Jules Boissière and the journey to the Orient
Jules Boissière and the trip to the East Conference by Hervé CASINI, Secretary General of the Museon Arlaten, The trip to the East is undoubtedly the typical example of the viatic genre in the nineteenth century from Châteaubriand and its Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem to Pierre Loti, obviously passing through Lamartine, Nerval, Fromentin, Gautier or Flaubert. Juels Boissière is therefore no exception to the rule, which is not surprising, he whose years of learning could show the desire for elsewhere and travel! Before even landing on the shores of Indo-Chinese space, Jules Boissière embarked in 1886, from Marseille, on the Melbourne of the Messageries Maritimes, blackened his notebooks with numerous notes, often revealing to us the vision of what our Félibre wants to avoid writing about his Voyage en Orient! Between act of humility not to tackle on its various stops the dreamed vision of an East already read through the eyes and the imagination of those who preceded it and annoyance to sometimes drift, almost in spite of himself, towards the clichés of the European in travel and humor transparaissant in some of his evocations, Jules Boissière invites us, from Marseille to Saigon via Pompeii, Port-Said, Aden or Ceylon, to share a look both original and familiar, fertile in amazing encounters.