I don't know where I bought this, but I'm sure I didn't spend more than a buck.
Paul Gauguin was one of the great initiators of Post-Impressionism,which makes him one of the fathers of Modern Art. Although he wasn't well regarded in his lifetime, now his works are sought after and prized.
Tired of city life in Paris, Gauguin left (as a forty-three year old), and went off to live in the South Pacific, specifically Tahiti. Pulling a "French Thoreau" I guess; going all the way to the So. Pacific.
The cover image from this copy is from a wood cutting from Paul's time during this, his first, visit.
At first he's disappointed. Europe has long fingers, and they've reached all the way to the Tahitian "metropolises". Eventually he gets further and further from the major towns, into the backwoods of Tahiti, which sound pretty fucking in the cut.
"Do you want to live in my hut for always?" is how he realized that the young beautiful native girl in his hut was now his wife. She was arranging food on a banana leaf.
The type set is strange in that the printed words may cover only slightly more than half the white-space on each page. But the tone, the angst, the feeling of leaving it all behind and fleeing for the tropics...that's the truth behind wanderlust. That's all there.
There's also the inevitable feeling of disappointment, since the world you're fleeing is too tempting not to replicate (it creates wealth), and thus infects anything of significant size.
Gauguin did it. He was one of the few that actually did it. This journal is breezy and quick, and as it unfolds, you can see his awestruck eye move into cynicism, and then into practicalities of life in the jungle.
It's one of the blueprints, if you're all about ditching your families and bills and running away to the jungle...at least philosophically, anyway.
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