Noa Noa - Softcover

Gauguin, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1479146382 ISBN 13: 9781479146383

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012

Synopsis

Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. ON the eighth of June, during the night, after a sixty-three days' voyage, sixty-three days of feverish expectancy, we perceived strange fires, moving in zigzags on the sea. From the somber sky a black cone with jagged indentions became disengaged. We turned Morea and had Tahiti before us. Several hours later dawn appeared, and we gently approached the reefs, entered the channel, and anchored without accidents in the roadstead. The first view of this part of the island discloses nothing very extraordinary; nothing, for instance, that could be compared with the magnificent bay of Rio de Janeiro. It is the summit of a mountain submerged at the time of one of the ancient deluges. Only the very point rose above the waters. A family fled thither and founded a new race--and then the corals climbed up along it, surrounding the peak, and in the course of centuries builded a new land. It is still extending, but retains its original character of solitude and isolation, which is only accentuated by the immense expanse of the ocean. Toward ten o'clock I made my formal call on the governor, the Negro Lacascade, who received me as though I had been an important personage. I owed this distinction to the mission with which the French government--I do not know why--had entrusted me. It was an artistic mission, it is true. But in the view of the Negro, however, this word was only an official synonym for espionage, and I tried in vain to undeceive him. Every one about him shared this belief, and when I said that I was receiving no pay for my mission no one would believe me. Life at Papeete soon became a burden. It was Europe--the Europe which I had thought to shake off--and that under the aggravating circumstances of colonial snobbism, and the imitation, grotesque even to the point of caricature, of our customs, fashions, vices, and absurdities of civilization. Was I to have made this far journey, only to find the very thing which I had fled? Nevertheless, there was a public event which interested me. At the time King Pomare was mortally ill, and the end was daily expected. Little by little the city had assumed a singular aspect.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In 1894, Paul Gauguin came to the conclusion that European culture in general, and French culture in particular, was spiritually and morally bankrupt. So he left. On the eighth of June 1894 he arrived in Tahiti, an island of tropical warmth, impenetrable jungles, and--most importantly for Gauguin--unspoiled, undecadent, un-European, and extremely beautiful people.He luxuriated in this paradise for two years, producing some of this best and best-known paintings. But Gauguin left us another masterpiece that has languished in obscurity until now: his journal and the woodblocks he made to accompany it.

About the Author:

John Miller is the editor and designer of such geographic anthologies as San Francisco Stories (0-8118-4439-0), Cape Cod Stories (0-8118-3252-X), Chicago Stories (0-8118-3974-5), and New Orleans Stories (0-8118-4494-3). He lives in Florida.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1479146382
• ISBN 13: 9781479146383
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 98