A Spahi's Love-Story

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Excerpt from A Spahi's Love-Story: From the French of Pierre Loti Member of the French Academy A very eminent French critic writing, some twenty years ago about the half-dozen novels which Pierre Loti had then published confessed his inability to analyse the very deep impression they had made on his mind and acknowledged that his critical conscience was much disturbed by the phenomenon. "The greatest masterpieces of literature have never troubled me thus, " he says. "What is there then in Loti's stories? They are written nonchalantly, in a limited vocabulary, and in short sentences of a very uniform nature. You will not find in any of the tales any exceptional or powerful drama, nor subtle psychology, the whole plot is reduced to a love-affair followed by a separation, and all the personages have very simple characters. Many books, both old and new, have required a very different effort of thought, invention, and execution. But, in spite of all that, Loti's novels intrude upon me and oppress me more than would a drama by Shakespeare, a tragedy by Racine, or a story by Balzac. And that is what disturbs me. Is there a spell about them - some witchcraft - a charm which cannot be explained, or which can be explained, otherwise than by literary merit?" Having confessed that the peculiar charm of Pierre Loti's books cannot be explained, M. Jules Lemaître thereupon devotes some twenty odd pages to explaining it, but not, as it seems to me, very happily, or at least not completely. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.