Special edition Regards From Lucy

An art book that takes us to the heart of William Ropp's Africa, a journey transcended by a poetic look at a continent with many facets.


Dreamed memory of Africa

The one whose stories illuminated my childhood was named Louis Jacolliot and it is in direct maternal line my great-great-grandfather.

A great traveler, he was in turn a judge in Tahiti and president of the Indian court of Chandernagor. During his short life (he was born in 1837 and died in 1890) he found the time to write about fifty works, as erudite as they were disparate; From an Indian version of Genesis translated from Sanskrit (after which he wrote "The Bible in India or the life of Lezeus Christina" which earned him a scathing blacklisting from the ecclesiastical authorities) to fantastic works - half novel and half travelogue - which take us from the Australian continent to the African jungles.

For the 8 years old child that I was then, titles such as "Le coureur des jungles" (1888) or "L'Afrique Mystérieuse" (1877) were enough to arouse, if not vocations, at least the desire to read. What they did; I devoured his works viewing to fall asleep scenes borrowed from "Journey to the country of the monkeys" or he described himself in the evening at the vigil around the campfire where haunting songs announced his very next consumption for the evening meal... Spirit of all things, he had assimilated a number of local dialects which allowed him to react promptly, to catch his boy by the collar and to administer him a nasty beating from his stick. Thus proving his ascendancy he avoided by this very fact to decorate their stomachs.

For the kid that I was then, his stories had a deep resonance and much later came the vocation.