One of the first 30 copies on colored vélin mahori paper (no. 4).
When Victor Segalen landed in Tahiti in 1903, he was a young naval doctor who had published almost nothing of the work that would make him one of the great twentieth-century travel writers. He arrived a few months too late: Paul Gauguin had died on 8 May 1903, at Atuona, on the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa.
In Tahiti and then in the Marquesas, Segalen discovered the traces Gauguin had left behind: his works, his belongings, his house, those who had known him, and above all the Polynesian world Gauguin had tried to see differently from other Europeans.
The interest of the Fata Morgana edition goes beyond the text originally published in 1904, since it brings together, around Gauguin and his final setting, several of Segalen’s writings related to Tahiti and Gauguin, some of which had until then been unpublished or difficult to find.
The texts were gathered, introduced and annotated by Annie Joly-Segalen and Dominique Lelong.