Victor Segalen
Segalen, Victor (1878-1919). A naval doctor of Breton origin, Segalen drew the substance of his literary works from his journeys in exotic regions. He was, however, not interested in documentary realism and scorned the type of exoticism cultivated by Loti: his enigmatic and idiosyncratic writings focus obsessively on the relationship between the imaginary and the real. If travel and writing were essentially paths towards self-discovery for him (he published little in his lifetime), none of his works is easily classified in terms of genre. Les Immémoriaux (1907), part-novel, part-documentary, is concerned with the extinction of tribal civilization in Tahiti. Long journeys and archaeological explorations undertaken in China provide the inspiration for the solemn, hieratic prose poems of Stèles (1912), Segalen's best-known work, as well as for his strange narrative René Leys (1921), in which the status of the narrator's account remains unclear to the end, and Équipée (1929), which recounts an imaginary expedition. Segalen's China, dominated by the figures of the Emperor, the Sage, and the Regent, is essentially symbolic and mythical, but the personal quest which underlies its creation is real and, despite Segalen's rather static style, often compelling. A friend of Debussy, for whom he devised a libretto, Orphée-Roi (1921), Segalen also wrote interestingly about the visual arts. Characteristically, the works evoked to powerful effect in Peintures (1916) are largely imaginary.
[Michael Sheringham]
