NOW AVAILABLE from Alondra Press

ISLAND JOURNEYS:
EXPLORING THE LEGACY OF FRANCE
A Collection of Travel Essays by Patti M. Marxsen

Many of us have a passion for islands, for the space around them, for the sound of water, for the sense of being away from the chaos of the modern world. But islands are not simply escapes... they are complex places steeped in culture and history. These essays explore seven islands in multiple dimensions.

Table of Contents

Ile de la Cite: The Island at the Center of the World

Lost in a Dream with Gauguin

Notes on Migration from the Isle of Death

Haiti’s Heavenly Waters

Rousseau’s Refuge

In Search of Lambaréné

Epilogue for an Emperor

From the Introduction
Islands occupy a special place in the modern psyche. To a large extent, the French have helped to create that fascination through exploration, colonization, missionary work, and war. Powerful personalities shaped by France have often become associated with islands. In this way, exotic islands have become a part of French culture.

Among the first to write a travel narrative, or récit de voyage, of island life was Father Jean-Baptiste Labat (1663-1738) whose Journey in the Islands of America fascinated the French. Louis Antoine de Bougainville circumnavigated the globe in 1768 and the book he wrote about his adventure, Voyage Autour du Monde, captured the popular imagination with images of a paradise called Tahiti. As the eighteenth century progressed, some islands became contested territories or cruel colonies that produced astonishing wealth. Haiti was the wealthiest French colony of all and Europeans born there were frequent guests at the French Court.

To some, islands feel open and exposed; to others, they are safe havens. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Ile St. Pierre in Switzerland’s Lake Biel became a symbol of refuge after a mere seven weeks there in 1765. For painter Paul Gauguin, islands were synonymous with exile. Napoleon—whose birth, marriage, and death are associated with islands—recognized the strategic importance of islands early on. On Québec’s Grosse Ile, the island becomes a cross-cultural checkpoint and gateway to a better life, a place to pause on a much longer journey.

Islands are self-contained worlds, but sometimes they encompass larger worlds. The Ile de la Cité floats in the center of Paris and yet it is part of the consciousness of metropolitan Paris and all of France. Lambaréné in Gabon, West Africa, as well, is an island whose identity has spilled beyond the riverbanks ever since a young doctor named Albert Schweitzer arrived there in 1913 with the intention of building a hospital.

The islands explored in these essays have accumulated culture and history like a sunken ship accumulates barnacles. They are far more than geography, having achieved the status of place. Each one calls out to the world with intriguing lessons in human experience and echoes of collective memory. After exploring a few islands, it becomes harder to think of islands as small and uncomplicated or, worse, as mere tourist destinations. This is not to say that islands do not offer a kind of escape from the pressures of modern life. As Rousseau discovered, the experience of knowing an island well allows us to escape to it “on the wings of imagination” from wherever we may be.

--Patti M. Marxsen