PIERRE LOTI'S GRAVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 199, 24 August 1925, Page 7

PIERRE LOTI'S GRAVE.

A SENSITIVE GENIUS. LONDON, August 23. The Paris correspondent of the "Morning Post" says there has been an interesting settlement of the controversy due to persistent refusal to allow visitors to j enter the grounds at He d'Oleron. near Rochefort, to see Pierre Loti's grave. The family state that Loti had an intense fear that his grave might' become* the haunt of tourists. New they publish a passage in his will: *"I wish to be buried forgotten by all the profanely curious. I beg nothing be said over the grave at my funeral but the Lord's Prayer. The public are never to be allowed to visit my grave but twice yearly, except for a dozen persons whose j names have been prepared by my soil."— j i A. and X.Z. Cable. | Louis Marie Julian Viaud i" - Pierre Loti"). the French impressionist author. was brilliantly successful in his own school of writing, but could not be called "popular."' and, indeed, it was his whole j pose to despise popularity and to seek only the applause of the cognoscenti. He went into the French 'Navy, and it was his experience at sea which inspired j his first story. "Aziyade," a rather diffi- ! cult proposition for the English reader ! iin search of "a good yarn." He told a i story a good deal by inference, and one of the best examples of his intellectual system is his. ''-Teunesse d<? Madam Prune." Pierre Loti was admitted to J the French Academy in 1891.