Gauguin's Noa Noa

'The Writings of a Savage?' Literary Strategies in Paul Gauguin's "Noa Noa"Author(s): Linda GoddardReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 71 (2008), pp. 277-293Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20462786 .

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'THE WRITINGS OF A SAVAGE?'

LITERARY STRATEGIES IN PAUL GAUGUIN'S NOA NOA

Linda Goddard

D espite his self-imposed exile in Polynesia from I89I, Gauguin continued to play an active role-from afar-in the Paris art world, maintaining corre

spondence with important literary figures, subscribing to periodicals, and writing cryptic explanations to accompany paintings back to Europe.' From the outset, he imagined his transferal in terms of its potential impact on aWestern audience and, once settled, he continued to rely upon European publications to resurrect in digenous myths and deities.2 Noa Noa, a partly autobiographical fiction evoking his paintings and experiences in Tahiti, was a key text in this endeavour to manipulate his critical reception. Later revised in collaboration with the Symbolist poet Charles Morice, the first draft of Noa Noa (hereafter denoted the Draft MS) was completed following Gauguin's temporary return to Paris in September I893, and possibly intended to complement an exhibition of his Tahitian paintings at the Durand Ruel Gallery in November I893, though it was not completed in time.3 Combining descriptions of his paintings with tales of adventure and references to Polynesian myth, it was less an accurate record of Gauguin's life, than a carefully staged encounter between the European and the 'exotic'.

Although frequently sampled for 'evidence' about Gauguin's life and work, Noa Noa is rarely taken seriously as a literary text. Whether celebrating or con demning his 'primitive' adventure, scholars have treated it primarily as merely an autobiographical document or an explanatory guide to his painting, and have insisted on the crudeness and simplicity of the artist's prose.4 In a I96I edition of the Draft MS, for example, Jean Loize claimed that 'As soon as he takes up a pen, Gauguin is entirely spontaneous, with no literary tricks: he knows that he is barbar ous and shocking.'5 While the barbarous and shocking naivety of his paintings has

i. Gauguin lived in French Polynesia from 1891 to 1893, and from 1895 until his death in 1903. For a

recent comprehensive investigation of these periods, see Gauguin Tahiti. The Studio of the South Seas, ed. G.

T. M. Shackelford and C. Fr?ches-Thory, London

2004. 2. The first to document these borrowings were

B. Dorival, 'Sources of the Art of Gauguin from Java,

Egypt and Ancient Greece', The Burlington Magazine, xcm, 577,1951, pp. 118-22, and R. Huyghe, 'La Clef

de Noa Noa', in P. Gauguin, Ancien Culte mahorie

(1893), ed. R. Huyghe, Paris 2001 (first published

1951).

3. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum. First facsimile

edition: P. Gauguin, Noa Noa (1893), ed. B. Sagot-le

Garree, Paris 1954.

4- Texts that use Noa Noa as a source for suppos

edly biographical information are too numerous to

list. Rare explorations of the book's literary themes

and influences include N. Wadley, 'The Facts and

Fictions of Noa Noa', in Noa Noa. Gauguin's Tahiti, ed. N. Wadley, Oxford 1985, and E. Childs, 'Gauguin as Author: Writing the Studio of the Tropics', Van

Gogh Museum Journal, 2003, pp. 70-87 (74-78).

5. J. Loize, 'Post-script: The Real Noa Noa and

the Illustrated Copy', in P. Gauguin, Noa Noa. Voyage to Tahiti (1893), tr. J. Griffin, postscript by J. Loize,

Oxford 1961, p. 69. Wayne Andersen similarly states

that Gauguin 'lacked the essential strategies of rhet

oric' in his introduction to P. Gauguin, The Writings

of a Savage, ed D. Gu?rin, tr. E. Levieux, New York

1996, p. xviii.

277

JOURNAL OF THE WARBURG AND COURTAULD INSTITUTES, LXXI, 2008



278 PAUL GAUGUIN'S NOA NOA

long been recognized as a deliberate primitivist device, his writing has rarely been credited with the same self-conscious artifice.6

Gauguin's collaboration with Morice in I894-95 on a revised version of the text (hereafter denoted the Louvre MS)7 is regarded as a crucial witness to the opposition that he set out to explore between the 'exotic' and the European, and has long been the focus of critical debate. Essentially, the dichotomy between 'savage' and 'civilised' in Noa Noa is played out in two oppositional pairings: that between Europe and Tahiti in Gauguin's fictional narrative, and that between Gauguin the 'primitive' artist and Morice the 'civilised' poet in the composition of the revised text. In other words, the contrast between the 'intuitive' account of the painter and the 'learned' commentary of the poet was consciously designed to reflect the confrontation between Europe and Polynesia that is the central theme of the text. It is consistently assumed, however, that Gauguin positioned himself on the side of the 'primitive' in both of these pairings. Whether praising its vivid portrayal of his encounter with the 'exotic', or exposing it as an imperialist fan tasy, commentators repeatedly insist on the coherence-authentic or staged-of

Gauguin's account.8 However, just as the artist's original draft has been misread, I suggest, as naive

and transparent, so his partnership with Morice has been miscast as a rigid oppo sition between untrained simplicity and turgid sophistication. I have argued else where that, even in its most schematic state, Noa Noa is a complex literary text that both builds on and resists an established tradition of travel writing about Polynesia.9 Gauguin's role-play as the inexperienced partner in the collaboration with Morice was a knowing literary device that enabled him to set up a thematically effective opposition, while maintaining his 'primitive' credentials. By reconsidering their partnership, I aim to show that the opposition between intuition and erudition, supposedly embodied by painter and poet, is as unstable as the fluctuation between 'savage' and 'civilised' in the text itself.

Since the initial publication of Gauguin's Draft MS in I954-long after ex cerpts of the revised text had first appeared in I897-preoccupation with recovering the artist's 'true' voice has clouded analysis of his collaboration with Morice.'

6. Belinda Thomson offers a note of caution rare

among Gauguin's editors: 'we should guard against

accepting the writings of the self-styled "savage", how

ever frank they may seem, at face value'; P. Gauguin,

Gauguin by Himself, ed. B. Thomson, Boston and

London 2000, p. 7.

7. Paris, Mus?e du Louvre MS 125. First facsimile

edition: P. Gauguin and C. Morice, Noa Noa (1893

97), Berlin 1926. 8. Loize (as in n. 5), p. 70, enthuses that Noa Noa

'reveals to us the painter in contact with this new

country and with its spirit ... Let us not grudge him

his use of the word bonheur'; more critically, E. Hughes

(WritingMarginality in Modern French Literature, Cam

bridge 2001, pp. 28,36) protests that Gauguin 'claims

direct access to the primitive, assuming the mantle of

the sauvage' and 'is unequivocal about his incorpor ation into Polynesian culture'. Both writers overlook

the ambiguity of the relation between 'civilised' and

'savage' in Noa Noa.

9. L. Goddard, 'Gauguin's Guidebooks: Noa Noa

in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing', in Strange Sisters. Literature and Aesthetics in the Nine

teenth Century, ed. J. B. Bullen and F. Orestano, Oxford

2008 (forthcoming). 10. The major attempts to establish a chronology

for the successive versions have been Huyghe (as in n. 2.; written before the discovery of the Draft MS);

J. Loize, 'Gauguin sous le masque ou cinquante ans

d'erreur autour de Noa Noa\ in P. Gauguin, Noa Noa

(1893), ed. J. Loize, Paris 1966; Wadley (as in n. 4); and most recently, I. Cahn, 'Noa Noa: The Voyage to



LINDA GODDARD 279

Before his return to Tahiti in I895, it is clear that Gauguin approved (and, as we shall see, probably contributed to) an extended, edited version of his first account, which comprised some additional narrative episodes, a preface and an introduction, as well as poems by Morice. Each author kept a copy and made further additions independently. Back in Tahiti, Gauguin added illustrations and another, still un published text, Diverses choses (I896-97), to create the version now in the Louvre, while Morice continued to revise the narrative and add more poems to produce the version published by La Plume in I9OI-the only full version of Noa Noa to appear during Gauguin's lifetime, but which the artist never saw."

Rather than accepting the amorphous, collaborative and changing nature of this work, critics have focused instead on isolating the Draft MS of I893 as the only legitimate text, dismissing the joint Louvre MS as a 'first state' of Morice's I9OI edition.I2 As the extant versions of Noa Noa came to light in reverse order,

Gauguin's original text emerged like a palimpsest, prompting commentators to denounce later versions as corruptions of the artist's initial vision.I3 An 'irrespon sible would-be modern poet' and 'evil-doer of the written word', Morice stood accused of destroying Gauguin's 'savage' tale with his overwrought prose.I4 It was Nicholas Wadley-in his translated edition of the Draft MS-who first questioned these preconceptions regarding Morice's involvement, arguing that the poet's refined style suited Gauguin's desire to juxtapose the 'primitive' and the cultured and was therefore a vital component of the work as Gauguin had conceived it.I5

Although Wadley's reassessment of the partnership is convincing, he none theless reiterates the usual assumptions about the artist's lack of sophistication as a writer. A key motivation for engaging Morice, he suggests, is that Gauguin 'was not a writer himself', and was 'consistently attracted to young men intellectually more articulate than himself'.'6 In other words, he accepts at face value Gauguin's own distinction between his 'primitive' style and Morice's 'cultured' one. But Gauguin's description of the partnership reveals that his naivety was deliberate, not natural: 'On the subject of non-civilised people, it had occurred to me,' he wrote to the artist Daniel de Monfreid, 'to bring out the contrast between their character and ours, and I had thought it would be an original idea to write (myself quite simply as a savage) next to the style of a civilised man - Morice. So I conceived and directed the collaboration along these lines; and also, not being a professional, as they say, to get a sense of which of the two of us was better; the naive and brutal savage or the rotten civilised man.'"7 It is clear from this quotation that he was not

Tahiti', tr. M. Polizzotti, in Shackelford and Fr?ches

Thory (as in n. i), pp. 134-52. 11. P. Gauguin and C. Morice, Noa Noa, Paris

1901. Morice's manuscript, dated 1897, in Philadel

phia, Paley Library, Temple University, contains minor

variations to this published edition.

12. Loize (as in n. 5), p. 69.

13. As noted by Wadley (as in n. 4), p. 97.

14. C. Stuckey, 'The First Tahitian Years', in The

Art of Paul Gauguin, ed. R. Brettell, Washington 1988,

pp. 210-16 (210); D. Gu?rin, 'Foreword', in Gauguin, The Writings of a Savage (as in n. 5), p. xxxv.

15. Wadley (as in n. 4), p. 8.

16. Ibid., p. 101.

17. 'J'avais eu l'id?e, parlant des non-civilis?s, de

faire ressortir leur caract?re ? c?t? du n?tre, et j'avais trouv? assez original d'?crire (moi tout simplement en

sauvage) et a c?t? le style d'un civilis? qui est Morice.

J'avais donc imagin? et ordonn? cette collaboration

dans ce sens; puis aussi, n'?tant pas comme on dit du




using Morice's sophistication to compensate for lack of experience, but rather to show off his deliberately synthetic and 'primitive' technique to its full advantage. Far from being natural, his anti-literary style was deliberately designed to echo the 'primitive' qualities that he attributed to Tahiti, and to distinguish his narrative from the literary accounts of professional writers and art critics.

Attempts to understand the genesis and significance of Noa Noa are compli cated by uncertainty about who proposed the project in the first place, and the precise division of labour during the elaboration of the draft. Similarities between the Louvre MS and the La Plume edition indicate a common source, but no con sensus as to when and where the two authors made their respective copies has been reached.'8 In his monograph on the painter, Morice claimed full responsibility for initiating and developing the venture, noting that the inspiration for a 'literary composition on the themes of the painter' had come to him on the occasion of Gauguin's I893 Durand-Ruel exhibition, and that 'Gauguin welcomed my sugges tion enthusiastically. He quickly drafted the notes from which I wrote the chapters

where "the Narrator speaks"'.'9 However, his assertions crumble under further inspection, since Gauguin first announced his plan for a 'book on Tahiti', without

mentioning Morice, in a letter to his wife written before the exhibition took place.20 Moreover, his friend Daniel de Monfreid recalled him reading aloud recently com pleted chapters from Noa Noa in his Paris studio in I894 and apparently insisted that at that time 'he had no intention of taking on a collaborator'.21

Willingness to accept Morice's version of events-despite its unreliability stems from the assumption that Gauguin was a literary novice. In her recent analy sis of the partnership, for example, Isabelle Cahn suggests that he 'did not want to risk writing a book on his own' and preferred to 'entrust the composition of the final text to a professional writer'.22 In fact, writing for Gauguin was not a second ary activity, but a serious, ongoing commitment. In addition to Noa Noa, he edited satirical newspapers and produced memoirs, art criticism, and a large correspon dence. By I893, he had already published art criticism and produced two illustrated manuscripts: Cahier pour Aline (I892-93) and Ancien Culte mahorie (I893) .23

m?tier, savoir un peu lequel de nous deux valait le

mieux; du sauvage na?f et brutal ou du civilis? pourri';

Gauguin, letter to Daniel de Monfreid, May 1902, in

P. Gauguin, Lettres de Paul Gauguin ? Georges-Daniel de Monfreid, ed. A. Joly-S?galen, Paris 1950, p. 188

(original emphases). 18. See Wadley (as in n. 4), pp. 97-98.

19. 'C'est en ?tudiant les uvres expos?es rue

Laffitte en 1893 que me vint l'id?e d'une composition litt?raire sur les th?mes du peintre... Gauguin accueil

lit avec enthousiasme ma proposition. Il r?digea tr?s

vite les notes d'apr?s lesquelles j'?crivis les chapitres o? "le Conteur parle"'; C. Morice, Gauguin, Paris

1920, p. 187. 20. 'Je pr?pare en outre un livre sur Tahiti et qui

sera tr?s utile pour faire comprendre ma peinture.';

Gauguin, letter to Mette Gauguin, October 1893, in P.

Gauguin, Lettres de Gauguin ? sa femme et ? ses amis, ed. M. Malingue, Paris 1992, p. 253.

21. 'Il r?sulte de souvenirs tr?s pr?cis conserv?s

par Daniel de Monfreid que, quand Gauguin, alors

occup? ? r?diger Noa Noa, en lut ? celui-ci, dans son

atelier de la rue Vercing?torix, certains chapitres qu'il venait de terminer, le peintre... ne songeait nullement

? s'adjoindre un collaborateur'; J. de Rotonchamp, Paul Gauguin 1848-1903, Paris 1925, p. 129.

22. Cahn (as in n. 10), p. 94.

23. Gauguin's earliest published articles are 'Notes sur l'art - ? l'exposition universelle', Le Moderniste

illustr?, 4 July 1889, pp. 84-86; Notes sur l'art - ? l'ex

position universelle (suite)', Le Moderniste illustr?, 13

July 1889, pp. 90-91; and 'Qui trompe-t-on ici?', Le

Moderniste illustr?, 21 September 1889, pp. 170-71. The only edition of Gauguin's collected writings is



LINDA GODDARD 281 Denials of literary expertise are a constant feature of his writing, from his early published articles, composed 'without any literary pretension',24 to his late diatribe against art criticism, Racontars de rapin (I902), in which he claimed to 'talk about painting, not as a literary man, but as a painter' .25 Such protestations of naivety should not be taken at face value. They served to enhance his 'savage' status, in contrast to the critics and academicians whose stuffy erudition he mocked, and to avert accusations of literary ambition. For in order to justify his assertion that 'painters have no need of support or instruction from literary men' he needed, in his own writing, both to demonstrate his superior visual insight, and to demonstrate at all costs its 'anti-literary' character.26

Meanwhile, Morice had his own reasons for contrasting his literary expert ise with Gauguin's apparent naivety. When an excerpt from the Louvre MS

which passed to de Monfreid after the artist's death-appeared in the periodical Les Marges in I9IO, Morice was angered by claims that it represented, not only Gauguin's original text, but a 'simpler, spicier, more gripping' version of events than the edition published in 190I.27 Seeking to set the record straight, he protested to the editor that 'Noa Noa is mine ... much more than it is Gauguin's. I collabor ated with him as a poet or an artist collaborates with nature.'2S

Publicly, at least, Gauguin, on the other hand, limited Morice's contribution to the provision of poems. He did not announce the collaboration officially until I895, at which point he explained that 'I describe my life inTahiti and my thoughts on art. Morice comments in verse on the works I have brought back from there.'29 Yet Morice claimed not only that he wrote all the poems-which he obviously did-but that he played a decisive role in the creation of the 'biographical chapters' too. These, he claimed, represented a 'process of adaptation' which would make it 'difficult to distinguish between the element of confession [Gauguin's 'notes' or verbal communications] and the element of interpretation'.3? Designed to elevate his role from that of commentator to that of originator, this tendentious comment

The Writings of a Savage (as in n. 5) (first published in

French as P. Gauguin, Oviri, ?crits d'un sauvage, ed.

D. Gu?rin, Paris 1974), but the texts are abridged, and

their original form and structure not always respected. 24. 'Le Moderniste commencera dans son prochain

num?ro la publication d'une s?rie de notes sur les

beaux-arts ? l'exposition crayonn?s ... sans nulle pr? tention litt?raire, par Paul Gauguin.'; M. d'Escaurailles

(G.-A. Aurier), 'La critique sans phrases', Le Modern

iste illustr?, 27 June 1889, p. 76. Gauguin reused the

phrase 'sans nulle pr?tention litt?raire' with reference

to his text Racontars de rapin (1902), in a September

1902 letter to the critic Andr? Fontainas, in Gauguin

(as in n. 20), p. 311.

25. 'Je vais essayer de parler peinture, non en

homme de lettres, mais en peintre.'; P. Gauguin, Racontars de rapin (1902), ed. R. Huyghe, Paris 1951,

p. 16.

26. Referring to Racontars de rapin, he notes 'je me

suis efforc? de prouver que les peintres en aucun cas

n'ont besoin de l'appui et de l'instruction des hommes

de lettres.'; Gauguin, letter to Daniel de Monfreid, October 1902, in Gauguin (as in n. 17), p. 192 (original

emphasis). 27. 'C'est plus simple, plus savoureux, plus saisis

sant.'; Eug?ne de Montfort {Les Marges, May 1910), cited in Loize (as in n. 10), p. 97.

28. 'Noa Noa est de moi ... bien plus que de

Gauguin. J'ai collabor? avec lui comme un po?te ou

un artiste collabore avec la nature.'; cited ibid., p. 97.

29. 'Je raconte ma vie ? Tahiti et mes impressions d'art. Morice commente en vers l' uvre que j'en ai

rapport?.'; Eug?ne Tardieu, 'Interview de Paul Gau

guin' {L'Echo de Paris, 13 May 1895) in P. Gauguin,

Oviri, ?crits d'un sauvage, ed. D. Gu?rin, Paris, 1974,

p. 138.

30. '... m?me les chapitres de pure biographie

repr?sentent un travail de transposition o? la part des

confidences et la part de l'ex?cution seraient difficiles

? d?brouiller.'; cited in Loize (as in n. 10), p. 98.




refuses to elucidate precisely the division of labour, and casts a shadow of distrust over the practicalities of the partnership.

Nonetheless, whether complaining, like Loize, that 'Gauguin's initial idea was quickly betrayed by his overly literary companion', or affirming, like Wadley, that Gauguin 'approved the first phase of Morice's editing and writing', scholars uniformly attribute to Morice the majority of revisions to the Draft MS.3' Yet the only grounds for assigning authorship to the poet are his own questionable claims, and the apparently more 'literary' status of the reworked material. In fact, there are strong indications that Gauguin's contribution was more extensive than has been previously assumed. Contradicting Loize's assumption that, since he 'never corrected himself', the initial draft 'would have been scarcely altered by Gauguin if he had published it alone', annotated and pasted-in sections show that he revised and elaborated his prose before Morice's involvement was even mooted.32

What is more, the appended revisions indicate that Gauguin worked at devel oping a more sophisticated style. For example, he entirely rewrote a passage describing his efforts to paint a portrait of his striking neighbour (depicted in the i89i painting Vahine no te tiare). In the first version, he recorded simply his difficulty in persuading her to pose and his desire to capture 'the charm of a Maori smile'.

He then rewrote the episode at some length-pasting extra sheets into the margins -as though her elusive presence were as difficult to capture in words as it was in paint. In the second version, her features have acquired 'a Raphaelesque harmony in the meeting of their curves, the mouth modelled by a sculptor who spoke all the tongues of language and of kisses, of joy and of suffering; that melancholy made of bitterness blended with pleasure, of passivity dwelling within domination. A complete fear of the unknown.'33 Such revisions demonstrate that even at this early stage of the project, Gauguin too was capable of the kind of 'melodramatic' and 'excessive' editing generally attributed to Morice.34

While the pasted-in revisions are reproduced in published editions of the Draft MS as autograph Gauguin, other points where a brief reference or ellipsis indicates a theme to be developed are assumed to have been left for completion by Morice. This hypothesis is based on a false distinction between the supposedly 'biographi cal' aspects of the narrative and those that rely on extraneous literary material. In particular, the increased dependence, in the Louvre MS, on Maori legends derived from the two-volume ethnographic study Voyages aux iles du grand ocean (I837) by the Belgian consul Jacques-Antoine Moerenhout, has been laid solely at Morice's

31. '...la premi?re id?e de Gauguin fut vite trahie

par son trop litt?raire compagnon.'; ibid., p. 74;

Wadley (as in n. 4), p. 106.

32. '... le premier jet du Noa Noa de Gauguin aurait

?t? peu modifi? par lui s'il avait d? le publier seul. Il

ne se corrigeait gu?re.'; Loize (as in n. 10), p. 72.

33. '...ce charme d'un sourire Maori'; '...une

harmonie rapha?lique dans la rencontre des courbes, la bouche model?e par un sculpteur parlant toutes

les langues du langage et du baiser de la joie et de la

souffrance; cette m?lancolie de l'amertume m?l?e au plaisir, de la passivit? r?sidant dans la domination.

Toute une peur de l'inconnu.'; Gauguin (as in n. 3), p. 8.

34. Wadley (as in n. 4, p. 78, n. 61) refers to an 'ex

tended, rather melodramatic addition' in the Louvre

MS to Gauguin's account of his 1892 painting Ma nao

tupapau; Loize (as in n. 10), p. 105, describes Morice's

contributions as 'd?bordante' (excessive).



LINDA GODDARD 283

door. Yet, as Rene Huyghe first showed, Gauguin himself transcribed passages from this study, which he obtained in Tahiti, into Ancien Culte mahorie, and this was in fact the true source of the Polynesian myths that he claimed to have learned from his Tahitian mistress,Tehamana.35 In comparison to the Louvre MS, Gauguin

made relatively few borrowings from Ancien Culte mahorie in the Draft MS. Several of these are woven seamlessly into the initial narrative.36 One-describing the birth of the stars-is added on a separate sheet, and two others are indicated in note form, for later development in the Louvre MS.37

Citing one of these additional borrowings-a brief reference to the 'legend of Tefatou'-Loize concludes that Gauguin 'finds this incorporation of legends difficult and tiresome' and so 'entrusts it to the professional experience of his collaborator', without whose interference 'he would have known how to stick to everyday reality'.38 Similarly, referring to the appended passage on the 'birth of the stars',Wadley concurs that 'the decision to use material from Ancien Culte mahorie may have followed the initial conception of Noa Noa'.39 However, if this episode was added at Morice's instigation, the latter's decision to omit it from the La Plume edition is puzzling. What is more-in line with the broader field of nineteenth century travel writing-Gauguin clearly intended to mix life and legend from the start, since elsewhere he integrated excerpts from Ancien Culte mahorie into the plot without the need for subsequent revision.40 Many of the travel memoirs and colonial guidebooks that he consulted before composing Noa Noa likewise com bined personalised adventure stories with authenticating detail from Moeren hout.4'

In I893, in a letter to his wife, Gauguin referred to 'a book on my journey which is giving me a lot of work', corroborating his commitment to the rewriting of Noa Noa.42 If we accept that he made revisions to the text before employing a co-writer, then it is reasonable to conclude that he intended to expand all of the preliminary jottings himself as well. Furthermore, there is evidence that he operated in this way on other occasions, working from notes and creating expanded versions of earlier manuscripts.43 The convention that, whereas Gauguin authored all the

35- Huyghe (as in n. 2).

36. Gauguin (as in n. 3), p. 24, the 'legend of Roua

Hatou' ('l?gende de Roua hatou'); p. 27, describing Tehamana's prayer; p. 29, an 'old Maori saying' ('vieux discours maorie').

37. Ibid., p. 20, describing the birth of the stars;

p. 16, the 'legend of T?fatou' ('l?gende de T?fatou');

p. 17, 'description of the paintings Matamua Autrefois and Hi?a Maruru' ('description du tableau Matamua

Autrefois et de Hina Maruru').

38. '... cette intercalation l?gendaire lui para?t diffi

cile, fastidieuse. Il s'en remet ? l'exp?rience profession nelle de son aide ... Si le peintre s'en ?tait charg?, il

aurait su rester dans la r?alit? quotidienne.'; Loize (as in n. 10), p. 75.

39. Wadley (as in n. 4), p. 78, n. 59.

40. See n. 36.

41. For example, passages from Moerenhout are

included in Monchoisy (M. Mativet), La Nouvelle

Cythere, Paris 1888, and H. Le Charrier, Tahiti et les

colonies fran?aises de la Polyn?sie, Paris 1887. On

Gauguin's exposure to these texts, see Goddard (as in n. 9).

42. 'un livre sur mon voyage qui me donne beau

coup de travail'; Gauguin, letter to Mette Gauguin, December 1893, in Gauguin (as in n. 20), p. 255.

43. B. Danielsson and P. O'Reilly, 'Gauguin

journaliste ? Tahiti et ses articles des Gu?pes', Journal de la Soci?t? des Oc?anistes, xxi, 1965, pp. 1-63 (3-4) refer to notes from which Gauguin developed longer articles. Gauguin expanded and revised the section

'L'?glise catholique et les temps modernes', from

Diverses choses (1896-97) to form the 1902 manuscript

L'Esprit moderne et le catholicisme; see E. Childs,




attached sheets, the annotations were later developed by Morice alone is incon sistent. For example, the notes 'Description [of] landscape - Shore side - Picture of the woodcutter' are jotted on the page of the Draft MS in the manner of other indications such as 'Legend of Tefatou', which are normally ascribed to Morice.44 But in this case, at least, Gauguin's authorship is undisputed. No commentator has suggested that this passage-in which he used two additional sheets to describe a woodcutter at work-was not of his own invention.

Yet although it does not use material from Moerenhout, this episode (which relates to the I89I painting The Man with an Axe) is no less 'literary', and no more 'biographical', than the nightly conversations with Tehamana that frame the myth of the 'birth of the stars', or the fishing expedition that introduces the legend of the Polynesian Neptune, Roua Hatou. The sight of the woodcutter attacking the tree-whether or not it relates to Gauguin's personal experience-is the spring board for a celebration of Buddhist spirituality, and its superiority to Western materialism. Inspired by the fallen leaves, whose pattern resembles an 'Oriental vocabulary', spelling 'that word, of Oceanic origin: Atua, God', Gauguin thinks of Tathagata, for whom 'all the most brilliant splendours of Kings and their ministers are nothing but spittle and dust'.45 Rather than documenting daily life on the island, these editorial revisions are designed to enhance the central thematic opposition between the 'primitive' and the 'civilised'.

In a related-and much discussed-episode of the Draft MS, Gauguin takes on the role of woodcutter himself, and explicitly links his destruction of a tree to his transformation from a civilised European into a 'savage'. He tells how he was guided along a difficult mountain path by a young Tahitian man on an expedition to find wood for carving, confessing that the man's 'lithe animal body' and 'graceful forms' aroused in him 'a premonition of crime'. When the artist and his guide reach a plateau and begin to attack their chosen tree with an axe, Gauguin undergoes a transformation: 'I struck angrily,' he writes, 'and, my hands bloody, chopped with the pleasure of satisfying my brutality, of destroying I am not sure what. Well and truly wiped out indeed, all the old residue of civilised man in me. I returned at peace, feeling myself from then on a different man, a Maori.'46 On this occasion, notes in the margin, rather than attached sheets, develop the philosophical and thematic significance of this supposedly biographical event. Comments such as 'vice unknown among the savages' and 'desire to be for a moment weak, a woman', again highlight the contrast between the apparent freedom of Oceania and the constricting morality of 'civilised' society, from which his attack on the tree symbolically releases him.47

'"Catholicism and the Modern Mind":The Painter

as Writer in Late Career', in Shackelford and Fr?ches

Thory (as in n. i), pp. 243-59.

44. 'Description paysage - c?t? de la mer - tableau

du bucher?n.'; Gauguin (as in n. 3), p. 7.

45. '...vocabulaire oriental'; '...ce mot originaire d'Oc?anie Atua. Dieu'; '...toutes les plus parfaites

magnificences des Rois et de leurs ministres ne sont

que comme du crachat et de la poussi?re.'; ibid., p. 7.

46. 'corps souple d'animal', 'gracieuses formes', 'un pressentiment de crime', 'Je frappais avec rage et

les mains ensanglant?es je coupais avec le plaisir d'une

brutalit? assouvie, d'une destruction de je ne sais quoi. Bien d?truit en effet tout mon vieux stock de civilis?.



LINDA GODDARD 285

For most commentators, this episode marks Gauguin's transformation genuine or cynical-from European to 'primitive'. However, even after this event, he frequently undermines his 'savage' identity and ironically highlights the fragility of his 'conversion'. After a successful catch on a fishing expedition, for example, no sooner has he acquired 'native' skills, than he signals his difference by heralding his European nationality: 'clearly the Frenchman brought luck'. He immediately regrets his outsider status, however, when his companions reveal that his particular fishing technique is an omen of his wife's infidelity. Upon his return-in a parody of the wood-cutting episode-he adopts a position of feminised passivity that makes clear his failure as a 'savage': 'my vahine [mistress] handled the axe, chopped wood, lit a fire, while I got myself ready and wrapped up against the coolness of the night.

My share of the fish cooked. Hers raw.'48 In a reversal of gender expectations, his mistress adopts the role of the woodcutter, while Gauguin, the sensitive European, is left to protect himself against the elements.

In addition to these episodes in the Draft MS, at least one additional section of the Louvre MS was evidently based on a manuscript in Gauguin's hand, re produced in the I920 edition of Morice's monograph on the artist.49 Comparing this passage to two similar episodes also absent from the Draft MS, Wadley con cludes that 'it is reasonable to assume lost manuscripts for these also'. Indeed, their attribution to Gauguin is persuasive, though not so much because, asWadley suggests, 'they are convincing as having a basis in Gauguin's life in Tahiti', than because their theme of cultural disjunction relates them convincingly to other episodes in Gauguin's fictional narrative, such as the fishing trip or wood-cutting expedition.5?

In an account of a trip to the Grotto of Mara, for example, Gauguin again uses the theme of a journey-this time an outing to a cave-to convey insecurity and cultural difference. Accompanied byTehura (an alternative name forTehamana in the Louvre MS) and her friends, he proposes swimming to the far end of the grotto, but is met with 'long private chats followed by mysterious laughter' and left to proceed alone. As he continues, he is overcome by fear and repeatedly fails to reach his destination, which seems to retreat as he approaches. Far from penetrating the depths of the Tahitian psyche, he returns to find his companion's friends have lost interest, while she asks ironically whether he was afraid. Again, he emphasises his European identity, retorting: 'We French, we are never afraid'. In response, he notes, 'no sign of admiration from Tehura'.5' Once again, his inability to acclimatise is consciously foregrounded. With their literary turn of phrase and dialectical

Je revins tranquille me sentant d?sormais un autre

homme un Maorie.'; ibid., pp. 12,13.

47. 'L'inconnu du vice chez les sauvages.', 'D?sir

d'?tre un instant faible, femme.'; ibid., p. 12.

48. 'D?cidemment le fran?ais portait chance.', '...

ma vahin? maniait la hache fendait le bois allumait du

feu tandis que je m'appropriais me couvrais pour la

fra?cheur de la nuit. Ma part de poisson cuite. La

sienne crue.'; ibid., pp. 25, 27.

49- Morice (as in n. 19), p. 169.

50. Wadley (as in n. 4), p. 48.

51. 'De longs conciliabules ? l'?cart, puis des

rires qui m'intriguent.', 'Nous autres Fran?ais nous

n'avons jamais peur.', '...pas un geste d'admiration

deTehura.'; Gauguin and Morice (as in n. 7), pp. 139

40,141.




themes, Gauguin's revisions-whether in the form of appended sheets, notes in the margin, or unrecovered manuscripts-are based less on 'everyday reality', than on a complex interplay between masculine and feminine, civilised and savage, that confirms his Draft MS is far more literary than it at first appears.

Beyond these textual additions and revisions, another significant alteration that Gauguin made to the Draft MS was to introduce a visual dimension. Signifi cantly, the preface to the Louvre MS described Noa Noa as a book 'to be seen as well as read', a phrase omitted from Morice's final, unillustrated version.52 While Gauguin's illustrations are celebrated independently, their relationship to his text is usually thought to be largely fortuitous. The original arrangement of text and image is preserved only in the I926 facsimile edition of the Louvre MS and has been disregarded in previous and subsequent editions, obscuring the visual and verbal hybridity of the work and treating the images as a secondary, detachable feature.53

The perception that the illustrations were an afterthought has doubtless arisen because of their uneven distribution. A significant number were glued onto blank pages originally reserved for poems by Morice that never appeared. Others, however, executed directly on the page and interwoven with the narrative, were obviously an integral feature from the start.54 Amongst this group are a number of watercolours that were copied from Ancien Culte mahorie. In the process of trans feral, they were divorced from the episodes that they originally accompanied (which also made their way, separately, into the Louvre MS). As a result, it is usually assumed that that they were merely copied at random from Gauguin's earlier text.55 However, if Gauguin had been transferring images directly from Ancien Culte mahorie simply to fill space, then it would be hard to explain why he repeatedly split up illustrations appearing in pairs, when there was enough room to reproduce an identical juxtaposition on the empty pages of Noa Noa.56 Instead, subtle changes suggest that the process of transferal was carefully considered.

One such illustration shows a pair of androgynous figures gesturing from a hillside at the moon, while looking down at another figure below. In Ancien Culte mahorie, this illustrates the Polynesian legend of the 'birth of the stars' (Fig. i). According to this tale, derived from Moerenhout, two twin stars flee to avoid being

52. '? voir et ? lire'; ibid., p. i.

53. For example, the facsimile edition by G. Artur

(Papeete 2001) of the originally unillustrated Draft

MS is accompanied by the Louvre illustrations, and

the 1988 edition of the Draft MS by P. Petit (Paris

1988) is accompanied by the 'Noa Noa' woodcut suite.

The first transcript of the Louvre MS (Paris 1924) is

published with illustrations after Gauguin by Daniel

de Monfreid.

54. Wadley (as in n. 4), pp. 144-45, argues for the

relevance of the original illustrations on pp. 157, 71 and 75 of the Louvre MS to the accompanying text.

55. According to Huyghe (as in n. 2, p. 16), it is

only by recourse to Ancien Culte mahorie that 'the sig nificance of several watercolours in Noa Noa becomes

clear'. C. Fr?ches-Thory similarly argues that 'the

watercolours of the earlier manuscript faithfully illus

trate the text, whereas those of Noa Noa were added

after the fact and bear no direct relation to the written

page'; 'The Paintings of the First Polynesian Sojourn', tr. M. Polizzotti, in Shackelford and Fr?ches-Thory

(as in n. i), pp. 18-45 (43)- Likewise, Loize (as in n.

10, p. 79), describes them as 'plac?s au hasard'

('randomly placed').

56. Loize (ibid., p. 80) believes that Gauguin left

Ancien Culte mahorie in Paris with Morice, and there

fore did not copy the illustrations directly. However,

Wadley (as in n. 4, p. 98), notes that 'in one case at

least the size and silhouette are exact enough to

suggest tracing'.



LINDA GODDARD 287

separated and are pursued by their mother. Transferred to the Louvre MS of Noa Noa, the watercolour image is integrated instead into the account of Gauguin's journey with the woodcutter (Fig. 2).57 In this new context, the hillside setting recalls Gauguin's arduous trip to the plateau, and the androgynous figures evoke the 'graceful forms' that attracted Gauguin to his young male guide. Whereas previously stars filled the sky, in keeping with the theme of the legend in Ancien Culte mahorie, in the 'copied' Noa Noa illustration, they have appropriately been replaced by a tree, representing the goal of Gauguin's wood-cutting mission.

Another example is a watercolour depicting a woman and man on a rock by a stretch of water. In Ancien Culte mahorie, this image illustrates the legend of Roua Hatou, the god of the sea who massacred the entire human race with a flood, saving only one fisherman and his wife, who took refuge on 'an island or a mountain' (Fig. 3). Transferred to Noa Noa, the watercolour becomes another of the illustrations accompanying the tale of the woodcutting expedition (Fig. 4) .58 As the scale of both the mass of land and the stretch of water in the picture are fairly indetermi nate, they could be taken to represent, in their new context, the mountain which Gauguin and his guide have to scale to reach the tree, and the surrounding river in which the artist is purified along the way.

Whereas previously the two figures were clearly of opposite sex, but the same race, representing the fisherman and his wife, in the later version the contrast in skin colour indicates Gauguin and his Tahitian guide, while the markers of gender have been erased in keeping with the theme of androgyny in the episode: the 'woman's' contours have been hardened and her hair shortened, while the 'man's' back has been turned so that his chest and profile no longer reveal his sex. This alteration relates directly to the surrounding text in the Louvre MS, where Gauguin notes that 'Amongst nude populations ... the difference between the sexes is much less marked than in our climates.' Even for women, no longer protected from the elements, 'the sea air strengthens the lungs, and broadens the shoulders and the hips.'59

Such changes, although subtle, confirm the deliberate placement of the illus trations to the Louvre MS and are therefore a further indication of Gauguin's creative control over the redrafting of Noa Noa. Together with his textual revisions, they challenge Loize's dismissal of the Louvre MS as merely an intermediary stage in the 'corruption' that led to Morice's La Plume edition. Eager to correct the assumption-discredited by his discovery of the Draft MS-that the Louvre MS was the original version of Noa Noa, Loize over-compensates by insisting that the Draft MS and La Plume edition are 'the only two texts that count, from start to finish: what Gauguin proposed initially - and what Morice produced ultimately'.6o

57- Gauguin (as in n. 2), p. 42; Gauguin and

Morice (as in n. 7), p. 77.

58. Gauguin (as in n. 2), p. 37 ('une ?le ou une

montagne'); Gauguin and Morice (as in n. 7), p. 79.

59. 'Chez ces peuplades nues... la diff?rence entre

les sexes est bien moins ?vidente que dans nos climats

...l'air de la mer fortifie les poumons, ?largit les

?paules, les hanches'; ibid., p. 79. 60. '...les deux seuls textes qui comptent, du

d?part ? l'arriv?e: ce que Gauguin proposait primi tivement, ce que Morice en a fait finalement'; Loize

(as in n. 10), p. 105.



J4LAts , j s'GA <

l4te IS 4%- J%otJwn~ &vwt itS (Ji4744

fO w$ M tftt4 t6 /ct JI 4MI4A4tL tOt

V~4 &o &WsSL~aL ieAt J ao N -/ j t 3~~i c 56&ttto*f.

it UtV4N(44* G

I . Paul Gauguin, p. 42 of Ancien Culte mahorie (I 892-93), with watercolour illustration of 'the birth of the

stars' (RMN, C Herve Lewandowski)



4A

40 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~l

2. Paul Gauguin, p.77 of Noa Noa, Louvre MS (I893-97), watercolour illustration for the story of the

wood-cutting expedition (RMN, ? Herve Lewandowski)




~~~~~~~~~~~~~/

3. Paul Gauguin, P. 3 7 of A ncien Culte mahorie (i18 92-93), watercolour illustration of 'the legend of Roua Hatou' (RMN, ?D Herv6 Lewandowski)

His belief that the Louvre MS was not Gauguin's final version, but Morice's rough

draft, neglects the extent to which both Gauguin and Morice-separately--refined and adapted the original text.

Morice's rough draft was in fact not the Louvre MS, which he never saw, but

the unfinished fragments that he showed Gauguin before his return to Tahiti and

worked up into an 'incomplete, incorrect' draft in I895.61 It is this manuscript to

which he referred when he publicly insisted in his monograph that his was the

'true and only first draft', relegating Gauguin's 1893 manuscript to the status of

'notes', and dismissing any changes that the artist might have made to the reworked

material following his return to Tahiti in 1895.62 After Gauguin's departure, Morice

himself substantially altered his version of the collaborative text without the artist's

approval, producing a completely new introduction, eliminating a chapter and the

preface, adding many more poems, further refining the prose, and reordering the

sequence of events in the narrative. Meanwhile Gauguin, who, as we have seen,

played a significant role in editing the Draft MS to begin with-rewriting and

inserting further episodes-added to the Louvre MS not only the illustrations, but also a lengthy section called Diverses choses, which, as part of the same volume, could arguably be described as an appendix rather than a separate text.6

61. In a letter to de Monfreid defending her hus

band's authorship rights, Morice's wife notes that? in addition to the 1897 manuscript?she owns another, dated 1895, inscribed by her husband: 'premier manu

scrit, incomplet incorrect'. Letter from Elisabeth Morice to Daniel de Monfreid, 18 August 1921, cited

in J. Deville, 'Les deux textes de Noa Noa', in L'Ami du Lettr?. Ann?e litt?raire et artistique pour 1925, Paris

1925, pp. 112-24 (117). The whereabouts of this manu

script are unknown. An entry in Morice's unpublished journal for Thursday 2 July 1896 records that 'Hell

[Elisabeth] depuis hier copie Noa Noa'; C. Morice,



LINDA GODDARD 29I

. . S a S0X- -s~~~~~~~~~~~~.. .............,^e''',''. e?*t

IA4A J Jj%t zt4

0j ~ ~ Aot 'Ao ea~~~~c&o& tA4e~&Vt

. .* . .. ..-i. ...**-* .-n e-t.C . $t.4-l a' . , e'*ws 6440*1t

w Jr /t /' t'. af /4 44r 'Jcr,

. I Th~ IIUf X, dp.& At AZ- rL

I'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~4

4. Paul Gauguin, P79 of Noa Noa, Louvre MS (i893-97), with watercolour illustration for the story of the

wood-cutting expedition (RMN, Gerard Blot)

Petit Journal I, Paris, Mus?e du Louvre, Biblioth?que et Archives des Mus?es Nationaux.

62. Morice (as in n. 19, pp. 187-88), describes the

revisions that Gauguin approved as 'la v?ritable et

unique r?daction primitive' and refers to the possibility

that 'Gauguin, r?crivant de sa main Noa Noa, ait in

troduit ? son gr? des changements dans la r?daction

primitive'.

63. This is how Rotonchamp (as in n. 21, p. 133), defines it.



292 PAUL GAUGUIN'S NOA NOA After publishing sections of the reworked Gauguin material, and some of his

own contributions, in La Revue blanche in I897, Morice persisted in his campaign to find a publisher for the volume.64 Not satisfied with the changes that he had

made between I895 and I897, his private journals reveal sustained solo campaigns on the text up until I899, long after the collaboration had soured.65 In contrast, Gauguin gradually distanced himself from Morice's ongoing involvement in the project. In an I899 letter to the poet's wife, he made a final effort to control the balance of the partnership, noting 'verses are expected from Morice, I know, but if there are many in this book all the narrator's naivety will disappear and the flavour, the Noa Noa will lose its origins.'66 Whereas Gauguin not only approved, but no doubt contributed to, the text as it appeared in the Louvre MS, he discred ited the La Plume version, refusing Morice's offer to send IOO copies of this 'un befitting' ('hors de saison') edition.67 Wadley therefore goes too far in suggesting that 'the final form published in I9OI more or less corresponds to Gauguin's first conception'.68 It is clear that, by this stage, Gauguin felt that he had lost control over a collaboration that had been tightly conceived and monitored by him up until his departure from France, and in which he played a greater role than has previ ously been accepted.

When an impoverished Morice quietly sold the Draft MS-complete with pasted-in revisions-to the print-dealer Edmond Sagot in I908, he was finally obliged to qualify his claim to sole authorship, acknowledging that 'these pages are all and uniquely by the hand of Paul Gauguin'.69 Either we dismiss Morice's guarantee of authenticity as a marketing ploy, or, more persuasively, we are led to accept that Gauguin was capable of originating the idea for a literary text, and subsequently refining his own work. What is more, the perception of the Louvre

MS as a corrupted, intermediary state is exacerbated by the absence of a complete, illustrated edition, including all 'Morice' material, as well as Diverses choses.7? It was clearly Gauguin's intention from the start to develop his schematic Draft into a

64. P. Gauguin and C. Morice, 'Noa Noa', La

Revue blanche, xiv, 105,1897, PP- 81-103, and xiv, 106,

pp. 166-90. Gauguin received the first instalment

only, and copied some new poems from it into the

Louvre MS; Loize (as in n. 10), p. 84. On Morice's

attempts to find a publisher, see ibid., pp. 83-85.

65. After recording in his diary 'Aujourd'hui,

vendredi, 10 septembre 1897, j'ai achev? Noa Noa'?

corresponding to the date inscribed on the manuscript in Philadelphia, Paley Library, Temple University?a new phase of work (distinct from the correction of

proofs in 1897 and 1901) is indicated with ongoing references to the project, beginning 15 December 1898 and continuing in February 1899; see C. Morice, Petit

Journal, Philadelphia, Paley Library, Temple Univer

sity. 66. 'On attend des vers de Morice, je le sais, mais

s'il y en a beaucoup dans ce livre toute la na?vet? du conteur dispara?t et la saveur, le Noa Noa perd de son

origine.'; Gauguin, letter to Madame Morice, Feb

ruary 1899, in Gauguin (as in n. 20), p. 289.

67. 'J'avoue que la publication de Noa Noa tout ?

fait hors de saison n'a aucun int?r?t aujourd'hui pour

moi.'; Gauguin, letter to Morice, July 1901, ibid., p.

303. 68. Wadley (as in n. 4), p. 149.

69. '...ces pages sont tous et uniquement de la

main de Paul Gauguin'. Although he acknowledges

Gauguin's authorship, Morice still describes these

pages as merely 'notes' ('des notes'); Charles Morice, letter to Edmond Sagot, postmarked 30 October 1908, facsimile enclosed in Gauguin (as in n. 3).

70. The full text of Diverses choses (1896-97) is

available only on the CD-rom Gauguin ?crivain, Paris

2003. Published editions of Noa Noa (for example Paris 1980 and Brussels 1989 and 1994) frequently

reproduce the revised version of the chapters, but

omit the introduction and Morice's poems.



LINDA GODDARD 293 fuller text, supplemented by Morice's poems. Together with the illustrations, which extend throughout the volume into Diverses choses, these changes make the Louvre

MS of Noa Noa an entirely different work from either the Draft MS or the I9OI La Plume edition: very much Gauguin's own, and one that deserves to be studied in its own right.

Courtauld Institute of Art



Gauguin's Noa Noa

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