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H. J. LETHBRIDGE
The blue-eyed conqueror was also a sexual conqueror, as this poem intimates; Mayréna, unlike the monogamous Morès, had a superfluity of mistresses; since the Sedangs practised polygamy he felt justified in acquiring a large number of women, though it must be added, usually in serial form.
But a deeper motive attracted Europeans to what was then thought of as the uncivilised portions of the world, a motive that would explain Mayréna's various fugues: this was a quest for redemption, for the acquisition of a new identity, one cleansed of accumulated filth from the past. The adventurer, in this case, is a swimmer who leaves his clothes on the shore and strikes out through lustral waters toward a further island—a new destiny.
Arthur Rimbaud, with his adolescent precocity, affirmed ‘Ma journée est faite; je quitte l'Europe Je reviendrai, avec des membres de fer, la peau sombre, l'oeil furieux: sur mon masque, on me jugera d'une race forte. J'aurai de l'or: je serai oisif et brutal."59 In these lines the ambitions of Mayréna and Morès are summarised,60