Noa Noa

Paul Gauguin's opening paragraph from his Tahitian journal: Noa Noa.

"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."

Although this translation (French to English by an unattributed translator) doesn't appear to contain the lyrical nature of en français, Gauguin's observations (it is unlikely he meant to literally say 'indentions became disengaged') does describe his introduction to Tahiti in 1891.

In Papeete, the French colonial capital, Gauguin noted the same bureaucratic excesses that helped induce him to flee from France.   Thirty years later, Nordhoff and Hall noted the same bureaucratic regulations and lethargy (not with the same depth of angst). Gauguin could be forgiven if he expressed the traveler's dilemma of finding some of the same annoyances one left behind, whether commercial or governmental.

Nevertheless, Noa Noa is a fine look at rural Tahiti in the 1890's. Over the next year (or so), I will translate the journal myself and why not? J'aime la langue française et en Polynésie française.

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Quoted source: Gauguin, Paul. Noa Noa: The Tahitian Journal. New York: Classic Books America, 2009. Print.