"Often, before returning home, I would take a long and roundabout way and pass by the peaceful ramparts from where I had glimpses of other provinces, and a sight of the distant country"
About this Quote
Loti makes homesickness feel less like a destination and more like a ritual of delay. The sentence is built on detour: "Often" sets it up as habit, "before returning home" frames home as inevitable, and "a long and roundabout way" turns the walk into a chosen suspension between belonging and escape. It reads like the soft choreography of someone who can bear home only after he has first tasted elsewhere.
The key stage-set is the "peaceful ramparts" - a defensive structure drained of urgency, repurposed from war to reverie. From that elevated edge he gets "glimpses" rather than panoramas, suggesting desire kept safely incomplete. Loti doesn't stride into other lives; he samples them at a distance, letting the idea of other provinces do the work of intoxication. The "distant country" is less geography than mood: a horizon-line that flatters the imagination precisely because it remains unreachable.
Context matters: Loti, a naval officer turned novelist, built a career on travel writing that romanticizes the far-off while mourning its loss to modernity. This sentence performs that signature tension. He is not simply admiring scenery; he's managing the psychological cost of return. The detour becomes a buffer against domestic gravity, and the ramparts become a threshold where the self can pretend, briefly, that identity is still movable. The peace here isn't comfort - it's the quiet that lets yearning speak.
The key stage-set is the "peaceful ramparts" - a defensive structure drained of urgency, repurposed from war to reverie. From that elevated edge he gets "glimpses" rather than panoramas, suggesting desire kept safely incomplete. Loti doesn't stride into other lives; he samples them at a distance, letting the idea of other provinces do the work of intoxication. The "distant country" is less geography than mood: a horizon-line that flatters the imagination precisely because it remains unreachable.
Context matters: Loti, a naval officer turned novelist, built a career on travel writing that romanticizes the far-off while mourning its loss to modernity. This sentence performs that signature tension. He is not simply admiring scenery; he's managing the psychological cost of return. The detour becomes a buffer against domestic gravity, and the ramparts become a threshold where the self can pretend, briefly, that identity is still movable. The peace here isn't comfort - it's the quiet that lets yearning speak.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wanderlust |
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