The Sacred in India According to Pierre Loti: A Mystical Pilgrimage Beyond the Colonial Gaze
In the heart of the Ganges, where fire, water, and death meet in a timeless ritual, Pierre Loti — French naval officer and writer — offers a rare, mystically infused vision of India. In Vers l’Inde, vers Bénarès (1899), Loti recounts his spiritual journey to the sacred city of Varanasi, distancing himself from the British colonial gaze and immersing himself instead in the metaphysical dimension of the East. His portrayal challenges Western stereotypes, seeking not to define, but to listen.
Loti arrives in Benares with the reverence of a pilgrim rather than the curiosity of a tourist. “Here death and life are no longer opposites, but mirrors of the same mystery,” he writes, observing the funeral pyres along the Ganges. The burning ghats become, for Loti, a sacred theatre of the eternal: “Un peuple entier, hiératique et immobile, regarde la mort comme une chose naturelle, sacrée” (Loti, 1899).
Loti’s writing diverges from the imperial narratives that had long painted India as decadent, superstitious, or in need of salvation. In contrast, he encounters India as a land of spiritual plenitude, where even suffering is inscribed in a larger cosmological order. He does not offer sociological analyses, nor does he attempt to “understand” Hinduism in a rationalist Western framework — instead, he contemplates. Like other mystics and writers sympathetic to the East, such as Romain Rolland, Loti is aware that true insight comes from dispossession of self.
In L’Inde (sans les Anglais), Rolland similarly states:
“L’anima dell’India non si rivela a chi vuole dominarla, ma solo a chi sa ascoltare.”
(“The soul of India does not reveal itself to those who seek to dominate it, but only to those who know how to listen.”)
— R. Rolland, L’Inde, 1923
Loti listens. His Varanasi is not a city of contrasts, but of metaphysical harmony. The yogis, the silence, the smoke rising from the flames — all are part of the same tapestry of the sacred. Unlike the British travel writers of the same period — who often filtered Indian spirituality through an orientalist lens — Loti writes from the interior. He himself becomes transparent: “Je me sens devenu tout petit, transparent, une ombre parmi les ombres.”
This approach recalls his earlier novel Aziyadé (1879), where the sacred is accessed through sensual love and conversion in the Ottoman world. But in Vers Bénarès, there is no conversion and no romantic heroine — only the silent confrontation with the sacred Other. It is a journey into absence, a mystical emptiness that slowly fills him with meaning.
Loti’s encounter with India also resonates — though contrasts — with the writings of Mark Twain, who visited Varanasi in 1896 and famously wrote:
“Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897)
But while Twain observes with irony and wonder, Loti lets himself be dissolved into the landscape. He is not a foreigner in awe, but a soul seeking resonance. His words do not describe India — they echo it.
References:
-
Loti, Pierre. Vers l’Inde, vers Bénarès. Calmann-Lévy, 1899.
-
Rolland, Romain. L’Inde (sans les Anglais). Alcan, 1923.
-
Twain, Mark. Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. American Publishing Company, 1897.
-
Said, Edward. Orientalism. Pantheon, 1978 (for contextual framework).