil. It is over there, above this steam and oil sprays that this enormous town appears, as if suspended. In the clear sky, minarets, as sharp as lances, point upwards, and dome upon dome, large round domes, some greyish-white, others dull white, rise in tiers, like stone bell-shaped pyramids: motionless mosques unchanged by the centuries. These mosques were whiter perhaps in times gone by, when our Western smoke had not yet polluted the air all around and when in the past only sailing ships came to drop anchor in their shadow, but always the same, and for centuries crowning Stamboul with their same giant cupolas, giving it this same unique outline grander than any other town on earth. These mosques are the unchangeable past. They conceal in their stones and marble the ancient Muslim spirit which still towers above where they stand. Whether arriving from the far reaches of Marmara or the far

Pierre Loti died on 10 June 1923; it is more than fitting that the last of his great travelogues to be translated into English should be published in that language in 2023, the centenary of his death. Loti's Life A detailed account of Loti's life is to be found in the Introduction to our translation of his Vers Ispahan, The Way to Isfahan, Gerlach Press (Berlin 2021, pp. ix-xvi), and the following biography can be kept brief.

Loti was born Louis-Marie-Julien Viaud in Rochefort, in present-day Charente-Maritime, on 14 January 1850 into a middle-class Protestant family. His father was a functionary of the local mairie. Julien was much spoiled in his childhood by his mother, two grandmothers and an elderly aunt, all of whom doted on the child. After a lonely life at home, he was sent to the local college when he was twelve. In 1866, he left for Paris to attend the Lycée Napoléon and successfully sat the examinations for entry as an officer into the French Navy in 1867.

For the next forty years or so, more than twenty of them actually at sea, Julien (who became Pierre Loti in 1872 in Tahiti) travelled the world: the Americas, the Middle East and North Africa, Turkey, the Far East and Indo- China and West Africa.

Loti wrote a series of novels, the first, Aziyade, was published in 1879; others followed as the years passed, perhaps the two most famous being Pecheur d’Islande, set among the Breton fishermen who sailed the northern waters, and Ramuntcho, a Basque love story. His novels gave way over the years to a whole series of travel writings, as he began to recount his journeys overseas, both official and private.

Loti was elected a member of the French Academy in 1891. He died in 1923 in Hendaye, on the Franco-Spanish border in Basque country. He was granted a state funeral, and, according to his wishes, was buried on the Île d’Oléron, off the west coast of France, near the mouth of the Charente and Rochefort, the town of his birth.

The distressing uncertainty concerning the future position of France in the Orient seems to be close to ending. Whether it is favourable or disastrous, the decision of the High Council of the Allies will shortly be taken. May a feeling of sound judgement and fairness inspire the arbitrators of our future with a long-lasting solution which assures peace in Islam, while at the same time again safeguarding somewhat our centuries-old interests, which are, alas, threatened by implacable rivals! I really think that, among true French patriots, there is almost no diplomat who is well-informed and genuine, whose eyes have not at last been opened to the necessity of maintaining a strong and friendly Turkey. This will preserve for us in the Orient at least vestiges of our past influence which was vital, and – and this is an entirely new motive – will provide Europe with a brave and undoubtedly adequate advanced barrier against the savage excesses of Russia.

I do not want to repeat endlessly the same truths, which I have already succeeded in articulating, in spite of the line taken by certain newspapers in denying their veracity. But I think I must again recall in just a few words these truths, to which most men of good faith have now rallied, since we find ourselves at the supreme moment.

I think I have stated strongly, with the support of evidence and proof, just about all there is to say on the subject of the ‘Armenian massacres’: the reciprocity of slaughter, the insane exaggeration in the complaints from these Armenians, who for centuries have so shabbily fleeced the Turks, their neighbours, and who, with their unflagging slander, have not ceased to play on their claim to be Christians in order to gather together Western fanatics against Turkey.

Turning to the Greeks, I do not think that they should be subject further to the law. Thank God, judgement has been made on their cause. That the war has enabled us to get to know them is a judgement from heaven. Evidence from thousands of our soldiers of their deceit and hatred of France, and the reports from our leaders concerning their invasion of Anatolia are overwhelming and conclusive. Moreover, the following is the wording of the official report of the Allies’ commission of enquiry concerning the actions of the Greeks at Pergamon and Menemen: ‘Nervous strain, fatigue and fear led them to commit, without any provocation, a real massacre of defenceless Turkish civilians.