Editing the nation's memory: textual scholarship and nation-building in ninteenth-century Europe

EUROPEAN STUDIES 26 EUROPEAN STUDIES An Interdisciplinary Series in European Culture, History and Politics Executiv...

Author: Dirk van Hulle | Joseph Theodoor Leerssen

195 downloads 1162 Views 3MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

EUROPEAN STUDIES

26

EUROPEAN STUDIES An Interdisciplinary Series in European Culture, History and Politics

Executive Editor Menno Spiering, University of Amsterdam [email protected] Series Editors Robert Harmsen, The Queen’s University of Belfast Joep Leerssen, University of Amsterdam Menno Spiering, University of Amsterdam Thomas M. Wilson, Binghamton University, State University of New York

EUROPEAN STUDIES An Interdisciplinary Series in European Culture, History and Politics 26

editing the nation’s memory: textual scholarship and nation-building in Nineteenth-century europe

Edited by Dirk Van Hulle and Joep Leerssen

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008

The editors wish to thank the European Science Foundation for funding the Exploratory Workshop ‘From Europe to nations and back again: Scholarly editing between the universal appeal of the classics and the national pasts’ (Amsterdam, December 2005), from which this volume has emerged. Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions de "ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents Prescriptions pour la permanence". The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence’. ISBN: 978-90-420-2484-7 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008 Printed in The Netherlands

NOTE FOR CONTRIBUTORS European Studies is published several times a year. Each issue is dedicated to a specific theme falling within the broad scope of European Studies. Contributors approach the theme from a wide range of disciplinary and, particularly, interdisciplinary perspectives. The Editorial board welcomes suggestions for other future projects to be produced by guest editors. In particular, European Studies may provide a vehicle for the publication of thematically focused conference and colloquium proceedings. Editorial enquiries may be directed to the series executive editor. Subscription details and a list of back issues are available from the publisher’s web site: www.rodopi.nl.

CONTENTS Authors in this volume

9

JOEP LEERSSEN Introduction: Philology and the European Construction of National Literatures

13

TEXTS BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT: EUROPEAN READERSHIPS, NATIONAL ROOTEDNESS DIRK VAN HULLE A Darwinian Change in European Editorial Thinking

31

GEERT LERNOUT The Angel of Philology

45

CASE STUDIES I EMERGING CANONS AROUND THE EUROPEAN RIM DARKO DOLINAR Slovene Text Editions, Slavic Philology and Nation-Building

65

PAULIUS V. SUBAČIUS Inscribing Orality: The First Folklore Editions in the Baltic States

79

PAULA HENRIKSON Scania Province Law and Nation-Building in Scandinavia

91

MARY-ANN CONSTANTINE Welsh Literary History and the Making of ‘The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales’

109

BERNADETTE CUNNINGHAM John O’Donovan’s Edition of the Annals of the Four Masters: An Irish Classic? 129

8

EUROPEAN STUDIES

JOÃO DIONÍSIO After the Lisbon Earthquake: Reassembling History

151

MAGÍ SUNYER Medieval Heritage in the Beginnings of Modern Catalan Literature, 1780-1841 169 PHILIPPE MARTEL The Troubadours and the French State

185

CASE STUDIES II EUROPEAN CROSS-CURRENTS: ENGLAND, GERMANY AND THE LOW COUNTRIES TOM SHIPPEY The Case of Beowulf

223

THOMAS BEIN Walther von der Vogelweide and Early-NineteenthCentury Learning

241

HERMAN BRINKMAN Hoffmann von Fallersleben and Medieval Dutch Folksong

255

JAN PAUWELS Private to Public: Book Collecting and Philology in Early-Independent Belgium (1830-1880)

271

MARITA MATHIJSEN Stages in the Development of Dutch Literary Historicism

287

JOEP LEERSSEN The Nation’s Canon and the Book Trade

305

AUTHORS IN THIS VOLUME THOMAS BEIN is professor for medieval German literature and ‘Kulturund mediengeschichtliche Textwissenschaft’ at the RWTH Aachen University. His areas of interest are twelfth- and thirteenth-century verse, Walther von der Vogelweide, scholarly editing, didactics, philology and the new media. HERMAN BRINKMAN is senior researcher at the Huygens Institute (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), The Hague (Netherlands). He works on Dutch literature of the later Middle Ages and has brought out editions of the Van Hulthem and Comburg miscellanies. At present he is preparing, in collaboration with Ike de Loos, a critical edition of the Gruuthuse Manuscript, the oldest and by far the richest collection of medieval Dutch poems and songs that have been preserved with their original melodies. MARY-ANN CONSTANTINE’s publications include Breton Ballads (1996) and, with Gerald Porter, Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song (2003). Since 2002 she has led the research project ‘Iolo Morganwg and the Romantic Tradition in Wales’ based at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. Her most recent book is The Truth Against the World: Iolo Morganwg and Romantic Forgery (2007). BERNADETTE CUNNINGHAM is Deputy Librarian at the Royal Irish Academy. She is author of The World of Geoffrey Keating (2000), and co-author with Raymond Gillespie of Stories from Gaelic Ireland: Microhistories from the Sixteenth-Century Irish Annals (2003). JOÃO DIONÍSIO is professor of Portuguese Medieval Literature and Textual Criticism at the University of Lisbon. He has brought out text editions of English and of Portuguese poetry, and is currently working on an electronic edition of the late medieval treatise Leal Conselheiro, by King D. Duarte (1391-1435). DARKO DOLINAR is head of the Institute of Slovene Literature and Literary Studies at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Ljubljana). He has published widely on literary theory and methodology, an on the history of literary scholarship in Slovenia. He was involved as editor or co-editor in the journal Primerjalna književnost (Comparative literature, 1978-1997) and the monograph series Literarni leksikon (1980-2001) and Studia litteraria (since 2004).

10

EUROPEAN STUDIES

PAULA HENRIKSON, currently a postdoctoral fellow at Uppsala University, is working on a project about the history of editorial scholarship in Sweden. Among her publications are the books Dramatikern Stagnelius (2004) and Textkritisk utgivning. Råd och riktlinjer (2007). She also works as editor in the editorial society Svenska Vitterhetssamfundet. DIRK VAN HULLE teaches English literature at the University of Antwerp. He is an editor of the Journal of Beckett Studies and Genetic Joyce Studies, and maintains the Beckett society’s Endpage (www.ua.ac.be/beckett). He is the author of Textual Awareness (2004) and Manuscript Genetics, Joyce’s Know-How, Beckett’s Nohow (2008). He is co-director of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project. JOEP LEERSSEN holds the Chair of Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam. His work on early cultural nationalism across Europe includes books like De bronnen van het vaderland (2006) and National Thought in Europe (2nd ed. 2008). GEERT LERNOUT teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Antwerp, where he is director of the Joyce Center. He has published books on Joyce, Hölderlin, Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’, the history of the book, the bible. With Vincent Deane and Daniel Ferrer he is editor of the Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo. He is a member of the Academia Europaea. PHILIPPE MARTEL is researcher at the CNRS and lectures in Occitan Civilisation at Montpellier University. His research focuses on Southern French cultural history, in particular aspects involving Occitan revivalism. Among his publications are Les Cathares et l’histoire (2002) and L’école française et l’occitan, le sourd et le bègue (2007). MARITA MATHIJSEN is Professor of Dutch Literature at the University of Amsterdam. She is mainly concerned with nineteenth-century literature and editorial scholarship. Among her books are De gemaskerde eeuw (2002), Nederlandse literatuur in de Romantiek (2004) and the standard Dutch introduction to textual scholarship Naar de letter (3rd ed. 2003). She leads a research group ‘The construction of the literary past (1750-1850)’. JAN PAUWELS has been on the staff of the Royal Library in Brussels as Chief Acquisitions and Keeper of nineteenth- and twentieth-century printed books from 2004 onwards. Currently, he is seconded as spokesperson to the federal Secretary of State for Transport and Mobility.

AUTHORS

11

TOM SHIPPEY has recently retired from the Walter J. Ong Chair at Saint Louis University. Among his publications are The Critical Heritage: Beowulf (co-edited with Andreas Haarder, 1998), and an edited volume of essays on The Shadow-walkers: Jacob Grimm’s mythology of the monstrous (2005). A volume of essays in his honour has appeared as Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myths (2007), which also focuses on the effects of the philological revolution inaugurated by Grimm. He intends to continue this theme with further publications on medievalism and nationalist philology. PAULIUS VAIDOTAS SUBACIUS is associate professor in literary theory at Vilnius University and a member of the Lithuanian Catholic Academy of Science. Member of the board of the European Society for Textual Scholarship. He has published numerous monographs, collections and articles in the areas of literature, history, religion, and academic politics. His main interest is in the biographical, social and religious context of textual production. He is now working on an edition of Antanas Baranauskas’s poetry. MAGÍ SUNYER I MOLNÉ is lecturer in Catalan literature at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona (Catalonia). He has published poetry, fiction and a contemporary tragedy. Among his scholarly work is a collection on the reprinting of classic Catalan texts, as well as numerous studies on aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catalan literature, with particular emphasis on Modernism and national myths. His book Els mites nacionalistes Catalans appeared in 2006.

EUROPEAN STUDIES 26 (2008): 13-27

INTRODUCTION PHILOLOGY AND THE EUROPEAN CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL LITERATURES Joep Leerssen The Language/Literature/Nationality Paradigm Culture lies at the heart of our idea of the nation-state, and thus at the heart of our idea of Europe’s national diversity. While the nation-state derives the state’s constitutional sovereignty from a specifically national mandate, ‘the nation’ invoked is not only a social idea (the body politic joined in a citizenry) but crucially also a cultural one – those people sharing a common set of historical memories and a common culture. Culture, in turn, has from the Romantic period onwards been insistently linked to the idea of a shared language, and considered as expressing itself most authentically in the oral and written literature in that language (Leerssen 2006b). Thus, the national specificity of the European states (and, in the general perception, one of the main reasons why the European Union, though similar in demographic and economic size, can never be as seamlessly integrated as the USA) resides in their cultural/linguistic foundation. While this idea is so universally current as to be almost a matter of self-evidence, it is in fact the result of a scholarly paradigm which, though apparently highly academic in nature, the province of the rarefied realm of philology, turns out to have been intricately intertwined, ever since its incipience around 1800, with the rise and dominance of European nationalism. This volume explores the rise of this philological model of nationalities defined in their languages and expressing themselves in their literatures.

14

European Studies

We tend to view Europe’s literary landscape implicitly as a set of various literatures in different languages; each European language expressing itself in its ‘own’ literature. By the same token, each European literature so defined forms the nation’s collective memory, its premier cultural inheritance with its own history, its own inner consistency linking texts from succeeding centuries by different authors into a distinct corpus and tradition. Language and literature thus closely intertwined form the very backbone of the nation’s identity and its persistence across the generations. The template of national specificity projected onto Europe’s literary traditions is already signalled by the fact that they are periodized, not according to general historical faultlines (i.e. the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press, or the invention of woodpulp paper and other technological advances in printing and book production between 1800 and 1840), but along country- or language-specific lines. Often the major historical caesuras of the literary traditions are linked to the great linguistic shifts. Anglo-Saxon (or Old English), Middle English and Early Modern English literature are distinguished from each other on the basis of the major transitions and discontinuities that divide the linguistic forms of Old, Middle and Early Modern English. The great difference between Malory and Spenser, it would seem, is that one wrote before, the other after the Great Vowel Shift. Similar linguistically-based periodizations can be noted for other languages like Gaelic and German. This has something to do, obviously, with the competence of the philologist studying the texts in question, much as in literary studies it is a truth universally acknowledged that the only way to understanding a text is by reading it in the original: reading the literature requires knowing the language. As a result, our education system has traditionally linked the two in the philological model of the Siamese Twins called Lang and Lit. The Lang-Lit model has long been a serviceable template for academic work, but its limitations have over the last decades become increasingly obvious. It had long been realized that many authors and corpuses are ambiguous in their linguistic appurtenance: Milton writing in Latin and English, Nabokov in Russian and English. The tradition of Medieval Latin and Neo-Latin; the cases of authors from bilingual countries rooted in more than one linguistic tradition (Ireland, Belgium, Finland, Switzerland); the case of languages stretching over different societies, different continents even, with different social contexts and literary traditions (French, English, Spanish): all that is an ongoing reminder that

INTRODUCTION

15

the criterion of language is not as universally categorical for the classification of literature as it would seem at first sight. In the last decades, new disciplines and specialisms have accordingly grouped literary corpuses in new ways, often combining texts from different languages into newly-constituted aggregates: from area studies and postcolonial studies to ‘period’ studies. It is now readily admitted that Chaucer and Boccaccio have, across the English-Italian linguistic divide, more in common than Chaucer and Galsworthy, or Boccaccio and D’Annunzio. At the same time it has become increasingly obvious that the Lang-Lit paradigm is of relatively modern vintage. Although our literary histories all work on its basis, and accordingly trace a single national literature back to its earliest beginnings in the medieval vernacular (thus making it seem that these traditions always had an autonomous identity for as long as we can retrace the written evidence), the insight is now gaining ground that this is in fact an anachronistic retroprojection. The meaning of the term ‘literature’ was wholly different before Romanticism, its old sense being perhaps best illustrated by William Godwin’s definition, in the Inquiry into Political Justice of 1793, of literature as ‘the diffusion of knowledge through the medium of discussion, whether written or oral’. Similarly, the compartmentalization of literature on the basis of language was wholly different the further we travel back in history. It is safe to say that ‘national’ or language-based categorizations of literary corpuses were unimportant in the seventeenth century, let alone earlier. The word literature was often used as a singulare tantum, in the sense of learning as expressed in writing, and nationally or linguistically a-specific. At most there was a distinction between the literature of classical antiquity and that of modern times, but the literary canon was blithely multilingual and universalist, embracing Homer, Virgil, Dante, Cervantes and Shakespeare. As Jorge Luis Borges phrased it, this classical view saw the distinction between people and centuries as incidental, and literature was always in the singular.1 The question of nationality and universalism in pre-Romantic European literature is of course enormously complex, and can only be sketchily outlined here. By all accounts, however, something like a paradigm shift occurred in that period between 1760 and 1840 that was marked by a number of concurrent revolutionary changes – such as the democratic 1 Borges 1930: ‘Para el concepto clásico, la pluralidad de los hombres y de los tiempos es accesoria, la literatura es siempre una sola’.

16

European Studies

revolutions of 1776 and 1789, the end of the ancien régime, the Industrial Revolution (which affected book production as much as other aspects of life) and the rise of Romanticism. For our present purpose, it is useful to draw attention to two further paradigm shifts: the rise of comparatism, and the rise of historicism. By comparatism I mean that the philosophical and anthropological questions which had been addressed in the abstract in the Enlightenment decades (the study of Man, the origin of Language, the meaning of History) was turned inside-out and became a comparative study of differentiations: anthropology became a comparative-ethnographical study of the differences between races and societies; the study of the origin of Language and Culture was, following Herder, turned into a comparative calibration of the diversity between languages and between cultures; and the philosophical history-writing of Hume, Voltaire and Gibbon (what Bolingbroke called ‘Philosophy teaching by example’) abandoned its political emphasis on succeeding dynasties and rulers, and anchored itself in the demotic track record of the nation’s collective experience (cf. generally Leerssen 2006). Historicism, for its part, was the investigation of the past, not as a philosophical exemplum or as antiquarian curio, but as a challenging expansion of one’s mental and cultural frame of reference, and as a continuous dynamics of processes of growth, decay, conflict and resolution. If any continuity existed between past and present, it was not so much a moral or philosophical one as a national-anthropological one, showing the nation’s evolution from primitive origins to modern maturity (or decay), and stressing the need not to lose the purity of the nation’s primeval roots and energies from sight amidst the complexities of the present (cf. generally Leerssen 2004a and 2004b). These developments all of them reflect the belated influence of Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova of 1724. A gnomic, wayward and difficult book (which it unavoidably was, since it had no pre-existing model to rely on), the Scienza Nuova had spelled out the agenda for something which Vico called by the old-fashioned Greek word for ‘erudition’, filologia, but which he gave a very specific new meaning by opposing it to philosophy. Whereas philosophy, for Vico, meant the investigation of the truths that are greater than man (and therefore, in the final analysis, not completely knowable by man), philology investigates the certainties that are a product of the human mind, the factual or ‘constructed truth’ (verum factum), and which man may understand as fully as a watchmaker knows the clocks he has made. Philology dealt, then, with the sum total of man-

INTRODUCTION

17

made certainties, all things by which humans make their world recognizable, knowable and predictable – which is tantamount to saying that philology deals with culture. Aspects of culture are, for Vico: mythology (a deferential way of saying that religion, too, is a cultural praxis providing certainties), history, manners and customs, law, literature and language. Vico was among the first European thinkers to formulate the idea, so popular from Romanticism onwards, that these aspects of culture are all derived from a single primitive ethnic self-invention and self-articulation. Law-makers, poets and priests have aboriginally one and the same function. It is for that reason that ancient laws jointly address civic and theological issues, and are often couched in a poetic language; it is for this reason that mythology is so often expressed through the poetic medium of epic. And that in turn means that all the branches of learning dealing with these matters can be jointly linked (we would call it ‘interdisciplinary’ nowadays) in an endeavour that Vico already called philological. Although Vico himself remained obscure during his lifetime and for a long time after his death, and became famous only in the 1820s, his influence was felt everywhere. The classical scholar August Boeckh defined philology without once mentioning Vico, but in a sweeping anthropological phrase that would have delighted the author of the Scienza nuova: as the Erkenntnis des Erkannten, the ‘understanding of our understanding’.2 The spread of Vico-style philology triggered many important scholarly developments. For one thing, it resulted in the nineteenth-century structural-comparative study of mythology. Its concerns are also noticeable in the new discipline of legal history (and legal historicism) as opened up by Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779-1861), the great legal historian and mentor of young Jacob Grimm. Legal history, nowadays a fairly marginal specialism, was at the centre of jurisprudence before the introduction of Napoleonic legislation in Europe: the full record of legal wisdom constituted the tradition that was invoked for the settlement of disputes, and therefore the record-keeping of ancient case law was at the heart of the legal profession and made it the lodestar for textual sourceediting in the course of the eighteenth century. The major philological 2 On the conceptual history of ‘philology’, including the impact of Vico: Hummel 2000. On Vico: Berlin 2003. The recursive phraseology ‘Erkenntnis des Erkannten’ aptly indicates the self-reflexive dimension of a Vicoesque notion of culture and of philology (as both a praxis and a reflection on that praxis), rendering it systemically complex and autopoetic.

18

European Studies

source editions of the nineteenth century would as a result often have a jurisprudential slant or interest. In this connection the Swedish edition of old law texts (Sweriges gamla lagar) by H.S. Collin and C.J. Schlyter (1827ff.) deserves mention, which had, for a spin-off effect, a dictionary of old Swedish (Ordbok till samlingen af Sweriges gamla lagar, 1877) by way of a lexicographical companion volume. The established tradition of legal historicism gained new impetus because laws, in the Romantic view as represented by Savigny, were not just instruments for conflict management, but expressions of the morality of the nation-at-large. It was this anthropological view which led scholars (like Savigny’s erstwhile student and assistant Grimm, who considered legal history an integral part of Germanistik) to focus on the cross-currents between law, moral outlook, vocabulary and literary expression (cf. Schmidt-Wiegand 1987). This organicist and Vicoesque focus can also be noticed in the enormous upsurge, between 1800 and 1830, of philology sensu stricto, that is to say: the structural-comparative and historicist study of variants in languages, texts and literatures. In other words, the rise of the Lang-Lit paradigm of national literatures and national literary histories can be dated from this period. From Reinventory to Reinvention: The Institutional Context None of this would have been possible merely as a result of intellectual ratiocination. The rise of philology was also prepared by a slow but accelerating process of textual availability and anamnesis. By the mideighteenth century, much of the medieval textual record of Europe’s vernaculars had fallen into oblivion or neglect. To be sure, this neglect was not total: there were bibliophiles and antiquaries who collected, studied and/or printed medieval literature – one thinks for example of the Marquis de Paulmy, whose private library was the core of the present-day Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, and whose collection Mélanges tirées d’une grande bibliothèque appeared in no less than 69 volumes between 1779-1788. Other examples include the antiquary and librarian Legrand d’Aussy; or the great Scandinavian collector Arni Magnusson, and the editions of Minnesang and Nibelungen material by Bodmer and Breitinger in 1757. To some extent, such activities were in the antiquarian mode, and can be aligned with ballad editions like the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry by Bishop Percy (1765); to some extent, again, they belong to a tradition of

INTRODUCTION

19

ecclesiastical and legal scholarship that had always been concerned with collecting, collating and compiling ancient source material. Literary compendia and repertories in the eighteenth century can be encountered as part of the church-historical and hagiographical school of the Bollandists and Jean Mabillon, the founder of diplomatics (1632-1707), and above all, as part of the legal-historical method, so influential all over Europe, of Luigi Muratori (1652-1750), the founder of modern historical source criticism and a lodestar of text-editorial method. It would be simplistic, then, given all these scholarly activities, to pretend that the philologists of the Romantic generation ‘invented’ the historical method or the craft of text-editing, or even that it was they, and they alone, who rediscovered the Middle Ages after centuries of total amnesia. The editorial work of Correia da Serra in Portugal is in many ways the continuation of an older eighteenth-century pattern. In NorthWestern Europe, the antiquarianism of Iolo Morganwg and Theophilus O’Flanagan (including their Macphersonesque penchant for fabricating evidence where needed) forms the stepping-stone for the more philological work of Thomas Price and John O’Donovan. While in most of Western Europe, philology was professionalizing, the edition of oral material in the Finnish-Baltic area remained, well into the century, the work of amateur investigators like Elias Lönnrot and Krisjanis Baron. But on the whole, all parts of Europe participate, whatever the variables of the local situation, in an undeniable qualitative and quantitative leap after 1770, and again after 1800, and it involved the matter of availability. Texts were becoming available to an unprecedented degree. The eighteenthcentury scholars and antiquaries had worked on the basis of textual material that was often in private hands. The large ballad MS from which Bishop Percy published the Reliques was a fortuitous find (cf. Groom 1999); the grande bibliothèque of Paulmy and the collection of Arni Magnusson were privately-owned. At best, text editions made use of semi-public collections in the hands of monarchs, municipalities or monasteries, to which it was a privilege to enjoy access. Bodmer’s first tentative edition of the Nibelungen material, for instance, was based on a manuscript spotted in the private collection of Count Hohenems two years previously. Manuscript-collecting was a pursuit for the educated elite. We see antiquaries like James Ussher, Sir James Ware, and Edward Lhuyd acquire important collections of Gaelic manuscripts between 1620 and 1720; we also see how after their deaths, these collections are either sold

20

European Studies

off to other collectors (giving rise to named MS corpuses such as the Sebright MSS or the Stowe MSS), or else acquired by corporate bodies such as Trinity College Dublin (in the case of the Ussher MSS) or the Bodleian (Lhuyd was curator of the Ashmolean).3 Once materials drift into institutional ownership, they usually stay there; the instances of university libraries selling material to private collectors are rare indeed. There is then, a tendency over the eighteenth and nineteenth century for private collections to be siphoned off into the institutional, public sphere. The manuscript holdings of the British Library still carry the names of the original private-individual collections which its absorbed in these decades: Royal MSS, Stowe MSS, Cotton, Rawlinson. (The sole surviving manuscript of Beowulf, first spotted in the late eighteenth century, is accordingly still known by its old catalogue marker ‘Cotton Vitellius’). On the Continent, this public siphoning of MS collections abruptly accelerates after 1770s with the break-up of the old monastic collections. The trend can be first spotted with the suppression of the Jesuits in the 1770s: their library in Lisbon becomes the core, eventually, of the Lisbon university library, and in the process important medieval manuscripts like the Cancioneiro da Ajuda come to light (cf. Michaëlis 1904). A similar process occurs when in the Holy Roman Empire, monastic fiefs are secularized and mediatized as a result of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803. Out of the monasteries of Bavaria, an enormous damburst of manuscript material is concentrated into the Munich court library around 1803, which as a result almost overnight became the most important repository of medieval literature after Paris, Vienna and the Vatican (Hacker 2000). The Carmina Burana of Benediktbeuren surfaced in this process. Likewise, the Comburg MS of the Reynard the Fox fable was discovered when that monastery was dissolved and its library was relocated to, and re-inventorized in, the Württemberg library at Stuttgart (Brinkman & Schenkel 1997). All this was dwarfed by the impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic conquests. The Royal Library of Paris first became a National, then an Imperial Library, and everywhere the conquering French armies nationalized church establishments and sold off their property; initially into private hands, from where the manuscripts prised loose 3 The vicissitudes of Irish MSS can be gathered from the introduction to Hancock et al 1865-73; Love 1961; Ó Muraíle 1996.

INTRODUCTION

21

from their century-old sequestration, drifted into the public domain over the following decades. And even where libraries were not pillaged or sold off (it was this that brought to light material as diverse as the medieval Dutch Servatius Legend, by Veldeke, and the ancient Slavic Gospel Book of Rheims), the French occupier would appoint officials in a bureaucratic re-structuring which again often triggered re-inventories and rediscoveries. The Biblioteca palatina in the Vatican Libraries is a case in point: the old Court Library of the Palatinate, taken from Heidelberg as war booty in the 1670s and donated to the Pope, was found around 1810 (by Gloeckle and Görres) to contain important treasures of medieval German literature (cf. Görres 1955), and was eventually donated by the Pope to Heidelberg University Library as part of the post-Napoleonic settlements in 1818. Another case in point involves the appointment of Angelo Mai (1782-1854) to the Biblioteca ambrosiana in Milan in 1811, which resulted in the discovery important manuscript remains, Latin and even Gothic. One of the groundswell-changes of the eighteenth century involves the development, traced by Jürgen Habermas (1990[1962]), of a ‘public sphere’. In the professionalization of the pursuit of philology, this shift makes itself clearly felt. The old patrons (like Kopitar’s patron Baron Zois in Slovenia,4 or the church seminaries that spawned the priestscholars like José Correia de Serra, Josef Dobrovský and Angelo Mai) were ceding their role to a new generation of university-trained and academically-employed scholars; as a result, a good deal of generational rivalry is seen where young generations are always ready to hurl the reproach of amateurish dilettantism at their elders, thus taking the newlyestablished high ground of a rigidly scientific methodology. That scientific high ground goes together with a professionalization, that is to say: a shift of philology from private hobby to publicly-funded discipline.5 The succession of philologists in their various generations is always one of repudiation, driven by an ongoing urge to outgrow the credulity, untrustworthiness and amateurish imprecision of the older generation. What has not yet been traced in the cultural shift from private to public in the emergence of the modern state is the transfer of ancient 4 Kopitar (1780-1844) was, with Dobrovský (1723-1859), the founder of modern Slavic studies. On Kopitar and Zois, see Merchiers 2005. A good deal of interesting material on Dobrovský is given in Keenan 2003. 5 An intermediary stage should not be overlooked: that of the sociable association of private scholars into city academies or learned societies.

22

European Studies

literary material into that public sphere – a transfer which took place everywhere, which made medieval vernacular literature accessible to an unprecedented degree and made the entire enterprise of the emerging philology possible in the first place. Practically all the great philologists of this generation started their career as archivists and librarians, were part of this vast, slow landslide of texts from private hands into public ownership. After all, what else does the word publish – which we so thoughtlessly use for the transition from handwritten to printed, from single- to multiple-copy – mean than making a text public? Nation-Building, National Canons, National Rivalry In many cases, the investigation and publication of the roots of European vernacular literatures was part of a nation-building process which would in many cases lead to full-fledged nationalist, autonomist or separatist movements. The many ‘minority’ literatures of Europe find their roots and ambitions in these romantic-historicist decades: in Catalunya, on the Balkans and in the Baltic. As such, editorial and philological scholarship (or folklore research, in those cases where literary material was transmitted orally rather than in writing) forms part of what Miroslav Hroch (1985) has identified as the incipient ‘phase A’ of national movements.6 How these incipiently national movements relate to regional trends elsewhere (e.g., the relations between Celtic philology in Brittany, in Wales and in Ireland, or the relations between the revival of Jocs Florals in Catalan Barcelona and in Occitan Toulouse) remains a challenging task for future researchers (cf. Leerssen 2006b). And even in old-established states, the rediscovery of the literary past tended to intensify national feeling, especially since many of the literary heirlooms that were brought to light were contested between different modern countries. Michel Foucault’s dictum (1979) that ‘first of all, texts are objects of appropriation’ has no clearer demonstration than the publication of the vernacular classics that occurred in these decades. The discoveries or rediscoveries occured when Europe was witnessing the break-up of the ancien régime and its reconstitution, following the bulldozings of Napo6 In Hroch’s analysis, national movements will typically start with an intellectual rediscovery of the nation’s culture and traditions (phase A), will then move into a phase of social assertions and demands for recognition (phase B), and then into a phase of militant separatism (phase C).

INTRODUCTION

23

leon, into a system of national states. However, the texts themselves reflected a Europe which in the early Middle Ages was still organized in tribal lordships, and in the later Middle Ages in feudal realms. The reappropriation of those texts into a new context thus presented many occasions for anachronism or categorical mismatch. The most outstanding example is the case of Beowulf (cf. Shippey & Haarder 1998): a text set on the North Sea coast between Northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia, reflecting common-Germanic narrative and mythological themes, written in Anglo-Saxon, produced and kept in England, and first published in Copenhagen (1815) as a Poëma Danicum dialecto Anglo-Saxonica. What ensued was not just a long scholarly and editorial debate on the verbal substance and linguistic appurtenance of the text, but also a long tug-of-war as to who could claim Beowulf as ‘their own’: Danes, English, or even Germans (who considered Beowulf to reflect the tribal culture of Angles and Saxons then still established on ‘German’ soil, prior to their British de-Germanization). Relations between Nordic and German philologists7 were famously soured by the contested territory that is, almost symbolically, Beowulf’s ancestral setting: Schleswig-Holstein, over which two German-Danish wars were fought in the course of the century. Nor is Beowulf an unusual case. The French Chanson de Roland, immediately hailed as ‘notre véritable épopée nationale’, was retrieved from the Bodleian library.8 Medieval Portuguese chronicles were found in Paris. The first edition of the Dutch Caerle ende Elegast was undertaken by the German poet/philologist Hoffmann von Fallersleben, and appeared in Breslau in 1824. The rise of Provençal and Spanish medieval philology was famously influenced by German philologists from the school of Grimm (who himself had edited a Silva de romances viejos in 1815). The figure of the Grimm-adept Friedrich Diez (1794-1876) looms large over the study of medieval Provençal.9 German-French rivalry, both geopolitically and academically, was no less bitter than German-Danish rivalry, and the strong-arm attitudes of the German philologists with their ‘critical’ Lachmann-style editing techniques were much resented in 7 Cf. Leerssen 2006a: 180-185; Schmidt 1974 [1885]. On the national chauvinism of Grimm and the Germanisten, also Fürbeth 1999, Netzer 2006. 8 The phrase ‘notre véritable épopée nationale’ is from a review in Le Monde, quoted in the introduction to Michel 1869 [1837]. See also Brandsma 1996; Redman 1991; Taylor 2001. 9 Espagne & Werner 1990; Gumbrecht 1986; Ridoux 2001.

24

European Studies

France. There was some friction in Provencal studies between the nativist influence of François Raynouard (1761-1836) and the German influence of Diez; and in the field of French epic poetry, the great medievalist and French patriot Paulin Paris (1800-1881) contrasted the present-day pre-eminence of German philologists with the erstwhile primacy of French medieval literature: Nous avions autrefois de grands poèmes, qui durant quatre cents ans ont fait la plus importante étude de nos pères. Et durant ce période, l’Europe entière, Allemagne, Angleterre, Espagne et Italie, n’ayant rien à nous opposer de comparable, ni dans leurs fastes historiques ni dans l’expression de ces fastes, s’est disputé la gloire secondaire de les traduire et de les imiter.10

This rivalry was exacerbated when literary materials were by their nature pre-national or trans-national, and could therefore be ‘claimed’ (Paris’s possessive and antagonistic use of the first-person plural is telling) by many heirs: themes like Reynard the Fox, the Charlemagne- and Roland cycles, Arthurian material. Thus the political rivalries and geopolitics of nineteenth-century Europe (involving disputed areas such as Schleswig-Holstein or AlsaceLorraine) informs the philological claims to literary heirlooms. Even more, it also underpins philological and editorial technique. The ‘critical’ style of textual editing, pioneered by the great classical scholar Carl Lachmann (1793-1851), aligning various manuscripts into a family tree or stemma of corresponding variants and derivations and distilling from this an ideal Urtext, was considered typically ‘German’, linked to the idealistic bent of German philosophy (always extrapolating from the tangible towards the ideal). Much mistrusted was also the tendency to extrapolate away from the actual text towards Stoffgeschichte or mythology, to distill from the texts the disembodied narrative themes, myths and tropes. The opposing tendency was accordingly considered anti-German: to take, after careful comparison, the best available text and to edit that in its integrity, with the variants merely noted by way of ancillary side information. Later on, that technique was linked to the French anti-Lachmannian medievalist Joseph Bédier (1864-1938); but the anti-Lach10 Paris 1836: ‘We used to have great poems, which for four hundred years formed the most important object of study of our forefathers. And during that entire period, all of Europe, including Germany, England, Spain and Italy, having nothing comparable to place alongside us, either in their historical deeds or in the expression of those deeds, vied for the secondary honours of translation and imitation.’

INTRODUCTION

25

mannian impetus predated Bédier and can already be found in the conflicting stances of Jacob Grimm and Paulin Paris over the notoriously complex Reynard the Fox material.11 It is in this context that we must situate the rise of the national paradigm in literary studies, and explain the intimate conjunction between nineteenth-century nation-building and the emergence of medievally-based national-literary canons in Europe. The idea that literatures were categorized first and foremost by nationality, much as nationality itself was first and foremost categorized by language, rises abruptly in these decades: it is the influence of Herder’s cultural relativism combined with the romantic historicism that flourished against Napoleon’s universal rule. There are mutliple ironies at work here. To begin with, the ‘national’ classics, now so firmly enshrined in our respective literary histories as the figureheads of a firmly ‘national’ tradition, only emerged from obscurity in the early nineteenth century. Again, although they themself were often of indistinct national provenance, they were immediately subjected to rivalling national appropriations. Thirdly, the national schools of philology which were vying for the true ownership of these pre-national, medieval texts and authors were themselves only crystallizing as the European nation-states were taking firm shape in the post-Napoleonic decades. On the whole, then, the process appears one where the very act of competition serves to give a clear outline to the competing parties, whose rivalry is subsequently retrojected into the past, and given historical roots, by the act of claiming certain textual and cultural heirlooms as ‘theirs’ to the exclusion of others. Much as, in the line of reasoning of Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson, national identities are nationalist constructs, so too national literatures are philological constructs.

References Berlin, Isaiah. 2003. Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder (ed. Henry Hardy). London: Pimlico. 11 On the Reynard quarrels, Leerssen 2006a: 75-95. On Lachmann and his influence: Lutz-Hensel 1975, Timpanaro 1963, Weigel 1989. On Bédier: Ridoux 2001.

26

European Studies

Borges, Jorge Luis. 1930. La postulación de la realidad. In Prosa Completa 1:155-60. 5 vols., Barcelona: Bruguera. Brandsma, Frank. 1996. Het Chanson de Roland: Van vondst tot nationaal epos. In De Middeleeuwen in de negentiende eeuw, ed. R.E.V. Stuip & C. Vellekoop, 155-168. Hilversum: Verloren. Brinkman, Herman & Janny Schenkel (eds.). 1997. Het Comburgse handschrift, Hs. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. poet. et phil. 2. 22. 2 vols; Hilversum: Verloren. Espagne, Michel & Michael Werner (eds.). 1990. Philologiques I: Contribution à l’histoire des disciplines littéraires en France et en Allemagne au XIXe siècle. Paris: Maison des sciences de l’homme. Foucault, Michel. 1979. What is an author? In Textual strategies: Perspectives in poststructuralist criticism, ed. J. Harari, 141-160. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Görres, Joseph. 1955. Geistesgeschichtliche und literarische Schriften (ed. L. Just). 2 vols; Köln: Gilde/Bachem. Groom, Nick. 1999. The Making of Percy’s ‘Reliques’. Oxford: Clarendon. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. 1986. ‘Un souffle d’Allemagne ayant passé’: Friedrich Diez, Gaston Paris, and the Genesis of National Philologies. Romance Philology 40.1: 1-37 Fürbeth, Frank, et al. (eds.). 1999. Zur Geschichte und Problematik der Nationalphilologien in Europa. 150 Jahre Erste Germanistenversammlung in Frankfurt am Main (1846-1996). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Habermas, Jürgen. 1990 [1962]. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Hacker, Rupert (ed.). 2000. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. München: Saur. Hancock, W. Neilson et al. (eds.). 1865-73. Ancient laws of Ireland. 6 vols; Dublin/London. Hroch, Mirsolav. 1985. Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hummel, Pascale. 2003. Philologus auctor. Le philologue et son oeuvre. Bern: Lang. Keenan, Edward L. 2003. Josef Dobrovský and the Origins of the Igor’ Tale. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Leerssen, Joep. 2004a. Literary Historicism: Romanticism, Philologists, and the Presence of the Past. Modern Language Quarterly 65.2: 221-43. Leerssen, Joep. 2004b. Ossian and the Rise of Literary Historicism. In The Reception of Ossian in Europe, ed. H. Gaskill, 109-125. London: Continuum. Leerssen, Joep. 2006a. De bronnen van het vaderland: Taal, literatuur en de afbakening van Nederland, 1806-1890. Nijmegen: Vantilt. Leerssen, Joep. 2006b. National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

INTRODUCTION

27

Leerssen, Joep. 2006c. Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture. Nations and Nationalism 12.4: 559-578. Love, Walter D. 1961. Edmund Burke, Charles Vallancey, and the Sebright manuscripts. Hermathena 95: 21-35. Lutz-Hensel, Magdalene. 1975. Prinzipien der ersten textkritischen Editionen mittelhochdeutscher Dichtung: Brüder Grimm, Benecke, Lachmann. Eine methodenkritische Analyse. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Merchiers, Ingrid. 2005. Cultural Nationalism in the South Slav Habsburg Lands in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Scholarly Network of Jernej Kopitar (1780-1844). Doctoral thesis, Gent: Universiteit Gent. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Carolina. 1904. ‘Resenha bibliographica’. In Cancioneiro da Ajuda. Edição critica e commentada, 1-53. Halle/S: Niemeyer. Michel, Francisque (ed.), 1869 [1837]. La Chanson de Roland et le Roman de Roncevaux des XIIe et XIIIe siècles; publiés pour la première fois d’après les manuscrit de la bibliothèque Bodléienne à Oxford et de la Bibliothèque Impériale. Paris. Netzer, Katinka. 2006. Wissenschaft aus nationaler Sehnsucht: Verhandlungen der Germanisten 1846 und 1847. Heidelberg: Winter. Ó Muraíle, Nollaig. 1996. The celebrated antiquary Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (c.1600-1671), his lineage, life and learning. Maynooth: An Sagart. Paris, Paulin (ed.). 1832. Li romans de Berte aus grans piés, précédé d’une dissertation sur les romans des Douze Pairs. Paris. Redman, Harry, jr. 1991. The Roland Legend in Nineteenth-Century French Literature. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. Ridoux, Charles. 2001. Évolution des études médiévales en France de 1860 à 1914. Paris: Champion. Schmidt, Ernst (ed.). 1974 [1885]. Briefwechsel der Gebrüder Grimm mit nordischen Gelehrten (new ed. Ludwig Denecke). Walluf: Sändig. Schmidt-Wiegand, Ruth. 1987. Das sinnliche Element des Rechts: Jacob Grimms Sammlung und Beschreibung deutscher Rechtsaltertümer. In Kasseler Vorträge in Erinnerung an den 200. Geburtstag der Brüder Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, ed. L. Denecke, 1-24. Marburg: Elwert. Shippey, T.A. & Andreas Haarder (eds.). 1998. Beowulf: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge. Taylor, Andrew. 2001. Was there a Song of Roland? Speculum 76: 28-65. Timpanaro, Sebastiano. 1963. La genesi del metodo del Lachmann. Firenze: Le Monnier. Weigel, Harald. 1989. ‘Nur was du nie gesehn wird ewig dauern’: Carl Lachmann und die Entstehung der wissenschaftlichen Edition. Freiburg/Br: Rombach.

TEXTS BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT: EUROPEAN READERSHIP, NATIONAL ROOTEDNESS


A DARWINIAN CHANGE IN EUROPEAN EDITORIAL THINKING Dirk Van Hulle Abstract While most European editors in the so-called Sattelzeit (the period leading up to and following after the French Revolution) were preoccupied with establishing and fixating national Urtexts in the service of nation-building, authors became increasingly aware of the literary creation as a process and started preserving their rough drafts and manuscripts. This trend prefigured a Darwinian change in editorial thinking: from an essentialist approach to a new focus on gestations and processes, marked by an acceptance of imperfection and an appreciation of the value of ‘mistakes’ as a crucial element in the dynamics of writing. Scholarly editing in the vernacular has had a considerable cultural and social impact on nation building in different language areas within Europe. Apart from the spatial aspect of this phenomenon, it is also possible to trace a double movement on the temporal axis. The first movement is a tendency from editing as a ‘European’ enterprise to national interests.1 The second movement is the development of scholarly editing in the wake of the so-called Sattelzeit. This period is marked by an interesting side effect: the link between scholarly editing and nation building proves to be bidirectional, since nation building in its turn also had an impact on scholarly editing, resulting in the development of different national edito-

1

See Geert Lernout’s contribution in this volume.

32

Dirk Van Hulle

rial ‘schools’.2 To try and analyse this development, this article focuses on three schools: the German, the French, and the Anglo-American traditions. As Thomas Bein points out,3 Karl Lachmann was not the only important figure in the foundation of the German school. Sebastiano Timpanaro notes that the Lachmannian method had been prepared by many other philologists, such as Carl Gottlob Zumpt, Johan Nicolai Madvig, Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, and Friedrich August Wolf (Timpanaro 1971, 42; 69). More specifically, they prepared the genealogical division of the manuscripts and the identification of common ‘ancestors’ by arranging versions in a kind of family tree of textual descent. Lachmann started applying his method not only to classical authors and medieval texts, but also to works by modern authors such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (edited between 1838 and 1840). However, Lachmann’s method was not designed to cope with autograph manuscripts, drafts and genetic variants (changes made by the author himself during the process of writing and revising). His genealogical method focused on transmissional variants (‘Überlieferungsvarianten’). This is interesting because it indicates the impact of the ‘Sattelzeit’ phenomenon on scholarly editing: editing was mainly regarded – at least by Lachmannians – as a tool to provide the German-speaking audience with the stable, definitive text of ‘national’ poets. After Lessing, Schiller and Goethe followed in the second half of the nineteenth century. Karl Goedeke’s edition of Schiller’s Sämtliche Schriften (1867-76) and the Weimar edition of Goethe’s works in 143 volumes, the so-called ‘Sophien-Ausgabe’ (1887-1919) represent two different tendencies in German editorial theory, which Klaus Hurlebusch respectively calls ‘das produktionsbezogene Editionskonzept’ and ‘das rezeptionsbezogene Editionskonzept’ (Hurlebusch 1986, 22; see also Nutt-Kofoth 2000). As Bodo Plachta points out, the publication of the ‘Sophien-Ausgabe’ of Goethe’s oeuvre reflected the then prevailing view, which took for granted that the basis of the edited text was the last version revised by the author (‘Fassung letzter Hand’) or the ‘letztwillige Textrecension’ of the final revised edition: this document is a sort of testament, according

2 For a survey of these schools in relation to twentieth-century literary geneses, see Van Hulle 2004 3 See Thomas Bein’s contribution in this volume.

A DARWINIAN CHANGE IN EUROPEAN EDITORIAL THINKING

33

to Bernhard Suphan in the preface to the ‘Sophien-Ausgabe’, and as a consequence, the editor was seen as the executor of the author’s last will. If we may consider this to be an understandable consequence of the editorial practices rooted in the period of nation building, it is also important to draw attention to another phenomenon that took place in the same period and may have been equally, if not more decisive, in the development of national ‘schools’ of scholarly editing. In Germany, Goethe and Schiller were among the first authors who started preserving their manuscripts in a systematic manner. This is indicative of a contemporary tendency that contrasts sharply with the desire to fix the old texts that were employed to shape national identities. The Revaluation of ‘Unfinished Business’ The renewed attention to the process as opposed to the finished product was part of the cult of genius. In his Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), Edward Young had claimed: ‘An Original may be said to be of a vegetable nature; it rises spontaneously from the vital root of Genius’ (§43). If spontaneity is such an important element in the concept of genius, it is only natural that the traces of that spontaneity are revaluated as well. And indeed, while – on the one hand – editors in the early nineteenth century are mainly concerned with the retrieval of older, often medieval, textual material in the European vernaculars and the increasing national value of the literary heritage, writers themselves – on the other hand – seem to be more concerned with the individual value of jottings, notes, drafts and marginalia. The most famous example is probably Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He used to jot down notes, not only in the margins of his own books, but also in borrowed copies. For instance, there are at least three known copies of the anthology Anderson’s British Poets that contain notes by Coleridge. One of these must have been Coleridge’s own copy, which he in his turn lent to his friend William Wordsworth. The latter also added his own marginalia to the volume, notably after reading Shakespeare’s sonnets. What takes place at this point in the margins of this anthology is a magnificent clash of the Titans of English poetry. Immediately after Shakespeare’s last sonnet Wordsworth adds a note in pencil, fiercely criticizing Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’ sonnets: ‘These sonnets ^beginning at 127,^ to his Mistress, are worse than a game at a puzzle-peg. They [are] abominably harsh obscure & worthless. The others are for the most part much better, have many fine

34

Dirk Van Hulle

lines very fine lines & passages. They are also in many places warm with passion. Their chief faults, and heavy ones they are, are sameness, tediousness, laboriousness, quaintness, & elaborate obscurity’ (Coleridge 1980, 42a). Whatever Coleridge may have thought when Wordsworth returned the anthology, he would not have dreamt of erasing the pencil marks. Instead, he added his own comments, expressing the wish (in a kind of note to posterity) that Wordsworth’s marginalia should never be removed: ‘I can by no means subscribe to the above pencil mark of W. Wordsworth; which however, it is my wish, should never be erased. It is his: & grievously am I mistaken, & deplorably will Englishmen have degenerated, if the being his will not, ^in times to come,^ give it a Value’ (Coleridge 1980, 42a). A simple note in the margins of an anthology thus marks the importance the Romantics attached to the spontaneous, unstructured spur-of-the-moment flashes of insight, which contrast sharply with the contemporary editorial concerns, focused on establishing and fixating national ‘Urtexts’. In France, Victor Hugo was one of the first authors who not only systematically preserved his manuscripts (from the 1820s onward), but also made a link between the individual, private, spontaneous aspect of literary drafts and the ‘national’ value of the literary heritage. Apart from medieval texts, modern manuscripts had national value as well, so Victor Hugo donated his manuscripts to the national library of France. What may at first sight seem to be yet another example of the Sattelzeit phenomenon should however be nuanced, because Hugo saw this ‘nationalist’ act as just a first step toward a European vision. In his testament (1881) he wrote: ‘Je donne tous mes manuscrits et tout ce qui sera trouvé écrit ou dessiné par moi à la bibliothèque nationale de Paris qui sera un jour la bibliothèque des États-Unis d’Europe’.4 More than a century later, it seems irrelevant to speak of a European library. If all the existing online library databases can be regarded as part of one big library, this is a global, not a European endeavour. What Hugo’s testament seems to be hinting at is a remnant of a nationally conceived, Napoleonic Europe, in which all European countries would constitute something like the greater banlieue of Paris.

4 Hugo in Biasi 2000, 13: ‘I donate all of my manuscripts and whatever will be found that is either written or drawn by me to the national library of Paris, which one day will be the library of the United States of Europe.’


35

French editorial theory in those days was closely related to the German tradition. Romance philology was more or less introduced to the French by a German scholar, Friedrich Diez. As Jean-Louis Lebrave has pointed out, it was Victor Cousin who took up the task of developing a French editorial school, by drawing attention to ‘the necessity of a new edition of Pascal’s Pensées’. This was the topic of his report to the Académie française in 1842 (Sur la nécessité d’une nouvelle édition des ‘Pensées’ de Pascal), in which he advocated the consultation of Pascal’s manuscripts, preserved at the national library. In his lecture, he explains that numerous editions of Pascal’s Pensées succeed each other, but that none of the editors takes the trouble of double-checking the manuscripts. The autograph is available at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; every editor mentions it, but no-one consults it, Cousin complains (Cousin 1949, 109; cf. Lebrave 1992, 58). This neglect is probably the result of an editorial tradition that is so completely geared to the absence of autograph manuscripts that editors lose all common sense. Cousin’s rhetoric is quite effective in that it draws attention to his contemporaries’ blind spot by means of one simple rhetorical question: what would people say if Plato’s original manuscripts were still preserved in a public library, but editors would simply ignore it and continue copying their editions from previous editions? Among French scholars, there was a genuine admiration for the German approach to philology. In 1864, Gaston Paris advocated a rapprochement between German and French scholarly editors. The positivism of philology was contrasted with the French tradition of the Belles Lettres. But ironically this new editorial development toward a rapprochement and toward an international dialogue was used to create national monuments such as the collection Les Grands Écrivains de la France set up by Hachette in 1862. The timid attempt to exchange ideas was interrupted rather abruptly by the Franco-German war in 1870, resulting in two divergent tendencies. On the one hand, there was the urge to outstrip the Germans in their own field of expertise; on the other hand, philology was increasingly regarded as the science of the enemy, which resulted in a return to the Belles Lettres tradition. In editorial terms, this implied a reaction against Lachmann, which led to Joseph Bédier’s socalled ‘best text’ approach, based on the criterion of ‘good taste’. Michael Werner explains how this war eventually resulted in a dichotomy that is still noticeable today:

36

Dirk Van Hulle Immerhin has sich auch in Frankreich somit ein typologischer Gegensatz herausgebildet zwischen dem rhetorisch brillianten Interpreten einerseits, der die literaturpolitische Bühne besetzt hält und auch über die Medien, Publikationen mit hohen Auflagen in die Öffentlichkeit wirkt, und dem Gelehrten andererseits, welcher weniger mit institutionellen Ehren bedacht, ein entbehrsames Dasein im Stillen fristet, abseits der Pariser Intellektuellen-Szene (...)5

In the Anglo-American tradition, the very notion of ‘best text’ was already questioned as early as 1756, when Samuel Johnson stated in his Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare: no single edition will supply the reader with a text on which he can rely as the best copy of the works of Shakespeare. The edition now proposed will at least have this advantage over others. It will exhibit all the observable varieties of all the copies that can be found, that, if the reader is not satisfied with the editor’s determination, he may have the means of chusing better for himself. (Johnson 1968, esp. 55-6, emphasis DVH)

As Peter Shillingsburg (2002) has pointed out, this is one of the causes of the fundamental discrepancies between the German and the AngloAmerican editorial traditions. In the former tradition, the paradigm is Goethe; in the latter, the paradigm is Shakespeare. The crucial problem with Shakespeare is the lack of autograph manuscripts; the main difficulty with Goethe’s works is the abundance of manuscript versions. As a result of these contingencies the corresponding traditions of scholarly editing have developed along divergent lines. The Notion of ‘Process’ A better understanding of the cultural differences that have led to specific editorial approaches and traditions in the past may eventually result in more cooperation in view of the future of European scholarly editing. If we are willing to try and find a common ground and work towards a rapprochement, a crucial concept in this effort is the notion of ‘process’. This notion gradually became important to scholarly editing during and 5

Werner 1987, 141: ‘In any case, the result is the emergence in France of a typological contrast between on the one hand the rhetorically brilliant critic, who occupies the literary scene and also operates in the public domain through mass media and publications with high print runs, and on the other hand the scholar, who is given less institutional esteem and leads a solitary existence in silence, far from the Parisian scene of intellectuals.’


37

after the so-called Sattelzeit, which can be seen as the culmination of a particular aspect of philology. Philology was shaped by the search for common ancestors in ancient and medieval texts, as well as the production of a reliable text of ‘God’s own words’, the Bible. This was a particularly teleological enterprise, in both a chronological and a counterclockwise direction. The search for the authentic, divine words is a quest in the direction of an absolute origin. And, not unlike the biblical Genesis (aimed at one goal: God’s satisfaction) the collation of variant readings of existing copies had one teleological purpose: the constitution of one reliable, definitive text of the Bible or any other Urtext. When Johnson, in 1756, argues that ‘no single edition will supply the reader with a text on which he can rely as the best copy of the works of Shakespeare,’ this is indicative of an important change of mentality that reflects the content of several literary and philosophical texts in the second half of the eighteenth. For instance, in his famous Fragment 116, published in Athenäum, Friedrich Schlegel wrote: ‘Die romantische Dichtart ist noch im Werden; ja das ist ihr eigentliches Wesen, dass sie ewig nur werden, nie vollendet sein kann.’ Whereas the teleology of the Biblical Genesis shaped a particular way of thinking and editing in the preSattelzeit, the post-Sattelzeit mentality in scholarly editing may be characterized by a gradual evolution toward a non-teleological approach along the lines of evolutionary theory. As Robert M. Young points out, science in the nineteenth century was very much preoccupied by issues of ‘origin’ – ‘the historicity of genesis of earth, life, mind, and society,’ (Young 1985, 638) and also of nations. This thesis seems to be confirmed by the title of Charles Darwin’s most famous work. Darwin’s Origin of Species, however, is not about the origin of the world. It is about process. And it is not about proceeding towards a goal; it is non-teleological. The process does not necessarily go anywhere, it simply goes ‘on’. If anything, it undermines the idea that man is the culmination of creation. Darwin’s theory is sometimes called the second Copernican revolution (Gruber 1974, 12). Copernicus showed that the universe does not revolve around the earth; Darwin demonstrated that man is not the centre of biological phenomena. His Origin of Species is not exclusively about the origin of our species, but about the multiplication of species and the mechanism behind it. This move away from anthropocentrism is already present in one of his early notebooks: ‘It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another. We consider those, where the cerebral structure, intellectual

38

Dirk Van Hulle

faculties, most developed, as highest. – A bee doubtless would where the instincts are.’6 The Sattelzeit – as a period marking the beginnings of the so-called ‘modern world’ – may be seen as a period of radical changes of concepts with implications for editorial theory as well. The notion of Sattelzeit, coined by Reinhart Koselleck,7 literally means ‘saddle-period’, i.e. the period that flanks the French Revolution by fifty years on either side. The end of this period (1789 + 50) is marked by the gestation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which mainly took shape in his notebooks between 1837 and 1839. Unlike most of his contemporaries, who ‘used the marvels of organic nature to demonstrate the supreme intelligence and necessary existence of the Creator’ and unlike 21st-century advocates of ‘intelligent design’, Charles Darwin ‘used the imperfections and irregularities to be found everywhere in living organisms to argue that the design of nature was achieved not by an omniscient inventor but by a groping evolutionary process.’ (Gruber 1974, 12). In other words, imperfection and errors are key elements in this story. This non-teleological view contrasts sharply with the teleological view on writing as expressed for instance in E.A. Poe’s Philosophy of Composition, published in 1846. The (over-)emphasis on ‘achievement’ is clear from the very start of Poe’s essay: ‘It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its [The Raven’s] composition is referrible either to accident or intuition – that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.’ (Poe 1986, 482). According to Poe, one of his first considerations was ‘the proper length for my intended poem – a length of about one hundred lines’ (483). He presents his writing process as an extremely teleological project: ‘Here then the poem may be said to have its beginning – at the end, where all works of art should begin’ (487). Still, Poe’s auto-analysis draws attention to craftsmanship in such a way that it represents a clear break with an earlier tendency to consider the creative process as the result of ‘an ecstatic intuition’ (481). 6 Charles Darwin, B-notebook (on transmutation of species) 74; quoted in Gruber 1974, 21. 7 Reinhart Koselleck’s research focus is ‘die Auflösung der alten und die Entstehung der modernen Welt in der Geschichte ihrer begrifflichen Erfassung’ (‘Einleitung’ in Brunner, Conze and Koselleck 2004, I: xiv).


39

A hundred years after Edward Young’s idea that an Original ‘is not made’ but ‘grows’ notably found its expression in works by poets such as Walt Whitman. The organic metaphors initiated by Whitman himself are exemplified by the steady ‘growth’ of the successive editions of Leaves of Grass. In the immediate post-Sattelzeit period, authors seem to be increasingly aware of the literary creation as a process, and some editors were quicker than others to react. In Germany, Karl Goedeke tried to reconstruct the ‘Geschichte von Schillers Geist’ (‘history of Schiller’s mind’, Schillers sämmtliche Schriften, 1: v), and to visualize the creative process: ‘den Process seines Schaffens (…) einigermassen zu veranschaulichen.’8 In France, the ambivalent attitude toward German philology after the Franco-German war did not imply a sudden aversion to manuscript research. On the contrary, early versions of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary were studied (by Antoine Albalat in 1903), Zola’s writing method was analysed (by Henri Massis in 1906), Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s manuscript of Paul et Virginie was examined (by Gustave Lanson, in 1908).9 While in Germany critics such as Georg Witkowski (1921) and Reinhold Backmann (1924) emphasized the importance of the apparatus to reconstruct the textual development, the French critic Gustave Rudler published a study (in 1923) that contained a chapter with the title ‘Critique de genèse’. Although Almuth Grésillon argues that this should not be confused with what is now called ‘critique génétique’, Rudler did make an important statement with regard to editorial theory: ‘Pourquoi la pensée et sa volonté finales de l’auteur auraient-elles plus de prix que sa pensée et sa volonté première?’10 8 Goedeke 1867-76, 15/2: vi-vii: ‘Nur eine photographische Wiedergabe könnte einen Begriff gewähren, was dem Dichter während der Arbeit der Aufzeichnung bedürftig erschien. Aber auch nur in der Photographie würde die Art seines eigentlichen Schaffens deutlich werden. Dazu reichen gestrichne Lettern und Schriftsorten verschiedenster Art nicht aus. Und doch erschien es als unausweichliche Aufgabe, den Process seines Schaffens, so weit es mit gedruckten Lettern möglich ist, einigermassen zu veranschaulichen.’ (‘Only a photographic representation could give us an idea of what the poet deemed necessary during the writing process. Only in the photograph would the art of his actual creation become clear. In this regard, crossed-out letters and different fonts do not suffice. Nonetheless it seemed to be an inevitable task to visualize his creative process insofar as that is possible at all in print.’) 9 For a thorough study of the history of genetic studies in France, see GothotMersch 1994. 10 Rudler 1923, 85: ‘Why would the author’s final thought and wish be more valuable than his initial thought and wish?’

40

Dirk Van Hulle

The issue of (final) authorial intention has been a major obstacle in attempts to move toward a rapprochement between different national editorial schools. Not only the French, but also German scholars used it to stress the difference between their traditions and the Anglo-American school. In 1975, in his article ‘A New Approach to the Critical Constitution of Literary Texts’ Hans Zeller called it an ‘ill-suited’ principle (244). But it is also a good example of the way in which a principle is blown up in order to highlight and even exaggerate national differences. The danger is in the neatness of nationalization – to paraphrase Samuel Beckett. In his Sandars Lectures in Bibliography (delivered in January 1958), even Fredson Bowers – one of the names always associated with the intentionalist approach – writes: ‘so many changes can take place between holograph manuscript and first edition that we should study these changes through various transcripts and proofs not for the simple mechanical purpose of checking the accuracy of the printed text […] but instead as an independent act of critical inquiry into the author’s mind and art’ (Bowers 1966, 17). He refers to a study of T.S. Eliot’s works by Robert L. Beare, who concludes: ‘The study of the stages of a poem or play which precede publication are of interest and significance for the genesis of the poem rather than as a check of its final published form.’ (Beare 1957, 24). If this passage were translated into French, it could easily pass for a statement by one of the French theorists of critique génétique. In conclusion, it seems fair to say that the insistence on national editorial schools on the basis of other than linguistic differences is quite artificial, and perhaps still a remnant of the Sattelzeit, when scholarly editing was placed in the service of nation building. Especially in this digital age, when scholars working on electronic editions communicate in mark-up languages, the notion of national editorial schools seems somewhat obsolete. That is why the foundation of an initiative such as the European Society for Textual Scholarship, promoting the dialogue between editorial traditions in different languages, rightly marks the beginning of scholarly editing in the 21st century. It is not a coincidence that the 2005 issue of Variants (the Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship) opens with a contribution by the Autralian scholar Paul Eggert with the subtitle: ‘The cross-fertilising of German and AngloAmerican editorial traditions’. A similar cross-fertilisation is taking place between French and other traditions. The reason why French genetic


41

critics avoid using the term ‘variants’ and prefer to employ the notion of ‘réécritures’ is precisely because, traditionally, textual variants were considered to be corruptions. If scholarly editing in the post-Sattelzeit can be described in terms of Darwin’s heritage and its crucial change of focus from an essentialist origin to a focus on processes, the following passage from The Origin of Species may be elucidating: ‘natural selection tends only to make each organism, each organic being, as perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same country with which it has to struggle for existence’ (Darwin in Mayr 1985, 771). The comparative ‘more perfect’ is a contradiction in terms. It implies a kind of perfection that is not absolute; in other words, it implies the acceptance of imperfection. The consequence is an enhanced interest in processes, not just products.11 What scholarly editors have increasingly learned to appreciate in the post-Darwin age is the value of ‘mistakes’ to understand the dynamics of the writing process. It is important to realize that this international revaluation has been made possible by the decision of authors from the Sattelzeit to start preserving their manuscripts at a time when editors were perhaps too busy with nation building.

References Backmann, Reinhold. 1924. Die Gestaltung des Apparates in den kritischen Ausgaben neuerer Dichter. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der großen Grillparzer-Ausgabe der Stadt Wien. Euphorion 25: 629-662. Beare, Robert L. 1957. Notes on the Text of T. S. Eliot: Variants from Russell Square. Studies in Bibliography 9: 21-49. Biasi, Pierre-Marc de. 2000. La Génétique des textes. Paris: Nathan. Bowers, Fredson. 1966. Textual and Literary Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brunner, Otto, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck, eds. 2004. Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, vol. 1. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1980. The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Marginalia I (Abbt to Byfield). Ed. George Whalley; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul / Princeton: Princeton University Press.

11 For instance, the notion of ‘relative perfection’ was the reason why the French poet Francis Ponge presented his ‘Fabrique du Pré’ in the early 1970s as a series of manuscript versions, in a facsimile edition with transcriptions.

42

Dirk Van Hulle

Cousin, Victor. 1849. Blaise Pascal. In Oeuvres, 4e série, ‘Littérature’, vol. 1; Paris. Darwin, Charles. 1959. The Origin of Species. A Variorum Text. Ed. Morse Peckham; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Eggert, Paul. 2005. Version, Agency, Intention: The Cross-fertilising of German and Anglo-America Editorial Traditions. Variants 4: 5-27. Goedeke, Karl. 1867-76. Schillers sämmtliche Schriften: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe. 16 vols.; Stuttgart. Gothot-Mersch, Claudine. 1994. Les études de genèse en France de 1950 à 1960. Genesis 5: 175-87. Gruber, Howard E. 1974. Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity. London: Wildwood House. Hurlebusch, Klaus. 1986. Deutungen literarischer Arbeitsweise. Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, Sonderheft 105: 4-42. Johnson, Samuel. 1968. Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare. In The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. A. Sherbo, 7: 51-58. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lanson, Gustave. 1908. Un Manuscrit de ‘Paul et Virginie’. Etude sur l’invention de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Paris: Ed. de la Revue du Mois. Lebrave, Jean-Louis. 1992. La critique génétique: Une discipline nouvelle ou un avatar moderne de la philologie? Genesis 1: 33-72. Mayr, Ernst. 1985. Darwin’s Five Theories. In The Darwinian Heritage, ed. David Kohn, 755-772. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nutt-Kofoth, Rüdiger. 2000. Schreiben und Lesen: Für eine produktions- und rezeptionsorientierte Präsentation des Werktextes in der Edition. In Text und Edition: Positionen und Perspektiven, ed. Rüdiger Nutt-Kofoth et al., 165202. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Plachta, Bodo. 1995. German Literature. In Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research, ed. D.C. Greetham, 504-29. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. Poe, Edgar Allan. 1986. The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings. London: Penguin Classics. Rudler, Gustave. 1923. Les Techniques de la critique et de l’histoire littéraire française moderne. Oxford : Oxford UP. Shillingsburg, Peter. 2002. ‘The Subject of our Mirth’: The Aesthetic Object in Anglo-American Editing. In Perspectives of Scholarly Editing / Perspektiven der Textedition, ed. Bodo Plachta and H.T.M. van Vliet, 47-59. Berlin: Weidler. Suphan, Bernhard. 1887. Vorbericht. In Goethes Werke. Hrsg. im Auftrag der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen, vol. I.1. Weimar. Timpanaro, Sebastiano. 1971. Die Entstehung der Lachmannschen Methode. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Van Hulle, Dirk. 2004 Textual Awareness: A Genetic Study of Late Manuscripts by Joyce, Proust, and Mann. Ann Arbor:: University of Michigan Press.


43

Werner, Michael. 1987. Edition und Kulturtradition in Frankreich. editio 1: 139144. Witkowski, Georg. 1921. Grundsätze kritischer Ausgaben neuerer deutscher Dichtwerke. In Funde und Forschungen: Eine Festgabe für Julius Wahle, 216-226. Leipzig: Insel. Young, Robert M. 1985. Darwinism is social. In The Darwinian Heritage, ed. David Kohn, 609-752. Princeton: Princeton University Press.


THE ANGEL OF PHILOLOGY Geert Lernout Abstract Philology is a historical discipline and as such, it cannot fail to be interested in its own origins. From its earliest forms in Hellenistic Alexandria, philology has attempted to understand and preserve older texts. With the development of a Christian body of texts in Greek and later also in Latin, this discipline only became relevant again in the Renaissance, when numerous new texts were rediscovered. In the next few centuries the new culture of the Republic of Letters led to a flowering of classical philology, which stressed the common European culture. Romantic scholars applied the new methodologies to vernacular texts and this in its turn led to ‘national’ philologies which began to lead their own lives. Let me begin by generalising, just a little bit, about the difference between facts and generalizations. The study of texts and the care for texts in their most general description, which is what I will call ‘philology’ in this paper, has always been caught in the famous hermeneutic circle where we can only understand the first puzzling detail that we find in the text when we place it in the context of the whole we haven’t even begun to read and where we can only claim to understand that same whole if we have first managed to make sense of every single detail. Or, to muddle metaphors even more, philology has always tried to navigate between the all too solid rock of individual fact and the whirlpool of generalizations. The dichotomy between the detailed fact on the one hand and the generalization on the other hand is true on all levels of philological investigation. At the most basic level it can be seen in the fundamental distinction between the material form of an individual copy of a book

46

Geert Lernout

and that platonic ideal of a Book that editors refer to as ‘the text’ and that most literary theorists try so hard not to think about at all. We can also observe the philologist’s fascination for little things in the enthusiasm with which an editor or textual scholar can investigate the presence or absence of a single comma. It is interesting to see that even a peculiar form of this interest in orthographic pedantry can find a general audience in Lynne Truss’s successful book on spelling, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. But despite its attention to detail, the general field of the study of writing is not averse to the most encompassing generalizations. On the one hand we have French post-structuralism’s metaphysical ruminations on écriture and on the other the partly unrelated work of the theorists of the power of the oral, the written, the printed and the digital word such as Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Jack Goody, Elisabeth Eisenstein and George P. Landow. As a fundamentally historical discipline, philology cannot fail to be interested in its own origins and for the greater part of its history, it has been characterized by a keen interest in a tradition that reached back through Christian Rome to a double origin in Hebrew scripture and in Greek literature and philosophy. Both of the foundational cultures for Western civilization were built on a sense of identity that was not entirely tied to geography (as the Egyptian had been) but to a set of shared values that had first been articulated in oral tales and that was later codified in written texts. Although we have been warned by scholars such as William V. Harris for Greek and Roman readers and Harry Y. Gamble for Christian readers not to overestimate the levels of literacy in the Hellenistic and Roman periods (Harris 1989, Gamble 1995), it is clear from the spread of libraries and schools that something like a common written culture did exist in the later Roman Empire: the great Greek classics on the one and the biblical literature on the other hand gave their respective communities a sense of unity and purpose that was thought to constitute a good education. Scribal culture in Egypt had been the preserve of an elite priestly class, but in later centuries literacy seems to have become more general among Greeks, Jews and Christians. Of course we should always be aware that we can only come to such a conclusion on the basis of evidence that is to a large extent limited to texts, i.e. written materials that were created, passed on and preserved by the same scribal class that had every reason to exaggerate its own importance.

THE ANGEL OF PHILOLOGY

47

The two essentially scribal cultures, Greek and Hebrew, were based on an education of the young who were trained to read and write by studying classic writings. It could thus be argued that through the literature of early rabbinical traditions there is a scribal continuity, for example, between the first few centuries of the Common Era and present forms of Judaism. Until a few decades ago, when Latin and Greek were still taught generally, a similar continuity was claimed to exist between Greco-Roman culture and the values of European elites. In both cases this continuity has recently been questioned: claiming such continuity is not the same as proving it. In both cases there is a silent supposition that in the course of history these continuities have not been contaminated by each other. And in both cases there is the historical fact of a third continuity of texts, which had its origin in roughly the same region at roughly the same time. In the greater part of Europe it was by the efforts of an exclusively Christian elite that both Hebrew and Greek ideas were transmitted in a decidedly changed form. For seventeen centuries the supremacy of Christian ideas could not fail to have a decisive effect on the fate of the other two continuities. But let us start from the fact that on the one hand human beings in general and Western culture in particular need to think that there is a continuity between the past and the present and that on the other hand philology has been used to supply that sense of continuity. The history of philological scholarship itself is subject to the same interest in continuity we observe in culture in general. The nice thing about the history of philology is that this history itself has its own historians, among the most recent of them the prolific Anthony Grafton who has written both extremely specialist studies and popular books for a general audience on the history of scholarship. In an intellectual market where books on the unified field theory in science can become bestsellers, it should not be too surprising that someone manages to interest a wider audience in the obscure scholarship by writers long dead about obscure authors who had been dead even longer by the time they were written about. But surely in the case of modern physics and biology the immediate political, metaphysical and moral implications are much more obvious than when the subject matter is the study of Latin, Greek and Hebrew-Christian scholarship? Philologists and editors labour under a relatively well deserved prejudice that most of the time they are much more interested in the arcane art of punctuation than in the meaning of the texts they work on.

48

Geert Lernout

In Dutch we used to call them ‘kommaneukers,’ comma fuckers, a term that with hapax legomenon and lectio difficilior deserves to become part of the philological terminology. The genius of Anthony Grafton and of the Italian scholar Luciano Canfora is that they manage to find a wider relevance in the scholarship of generations of comma fucking philologists, whose work concentrates on tiny nuggets of facts instead of on the grand scheme of things. It is this dichotomy that will haunt this paper. In Forgers and Critics Grafton traces the tight relationship between forgery and literary scholarship through the last twenty-five centuries. Forgery, the attribution of the authorship of one’s text to another person, may well be only a day or two younger than writing itself, just as according to the German linguist Rudi Keller, human speech and symbolic language probably started with the first lie (Keller 1990). But a truly successful forger depends on a certain level of historical knowledge, because forgery can always be exposed by somebody who simply knows more about the purported author or genre or period. That person was the critic or philologist who began his career in Hellenistic times with the analysis of false works that in the burgeoning book market of fourth and third century Athens were being attributed to the great authors of the previous era: Plato, Aristotle or Hippocrates. The scholars headed, according to Grafton, ‘by that patron of all later librarians, Callimachus’ distinguished between a writer’s gnesiosi (legitimate offspring) and nothoi or bastard works, forgeries (Grafton 12). This is the beginning of a philology that attempted to stay one step ahead of the forgers but that could not help but transform itself every time a clever forger appeared who subtly used the same tools that the philologists had earlier employed in exposing forgery in order to create a more convincing fraud. Every time this happened, the philologists had to outsmart the clever forger, forcing future forgers to be even more creative, etc. Forgery and criticism developed hand-in-hand and it does not come as a surprise that the best forgers were most often the philologists themselves. Grafton shows that this was not just an academic parlour game: some of the religious or philosophic sects in the Greek world claimed to have genuine texts written by their founding fathers, Orpheus and Pythagoras. And in the multicultural world under Hellenistic influence, Egyptians, Babylonians and Jews attempted to prove convincingly, with documents in hand, not only that their civilisation was older than all the others on offer but that the central insights of Greek philosophy had been copied


49

from ancient Egyptian, Babylonian or Jewish wisdom sources. When Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, the Jewish interpretation of historical precedence was simply adopted by the Christians who saw themselves as the legitimate heirs to the wisdom of Moses and Solomon. And the Christians immediately had their own problems with forgery when early on the authenticity of the Christian writings was challenged by so-called heretics like Marcion. The canon of Christian writing was only finalized in a very late stage of its development and that not without considerable political pressure from the newly Christian emperors in Rome. In the fight against the writings, both in the Old and the New Testament, that would henceforth become apocryphal, the same philological techniques were being used. The Christian scholar Julius Africanus pointed out that the story of Susanna and the elders in the Book of Daniel simply could not be genuine. There were historical reasons (in the story the captive Jews in Babylon seemed to enjoy far too much freedom) and there were also narratological reasons: Daniel in this section of his Book prophesied in direct speech, whereas elsewhere his words were reported. But crucially, the story depends on two elaborate puns that work in Greek, but not in the Hebrew from which this part of the text was supposedly translated. This kind of close textual scrutiny disappeared by the end of the classical period: in the early middle ages the critical study of the bible and of the work of the church fathers – if it addressed issues of authenticity at all – tended to be theological rather than historical or philological. The latter type of scholarship was badly needed when the new nations in the High Middle Ages began to look for classical pedigrees and did so without exception by copying Virgil’s example and finding the ancestors of the British, the French, the Celts and the Frisians in groups of fugitives from the most famous ruined cities, Troy or Jerusalem. In the competition for the oldest ancestry, serious criticism of the other party’s claim seems to have been only a second option, resorted to when the first counter-attack did not work. And the first attack was nearly always simply a new forgery, as when the fight between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge for the oldest pedigree deteriorated into fraudulent claims and counter-forgeries, which was only won by Cambridge when a document was found that proved conclusively that the university had been founded in 394 BC. Monasteries, cities and individuals took over

50

Geert Lernout

the market for forgeries and Grafton writes that the new specialists in detecting forgeries were the canon lawyers. The renaissance marked the genuine rebirth of philology and it was in the study of Latin and Greek texts that the humanist writers rediscovered and refined the tests that had been invented by their Hellenistic colleagues twenty centuries earlier. Francesco Petrarch and the other great humanist scholars rediscovered scores of texts that had long disappeared and they reinterpreted existing texts in a new light. And at the same time the new invention of the printing press for the first time in history made perfect copies of a single editio princeps available for comparison and collation everywhere in the world. Grafton’s major intellectual heroes belong in this period: they are the philologists Lorenzo Valla, Desiderius Erasmus, Joseph Scaliger, Justus Lipsius, Richard Bentley, all of them critics and editors who perfected and sometimes invented the careful critical study of and care for texts from the past. In their study of the works of the Roman and Greek writers, they refused to take anything for granted and their irreverent attitude to the glories of the past led to famous intellectual debates such as the querelle des anciens et modernes in France or the Battle of the Books in England, where the authority of the classics was at stake. The critical attitude towards tradition is already present in the writings of the earliest humanists but it would lead inevitably, first to the reformation and then, after the disasters of the different religious wars, to scepticism and what Jonathan Israel has called the radical enlightenment. What is striking about this heroic generation of philologists is the new self-assurance needed to position oneself just outside and, if need be, against the accumulated weight of tradition, even, for those concerned, in opposition to the most absolute forms of religious tradition. This attitude may be most famously embodied by the German monk when he had been summoned by the Holy Roman Emperor in an attempt at reconciliation: ‘Hier steh’ ich, ich kann nicht anders.’ But a similar attitude can be found in the work of philologists such as Valla when he haughtily proves that the Donation of Constantine cannot possibly be genuine1 or when Erasmus edited the most holy Christian texts 1 Valla explains in a letter to cardinal Trevisan: ‘Why did I write about the Donation of Constantine? (...) Bear one thing in mind. I was not moved by hatred of the Pope, but acted for the sake of the truth, of religion, and also of a certain renown – to show that I alone knew what no one else knew.’


51

from Greek (and thus by definition schismatic) originals and in the process managed to give the New Testament a new and philologically more correct title (Novum Instrumentum). The same extreme self-assurance can be found in Spinoza’s Tractatus, in Richard Bentley’s textual criticism and in the work of so many of the other erudite and extremely critical thinkers of this period. It is an irony not lost on the major participants in this movement that just as these critics had edited and printed most of the major and minor Greek and Latin texts, when to a large extent issues of chronology and authenticity had been settled, that the same critical spirit began to cast a cold eye on their own discipline (Grafton 1991). In the most advanced circles of the seventeenth century textual study began to lose its prestige to the experimental sciences and increasingly also to the experience of the practical men who would build the new world of technology. Galileo had already established that if there was a book of nature, that particular book was written not in Latin or Greek or Hebrew but in the language of mathematics. Strangely from our present point of view this generation of textual critics seems to have agreed with their critics: Richard Bentley wrote that ratio et res ipsa (reason and the thing itself) carried more weight than a hundred manuscripts. The rediscovery of Roman and Greek ruins, the careful collection of inscriptions and coins had already changed the writing of history based on literary sources, when the French Jesuit Jean Hardouin made the claim, ‘well beyond the verge of madness,’ quotes Grafton from Momigliano (Grafton 2001, 182) that the confrontation of coins and literary texts proved that most of the texts of classical and early literature had in reality been written by an atheist sect of fourteenth century Italians, who forged among many other texts (including the complete works of Thomas Aquinas), all the works of the Latin and Greek church fathers. This conspiracy of clerics, this unholy cabal was even responsible (dixit Hardouin) for convincing the Byzantine Greeks that they should abandon their originally Latin liturgy and Bible for the forged Greek translations, and all of this just to confuse the Catholic faithful (Grafton 2001, 193). The textual critics and participants in the several querelles did not need unbalanced Jesuits to make a mockery of their own discipline: they had lampooned themselves and each other even earlier, writing satirical accounts of nit-picking editors and over-scrupulous textual critics. That

52

Geert Lernout

they used the all too classical genre of satire for this purpose and that these texts were often written in the most difficult and erudite Latin is an irony that cannot have escaped their attention. The self-criticism of humanism is even older. In her study of the fate of Latin, Françoise Waquet describes the rise in the early sixteenth century of the stock-character of the pedant in vernacular literatures in Italian, French and English, who quotes Latin and Greek indiscriminately. Examples are Giordano Bruno’s Il Candelaio, Gabriel Harvey’s Pedantius and Cyrano de Bergerac’s Le pédant joué. In his essay Du pédantisme Montaigne blamed this condition on the fact that the only people who tried to make a living out of learning were people of low fortune: ‘And with such people their natures, being by family background and example of the lower sort, assimilate the fruits of knowledge falsely’ (Waquet 2001: 209). This snobbish dismissal of the lowly pedant should remind us that quite a few of the textual scholars, like Harvey and Bentley, did indeed rise from the lower classes and in both cases they were not allowed to forget their original status. The cruel treatment they encountered from the people that used to be called their ‘betters’ may well explain some of the stridency in their writings and it certainly demonstrates that for ambitious young men of humble birth the thorough mastery of Greek and of an elegant Ciceronian Latin represented one of the few chances for advancement (see Stern 1979 and Monk 1883). Montaigne may have mourned the loss of Latin as a European language in his essays, but he wrote and published his lament in French and this is a development that we find everywhere in the seventeenth century: Newton still wrote his Principia in Latin but his Optics was in English. Latin was used by scholars to communicate, but on the continent at least, it began to be replaced in the eighteenth century by French. It is clear that this common language was an important cohesive factor in Europe. This was certainly the case for the Catholics who still had Latin as a lingua franca, but in the study of Latin the close scrutiny of texts by Roman writers was part of the education of both Catholics and Protestants and thus the language was not restricted to the former. Some textual scholars and editors in the sixteenth and seventeenth century showed a remarkable versatility in adapting their religious allegiances to the situation in which they found themselves and Dutch and English Protestants visited Italian libraries and monasteries with very few restrictions. While the study and interpretation of biblical and patristic sources was highly


53

controversial, the reading of Virgil and Horace had the advantage of representing a neutral territory. When young British and Dutch scholars visited Italy on the first grand tours, they found like-minded scholars there who certainly did not share their religious ideas.2 So Latin was not an exclusively Catholic language: it was after all in mostly Protestant Germany that in the nineteenth century the modern secondary school and university education was first developed. While political Europe was disintegrating in religious territories, humanism was creating an international intellectual elite that to a large extent disregarded the new national or religious borders and disputes. This early enlightenment was based on an intricate system of personal ties, learned societies and journals that enabled scholars who had completely different social, political, national and religious allegiances to exchange information on Roman and Greek antiquities, on variants and manuscripts. This is clear when we see that Richard Bentley, an English Protestant, not only had excellent relations with the French Benedictines at Saint Maur, not just helping them with their edition of the works of Origen of Alexandria but even exchanging collations of biblical manuscripts when both parties were involved in competing Protestant and Catholic editions of the Bible. This philological international was not an affair of what we now call ‘the humanities.’ The split between what fifty years ago C.P. Snow called the two cultures had not yet occurred and the most important of the scientific geniuses who created the scientific revolution, Leibniz and Newton, were just as much fascinated by theological and historical issues. And so were the many learned societies that were created all over Europe, with support from the more enlightened of the European kings and princes. Institutionally, the study of Greek and Latin literature was a latecomer at the university. It was only in 1777 and after quite a fight that F.A. Wolf managed to be matriculated at Göttingen, not in theology, but as a studiosus philologiae. Famously his near-contemporary, the English philologist Richard Porson was told by the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University that he might just as well ‘collect his manuscripts at home’ instead of using the university’s resources. For textual scholars romanticism brought a number of different developments: on the one 2

A good example is Nicolaes Heinsius, see Blok 1984.

54

Geert Lernout

hand all the major Greek and Latin texts had already been edited and most of the efforts would henceforth be directed on the one hand towards the edition of the more obscure texts and on the other hand to the annotation of those works that were beginning to be considered and marketed as ‘the classics’. But these classics also changed their character: among quite a few other essays and books in the final decades of the eighteenth century, it was the same F.A. Wolf’s study Prolegomena ad Homerum that turned the Greek poet from the classicist writer of the previous era into a natural, naive and folk poet (or group of poets). The privileged and newly ‘classic’ texts also needed commentary and annotation because their thorough study began to form an important part of a university education that had until this moment been a uniform phenomenon. The earliest universities used to offer an education that was not substantially different in Bologna than in Oxford or Paris or Prague. It was only when this essentially religious education split into Catholic and Protestant versions that there were at least two kinds of universities, but even then the Latin and Greek curriculum tended to be similar, regardless of the university’s religious allegiance. It was in the nineteenth century that this common culture came under attack from the most unlikely side: textual scholars and editors, all of whom had learned the trade in the study of Greek and Latin literature, began to collect, edit and publish texts in the vernacular languages. Again the German scholars were pioneers in this practice and it has become a common-place that it was this development that stands at the start of the modern conception of European humanist study at the secondary and tertiary levels. No wonder then that by the end of the nineteenth century the German form of textual criticism was being imitated all over the world. This form of inquiry became the basis of the modern humanities departments at the new research university that in one way or another is still the world-wide model for higher education. German textual study was everywhere and even Italy, a country that claimed to have invented both classical and vernacular humanist study, had to be prodded by German scholars into the editing and studying of early Italian texts. Similar developments took place all over Europe, with local scholars only slowly catching up with what the Germans had been doing successfully for many years. In the course of the nineteenth century, in other words, the discipline of philology went through a process of nationalization. By the


55

end of the century the scholarly study of each of the different national literatures and the historical-critical edition of its major texts had become a university specialism that of course tended to be restricted in the main to the university departments in one’s own country. No single European university could afford to have all of the European languages and literatures covered. National philologists not only wrote on their own language but in their publications they increasingly began to use that language too. In most cases this effectively excluded non-native speakers from this form of enquiry and this resulted in the novel fact that some of the national philologies began to have their own divergent developments, to some extent outside of the hitherto general university culture. Language still is a central issue in philology, not just as the object of study but at least as importantly as a medium of that study: philology used to be an international science that was practiced, like all other sciences, in an international language, Latin. Nowadays classical philology by its nature remains an international and to some extent a non-national concern but its practitioners no longer write in a common language. In the nineteenth century the specialized journals began to publish their scholarship in the vernacular languages, so that modern classical or biblical philologists who wanted to keep up with the literature were required to have a reading knowledge of at least Italian, of English, German and French and preferably also of Dutch, Spanish and Danish. Judging from the titles of the contributions in this symposium, it is obvious that in the nineteenth century philology as a science shifted its attention from classical Greek and Latin texts to texts in the vernacular, beginning with the oldest medieval texts and in some instances moving to what was called the ‘national’ literatures of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century the development of editorial practice in some cases would shift from classical philology to the edition of modern literatures with the difficult cases of ‘national poets’ such as in the UK William Shakespeare (no manuscripts and defective printed versions) in the UK and in Germany Friedrich Hölderlin (only drafts of the later major poems) and Franz Kafka (only manuscripts of the major works) among many other controversial cases. Because of these conditions, in many cases editorial theory ceased to have a common international forum. When in the seventies and eighties French genetic criticism became interested in those textual issues that had been dismissed as positivist by structuralism and post-structuralism, the result-

56

Geert Lernout

ing development to a large extent happened without reference to existing methodologies in German and Anglo-American traditions. In classical studies editorial theory was and still is considered to be a shared problem, with discussions of Lachmann’s stemmatic approach in some European countries, e.g. in Italy where for all kinds of cultural and political reasons there has been a continuous dialogue between the two philologies. But in the rest of Europe and in the US the separate development in classical and vernacular philologies and the fact that increasingly the latter issues were being discussed in one’s own national language, has resulted in entirely separate developments. By the end of the twentieth century there were a few attempts at a dialogue between German editors and French généticiens or between the latter and the Italian philologers. In his study of editorial traditions in the case of the modernist writers James Joyce, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust, Dirk Van Hulle was able to trace the exact relationships among the Anglo-American, German and French traditions in editing and textual study, a feat that only became possible because in this case the scholar studying these traditions was not just fluent in all the languages involved but also sufficiently aware of the specific editorial problems in the three very different cases of Joyce, Mann and Proust (Van Hulle 2004). This is another source for the divergence in philological theory and practice: the increasing trend of specialization in graduate education has resulted in an almost programmatic reluctance to generalise. This is paradoxically demonstrated in the career of Roland Barthes whose first structuralist work attacked the philology of the traditional critics by attempting to find the structures underlying not just literary but all semiotic systems, the most ambitious project of providing a general basis for every aspect of what was called a ‘signifying practice’. But by the end of the seventies Barthes had moved away from such generalization, arguing, in his late study La chambre obscure, for the creation of a mathesis singularis, which he defined as ‘the impossible science of the unique being’ (Barthes 1980, 110). We can observe in the same period an equivalent for this reluctance to generalize in similar developments in editorial theory. The representatives of the New New Bibliography moved away from the Greg-BowersTanselle insistence on the universal relevance of authorial intention. We can also see it in recent German editions, such as Sattler’s edition of the works of Friedrich Hölderlin or in the refusal of critique génétique to even


57

consider editing a text, because that would give a finality to a version of the text that by definition no text can or should have. In more recent years there have been strong arguments by respected authors against traditional philology. In his ‘critical history of philology’ Bernard Cerquiglini argues against the generalising tendencies in philology and he praises the individual variant that does not allow a generalization (Cerquiglini 1989). In all these cases, editors, critics and theorists of different national, cultural and ideological backgrounds refuse to generalize and instead they defend a principled priority of the individual material and textual fact. With all these centrifugal forces at work in and (it might be argued) against philology, it is heartening to observe that in some philological fields we can see attempts to counter-act the forces that threaten to tear the discipline further apart. Strangely the most important of these centripetal forces comes from precisely the field that for so many centuries had been the direct competitor of classical learning: the study of the bible. Biblical philology suffers from all of the ills of classical philology: specialization on the one hand and on the other a relevant secondary bibliography in at least six languages. Traditionally the study of the strange book we call the bible was divided strictly along confessional lines with Catholic, Protestant and Jewish interpretations only rarely meeting. In the nineteenth century attempts were made to find a common ground, both in what in 1787 began to be called the ‘higher criticism’ and in the lower criticism that concerned itself with textual details and editing. By the mid-nineteenth century the serious scholarly study of the bible was no longer restricted to theology departments and non- or no longer religious scholars such as D.F. Strauss and Ernest Renan continued the historical and critical studies of early Judaism and Christianity that would lead to the inerrancy debate and fundamentalism in the protestant churches and somewhat later to the modernist crisis in Catholicism. It is only in the last half century, after the hierarchy in Rome changed its position on the historical study of the text, that Catholic biblical scholars have begun to read and study the book from a perspective that is no longer strictly partisan.3 It is interesting first, simply to note that major figures in the history of philology as a critical discipline such as Richard Bentley and Karl 3 For general surveys of biblical criticism, see Greenslade 1963 and Reventlow 1990-97.

58

Geert Lernout

Lachmann planned to expose the biblical text to the principles of the new science. Secondly the history of biblical textual scholarship would have been quite different without the reformation: obviously the serious study of the text of the bible became much more important after the introduction of the doctrine of sola scriptura. If only the words of God’s book and not tradition can tell us something about God, then it becomes vitally important that the book as we have it really does contain God’s unadulterated word. As Salvatore Comporeale demonstrated more than thirty-five years ago, this interest in the biblical text had been pioneered by Lorenzo Valla as a strictly humanist form of ‘New Theology’ (Camporeale 1972). It was Erasmus’s great achievement that he most clearly understood what Valla had been trying to do in his Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum. The philological interest in the biblical text thus preceded the reformation but, needless to say, the doctrine of sola scriptura gave its findings a kind of relevance that had been absent in the history of the church with the exception of its earliest history, between the writing of Revelation 22:18-19 (‘For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book’) and the discussions about the exact nature of the Christian canon that lasted at least until the beginning of the fifth century. In that earliest history the status of the earliest Christian texts had been decidedly non-canonical and although the arguments for inclusion or exclusion of a particular text in the canon were only seldom historical or philological, these considerations had not been completely absent either. But paradoxically, some of the most thorough biblical criticism in the period after Luther and Calvin came from Catholic scholars such as Richard Simon and Alexander Geddes who not only wanted to defend the orthodoxy of tradition against Spinoza’s rationalist critique but also against the total reliance on the bible that the Protestants advocated (see Murri 1972 and Fuller 1984). Even before the publication of his Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, Simon had been involved in an aborted attempt to translate the bible in collaboration with Protestants and in the end it was his use of the term ‘critique’ in combination with the bible that upset the Catholic critics the most. Apparently in those more inno-


59

cent days, that word still had its original force. It can only be a hopeful sign that last year, I think for the very first time, a Dutch translation of the bible was published that was the result of a real collaboration between Catholics and Protestants and that seems to have been acceptable to both parties. In the field of biblical criticism at least, a general agreement has been found on the presumably historical and critical shape of the text that transcends these old sectarian divisions. In conclusion I would like to make a few suggestions. If we can learn anything from the history of our discipline, it is that there is no such thing as a German or a French philology, just as there is no Catholic or Jewish science. The principles governing the creation, transmission and usage of written texts are the same, whether we study classical, biblical or modern writings. As Joep Leerssen has argued in the introduction to this volume, there are no good reasons for the continued separate development of the national philologies and it might be a good idea to increase the number and quality of contacts between scholars from the different national scholarly traditions in all forms of philology. For that purpose it seems necessary that major contributions to editorial theory or practice should at least be reported and maybe systematically translated in English-language publications. That would put an end to the harmful isolation of some national philologies who continue to be blissfully unaware of what is and has been happening in neighbouring cultures and literatures. At the same time scholars working within these national literatures should be much more aware of what is going on in the study of earlier texts and vice versa. As G. Thomas Tanselle put it, almost a quarter of a century ago: By not familiarizing themselves with the textual criticism of classical, biblical, and medieval literature, textual scholars of more recent literature are cutting themselves off from a voluminous body of theoretical discussion and the product of many generations of experience. And by not keeping up with developments in the editing of post-medieval writings, students of earlier works are depriving themselves of the knowledge of significant advances in editorial thinking. (Tanselle 1983: 22)

Finally, and this bring us back to the discussion of facts and generalization in the first part of this paper: in Joseph A. Dane’s recent The Myth of Print Culture it becomes evident that what philology in the widest definition needs most desperately is not more generalization. Dane skilfully and wittily demonstrates that some of the most widely cherished beliefs

60

Geert Lernout

and stories about print culture are no more than convenient myths that cannot possibly be substantiated. Most relevantly in his Chapter 6 Dane demolishes what he calls ‘the critical mythology that accrues to certain historical figures (Erasmus, Bentley, Malone) as they become defined as editors in the modern sense’ (Dane 2005, 4-5). Since my all-too-generalising comments have to some extent been based on the mythological history of the discipline written by latter-day philologists, we may well have to revise part of this story. But before we do that, we will require many more details, because it is there, among the details, according to the old saying, that we’ll find ‘der Herr-Gott’. The first irony is that at least one editorial variant of this old saying claims that instead of God we will find ‘der Teufel’ in the detail. And perhaps the final and completely appropriate irony is that both versions of this saying have been variously attributed to Goethe, Spinoza, Flaubert and a host of other writers. Personally I am quite certain that it is the devil who is to blame.

References Auvray, Paul. 1974. Richard Simon: 1638-1712. Paris: Presses universitaires françaises, Barthes, Roland. 1980. La chambre claire Paris: Seuil. Blok, Frans Felix. 1984. Nicolaas Heinsius in Napels (april-juli 1647). Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. Camporeale, Salvatore. 1972. Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia. Preface by Eugenio Garin. Firenze: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento. Canfora, Luziano. 1991. The Vanished Library. London: Vintage. Canfora, Luziano. 1998. La Bibliotheca del patriarca: Fozio censurato nella Francia di Mazzarino. Roma: Salerno. Canfora, Luziano. 2002. Convertire Casaubon. Milano: Adelphi. Cerquiglini, Bernard. 1989. Eloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philology. Paris: Seuil. Dane, Joseph A. 2005. The Myth of Print Culture: Essays on Evidence, Textuality, and Bibliographical Method. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Fuller, Reginald C. 1984. Alexander Geddes 1737-1802: Pioneer of Biblical Criticism. Sheffield: Almond Press, Gamble, Harry Y. 1995. Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Grafton, Anthony. 1990. Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity inWestern Scholarship. London: Collins & Brown.


61

Grafton, Anthony. 1991. Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450-1800. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Grafton, Anthony. 1997. The Footnote: A Curious History. London: Faber and Faber. Grafton, Anthony. 2002. Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greenslade, S.L, ed. 1963. The Cambridge History of the Bible. The West from the Reformation to the Present Day. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, William V. 1989. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keller, Rudi. 1990. Sprachwandel. Von der unsichtbaren Hand in der Sprache. Tübingen: Francke. Mirri, F. Saverio. 1972. Richard Simon e il metodo storico-critico di B. Spinoza. Firenze: F. le Monnier. Monk, James Henry. 1883. The Life of Richard Bentley, D.D. London. Reventlow, Henning Graf. 1990-97. Epochen der Bibelauslegung. 3 vols.; München: C.H. Beck. Stern, Virginia F. 1979. Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia and Library. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tanselle, G. Thomas. 1983. Classical, Biblical and Medieval Textual Criticism and Modern Editing. Studies in Bibliography 36: 21-68. Van Hulle, Dirk. 2004. Textual Awareness: A Genetic Study of Late Manuscripts by Joyce, Proust, and Mann. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Waquet, Françoise. 2001. Latin or the Empire of the Sign. London: Verso.

CASE STUDIES I EMERGING CANONS AROUND THE EUROPEAN RIM


SLOVENE TEXT EDITIONS, SLAVIC PHILOLOGY AND NATION-BUILDING Darko Dolinar Abstract Critical editions in Slovenia belong to two different contexts: Slavic philology and Slovenian national culture. Their development can be divided along two lines. The editions of older texts and materials are more committed to pure scholarly criteria; they are intended primarily for a specialized, also international readership, with less interest in (or for) the wider public. The editions of more recent literary works have a wider and more mixed target readership. In terms of editorial procedure they are more subject to compromise and more open to a nationally ideological parti-pris. The major contemporary series ‘Collected Works of Slovenian Poets and Writers’ represents the mixed type of editions where strictly scholarly treatments coexist with accessibility for the general public. However, this schematic division still leaves room for exceptions such as the recent critical edition of the medieval Freising manuscripts, whose eager acceptance among the wider public bespeaks the political attitudes of a specific historical moment. Ever since its beginning in the early nineteenth century, editing activity in Slovenia has primarily been tied to national philology or national literary history, and much less, or almost not at all, to other text-related disciplines such as law, philosophy, history, theology or Biblical studies – that is, disciplines in which critical editions may have an equally important role. The history of critical editions in Slovenia should be seen, then, in two different but interconnected contexts: Slavic philology and Slovene

66

Darko Dolinar

national culture. I first examine these contexts and then proceed to consider critical editions themselves. Contexts Slavic philology belongs to the group of ‘new’ or national philologies. These were shaped relying heavily on the model of ‘old’, i.e. classical philology, with the theoretical and methodological approaches, values and techniques of the Classics transposed to the subject areas of ‘new’ European literatures and cultures. This occurred at a specific historical juncture towards the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, under the influence of the flourishing and predominance of historicism and the rise of national awareness and of modern nation-formation. Against the backdrop of these significant conceptual and intellectual shifts could national literatures and cultures become a rewarding subject of scholarly studies. The assumption behind every critical edition is that a text under consideration has a certain value, and therefore deserves close philological examination. A priori recognition of its value is a prerequisite, or the undertaking would not make sense. This means that, similar to the approach adopted by old philology in treating the works of classical antiquity, the new philologies view texts written in national languages as having value – albeit that the perspective and evaluation criteria are now somewhat different. Whereas the Classics carried ethical, cognitive and aesthetic values that constituted the core of the ideal of universal humanist education and Bildung, and as such were accepted by European cultures of later periods, the texts treated by the new philologies have yet another, added value in addition to these. They are the manifestations of the creativity of a specific ethnic group or nation – or, in other words, the intellectual life of these groups finds expression through these texts. Perhaps the most energetic expression of this belief is the formulation that the individuality of a nation – that is, the nationality of a nation1 – is in essence its language, literature (in the widest sense of the word, including folklore), mythology and religion. Roughly speaking, the development of the new philologies seems to go through two crucial phases. In the first phase, the new philologies delineated their subject fields, identified the main problems, put in order 1 This was the basic standpoint explicitly formulated by Gregor Krek, the first professor of Slavic philology at the University of Graz; cf. Krek 1874, 141-46; the same in Krek 1887, 477-83.

SLOVENE TEXT EDITIONS

67

their theoretical foundations and created the methodological apparatus; in the next phase, they broke from the isolated sphere of private erudition and moved towards establishing and encompassing institutions and social promotion. Their inner dynamics were governed by two aspirations. One was expansion, or the conquering of new dimensions of their objects of study and reinforcing and deepening the theoretical foundations and methodological procedures. The other was progressive differentiation and specialisation with respect to the field of study (in which the focus shifted from the philology of broader language groups to particular national philologies) and at the systemic and methodological levels, where general philology split into individual disciplines, in most cases linguistics, literary studies and ethnology or folklore studies. During the nineteenth century, the period of their greatest flourishing, the new philologies strived to secure for themselves a central place among the humanities by applying the highest levels of professionalism in all respects. They adhered to the principles of scholarly studies that were valid at that time. However, they did not operate in neutral academic and cultural spaces of pure cognition and evaluation, but were part of the historical and social contexts of the time. Since as a rule they dealt with languages, literatures and folklores of specific national communities – their own national communities – they were obliged to express and affirm corresponding national traits. The more convincingly and successfully they fulfilled this task – an ideological one, really – the more readily their role as a central national discipline was acknowledged. The national-ideological aspect is more or less common to all the new philologies, and their social function largely rests upon this aspect. How this worked out in practice was a matter of particular historical circumstances. By and large, a nineteenth-century spectrum runs from sovereign nations with strong economies, firm social structures and developed cultures (e.g., France, Britain, Spain and Russia), to non-sovereign, politically subaltern, economically and socially weak, and culturally underdeveloped nations (also referred to as ‘stateless’ or ‘non-historical’ nations, e.g., Irish, Catalonian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian). Positioned between these two extremes are nations with significant histories and developed cultures, but without autonomy or political independence (e.g., Czech, Polish and to some extent Italian). National philologies ranged across very different contexts, and were subject to different circumstances. Because language, folklore, literature

68

Darko Dolinar

and arts are the main (if not practically the only) manifestations of the existence of ‘stateless’ nations, they tend to be studied and cultivated with special zeal. While a rich and developed culture with many quality texts at its disposal can afford to neglect works of less significance, in smaller and less developed nations every cultural phenomenon, regardless of significance, may become the focus of philologists’ interest. The Slovene nation falls into this latter category: stateless, with a late development. A process of national revival or awakening occurred in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century; it was initially restricted to linguistic, literary and cultural activities, and later spread into the economic, social and political fields. National philology emerged as a part of this process. Its very birth and existence testify to the efforts to revive the local language and culture; conversely, it played an active role in this process and contributed to the emergence of national awareness. National philology was driven by the need for national affirmation, and philology’s ideological function in the Slovene context was more salient than in large, developed and sovereign nations. Slavic studies evolved along more or less the same path as the other new philologies. The important stages, shifts and milestones in its development mainly corresponded to the established pattern of Germanic and Romance studies, albeit a little belatedly. One of the central dilemmas, probably not so conspicuous in other studies, related to the specification of the subject field. The points at issue were the relationships, boundaries and transitions between the fields common to all Slavic nations in general and those specific to individual ethnic (i.e., national) entities inside this framework. One of the problems was a distinction between languages and dialects and between nations and ethnic groups or tribes. The perspective on this issue obviously changed over time; this is indicated by a meaningful difference between the titles of two standard works. In 1826 Pavol J. Šafárik wrote his History of the Slavic Language and Literature (note the singular form) in all its Dialects (Šafárik [Schaffarik] 1826), but forty years later Pypin and Spasovich published their Historical Review of Slavic Literatures (note the plural).2 This vacillation has wider implications. It is connected with the emergence of Pan-Slavism and its various offshoots (e.g., Illyrianism in the South Slavic region). Above all, 2 Pypin and Spasovich 1864, 2nd expanded ed.: Pypin and Spasovich 1879-80. The contemporary German translation of this book (1880-84) was very popular among Slavic readers in the Habsburg monarchy.


69

it is related to the fact that in the nineteenth century the constitution of the Slavic nations and the shaping of national awareness were as yet in flux. The circumstances of political and cultural history prevailing in various regions dictated various social roles conferred upon Slavic studies in their specific environments. While in Russia, philology dealt with the culture of the ruling nation, the situation was different in the Habsburg monarchy, which encompassed the majority of the West Slavic nations and a considerable number of the South Slavic nations in a subordinate political and social position. The development of Slavic studies in Austria is fairly well known (e.g. Kimball 1973). It began with the collaboration of experts, critics, enthusiasts and authors from the broader environment whose gravitational centre was Vienna. Over several decades, the research work and publishing activities of this informal international network provided firm foundations for Slavic studies, so that by the mid-nineteenth century it emerged as a mature discipline that found its way into the universities, first the University of Vienna, then those of Graz and Prague. Prominent Slovene philologists contributed a great deal to the discipline’s development, among them the founder, Jernej (Bartholomäus) Kopitar (1780-1844), his student, successor and the first professor of Slavic philology in Vienna Fran Miklošič (Miklosich, 1813-91) and the pioneer of Slavic studies at the University of Graz, Gregor Krek (1840-1905). Towards the end of the century, they were succeeded by the representatives of the next generation of philologists: Vatroslav Oblak (1864-96), Karel Štrekelj (1859-1912) and Matija Murko (1861-1952), who adapted to completely new circumstances following the First World War. In the light of these facts, it is understandable that one of the main lines of development of national philology in Slovenia was closely related to academic Slavic studies in Austria. However, initially the themes and issues specific to Slovenia were relatively less conspicuous. They received more emphasis only towards the end of the nineteenth century; that is, the time when the previously dominant uniform model of philology began to split into national disciplines elsewhere as well. It was at this time that Štrekelj gave the first independent lectures on Slovene language, literature and folk songs at the University of Graz; some of these were even held in the Slovene language. Significantly stimuli towards a Slovene national philology also came from outside academic institutions. Among these there were courses in

70

Darko Dolinar

Slovene (as a native language) and Slovene literature that were gradually established in Germanised schools; the textbooks and reference books used in these courses can be considered the second line of development in emerging Slovene studies. Another relevant influence were newspapers and magazines, which published popular texts with didactic content and written in the spirit of national awakening, paving the way for more complex literary and critical textual activity. Such journalism combined the programmatic standpoints of literary authors, more ambitious book reviews and the first serious attempts at literary theory. In this long and complex process of the constitution of Slovene letters, the crucial passage-points are marked by the first academic treatises, the first complete literary historical reviews, the gradual specialisation of professional publications, the strengthening of a theoretical and methodological basis at the beginning of the twentieth century and, finally, the full institutional and social recognition of this discipline, which occurred only after the disintegration of the Habsburg monarchy and within the new Yugoslav state. Slovene studies were accorded a central place in the first Slovene university in Ljubljana, established in 1919. Critical Editions The manoeuvring space of these editions seems by and large to have been determined by three factors: the nature and the scope of the textual heritage in question, the principles and theoretical or methodological approaches employed by their parent disciplines, and various external systemic aspects (ideological, cultural and social, organisational, economic). The interplay of these factors crucially shapes and directs the structure and function of critical editions. One of the most important factors influencing editorial practice is the fact that the corpus of older Slovene texts is modest in number and scope. Only some ten medieval manuscripts have survived to date, some in their entirety and others in fragments, and these are predominantly prayers and sermons; these manuscripts are unique specimens, and so they do not provide evidence of a copying tradition. The Early Modern period saw the emergence of a body of writing with a predominantly ecclesiastical religious focus; alongside, the number of secular functional writings gradually increased as well. Artistic literature emerged towards the end of the eighteenth century and reached its first peak in the first half of the nineteenth century with Romantic poetry, represented by


71

names like France Prešeren (1800-1849). In subsequent decades, postRomantic and Realistic narrative prose developed (Fran Levstik, 18311887; Josip Jurčič, 1844-1881), and readership grew in size; at the same time, the social basis of literature was strengthened through book publishing, periodicals and school curricula. On this basis, text editions in Slovenia appear to have followed a dual line of development. One of these runs concurrently with Slavic philology in general, the other belongs to the domain of national literary history. The former includes primarily older texts and documentary materials, whereas the latter is dominated by recent literary works. Folk songs occupy an intermediate position, showing the traits of both types mentioned. The first line has its beginnings in the early nineteenth century and originated in the circle gathered around the patron and mentor Sigismund Zois (1747-1819). Jernej Kopitar was a member of this circle, as was the poet and versatile essayist Valentin Vodnik (cf. Merchiers 2005). Their correspondents also included the ‘father of Slavic studies’ Josef Dobrovský. The text editions generated by this circle were intended primarily for an academically erudite audience. In terms of quality, the best among these – for example, Kopitar’s edition of the Freising Manuscripts, partly published in 1822, with a complete edition appearing in 18363 – are on a par with the best international academic works of that time. This line was carried on by the aforementioned Slovene experts in Slavic studies at Austrian universities, Miklošič, Krek and Oblak, who were indeed more concerned with texts in Old Church Slavonic, although they did publish several old Slovene texts. This tradition of critical editions with predominantly academic goals and specialised target readership continued into the twentieth century. One such undertaking was the critical edition of the Freising Manuscripts prepared by Fran Ramovš and Milko Kos (1937). Recent editions dating from the second half of the twentieth century include those of older literary texts, manuscripts, correspondence and documentary materials published by the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts and its Scientific Research Centre. 4 3

Kopitar 1836, XXXIII-XLIV; cf. also the modern Slovene translation, Kopitar 1995. The series includes the Freising Manuscripts (Bernik et al. 1992, 1993, 2004), some Old Church Slavonic manuscripts, various Slovene texts from the sixteenth to eighteenth century (works of Protestant writers, collections of poems, collections of 4

72

Darko Dolinar

Early publications of folk poems dating from the period of Romanticism were inspired by literary taste and the ideals of national awakening – for example, Vodnik’s and Prešeren’s redactions in the almanac Kranjska Čbelica (‘The Carniolan bee’) in the 1830s, and books edited by Emil Korytko (1839-44) and Stanko Vraz (1839). At the turn of the twentieth century, Karel Štrekelj prepared a comprehensive critical edition of his Slovenske narodne pesmi (Slovene Folk Songs; 1895-1923),5 which came to be regarded as one of the greatest achievements of this discipline by international standards, although the publisher, Slovenska matica,6 targeted the wider public rather than specialised circles. The destiny of editions of more recent literary works was quite different. Owing to the state of affairs in the field of belles lettres as outlined above, and the backwardness of literary historiography in the first half of the nineteenth century, there was no genuine need for critical editions. In the second half of the nineteenth century several editions of mixed type intended for the wider public appeared, ranging from popular ones to annotated scholarly editions. They were initially prepared by literary writers and critics and later on by philologists. Their original intention was to present the works of individual authors (complete or in part) and also included the works of most widely recognised living authors. One of the first such projects was the edition of poetry written by the most important Romantic poet, France Prešeren, edited by the writers Josip Stritar and Josip Jurčič (1866). The most prominent achievements are probably the editions of prose written by Jurčič, Levstik and certain other authors prepared by the critic Fran Levec (1882-92; 1891-95). Editing activity became more intense in the early twentieth century. The first solid argument for these undertakings was formulated during the First World War by the literary historian and critic Ivan Prijatelj. In his politically and culturally motivated call for a book series presenting Baroque sermons), correspondences of literary and historical relevance (Trubar and other Protestants, Čop, Vraz, Korytko, Levec, Govekar, Kidrič and Lavrin), and finally works of philology and literary history (Pohlin, Erberg and Kidrič). 5 After Štrekelj’s death in 1912, the edition’s fourth volume was completed by his student Joža Glonar. 6 In many Slavic countries, the matica – an association combining the functions of reading room, publishing house and book club – was an important initiative towards popular literacy and the status-raising of the national language (Kimball 1973). The Slovene matica was founded in 1864; among its aims were the cultivation and dissemination of scientific learning.


73

classic Slovene writers (Prijatelj 1917a, 1917b), he opted for a popularlyoriented type of edition based on critically checked texts, commentaries and essays, but without the detailed critical apparatus that is of interest only to specialists. This concept was employed in his edition of Jurčič’s and Tavčar’s works in the 1920s (Prijatelj 1919-27, 1921-32). A stricter scholarly method inspired the editions of Prešeren’s poetry by the literary historians Avgust Žigon (1922),7 Joža Glonar and Avgust Pirjevec (1929), and France Kidrič (1936). Activities in this area came into full swing in the second half of the twentieth century with editions of individual authors’ works, and several ambitious book series supplemented with commentaries, each of which applied textual-critical and ecdotic elements. Undoubtedly, the central place is occupied by the representative series Zbrana dela slovenskih pesnikov in pisateljev (‘Collected works of Slovene poets and writers’), later dubbed the ‘Slovene classics’ . This series, which has been in progress since 1945, runs to more than 220 volumes by c. thirty authors. Of these, 25 are complete work editions, some of them supplemented with a monograph on the author. Eminent literary historians and critics have participated in this project. This provides a good basis for the exemplary identification of the main advantages, but also some drawbacks, of recent edition practices.8 This series addresses both a narrow circle of specialist scholars and the wider general readership. Therefore, much as in the case of some of its interwar predecessors, the strict critical-editiorial principle was not employed; instead scholarly methods were combined with approaches that took as their point of departure accessibility for the general public. This series played an important role in shaping the Slovene literary canon. The selection of authors shows that while canon was already firmly established for the nineteenth and early twentieth century , it was still open to major changes as regards recent literature. In individual work editions, it is telling which parts are foregroudned as core texts and which are included as additions. Here the editors judge what is complete, finished and aesthetically valuable, and what is merely a draft, a frag7 The book was printed in 1914, but publication was delayed due to to outbreak of the First World War. 8 Cf. occasional articles by, and interviews with both general editors, Anton Ocvirk and, after his death in 1980, France Bernik, as well as some ambitious book reviews such as Pogačnik (1979) and, among the very rare critical works, Kramberger (1993).

74

Darko Dolinar

ment, an immature work or simply a failed attempt. In this way they intervene almost as co-author, particularly in cases in which they deal with comprehensive legacies where there are no testimonies to the ‘author’s will’. The editors decide which text is an original and which an adaptation or translation, and what the most suitable arrangement of these texts is; they decide to what extent the borderline, semi-literary and non-literary components of particular works are taken into account. Finally, their concessions to the readers’ receptive capacities can be inferred from the way in which the language of older texts has been modernised. The series also reveals predicaments in the literary system. Obviously, the Slovene literary market is too small to tolerate specialised scholarly editions or perhaps bibliophile ones alongside popular editions of the same works. This approach works only with few recognised classic authors – France Prešeren, Ivan Cankar, Oton Župančič and Srečko Kosovel. In addition, over the last few decades the country’s transition crisis has affected publishing activity and has undermined the institutional and social support of all commercially less attractive publishing projects. This means that critical editions have primarily been the domain of academic institutions, whose existence is not dependent on the book market, whereas mainstream publishers undertake such projects only exceptionally, with much difficulty and practically in defiance of commercial considerations. The most illustrative example is the destiny of the collection of classic Slovene writers that was scheduled to appear over the past decade. It survived the abolition of the fiction programme by its previous publisher and the collapse of its newly found publisher, and finally found shelter under the roof of a third publisher, a student publishing organisation. The various types of editions presented here reveal some essential differences. Critical editions of older texts and documentary materials are more committed to pure scholarly criteria; they are intended primarily for specialised circles, including international ones, and they are of less interest to the general public and less open to national-ideological influences. The editions of more recent literary works target wider and mixed readerships. In terms of editorial concepts they are therefore more subject to compromises. The national ideological function attributed to these works can be preserved in such editions.


75

However, this schematic division is not absolute. The Freising Manuscripts, one among the rare medieval Slovene texts that received the most attention and saw the greatest number of editions, is the most characteristic exception.9 The reasons are obvious. These manuscripts dating from the end of the tenth century are the oldest manuscripts in any Slavic language using the Latin alphabet, and the texts themselves are even older than the manuscripts. They present not only the opportunity to resolve certain philological issues relating to the history of language and literature, but they also raise questions related to ecclesiastical, religious, ethnic, cultural and political history. The issues related to these manuscripts are relevant for the broader Central European and Mediterranean regions located at the point where the Alps, the Apennine Peninsula, the Pannonian Plain and the Balkans meet. Scholars have expressed interest in these texts ever since their discovery at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The selected bibliography includes more than six hundred titles, including almost forty editions. Not all of these are critical – some are adapted for textbooks, are translations, etc. – yet more than half of them display serious scholarly intentions. In addition to Slovene editors, there are also Czech, Slovak, Russian, Austrian and German researchers. They illuminate this subject from various perspectives and place it in various contexts. One of the central questions, which has pervaded almost two hundred years of debate, relates to the linguistic and ethnic origins of these texts. Early on, Dobrovský and Kopitar advanced the thesis that the Freising Manuscripts belong to early Slovene. In subsequent debates, contradicting hypotheses appeared, linked the MSS to Old Church Slavonic writing from ninth-century Greater Moravia and Lower Pannonia. In accordance with various theories on the origins and emergence of Old Church Slavonic, these hypotheses suggested either a link with Czech or Slovak regions, or with Macedonian foundations, also allowing contacts with the Croatian glagolitic tradition. At the root of these debates lies the issue of the relative influence of the Western Church (through German patterns of Slovene texts) and that of the Eastern Church (from which ensued the mission of Cyril and Methodius). 9 For additional information, cf. the survey of studies by Igor Grdina and bibliography by Marko Kranjec in the critical edition Bernik et al. 2004, 154-91. A recent electronic critical edition (Grdina et al. 2007) has been placed online at http://nl.ijs.si/e-zrc.bs

76

Darko Dolinar

Academic research on this issue has followed its immanent logic, resting on the subject matter itself and the state of affairs in disciplines concerned with it; even so, the interpretations of the findings are not immune to ideological undertones. Discussions were not only of an academic, scholarly import; when associating the Freising Manuscripts with one or another contemporary Slavic nation they also revealed an ideological dimension, a mental (historicist) template according to which whatever is older is more precious and more valuable, and whereby the historical rootedness of cultural patterns or values enhances their contemporary status. According to the established research tradition and according to currently prevailing academic opinion, the Freising Manuscripts belong to the early phase of Slovene, or they are most akin to it. Therefore, Slovene national philology – or, to be more precise, linguistic, literary and cultural history – places the manuscripts at its very beginning, which gives them powerful symbolic meaning. It is probably no coincidence that twentiethcentury debates about the Freising Manuscripts received fresh impetus precisely during the periods that were significant for the Slovene national issue. Certainly, their wider popular reception is connected with this political conjuncture. To illustrate this pattern, the most recent instance may suffice. In 1992, on the first anniversary of Slovene sovereignty, a critical edition of the Freising Manuscripts was published, summarising most previous findings. It triggered a fresh cycle of systematic research. The book, presented in a bibliophile layout befitting the occasion, also elicited a broad response among the wider public. It was followed by a paperback reprint, an audiocassette with phonetic reconstruction of the texts and a television broadcast. A publishing house of the Slovene minority in Italy published the translated and adapted version of this critical edition. This provoked extensive polemics in Trieste (located in the ethnically mixed border region and sensitive to Italian nationalist resentments), in which the issues of the age, comparative advantages and value of these texts were debated. Finally, the latest, supplemented version of the critical edition took place in the context of the celebrations marking Slovenia’s 2004 accession to the European Union. At that time, the four oldest Slovene manuscripts kept at various locations in four countries were exhibited together for the first time. This exhibition, entitled ‘The Birth Certificate of Slovene Culture’, had so many visitors that it had to


77

be extended beyond its scheduled closing date. Thus, even today, critical text editions, for all their academic and scholarly content and intent, may, given a suitable occasion, obtain an ideological function.

References Bernik, France. 2004. Iz veka v vek, iz roda v rod: ob petdesetletnici zbirke slovenskih klasikov. In Spektrum ustvarjalnosti, 114-16. Ljubljana: Slovenska matica. (Reprint from Delo 38, 12 December 1996: 13). Bernik, France et al., eds. 1992. Brižinski spomeniki. Znanstvenokritična izdaja. Ljubljana: Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU and Slovenska knjiga. Bernik, France et al., eds. 1993. Brižinski spomeniki. Znanstvenokritična izdaja. 2nd ed.; Ljubljana: Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti and Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU. Bernik, France et al., eds. 2004. Brižinski spomeniki – Monumenta frisingensia. Znanstvenokritična izdaja. 3rd ed, ed. Jože Faganel and Darko Dolinar. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU. Glonar, Joža and Avgust Pirjevec, eds. 1929. Doktorja Franceta Prešerna zbrano delo. Ljubljana: Jugoslovanska knjigarna. Grdina, Igor et al., eds. Brižinski spomeniki: Monumenta Frisingensia. Elektronska znanstvenokritična izdaja. Ljubljana: Inštitut za slovensko literaturo in literarne vede ZRC SAZU. Online at http://nl.ijs.si/e-zrc/bs Kidrič, France, ed. 1936. Prešeren. I. Pesnitve – pisma. Ljubljana: Tiskovna zadruga. Kimball, Stanley B. 1973. The Austro-Slav Revival: A Study of Nineteenth-century Literary Foundations. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Kopitar, Bartholomaeus (Jernej). 1836. Glagolita Clozianus. Vindobonae (Vienna). Kopitar, Jernej. 1995. Jerneja Kopitarja Glagolita Clozianus – Cločev glagolit. Ed. Jože Toporišič; Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta, Oddelek za slovanske jezike in književnosti, Seminar slovenskega jezika, literature in kulture. Korytko, Emil, ed. 1839-44. Slovenske pesmi krajnskiga naroda. 5 vols.; Ljubljana: Blasnik. Kramberger, Igor. 1993. Sociologija filološko-založniške institucije. Doctoral thesis, Univ. Ljubljana. Krek, Gregor. 1874. Einleitung in die slavische Literaturgeschichte und Darstellung ihrer älteren Perioden. Theil 1. Graz. Krek, Gregor. 1887. Einleitung in die slavische Literaturgeschichte: Akademische Vorlesungen, Studien und kritische Streifzüge. 2nd ed. of Krek 1874. Graz. Levec, Fran, ed. 1882-92. Josipa Jurčiča zbrani spisi. 11 vols.; Ljubljana. Levec, Fran, ed. 1891-95. Levstikovi zbrani spisi. 5 vols.; Ljubljana.

78

Darko Dolinar

Merchiers, Ingrid. 2005. Cultural Nationalism in the South Slav Habsburg Lands in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Scholarly Network of Jernej Kopitar (1780-1844). Doctoral thesis, Univ. Gent. Ocvirk, Anton. 1954. Zbrana dela slovenskih pesnikov in pisateljev: razgovor z glavnim urednikom dr. Antonom Ocvirkom. Naši razgledi 3.23 (4 Dec.): 11-12. Ocvirk, Anton. 1965. Zbrana dela slovenskih pesnikov in pisateljev. In Dvajset let Državne založbe Slovenije, 21-28. Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije. Ocvirk, Anton. 1971. Sto knjig slovenskih klasikov. Govor ob jubilejni knjigi. Naši razgledi 20.22 (26 Nov.): 670-71. Pogačnik, Jože. 1979. Kritična izdaja in njeni problemi: ob sklepu Cankarjevega Zbranega dela. Naši razgledi 20.1 (26 Jan.): 40-41. Prijatelj, Ivan. 1917a. O izdaji naših klasikov. Naša knjiga (supplement to Ljubljanski zvon) 1.2: 5-7. Prijatelj, Ivan, 1917b. O ureditvi naših klasikov. Naša knjiga (supplement to Ljubljanski zvon) 1.3: 10-12. Prijatelj, Ivan, ed. 1919-27. Josipa Jurčiča zbrani spisi. 5 vols.; Ljubljana: Tiskovna zadruga. Prijatelj, Ivan, ed. 1921-32. Ivana Tavčarja zbrani spisi. 6 vols.; Ljubljana: Tiskovna zadruga. Pypin, Aleksandr N. and Vladimir Spasovich. 1864. Obzor istorii slavianskikh literatur. St. Petersburg. Pypin, Aleksandr N. and Vladimir Spasovich. 1879-80. Istoriia slavianskikh literatur. 2 vols.;St. Petersburg. (2nd, expanded ed. of Pypin and Spasovich 1864.) Ramovš, Fran, Milko Kos, eds. 1937. Brižinski spomeniki. Uvod, paleografski in fonetični prepis, prevod v knjižno slovenščino, faksimile pergamentov. Ljubljana: Akademska biblioteka. Schaffarik, Paul J. 1826. Geschichte der slavischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten. Ofen (Pest). Stritar, Josip and Josip Jurčič, eds. 1866. Pesmi Franceta Preširna. Ljubljana. Štrekelj, Karel, ed. 1895-1923. Slovenske narodne pesmi. 4 vols.; Ljubljana: Slovenska matica. Vraz, Stanko, ed. 1839. Narodne pesni ilirske, koje se pevaju po Štajerskoj, Kranjskoj, Koruškoj i zapadnoj strani Ugarske. Zagreb. Žigon, Avgust, ed. 1922. Prešernova čitanka. Prevalje: Mohorjeva družba.


INSCRIBING ORALITY: THE FIRST FOLKLORE EDITIONS IN THE BALTIC STATES Paulius V. Subačius Abstract The earliest Lithuanian and Latvian editorial efforts intended to show that behind the scarcity of mature literary works there existed an older medieval, orally transmitted cultural tradition. Its rediscovery was mostly assigned to folklore publications which were remarkable for their philological quality. The professional collection of folklore was likewise more advanced than that of ancient manuscripts. The character of the first annotated folklore editions was determined by the fact that they were addressed not only to local readers, but also to foreign linguists, whose interest in the Baltic languages required an exact rendering of textual features. The modern national literature drew its pedigree from folk culture and folklore publications, sidelining the heritage of written (religious and didactic) literary sources. Scholarly editing of oral literature is one of the youngest among the branches of textual scholarship. It involves very complicated issues such as the extent and variation of the text, as well as ways of conveying the characteristics of its performance in the apparatus (Foley 1995). However, in this context the first philological editions in the Baltic languages seem paradoxically situated. In Latvia and Lithuania, the first vernacular editions indicating early stirrings of textological awareness appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The great majority of these editions were publications of folklore, especially of the texts of folksongs. The impact of these publications on modern Lithuanian and Latvian culture and national awareness was huge (Kiaupa 2002, Snyder 2003). Typologically it

80

Paulius V. Subačius

matches the influence exercised on West-European nations by the Romantic recovery of vernacular medieval literature and its introduction into literary and cultural circulation (Leerssen 2004). In the period under discussion (1807-1915), both Baltic nations belonged to the Russian empire, except for roughly one fifth of the Lithuanian population which lived in the north-eastern part of the Kingdom of Prussia (the area known as Lithuania Minor). Prior to the twentieth century, Latvians had never had their own state. Although the states to which the Latvians belonged changed through the ages, Latvian culture and language had been under the constant influence of a German nobility from twelfth-century Christianization onwards (Puisāns 1995). In Lithuania, from the sixteenth century onwards the language carrying cultural prestige had Polish. Lithuanians lost their joint confederate state with Poland at the end of the eighteenth century (Bumblauskas 1999, 8891; Gerutis 1984). The incorporation of Lithuania and Latvia into Russia revealed clearly that the new suzerain was far less European (Western-oriented) than the subject peoples themselves, who responded with several uprisings (1794, 1831, 1863). The repression of these uprisings was itself a great blow to traditional forces within Lithuanian and Latvian societies. ‘Battle losses, emigration to Western Europe, exile to the east, estate confiscation and cultural russification all changed the political mood. As the peasantry’s and the intelligentsia’s role became ever clearer, the gentry’s position in society began to weaken’ (Rowell at al., 2002, 25). A new intelligentsia, clerical and secular, emerged from among the emancipated peasantry. ‘An understanding gradually emerged that Lithuanian [and Latvian] was not just an ethnic language but national one.’ Thanks to church schools in Latvia and secret village schools in Lithuania, where children were taught their native language, the Baltic countries by the end of nineteenth century became the most literate area in the Russian Empire (ibid., 28). The first books in Latvian and Lithuanian had been sixteenth-century catechisms (Žukas 1999, 10, 16), later followed by numerous translated and original religious texts, as well as linguistic instruments, such as dictionaries and grammars. Some secular publications in the form of occasional and didactic works also appeared. Nevertheless, in the two Baltic languages the first poetic works that could claim to be significant landmarks in the national literature were written only in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is important to note that in Lithuania and

INSCRIBING ORALITY

81

Latvia during the period from the thirteenth to nineteenth century the local population, as well as settlers from other countries, were prolific in different genres in other languages: Latin, Polish, German, Yiddish, and East Slavic languages (Kubilius et al., 1997). The absence of state institutions, along with other factors, determined, however, that a modern Lithuanian and Latvian sense of national identity was established along linguistic-ethnographic, rather than political, principles. Therefore texts written in other languages were marginal to an emerging national culture. Acceptance of those texts as part of the Lithuanian and Latvian cultural heritage spread only by the end of the twentieth century (Ulčinaitė 1996, Narbutas 2000). Thus, as a result of the dearth of the ancient written texts and authorial literature in the vernacular languages, the very first efforts to search for national origins were directed almost exclusively towards folklore. These efforts were inspired by intellectual factors current in many parts of Europe: the influence of Macpherson’s Ossian, and especially of the German philosophers’ and philologists’ ideas on vernacular language and folk culture. Herder’s two-volume collection of Volkslieder (1778-79; now better known under the title of the 1807 re-edition as Stimmen der Völker in Liedern), contained some Lithuanian and Latvian songs. This collection provided European philologists with their first extensive acquaintance with Baltic oral literature. Reciprocally, its impact was far more important. For a hundred years it was quoted in Lithuania and Latvia as an argument that Baltic folklore, and by implication the Baltic languages and nations, stood as equals alongside other European nations. In addition to this general Romantic atmosphere, there was another formative reason for the incipient interest in Lithuanian and Latvian folklore: the emergence of comparative linguistics. The very founders of the theory of Indo-European affinity had already asserted that, among the living languages of the Indo-European family, the Baltic languages best preserved ancient forms. Therefore almost all prominent nineteenthcentury European linguists included the Baltic languages in their studies (Žukas 1999, 22). What is more, the most suitable resource in order to identify the archaic strata of language was considered to lie in the folk tradition, rather than in authorial works or in contemporary usage. As a result, philologically-qualified publications on Baltic folklore could count on an interested academic readership abroad even before they appeared.

82


At home, the protagonists of the national movements took pride in the fact that the famous European scholars paid attention to the ‘tunes of simple country folk’. ‘Folk culture and folk creations were lifted to the range of the highest culture’ (Subačius 1996, 7). The first separately published collection of the Lithuanian folk songs was entitled Dainos oder Litthauische Volkslieder (1825) and contained 85 folklore texts (Rhesa 1825). It was edited by Liudvikas Rėza (German spelling: Rhesa; 1776-1840), a Lutheran clergyman of Lithuanian extraction and professor of oriental languages and theology in Königsberg University. He had earlier brought out re-editions of two almost hundred-year-old translations of the Bible into Lithuanian (Biblia 1816, 1824), followed by two voluminous parts of ‘philological critical notes’ (Rhesa 1816-24). The connection between high philology and the publication of folk songs is neither straightforward nor coincidental; both involved textological skills. The collection of songs is a parallel edition: Lithuanian texts and their German translations are printed on facing pages. The melodies for seven of the songs are appended; so is a synoptic article, which not only stresses the importance and distinctiveness of the oral corpus but also presents a synopsis of Lithuanian folklore scholarship and previous (piecemeal) publications. Some songs are accompanied by an account of the circumstances in which they were recorded and of the performative context. As far as one can see from the surviving fragments of Rėza’s archive, around 60% of the published texts fairly accurately represent the texts recorded by the nine assistants who helped Rėza in the collection of folklore. Besides, in his letter (dated 20 March 1826) to Johann Wolfgang Goethe from whom he expected assistance in the publication of the collection, Rėza asserts that he has witnesses who would confirm that the editor faithfully represented and rendered the texts that were sent to him (cf. Jovaišas 1969, 273). Three editorial interventions in this collection are obvious: the selection of the included songs from a larger collection of recorded folklore; the grouping of the texts by genre and theme; and the fact that the songs carry thematically indicative titles – which Lithuanian folksongs, usually identified by their first line, do not possess. Other editorial interventions on Rėza’s part are of an entirely different nature. They are strictly at odds with the philological principles while

INSCRIBING ORALITY

83

reflecting current attitudes towards folk creativity. Archival and textual criticism research shows that three songs in the collection were actually written by Rėza himself (Jovaišas 1969, 256-90). These songs draw on Lithuanian folklore models and on materials concerning Latvian mythology and cosmology published at the end of the eighteenth century (Bojtár 1999, Ābols 2002). This mythology is treated as representing the shared inheritance of the ancient culture of the Balts. The chief and perhaps the only aim of this forgery was to demonstrate that Lithuanian folklore contains mythological material, and as such conveys information about the deepest layers of the nation’s past. As Rėza wrote in his commentaries, he had no doubt that the songs featuring mythological events, such as ‘The Wedding of the Moon’, had been composed in pagan antiquity (Rhesa 1825, 333). In reality, authentic Lithuanian folk songs (unlike the Latvian ones) almost never contain mythological material (such as references to gods, goddesses or anthropomorphised heavenly bodies). Rėza, on the other hand, created texts about the wedding of the moon and the sun, or about the god Perkūnas (thunder). The circle of his correspondents and his philological interests attest that Rėza was directly influenced by Jacob Grimm’s ideas on the intertwining of mythology and historical reality in the epics. Through his forgery, Rėza gave rise to the tradition which seeks to detect in the Lithuanian folklore the fragments of a lost, primordial national epic. This tradition has its adherents in Lithuania to this day and retains its academic status despite the fact that it has been exploded on the basis of textual and editorial evidence. And another group of inauthentic texts found its way into this collection – a result, not of conscious forgery, but of uncritical source selection of the sources and the wish to publish as many songs as possible. These are the texts taken from the secondary sources without checking their reliability or, in a particularly interesting instance, the songs who were translated back into Lithuanian by Rėza himself from earlier fragmentary publications in German. It is instructive to compare this publication of oral material with the same philologist’s publication of an authorial text. In 1818 Rėza published the first edition of The Seasons, a poem by the late-eighteenth century Lithuanian writer Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714-1780), considered a classic of the Lithuanian literature (Rhesa 1818). Although the editor relied on the autograph, he took many more liberties with the authorial

84


text than he had done with the folklore ones. Out of the poem’s 2968 lines he deleted 468, changing characters’ names and otherwise altering the text. The principal reasons for these changes were aesthetic and moralistic. The passages that were omitted or transformed were the ones which, according to the editor’s opinion, contradicted ‘good taste’, clashed with the pastoral image of the Lithuanian peasants’ life, or criticised Prussian authorities. While Rėza’s statements concerning the authenticity of the folk songs was, as we have seen, less than well-founded, still his editorial policy was guided by the principle of faithful textual rendering; but in his interference with Donelaitis’ manuscript he consciously disregarded the author’s intention or the documentary evidence. The attitude seems to be that the folk texts should be presented as authentically as possible, whereas authorial works can be safely edited according to the editor’s taste and the target audience. In Lithuania this editorial stance was dominant throughout most of the nineteenth century. The Romantic attitude towards folklore reached the Baltic nations almost a hundred years earlier than the modern concept of authorship. It is illustrative to compare these two editions by Rėza with the editorial strategy of the German philologist G.H.F. Nesselmann, who published the same texts a quarter of a century later. In diametrical opposition to Rėza, Nesselmann published Donelaitis’ text (Nesselmann 1869) scrupulously following the autograph and the earliest copy, and accurately retaining diacritical signs and other features; whereas in his edition of 410 folk songs, compiled mostly from Rėza and other earlier editions, Nesselmann (1853), on the contrary, shortened, supplemented, emended and reworked the texts. Thus he removes segments that were, in his view, contaminated; in several cases he splits into two works that are on record as one song; in other cases he welds verses from several songs into one. Such interventions were motivated by his individual taste and the idea that texts should be subjected to the methods of comparative reconstructive linguistics. Rėza’s folksong edition was favourably reviewed by Goethe and by Jacob Grimm. These endorsements encouraged foreign scholars’ interest in the Baltic nations, and acted as a powerful boost to the few nationallymotivated members of the Lithuanian intelligentsia. In their eyes, publications that were succesful in the international literary system enhanced chances national self-expression.

INSCRIBING ORALITY

85

The first edition of Latvian songs appeared somewhat earlier than Rėza’s work and in more extensive form. In 1807 by Gustav Bergmann (1749-1814), a Lutheran priest, who himself collected the texts and printed them at the printing-house on the island of Rujen, in the province of Latvia; the printing-house he had established himself. Bergmann is typologically akin to Rėza in that he also had edited and published a (Latvian) Bible translation. Although Bergmann had high philological ambitions as an editor, his edition of folk songs contains ill-understood and poorly recorded words; also, authentically traditional texts are intermixed with newer songs of various origins. The edition also lacks a philological apparatus. A much higher editorial standard is attested by a collection, modest in its extent – the texts of only 30 Lithuanian songs – which in 1829 was published in Vilnius by Simonas Stanevičius (1799-1848). Stanevičius, a beggared nobleman and a poet who had graduated in Classics from Vilnius University, was the first Lithuanian who sought to earn his living as a free-lance professional philologist. Before he published the collection of songs, he had edited and published selections from a sixteenthcentury Lithuanian book of sermons, as well as a new edition of an early eighteenth-century grammar, in Latin, of the Lithuanian language (Stanevičius 1823, 1829). Stanevičius’ collection was marked by strict selection criteria. He included only one fifth of the texts that he had at his disposal, clearly listing the criteria of selection in the ‘Introduction’: archaic nature, internal coherence of the text, complexity as a song. The songs are carefully recorded and numbered, and many are accompanied by linguistic and factual comments. In his commentaries, Stanevičius evinces trenchant historicism, as against romantic idealization: Tykietise idant butu daynas nu karzigiu senowes Lituwiu yr Zemaycziu kures daynewa Waydelotay musu zemes wiresnynjey yr daynynynkay, ira tuszczia dyngstys. Waykay sawa tiewu daynas atkartodamy wadyn tay senowes daynomys yr nor jas uzmyrszty; ko taygy benoriety idant daynas Wai[d]elotu pyrm 400 yr 500 metu daynujemas, szendin pazynstamas butu? Mazne be abejojyma galu sakity jog wysas szendin randamas Zemaycziu daynas nier ankstibesnes uz (...) XVIII amziaus (...).1 1

Stanevičius 1829, [6]: ‘A hope to have songs from olden times of valiant Lithuanians and Samogitians that were sung by high-priests and songsters of our land is but a vain hope. Children who repeat songs of their fathers call them songs of antiquity and hasten to forget them; how then could one wish for the songs of high-priests, sung 400 or 500 years ago, to be current today? Without hesitation I could say that all Samogitian songs that are found today are not anterior to the eighteenth century.’

86


The musical scores for all the published songs were published four years later (Stanevičius 1833). Stanevičius disseminated these and other publications with the declared aim of nurturing national culture and national awareness. A substantial part of the gentry intellectuals in Lithuania (bilingually Polish- and Lithuanian-speaking) felt sympathy for Lithuanian language and folklore. ‘Interest of Baltic Germans intellectuals in popular culture was not very wide and did not transgress the limits of purely scholarly concern. Even sympathetically to popular culture disposed Baltic German intellectuals held German culture superior’ (Pivoras 1996, 7). Either negatively or positively, this scholarly concern fed into the ambitious scheme, in the mid-century, of publishing a full corpus of Latvian songs. The somewhat utopian plan took shape in sections of the Lettisch-Literärische Gesellschaft (Latvian Literary Society, composed of Germans). Latvian songs are short, consisting mostly of a single stanza, and thus it was possible for collections of thousands of songs to appear earlier on in Latvia. In 1844 Georg Büttner (1805-1883) published, under the aegis of the Lettisch-Literärische Gesellschaft a collection of ‘The Songs and zinges of Latvian People’ (Büttner 1844) comprising 2854 texts, and with an appendix of Clarifications and Remarks. In 1874-1875 the same Society, to celebrate its anniversary, printed in Leipzig two volumes of ‘The songs of the Latvian Nation’, Latviešu tautas dziesmas (edited by August Bielenstein, 1826-1907). This edition was intended to run to four volumes and to contain all of the material collected; it was never completed, and only 4793 out of the expected number of 10.000 texts have been published. Lithuanian folk songs are much lengthier (often more than twelve stanzas), which explains why the collection of 7000 songs compiled in the 1850s and 1860s by the Lithuanian Catholic priest Antanas Juška (1818-1880) far exceeds the Latvian collections in size. Four volumes, almost a thousand pages each, were published in 1880-1883 in Russia through the efforts of his brother, the philologist Jonas Juška (1815-1886), comprise only a third of the manuscript collection (Juška 1880-82, 1883). The volumes were disseminated legally only outside Lithuania, because in the period between 1864 and 1904 the Russian Imperial administration had prohibited the use of the Latin alphabet in Lithuanian-language publications. The Catholic clergy played a significant role in the Lithuanian national awakening movement and in the resistance against the printing ban. Bishops organized the publication of

INSCRIBING ORALITY

87

Lithuanian books in Eastern Prussia and other countries (Baronas et al., 2002, 124-5). Among numerous illegal production smuggled into Russian-ruled Lithuania were not only religious books, but also editions of oral literature. Juška’s collection establishes a textual corpus in that in the course of preparation of his hefty books some 5000 songs were collected in one parish alone. The folklore publications by the Latvian mathematician and astronomer Krišjānis Barons (1835-1923) ran to even greater girth. His fifteen-part annotated collection of ‘Latvian songs’ (Barons 1894-1915) contains over 200.000 songs along with their variants. In 1880, Barons captured his great collection of recorded songs in a huge card-catalogue; the basis of a folklore archive which became the first national repository of the Latvian cultural heritage, and which was eventually entrusted to the newly-established independent state of Latvia. Likewise the archive of the Lithuanian Scientific Society (established in 1907), the first nationwide collection of the Lithuanian cultural inheritance, was initially also largely a depository of folklore records. Both Jonas Basanavičius (1851-1927), the founder of the Society and its archive, and the Latvian Barons, came to be called the patriarchs of their nations even during their lifetime (Senn 1985, 311-5; Bleiere et al. 2006, 42). Owing to the specific nature of folklore publication it is difficult to identify any specific textological approach in these Lithuanian and Latvian editions of folksong. The editors’ professional and educational background indicates a some familiarity with Biblical and Classical studies; one cannot state anything more specific than that. An peculiar feature of these editions is the effort to retain, as precisely as possible, the linguistic forms, the accidentals of the texts. In this respect the attention of the linguists engaged in the Indo-European research was decisive. It was also one of the reasons that editions which had been undertaken for a narrow goal – to bolster national self-esteem – were at the same time also circulated in European academic circles. Later on, bilingual parallel editions of songs became reference materials for comparative research into folklore and mythology, with a methodology borrowed from linguistics. Thus, the early philological editions of the Baltic nations, despite representing exotic languages, were never a closed book to Europe-atlarge. The Latvian and Lithuanian nationalist ideology that had proclaimed the distinctiveness of ancient pagan Baltic culture determined literary and

88


linguistic interest in folklore. The modern national literature drew its pedigree straight from folk culture, sidelining and marginalising the heritage of religious and didactic literature. The folksong editions were (alongside writers’ own rootedness in an environment naturally permeated by folklore), an important factor in this process. For it is precisely these folksongs editions whose influence one recognises in the lavish inclusion of folklore material in those works of literature which themselves were not in direct contact with living tradition. An exceptionally telling case is the Latvian poet Andrejs Pumpurs (1841-1902). In 1888 he published an epic in Latvian entitled The Bear-slayer. It was based on a wide range of folklore literature and imitated Finno-Ugric, as well as medieval, epics of a heroic and mythological nature. As most of the notorious counterfeit fabrications of folklore had already been exposed at the time, Pumpurs decided not hide his authorship. We are talking about the period when the standard norm of the Lithuanian and Latvian languages was taking shape. In this process, the examples of folklore, as well as the material from the editions of folk literature, largely overshadowed that experience of the unification of language which was accumulated in textual sources such as Bible translations or religious songs. The main issue remains this: in Lithuania and Latvia the re-evaluation of old local cultural traditions was mostly manifested in folklore publications. In their level of philological preparation these were ahead of literary editions by more than a half-century. Since, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the newly emerging national states of Lithuania and Latvia were formed on the basis of the ethno-linguistic concept of nationality, folklore editions played an important part, not only in nationbuilding but also in state-formation.

References Ābols, Guntars. 2002. The Contribution of History to Latvian identity. Riga: Nacionālais apgāds. Baronas, Darius et al. 2002. Christianity in Lithuania. Vilnius: Aidai. Barons, Krišjānis. 1894-1915. Latvju dainas: Chansons nationales lataviennes. 6 vols.; Jelgava & St. Petersburg. Biblia. 1816. Biblia, tai esti: Wissas Szwentas Rásztas Séno ir Naujo Testamento […], Nů keliû Mokytojû Lietuwoj Lietuwiszkay perstattytas, Dabar isz naujo pérweizdētas ir tréczą Kartą iszspáustas. Karaliaučius.

INSCRIBING ORALITY

89

Biblia. 1824. Biblia, tai esti: Wissas Szwentas Rásztas Séno ir Naujo Testamento, Lietuwiszkay pérstattytas, isz naujo pérweizdētas Ir ketwirtą kartą iszspáustas. Tilžė. Bielenstein, August. 1874-75. Latviešu tautas dziesmas. 2 vols., Jelgava. Bleiere, Daina et al. 2006. History of Latvia: The Twentieth Century. Riga: Jumava. Bojtár, Endre. 1999. Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People. Budapest: CEU Press. [Bumblauskas, Alfredas]. 1999. History. Lithuania. Vilnius: Du Ka, Büttner, Georg. 1844. Latviešu laužu dziesmas un zinges. Jelgava. Foley, John Miles. 1995. Folk Literature. In Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research, ed D. C. Greetham, 600-626. New York: MLA. Gerutis, Albertas (ed.). 1984. Lithuania: 700 years. New York: Manyland books. Jovaišas, Albinas. Liudvikas Rėza (Vilnius: Vaga, 1969), Juška, Antanas. 1880-82. Liėtùviškos dájnos. 3 vols.; Kazan; Juška, Antanas. 1883. Liėtùviškos svotbinės dájnos. St. Petersburg Kiaupa, Zigmantas et al. 2002. The history of the Baltic countries. 3rd rev. ed.Tallinn: Avita. Kubilius, Vytautas et al. 1997. Lithuanian literature. Vilnius: LLTI. Leerssen, Joep. 2004. Literary historicism: Romanticism, philologists, and the presence of the past. Modern language quarterly 65.2: 221-243. Narbutas, Sigitas. 2000. The Mysterious Island: a Review of 13th-16th Century Literature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Vilnius: LLTI. Nesselmann, G.H.F. 1853 Littauische Volkslieder, gesammelt kritisch bearbeitet und metrisch übersetzt. Berlin. Nesselmann, G.H.F. 1869. Christian Donalitius Littauische Dichtungen nach Königsberg Handschriften. Königsberg. Pivoras, Saulius. 1995. The Development of Lithuanian and Latvian Civic Self-consciousness during the End of XVIII – First Half of XIX Centuries: A Comparative Aspect. Vilnius: VU. Plakans, Andrejs. 1974. Peasants, Intellectuals, and Nationalism in the Russian Baltic Provinces, 1820-90. Journal of modern history, 46: 445-475. Puisāns, Tadeušs. 1995. The Emerging Nation: The Path of Agonizing Development from Baltic Tribalism to Latvian Nationhood. Rīga: Centre of Baltic-Nordic History and Political Studies. Pumpurs, Andrējs. 1888. Lāčplēsis, latvju tautas varonis: Tautas epus. Riga. Rhesa, L.J. 1816-24. Philologisch-kritische Anmerkungen zur litthauischen Bibel. 2 vols. Königsberg. Rhesa, L.J. 1818. Das Jahr in vier Gesängen, ein ländliches Epos aus dem Littauischen des Christian Donaleitis, genannt Donalitius, in gleichem Versmaaß ins Deutsche übertragen. Königsberg. Rhesa, L.J. 1825. Dainos oder Litthauische Volkslieder gesammelt, uebersetzt und mit gegenueberstehendem Urtext herausgegeben. Nebst einer Abhandlung ueber die litthauischen Volksgedichte. Königsberg. Rowell, Stephen C.; Reda Griškaitė; Gediminas Rudis. 2002. A History of Lithuania. Vilnius: Inter Se.

90


Senn, Alfred Erich. 1985. The Lithuanian Intelligentsia of the Nineteenth Century. In National Movements in the Baltic Countries during the Nineteenth Century, ed. A. Loit, 311-315. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. Snyder, Timothy. 2003. The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Stanevičius, Simonas. 1823. Wyjątek z kazań żmudzkich. Vilnius. Stanevičius, Simonas. 1829a. Daynas Żemaycziu surynktas yr ysżdutas par Symona Stanewicze Mokslynynka Lyteraturas yr Grażiuju Prytirymu. Vilnius. Stanevičius, Simonas. 1829b. Trumpas pamokimas kałbos Lituwyszkos arba Żemaytyszkos nuo nekurio nobazna ysz draugistes Jezaus Kunyga lotinyszkay paraszitas yr spaustas Wyjlniuj’ metuse 1737. dabarcziu atrastas yr ysznauja swiêtuy parôditas. Vilnius. Stanevičius, Simonas. 1833. Pàźimes zemaytiszkas gâydas prydiêtynas pry Daynù Żemaycziu surynktù yr yszdûtu par Symona Stanèwicze Môkslynynka Lyteratùras yr Graźiùju Prytirymu. Riga. Subačius, Paulius V. 1996. Concept of the Culture of National Liberation. Vilnius: VU. Ulčinaitė, Eugenija. 1996. Baroque Literature in Lithuania. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. Žukas, Saulius. 1999. The First Lithuanian Book and its Cultural Context. 2nd rev. ed. Vilnius: Baltos lankos.


SCANIA PROVINCE LAW AND NATION-BUILDING IN SCANDINAVIA Paula Henrikson Abstract Competing Danish and Swedish editions of the Scania province law exemplify the role of textual editing for nation-building in Scandinavia. A Danish province up to the seventeenth century, Scania has since 1658 been Swedish territory. This has made the Scania province law, which dates from the Middle Ages, a cultural heirloom of two nations, Sweden and Denmark. The editions of the law, which have been produced in both countries from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, express their national bias not only in the introductions but also through elements such as the evaluation of manuscripts, the treatment of text and commentary, and visual codes such as format and layout. On the whole, editing proves to be a means of defining nationality and social identities, fundamentally determined by the editor's preconceptions and prejudices. Gary Taylor has compared scholarly editing to the battle between Persians and Greeks over the dead body of Leonidas: the text, though powerless and dead, is the object of scholarly contest (Taylor 1994, 19). With this drastic image Taylor calls attention to the symbolic character of textual scholarship. The editors pursue their task driven by ambitions and interests which, though seldom verbalised, nevertheless form the basis for their historical commitment. Power over the corpus of the text gives power over history as well, and over the understanding of history. Traditionally, scholarly editing has elicited only sparse theoretical (even though frequent methodological) interest. The old notion of scholarly editing as the ‘handmaid’ of the higher criticism has been persistent.

92

Paula Henrikson

To see in editing a disinterested task has also been the prerequisite guarantee for its claim to authority. The representation of history that an edited text embodies secures its reliability through the notion of editing as an objective, neutral and unbiased activity. And vice versa: if the conditions of scholarly editing must be understood as variable with the editor’s theoretical and historical bias, how is it possible to justify an endeavour which claims to produce the material foundations for comprehensive and unprejudiced research? In an ongoing project I explore the tradition of Swedish scholarly editing from the Renaissance to present times, raising questions of ideology, power, and responsibility. The historical perspective is meant to lay open the preconditions of textual scholarship, important for present scholarly editing as well. At the same time the approach is meta-historical: my attention is directed above all to the history of historical understanding and historical consciousness. Why do we turn to the texts of history? What questions do we hope that the texts will answer? What use do we believe we have of history? Issues like these have been raised through the narrative turn of historical theory during the last decades, represented by names such as Hayden White, Paul Ricoeur and Jörn Rüsen. I should like to place scholarly editing in this context. The modern philologies built their claim to legitimacy on nineteenthcentury historicism and its notions about source-critical scholarly methods whose results were founded in positive fact rather than in opinionated preconceptions. But this increasing commitment to the ‘scientific’ – understood as a disinterested striving for objectivity – tended also to veil the roots in ideology which brought forth the philological discipline. In hermeneutic terms, the modern, methodologically advanced philology was prone to mask its origins in romanticism’s notions about the uses of history and the ideal of the nation. In this way also the dependence of textual scholarship on societal interests became obscured. Yet observing textual editing from an historical perspective makes transparent the fact that texts at all times have been edited with specific – societal, ideological and aesthetic – purposes in view, and that such preconceptions govern the editorial choices. The same insight provided the point of departure for the scholars who towards the end of the 20th century, aimed at re-evaluating the task of textual criticism in terms of a social and historical understanding of

SCANIA PROVINCE LAW AND NATION-BUILDING IN SCANDINAVIA

93

literature, as advocated by scholars such as Jerome J. McGann, D.C. Greetham and Peter Shillingsburg. McGann opposes the view that the purpose of textual criticism is to establish texts for the literary critics. This, he points out, is in actual fact only a specialised application of the text-critical method. Its general use is much larger: textual criticism provides the tools for studying the history of texts and the history of their reception, both of which are decisive for constructing a work’s literary meaning (e.g. McGann 1985, 180–99). Greetham focuses on similar phenomena when he argues how our ways of reading always correspond to the ideological and technical instructions embedded in an edition’s mode of presenting its material. The success of the clear reading text was historically and ideologically conditioned, just as the present-day concern with variation and polyphony is an expression of a post-modern view of literature. ‘My point’, Greetham writes, ‘is that there is no inherent physical display of text and apparatus that is more natural to a specific work than any other’ – all editing is an ideological construction.1 Shillingsburg’s conclusion drawn from a similar line of argument is that, instead of hunting for the right text, both readers and editors ought to make themselves aware of how theoretical, institutional and social conditions govern the formation of all the texts we work with (e.g. Shillingsburg 1997). The re-assessment of the task of textual criticism should be seen in terms of a new-historicist view of literature that aims at investigating, on the one hand, the textuality of history, and on the other hand, the historicity of texts.2 History is a text: this implies that it is governed by rhetorical, ideo 1 Greetham 1993, 14: ‘While he was thinking of schools of cultural or aesthetic criticism rather than schools of textual editing, Terry Eagleton’s dictum, “Ideology, like halitosis is(...) what the other person has”, could equally well apply to an editor’s conviction that his or her method of textual display has no ideological content and is somehow natural and proper to the work being edited. My point is that there is no inherent physical display of text and apparatus that is more natural to a specific work than any other, and that each display carries the codes of meaning the editor designs as part of the total ideological construct.’ 2 The term derives from Montrose 1989, 242: ‘By the historicity of texts, I mean to suggest the cultural specificity, the social embedment, of all modes of writing – not only the texts that critics study but also the texts in which we study them. By the textuality of history, I mean to suggest, firstly, that we can have no access to a full and authentic past, a lived material existence, unmediated by the surviving textual traces of the society in question – traces whose survival we cannot assume to be merely contingent but must rather presume to be at least partially consequent upon complex and subtle social processes of preservation and effacement; and secondly, that those textual

94

Paula Henrikson

logical and narrative strategies. Texts, in their turn, have a history – this implies that they do not exist above or outside history, but must be studied in all their historical instability. Empirical facts, too, are constructed from notions of the nature of history: there is no Archimedean point to stand on in the world of texts. It is from the example of the Scania Province Law, a text over which both Danish and Swedish editors have fought for rightful possession, that I wish to discuss the relationship between textual editing and ideology. I restrict myself to the printed editions of the law’s Scanian text, and thus leave aside, among other things, the translations to modern Danish and Swedish, not so much for theoretical as for practical reasons. One particular aspect of editorial preconception will be the focus of my interest, namely the interconnection between national allegiance, nation building and textual editing. Several interesting aspects of the law’s editorial history thus will be left out of my present considerations – among these are largely, for instance, the issues of legal and linguistic history. I should also add that I will mainly examine what might be called the rhetoric of the editions, manifested not least in their paratexts (such as format and illustrations), and thus leave aside all evaluation of the actual editorial decisions. Scania nowadays is a province on the southern edge of Sweden, but it has been so for only 350 years. Before that, it was one of the most important provinces of Denmark, harbouring, notably, the Danish episcopal see. The Scania Law was drawn up in the thirteenth century, and it is also Denmark’s oldest surviving law text. But in consequence of Scania’s changed national appurtenance, the Scania Law acquired double ownership: both Swedes and Danes have laid claim to the monument. It is this double possession that I wish to explore. The editio princeps of the law was brought out in 1505.3 This was in a small quarto service edition printed by Gotfred af Ghemen in Copenhagen. It derived from a recent, and subsequently lost, manuscript, said in the title of the edition to be ‘wæl offuer seeth och rættelighe corrigeret’ (‘well overseen and set right with corrections’). The flyleaf carries the traces are themselves subject to subsequent textual mediations when they are construed as the “documents” upon which historians ground their own texts, called “histories”.’ 3 The title of the edition is Hær begynnes skonskæ logh paa ræth danskæ, och ær skifft i xvij bøgher oc hwer bogh haffuer sith register. ok ær wæl offuer seeth och rættelighe corrigeret (1505).


95

Danish royal crest with three lions, symbolising the three main Danish provinces, including Scania. Britta Olrik Frederiksen, who has compared the text with the manuscript which the edition possibly or probably was based on, states that the purpose of the edition was ‘det rent praktiske’ (‘the entirely practical’), that is, to spread the current lawtext. Ghemen chose a young manuscript, apparently without much critical judgement. In principle he followed its text as far as he understood it – the deviations are mainly orthographical (Frederiksen 2001, 118). Ghemen’s edition thus could be classified as a pre-critical edition, in which the main ambition was not to present a better or more authentic text than the existing texts, but simply to further the spreading of the work. The four editions I will take a closer look at, by contrast, were not so motivated. The first of them appeared in 1676, commissioned as a de luxe edition by Johan Hadorph, the Swedish secretary in the Swedish College of Antiquities (Antikvitetskollegium). Thereafter it was not until 1853 that the Dane P.G. Thorsen published an edition of the Scania Law in his edition of the Danish laws. In 1859, this was followed by Carl Johan Schlyter’s edition of Sweriges Gamla Lagar (‘Sweden’s Ancient Law Texts’), where the Scania Law occupied volume 9. A new scholarly edition appeared in 1933 in the first volume of Danmarks Gamle Landskabslove (‘Denmark’s Ancient Province Laws’). From the time that Sweden won Scania in 1658, in other words, Sweden and Denmark have fought a long drawn out tug-o’-war over the right to the Scania Law, practically as if it were that province’s deed of ownership. In fact, when the territorial wars over Scania ended, the symbolic war over the right to Scania’s history was only just beginning. Hadorph’s edition of 1676 was a prop to the Kingdom of Sweden’s ambition to annect and ‘swedify’ the new-won province. His preface opens quite frankly: ‘Skåne hafwer af äldste tijderne warit en Ledamot af Götharijket/ hwilket sina Råmärke hafwer mitt uthi Öresund’ (‘Scania has since the earliest times been part of the realm of the Goths, whose borderline goes through the middle of the Öresund’). In this way the edition was put in the service of a tendentious writing of Swedish history. When Hadorph’s edition came out, the Scania Law was actually still the current law in Scania – Swedish law was introduced only five years later. There was of course a strong symbolism in the fact that the Law’s text was published in Stockholm, and Hadorph’s edition is also a declara-

96

Paula Henrikson

tion of power, meant to overpower. The bibliographical codes are correspondingly forceful and unambiguous. The book is a de luxe edition in elegant folio. The Swedish royal crest dominates the title leaf, filling half the page – which is an emblematic response to the Danish crest in Ghemen’s edition. And if anyone in spite of this should feel uncertain where the edition belongs, the imprint calls out ‘STOCKHOLM’ in large capitals. The title reads: Then Gambla Skåne Lagh/ Som i forna Tijder hafwer brukat warit/ Och nu Aff ett Gammalt Pergamentz MS.to med flijt uthskrifwin/ Medh Nyare Codicibus jempnförd och förbättrat/ som på nästfölliande Blad finnes antecknat/ Sampt Medh Hans Kongl. May:s Bekostnat uplagd.4 In the wording of the title, two things at least are noticeable. First, it advertises at once who funded the major project: His Royal Majesty. Second, the title page expresses unambiguously the ambitious antiquarianism which motivates the edition. Ghemen’s edition was a service edition, meant to increase knowledge about current law. When Hadorph’s edition appeared, Swedish law, it is true, had not yet been introduced in the new province – but he clearly indicated with his edition that the Scania Law was antiquated as a juridical text. ‘The old Scania Law’ as it applied ‘in ancient times’ had now been carefully fair-copied ‘from an old parchment’. Age thus became an argument in its own right, and the antiquarian interest was instrumentalised for appropriating the text by re-functionalising it. What the title-page tells its readers is that the Scania Law has no currency in legal use. It is a piece of the cultural heritage, rather, of which the Kingdom of Sweden has gained rightful possession. The newly founded College of Antiquities, within which Hadorph was active, was Sweden’s central institution for this politically driven antiquarian interest, and it was also the reason why antiquities of diverse kinds and in large numbers came to light and were preserved for posterity (cf. Schück 1932, and Lindroth 1975, 235–348). Hadorph’s antiquarian ambition is apparent not least in that he chose as base text the oldest known manuscript, which he had obtained from the county governor in Kristianstad through the chancellor Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie. It went of course on a symbolic journey from the earlier Danish province 4 ‘The old Scania Law, which was applied in ancient times, and now is fair-copied scrupulously from an old parchment, compared with newer codices and thus improved, as is noted on the next page, and is published at the expense of His Royal Majesty’.


97

to the capital of Sweden, as the big power it then was, and Hadorph emphasised with satisfaction that the like of this manuscript was hardly to be found in Denmark. About its language he says that it is ‘renare och åldrigare än i the senare Manuscriptis, ja aldeles lijkt med thet gambla Göthiske Språket/ som i Götharijkes Laghböckerne finnes’ (‘purer and older than in the later manuscripts, indeed altogether like the old Gothic language, as it can be found in the laws of the Goths’) – in the Danish edition from 1505, however, the language is ‘mera fördanskat’ (‘more “danified”’; Hadorph 1676, n.p.). The antiquarian desire to reproduce an older rather than a younger manuscript corresponds fully to Hadorph’s patriotic ambition: the language of the older Danish manuscript was of course closer to the Swedish language than a younger manuscript could be. Frederiksen has pointed out, though, that the fidelity to the text is not bigger in Hadorph’s edition than in Ghemen’s (Frederiksen 2001, 121). Among the alterations Frederiksen registers is the repeated shift of æ as final vowel to a, which might be interpreted as an attempt to adjust the language in a Swedish direction. Hadorph’s message is that the Scania Law is Swedish, its language is Swedish, and its rightful overlord is the Swedish King. The patriotic resonances in Hadorph’s big-power-oriented edition were of course typical of their day. It is symptomatic, nonetheless, that when the Scania Law was edited again, this time by the Dane P.G. Thorsen in 1853, the introduction opened with an echo in the same spirit: ‘Skånes gamle Provindslov, hvis Sprog er den ældste Dansk, står ved sit Indhold i et meget nært Forhold, på forskjellig Måde, såvel til den gamle sællandske Lov som til Valdemar den andens jydske Lov’.5 By assigning the language of the law to ‘the oldest Danish’ and pointing out the Danish legal tradition as the relevant context, Thorsen not only replies to Hadorph’s attempt to ‘swedify’ the law. He also places the law in the history of linguistics, in accordance with the revolutionary achievements of the early nineteenth century in that field. In his Forsøg til en videnskabelig dansk Retskrivningslære med Hensyn til Stamsproget og Nabosproget (‘An attempt at a scientific theory of Danish spelling, with regard to the root language and the neighbouring language’, 1826), Rasmus Rask had 5 Thorsen 1853, 1: ‘Scania’s old province law, whose language is the oldest Danish, is in its content closely related, in many ways, both to the old Själland law and to the Jylland law of Valdemar the Second’.

98

Paula Henrikson

singled out the language of the Scania Law as precisely ‘den ældste Dansk’ (‘the oldest Danish’, 107), and Thorsen could thus on scientific grounds dismiss Hadorph’s politically rather than scientifically motivated view on the language of the Scania Law.6 Thorsen underscores at the same time that the moment has come for the Danes, too, to make a bid on behalf of this ‘ærværdige og vigtige fædrelandske Monument’ (‘glorius and important national monument’). Fortunately, he continues, a manuscript happens to exist which is older than the one Hadorph edited. Even though Hadorph’s manuscript is very old, he writes, ‘står den dog i Alder tilbage for det berömte Runehåndskrift af Loven’.7 He dates this runic manuscript, Codex Runicus, which was brought to Copenhagen by Arne Magnusson, to the second half of the 13th century and uses it as the base text for his edition. Thus for Thorsen, too, antiquity is the weightiest argument: the Copenhagen manuscript shall by its very age silence the self-important Stockholmers. The fact that it was written in runes gave an extra aura to Thorsen’s native ward, and it was not without a certain mythification that he enlarged upon the function, significance and ‘ædle og naturlige Stil’ (‘noble and natural style’) in the Codex Runicus (ibid., 8). Unhappily enough, however, the runic manuscript had a major lacuna which in one way or another had to be filled in. Thorsen states that Hadorph’s manuscript would have been the most desirable source of reference, yet, ‘da den er svensk Ejendom, vilde jeg slet ikke anholde om den’ (‘since it is in Swedish possession, I did not even wish to seek permission to use it’. He explains this decision by declaring that he does not wish to anticipate the contemporary effort by Schlyter to edit the law in his edition of Sweriges Gamla Lagar (ibid., 13). Therefore, Thorsen filled the gap instead from a much younger Copenhagen manuscript – a compromise that in the first place, no doubt, had practical reasons, but which at the same time gives evidence of the lack of cooperation between the neighbouring countries in the editorial enterprise. The rivalry was loaded as to which manuscript was the oldest, the socalled B76 in Stockholm or Codex Runicus in Copenhagen, and the competing claims were to remain controversial in the editions of the Scania Law. The two existing Swedish editions are based on B76 in 6 Many thanks to Britta Olrik Frederiksen, who called my attention to this connection between Thorsen and Rask. 7 Thorsen 1853, 3: ‘it must yield as to age to the law’s old runic manuscript’.


99

Stockholm. The two Danish ones both accept Codex Runicus in Copenhagen as the oldest and best manuscript. In each individual case careful scholarly considerations no doubt lie behind the editorial decisions, yet from a bird’s-eye perspective this division is inevitably seen to spring from a sense of editorial scholarship whose task is assumed to be an affirmation of the primary right of access of one’s own nation to the Scania Law. Carl Johan Schlyter’s edition of the Scania Law followed in 1859, only six years after Thorsen’s, but it constituted a qualitative leap in terms both of theory and of methodology.8 While the frame of reference legitimising Thorsen’s edition was still a late romantic nostalgia for the old Nordic heritage, Schlyter’s edition by contrast is an early representative of the kind of historicism that was to gain ground in the latter half of the 19th century. For Schlyter, the aura surrounding the runic hand has simply become a matter of ridicule. His legitimising strategy lies instead in an astonishingly modern sense of scholarship. Schlyter is not only the originator of the first stemma known in the history of textual scholarship (presented in the edition of 1827 of the Västgöta Law); he is also aware of the need for meticulously compiled inventories of all extant manuscripts. In his introductions, moreover, his arguments are based on variants, communal error, watermarks and press variants. These introductions, not least for the reason that they explicitly reflect upon his own editorial principles, are prone to run to the length of some 200 pages. Schlyter’s consistency of method was innovative, but it should be noted that his scholarly attitude did by no means get in the way of an outspoken patriotism. The fact that Scania belonged to Denmark when the law was instituted ‘har varit mig bekant allt sedan min barndom’ (‘is something I have known ever since my childhood’), Schlyter asserts. Yet he offers three reasons for nonetheless perceiving the Scania Law at home among Sweden’s province laws. In the first place, the provinces in which it was valid law have ever and again been under Swedish rule and therefore share the same legal tradition as the Swedish laws, he declares; secondly, he claims that the law’s diction and the diction of the Swedish laws all must be considered dialects of the same language, and thirdly – 8 On this, see Holm 1972, 48–80, esp. 60: ‘I have no hesitation in maintaining that already in 1827 Schlyter had complete theoretical and practical command of the methods now accepted in modern stemma construction, including the rule of communal and distinctive error.’

100

Paula Henrikson

and above all – Scania does now belong to Sweden (Schlyter 1859, Schlyter’s argument that the three provinces in question, Scania, Blekinge and Halland, ‘af naturen äro sammanbundna med Sverige’ (‘by nature are bound up with Sweden’) is also recurrent in Swedish arguing, not least in the contradictory Swedish attempts to combine Scandinavism and patriotism in the 1890’s (cf. Zander 1999, 12–30). This reference to ‘natural borders’ appealed to the notion of societies and nations as objectively given by nature and God, rather than as being human constructions. Age and origin carry positive connotations for those who value manuscripts. The same notions are implicit, too, when the Swedish editors argue for Sweden’s right to the Scania Law. Schlyter speaks of the Danish ‘språkförbistring’ (‘corruptions of the language’) and the lack of ‘renare språk’ (‘purer language’) in old Danish manuscripts – the early dissolution of the conjugational system becomes an index for the degenerative departure of Danish from the common Nordic origins, better preserved in Swedish. In fact, they have been particularly well preserved in Schlyter’s edition of the Scania Law – for his establishment of the text is archaising in such a way that he repeatedly corrects the manuscript text where it does not show the right, that is: the ancient, conjugational forms (Brøndum-Nielsen 1917, 127). It is true that, with his famous accuracy, he records his every emendation, but the result is nonetheless an established, privileged, text, leaning more towards Old Swedish than the manuscript warrants. By way of this archaising, Schlyter proves his contention that Scania is by rights a Swedish province. Schlyter’s edition thus manifests the thesis Allen J. Franzen has argued for in his monograph Desire for Origins (1990): CLXII–CLXIII).

The search for origins is never disinterested; those wishing to trace an idea or tradition to its historical, linguistic, and textual beginnings have always done so with a thesis in mind, and the origin they have found has often been an origin they have produced.9 9

Frantzen 1990, xii. Further: ‘My attempt to define history and textual criticism within the context of reception and reproduction is designed to emphasize the subjectivity inherent in both scholarly practices. The technical nature of historiography and textual criticism has sometimes caused both to be understood as objective. Yet it is obvious that, just as history requires a writer to reconstruct the story being told, textual criticism requires a scholar to reconstruct the text to be read – not just to “edit” it, but to do so within a specific, reconstructive, and hence interpretive, framework. To call either practice ‘objective’ is to forget its hermeneutic function.’


101

Behind linguistic considerations are always political interests – this is Franzen’s proposition.10 And through the archaising of his edition Schlyter buttresses his thesis that Scania by rights is Swedish. The Swedish language is pure, strong and ancient; the Danish is degenerative and corrupted. This rhetoric can of course be traced to the linguistic speculations of the Nordic renaissance, which I cannot discuss further here. But it should be noted that even though such fantasies of an old, adamitic Ur-language nowadays sound bizarre, originality is yet still a catchword in scholarly editing. Textual scholarship has often defined as its goal a reaching back behind a latter-day, ‘corrupted’ layer, and towards a more or less mythic origin – to be sought in the beginning of times or in the intention of the author. This view also characterises the stemmatic method (cf. Aarsleff 1985, 93–113). Generously, though, Schlyter still concedes that one could hardly object if the Danes should also choose to incorporate the Scania Law among the old laws of their country (Schlyter 1859, CLXIII). And this is of course precisely what they did, though after Thorsen it was not until 1933 that the Scania Law was included in a Danish collection of law texts. Modern paradigms of textual scholarship had meanwhile come into full force, and the editors naturally enough saw no reason for discussing the inclusion of this law in their collection. Yet traces of the DanishSwedish conflict are still discernible. The controversy over the manuscripts continued – the editors now state that B76 dates from the fourteenth century, while the Codex Runicus might be from the late thirteenth century and therefore should be considered as the oldest of the Scania Law manuscripts. The lacunae were now filled in mainly from B76. Besides the edition of Codex Runicus, the editors also provide editions of two younger manuscripts of the same law, demonstrating the variations of the law in its practical use – one of them to be found in Stockholm. One should note the diversity they thus invite into the edition. In 1933, the historical conflict between Denmark and Sweden was no longer either threatening, or even of interest. At the same time, a new scholarly paradigm held sway that did not permit exposing driving forces 10 Frantzen 1990, xiii: ‘My thesis – and thus my own reason for seeking the origin of Anglo-Saxon studies – is that engagement with political controversy has always been a distinctive and indeed an essential motive for studying language origins and therefore for studying Anglo-Saxon.’

102

Paula Henrikson

of a pre-scholarly nature. For the most part, all mention of the editors’ motivations had thus meanwhile to be relegated to prefaces and other forms of more personally reflective paratexts. But even so, one should note the logotype on the flyleaf: it displays yet again the three lions from the Danish crest that once adorned Ghemen’s edition. Though this is only a summary survey of the Scania Law’s editorial history, it still permits drawing a few conclusions. On every level – from the material one concerned with the book’s physical appearance, via prefaces and introductions, to the choice of base text, editorial emendation and the establishment of the edited texts, we may discern just how the editions have been shaped in relation to the symbolically charged law text. The editions become building blocks towards the building of nations – and seen from an historical perspective, it is precisely such a function that textual editing has generally assumed as one of its central tasks. It was by no means fortuitous, for example, that the romantic ideas about the emergence of the nations coincided with the most significant phase of expansion of the modern philologies – but that is another story. I wish to conclude with a closer look at the notions my paper has been meant to illustrate: namely, the editor’s preconceptions and prejudices. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s attempts to re-instate these notions takes a stand against rationalism’s belief in rationality. The belief in ‘rationality’s absolute self-construction’ according to Gadamer shuts its eyes to the insight that whoever wishes to comprehend a text always already has something in common with it. ‘Belonging to a tradition’ is in Gadamer’s view therefore a ‘condition of hermeneutics’; indeed, such preconception is for him in fact ‘the most basic of all hermeneutic preconditions’. This pre-existing bond with a common tradition in its turn leads the interpreter to pre-conceive the text’s meaning, or the text’s ‘perfection’, Vollkommenheit. Gadamer writes: So machen wir denn diese Voraussetzung der Vollkommenheit immer, wenn wir einen Text lesen, und erst wenn diese Voraussetzung sich als unzureichend erweist, d. h. der Text nicht verständlich wird, zweifeln wir an der Überlieferung und suchen zu erraten, wie sie zu heilen ist. Die Regeln, die wir bei solchen textkritischen Überlegungen befolgen, können hier beiseite bleiben. Worauf es ankommt, ist auch hier, daß ihre rechte Anwendung nicht von dem inhaltlichen Verständnis ablösbar ist.11 11 Gadamer 1990, 296, 299; for the English translation, Gadamer 1989, 291, 294: ‘So when we read a text we always assume its completeness, and only when this as-


103

This is one of the few instances where Gadamer explicitly talks about the activity of textual criticism; and it is hardly surprising that he relates it to an understanding of content. But it is not least in terms of the task of textual criticism that Gadamer’s reasoning is dubious, and this is not just because he leaves aside its ‘rules’. Rather, our discussion of the Scania Law prompts two pressing questions: in the first place, is Gadamer’s view not in fact seriously reductive, narrowing textual criticism, as it does, to a mere instrument of power to restore the text in harmony with our expectations? And secondly, how can one within Gadamer’s system ever break with a reductive and oppressive tradition? What makes the Scania Law an instructive example of the role that preconception plays in textual editing is the fact that it has been shown to belong within not just one, but two traditions. Since both Swedes and Danes claim the text, both traditions become mutually revelatory: the one brings out the blind spots in the other. The kind of preconception that in other editions is an implicit and opaque precondition for a text’s adoption, thereby becomes explicit and transparent. This is why I would also suggest that the mechanisms that the Scania Law reveals are not exceptions, but the rule. The Scania Law makes processes visible which otherwise usually remain invisible. The circumstance that the Scania Law belongs to two traditions shows how unstable the categories are that control understanding. When Gadamer names ‘the text’s perfection’ as the point of origin of textual criticism, he allows for but a single tradition enveloping us all that makes understanding possible and legitimises text-critical decisions. It would seem, in fact, as if ultimately but the abstract notion of tradition remained as the only active principle in his hermeneutics – yet he does not give the interpreter, in this case the textual critic, a chance of breaking with his or her tradition. On the contrary, the intrusion of textual criticism becomes the ultimate tool to prevent tradition from losing its grip on the text. This is textual criticism as the exercise of power – and from this perspective, a pluralism of traditions were not only a challenge, but above all a salvation. sumption proves mistaken – i.e., the text is not intelligible – do we begin to suspect the text and try to discover how it can be remedied. The rules of such textual criticism can be left aside, for the important thing to note is that applying them properly depends on understanding the content.’

104

Paula Henrikson

Is it possible to imagine a mode of editorial scholarship that does not depend on a notion of tradition like Gadamer’s? Gunter Martens talks about the text’s ‘konstitutive Fremdheit’ (‘constitutive estrangement’) in his attempt to describe its unconditional autonomy: it is not the editor’s task to set right the text according to our expectations, but instead to protect it from hasty intervention.12 Much earlier, the classical scholar Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff spoke of the ideal scholar’s state of consciousness as one of self-surrender. The scholar should dedicate her own individuality unreservedly to the alien (Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1907, 256ff.). In practice, neither Martens nor Wilamowitz are strangers to text-critical intervention, but their common stance in theory may be thus paraphrased: where it runs against our notions, it is not the text that we must set right – it is ourselves. Wilamowitz’ and Martens’ attitudes are, I think, worth to be given some thought in terms of a reflection on scholarly ethics – and perhaps it is even true to say that the question of the editor’s stance and attitudes belongs in the field of ethics, rather than in that of a theory of knowledge. Yet as a frame within which to model the cultural significance of editorial scholarship, their views are insufficient. It would be naive to believe that not we too, in our turn, also edited texts in the service of certain ends. The truth is, on the contrary, that an historical text remains relevant only in the measure that it answers to present needs. The only texts towards which we can maintain a totally disinterested attitude – or on which we give up all demands – are those to which we are wholly indifferent. An historical understanding of editorial scholarship must take its departure from the reception history of the works in their written transmission. Our access to history must pass through these texts, the way they have been transmitted by human beings who, in their turn, had an ideological or aesthetic agenda. My overview therefore of the editorial history of the Scania Law has above all been a tale of its reception history. In the words of Hans Robert Jauß: Das literarische Werk ist kein für sich bestehendes Objekt, das jedem Betrachter zu jeder Zeit den gleichen Anblick darbietet. Es ist kein Monu12 Martens 1991, 19: ‘Die historisch-kritische Ausgabe hätte danach gerade ihre eigentliche Aufgabe darin, gegen Anpassung und vorschnellen Abbau des für uns abweichend Erscheinenden den geheimen Widersinn des Kunstwerks, seine konstitutive Fremdheit freizulegen.’


105

ment, das monologisch sein zeitloses Wesen offenbart. Es ist vielmehr wie eine Partitur auf die immer erneuerte Resonanz der Lektüre angelegt, die den Text aus der Materie der Worte erlöst und ihn zu aktuellem Dasein bringt (...)13

To ‘free the text from the substance of the words’ is for Jauß a metaphor for the power of reading to give the works of literature a renewed presence. But Jauß can be much more radically conceived. To speak of the shifting faces of the literary work is not to speak in metaphor, but of a physical reality, and the texts’ ‘substance’ is not invariant, just as little as is the literary work itself. Scholarly editing is a material expression of the historical transformations of literature. The editor of a text does not arrest this transformation. The editor does not – as he or she sometimes believes – remove textual variation or instability. On the contrary, editions engender added variation, as they give a new face to the edited text. This is the law of entropy, applied to editorial scholarship: an editor never creates greater order, but only contributes to the accretive disorder. Or, expressed more optimistically: textcritical knowledge is accumulative, not definitive.14

References Aarsleff, Hans. 1985. Scholarship and Ideology. Joseph Bédier’s Critique of Romantic Medievalism. In Historical Studies and Literary Criticism, ed. Jerome J. McGann, 93–113. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Brøndum-Nielsen, Johs. 1917. Danske lovhåndskrifter og dansk lovsprog i den ældre middelalder. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 34: 105–37. Frantzen, Allen J., 1990. Desire for Origins. New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Frederiksen, Britta Olrik. 2001. Om udgivelse af gammeldanske håndskrifter i 500 år – en skitse. Collegium Medievale 14: 115–40. 13

Jauß 1970, 171ff.: ‘A literary work is not an object which stands by itself and which offers the same face to each reader in each period. It is not a monument which reveals its timeless essence in a monologue. It is much more like an orchestration which strikes ever new chords among its readers and which frees the text from the substance of the words and makes it meaningful for the time’ (Jauß 1970-71: 10). 14 This article was prepared during a stay as a guest scholar at the Institut for Nordiske Studier og Sprogvidenskab at the University of Copenhagen, funded by Stiftelsen för internationalisering av högre utbildning och forskning i Sverige (STINT). I wish to thank STINT, as well as my contact at the institute, Johnny Kondrup. Finally, I also wish to thank Hans Walter Gabler, for valuable help with the English language.

106

Paula Henrikson

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1989. Truth and Method. 2nd ed.., trl. Joel Weinsheimer & Donald G. Marshall; London: Sheed and Ward. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1990. Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (1960). Tübingen: Mohr. Greetham, D. C. 1993. Editorial and Critical Theory. From Modernism to Postmodernism. In Palimpsest. Editorial Theory in the Humanities, ed. George Bornstein & Ralph G. Williams, 9–28. Ann Arbor:: University of Michigan Press. Hadorph, Johan, ed. 1676. Then Gambla Skåne Lagh/ Som i forna Tijder hafwer brukat warit/ Och nu Aff ett Gammalt Pergamentz MS.to med flijt uthskrifwin/ Medh Nyare Codicibus jempnförd och förbättrat/ som på nästfölliande Blad finnes antecknat/ Sampt Medh Hans Kongl. May:s Bekostnat uplagd. Stockholm. Holm, Gösta. 1972. Carl Johan Schlyter and Textual Scholarship. Saga och Sed. Kungl. Gustav Adolf Akademiens Årsbok, 48–80. Hær begynnes skonskæ logh paa ræth danskæ, och ær skifft i xvij bøgher oc hwer bogh haffuer sith register. ok ær wæl offuer seeth och rættelighe corrigeret. 1505. Kiøbenhaffn. Jauß, Hans Robert. 1970. Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft. In Literaturgeschichte als Provokation, 144–207. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Jauß, Hans Robert. 1970–71. Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory. New Literary History 2: 7–37. Lindroth, Sten. 1975. Svensk lärdomshistoria, vol. 2 (Stormaktstiden). Stockholm: Norstedts. Martens, Gunter. 1991. ‘Historisch’, ‘kritisch’ und die Rolle des Herausgebers bei der Textkonstitution. Editio. Iinternationales Jahrbuch für Editionswissenschaft 5: 12–27. McGann, Jerome J. 1985. The Monks and the Giants. Textual and Bibliographical Studies and the Interpretation of Literary Works. In Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation, ed. Jerome J. McGann, 180–199. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Montrose, Louis A. 1989. Professing the Renaissance. The Poetics and Politics of Culture. In The New Historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser, 15–36. London: Routledge. Rask, Rasmus, 1826. Forsøg til en videnskabelig dansk Retskrivningslære med Hensyn til Stamsproget og Nabosproget. København. Schlyter, Carl Johan (ed.). 1859 Corpus iuris sueo-gotorum antiqui. Samling af Sweriges gamla lagar, på kongl. maj:ts nådigste befallning utgifven, bd 9 (Skåne-Lagen, med ärkebiskopens i Lund Andreas Sunessons latinska bearbetning, skånska kyrkrätten och stadsrätten, samt åtskilliga stadgar för Skåne). Stockholm. Schück, Henrik. 1932. Minne af Johan Hadorph. Svenska Akademiens Handlingar ifrån år 1886 43: 71–335. Shillingsburg, Peter. 1997. Resisting Texts. Authority and Submission in Constructions of Meaning. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.


107

Taylor, Gary. 1994. The Rhetorics of Reaction. In Crisis in Editing. Texts of the English Renaissance, ed. Randall M. Leod, 19–41. New York: AMS. Thorsen, P. G. (ed.). 1853. Skånske Lov og Eskils skånske Kirkelov, tilligemed Andreæ Sunonis lex Scaniæ prouincialis, skånske Arvebog og det tilbageværende af Knud den 6.s og Valdemar den 2.s Lovgivning vedkommende skånske Lov. Kjøbenhavn. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. 1907. Einleitung in die griechische Tragödie. Berlin: Weidmann. Zander, Ulf. 1999. Hur stort är fäderneslandet? Skånsk historia och dansksvenska gränser från sekelslut till sekelslut. Ale. Historisk tidskrift för Skåne, Halland och Blekinge 3: 12–30.


WELSH LITERARY HISTORY AND THE MAKING OF ‘THE MYVYRIAN ARCHAIOLOGY OF WALES’ Mary-Ann Constantine Abstract This chapter explores a formative moment in the history of Welsh literature and philology: the publication, between 1801 and 1807, of three volumes of medieval Welsh-language texts known as the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales. Now generally discredited as the product of misguided Romantic-era enthusiasm, the Myvyrian was a respected and respectable companion for writers and scholars in Wales and beyond during most of the nineteenth century, and it helped shape a vision of ‘Welshness’ still recognisable today. It repays closer scrutiny, both as a work of scholarship and for its contribution to incipient Welsh nationalism. Moreover, the story of its compilation by three very different men – a compelling mixture of endeavour, generosity and deviousness – is as much a part of Welsh literary history as the publication itself. One of the formative moments in the history of Welsh literature and philology was the publication, between 1801 and 1807, of three weighty volumes of medieval texts known as the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales. Although, for reasons which will become clear, it has long since fallen on hard times, the Myvyrian was a respected and respectable companion for writers and scholars in Wales and beyond during most of the nineteenth century, and it helped shape a vision of ‘Welshness’ still recognisable today. The story of its compilation – a compelling mixture of endeavour, generosity and deviousness – and of the three men who brought it into being, is, by now, as much a part of Welsh literary history as the publication itself.

110

Mary-Ann Constantine

A culture’s literary history is like a river fed by many tributaries. From where we stand we feel we know the landscape, in all its twists and turns, well enough – but that sense of what has shaped the river, of the influences and confluences that have most determined its course, depends dramatically on the viewer’s own position in space and in time. So it may be salutary to start with the story of the late eighteenth-century Welsh literary revival as seen from Brittany some half a century after it got going. It is a romantic tale of the poor shepherd boy Owen Jones, born in 1741 in the ‘valley of Myfyr’ (the parish of Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr, from which he would later take his bardic name ‘Owain Myfyr’). When out on the hills tending his flocks, says our author, he would often turn his eyes to the splendour of Snowdon, that Celtic Parnassus, which, surely, he must often have climbed to sleep the sleep of poetic inspiration. Once grown up, and thoroughly versed in the poetic and musical arts of his native Wales (an innate passion for which is the mark of all true Welshmen), he conceived the idea of bringing these national treasures, long hidden in manuscripts, out of their ancient strongholds in order to make them known to the wider world: Par malheur, ces jardins des Héspérides celtiques, si gracieusement ouverts aujourd’hui à quiconque sait toucher aux fruits sans les gâter, avaient alors des gardiens non moins farouches que les dragons de la fable: (...) quelle chance de succès pouvait donc avoir un pauvre paysan? Comprenant que la fortune seule lui fournirait le rameau d’or qui conjure les dragons, il dit adieu à son pays par amour pour ce pays même: il se rendit à Londres (...), il entra comme employé dans le magasin d’un marchand de fourrures de Tames’s street, et après être devenu homme de peine commis, de commis associé, et enfin chef de l’établissement, à la mort du propriétaire, après avoir, durant quarante ans, prélevé, jour par jour, shelling par shelling, sur ses économies, la somme nécessaire pour faire copier, puis imprimer les textes des anciens poèmes bretons; encouragé par quelques amis exilés avec lui du sol de la patrie, avec lui pleurant bien souvent au souvenir du pays natal, soutenu même et provoqué par les injustes préventions, les doutes injurieux, et les grossières railleries des étrangers contre les bardes, il les publia, en 1801, sous le titre d’Archéologie galloise de Myvyr ou Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales 1 1

La Villemarqué 1850, ii-iii: ‘But alas, the gardens of these Celtic Hesperides, now so graciously open to those who know how to touch their fruits without spoiling them, were at the time guarded as fiercely as if by fabled dragons: (...) what hope of entry, then, for a poor peasant? Realizing that money alone would provide him with the dragon-vanquishing golden bough, his very love for his country forced him to bid that country farewell, and he made his way to London, where he found employment in a

THE MYVYRIAN ARCHAIOLOGY OF WALES

111

This fable is recounted by the Breton writer Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué in the introduction to his own selection of early Welsh poetry. Like much of what he wrote, it is not exactly fiction, but nor does it tell the whole story: his version of events collapses a complex prehistory of false starts and collaborations involving the London Welsh societies2 and the joint efforts of the three editors of The Myvyrian Archaiology, into the affecting tale of a single hero-figure. Owain Myfyr becomes not only the Welsh revival’s prime economic mover, as he undoubtedly was, but also its superlative scholar, editor and visionary. The virtual invisibility of the other two editors, William Owen Pughe and Edward Williams, is significant. Three-quarters of a century on, back on the Welsh side of the riverbank, the view is rather less serene. Owain Myfyr, bulky man though he was, has now been eclipsed by the small, restless figure of Edward Williams, better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg (‘Ned of Glamorgan’). A careful study of a dozen poems attributed to the fourteenth century poet Dafydd ap Gwilym has just shown, irrefutably, that they must be Iolo’s own work: they are forgeries, pastiches, and the implications for the foundations of Welsh scholarship are serious. In a somewhat shrill introduction to G. J. Williams’s excellent detective work, the academic John Morris-Jones denounces Iolo Morganwg (by then long established as a kind of Welsh National Treasure) as a ‘hateful man full of hate’, a poisoner of well-springs: it will be, he says, ‘an age or two yet before our history and literature are clean of the traces of his dirty fingers’.3 The river of Welsh literary history has been fed by contaminated fur merchant’s shop in Thames Street. Here he worked his way up from apprentice to become, at the death of the proprietor, head of the firm, and for forty long years he saved day by day, shilling by shilling, the necessary amount to have copied and then printed the texts of the ancient British poems; encouraged in this enterprise by a few friends, who were, like himself, exiled from their native soil, and like himself were often moved to tears at the thought of their homeland, hardened and provoked by the unfair prohibitions, the insulting doubts, and the vulgar jests which foreigners directed against the bards, he published these texts, in 1801, under the title of the Welsh Archaiology of Myfyr, or the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales.’ 2 The Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion (lit. ‘earliest inhabitants’) was founded in London in 1751 by Richard and Lewis Morris with an essentially antiquarian remit; the Gwyneddigion (lit. ‘men of Gwynedd’), founded in 1770 with Owain Myfyr as its first President, had a more eclectic membership and a more radical tone. 3 Williams 1926: xvi: ‘bydd ein llên a’n hanes am oes neu ddwy eto cyn byddant lân o ôl ei ddwylo halog ef’.

112


underground streams, and all of Iolo’s works are now suspect. They include, of course, large parts of The Myvyrian Archaiology, over which he laboured for many years, tracking down and copying out manuscripts, and sending texts – but how many of them reliable? – to his colleagues in London. The first decades of the twentieth century saw a fierce rejection of Welsh Romantic scholarship, a return to sources, to new scholarly editions, and the cultivation of that scrupulousness bordering on mania which becomes one of the hallmarks of modern academic Celtic studies. The Myvyrian Archaiology, a standard text for nineteenth-century writers, fell out of favour. Two centuries on, and standing a good long way back from the source, the patterns made by the interconnecting streams, complex as they are, seem rather clearer: it becomes easier to pick out the roles of the three editors of the compilation and the relative proportions of their scholarly endeavour, zeal and deception. It is also easier to situate the nature of their scholarship within a broader cultural context, both British and European – a broader context which, incidentally, includes La Villemarqué’s own somewhat dubious role in transferring (or, as he would have it, repatriating) part of that Brittonic legacy to Brittany.4 The story of the genesis of The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales is a useful lens through which to focus some of these wider concerns, and it really does not need dragons and golden apples to make it interesting. Eighteenth-century Wales was witness to a huge surge in published works, yet in many respects, even by the end of the century, it was still very much a manuscript culture: most people still copied out or learned each other’s poems, and the collecting and copying of early manuscripts was far from an elite antiquarian pursuit (McKenna 2005). Yet as the traditional ways of sustaining cultural knowledge crumbled there was a growing sense of a need to rescue the written debris of the past: the old system of bardic patronage was by now virtually defunct and Welsh gentry looked increasingly to England to educate their sons. Old Welsh books and papers had ceased to be valued and many perished. By the middle of the century efforts had begun to stem the tide of neglect: an energetic circle of writers and scholars around the Morris brothers of Anglesey became involved in recovering manuscripts and encouraging 4 La Villemarqué’s relations with Wales and his use of The Myvyrian Archaiology are discussed in Constantine 2007, 143-98. For a comprehensive introduction to Iolo’s life and work see Jenkins 2005.


113

new authors (cf. Morgan 1981, Herbert & Jones 1988). They began to assess the holdings of the various estate libraries and other private collections, they chased priceless medieval manuscripts still being passed casually around by hand, and they copied them, creating a sizeable collection which would come to be held in the Welsh Charity School at London. The Morrises’ protégé, the unlucky, drink-prone cleric Evan Evans (‘Ieuan Fardd’), was one of the greatest and most dogged collectors of Welsh manuscripts. He it was who rediscovered the early heroic poem Y Gododdin, now the immovable cornerstone of any Welsh literature course: its belated addition to the canon offers a neat parallel to England’s long wait for its own literary ‘beginnings’ in Beowulf, first published in 1825. In 1764 Evan Evans published Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards, a selection of texts in Welsh, with some English translations and a Latin dissertation on Welsh literature. Specimens was aimed for the first time at a readership outside Wales, and was conceived, at least partly, as a kind of sobering response to Macpherson’s Ossian: the tone is scholarly, defensive.5 Evans’s work was an important turning point, but it did not go far enough: a generation later there was continuing corrosive fall-out from the Ossian controversy, and attacks on all things Celtic by the ‘Gothic’ apologist John Pinkerton left Wales still driven by the need to defend both the age and reliability of Welsh tradition. One senses, in Welsh scholarly circles, an indignation born of insecurity, a fear of being misunderstood. Establishing a verifiable and venerable literary history, far earlier than anything the Saxons could boast, would also be some consolation at Wales’s effective loss of prestige within an English-speaking ‘Britain’ rapidly consolidating its power-base in London – the Ancient Britons, after all, undisputably spoke Welsh. Such considerations make the publication of the Myvyrian or something like it seem inevitable: in actual practice, given the characters involved in its genesis and the difficulties they faced, it is rather miraculous that it ever happened at all. By the 1770s Owain Myfyr was doing well in the fur-trade in London.6 Iolo Morganwg first made contact with him there in 1773-4, when he went to find work as a stonecutter. Myfyr, always responsive to fellow 5 For the Welsh reaction to the Ossian phenomenon see Constantine 2004 and Constantine 2007, 85-128. 6 The most thorough account of Owain Myfyr’s life to date is the unpublished PhD thesis Phillips 2006. Cf also Phillips 2005.

114


Welsh enthusiasts, welcomed him into the Gwyneddigion Society, and, perhaps more fatefully, showed him the Morris manuscripts at the Welsh School. The poems of the fourteenth-century Dafydd ap Gwilym made a profound impression on him: he began writing his own poems in Dafydd’s style, sending them to Myfyr for criticism and advice. After a difficult, and homesick, period working at his craft down in Kent, Iolo returned to Glamorgan. By the mid-1780s he was married and enduring extreme financial hardship, and for a while he lost (or gave up) contact with the London Welsh: the generous Owain Myfyr was distressed to discover later that Iolo’s debts had forced him to spend a year in prison. Contact was finally re-established in 1788, through Myfyr’s latest ‘discovery’, William Owen (later known as William Owen Pughe)7, a modest and hard-working clerk from Merioneth, and another keen enthusiast for all things Welsh. The two men were working towards an edition of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s poems, and Iolo hinted tantalizingly at pieces he had copied from Glamorgan manuscripts which were not to be found in the London collections. The editors asked urgently to see them, and at the eleventh hour Iolo sent a clutch of poems which were included in an Appendix to the publication.8 Several of these Appendix poems – especially those bursting with enthusiastic praise for the county of Glamorgan and for Dafydd’s great patron Ifor Hael – would become firm favourites in the following century; most, of course, were Iolo’s own work. And thus began the somewhat fraught triangular alliance between Owain Myfyr, William Owen Pughe and Iolo Morganwg, an alliance which would founder in bitter recriminations in 1806, but which held together just long enough for a significant part of their ambitious project of publication to see the light of day. None of these men came from a privileged background. They do not fit the typical model of the gentleman collector whose antiquarian passions were funded by family wealth or a Church living; they were not educated at Oxford or Cambridge, and did not have the benefit of personal tutors – Iolo, indeed, barely had the benefit of the village school. Thus, while it does not seem quite right to romanticize Owain Myfyr in La Villemarqué’s terms as a ‘poor shepherd boy made good’ (given 7 William Owen inherited property from a kinsman in 1806 and took the name ‘Pughe’ in recognition of the bequest. For an account of his life (in Welsh) see Carr 1983, also Carr 2005. 8 Jones and Pughe 1789. Iolo’s forgeries are analysed by G. J. Williams 1926.


115

Wales’s demography it is inevitable that most of the bright minds of the period came from some kind of rural or farming background), it is worth recognizing that the passion for literature, the love of learning and the erudition of these three men was non-institutional, the product of localized literary traditions maintained, by this period, not by the Anglicized gentry but by a lively artisan class. Owain Myfyr was well aware that his native area had produced some of the finest poets of the late middle ages; Iolo learned his poetic craft from a circle of scholar-poets, all farmers or craftsmen, from the Glamorgan uplands. Although he received subventions from Myfyr, and later from the Royal Literary Fund, Iolo never escaped the need to practise his manual labour, and his family frequently struggled against real poverty. Disparity in income played its part in the difficulties which arose between the three collaborators. For most of his life Owain Myfyr was extremely generous with his wealth: for many years William Owen Pughe and his family lived rent-free in a house in Pentonville, and he received an allowance of £100 per annum for his efforts in the cause of Welsh literature – efforts which were, in terms of sheer industry, phenomenal. Iolo, an extremely complex character and far from reliable co-worker, found the processes of literary patronage deeply unsettling. He resented the idea of dependency on Owain Myfyr and, although glad to receive money when it came, was quick to take offence at perceived slights; a major aspect of their later contention was an ‘understanding’ (which proved to be anything but) that Myfyr would continue to subsidise Iolo’s literary activities long beyond the period of the Myvyrian. Pughe’s role, judging from the letters, was often one of patient diplomacy between the two men. His 1806 inheritance (which in fact brought him little immediate benefit in terms of ready cash) left Iolo even more aggrieved at his own bad luck; this, compounded with Pughe’s increasing devotion to the prophetess Joanna Southcott and his ‘barbarous’ lexicographical and orthographical innovations, effectively damned him. As Geraint Phillips has suggested, Iolo’s forgeries, his subtle deceptions, may have been part of a compensatory power game, a ‘secret’ which gave him – unquestionably the best scholar and the quickest mind – a hold over the other two.9 Geography was another complicating factor. In 1799, and not entirely according to plan, Iolo set off on a tour of Wales with the aim of finding 9

See Phillips in Jenkins 2005, 403-423.

116


and copying material for the ‘Welsh Archaiology’, which was now, after several false starts, seriously underway.10 Myfyr, in fact, would have preferred to have had Iolo in London helping William Owen Pughe with the huge task of editing the reams of material they already possessed, but Iolo (who had suffered a nervous breakdown in London in 1792) resisted all attempts to lure him back. He did things very much his own way, travelling on foot all over Wales, sometimes covering thirty or forty miles a day, and effectively disappearing for weeks on end. Anxious letters from Pughe and Myfyr, often sending him money, chased him from county to county; he did not always bother to reply. Nor did the treasures he discovered on his travels always correspond to their list of desiderata for the great edition; a box full of historical material which was urgently needed in London languished for several months in Bristol while Iolo turned his mind to what he felt was the far more pressing business of collecting (and, be it said, manufacturing) ancient Welsh proverbs (Phillips 2006, 417-418). Politics played its disruptive part as well. After several fruitful sessions copying manuscripts in the great library at Hafod in Ceredigion there was a marked cooling of relations between Iolo and the landowner Thomas Johnes, when, as William Owen Pughe put it, ‘some body must have insinuated something to him respecting your kingophobia’;11 in Llanrwst Iolo met with aggressive opposition to their ‘little pitiful concern (...) of printing some inconsiderable portions of the works of the Welsh bards on a very narrow scale’ by a rival group who claimed that Myfyr and his men would only publish ‘democratical stuff’.12 There was an element of truth in this. Although the Myvyrian, a sober edition of texts, claimed no overt political agenda, Iolo’s revolutionary brand of bardic nationalism had already infiltrated many of the pieces he would supply to Pughe and Myfyr. His 1794 collection of verse in English, Poems, Lyric and Pastoral, set out a vision of the ancient British past whose political and religious principles were directly opposed to the restrictive rule of Pitt’s government; a couple of years earlier William Owen Pughe’s equally innocuously-titled The Heroic Elegies and Other Pieces of Llywarç Hen had carried a lengthy and learned introductory account of the ceremonies and beliefs of the British bards which again owed almost 10

Iolo’s travels are tracked in detail by Phillips 2006, 190-211. William Owen Pughe to Iolo Morganwg, 14 June 1799. Correspondence nr. 504. 12 Iolo Morganwg to Owen Jones, 22 July 1799. Correspondence nr. 510. 11


117

everything to Iolo’s ideas. The ‘democratical stuff’ did, therefore, make its way into the three volumes, although to varying degrees. The concept of a comprehensive, chronologically-organized repository of literary texts was new to Wales: previous anthologies, like Lewis Morris’s Tlysau yr Hen Oesoedd (1735), had culled poetic ‘gems’ or ‘blooms’, while Evan Evans’s scholarly Specimens made no claims to completeness, and was decidedly patchy on the early period. The most influential collection at the end of the eighteenth century was Rhys Jones’s Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru of 1773, which covered a brave chronological span but had only limited access to the manuscripts (cf. McKenna 2006). The publication of The Myvyrian Archaiology is thus an interesting moment in a culture famed (and often mocked) for its fondness for lineage, for its backward gaze – ‘if they want a Pewter Spoon or Porringer in their House’ noted one satirist, ‘yet they will by no means be without a Pedigree’.13 Welsh poets had, for example, long acknowledged Taliesin as the founding father of their craft, even if the body of poems attributed to him fluctuated from one century to the next; scholars of the Renaissance, such as Humphrey Lhwyd, had begun to trace textual genealogies, and develop a sense of historical depth. But the Myvyrian represents a new departure: a type of scholarly literary history closer in spirit to that inaugurated in England in the 1770s and 1780s by Thomas Warton’s History of English Literature. Unlike Warton’s work, however, the Myvyrian did not (as it turned out) offer a descriptive account of literary history in Wales. A promised dissertation on Welsh poetry ‘wherein we shall consider the nature and peculiar character of it, analize the verse of our different periods, point out in what they differed, the progress of the improvements’ (MAW 1: xx-xxi) never materialized, and that task was left to Iolo’s endlessly-drafted (but also ultimately unfinished) magnum opus, ‘The History of the Bards’.14 Instead, the Myvyrian editors produced a canon: three volumes of texts ascribed where possible to named authors, and arranged chronologically and generically. They comprise, in the first volume, poetry ‘from the earliest times to the beginning of the fourteenth century’ (MAW 1: vi), beginning with the Gododdin of Aneirin, whose floruit is given as 510-560; the second vol13 ‘E.B.’ 1710, 3 (this work is sometimes attributed to Ned Ward). For an assessment of the Myvyrian as a turning point in Welsh scholarship see Williams 1966. 14 For two draft versions of this work see Charnell-White 2007, 172-181 and 181201.

118


ume contained prose works, histories, law texts and saints’ lives. Translations were not included, but each volume bears an index giving names and dates of the known authors, and an indication of the manuscript provenance of variant versions. The editorial principle, set out in an English introduction to the whole work, was ‘to give these ancient manuscripts with the most scrupulous fidelity, as we find them’ (MAW 1: xix) The first two volumes appeared in 1801; there was then a significant delay before the third, and most controversial, volume appeared in 1807 – a year after the editorial triumvirate had effectively collapsed. A fourth proposed volume, to have contained the texts of the prose romances and native tales, never saw the light of day. The contents of the third volume are, for present purposes, the most interesting. Advertised as a ‘collection of aphorisms, proverbs, ethical triads, legislative triads, laws, and music’, it presents a rich mixture of what might be called foundational texts – material pertaining to the early stages of a national self-definition, both legal (the official structuring of society) and characteristic (defining the innate character of the people). They perfectly express Joep Leerssen’s notion of ‘a single primitive ethnic self-invention and self-articulation’ deriving ultimately from Vico, and have many European parallels: one might compare the manuscript ‘discovered’ in Zelená Hora in 1819, which ‘cast much light on the primal practices of Czech justice, political counsel and communal organization’.15 The nature of the contents of the third volume is announced in the title-page quotation: Tri dyben addysg a chôv: gwybyddu, diwallu, a dyddanu The three objects of instruction and record: to convey knowledge, to supply defects, and to give pleasure

Of the three, that middle verb gives most pause for thought: the typically eighteenth-century ‘supply defects’, meaning to correct, is given in Welsh as diwallu – literally, to remove or erase error. As Gwyneth Lewis has shown, the concept of revision was central to Iolo’s perception of his bardic role, expressing itself on both a spiritual and an editorial level as a licence to improve.16 Little wonder, then, that this volume of the Myvyrian has been both the most influential, and the most reviled.

15 16

See Leerssen’s introduction to this volume; also Evans 2005, 58. Lewis 1991, 232.


119

The most widely-used texts in the third volume were undoubtedly the Triads (‘Trioedd’ in Welsh), remnants of a mnemonic system used by Welsh bards and other professionals to classify historical, poetic and other instructive material. Many are genuine (or at least pre-Iolo) texts, sequences of elliptical, three-line verses, often tantalizing in their references to names and narratives partially or completely forgotten: Three Exalted Prisoners of the Island of Britain: Llír Half-Speech, who was imprisoned by Euroswydd, and the second, Mabon son of Modron, and third, Gwair son of Gweiriodd.17

For many antiquarians, the triads were a form crying out for interpretation – for expansion and clarification. It was a form Iolo made his own, and long before work began on The Myvyrian Archaiology he had expanded or coined dozens of sequences to cover all eventualities: religion, philosophy, history, law and the early stages of Welsh civilization. (As he would remark disingenuously to the Ossianophile Robert Macfarlan in 1804: ‘to forge with any hopes of success in the Erse it would not do to fabricate an Ossian, or any thing else alone, you must forge in all the unavoidably concomitant branches of literary knowlege, at least in a great many of them’).18 The triads provided a platform for his ‘culture heroes’, characters pulled from the meagre sources into whom he breathed new life: Hu Gadarn, the ploughman-king who first taught the Welsh their system of Vocal Song; the wise ruler Prydain fab Aedd; the bards Plennydd, Alawn and Gwron, all of them founding fathers of a culture which could be traced back to the Biblical patriarchs.19 One of the most appealing figures is the early British law-giver Dyfnwal Moelmud (Geoffrey of`Monmouth’s Dunwallo Moelmutius). Iolo’s ‘Moelmutian’ triads use legal language to evoke an ideal early British society, a kind of Golden Age, under this legendary leader, while an essay amongst his manuscripts extrapolates an entire world from what seem to be largely his own invented texts.20 Thus Iolo’s triads, mixed, in the Myvyrian, with 17 Bromwich 2006, 146. Sequences of Iolo’s triads also appeared in the second volume of the Myvyrian. 18 Iolo Morganwg to Robert Macfarlan, 6 June 1804. Correspondence nr. 692. 19 For a detailed account of Iolo’s manipulation of the traditional triads see Bromwich 1969. 20 National Library of Wales MS 13088B, 63–78. Iolo’s ‘Moelmutian’ vision of a just society seems, by a somewhat circuitous route, to have impressed Karl Marx. See letters written to Engels in March 1868 and May 1870, Marx and Engels 1975-2005,

120


the genuine articles, became the principal medium of his fictive bardic grand narrative – a body of knowledge handed down through (invariably Catholic) periods of repression and intolerance to keep the flame of true Christian understanding alight. They were immensely popular in the nineteenth century, and won considerable attention on the Continent from scholars like Ferdinand Walter, Claude Fauriel and Adolphe Pictet – the latter thrilled to find premonitions of Kant and Leibniz in the wisdom, as he thought, of the ancient Celts.21 But valuable echoes of ancient times might equally be found in the humbler proverbs of the people, and the third volume of the Myvyrian also became the repository for earthier voices from the past. Reams of sayings attributed to wisdom figures like Catwg Ddoeth (‘Wise Catwg’), or the Bardd Glas (the ‘Blue Bard’) encapsulate the spirit of the Welsh people through time: the running title for this section of the book is ‘Doethineb y Cymry’ (‘the Wisdom of the Welsh’).22 The sayings and proverbs listed in the Myvyrian appear, like other texts, without interpretative or descriptive commentary, but a sense of what such pieces might have meant to Iolo comes across very vividly in a letter he wrote to Owain Myfyr in April 1800. It demonstrates to perfection the spirit of zealous interpretation and the inevitable direction of its flow: Amongst my collection of proverbs used in Glamorgan, there is one that is singular enough: a person on receiving useful instructions, information, &c., says of his instructor by way of complimenting him, ‘Hyfforddwr a fydd gorddwr’ [He who instructs will become a churner]. This proverb is pretty common, but I have never yet met with a person who seemed to me to understand it.

Noting that the saying is never used in a derogatory manner, he suggests:

42: 547 and 43: 515-516. I am much indebted to Brian Davies for this information. 21 See Löffler 2007, 82-3; Pictet 1856. For Fauriel’s interest in matters Welsh see Constantine 2007, 145-7. 22 The sayings of ‘Catwg Ddoeth’ emerge from a complex process of muddled substitutions (not all, it must be said, attributable to Iolo) as the Iolo-ized version of the Disticha Catonis, or ‘Sayings of Cato’, a popular school-text across Europe in the late medieval period. Iolo also claimed that the ‘Bardd Glas’ was the ‘Glasgerion’ mentioned in Chaucer’s House of Fame.


121

‘Cordd’23 seems originally to have signified a collection into one body or mass of what was before widely scattered, of parts theretofore in wide seperation [sic] from each other; ‘corddi’, to collect into one mass, to incorporate into one body; ‘corddi ymenyn’, to collect into one mass the butter that hitherto was dispersed or disseminated in very minute particles through the whole milk; ‘trefgordd’, a community of people collected and associating together in one body, from amongst the hunters of woods and forests, from amongst savage nomades in the first rude state of man (...) Now, if I am right in my etymology of the words ‘cordd’ & ‘corddi’, the true sense of the proverb will be, ‘He that can (or will) instruct mankind, will become the head or chief of a community, or will be able to associate savages or scattered inhabitants of woods (‘gwyddelod’)24 into a civilized body, mass, or community’; or, in other words, ‘The instructor, or civilizer will become the patriarch, founder, &c. of a nation or civilized body of men, the collector of a number of individuals into one political mass’ – a very natural proverb for the early states of human society. On similar ideas are founded the mythologies of Sesostris, Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Orpheus, Amphion, &c., &c. (...) Supposing that I have hit on the true idea, it will follow that this proverb of ours is extremely ancient, (...) I know a few instances, besides this, where obsolete words not now understood by the common people, are still retained in popular proverbs and idioms, though never used on any other occasion.

It is difficult to imagine a better example of what by the turn of the century had become a Europe-wide, post-Herderian propensity to find the beginnings of nationhood far back in time, preserved unwittingly in the songs and sayings of the common people. Nice too, that such highflown sentiments, and such august philosophical company, should be summoned by something as practical as churning butter. As we have seen, instruction was at the very heart of Iolo’s bardic vision: for him the early druids (who were also bards) were essentially teachers, not of some select group of religious initiates, but of the people as a whole. Priests were necessarily poets because they taught through the medium of po23

For ‘cordd’ and ‘corddaf: corddi’, see the entries in the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru. Although Iolo’s connection of the two would have seemed plausible enough, the meaning ‘tribe, clan’ and the verb ‘to churn, agitate’ are not in fact related; nor has the phrase in question been otherwise recorded. I am grateful to Andrew Hawke for this information. 24 The word gwyddelod, as Iolo happily points out elsewhere, is also the Welsh word for the Irish, and does indeed mean ‘dwellers in the woods’; there was little love lost between Wales and Ireland during this period, which effectively predates the general post-Romantic perceptions of Celtic-speakers bound together by a shared distant past and ties of blood.

122


etry, through the triads, which were easily retained by the memory of even the unlettered masses. Their enlightened, democratic – and, indeed, Unitarian – doctrines could be recovered from both written and oral sources, from the spoken proverbs he collected on his travels around Wales (‘with all my ears open’, as he put it) as well as in the triads he found in the libraries of the gentry or from ragged manuscripts passed from hand to hand in smoky cottages: From our ancient proverbs may be collected the sublimest truths of religion, the most refined precepts of morality, the happiest dictates of wisdom, the most excellent maxims of prudence, the most elegant modes of expression, the neatest disposition, and the most rhythmical arrangement of the words. They also throw great light on ancient usages and manners, and not inconsiderably elucidate history.25

Such cryptic material was, inevitably, immensely rewarding to the eye of faith, and where the necessary ideas failed to materialize Iolo could always provide them himself. His forgeries have long earned him the opprobrium of medievalists, but, as Morfydd Owen has suggested, Iolo’s fascination with the triads and his aptitude for coining them situate him in a long line of antiquarians who, down the centuries, have preserved and revitalized this distinctively Welsh genre (Owen 2007) Similarly revisionist interpretations of other so-called forgers, James Macpherson and Hersart de La Villemarqué among them, are now more inclined to see them as transformative bearers, than betrayers, of their respective traditions. I will return to the subject of forgery and betrayal at the end. The putative fourth volume of The Myvyrian Archaiology is also of interest. It was to have contained more medieval prose texts, those generally if somewhat erroneously known today as The Mabinogion, from the title given them in 1838 by their translator, Lady Charlotte Guest. They comprise a dozen or so stories from the fabulous native tales (including the earliest Arthurian tale in Europe, and the complex interlinked narrative of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi) through to the French-inflected chivalric romances. Since these much-discussed texts are now often the first port of call for the new student of Welsh, and have come to typify medieval Wales, their virtual absence from the literary landscape of the time is worth noting. That absence was in part an accident of circumstance: although various scholars, Sharon Turner and Sir Walter 25

Iolo Morganwg to Owain Myfyr, 17 June 1800. Correspondence, nr. 547.


123

Scott among them, urged William Owen Pughe to publish the translations at which he had laboured long and hard, he died before they could go to press.26 But it also reveals the relative prestige of poetry, history and law at this period in the defining of a national culture: one may note Iolo’s own objection to the notion of ‘fable’ (a word invariably associated in his writings with the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth) and his claim that prose was a far less reliable receptacle for ancient ‘truths’ than verse.27 If the value of the Myvyrian’s edited texts has diminished with the discovery of Iolo’s forgeries and advances in textual editing generally, its English-language introduction, ‘A short review of the present state of Welsh manuscripts’ has become more interesting with time. Iolo produced it after much nagging from Pughe and Myfyr (the first volume was printed and waiting for ‘the flourish of a preface’ by August 1800: Iolo, for various reasons both practical and psychological, did not manage to write the piece until December).28 The essay went through many drafts before appearing in its published version, and these drafts, preserved in the huge and chaotic archive of Iolo’s manuscripts held at the National Library of Wales, shed considerable light on the curiously pressured atmosphere of the published piece: as I have said elsewhere (2007, 95), it feels as if it has been written with clenched fists. Iolo defends the Welsh manuscript tradition with vigour, stressing the abundance of manuscripts dating from many different periods through which the ‘originals’ could be traced; he gives the names of private collections and libraries, and a brief history of previous scholarship, with the efforts of predecessors such as Evan Evans duly acknowledged. The tone, however, is frequently angry and defensive, castigating both the English for their lack of support and the Welsh upper classes for their lack of patriotic fervour (‘these first-moving virtues, for such they certainly are, have almost disappeared in Wales’, MAW 1: ix). There are moments of sudden aggression: Why Welsh Bibles were taken out of churches and burnt, as we have it recorded, and English ones ordered to be used in the room of them, cannot 26

Parts of some of the tales did appear in the press. See Johnston 1957-58. See especially his essay on the triads in his English collection, Williams 1794, 217-227. For Iolo’s ideas about orality and literacy see Constantine2007, 85-142. 28 William Owen Pughe to Iolo Morganwg, 28 August 1800; Iolo Morganwg to William Owen Pughe, 19 December 1800. Correspondence, nrs. 561 and 570. 27

124


now be well known; we trust that, however hostile the politics of this country [i.e. England] were once towards our language, they have so far ceased to be so, as to become absolutely indifferent about the matter. (MAW 1: x)

Such accusations hardly seem calculated to win over an audience new to the Welsh material, nor, as Iolo expresses the hope elsewhere, to encourage sympathetic English scholars to learn the language. Subsequent attempts to mollify his readers still fall some way short of expected levels of urbanity: ‘We desire to be understood as speaking of past times, sincerely hoping that those of the present will make amends before the tribunal of the literary world’ (MAW 1: 10). Another distinctive feature of the ‘Short review’ is the Ossian controversy, strikingly absent from the published version but not from the earlier drafts. Even in the awkwardly restrained published form it is an obvious point of reference, the unnamed ‘imposture’ against which the fidelity and reliability and historical depth of the Welsh tradition can be measured. Ironically enough, the attacks on Ossian patently ventriloquize comments made by James Macpherson’s arch-enemy, Samuel Johnson. Thus Iolo does not merely adopt the position and basic assumptions of Johnson concerning the Gaelic bard (including the erroneous claim that there were no manuscripts in Scots Gaelic), but he echoes his very phrasing: ‘our bards’, says Iolo, ‘were not barbarians amongst barbarians; they were men of letters (...) we talk not foolishly and incredibly of oral tradition’.29 Once again the emphasis is on Wales’s civilized early past, conceived as everything that Ossian’s Scotland is not: literate, organized, enhanced rather than destroyed by the Roman occupation, and assured of continuity through the strength and continued presence of Welsh itself: ‘our language, as some have imagined, is not altered’ (MAW 1: xviii). In short, Iolo’s preface – an English-language introduction to a collection of untranslated Welsh texts – is a tangle of resistance and complicity, a gift for those interested in the paradoxes inherent (and perhaps more intensely so amongst ‘minority’ cultures) in the struggle to define national identity. In a recent essay, Joep Leerssen (2006) sets out the case for the study of a vast range of cultural artefacts – poems and novels, folk songs, dictio29 MAW 1: xviii. Compare Dr. Johnson (1775 2: 101): ‘He that cannot read may converse with those that can; but the Bard was a barbarian among barbarians, who, knowing nothing himself, lived with others that knew no more’.


125

naries, paintings, textual editions, museums and monuments – as central to our understanding of the obvious, yet elusive, phenomenon of European nation-making during the Romantic period. They should not, he suggests, be treated merely as preliminaries or by-products of ‘serious’ political nationalism, they are its raw material, expressing it, reacting to it and creating it. A helpful taxonomy of different phases of cultural activity shows how the work of ‘salvage’ (inventorizing, rescuing, cataloguing, collecting) forms the basis for ‘fresh productivity’ on national themes (writing, composing, translating); a third phase then sees the conscious ‘propagation’ of an idea of nationhood through the public sphere (history taught in schools, festivals, street-names, pageants). Broadly speaking, these phases succeed each other in the development of a national sensibility: the folk songs inspire the Lieder or the waltzes which will, eventually, be played by a National Orchestra in a National Concert Hall. The pattern holds well enough for Wales, which was relatively early in ‘rescuing’ its culture, if slow to realize its major institutions:30 but it is hard to escape the observation that Iolo’s forgeries cut across these categories with a striking simultaneity. His acts of creative salvage (retrieving/inventing poetry, triads and an early Welsh alphabet) had, by the year 1792, already found an enduring means of propagation in his ceremony of initiation, the Gorsedd of the Bards, still an integral part of the great culture-fest which is the annual Welsh National Eisteddfod. Romantic historical forgery, in other words, plays havoc with time, not only by altering the past to suit the present (we are all guilty of that), but by collapsing the historical and the creative mindset at precisely the point when their separation seems to matter most. Since Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s influential book of essays on The Invention of Tradition (1983), it has become commonplace to acknowledge the ‘creative’ element in the shaping of cultural history. Few would now argue with the notion that cherished national myths often rest on trembling foundations; and it can seem that once the necessity for such myths has become the proper object of scholarly investigation, their ‘authenticity’ or otherwise almost ceases to be relevant. This can be granted, but with one caveat: the often fraught debates over the authenticity of poems, songs and documents believed (and then not 30 The federal University of Wales was founded in 1893; the National Museum and the National Library (institutions of which Iolo had dreamed more than a century previously) in 1907.

126


believed) to represent the very voice of the nation became events in themselves, and had consequences. The Ossian debate (to be distinguished from the massive influence of the poems themselves) has been credited, amongst other things, with the rise of literary historicism and the birth of the Romantic fragment poem (Leerssen 2004; Levinson 1986). In Wales the ‘Iolo controversy’ came late, but it mattered greatly: faith was shaken on a grand scale, with both positive and negative results. On the one hand the discovery of Iolo’s forgeries forced scholars to undertake a comprehensive revision of their sources, thus advancing the process of textual editing in Welsh. On the other hand, it could be argued that it induced a painfully narrow attitude to ‘correctness’ that stifled creative engagement with the texts of the past. For much of the twentieth century Celtic Studies’ answer to the excesses of Romanticism was philology, not as Vico envisaged it, but in its driest and narrowest manifestation. During this period of reaction The Myvyrian Archiology was inevitably a lost text, a contaminated source, though one still cheerfully plundered by the Celtic fringe. But perhaps by now we have enough distance to see it for the remarkable achievement it was: an astonishing act of generosity (Myfyr’s financial contribution is thought to have been between four and five thousand pounds; Williams 1966: 9) and the product of long hours of labour and diplomacy, which gave solidity to a literary tradition and then delivered that tradition to a new, reading, public. The Myvyrian became a key-stone in the nineteenth century Welsh national revival: parts of it were reprinted in journals and pamphlets and the whole work was re-edited in 1870 as a single volume (Löffler 2007, 82-83). A copy of the now rare three-volume first edition is kept for readers’ use at the National Library of Wales, nicely bound by a later nineteenth-century owner with decorative marbled flyleaves. Just inside the first volume a dedication in Iolo’s hand offers the work as a gift from the three editors to fellow radical and ‘chief druid’ Tomos Glyn Cothi.31 Handwriting never fails to move, and it is salutary to think of this man trying to write his angry preface in the dark evenings after a day’s hard labour. Although not perhaps with hindsight entirely fair, Iolo’s later, bitter, reproach to his erstwhile friend and patron Owain Myfyr will do as a timely reminder to those of us who now sit comfortably with the world’s knowledge at 31 ‘Rhodd y Cyhoeddwyr ag o law Iolo Morganwg i’r Parchedig Dderwyddfardd Thomas Glynn Cothi’.


127

our fingertips that it was not always thus: ‘In looking over my journals and itinerary and summing up the whole, I find that I have travel’d afoot for you more than two thousand miles from first to last.’32

References B., E. 1701. A Trip to North-Wales: Being a Description of that Country and People. London. Bromwich, Rachel. 1969. ‘Trioedd Ynys Prydain’ in Welsh Literature and Scholarship. Cardiff: University of Wales Press Bromwich, Rachel, ed.. & trl. 2006. Trioedd Ynys Prydein. 3rd ed.; Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Carr, Glenda. 1983. William Owen Pughe. Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru. Carr, Glenda. 2005. An Uneasy Partnership: Iolo Morganwg and William Owen Pughe, in Jenkins, 443-460. Charnell-White, Cathryn. 2007. Bardic Circles: National, Regional and Personal Identity in The Bardic Vision of Iolo Morganwg. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Constantine, Mary-Ann. 2004. Ossian in Wales and Brittany. In The Reception of Ossian in Europe, ed. Howard Gaskill, 67-90. London: Continuum. Constantine, Mary-Ann. 2007. The Truth Against the World: Iolo Morganwg and Romantic Forgery. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Correspondence: Geraint H. Jenkins, Ffion M. Jones and David Ceri Jones, eds. 2007. The Correspondence of Iolo Morganwg. 3 vols; Cardiff: Cardiff University Press. Evans, Robert. 2005, ‘The Manuscripts’: The Culture and Politics of Forgery in Central Europe’, in Jenkins. Herbert, Trevor and Gareth Elwyn Jones, eds. 1988. The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Jenkins, Geraint, ed. 2005. A Rattleskull Genius: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Johnson, Samuel. 1775. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. 2 vols.; London. Johnston, Arthur. 1957-58. William Owen-Pughe and the Mabinogion, National Library of Wales Journal 10: 323-8. Jones, Owen and William Owen Pughe, eds. 1789. Barddoniaeth Dafydd ab Gwilym. London. La Villemarqué, Th. Hersart de. 1850. Poèmes bretons du VIème siècle. Paris.

32 Iolo Morganwg to Owain Myfyr, 5 April 1806. Correspondence, nr. 763 I am very grateful to Geraint Phillips for his judicious comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

128


Leerssen, Joep. 2004. Ossian and the Rise of Literary Historicism. In The Reception of Ossian in Europe, ed. Howard Gaskill, 109-25. London: Continuum. Leerssen, Joep. 2006. Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture, Nations and Nationalism 12: 559-578. Levinson, Marjorie. 1986. The Romantic Fragment Poem: A Critique of a Form. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Lewis, Gwyneth. 1991. Eighteenth-Century Literary Forgeries, with Special Reference to Iolo Morganwg. DPhil thesis, Oxford. Löffler, Marion. 2007. The Literary and Historical Legacy of Iolo Morganwg, 1826-1926. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels.1975-2005. Marx/Engels Collecetd Works. 50 vols., London: Progress. MAW: Jones, Owen, Edward Williams, and William Owen Pughe, eds. 180107. The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales. London. McKenna, Catherine. 2006. Aspects of Tradition Formation in EighteenthCentury Wales, Memory and the Modern in the Celtic Literatures, (CSANA Yearbook, 5): 37-60. Owen, Morfydd E. 2007. Traddodiad y Triawd Cyffredinol yn y Gymraeg a’r Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales. Aberystwyth: Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru. Phillips, Geraint. 2005. Forgery and Patronage: Iolo Morganwg and Owain Myfyr. In Jenkins, 403-23. Phillips, Geraint. 2006. Bywyd a Chysylltiadau Llenyddol Owain Myfyr. PhD thesis, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Pictet, Adolphe. 1856. Le mystère des bardes de l’île de Bretagne: ou, La doctrine des bardes gallois du moyen âge sur Dieu, la vie future et la transmigration des âmes. Genève. Morgan, Prys. 1981. The Eighteenth-Century Renaissance. Llandybië: Davies. Williams, Edward. 1794. Poems, Lyric and Pastoral. London. Williams, G.J. 1926. Iolo Morganwg a Chywyddau’r Ychwynegiad. Llundain: Cymdeithas yr Eisteddfod Genedlaethol. Williams, G.J. 1966. Hanes Cyhoeddi’r ‘Myvyrian Archaiology’, Journal of the Welsh Bibliographical Society 10: 2-12.


JOHN O’DONOVAN’S EDITION OF THE ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS: AN IRISH CLASSIC? Bernadette Cunningham Abstract The Annals of the Four Masters, compiled by professional Irish historians in the 1630s, were intended to provide a comprehensive chronicle of Irish history from earliest times to the present. Written in Irish, the work remained unpublished in the early modern period, known only to antiquarian scholars. Later, in the atmosphere of civic patriotism prevalent among Irish scholars in the 1840s, the work was published in a dual language edition. At the same time, stories from the annals were popularised in cheap magazines. The scholarship and the ideology of their nineteenth-century editor, John O’Donovan, coupled with the Gaelic and Catholic credentials of the original annalists and the romantic perception of the annals as having rescued Irish history from oblivion, made these annals a foundational text for the emerging Irish Catholic nation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Annals of the Four Masters is the popular title given to a chronicle of Irish history compiled in the 1630s and eventually published in the mid- nineteenth century (O’Donovan 1848-51). Written in the Irish language by professional historians trained in the Gaelic tradition, the annals recounted the history of Ireland, year by year, from the time of the Biblical flood down to AD 1616. The Annals of the Four Masters were derived principally from earlier manuscript sources, only a few of which now survive. In the 1630s, most of those older source manuscripts were in the hands of hereditary learned families in the north-west of Ireland, in particular the families of Ó Cléirigh, Ó Maoil Chonaire, Ó

130

Bernadette Cunningham

Duibhgeannáin and Ó Luinín. None of these older sets of provincial annals, however, were deemed suitable to seventeenth-century European fashions in writing the history of nations and so a new research project on the Irish past was undertaken in the 1630s. The historians involved were drawn from the families of Ó Cléirigh, Ó Maoil Chonaire and Ó Duibhgeannáin; the leader of the group was an Irish Franciscan lay brother, Míchéal Ó Cléirigh. The new annals were intended to provide a comprehensive chronicle of Irish history from earliest times to the present. A key objective of the annalists was to demonstrate the antiquity of the kingdom of Ireland and particular emphasis was placed on the succession of kings of Ireland, whose reigns were systematically documented (Cunningham 2005; McGowan 2004). The original research project that culminated in the writing of the Annals of the Four Masters was masterminded by the Irish Franciscans who were based at the College of St Anthony in Louvain in the Spanish Netherlands. That college had been founded in 1607 primarily to provide a seminary education for Irish Catholic men who wished to be ordained as priests. The experience of prolonged contact with educated men from other nations had a lasting impact on Irish scholarship, and a renewed interest in researching and writing Irish history, both secular and ecclesiastical was among the outcomes (Cunningham 1991). Inspired by contemporary European trends in the writing of national histories, there were two main strands to the historical research of the Irish Franciscans based at Louvain. One involved work on the lives of Irish saints, while the second focussed on the secular history of Ireland. Arising from this research, two substantial Latin volumes of Irish saints’ lives, edited by John Colgan, were published in the 1640s: Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae of 1645 and Triadis thamaturgae acta of 1647. A new martyrology of Irish saints was also compiled, though this was not published until the midnineteenth century (Todd & Reeves 1864). A series of meticulously planned historical compilations was also prepared, culminating in 1636 with the completion of the Annals of the Four Masters. These essentially secular annals of Irish history compiled by Míchéal Ó Cléirigh and his associates, were intended to be translated into Latin and made available in print. However, for a variety of reasons, of which the scarcity of funding was probably the most significant, these comprehensive annals of Irish history, which extended to over 400,000 words, were not published in the seventeenth century. Instead, the work circulated in a very limited

THE ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS

131

way in two separate spheres through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Given the quite restricted circulation of the work when first published, the manner in which the Annals of the Four Masters came to prominence in the nineteenth century requires explanation. The story begins in County Donegal in the north west of Ireland in the 1630s, where the original compilers made at least two full sets of these new annals. When completed, one set was taken to Louvain with a view to publication, while another set was presented to the patron of the work, Fearghal Ó Gadhra. Thereafter, the after-life of the work can be seen as made up of two elements. The annals were used as a reference source in the 1640s by the Irish Franciscan hagiographer, John Colgan, but after his death in 1658 the Franciscan copy of the text appears to have languished largely unused for generations. Within the Franciscan order, the contribution of the only Franciscan among the annalists, Míchéal Ó Cléirigh, had already been eulogised in print as early as 1645, in a manner that still resonated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Meanwhile the set of autograph manuscripts that remained in Ireland circulated in a limited way among a select number of scholars, including, for instance, Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh in the 1640s, Roderic O’Flaherty of Galway in the 1680s and Charles O’Conor of Belanagare in the mideighteenth century (Ó Muraíle 1987). In the course of the eighteenth century Charles O’Conor assembled an impressive private collection of medieval and early modern Irish manuscripts, among them an autograph set of the Annals of the Four Masters. One significant aspect of his interest in these manuscripts can be discerned in the manner in which he augmented the work with his own additions relating to O’Conor family history (RIA, MS C iii 3 and TCD, MS 1301). In addition to this, O’Conor commissioned transcripts of the annals for use by others interested in such sources.1 Partly through the efforts of O’Conor the idea gained momentum that the text of these annals - and other Irish-language treasures that had survived from earlier centuries - should be published. Conscious both of the fragility of paper manuscripts and of the decline in expertise which meant that few people living could read

1 RIA, MSS 23 F 2-3 and TCD, MS 1279 are late eighteenth-century transcripts of the early portion of the Annals of the Four Masters, while RIA MSS 23 F 4-6 are transcripts completed in 1778 of the later part of the same annals.

132


the source texts O’Conor had collected, he observed to fellow antiquary Chevalier O’Gorman in 1783: Our originals (...) should be printed under the eye of a learned Editor, with a literal translation in English or Latin. If this be omitted (as I foresee it will) the treasures still preserved in our language will be as certainly lost as those that have long since perished. (Cited O’Donovan 1848-51, 1: xxxviii)

When the Royal Irish Academy was formed in 1785, Charles O’Conor was one of the founding members and within a few years the idea of translating the Annals of the Four Masters was being given serious consideration by this learned society.2 The activities of the Royal Irish Academy went into decline in the decades immediately following the implementation of the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, but the drive of men like the antiquarian scholar George Petrie spearheaded a new era of vitality from the 1830s. In a scholarly atmosphere imbued with civic patriotism, where particular importance was attached to collecting antiquarian artefacts and manuscripts, publication of texts was a logical further step in the process of bringing these records of Irish heritage into public ownership (Leerssen 1996, 106-7; Mitchell 1985; FitzPatrick 1988, 3-5). Other learned societies, too, were formed. The belief in the national importance of publishing editions of Irish manuscripts let to the formation of the Irish Archaeological Society on St Patrick’s Day 1840, under the leadership of J.H. Todd specifically to arrange for the publication of editions and translations of manuscripts of particular Irish historical significance.3 That it was founded on the feastday of Ireland’s patron saint symbolised a perception of the national rather than purely scholarly significance of such work. The Celtic Society, with similar objectives was founded in 1845, and the two subsequently merged to become the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society. The stated objective of the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society was ‘to print, with accurate English translations and annotations, the unpublished documents illustrative of Irish history, especially those in the ancient and obsolete Irish language, many of which can be accurately transcribed and elucidated only by scholars who have been long engaged in investigating the Celtic remains of Ire2

RIA, Council minutes, vol. I, p. 344 (18 Feb, 1797). For an analysis of the membership of the Irish Archaeological Society see Murray 2000, 62-7. 3


133

land’. That the work was in the nature of a rescue mission is evidenced by the assertion that ‘should the publication of these manuscripts be long delayed, many most important literary monuments may become unavailable to the students of history and comparative philology’.4 John O’Donovan emerged as a pivotal figure in the editorial work promoted by the Irish Archaeological Society. His knowledge of the historic Irish language and the intricacies of the Irish manuscript tradition were a rare enough specialism in his intellectual circle in the 1830s and 1840s. His work in this sphere was extensive, and he translated and edited numerous dual language editions of Irish texts published by the Irish Archaeological Society, and later by the Celtic Society. Works translated and edited by O’Donovan during the 1840s included The Banquet of Dún na n-Gédh and the Battle of Magh Rath, an Ancient Historical Tale (1842), The Tribes and Customs of Hy-Many, Commonly Called O’Kelly’s Country (1843) and The Genealogies, Tribes, and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach, Commonly Called O’Dowda’s Country (1844). He also contributed editions of shorter texts to two miscellaneous volumes, Tracts relating to Ireland, vol. 1 (1841), and The Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society, vol. 1 (1846). His edition of Leabhar na gCeart, or the Book of Rights (1847) was published by the Celtic Society, and he also edited the Miscellany of the Irish Celtic Society (1849). Perhaps of even greater scholarly significance than the various learned societies that emerged in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland was the work of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. This government-sponsored project to create large scale maps of the entire island of Ireland, though initially conceived as a military enterprise, served as a kind of proxy university for a group of scholars interested in Irish topography, placenames, folklore and antiquities. The personnel employed in the topographical department of the Ordnance Survey, headed by Sir George Petrie, included people who were also active in the Royal Irish Academy and the Irish Archaeological Society. An article by Sir Samuel Ferguson published under the heading ‘Lord Romilly’s Irish publications’ in the Quarterly Review gave due recognition to the vision of the leaders of the Ordnance Survey project in promoting research on Irish history. Ferguson acknowledged not just the contribution of Sir George Petrie, but also that of Sir Thomas Larcom, who had overseen the Ordnance Survey project. ‘To him is mainly due the idea of attaching the loyal classes to 4 Annual report, The Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society, MDCCCLX: RIA, LR/1/B/10.

134


the cultivation of native letters, an idea which, if carried out as conceived, would have forestalled Fenianism by infusing educated influences into all its material’.5 The fact that the Ordnance Survey provided the editor of the Annals of the Four Masters, John O’Donovan, with his main source of employment between 1833 and 1842, was significant on several counts. It gave O’Donovan the opportunity to conduct detailed research on the topography of all parts of Ireland, and this corpus of research was incorporated in the extensive notes to his edition of the annals. The work also brought this Irish Catholic scholar to the notice of the predominantly Protestant social elite who comprised the Irish Archaeological Society, and to others in the intellectual circle of antiquaries in mid-nineteenth-century Dublin. As part of a process of collecting artefacts and manuscripts of historical interest for the Academy, Sir George Petrie bought the original autograph manuscript of the second part of the Annals of the Four Masters at auction in 1831. The manuscript covered the years AD 1171 to AD 1616 and he immediately sold it to the Royal Irish Academy thereby bringing it into public ownership. It was unbound and in poor condition and the considerable sum of £53 that Petrie paid, then the equivalent of more than 5 month’s wages for an educated person, was an indication of the special regard in which this work was held. From then on, Petrie was anxious that it should be published. He stressed the necessity of giving durability, while yet in our power, to the surviving historical remains of our country, and thereby placing them beyond the reach of a fate otherwise inevitable. To me it appears a sacred duty on all cultivated minds to do so. Had this compilation been neglected, or had it, as was supposed, shared the fate of its predecessors, what a large portion of our history would have been lost to the world for ever. (Petrie 1831, 387)

Petrie had a clear idea of the kind of edition required, and was particularly keen that the Irish text should be printed using an appropriate Gaelic font. By 1835 he had designed a new Gaelic type for use by the Dublin University Press. Petrie’s ‘A’ type, funded by Hodges and Smith, was modelled on the lettering in the Book of Kells. Although this type was used in various printing projects in which Petrie was involved, including the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy and publications of the Ordnance Survey, it was planned by Petrie in 1832-33 when the publication 5 Ferguson 1868, 443. For the identification of Ferguson as the reviewer see Denman 1990, 195-213.


135

of the Annals of the Four Masters was first proposed (Kinane 1994, 130131; McGuinne 1992, 102-103). The design and physical appearance of the Irish text of the Annals was clearly regarded as important. While the use of a Gaelic script was readily justifiable on scholarly grounds, as necessary for the accurate representation of the written text, its significance transcended those technicalities. Just as the Gaelic origins of Irish place-names were being brought to light by O’Donovan and other researchers in the topographical department of the Ordnance Survey, so the Gaelic texts that were central to Irish antiquarian research were being brought into the public sphere through the medium of print. Their Gaelic character was what defined the authenticity of these texts, and it was deemed necessary to preserve the essence of that character in the print medium. It was part of a process of re-Gaelicising the memory of the past, while demonstrating the authenticity of texts (Leerssen 1996, 25; Leerssen 2002, 24-7). Financing the publication of a text as large as the Annals of the Four Masters proved to be a challenge. Neither the Irish Archaeological Society nor the Royal Irish Academy had access to the necessary funds.6 The Academy applied to the British Government for funding specifically for the publication of the Annals, but without success.7 Thus, it fell to the commercial publishing firm of Hodges and Smith to undertake the project. The publisher, George Smith, paid John O’Donovan for his work of translation and also Eugene O’Curry for his work in transcribing the complete Irish text in a form suitable for use by the typesetter.8 The editorial scholarship associated with the Annals in the form they were published was primarily topographical and genealogical in nature, since these were O’Donovan’s areas of expertise. His translation is reliable and accomplished, but he did not aim at a full critical edition. Thus, even though two autograph manuscripts of the later part of the annals (post AD 1334) were available to him, he did not systematically represent the variant readings of the two sources in his edition. He based his edition on one set of manuscripts (now RIA, MSS 23 P 6-23 P 7) while referring in the notes to selected variants in the ‘college copy’ (now TCD, MS 1301). O’Donovan’s primary objective was to make available a full Irish text and English translation of an historical source he deemed to be 6

Hodges and Smith circular letter, 31 January 1844 (R.I.A., 12 I 15, p. 311). RIA, Council minutes, VI, pp 64-70. 8 O’Lochlainn 1940, 179; RIA, Council minutes, VI, p. 218; Cunningham 2006a. 7

136


of key significance as a comprehensive chronicle of Irish history. His editorial method indicates that documenting the ‘facts’ of history was his priority and this took precedence over the production of a critical edition of the autograph manuscripts. In addition to its intrinsic value as a source of historical information, it was anticipated that this pioneering dual-language edition of a key text would be of special value to later scholars in undertaking other planned translations of major Irish historical sources.9 O’Donovan’s three-volume 1848 edition of the Annals was well received by the scholarly community, and the editor and publisher were encouraged to complete the work by publishing the Irish text and an English translation of the earlier section from AM 2242 to AD 1171. This was completed and published in 1851. In issuing this edition of the early part of the annals, the prior existence of a published Latin translation was not seen as a threat to the likelihood of commercial success. This was because the 1826 Latin edition of the same pre-1171 Annals had adopted a quite different approach to editing the text, which proved far less satisfactory. Edited by Rev Charles O’Conor, grandson of the eighteenth-century collector Charles O’Conor of Belanagare, it was the third in a series of four volumes of Irish historical texts privately published in England at the expense of the Duke of Buckingham (O’Conor 1826). That the translation prepared by O’Conor was into Latin rather than English was unexceptional – and indeed Petrie and his circle initially gave serious consideration to Latin rather than English as the language for their translation also.10 However, it was recognised that the use of Latin would have confined its readership to a small highly-educated elite, as happened with O’Conor’s edition. There were problems, too, with O’Conor’s Irish transcript of the text. His rendering of the Irish text was severely criticised by contemporaries for O’Conor’s failure to expand scribal contractions, and for the use of an italic rather than a Gaelic type font to represent the Gaelic script. It was argued that these two shortcomings made reading the Irish text extremely difficult for anyone other than specialist scholars (O’Donovan 1848-51, 1: xxxi-xxxvi). O’Conor’s edition was privately published and had a limited circulation, and was never a serious commercial challenge to O’Donovan’s edition as published by Hodges and Smith in 1848-51. A far more seri9

RIA Council minutes, V, pp 54-57. RIA, Council minutes, IV, pp 295-6.

10


137

ous threat to the viability of the first edition of O’Donovan’s work had emerged with the publication by Brian Geraghty in 1846 of a rival cheap translation of the same annals covering the post-1171 period. This alternative translation was the work of a respected scholar, Owen Connellan, and was published entirely in the English language without any parallel Irish text. The text was augmented with footnotes taken without acknowledgment from historical articles published in popular magazines by other scholars, not least John O’Donovan.11 In the manner in which they were presented by the publisher, the footnotes bore little or no relation to the text of the annals they purported to eludicate, comprising instead general essays on miscellaneous aspects of Irish history and genealogy. Connellan’s translation of the annals was initially published in periodical format, with over 700 subscribers, and was subsequently issued in book form in 1846. The scholarly community recognised this enterprise as a cheap stunt designed to capitalise on the undoubted market that existed for publications drawn from authentic Irish historical sources. Connellan claimed that he was refused permission to consult Irish manuscripts in the library of the Royal Irish Academy because of his association with the publisher Brian Geraghty’s whose opportunism threatened to undermine the viablity of O’Donovan’s edition being published by Hodges and Smith.12 In a letter to John Windele of Cork, O’Donovan mocked the edition and also criticised Connellan’s adoption of the title of ‘Irish Historiographer’ to his late majesty, adding ‘I cannot but laugh at the folly of his publisher in allowing him to assume such a name’. He also accused Connellan of citing his own work ‘without a single word of acknowledgement’.13 A fellow antiquary, William Hackett, wrestled with his conscience when asking for a loan of Connellan’s serial edition from John Windele in the spring of 1845, commenting that it was ‘a pity to encourage such an invidious project but, as I would not consider my borrowing it from you would be any benefit to the Publishers, I should not scruple you sending it (or my receiving it rather) by some convenient opportunity.’14 The 327 unsold copies of Connellan’s English translation 11 Articles by John O’Donovan in the Dublin Penny Journal and the Irish Penny Journal were among those adapted without acknowledgement for Brian Geraghty’s publication. See Ferguson 1848, 359. 12 Connellan to John Windele, 24 July 1846 (RIA, MS 12 L 10/83). 13 O’Donovan to Windele, 4 January, 1845 (RIA, MS 12 L 9/6 ii). 14 Hackett to Windele, 6 Feb 1845 (RIA, MS 4 B 5/88).

138


of the Annals, published by Brian Geraghty in 1846, were auctioned two years later when the publisher was declared bankrupt. At about the same time, O’Donovan’s much more ambitious, and much more expensive, three volume dual-language edition of the same work went on sale for the first time (Cunningham 2006a: 116-9). Connellan’s one-volume cheap edition had retailed at £1.10s. whereas O’Donovan’s three-volume 1848 edition retailed at £8. 8s. with a special price of £6. 6s. for subscribers who had placed orders in advance of publication.15 The extended edition, containing the full text from AM 2242 to AD 1616, comprising six volumes of text and a seventh volume containing an index, which was published in 1851, sold at the very considerable price of £14.14s. The publishers were aware that the high price ‘chiefly confined the sale to public institutions and men of large fortune’.16 The timing of the publication of O’Donovan’s edition of the Annals was unfortunate, coming in the midst of a diastrous famine in Ireland which had reached its peak during 1847, and initially the edition was not a commercial success.17 Despite this, it was reviewed enthusiastically in a variety of periodical publications of various political hues. The Church of Ireland’s Irish Ecclesiastical Journal (1848) portrayed the work as an icon of Irish ability to triumph over adversity. The reviewer observed that ‘In a year of famine and great mercantile depression appeared the work whose title heads this article, as it were an earnest of intellectual propriety, and an omen of national convalescence.’18 Again writing from a Protestant perspective in the Dublin University Magazine, the poet Samuel Ferguson was equally enthusiastic. Looking at O’Donovan’s edition of the Annals in the context of other contemporary publications including George Petrie’s researches on round towers and William Reeves’s work on papal taxation, Ferguson noted in a tone of national pride: Our satisfaction is of a high and ennobling kind, for it is chiefly on account of the country itself that we feel it. We never can despair of a country in which works like these succeed one another, in such rapid and regular succession, showing, as they do, a systematic application of calm and cultivated minds to the pursuit of that self-knowledge which will be found, after all, to lie at the foundation of whatever just national feeling, of whatever

15

Hodges and Smith to Windele, 19 Mar. 1844 (RIA, MS 4 B 5/16). Hodges and Smith, circular letter dated June 1855 (RIA, 12 L 15, p 571). 17 O’Donovan to Windele, 25 June 1852 (RIA, MS 4 B 12/83 i). 18 Review in Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, 5 (1848): 123. 16


139

permanent and wholesome public opinion, can be looked for or desired in this country. (Ferguson 1848, 359).

Ferguson saw in these works of historical scholarship the potential redemption of Irish civilisation, in the aftermath of Famine and political unrest. Society has, it is true, been almost shaken to pieces. We have, indeed, been involved in a sea of troubles; but in the midst of that confusion and repulsion, the reconciling power of mind has been at work, settling and establishing itself on sure foundations, by unseen but great and persevering labour, for these noble works of learning which day by day begin to show their heads above the waves of misfortune around us, rest upon deep and solid superstructures. (ibid.)

Welcoming even the form in which the Annals were presented, Ferguson enthused that O’Donovan’s edition was ‘in matter, in learned use of it, in method, and in typographical excellence ... fit to take its place in any shelf, of any European library, beside Camden, Mabillon or Muratori’ (ibid., 360) Contrasting Irish scholarship with that then current in England, Ferguson welcomed the fact that in Ireland ‘all our labours in antiquity and history’ contributed towards ‘the propagation, namely, of self-knowledge, self-respect, and attachment to the country in which our lot is cast’. Ferguson had clear opinions on the kind of history Ireland required to underpin civic patriotism, in a country ‘where society itself has still to be formed and consolidated, before we can begin even the slowest progress towards greatness or prosperity’. A general narrative history, he believed, would only lead to ‘feelings of regret and despondency’. Rather, he advocated, the histories we now want are particular and local; such as, it is true, would furnish no material for large philosophic inductions, but such as will enable us to know one another and the land we live in, and every spot of it, that such knowledge may beget mutual confidence and united labour, and that we may strive to advance our own and our country’s fortunes here in the place assigned to us in the world. (ibid., 361)

Ferguson belonged to that generation of Protestant establishment literary figures who sought to come to terms with being Irish while not yet fully reconciled to all aspects of Irishness (Denman 1990, 4-5; Campbell 2006, 504-515). He and his circle had been primed to respect the value of the Annals, so much so that Ferguson (1848, 362) could assert that ‘the fame

140


of these annals of the O’Clerys has been so widely celebrated of late years, that it is almost unnecessary to remind readers of the circumstances of their composition’. That fame had been enhanced by popular poetry composed by men such as Thomas D’Arcy McGee (in his The Irish Writers of the Seventeenth Century of 1846), as well as by articles by John O’Donovan and others published in popular penny journals from the 1830s. Weekly magazines such as the Irish Penny Journal, founded by George Petrie in 1840, and the very similar Dublin Penny Journal (1832–37) that Petrie had also promoted, were established ‘with national as well as useful objects in view’, and these magazines brought topics of historical, antiquarian and literary interest to a wide audience. Despite this popularising of Irish historical material, men such as Ferguson for whom the medieval texts in the Irish language were virtually a closed book, displayed a certain lack of affinity with the kind of historical material recorded in the annals. It is noticeable in his 1848 review of the Annals that he had rather more to say about the editor’s footnotes than about the text itself. Indeed, he explicitly stated that ‘it is mainly to Mr O’Donovan’s notes that the reader, who is not a dry local or family historian, or genealogist, must look for really interesting philosophic, and picturesque matter’. He went on to indulge his poetic interests, inviting young poets to accompany him through the notes ‘to find what we may of picturesque or poetic material. And indeed, the notes furnish abundant material of this kind for both poet and romance writer’ (372). For Ferguson, this kind of work was an important means of nation building, the sources containing ‘abundant material, from century to century, back as far as tradition reaches, and capable, every particle of it, to be turned to the loftiest national purposes.’ Yet, the poetic inspiration that might be provided by the original Irish text of the annals was beyond the scope of his interests. In this, Ferguson was not alone, and there is a sense in which for many who have consulted the Annals since Ferguson’s day, the learned notes of John O’Donovan have been seen as the most important element of the publication. There is no doubt that O’Donovan’s masterly edition has profoundly influenced subsequent perceptions of the Annals as a classic source for understanding the Irish past. For some, by the twentieth century, O’Donovan’s creation of a classic merited him the title of the ‘fifth master’ (Ó Muraíle 1997). Overall, the enthusiastic reception accorded the publication of the Annals, both in terms of the quality of O’Donovan’s work as editor and the prestige character of the


141

finished product, cemented the reputation of the Annals of the Four Masters as a highly significant source for the history of Ireland and its localities from earliest times to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Many other Irish historical texts were edited for print through the later nineteenth century, including editions with English translations of important older sets of Irish annals such as the Annals of Ulster, the Annals of Loch Cé, and the Annals of Clonmacnoise. It was recognised that the evidence of the Annals of Ulster, for example, was generally more valuable to historians than that of the Annals of the Four Masters, but yet these other annals never attained the cult status that came to be associated with the work of the Four Masters. Other medieval and early modern historical texts were also prepared for publication, some of them as part of editorial projects that enjoyed British government funding. Indeed, there was a concerted effort by certain scholars, such as J.H. Todd and J.T. Gilbert, to ensure that Irish historical documents would be accorded equal status with those of Great Britain, and funding was obtained for some publishing initiatives on that basis. Such editorial work was seen as one means of demonstrating that Ireland was no mere province but a nation. In an era of political tension and cultural rivalries, the authorities in England were acutely aware of the political expediency of funding the publication of editions of Irish texts (Gillespie 2006). In all these enterprises, the high standard achieved in editing the Annals of the Four Masters provided inspiration and motivation to extend such scholarship as a means of enhancing the reputation of the Irish nation. From the time it was first published in 1848-51, the deluxe edition of the Annals of the Four Masters could not fail to impress. Nothing on that scale had previously been published in Ireland, and even the physical appearance of the seven-volume set was impressive. But was it a national classic? One way of tracing its subsequent influence is by examining the manner in which the work was used by later historians. Among the many narrative histories of Ireland to be published in the nineteenth century, one of the more successful in incorporating evidence from annalistic sources, most notably the Annals of the Four Masters, was Martin Haverty’s History of Ireland, Ancient and Modern published by James Duffy in 1860. That Haverty’s work proved popular is evidenced by the production of a separate edition for use in schools, together with reprints of his book in 1861, 1865 and 1867. P.W. Joyce’s A Social History of Ancient Ireland published in a two-volume edition in 1903, drew heavily not just

142


on the Annals of the Four Masters but also on the other Irish historical texts that had been edited by John O’Donovan for the Irish Archaeological Society. While noting of late ‘among Continental and British writers, something like a spontaneous movement showing a tendency to do [the Irish race] justice’, Joyce still believed his history was necessary because the Irish ‘have never, in modern times, received the full measure of credit due to them for their early and striking advance in the arts of civilised life, for their very comprehensive system of laws, and for their noble and successful efforts, both at home and abroad, in the cause of religion and learning’ (Joyce 1903, 1: xi-xii). Joyce’s historical writings, like those of Haverty, included works for children. His illustrated A Child’s History of Ireland (1897: 10-11) included an introductory essay on sources, noting the importance of the annals, especially the Annals of the Four Masters. He expressed the hope that his book, ‘written as it is in such a broad and just spirit, may help to foster mutual feelings of respect and toleration among Irish people of different parties, and may teach them to love and admire what is great and noble in their history, no matter where found’ (vi). Despite the best efforts of these and other historians to present accessible narratives based on authentic medieval Irish sources as mediated by mid-nineteenth-century translators, the nationalist writer Alice Stopford Green opened her study of The Old Irish World (1912) with a despondent chapter on ‘The way of history in Ireland’. She insisted that history was ‘portioned out to Irishmen as a fragment of English history’, and ‘Irishmen are still driven to discuss in belated fashion the question that all Europe settled long ago – Why should we make the history of our country our serious study?’ ‘As members of a nation’, she reiterated, ‘we are bound to make History our all important study’ (Green 1912, 2-4). For Green, one of the few bright points in nineteenth-century historical research had been the work of the state-sponsored Ordnance Survey, and she praised the scholarship of Sir George Petrie, John O’Donovan and their colleagues, in ‘a kind of peripatetic University’, noting that ‘It is such things as these that reveal to us the soul of Irish Nationality and the might of its repression’ (55-56). Calling for further research to be carried out on Irish place-names and Irish antiquities, she argued that ‘All historians, all Irishmen alike, must ardently join in such an entreaty, for the honour of their land. Is it too much to hope that (...) Irish scholars may


143

yet be given the patriotic task of saving what yet remains on Irish soil of the inheritance of her people’ (61). Lacking knowledge of the Irish language, Green was limited in the original research she could undertake on early Irish history, but major progress in this sphere was achieved by Eoin Mac Neill, in his Phases of Irish history (1919), and Celtic Ireland (1921). Mac Neill had been introduced to the study of history by the Jesuit scholar Edmund Hogan, and studied Irish with Douglas Hyde. He founded the Gaelic League in 1893, and subsequently became active in Irish nationalist politics (Maume 2004; also Byrne & Martin 1971). Mac Neill, as professor of Ancient Irish History at University College Dublin, argued that it was necessary to go beyond the mid-nineteenth-century editions of Irish texts, with the inevitable biases of their translations, and called for financial support for students engaged in the combined disciplines of history, archaeology and Irish philology. Only in this way, he believed, could ‘our Nation’s ancient story’ be given ‘the place it deserves in the world’s history’ (Mac Neill 1921, xiv-xv). Mac Neill rejected implicitly the historicity of much of the pre-Christian content of texts such as the Annals of the Four Masters. While his view came to be the orthodoxy in academic circles, the annals continued to be relied on for the more local evidence they contained relating to the medieval period. The ‘royalist’ master narrative of the Four Masters was ignored, and emphasis was placed instead on other characteristics of the work. Thus, the strands of history that emerged from the use of source texts such as the Annals in the nineteenth century were attention to the minutiae of local history and topography, the cult of individual heroes and the stories of their military exploits, and the Christian heritage of early Ireland. In so far as Samuel Ferguson had been correct in his assessment in 1848 that narrative political history was best avoided in Ireland, and that local history was the path to follow, O’Donovan’s edition of the Annals of the Four Masters provided an important access point to the past. The editor had devoted an entire volume to an index of names and places, and together with his encyclopaedic annotations concerning individual place-names and local family histories, even today the work is regularly consulted by local historians and archaeologists concerned with medieval Ireland. Scholars such as Edmund Hogan and P.W. Joyce would later pursue a interest in Irish onomastics, which owed a considerable debt to

144


the pioneering researches of O’Donovan. The value of the annals to such scholars was clear, but that in itself did imply classic status. In 1910, however, it is little surprise to find that Hogan’s Onomasticon Goedelicum (1910) is prefaced by the phrase ‘Dochum Glóire Dé ocus onóra na hÉrenn’ (For the glory of God and the honour of Ireland). That phrase was taken from Míchéal Ó Cléirigh’s 1636 dedication of the Annals to his patron, Fearghal Ó Gadhra, and over time the phrase came to symbolise all that the scholarship of the Annals represented. The adoption of the same phrase as part of the banner of the Irish Press newspaper founded in 1931 by Éamon de Valera continued subtly to propagate the notion of Irish history, Irish Catholicism and Irish destiny being intertwined. People like O’Donovan who edited historical texts in nineteenthcentury Ireland had little doubt but that their work, like that of the seventeenth-century predecessors, was being undertaken ‘Do chum glóire Dé agus onóra na hÉireann’ (For the glory of God and the honour of Ireland). From the nineteenth-century perspective, the very act of writing history at a time of political and social upheaval could be interpreted as an act of national heroism. By implying that the seventeenth-century annalists had rescued the records a lost Gaelic civilisation, O’Donovan had projected onto the original annalists the essence of his understanding of his own role as a scholar in the 1830s rather than the 1630s in preserving the annals for posterity. O’Donovan’s dedication of his edition made explicit reference to Ó Cléirigh’s 1636 dedication of the annals to their patron, and he thanked those who had ‘eminently distinguished themselves by their exertions in promoting the story of Irish History and Antiquities’ by pursuing ‘the cause of ancient Irish literature, at a period when it had fallen into almost utter neglect’ (O’Donovan 1848-51, 1: vvi). Projecting back onto the seventeenth-century Four Masters the ‘rescue mission’ of the nineteenth-century antiquarians had several consequences. First, it attached a high rarity value to the contents of the annals, presenting them as a national treasure, a rare survival from a oncerich culture. The fact that the annals had not been issued in print in the seventeenth century contributed to this sense that they were the last fragments of a lost civilization. Secondly, it fed into the story of Gaelic Ireland having been destroyed by the might of England, so that it was argued that even the very memory of that society would have been obliterated were it not for the work of the Four Masters. Thirdly, it created a


145

sense of continuity between the activities of nineteenth-century scholars and those of the late medieval Gaelic tradition, where in truth the eighteenth century had been decidedly a period of discontinuity.19 Fourthly, it enhanced the reputation of O’Donovan and his mid-nineteenth-century collaborators, ultimately according them a role as shapers of the modern Irish nation.20 While it has been convincingly demonstrated by late twentieth-century historians that the Annals were not conceived as a rescue mission in the seventeenth century but rather as a carefully constructed chronicle of history for the Irish Catholic community in Ireland and overseas, the alternative interpretation that formed part of O’Donovan’s editorial ‘package’ still survives in popular interpretations of the work of the Four Masters. The annals were seen as a rare bright light in the sea of oppression, defeat and loss that had emerged as the master narrative in the story of Ireland (Foster 1993, 1-20). The cult of Mícheál Ó Cléirigh that arose from this was one manifestation of the national significance of the annals. Evidence of Ó Cléirigh’s cult status in the late nineteenth century is provided, for example, by the work of journalist and popular historical writer, Eugene Davis, whose ‘Souvenirs of Irish footprints over Europe’ was published in serial form in the Evening Telegraph and Freeman’s Journal newspapers in 1888-9. In addition to tracing the footprints of early Christian Irish saints in Europe, Davis also went in search of the sites in Louvain associated with Micheál Ó Cléirigh. Citing poetry from the 1840s composed by Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Davis presented an idealised picture of the world of the Four Masters. It seems clear from the work of popular writers such as McGee and Davis that the memory of Ó Cléirigh was deliberately cultivated as an icon of Catholic Ireland. Ó Cléirigh’s Franciscan credentials and his humble status as a lay brother made him a particularly appropriate hero. As the nineteenth century came to a close, the cult of Míchéal Ó Cléirigh showed no signs of abating. Writing a survey of Irish literature first published in 1899, Douglas Hyde, an influential scholar and collector of folk literature who later became the first protestant President of Ireland, presented Ó Cléirigh and the Annals of the Four Masters in the following terms: 19

For the discontinuities, see Cunningham 2006b and Rankin 2006. In 1962 commemorative postage stamps were issued to mark the centenary of the deaths of John O’Donovan and Eugene O’Curry: Buchalter 1972, 63. 20

146


Before O’Clery ever entered the Franciscan Order he had been by profession an historian or antiquary, and now in his eager quest for ecclesiastical writings and the lives of saints, his trained eye fell upon many other documents which he could not neglect. These were the ancient books and secular annals of the nation, and the historical poems of the ancient bards. (...) There is no event of Irish history from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the seventeenth century that the first inquiry of the student will not be, ‘What do the “Four Masters” say about it?’ for the great value of the work consists in this, that we have here in condensed form the pith and substance of the old books of Ireland which were then in existence but which – as the Four Masters foresaw – have long since perished. (Hyde 1899, 574-580)

If O’Donovan had not already ensured that the Annals of the Four Masters would be regarded as a national classic, the endorsement of Douglas Hyde certainly helped confirm the status of the work. As the twentieth century progessed, the Franciscan order, too, embraced Ó Cléirigh as a potent symbol of Catholic Ireland (Cunningham 2007). In the Irish Free State after 1922, as in the nineteenth-century ‘province’ of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the study of history both national and local was important, not least because recalling the story of Ireland seemed a more achievable objective than reviving the national language. While an ‘800 years of oppression’ school of nationalist history also came to the fore and informed contemporary politics, for those who looked to the ancient past for affirmation of the value of Irishness, the pages of the Annals of the Four Masters continued to provide inspiration. The annals were valued for the affirmation they provided regarding the antiquity of the kingdom of Ireland, the strength of the Irish Christian heritage, and the tradition of the Irish language through the medium of which those various elements of the Irish past had been preserved for posterity. The Annals were not easily read as narrative history, but yet it was recognised that something of the historical essence of Irishness was captured in their pages. In the fledgling Irish state of the early twentieth century, there was a strong growth in interest also in folklore and in local history as a way into a different, more balanced view of the Irish past (cf. O’Leary 2004). The capacity of the Annals of the Four Masters, in the form in which they were presented to readers in the mid-nineteenth-century edition, to connect local places and communities into the national story, through the minutiae of John O’Donovan’s topographical information, was perhaps their most important characteristic. O’Donovan’s achievement was to


147

take a text that had been almost vanished without trace and make it accessible to a wide public, whether in the full dual language edition that adorned scholarly libraries or through the stories from the annals that he and others popularised in penny magazines. The enhanced product that was O’Donovan’s nineteenth-century edition of the Annals, together with the Catholic credentials of the original annalists, and the romance of a rescue mission, together created a foundational text for an emerging republic out of the royalist ‘Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland’.

References Buchalter, M. Don, ed. 1972. Hibernian specialised catalogue of the postage stamps of Ireland, 1922-1972. Dublin: Hibernian Stamp Co. Byrne, F.J. and F.X. Martin, eds). 1973. The Scholar Revolutionary: Eoin MacNeill, 1867-1945, and the Making of the New Ireland. Shannon, Irish University Press. Campbell, Matthew. 2006. Poetry in English, 1830-1890: From Catholic Emancipation to the Fall of Parnell’, in The Cambridge History of Irish Literature, ed. Margaret Kelleher and Philip O’Leary, 1: 500-543. Cambridge:, Cambridge University Press. Cunningham, Bernadette. 1991. The Culture and Ideology of Irish Franciscan Historians at Louvain, 1607-1650. In Ideology and the historians, ed. Ciarán Brady, 11-30, 223-227. Dublin, Lilliput. Cunningham, Bernadette. 2005. The Making of the Annals of the Four Masters. PhD thesis, University College Dublin. Cunningham, Bernadette. 2006a. ‘An Honour to the Nation’: Publishing John O’Donovan’s Edition of the Annals of the Four Masters, 1848-1856. In Print Culture and Intellectual Life in Ireland, 1660-1941, ed. M. Fanning and R. Gillespie, 116-142. Dublin, Woodfield. Cunningham, Bernadette. 2006b. Historical Writing, 1660-1750. In The Oxford History of the Irish Book III: the Irish book in English, 1550-1800, ed. Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield, 264-281. Oxford: Clarendon. Cunningham, Bernadette. 2007. Remembering Mícheál Ó Cléirigh. In Writing Irish History: The Four Masters and their World, ed. E. Bhreathnach & B. Cunningham, 76-83. Dublin: Wordwell. Denman, Peter. 1990. Samuel Ferguson: Thee Literary Achievement. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe. Ferguson, Samuel. 1848. The Annals of the Four Masters. Dublin University Magazine, 31.. [Ferguson, Samuel]. 1868. Lord Romilly’s Irish publications. Quarterly Review 124: 423-45.

148


FitzPatrick, Elizabeth. 1988. The Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy: A Brief Introduction. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. Foster, R.F. 1993. Paddy and Mr Punch: Connections in Irish and English History. London: Allen Lane. Gillespie, Raymond. 2006. Printing History: Editing and Publishing Historical Documents in Nineteenth-century Ireland. In Print Culture and Intellectual Life in Ireland, 1660-1941, ed. M. Fanning and R. Gillespie, 74-94. Dublin: Woodfield. Green, Alice Stopford. 1912. The Old Irish World. Dublin: M.H. Gill. Hyde, Douglas. 1899. A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present Day. London. Joyce, P.W. 1903. A Social History of Ancient Ireland. 2 vols.; London: Longmans, Green. Kinane, Vincent. 1994. A History of the Dublin University Press, 1734-1976. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. Leerssen, Joep. 1996. Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary Representation of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century. Cork: Cork University Press. Leerssen, Joep. 2002. Hidden Ireland, Public Sphere. Galway, Arlen House. Maume, Patrick. 2004. Eoin Mac Neill. In Oxford DNB. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McGowan, K. Megan. 2004. The Four Masters and the Governance of Ireland in the Middle Ages. Journal of Celtic Studies 4: 1-41. McGuinne, Dermot. 1992. Irish Type Design: A History of Printing Types in the Irish Character. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Mac Neill, Eoin. 1921. Celtic Ireland. Dublin: Martin Lester. Mitchell, G.F. 1985. Antiquities. In The Royal Irish Academy: A Bicentennial History, 1785-1985, ed. T. Ó Raifeartaigh, 93-163. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. Murray, Damien. 2000. Romanticism, Nationalism and Irish Antiquarian Societies, 1840-80. Maynooth: Department of Old and Middle Irish, NUI Maynooth. O’Conor, C., ed.. 1826. Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores, Tom III: Annales IV Magistrorum. Buckingham. O’Donovan, John, ed.. 1848-51 Annála Ríoghachta Éireann. Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, by the Four Masters, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1616, Edited from MSS. in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy and of Trinity College Dublin, with a Translation and Copious Notes. 7 vols.; Dublin. O’Leary, Philip. 2004. Gaelic Prose in the Irish Free State. Dublin: UCD Press. O’Lochlainn, Colm. 1940. John O’Donovan and the Annals. Irish Book Lover, 27. Ó Muraíle, Nollaig. 1987. The Autograph Manuscripts of the Annals of the Four Masters. Celtica 19: 75-95. Ó Muraíle, Nollaig. 1997. Seán Ó Donnabháin: ‘An cúigiú Máistir’. Léachtaí Cholm Cille. 27: 11-82.


149

Todd, J.H. and W. Reeves, eds. 1864. The Martyrology of Donegal: A Calendar of the Saints of Ireland: Féilire na naomh nErennach. Dublin. Petrie, George. 1831. Remarks on the History and Authenticity of the Annals of the Four Masters. Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy 16: 381-393. Rankin, Deana. 2006. Historical writing, 1750-1800. In The Oxford history of the Irish book III: the Irish book in English, 1550-1800, ed. Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield, 282-300. Oxford: Clarendon.


AFTER THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE: REASSEMBLING HISTORY João Dionísio Abstract This essay examines the connection between nation-building and editorial activity in Portugal towards the end of the eighteenth century. It focuses on the hypothesis that the Lisbon 1755 earthquake (i) fuelled the will to publish unknown preserved documents which, should another earthquake occur, could be utterly destroyed and thereby (ii) speeded up the development of palaeography and diplomatics as core disciplines in the preservation of textual information. The article focuses on José Correia da Serra, who between 1790 and 1793 directed the Royal Academy of Sciences’ edition of a Collecção de Livros Ineditos da Historia Portugueza. Special attention is given to the criteria behind the selection of the texts which were edited in the Collecção, the rationale of this edition, and its reception. Taken together, these different aspects of Correia da Serra’s work suggest that already in his time and in the years to come nation building was carried out regardless of scholarly editing. In an issue of the American newspaper Baltimore Patriot dated 5 February 1818, an article bearing the title ‘Something new in diplomacy!’ vigorously criticizes Abbe José Correia da Serra, at that time Portuguese ambassador to the United States. The beginning of the article presents him cumulatively in the following series of epithets: ‘that philosopher, that modern Socrates, the distinguished preceptor of Robert Walsh Jr, to wit, (…) the Jesuit, the mock and scientific representative of that pious and humane king John of Portugal’(Bourdon 1975, 360). By then, the characterisation of Correia da Serra as ‘that modern Socrates’ was already a

152

João Dionísio

conventional way of portraying him. On 12 March 1818, in a letter Robert Walsh Jr. sent to Francis Walker Gilmer, he called Correia da Serra ‘our Socrates’, maybe referring half-humorously to the dedication of the 1817 edition of Henry Marie Brackenridge’s Views of Louisiana, a set of narratives of the author’s journey up the Missouri River (Davis 1955, 120). In the dedication one reads: the profound maxims, upon every subject, which like the disciples of Socrates, we treasure up from your lips, entitle us to claim you as one of the fathers of the nation.(Davis 1955, 123)

The purpose of this essay is to see to what extent we are allowed to view Correia da Serra not only as a father of the United States, but also more modestly as a begetter of Portugal due to his editorial activity. In order to do this I will refer back to the second half of the eighteenth century. Having been raised in Italy, where he took orders, Correia da Serra belongs to a group of people generally known as estrangeirados, ‘Europeanized intellectuals’ who focused on foreign European culture through which they fought clericalism, aristotelianism and superstition in Portuguese education and culture (Simões et al. 2004, 2006). They are traditionally viewed as the highest representatives of the Enlightenment period in Portugal because of the core role they played in the 1770s reform of education promoted by the Marquis of Pombal or in the the Academy of Sciences created in 1779 by the Duke of Lafões and Correia da Serra. The international ideology in their actions characterises to some extent their writings. Between 1790 and 1793 the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon published three infolio volumes of a series generally entitled Colecção de Livros Ineditos da Historia Portugueza (collection of unpublished books of Portuguese history), the edition being directed and made by Correia da Serra. These volumes, each running to over 600 pages, were the Academy’s most expensive publications, volume 1 costing 1800 reis (Serra 1790, 627), much more than the second most expensive book issued by the Academy, which cost 800 reis (Memorias Economicas da Acad. Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, para o adiantamento da Agricultura, das Artes, e da Industria em Portugal, e suas Conquistas). Lisbon bookshops selling the Colecção were Gazeta, Borel and Bertrand, beside an unnamed shop in the university town of Coimbra. Two of these three Lisbon bookshops were the property of originally French families (Domingos 2000; Guedes 1987, 15-44; Caeiro 1980: 311; Guedes 1988: 69). Strictly Portuguese at the start, the

AFTER THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE

153

distribution of the Colecção (and of other Academy books) became broader in 1793: volume three was also to be sold in Leiden, through Johannes and Samuel Luchtmans II (actually the latter had passed away in 1780), the heirs of Samuel Luchtmans, a town and university printer in 1730 with contacts with scholars all over Europe. The Colecção was also sold in Paris by the bookseller and publisher Théophile Barrois le jeune. These three volumes should be seen against a complex backdrop, in which I highlight two aspects. Institutionally, it should be remembered that before the Royal Academy was established (and so before the series of historical texts edited by Correia da Serra was published) there had existed another institution of a similar kind, the Royal Academy of History. Founded in 1720, it was the first Academy to be created with royal support. Its ideology, involving the subordination of civil history to religious history and the predominance of an apologetic point of view towards religion and the royal dynasty, ran counter to the spirit of the Enlightenment – notwithstanding the fact that some of the works produced by its members are still useful today (e.g. Historia Genealogica da Casa Real Portuguesa, by D. António Caetano de Sousa, 1735-48; Bibliotheca Lusitana , by Diogo Barbosa Machado, 1741-59; cf. Curto 2001-2002: 35; Lopes 1971: 14-15). Although such prejudices do not manifest themselves in Correia da Serra’s collection, the new Academy did follow in the footsteps of previous projects involving a thorough or selective mapping out of Portuguese Literature and History. This needs to be kept in mind when we encounter claims to the effect that the new Academy of Sciences made a clean sweep of past institutions so as to bring the light of knowledge to Portugal (Curto 2001-2002: 28-43). It is true, all the same, that the Academy had much broader goals in mind than earlier similar institutions. According to the 1780 version of the Statutes Plan, it was the love of the nation, combined with royal support, that stimulated the foundation of the Academy, consecrated to the public glory and welfare (gloria e felicidade publica) in order to develop national instruction, the perfection of the sciences and the arts, and to increase popular productive labour (industria Popular). Secondly, to situate the beginnings of the Academy and of its editorial activity properly, we should take into consideration the intellectual effects caused by the great Lisbon earthquake, which had occurred a quarter of a century before the Academy was created, in 1755. In the words of an English merchant living in Lisbon at that time:

154

João Dionísio

When, about Ten o’Clock, without the least warning, a most dreadful Earthquake shook by very short but quick Tremblings, the Foundations from under the Superstructures, loosening every Stone from its Cement. Then, with a scarce perceptible Pause, the Motion changed, and every Building rolled and jostled like a Ship at Sea; which put in Ruins almost every House, Church, and Publick Building, with an incredible Slaughter of the Inhabitants.1

On 1 November, All Saints’ day, between 9.30 and 10 a.m., when many people were gathered in churches, an earthquake occurred, measuring 8.5 to 9.0 on the Richter scale, and went on for approximately 9 minutes. It was followed by a number of fires all over downtown Lisbon which raged for five or six days, and finally by a tsunami, a gigantic wave rare on the Atlantic coast. Of the estimated 20,000 houses then existing in Lisbon, only 3000 could be securely occupied after the quake, which mainly affected the medieval centre of the city. About 8000 people died, that is, five per cent of the city dwellers. The tower of St. George’s Castle, which hosted the documents of the Royal Archive, was destroyed. It has been pointed out that a consequence of the earthquake was a feverish desire to reconstruct and to remap the city, of which there were few descriptions and maps before it happened (Sequeira 1967, 17). The natural cataclysm may have had a similar effect in editorial terms by fuelling the will to publish those surviving documents which, should another earthquake occur, stood in danger of total destruction. The eagerness to protect historical and literary documents from natural disasters must have sped up the development of palaeography and diplomatics as core disciplines in the preservation of textual information. The Academy of Sciences took part in the process by promoting a general inventory of documents, mainly in religious archives, involving members such as Joaquim de Santo Agostinho, Santa Rosa de Viterbo and, above all, João Pedro Ribeiro.2 On the other hand, however, the 1

Jackson 2005, 147. One might here recall that the earthquake totally destroyed the building of the Bertrand bookshop, later to become one of the selling points of the Colecção, and also the Bertrand storehouse: ‘l’incendie du Tremblement de Terre du premier Novembre de 1755 en aiant consume toute l’Impression, ainsi que tout ce que nous avions de librarie (…) ce n’était gueres le tems, après la perte que nous avions fait dans ce terrible Tremblement de Terre d’un fonds aussi considerable comme celui que nous avions en livres…’ (cf. Guedes 1987, 34). 2 Ribeiro taught Diplomatics, a subject formally created in 1796 at the University of Coimbra, having obtained a post at the Royal Archive in 1801 (Gomes 2001, 44). In the preface to volume 1 of the Colecção there is the announcement of the thorough


155

earthquake must have represented an epistemological tabula rasa, something that some members of the Academy cherished as a necessary condition for the cultural and educational development of the country. After all, rebuilding the memory of the nation involved two contradicting activities: silencing some textual debris to the condition of unrecognisable ‘objects that once belonged to a building’ and exalting other textual debris to function as the axis of the reconstruction.3 The connection between the Academy’s editorial projects and a renewed historical self-awareness is not immediately conspicuous in the Statutes Plan of the Academy. In fact, the Plan presents the third Class of the Academy (Bellas Letras) as having to do with the several branches of Portuguese Literature. One will have to look at the prologue of vol. 1 of Memorias de Litteratura Portugueza, the journal of this Class, to get an explanation of the sense in which the expression ‘Portuguese Literature’ is used. ‘Portuguese Literature’, one is told there, refers to Portuguese Language and History, which are to be analyzed in all possible features and connections (Ribeiro 1872, 38-39).4 Much more than Portuguese Language, History would constitute the cherished territory cultivated by the Academy at the beginning of its existence, which is evidenced by and large by the publication of Correia da Serra’s Colecção. What were the explicit factors that stimulated Correia da Serra to edit historical texts, and what were the criteria that led him to select precisely the texts he edited? One way of answering these questions is by analysresearch in the national and foreign cartórios, to be carried out by João Pedro Ribeiro e Joaquim José Ferreira. To place this sort of initiative in the European context, see Leerssen 2006, 567. 3 I am quoting from Gumbrecht’s comment on the debris of Heidelberg’s Castle, when he assigns to the ruins a slow rhythm of change ending in a ‘possible future when the debris will no longer be recognizable as objects that once belonged to a building’ (Gumbrecht 2003, 9-10). 4 Although there are several language-related documents in the Correia da Serra Archive, it was the History branch that predominated in the Academy’s first decades. On documents about language, see, e.g., A57 (Correia da Serra archive, hosted by I. A. N. / Torre do Tombo), which comprehends very inchoative ‘Materiaes para o Glossário Portuguez’, ‘Da origem immediata da Lingoa Portugueza / Modo Fizico com qse ella formou, e cauzas / Quanto aos sós / Quanto à sintaxe / Dos períodos de variaçaõ da Lingoa Portugueza e cauzas. / Do estado actual da Lingoa Portugueza. / Das perfeições e defeitos actuaes. / Do modo de augmentar huas, e evitar os outros’, apart from some contrastive observations on Portuguese, French and Italian languages and on the orthography and pronunciation of Portuguese. There are also some notes on the usefulness of certain manuscripts (kept in Alcobaça) for the Dictionary of the Academy and for a History of the Portuguese Language.

156

João Dionísio

ing the main epigraphs in the Colecção; another is to scan the paratext that prefaces the first volume of the series. On the title page of the Colecção’s three volumes there is a significant quote from Horace’s Epistles II, ii, 115-116: ‘Obscurata diu populo, bonus eruet, atque Proferet in lucem [speciosa vocabula rerum]...’ In Fairclough’s translation: ‘Terms long lost in darkness the good poet will unearth for the people’s use and bring into the light – [picturesque terms]’. Putting himself in Horace’s shoes, Correia da Serra plans to reveal texts previously neglected, and claims that there is fruitfulness in this retrieval. The quote is doubly meaningful, as regards the Academy’s aim of public instruction and as regards the Enlightenment spirit. In contrast with Horace’s quote, the one with which the Preliminary Discourse of volume 1 starts is more general. It is taken from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura I, 927: ‘Juvat intêgros accedere fontes’. In Rouse’s translation: ‘I love to approach virgin springs [and there to drink]’. As a matter of fact, ‘virgin springs’ seem simply to duplicate Horace’s ‘terms long lost in darkness’. The short Preliminary Discourse of the Colecção (Serra 1790, VII-XI) starts out with the editor’s statement that necessity and glory impelled him to study Portuguese History. Necessity, he writes, because if one is to understand the present one must know the past; glory because actions of his ancestors affected all humankind. This last remark is an obvious allusion to the Portuguese naval discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A logical progression is thus suggested: since (1) in order to know the present, one has to know the past, and since (2) the acts of our ancestors affected humankind, (3) people from other countries should be aware of the history of Portugal. This tallies both with the international distribution of the Colecção and with Correia da Serra’s internationalist ideology. In the Preliminary Discourse’s next paragraph, the editor claims that study without certainty is vain, notably in the field of History, where one is bound to deal with remnants: The remnants that people left in monuments and the narration of contemporary people, that is all one has and if by chance [por ventura] they are absent, there is neither inventive ingeniousness [viveza de engenho] nor sharp reasoning [agudeza de raciocínio] that may overcome its absence.

Correia da Serra asserts later that these remnants, these narrations, which correspond to Horace’s ‘terms long lost in darkness’ and to Lucretius’


157

‘virgin springs’, are the basis for certainty, and that books which fail to take them into account are superfluous. The fact that these works, which he does not identify, exist in large numbers shows that Portuguese people have been obscenely uninterested in having access to source documents. His collection should thus compensate for this historical weakness and represent a vigorous back-to-basics movement – back to the textual basics, that is. This is why, as is stated in the fifth paragraph, the Academy has decided to publish such ancient books, memories and monuments of the Monarchy as were spared by Time (or rather, one should perhaps say, by Time’s more tangible representation, the earthquake). Only when this work is finished, Correia da Serra continues, will we know what Portugal was, what past actions there were relevant to history, their causes and effects.5 In the concluding paragraph, through a typical captatio benevolentiae move, he claims that only the piety towards the fatherland, the merit of the works edited and his own zeal made him endure the lack of glory and tediousness implied in editing others’ works. The corpus selected for inclusion in the first three volumes can be tabulated as follows:6

5 Correia da Serra goes on to present the main persons responsible for the first volume and a forthcoming volume in the sixth paragraph; he then gives examples of contributions towards his stated goal: a forthcoming volume with the Arabic documents of the Royal Archive, edited by Fr. Joaõ de Souza; a work by the historian Diogo do Couto, Observações sobre as principaes cauzas da decadência dos Portuguezes na Azia, escritas em forma de Dialogo, com o Titulo de Soldado Pratico, to be published by Mr. António Caetano do Amaral. 6 See the reference to extant copies of the Portuguese texts of the Colecção in Askins et al., n.d.: Rui de Pina, Crónica de D. Duarte, Texid 1052; Rui de Pina, Crónica de D. Afonso V, Texid 1149; Rui de Pina, Crónica de D. João II, Texid 1150; Rui de Pina, Crónica de D. João II, Texid 1150; Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Crónica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses, Texid 1058; Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Crónica do Conde D. Duarte de Meneses, Texid 1053; Livro Vermelho de D. Afonso V, Texid 9483; Livro Antigo das Posses da Casa da Suplicação, Texid 9442.

158

João Dionísio

vol. 1

Preface De Bello Septensi or Livro da Guerra de Ceuta, by Mateus de Pisano Crónica de D. Duarte, by Rui de Pina Crónica de D. Afonso V, by Rui de Pina

vol. 2

Crónica de D. João II, by Rui de Pina Crónica do Conde D. Pedro de Menezes, by Gomes Eanes de Zurara (but ascribed here to Rui de Pina)

vol. 3

Crónica do Conde D. Duarte de Menezes, by Gomes Eanes de Zurara Livro Vermelho de D. Afonso V Fragmentos de Legislação escritos no Livro chamado Antigo das Posses da Casa da Suplicação

If after the earthquake the reconstruction of the fragile medieval structures of downtown Lisbon gave birth to new quarters framed in straight lines, the casting of these texts suggests Correia da Serra was deliberately setting out to transmit a new idea of the Portuguese Middle Ages. The texts or groups of texts included in the Colecção belong to the late medieval period; this is remarkable in that, according to the doctrine summarised in the Preface, the remnants of the late Middle Ages would enable the reader to better understand the Golden period of Portuguese discoveries. The texts selected are either chronicles or jurisprudential documents. The noteworthy work that opens the series, although not considered a fundamental text, but simply a ‘curious monument of our History’ (Serra 1790, 3), perfectly agrees with Correia da Serra’s doctrine regarding internationalisation. It is neither written by a Portuguese author, nor written in the Portuguese language. Furthermore, in the eulogy of King Afonso V, contained in chapter 1 of Crónica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses, one learns that King Afonso V had foreign political marketing in mind when he commissioned Matteo Pisano with the Latin writing of De Bello Septensi: não soomente se comtemtou de hos fazer escrever ē nosso propio vulgar portugues, mas aymda os fez traduzir aa llymgoa llatina, porque nõ soomemte os seus naturais ouvessem conheçimemto e saber das gramdes cavalarias daquelle comde e dos outros que com elle comcorrerão, mas que


159

aymda fossem manyfestos a todo conheçimemto de toda a nobreza da cristamdade, per mestre Matheus de Pisano (…)7

How did Correia da Serra proceed editorially? With one exception,8 each edited text is preceded by a short introduction that reviews the manuscripts taken into consideration, biographical data, an identification of the author’s works, a presentation of the work and of the author’s style. Textual criticism proper plays a role in the collection of manuscripts, the comparison of readings and the annotation. As far as collecting material is concerned, the strategy followed by Correia da Serra is relatively plain: a good part of the texts were thought to be transmitted in single copies, which made the editor content himself with the codex unicus he had at hand.9 When a text reached the editor through more than one copy, he proceeded on the basis both of professional background and of location. Thus with Rui de Pina’s Crónica de D. Duarte, a manuscript of which existed in the Royal Archive, a circumstance that would automatically prove its status as a sound basis for the edition, since Rui de Pina was a royal chronicler; in Correia da Serra’s phrasing: ‘since it is kept at the Royal Archive it is useless to say anything about its authenticity’ (Serra 1790, 66). But in apparent contradiction, the following texts, Crónica de D. Afonso V and Crónica de D. João II, again royal chronicles, again by Rui de Pina, again transmitted by a manuscript kept at the Royal Archive, were edited with the help of another copy, then the property of the Benedictine monks. The other two chronicles included in the Colecção were written by Gomes Eanes de Zurara. The first, about the life of the nobleman D. Pedro de Meneses, had the text established, in a typical recentiores deteriores 7 Zurara 1997, 175-176: ‘not only did he [Afonso V] content himself by having them written in our own current Portuguese, but ordered their translation into the Latin language, so that not only their naturals had cognizance and knowledge of the great chivalric feats of that Count and of the others who took part in them with him, but also in order to make them manifest to the knowledge of the noblety of Christianity, by Master Matheus de Pisano’. 8 There is no separate introduction to Rui de Pina’s Crónica de D. João II, this being subsumed in the editor’s preface to the Crónica do Conde D. Duarte. 9 Américo da Costa Ramalho writes that the manuscript that served for Correia da Serra’s edition of De Bello Septensi, which is not necessarily a codex unicus, belonged to D. Manuel II’s library, in Vila Viçosa (Ramalho 1989-90, 214). In Geraldes Freire’s view, Ramalho is right in posing the hypothesis of the existence of other manuscripts, for, according to his observation, the copy that served for Correia’s work is not the one kept in Vila Viçosa (Freire 1989-90, 217).

160

João Dionísio

decision, by means of the most ancient of the few manuscripts known to Correia da Serra, owned by a member of the Academy of Sciences (Serra 1792: 211). As to the second one, a biography of D. Duarte de Meneses, the basis was an even rarer manuscript (for there were fewer copies extant) which was the property of another member of the Academy. Correia da Serra is aware of the shortcomings of this copy when he mentions its many lacunae, impossible to resolve without the aid of other uncorrupt copies, unknown to him. The last two groups of texts edited in the Colecção are legal writings. The first group was taken from Livro Vermelho do Senhor D. Afonso V, which was edited, in the absence of the lost original, according to an imperfect copy ordered by King John III. The second group was taken from a single manuscript, showing several flaws, of the Livro das Posses da Casa da Suplicação. In view of what this tells us concerning Correia da Serra’s policy in selecting the copies on which he based his edition, it is no surprise to see the lack of comparative moves or at the absence of explanation concerning the comparison of testimonia. Regarding Rui de Pina’s Crónica de D. Afonso V and Crónica de D. João II, one finds no trace of the variants detected in the comparison between the Royal Archive manuscript and the Benedictine copy. Besides, there is no information as to the criteria that led the editor to prefer a specific variant reading instead of another.10 Correia da Serra’s annotation has mainly to do with lacunae and emendation. He locates the passages where the corruptions are, but neither mentions their nature, nor identifies precisely what lies behind them. The relatively strong visibility given to the editorial action is due to the profile of the scribe: careful in calligraphy, far from competent in Latin. Furthermore, some observations occasionally emerge to explain the blanks and eventually to correct the text ope ingenii (Crónica de D. Duarte de Meneses, p.311; Fragmentos legais, p. 578, 598, 603, 609, 612). Correia da Serra’s faltering attitude towards emendation is witnessed by his last words in the series – not very famous but still revealing. They

10 As a matter of detail: the editor confesses that he did not have the opportunity to compare the papal bull as quoted within the edited text with its original (1793, 594595). However, he had recourse to Ordenações Afonsinas in order to detect an alleged error in another text (1793, 605).


161

appear at the end of volume 3, on p. 617 (not numbered), and accompany a list of Errata. First one reads the introductory note: Some other words of the Crónica do Conde D. Duarte could have been corrected, which we did not, both because they are written in a precious manuscript, as we wrote in Volume II of this collection [p. 211], and because we leave to the intelligent [entendido] reader its correction.

The reader might be confused by the unsystematic criterion that made the editor emend some words and leave others uncorrected. Yet the uncorrected words are then listed, for immediately after his disclaimer Correia da Serra adds: ‘And one might correct’, followed by a list of possible mistakes in the so-called precious manuscript. By now the patient reader would think that the list he is accessing is a thorough one. Yet, the list is concluded by the tranquil expression ‘And thus some others’. And this time these remaining alleged mistakes are not presented. Reception The reception of Correia da Serra’s work was generally enthusiastic. Silvestre Ribeiro, for instance, considered that volume I was preceded by an excellent introduction and that the Academy made the right choice when it commissioned Correia da Serra with the research work and selection of the texts to be included in the project (Ribeiro 1872, 293-294). According to the hyperbolic description given by the online Classic Encyclopedia, Correia da Serra’s Colecção is ‘an invaluable selection of documents, exceedingly well edited’. A curious dissonant in the generally benevolent chorus of contemporary opinion is the criticism of Father Francisco José da Serra Xavier, kept in manuscript (now in Brazil). It had scarcely any impact, for it was never published and, besides, it has been passed over in silence by the Academy’s historians. One of these, rather than dealing with the nature of the criticism, indulges in presenting the genealogy of the critic: born in the parish of São Paulo, borough of Penalva; married to Maria Luisa and moved to Lisbon, where he established himself as a grocer. The grocery was destroyed by the earthquake. He had two children. When he was about to take orders, he declared that his grandmother (on his mother’s side) was nicknamed ‘Black’ (Negra) because she was fed by a black goat. And so forth (See Carvalho 1948, 94). What strikes us most in both the appraisal and the report of the criticism is that nothing, absolutely nothing, is said about the editorial theory

162

João Dionísio

and performance of the series. Thus, Correia da Serra was right when he stated that editing did not bring glory, but it did not bring disrepute either. To bring either glory or opprobrium, it had to be noticed as such. In the obscure history of Portuguese scholarly editing prior to the nineteenth century, Correia da Serra’s project is as good as non-existent. This is not his fault, however, for in handbooks on textual criticism in Portugal nothing seems to have deserved observation in this field before 1800. In a way, Correia da Serra’s project clearly represents this nothingness, which has to do with the ‘absence of a previous definition of the fields of intervention of the editor’ (Brocardo 1997: 121). An absence that is manifested in different procedures not made explicit by our editor: abbreviation development; word separation; introduction of capital letters; modernization of punctuation; correction (although rare) through addition of words; graphic alteration with and without phonetic implications. All in all, as Teresa Brocardo says, his edition seems akin to a hand copy, that frequently swings to and fro between fidelity and innovation, clearly distant from scholarly editing.11 On another ground, the use made of the Colecção was paradoxical. Rui de Pina, the best-represented author in the series, is an idiosyncratic choice by Correia da Serra, at odds with the relative lack of importance with which this historian is credited today (but also already in the nineteenth century). In contrast, the most canonic medieval chronicler, Fernão Lopes, is ignored in these first three volumes and included only in the fourth, in which Correia da Serra had no hand. Thus, the series posits a sort of canon that was to be overtaken by later developments. The Colecção failed to meet one of the most important prerequisites of canonicity: the fact that ‘over successive generations (…) readers continue to affirm a judgement of greatness, almost as though each generation actually judged anew the quality of the work.’ (Guillory 1995, 236). Yet there are contradictions even here. For one thing, texts edited in the Colecção were read over successive generations in school anthologies and in semi-deluxe books; still, this was a form of recycling rather than 11 One should say on Correia da Serra’s behalf that the most recent edition of Crónica de D. Pedro de Meneses, a fine piece of scholarship, depends on the very same manuscript he selected, which undoubtedly gives him some credit (Brocardo 1997, 23 and 111). The manuscript is now in Coimbra, Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra, ms. 439. Description by Brocardo 1997, 28-33. For a description of Correia da Serra’s editorial work concerning Crónica de D. Pedro de Meneses, see Brocardo 1997, 117-148.


163

involve a result of judgement or appreciation. For instance, in José P. Tavares’ Selecta de Textos Arcaicos e Medievais, published in 1923, one finds Rui de Pina’s Crónica de D. Duarte and Crónica de D. Afonso, explicitly referenced to Correia da Serra’s work as the source text. The same thing happens in the prestigious anthology organized by Corrêa de Oliveira and Saavedra Machado. Again, in a series entitled ‘Treasures of Literature and History’, a volume appeared in 1977 including all of Rui de Pina’s chronicles, with the text of Crónica de D. Duarte, Crónica de D. Afonso and Crónica de D. João II corresponding literally to Correia da Serra’s text, and the introductions reproducing those of Correia da Serra (although this is only obliquely acknowledged by M. Lopes de Almeida, who introduces the book).12 This leaves us to a curious contradiction between successive reprinting and lack of judgement-based canonicity. We cannot know what would have happened to the fourth and fifth volumes of the Colecção, had Correia da Serra stayed in Portugal. But he had to leave his country with the French naturalist Broussonnet (1761-1807), who had fled France in the persecution of the Girondins. Once the Portuguese government realised that Broussonnet was hiding in the Royal Academy they intervened, and both Correia da Serra and his French colleague decided to escape (Ribeiro 1872: 38-39). Our editor moved to England, then to France and to the United States, where his intelligence and vast knowledge gave birth to his Socratic epithet. In France, Correia da Serra wrote the article ‘Sur l’état des sciences et des lettres parmi les Portugais’ (1804), maintaining in it that the most recent stage in the political and cultural evolution of Portugal, that is, the period during which he lived, was one of recovery in both the scientific and literary branches of knowledge. This, however, did not involve editorial scholarship. Later on, when in the United States he was hyperbolically labelled a father of the nation, this had nothing to do with his experience as an editor. After all, although Correia da Serra was a prestigious naturalist, and botanist in particular, deserving admiration in the growing European network of natural sciences, at the same time he was ignorant of works by J.-B. Morel, Rühnken, Bentley, Giulio Pontedera – who was

12 E.g. Tavares 1923, 211-222; Oliveira and Machado 1973, 642-46; Pina 1977, 4791033. On page XXIII of Lopes de Almeida’s introduction to the latter book he writes: ‘As to the reliability of the texts, we ask permission to declare them correct’.

164

João Dionísio

also a botanist13 – Wettstein, Bengel, as well as those by others who contributed to scholarly editing as a growing autonomous field. 14 It is true that I am not doing Correia da Serra justice by approaching his editorial work in a somewhat a-historical way; that is, ignoring what was possible for his age and what was not (Gadamer 2004: 15). Actually, the first major step in synchronising Portuguese editorial practice regarding historical texts with similar programmes in other countries would occur only several decades later with Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, a new series directed by Alexandre Herculano. Again published by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, it commenced in 1856 and went on until the end of the century, lossely modelled on the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. It was divided into three sections taken after the structure of the German series; of the five sections comprehended in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Antiquitates, Diplomata, Epistolae, Leges and Scriptores), the Portugaliae Monumenta Historica took over ‘Scriptores’, ‘Leges’ (called ‘Leges et Consuetudines’) and ‘Diplomata’ (named ‘Diplomata et Chartae’).15 It is true that in the general bilingual (Portuguese and Latin) preface, Alexandre Herculano and Mendes Leal re-use one item of Correia da Serra’s introduction by mentioning that this new series will deal with unknown documents that are bound to modify current opinion, to correct some views and to confirm others. But, immediately following, new issues appear: the desire to emulate other similar collections published in other countries (Germany, France, England, Italy and elsewhere); the decision to produce an edition in parallel versions when authentic manuscripts show important and numerous differences vis-à-vis other authentic manuscripts; the presentation of the transcription strategy against the backdrop of the procedures carried out by European editors and paleographers (Mabillon, Achery, Baluzio and Muratori are mentioned) (Herculano and Leal 1856).

13 See Gadamer 2004, 182: ‘(...) there is a close correspondence between philology and natural science in their early visions of themselves. That has two implications. On the one hand, “natural” scientific procedure is supposed to apply to one’s approach to scriptural tradition as well, and is supported by the historical method. But on the other hand, just as naturalness in the art of philology means understanding from a context, so naturalness in the investigation of nature means deciphering the “book of nature”. To this extent scientific method is based on the model of philology.’ 14 On textual scholars before Lachmann, see Timpanaro 1990. 15 A new section, ‘Inquisitiones’, was created (1888-97) after Herculano’s death.


165

Leerssen’s appealing use of the concept of network as a means of explaining romantic nationalism in Europe is helpful to pinpoint one of the main differences between Correia da Serra’s Colecção and Herculano’s series. The idea of ‘authors influencing other authors’ is shaped according to the influencing individuals. Correia da Serra, for whom editing is similar to a scribal act, belongs first and foremost to the naturalist network; Herculano, who practises editing as a scholar, belongs to the literature network (in the sense given by Leerssen 2006, 569 to the field of literature). With reference to the notion of network I would like to briefly consider two practises relating to the awareness of diversity. As to the awareness of diversity regarding the comparison between copies, the Colecção generally silences variants, while Portugaliae Monumenta Historica gives them voice. In other words, Correia da Serra tends to produce a unified, self-contained text; Herculano, when it seems fit to him, gives more than one version of the same text, thus transmitting the idea that the reader should have access to the group, otherwise obtaining a mutilated representation of textual reality. But as to another aspect of this awareness of diversity, i.e., critical reception or the comparison between the edition and its sources, there is no sharp difference between the Colecção and Portugaliae Monumenta Historica. Unlike what happens in Germany, as Thomas Bein has made clear through the examples of Lachmann’s and Pfeiffer’s editions of Walther von der Vogelweide’s Preislied (cf. his essay in this volume), there was no tradition in nineteenth-century Portugal of reviewing editions in editorial terms. Consequently there was no tradition of re-editing the same texts in a scholarly way. One may explain this situation from the geographically peripheral position of Portugal, which naturally causes it to be dominated by slow time curves,16 and one may compensatingly add that Portugal is today the only country that has chosen to celebrate its national holiday on the feastday of its foremost canonical writer, Camões (1524?-1580). I think, however, that this vivid example of the instrumentalisation of the literary heritage in nation-building does not occur as a result of scholarly editing, but rather regardless of it. To some extent, the combination of nation building and scholarly editing in Portugal is still, even as we speak, a matter of wishful thinking. 16 See Siegfried Kracauer’s theory against the uniform flow of time as used by Hans Robert Jauss’ thesis 6 (Jauss 1982, 36-39).

166

João Dionísio

References Askins, Arthur L-F., Harvey L. Sharrer, Aida Fernanda Dias, and Martha E. Schaffer. BITAGAP (Bibliografia de Textos Antigos Galegos e Portugueses), http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Philobiblon/phhmbp.html Bourdon, Léon. 1975. José Corrêa da Serra. Ambassadeur du Royaume-Uni de Portugal et Brésil a Washington 1816-1820. Paris: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian – Centro Cultural Português. Brocardo, Maria Teresa. 1997. Introdução. In Crónica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses, ed. Gomes Eanes de Zurara. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian – JNICT. Caeiro, Francisco da Gama. 1980. Livros e livreiros franceses em Lisboa, nos fins de Setecentos e no primeiro quartel do séc. XIX, separatim of Anais 2nd ser. 26.2 (Lisboa: Academia Portuguesa da História): 301-27. Carvalho, Augusto da Silva. 1948. O abade Correia da Serra, Lisboa: Academia das Ciências (Memórias, classe de Ciências, VI). Classic Encyclopedia www.1911encyclopedia.org/Jose_Francisco_Correia_Da_Serra Curto, Diogo Ramada. 2001-2002. A história do livro em Portugal: uma agenda em aberto. Leituras. Revista da Biblioteca Nacional 9-10: 13-61. Davis, Richard Beale. 1955. The Abbé Correa in America, 1812-1820. The contributions of the diplomat and natural philosopher to the foundations of our national life. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society. Domingos, Manuela D. 2000. Livreiros de Setecentos. Lisboa: Biblioteca Nacional. Freire, José Geraldes. 1989-1990. Primeiras referências latinas à conquista de Ceuta. Humanitas, 41-42: 216-19. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Truth and method. rev. trl. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall; London: Continuum. Gomes, Saul António. 2001. Anotações de diplomática eclesiástica portuguesa. Estudos de Diplomática Portuguesa, 41-72. Lisboa: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra – Edições Colibri. Guedes, Fernando. 1987. O livro e a leitura em Portugal. Subsídios para a sua história. Séculos XVIII-XIX. Lisboa – S. Paulo: Verbo. Guedes, Fernando. 1998. Os livreiros franceses em Portugal no séc. XVIII. Lisboa: Academia Portuguesa da História. Guillory, John. 1995. Canon. In Critical Terms for Literary Study, eds. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, 233-249. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. 2003. The powers of philology. Dynamics of Textual Scholarship. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Herculano, A., and J. da S. Mendes Leal. 1856. [Advertências]. In Portugaliae Monumenta Historica. A saeculo octavo post Christum usque ad quintumdecimum, iussu Academiae Scientiarum Olisiponsensis edita, Scriptores volumen I, V-XXIII. Olisipone: Typis Academicis. Horace. 1966 [1926]. Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica. trl. H. Rushton Fairclough; London – Cambridge, MA: Heinemann & Harvard University Press.


167

Jackson, K. David. 2005. As narrativas do desastre: a estrutura do relato e o Terramoto de 1755. In O grande terramoto de Lisboa. Ficar diferente, eds. Helena Carvalhão Buescu and Gonçalo Cordeiro, 135-159. Lisboa: Gradiva – Fundação Cidade de Lisboa Jauss, Hans Robert. 1982. Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory. In Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 3-45. trl. Timothy Bahti; Brighton: Harvester. Leerssen, Joep. 2006. Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture. Nations and Nationalism 12: 559-578. Lopes, Óscar. 1971. Academias. Dicionário de História de Portugal. ed. Joel Serrão; Lisboa: Iniciativas Editoriais. Lucretius. 1975 [1924]. De Rerum Natura. trl. W. H. D. Rouse, new ed. Martin Ferguson Smith. London – Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann & Harvard University Press. Maxwell, Kenneth. 2005. O Terramoto de 1755 e a recuperação urbana sob a influência do Marquês de Pombal. In O grande terramoto de Lisboa. Ficar diferente, eds. Helena Carvalhão Buescu and Gonçalo Cordeiro, 209-237. Lisboa: Gradiva – Fundação Cidade de Lisboa. Oliveira, Carlos Sousa. 2005. Descrição do terramoto de 1755, sua extensão, causas e efeitos. O sismo. O tsunami. O incêndio. In 1755. O grande terramoto de Lisboa, 1 (Descrições): 23-86. Lisboa: Público. Oliveira, Corrêa de, and Saavedra Machado. 1973. Textos Portugueses Medievais. Coimbra: Coimbra Editora. Pina, Rui de. 1977. Crónicas. ed. M. Lopes de Almeida; Porto: Lello & Irmão. Ramalho, Américo da Costa. 1989-1990. O manuscrito do De Bello Septensi. Humanitas 41-42: 214. Ribeiro, José Silvestre. 1872. Historia dos Estabelecimentos Scientificos Litterarios e Artísticos de Portugal nos successivos reinados da monarchia, II. Lisboa. Sequeira, Gustavo de Matos. 1967. Depois do Terramoto: Subsídios para a História dos Bairros Ocidentais de Lisboa, 1. Lisboa, Academia das Ciências. Serra, José Correia da, ed. 1790-93. Collecçaõ de Livros Ineditos da Historia Portugueza. 3 vols.; Lisboa. Simões, Ana, Ana Carneiro, and Maria Paula Diogo. 2004. Building the Republic of Letters. The Scientific Travels of Portuguese Naturalist Correia da Serra (1751-1823). Revue de la Maison Française 1: 33-50. Simões, Ana, Ana Carneiro, and Maria Paula Diogo. 2006. Cidadão do Mundo: Uma biografia científica do Abade Correia da Serra. Porto: Porto Editora. Tavares, José P. 1923. Selecta de Textos Arcaicos e Medievais (VI e VII Classes dos Liceus). Porto: Livraria Chardron. Timpanaro, Sebastiano. 1990. La genesi del metodo del Lachmann. Padova: Liviana Editrice. Zurara, Gomes Eanes de. 1997. Crónica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses, ed. Maria Teresa Brocardo. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian – JNICT.


MEDIEVAL HERITAGE IN THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN CATALAN LITERATURE, 1780-1841 Magí Sunyer Abstract In the period 1780-1840 there were very few reimpressions of medieval Catalan texts and there was considerable confusion about the value of the literary past. However, at the end of the eighteenth century, a modern process of publishing medieval documentation was instigated, largely thanks to Antoni de Capmany, that was to have an extraordinary impact on the activity of men of letters, historians and scholars in the following century. The introduction of Romanticism by the review El Europeo (1823-24) prompted an interest in medieval Catalan history in all sorts of literary and historical genres. In the 1830s philological projects were undertaken such as the dictionary of writers by Josep Torres Amat and some collections of texts by ancient writers, and the first steps were taken towards the accurate editing of medieval texts. By the end of this period, Joaquim Rubió i Ors, imbued with this spirit, was advocating the use of the Catalan language for cultured literature. Joaquim Rubió i Ors decided to bring the poetical campaign that had been printed in the Diario de Barcelona in 1839 and 1840 to its culmination by publishing Lo Gayter del Llobregat (‘The Piper of the Llobregat’). In explaining his decision, he repeatedly stated, modestly, that he did not deserve to be considered a troubadour, merely a piper; and among other patriotic arguments he wrote: seria molt convenient traure ses glòries passades a la memòria del poble que treballa i s’afanya per sa glòria venidera, i que alguns records de lo que fórem podrien contribuir no poc a lo que tal vegada havem de ser.

170

Magí Sunyer

To transmit these memories, ha conegut que no devia fer sinó obrir lo llibre de nostra història en ses pàginas més brillants i poètiques; i sentar-se en les verdoses i venerables ruïnes de l’antic monument que presencià los heroics fets que en aquella se descriuen.

He then specified the historical and literary glories to which he referred and demanded that they be retrieved in Catalan and not in Spanish: ¿No tenim una co¹lecció de cròniques tan abundant i variada com la que puga posseir qualsevol altre poble, i una galeria immensa de trobadors, pares de la poesia vulgar moderna?.1

The author of this key text in twentieth-century Catalan literary history, Rubió i Ors, was a member of the group of intellectuals around the scholarly authority of Manuel Milà i Fontanals; more than his friends, he had confidence in the potential of the Catalan language. In this same prologue, he somewhat prematurely stated that he believed his poetry campaign to have been a failure because of its lack of followers. However, it did inspire younger writers such as Antoni de Bofarull and Marian Aguiló to take up the pen, albeit for the moment only to write poetry. Subsequently they played decisive roles in the re-publication and popularisation of medieval literary and historical Catalan texts. His concern for language was by no means fortuitous. The Catalan Countries were still largely monolingual2 but, after centuries of extremely limited use of Catalan as a means of cultured expression, the first wave of liberal modernity had the effect of reducing Catalan to the category of a patois and of restricting its ambit to colloquial situations. At the beginning of the period under consideration here, a modern intellectual who played a fundamental role in the evaluation of the medieval past, Antoni de Cap1 Joaquim Rubió i Ors, prologue to Lo gaiter del Llobregat, in Miracle 1960, 278-80: ‘[the piper believes] that past glories should be transmitted to the memory of the people who work and strive for future glories, and that the reminiscence of what we once were may contribute to no small extent to what perhaps we should be.’ ‘one need do no more than open our history book at its most brilliant pages; and sit among the green and venerable ruins of the ancient monument that witnessed the heroic deeds described therein.’ ‘Do we not have as abundant and varied a collection of chronicles as any other people, and an immense gallery of troubadours, fathers to modern vulgar poetry?’ 2 Anguera 1997 provides considerable data about the generalized, practically exclusive, use of Catalan as the colloquial language.

MEDIEVAL HERITAGE IN MODERN CATALAN LITERATURE

171

many, exhumed a speech by king Martin the Humane and decided to translate it into Spanish. To justify this decision, he wrote a death certificate of the Catalan language, stating that it could no longer be used for cultural functions. Therefore, recognising medieval texts as ‘classics’ of Catalan literature and history had a twofold meaning. First, these texts established the notion that Catalonia had a tradition of its own; second, this tradition showed that the Catalan language could be used in all registers; that is to say, like metropolitan languages, with (unlike Catalan) an active state apparatus behind them for support and propagation. 1780-1833 It should not be forgotten that Neoclassicism had little impact on the part of the Catalan language domain subjugated by the Spanish crown at the beginning of the eighteenth century, after the defeat in the War of Succession. Northern Catalonia, under French government, and Minorca, a British colony throughout much of the century, were unaffected; it was in these territories that the Greek and Latin classics were reflected in tragedies like Joan Ramis’s Lucrècia, set in Roman antiquity, and the 1808 translation of Virgil’s Bucolics by Antoni Febrer i Cardona. However, as Joan Fuster (1976, 150-1) points out with regard to Valencia, we must take into account the fascination that some eighteenth-century intellectuals felt for medieval authors. There, several works from ancient Catalan literature were salvaged by Gregori Maians; also, Jaume Roig’s Espill (Mirror) was published by Carles Ros in 1735, and a project was conceived to publish a series of classics (not exclusively Valencian) by Lluís Galiana in 1763. Throughout the eighteenth century, it was quite common for language apologias (for instance, those by Agustí Eura and by Josep Ullastre) to refer to better times when both country and language had full expression (cf. Feliu et al. 1992). Josep Fontana points out that 1780 was the year in which the Board of Trade and two historians, Jaume Caresmar and Antoni de Capmany, established an economic, historic and philological programme that presented Catalonia’s specific needs to the State. Their approach focused on Catalan history and literature as manifestations of a separate individuality, which was also expressed in economic issues. The programme also involved renouncing the Catalan language:

172

Magí Sunyer

Allò que els interessava no era la literatura catalana per ella mateixa, sinó com a testimoni d’una cultura pròpia, la sola existència de la qual donava suport a la imatge diferenciada de Catalunya que pretenien exposar.3

Integral parts of the programme were Memorias históricas sobre la marina, comercio y artes de la antigua ciudad de Barcelona, published in 1779 by Antoni de Capmany,4 and the plan to publish a dictionary of Catalan writers, initiated by Jaume Caresmar and completed by Fèlix Torres Amat decades later. Jordi Rubió i Balaguer (1986, 3: 82) points out that Jaume Caresmar and his followers are fundamental to the process that was to lead from the antiquarian study of history to archival and diplomatic research, because it was based on a movement that was active throughout Europe. Jordi Rubió himself stressed the importance of these initiatives: Suggestions llançades per primer cop pels historiadors donaren estructura a ideologies i programes de restauració que tingueren després vigència en la Renaixença, la qual s’ha d’estudiar en funció del segle XVIII.5

Even so, let me stress once again that this movement rejected what was to become the distinguishing feature par excellence of the Catalans: their language. The effect of these Enlightenment activities was twofold. On the one hand, they drew attention to Catalan history and encouraged ancient documents of historical and literary interest to be exhumed; on the other, with the prestige of modernity, they pushed culturally ambitious discourse towards the use of Spanish. The later process that we know as Renaixença, which depends precisely on pride in former glories, played a vital role in the progress of scholarly investigation while striving to recuperate Catalan as a language appropriate for all uses. This process was 3

Fontana 1993, 120-1: ‘What they were interested in was not Catalan literature in itself, but Catalan literature as proof of a culture, the mere existence of which gave support to the image of a distinct Catalonia that they were trying to present.’ 4 Fontana 1993, 119, considers this to be the greatest work of eighteenth-century Catalan culture. Previously, Capmany had published Antiguos tratados de paces y alianzas entre algunos reyes de Aragon y diferentes principes infieles de Asia y Africa, desde el siglo XII al XV; his penchant for Spanish (over against Catalan) literature is manifested in his Teatro histórico crítico de la elocuencia española, an anthology of Spanish literature from the early romances to the present, published in 1786. 5 Rubió 1986, 83: ‘Suggestions first made by historians gave structure to ideologies and restoration programmes that were subsequently to be valid during the Renaixença, which has to be studied in the context of the eighteenth century.’


173

eventually to merge with political Catalanism. As Jordi Rubió puts it: ‘Catalunya tanmateix va saber llegir i entendre la lliçó i¹luminadora del seu passat que es desprenia dels documents publicats en les Memorias’.6 If we focus on the publication of medieval documents, we must again mention, first and foremost, Antoni de Capmany. In 1879 he published, as part of the aforementioned Memorias, a ‘diplomatic collection of the instruments that justify the present memoirs’ presenting 488 documents – not, to be sure, literary texts, but privileges, letters, regulations, decrees, treaties, sentences, concessions, etc. These texts testified to the brilliance of Catalonia’s medieval past and at the same time (although this was not the editor’s intention) to the splendour of the Catalan language. Two years later Capmany published a document that was fundamental in raising the awareness of the importance of medieval Catalonia: the ‘Book of the Consulate of the Sea or Code of maritime customs in Barcelona’, generally known as the ‘Book of the Consulate’. This medieval Catalan code of maritime customs was to prove highly influential in the following century. By the end of the eighteenth century various re-editions of Catalan classics had appeared, such as Jaume Febrer’s Trobes, which were then thought to be medieval. They were first published in the periodical Diario de Valencia between 1791 and 1795, and then in book form in 1796. There were also some learned controversies about the classics, which required knowledge and study,7 and MS catalogues or projects for cataloguing Catalan writers.8 But the fact remains that one hundred years later, in 1893, Alfred Morel Fatio still deplored the difficultity of writing a true history of Catalan letters since the texts were unknown or unavailable (Aramon i Serra 1997, 435). If this was the situation at the end of the nineteenth century (when considerable trouble had been taken to make up for the shortcomings), things were even worse in the century’s 6 Ibid., 95: ‘Catalonia, however, knew how to read and understand the Enlightenment lesson of her past revealed in the documents published in the Memoirs. 7 One of these was between Josep Villarroya (Coleccion de cartas histórico-críticas en que se convence que el Rey D. Jayme I de Aragon no fue el verdadero autor de la Crónica ó comentarios que corren a su nombre, 1800) and a rejoinder ‘Sobre la Crónica del Rey Don Jayme I de Aragon’ (published in Variedades de Ciencias, Literatura y Artes). Cf. Marcet & Solà 1998. 8 It was at this time that the dictionaries by Just Pastor Fuster and Fèlix Torres Amat were planned; in June 1795 Antoni Elies i Robert read to the Barcelona Royal Academy of Arts on a ‘Catálogo de las obras que se han escrito en lengua catalana desde el reynado de Dn. Jayme el Conquistador’; cf. Marcet & Solà 1998.

174

Magí Sunyer

early decades. Of course, there were the constant re-editions of Anselm Turmeda’s Llibre de bons amonestaments (‘The book of good admonitions’), but its usage was restricted to primary schools as an entry-level text book, and had no connection with any rediscovery or revival of the medieval classics. Between 1780-1833, and with the few exceptions I have mentioned, readers interested in the medieval classics had to go to libraries that preserved old editions and manuscripts, or to bookshops specialising in rarities.9 Or they had to make do with a few short anthologies, which offered little more than samples. The catalogue of works written in Catalan, published as an appendix to the second edition of Josep Pau Ballot’s Gramàtica i apologia de la llengua catalana (‘Grammar and apologia of the Catalan language’), is extremely short and reproduces very few fragments. In 1824, Jaubert de Paçà’s Recherches sur la langue catalane (published in Paris) contained a selection of texts that, according to Lola Badia, fa la impressió que s’alimenta fonamentalment de la tradició que treballosament ha sobreviscut al llarg de l’anomenada Decadència; en seria una prova el paper destacadíssim que assigna a Francesc Vicenç Garcia.10

A prevailing lack of historical knowledge is evinced in such symptomatic slips as the belief that Ausiàs Marc predated Petrarch; also, the Biblioteca valenciana (‘Valencian Library’, the dictionary of authors compiled by Just Pastor Fuster mentioned in note 9, and published in two volumes in 1827 and 1830) opens with Vicent Ximeno, an eighteenth-century author. The choice of texts or fragments is haphazard: the volumes contain entire compositions from minor writers but, despite all the praise lavished on him, only two of Ausiàs Marc’s verses. The mythification of the medieval past had literary repercussions; witness some fragments of an unfinished but well-known poem by Antoni Puigblanch, usually known as Les comunitats de Castella (‘The communities of Castile’). Puigblanch lived in exile in London during the tyrannical periods when Fernando VII reigned (1814-20, 1823-33); his 9 Simbor 1980, 84-85 reproduces an advertisement by the bookseller Just Pastor Fuster (who was subsequently to publish a dictionary of Valencian authors) in the Diario de Valencia offering ‘por raros’ Jaume Roig’s Llibre de les dones, and the poems later known as the Cançoner Satíric Valencià (‘The satirical Valencian anthology’). 10 Badia 1994, 10: ‘is apparently based on the tradition that survived (...) throughout the so-called Decadence; proof of this is the leading role given to Francesc Vicenç Garcia’.


175

poem is a radical diatribe against the monarch and an exaltation of liberty. He develops the theme of the excellence of the language, and also vindicates it. He refers to Catalan (or, as it was often called at the time, ‘Limousin’) in the following terms: Llenguatge és tal, aquest, que del mateix usaren, del francès Carlo Magno los cortesans complots, i els destres catalans amb ell se gloriaren que del Jònic solcant, i de l’Egeu, los flots, duenyos foren d’Atenes [...] En ell també escrigueren los gaios trobadors amb noble pensament i amb més noble porfia.11

Regardless of obvious historical and philological errors (e.g. the mistaken assumption that Charlemagne spoke Catalan, or the prevalent conflation between Catalan and Limousin) the poem interestingly invokes, precisely, medieval and historicist claims to prestige: the expedition to Greece and the troubadours. The first of these is the most constant and uninterrupted mythical trope used by Catalans into the nineteenth century. We should not be surprised that Puigblanch resorts to it, particularly if we remember that both Antoni de Capmany in his ‘Memoirs’ and the Book of the Consulate of the Sea had revived interested in the subject. The troubadour reference is of a different nature. Between 1816 and 1821, François Raynouard had published in Paris the six volumes of the Choix des poésies originales des troubadours.12 As a philologist, Puigblanch may have been familiar with the work. In any case, the element of troubadourism was to become a decisive factor in romantic Catalan medievalism and influenced Catalan literature throughout the nineteenth century, and even (with some ups and downs) right up to the present day.13 These elements make Puigblanch’s poetry more significant that it might seem for an unfinished poem that remained unpublished for years. In fact, one party among the Renaixença revivalists would later claim that Puigblanch’s poem, rather than Aribau’s ‘La Pàtria’, was the movement’s 11 Quoted from Molas 1968, 108-9: ‘Such a noble language, spoken by/ Charlemagne’s conspiring courtiers/ And the able Catalans / Who sailed the Ionian and Aegean Seas / To become the masters of Athens. [...] It was also the language spoken by the troubadours / To show noble thoughts and even nobler tenacity.’ 12 Cf. also Philippe Martel’s contribution to the present volume. 13 See Rubió 1986, 407-17. For Catalan-Occitanian political links after this period, see Martel 1992.

176

Magí Sunyer

true precursor. Still, the appearance of ‘La Pàtria’ in the newspaper El Vapor, 1833, marks a caesura. 1833-1841: ‘Taking Down From the Sacred Wall the Forefathers’ Lyre’ Romanticism entered Catalonia by means of the journal El Europeo (‘The European’, 1823-24), which was directed by Bonaventura Carles Aribau and Ramon López Soler, and really took off after 1833, the year of the death of Fernando VII and the return of the anti-absolutist exiles. Aribau and López Soler showed no interest in promoting medieval Catalan classics; significantly, the Library of Spanish Authors which Aribau directed from 1846 did not publish a single Catalan author either in the original or in translation. The literary and philological orientation of these authors was Spanish. López Soler made just one exception to this (he wrote a single verse in Catalan); but among Aribau’s several minor texts, one that was to prove to be fundamental to the history of Catalan letters, ‘La Pàtria’. It has been said that some passages from Aribau’s poem are indebted to Puigblanch. However, it was of much greater literary quality and managed to synthesize the main features of what would become dominant in the re-emergence of Catalan literature. In his praise of the language, which he also calls ‘Limousin’, the link with childhood and sentiment plays a major role; but Aribau also refers to past medieval glory, not as explicitly as Puigblanch, but leaving no room for doubt: Plau-me encara parlar la llengua d’aquells savis, que ompliren l’univers de llurs costums e lleis, la llengua d’aquells forts que acataren los reis, defengueren llurs drets, venjaren llurs agravis.14

He mentions warriors and wise men (i.e., writers), using, in short, the same characterization as Puigblanch, without making it clear to which heroic deed or which wise men he is referring. Even so, he relates the language to ‘the song of the troubadour’, and a little later appear the lines that I quote by way of motto to this section of my article: ‘ni cull del mur sagrat la lira dels seus avis’. Thus, like Puigblanch, Aribau uses the well-known references to seafaring expansion and the troubadours. 14 Molas1974, 19-20: ‘It still pleases me to speak the language of those wise men, / who filled the universe with their customs and laws, / the language of the strong who obeyed the kings, / defended their rights and avenged their wrongs.’


177

Though Aribau was not interested in the advancement of Catalan as a cultural vehicle, his poetry was to mark Catalan cultural history like no other. Manuel Jorba has stated that the importance of Romanticism lies in the publishing of medieval texts: Gràcies principalment a l’ambició romàntica de presentar la individualitat nacional en la fase de la seva presa de consciència o en la seva culminació, a les aportacions del comparatisme i, en alguns casos, a procediments positivistes, fou possible el descobriment i progressiva assumpció dels propis clàssics i el projecte d’edició i l’estudi del fons literari, especialment del popular i el medieval.15

In 1835, a scheme was launched to publish in installments a ‘Treasury of the Catalan Language’, running to a total of 2560 pages and including editions of Catalan classics (Anguera 2000, 134n). In 1836 two works were published that were to have an important effect on nineteenthcentury historiography and literature. The first was Los condes de Barcelona vindicados (‘The revenge of the Counts of Barcelona’) by Pròsper de Bofarull, the first modern history of medieval Catalonia based on the new archiving research approach. The second was Memorias para ayudar a formar un diccionario crítico de los escritores catalanes y dar alguna idea de la antigua y moderna literatura de Cataluña (‘Notes to help draw up a critical dictionary of Catalan writers and give some idea of the ancient and modern literature of Catalonia’), by Fèlix Torres i Amat. In 1847, Pròsper de Bofarull was to begin publishing his Colección de documentos inéditos del Archivo General de la Corona de Aragón (‘Collection of unpublished documents from the General Archive of the Aragon Crown’). These documents were essential to understanding Catalan history and contained some literary texts. They had a decisive influence on the editor’s nephew Antoni de Bofarull, a historian, man of letters and main proponent of the historicist Renaixença. Torres i Amat’s Memorias, the realization of a project that had begun at the end of the previous century, provided a basis for understanding Catalan literature. 15

Manuel Jorba, ‘La Renaixença’, in Molas 1986, 7: 17: ‘Largely owing to the romantic ambition of presenting national individuality in its awareness-raising stage or in its culmination, to the contributions of comparative linguistics and, in some cases, to positivist procedures, did it become possible to discover and appropriate our own classics and the project of publishing and studying our literary resources, particularly the popular and medieval ones.’

178

Magí Sunyer

Sometime between Aribau’s generation and the next, medievalism became a veritable romantic fever. Ramon López Soler (Aribau’s colleague in the Philosophical Society and in El Europeo, and the man responsible for publishing ‘La Pàtria’ in El Vapor) had already used medieval Catalonia as the setting set much of the action of the first romantic historical novel in Spanish, El caballero del cisne (‘The Knight of the Swan’, 1830). But the novelist who is generally considered to have tipped the Walter Scott-type historical novel towards Catalan themes, even though he wrote in Spanish, was Joan Cortada with La heredera de Sangumí (‘The heiress of Sangumí’, 1835), followed by El rapto de doña Almodis (‘The abduction of Lady Almodis’, 1836), Lorenzo (1837), El bastardo de Entenza (‘The bastard from Entenza’, 1838) and El templario y la vilana (‘The Templar and the peasant woman’, 1840). It will suffice here to draw attention, in passing, to the troubadourism of Lorenzo and to the tradition of historical prose which would lead from Cortada to Antoni de Bofarull and Víctor Balaguer. Those authors would exploit crucial moments in Catalan history, first medieval and then from other periods. This process culminated in 1862 when Antoni de Bofarull published the first modern novel in Catalan, L’orfeneta de Menargues o Catalunya agonitzant (‘The orphan girl from Menergues or the death throes of Catalonia’), set in a critical juncture at the beginning of the fifteenth century. These historical novels with medieval themes often contained scholarly information which, bearing in mind the difficulty of consulting old texts, aimed to make up for the evident shortcomings in readers’ knowledge of Catalan history. Jordi Rubió (1986, 410) has stated that nobody before Cortada had thought of annotating their novels with real facts and documents; but the habit was taken up, among others, by Antoni de Bofarull and Víctor Balaguer and, subsequently, by Maria de Bell-lloc. In 1840, Joan Illas i Vidal anonymously published Enrique y Mercedes. Novela histórica del sitio de Barcelona. Contiene algunos documentos auténticos pertenecientes a la Guerra de Sucesión, with a highly unusual and controversial setting: the War of the Spanish Succession. In the prologue, the author expressed regret at not having written in Catalan, because he would only have been able to do so if he had had the soul and the language of the troubadours. This novel also provided an appendix with documentation from the period. Likewise, Jaume Tió i Noè, who had written his first play about an episode in Spanish history, followed Cortada’s novelistic development in


179

that he catalanized the theatrical themes from Generosos a cual más (‘Nobody more generous’, 1840) along the same lines as he was to do later with Alfonso el Liberal o leyes de amor i honor (‘Alfonso the Magnanimous or laws of love and honour’, 1843) and El espejo de las venganzas (‘The mirror of revenge’, 1844). Tió also edited two popular historical texts which were to inspire and inform a great deal of historicist literature: Expedición de los catalanes y aragoneses contra turcos y griegos (‘The Catalan and Aragonese expedition against the Turks and Greeks’) by Francesc de Montcada (which was based on Ramon Muntaner’s Chronicle, and which generated a great amount of literature on the medieval Catalan almogàver-soldiers), and Historia de los movimientos de separación y guerra de Cataluña en tiempos de Felipe IV (‘History of separatist movements and war in Catalonia in the times of Philip IV’) by Francisco Manuel de Melo, a reference text about the mid-seventeenth-century Reapers’ War. In 1839, Pau Piferrer published the first volume of Cataluña in the series Recuerdos y bellezas de España (‘Memories and sights of Spain’). Both his contemporaries and latter-day historians consider this work to be the cornerstone of Catalan historicist romanticism. Piferrer does not hesitate to include documents, in their entirety or in excerpt, about a history and a literature which he knows to be unfamiliar and poorly publicized. The quotations are usually of a scholarly nature, but there is no shortage of literary passages inserted on the least likely of pretexts. Thus the chapter on Sant Cugat del Vallès begins with a beautiful capital letter S which draws with it the following footnote: Esta S es copia de la que encabeza la segunda de las cinco baladas del trovador Luis de Vilarasa, caballero catalán que floreció a principios del siglo XV, y uno de los que forman el cancionero de París. Como poseemos uno de los facsímiles que trajo a Barcelona el anticuario francés M. Tastu, creemos no será inoportuno continuar la mencionada balada, que no traduciremos del catalán por no concentirlo su estremada senzillez y gracia de la frase, prendas que desaparecerían si se virtiese en cualquier otro idioma16

16 Piferrer 1839, 190-191: ‘This S is a copy of the one to be found at the beginning of the second of the five ballads by the troubadour Luis de Vilarasa, a Catalan knight from the beginning of the fifteenth century, whose work is part of the Paris anthology. As we have one of the copies that the French antiquarian M. Tastu brought to Barcelona, we believe that it would not be inopportune to continue this ballad, which we shall not translate into Catalan so as not to spoil the extreme simplicity and grace of its phrases, which cannot be rendered in any other language.’

180

Magí Sunyer

– and he then goes on to reproduce the poem. With procedures like these fragments of medieval classics or poems were made known. As Josep Fontana (1993, 542) notes, the new historiography began with Piferrer. We should not be surprised that those responsible for popularizing Catalan history, Víctor Balaguer and Antoni de Bofarull, followed him also in this respect. In 1840, the journal that introduced romanticism to the Balearics, La Palma, was published in Majorca. The instigators, in particular Josep Maria Quadrado and Tomàs Aguilò, focused not only on original literature about medieval themes but also on ancient literature, in such articles as ‘Majorcan poets’ by Quadrado (who was later to undertake the task of editing ancient texts). In the same year, in Barcelona, a project that was impregnated with the Renaixença spirit (Badia 1994, 11) was started by Josep Maria de Grau and Joaquim Rubió i Ors: the Co¹lecció d'Antigues Obres Catalanes (‘Collection of ancient Catalan works’). The only works to be published were the poems of Francesc Vicent Garcia (Rector of Vallfogona), and those of Pere Serafí, both in 1840. That the Collection should begin with Garcia and Serafí should be no surprise. Garcia enjoyed considerable popularity, as was shown by the number of re-editions of his poems throughout the nineteenth century, and there was a widespread misconception that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the golden age of Catalan literature (analogously to the Spanish Siglo de Oro). For the same reason, it was planned to publish Francesc Fontanella alongside medieval authors such as Ausiàs Marc (Aramon 1997). Let us finish where we began. In 1839, Joaquim Rubió i Ors began the publication of the poems in Catalan entitled ‘Lo Gaiter del Llobregat’, in the Diario de Barcelona – the first poetic campaign of the Renaixença. Two years later he published them all in one volume with a prologue that was steeped in medievalism. This was considered to be the Renaixença’s first manifesto. By that time, medievalism and trobadourism were fully established in the literature written by Catalans. Rubió was the first to call for the revival of the Jocs Florals (‘Floral Games’), first imported to Barcelona by John I: Catalunya fou per espai de dos segles la mestra en lletres dels demés pobles; ¿per què, no pot restablir sos jocs florals i sa acadèmia del gai saber, i tornar


181

a sorprendre al món amb ses tensons, sos cants d'amor, sos sirventesos i ses albades?17

That did not actually take place until 1859; but in 1841, as a sort of rehearsal, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona organized a competition with two prizes. One was for a historical piece of work on the Parliament of Casp, the prize for which consisted of copies of Bofarull’s Los condes de Barcelona vindicados, and Capmany’s Memorias. The other was for an epic poem, more than 600 lines long, about the Catalan expedition to the East, which was awarded to Joaquim Rubió i Ors. Significantly, the bibliography for this latter topic mentioned the popular narrative history by Francesc de Montcada rather than the original chronicle by Ramon Muntaner. Conclusions On balance, the period between 1780 and 1840 was a lean time for the publication of Catalan medieval literature. Very few editions were published, and the ones that were often showed a considerable lack of editorial sense of purpose. At the end of the eighteenth century, and largely thanks to the initiative of Antoni de Capmany, documentation of fundamental historical interest with a modern approach began to be published. At the same time a project got under way to write a dictionary of Catalan writers, and in 1836 Torres i Amat published his Memorias. Despite the difficulty of finding medieval texts, a medievalizing influence can be felt in Antoni Puigblanch’s poem, in the references to Catalan expansion in the East, in the popularization of troubadourism and, above all, in the advent of romanticism. In fact it is already noticeable in Aribau’s ‘La Pàtria’ and in historical novels and drama written in Spanish on Catalan themes (Cortada, Tió i Noè). In Majorca, the journal La Palma was moving in the same direction. The most influential work at the end of this period, Recuerdos y bellezas de España: Cataluña by Piferrer, laid down the guidelines for assessing the past and medieval literature. Joaquim Rubió i Ors started a new cycle with the campaign for catalanizing the language of poetry and wrote the first manifesto of the Renaixença, including a proposal for reviving the medieval-troubadouric Floral Games. Together 17 Joaquim Rubió i Ors, in Miracle 1960, 283: ‘For two centuries, Catalonia taught literature to other nations. Why can we not revive the Floral Games and the academy of poetry, and once again astonish the world with our love songs, sirventes and aubades?’

182

Magí Sunyer

with Josep Maria de Grau, he was also responsible for the publication of a Co¹lecció d’Antigues Obres Catalanes, which did not however go beyond two volumes (neither of which contained medieval authors). It was only in the following decades that the great medieval writers, from the chroniclers to Ausiàs Marc, were published. Initially, because of an inherent mistrust of the Catalan language, they were translated into Spanish; only subsequently were they published in the original. In a letter to Rubió i Ors, Manuel Milà i Fontanals revealed that he was planning to publish the great medieval classics, but this was not to be. In the course of the nineteenth century, the assessment of Catalan writers was gradually refined. In this process, considerable influence was exerted by the guidelines and publishing activity of Antoni de Bofarull, Constantí Llombart, Josep Maria Quadrado, Gabriel Llabrés, Francesc Pelai Briz and, above all, Manuel Milà i Fontanals and Marian Aguiló. According to Lola Badia (1994, 13), Antoni de Bofarull’s 1858 vision of medieval Catalan literature was similar to the one we have now, and she considers that it was between 1860 and 1889 that the work was done to provide Catalan literary history with a clearer profile.18

References Anguera, Pere. 1997. El català al segle XIX. Barcelona, Empúries. Anguera, Pere. 2000. Els precedents del catalanisme. Barcelona, Empúries. Aramon i Serra, Ramon. 1997. Les edicions de textos catalans medievals, in Estudis de llengua i literatura. Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Badia, Lola. 1994. La literatura catalana medieval vista per alguns erudits vuitcentistes, in Actes del Co¹loqui internacional sobre la Renaixença, 9-16. Barcelona, Curial. Cahner, Max. 2004. Literatura de la revolució i la contrarevolució (1789-1849). Barcelona, Curial. Feliu, Francesc et al., eds. 1992. Tractar de nostra llengua catalana. Vic, Eumo. Fontana, Josep. 1993. La fi de l’Antic Règim i la desamortització. 4th ed., Barcelona, Edicions 62. Fontana, Josep. 1997. El Romanticisme i la formació d’una història nacional catalana, in Actes del Co¹loqui sobre el Romanticisme, 539-549. Vilanova i la Geltrú: Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer. 18 This article is part of the research carried out by the research group in National and Gender Identity in Catalan Literature of the Rovira i Virgili University and project HUM 2006-13121/FILO of the Ministry of Education and Science.


183

Fuster, Joan. 1976. Llengua i literatura en el primer terç del segle XIX, in Decadència al País Valencià. Barcelona, Curial. Gadea i Gambús, Ferran. 1994. Notes sobre la recuperació, valoració i edició dels clàssics durant la Renaixença. Estudi especial de les cròniques, in Actes del Co¹loqui internacional sobre la Renaixença, 2: 17-32. Barcelona, Curial. Marcet, Pere, Joan Solà. 1998. Història de la lingüística catalana. Vic, Eumo. Martel, Philippe. 1992. Occitans i catalans: Els avatars d’una germanor, in Actes del Co¹loqui internacional sobre la Renaixença, 1: 377-390. Barcelona, Curial. Miracle, Josep. 1960. La Restauració dels Jocs Florals. Barcelona, Aymà. Molas, Joaquim. 1962. Poesia neoclàssica i pre-romàntica. Barcelona, Edicions 62. Molas, Joaquim. 1974. Poesie catalana romàntica. 2nd ed.; Barcelona, Edicions 62. Piferrer, Pau. 1839. Recuerdos y bellezas de España I: Cataluña. Barcelona. Rubió, Jordi. 1986. Història de la literatura catalana. Montserrat, Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat. Simbor, Vicent. 1980. Els orígens de la Renaixença Valenciana. València, Universitat de València.


THE TROUBADOURS AND THE FRENCH STATE Philippe Martel Abstract In the investigation of the earliest medieval manifestations of their national culture, nineteenth-century French scholars and intellectuals faced a problem: the Troubadours use an idiom which some centuries later had come to be rejected as mere patois. Paradoxically, a literary tradition of Europe-wide prestige, born on French territory, is not properly French. The discovery of the Oxford manuscript of the Chanson de Roland (1837) and other Chansons de geste of the langue d’oïl afforded more convenient Great Ancestors to the French intelligentsia; accordingly, poetry of the langue d’oc drops out of the canonic corpus of the beginnings of the nation’s literature. Meanwhile, the theme of the Albigensian crusade is being re-discovered and quickly sidelined as a threat to the French national mythology. But some southern French intellectuals, sensitised to this heritage, devote themselves to its promotion. Mistral and his Félibres make it the basis of their planned Occitan Renaissance. This incipiently nation-building project faces two drawbacks: the social status of the actors of the Occitan renaissance (modest middle-class in the main) bars them from attaining any significant political or intellectual power; and no room is provided for Occitan-related research either at University level or in local institutions of learning. The attempt to re-integrate the Troubadours and Occitan literature and history into the mainstream of canonical French culture was doomed to fail. From the late eighteenth until the mid-nineteenth century, France, like many other European countries, built up progressively corpus of historical and cultural references constituting the basis for a national (moral

186

Philippe Martel

and civic) consensus. The dynasty, common identity focus for the subject of the ancien régime, had vanished after 1789; values, records and myths were needed for the citizens of the new French nation-state. This involved a new scientific discourse about history, language and literature, and a careful evaluation of the various and sometimes contradictory elements inherited from France’s long past. A key issue in this process was the tension between North and South. Multilingualism had been the rule in pre-revolutionary France, and of course it did not vanish on 14 July 1789. Frenchmen then, and throughout the following centuries, could be speakers of Breton, Alsatian or Occitan. Occitan-speaking France in 1789 covered one fourth of the total population, on one third of the national territory. An important part of France has, then, its own language, social and familial structures, mentality and culture, level of economical development. More than a periphery, it was considered the other half of France, distinct from the region around the capital Paris. This situation differs from other regions which, like Brittany, have a particularism but a far less significant geographical footprint. This difference was increasingly highlighted by travelers, administrators and statisticians, and was complemented by the gradual scholarly recognition of a special language, literature and history. The question thus arose, how the official new discourse about national identity was to deal with this southern difference. Integrate, separate or ignore it altogether? The problem was further complicated by a basic literary fact: southern France had in its own time given birth to a prestigious medieval literature of Europe-wide renown. The trobadors or troubadours constitute a second difference with other regions.1 Should they be recognised as the true fathers of French literature, even though their language was not French, but what is usually termed patois (a francocentric word indicating boorish jargon utterly bereft of any literary quality)? How can the French national ideology accommodate this awkward duality between the two great literatures of medieval ‘France’, oc and oïl? How can it resolve the contradiction between the image of prestigious medieval Occitan, and the image of the contemporary southern-provincial patois, which most 1 Even the chivalric matière de Bretagne of Arthurian romance is in French, not in Breton, and in any case deals with Britain rather than Brittany.

THE TROUBADOURS AND THE FRENCH STATE

187

French intellectuals and politicians consider doomed? This contradiction involves two other dilemmas. To begin with, the image of the medieval South and its people (the Midi) runs counter to the nineteenth-century view of southerners, then widely considered by French elites as an underdeveloped, illiterate population too much swayed by their passions owing to the southern climate, and hence violent and politically untrustworthy. Second, history relates how the civilisation of the celebrated troubadours had died after the ferocious thirteenth-century Albigensian Crusade; thus the union of North and South is the result of what many historians from the early nineteenth century onwards began to represent as mere mass-murder induced by clerical fanaticism and Northern greed. Was France, then, the offspring of a genocide? In what follows, I aim to show how those dilemmas were dealt with by early-nineteenth-century intellectuals. What did they actually know about the troubadours and the Occitan Middle Ages? How did they perceive them? How does their perception change over time? Is it possible to find a difference between northern and southern intellectuals? And specifically: are the ancient troubadours to be enlisted by some ‘Occitan’ national-literary movement in search of historically legitimate ancestors, particularly when some of those intellectuals (in the ambience of Mistral and the Félibrige) begin to mount a ‘Provençal’ linguistic and cultural self-assertion against Paris? The Discovery of the Troubadours As we know, the great period of the troubadours is over by the end of the thirteenth century, despite the attempt, through Toulouse’s Jocs Florals, to continue their heritage during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. After a period of decline, this institution, conceived to cultivate Occitan letters, converted itself in the early sixteenth century to the use and cultivation of the King’s French. What has survived of troubadour literature is contained in manuscripts conserved in various places, mainly between France and Italy. Their memory was more or less vaguely conserved from the Middle Ages into the nineteenth century through various channels, which can here only be briefly touched upon (Lafont 1982). Italian culture keeps the memory of troubadour poetry because it is an intertext to Dante and Petrarch, and influences the beginnings of

188

Philippe Martel

Italian literature. This is why from time to time, important Italian scholars feel compelled to scrutinise these forerunners of Italian poetry. Thus Pietro Bembo in the sixteenth century and Giovanni Crescimbeni in the seventeenth planned (fruitlessly) an anthology of troubadour poetry; the latter at least managed to see into print an Istoria della volgar poesia (1678) which pays attention to troubadours. In France meanwhile, ‘gothic’ (i.e. medieval) literature was little appreciated, even held in contempt. But in Provence, some sixteen-century scholars like Jean de Nostredame (Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poetes provençaux, 1575) maintained some kind of knowledge about the troubadours, albeit tainted sometimes with imaginative reconstructions or even downright mystifications. Nostredame (brother, incidentally, of the famous Nostradamus) audaciously transforms all ancient Troubadours, whatever their actual birth-place, in true and pure Provençals. He is also responsible for an invention which remain current until the end of nineteenth century, the strange tribunal of the Cour d’Amour, in which beautiful and wise Provençal noblewomen were supposed to have passed judgement on intricate affairs of the heart. Nostredame is aware of Italian writing about the troubadours, and in return Italian scholars take note of him throughout the next two centuries, helping his clever and fantastic inventions to the status of respectable tradition. Among Nostredame’s more reliable successors was the great seventeenth-century Provençal scholar and humanist Fabri de Peiresc, who researched and copied manuscripts available in France, and also was in touch with Italian colleagues. Following him, other Provençal intellectuals like Gallaup de Chasteuil or Honoré Bouche (author of a 1664 History of Provence), and later still, in the eighteenth century, Président de Mazaugues continued the tradition of collecting ancient texts. But their work remains unpublished and has exercised no direct influence on cultural and literary life in modern Provence. There is still a literary production in the vernacular language in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, but its models are French and Italian, baroque in style and without similarity to medieval Occitan poetry.. But changes were in the air. In Italy, a Catalan cleric, Dom Bastero, developed during an Italian journey an interest in what he encountered about troubadours. Although he failed to publish the genuine original texts, he did produce a seminal book on the topic, La Crusca provenzale (Rome, 1724), the first study about the subject which escapes the fate of


189

unpublished obscurity. That does not mean his work is above criticism. He deals mainly with the Vidas or Lives of the ancient poets; they had also been used by Nostredame to build some of his fantasies, and Bastero does not correct those. Worse: being himself Catalan-speaking, he succumbs to the temptation of claiming his own Catalan language as the only true heir to the troubadours’ old ‘Provençal’, as opposed to the ‘debased’ idiom of ‘Occitania’ (a term he is familiar with). Nostredame had outrageously ‘Provençalised’ all medieval Occitan poets, and Bastero follows in his footsteps, out of Catalan patriotism. One century later, the first protagonists of the Catalan renaixença remembered him, and took it for granted that their Catalan ancestors had played a leading part in the prestigious courtly productions of the twelfth century. Which could not fail to engender subsequent controversies with Occitan intellectuals.... French learning followed suit. Troubadours found a place in the monumental Histoire générale de Languedoc (1737) by two Maurist Benedictines, Dom Vic and Dom Vaissète, who likewise emphasise the contribution of their province to ancient Occitan literature. But their main purpose being historical (recalling the glory and, incidentally, the legitimacy of old provincial privileges) rather than literary, their perspective on the subject is derivative. Also in 1737, the great French literary antiquary Lacurne de Saint Palaye, with the help of collaborators and correspondents, began his enormous work of deciphering and copying the material conserved in French libraries – first of all the Bibliothèque royale, later also local or private libraries. By 1739, Lacurne and his staff extended their survey to Italy. The result of this work: some five thousand items transcribed with attempts at translation. One cannot but admire this achievement. Lacurne de Saint Palaye was an expert in medieval French, and had a good command of paleography, but as a non-Occitan-speaker from Bourgogne, he was in no position to grasp the language and the subtle rhetoric of Occitan poetry. He nevertheless succeeded in making his way through a vast amount of this foreign material. But once again, this remarkable work was to remain largely unpublished. Only in 1774 one of Saint-Palaye’s collaborators, Millot, published a selection of ca. 100 items in a book audaciously en titled Histoire littéraire des troubadours, contenant leurs vies, des extraits de leurs pièces et plusieurs particularités sur les moeurs,les usages et l’histoire du XIIème et du XIIIème siècle. For the first time, a large public – large by period standards of course –

190

Philippe Martel

was given a glimpse of what ancient Occitan poetry was. And that is where the trouble started. The North-South Controversy Concerning troubadours, their language and their country, Millot had some particular ideas. Of course, for him, these old poets are French, and inhabitants of the ‘French monarchy’s southern provinces’. No place either for Catalan pretensions or for any notion of a separate Occitan identity. Moreover, the very location of their homeland provides these poets with mental characteristics directly determined by the climate they enjoy: Sous un beau ciel, dans un pays favorisé par la nature, où la chaleur du climat excite l'esprit sans affaisser le coprs, le goût de la poésie doit être plus vif qu'ailleurs, et plus fertile en productions. Telles étoient les provinces méridionales de la monarchie françoise, toutes comprises sous le nom commun de Provence, parce que la langue provençale leur étoit commune à tous.2

Nothing really original here. At least since Montesquieu, climate theory had been flourishing: an attempt at a materialistic explanation of cultural and anthropological diversity, holding that societies in the various parts of the world are determined by their natural habitat. From this point of view, the influence of sun and light enjoyed by southern Europe (and southern France) affects the bearing of the southerners, makes them more sensible to sensations, colours, music, but also less reasonable and more passionate than the stolid populations labouring under a colder, rougher climate. Such a theory, of course, implies a gradation between peoples, a hierarchy privileging Northerners as best fitted for reflection, judgement and progress. The capacity of conceiving and building the future is theirs, whereas the sensuous and passionate folk of southern regions had their high-point in remote past periods: classical antiquity, the Italian, and Occitan Middle Ages. According to Millot and his ilk, ancient Occitan poetry owes much more to these objective climatic conditions than to a true creative capacity: from the outset, a close rela2 Millot 1774, 1: xx: ‘Under bright heavens, in a country favoured by nature, where the warmth of climate excites spirit the without weakening the body, the inclination for poetry has to be more vivid than elsewhere, and more fertile in productivity. So it was in the French monarchy’s southern provinces, all known at that time under the common name of Provence, because all shared the Provençal language’.


191

tionship is established between southern France (‘Midi’) and that greater south that encompasses Italy, Spain, and the Mediterranean at large. The same gesture introduces a subtle devalorisation of this poetry and of its producers. Subtle: for Millot liberally bestows flattering epithets on the poets he deals with, and strongly suggests that they were in fact the forerunners of the West’s cultural renaissance. They only came too soon – a commonplace which was to survive for a long time after Millot: Dans le douzième, le treizième et le quatorzième siècle, elle fut parmi les personnes polies ce que devint ensuite la langue italienne, et ce que la françoise est aujourd’hui. La réputation et les ouvrages des troubadours firent sa fortune. Rien n’égaloit ces poètes. Chacun s’empressoit de les connoître, de chanter leurs pièces. C’étoient comme les hérauts et de la chevalerie et de la galanterie, dont l’empire embrassoit toute l’Europe méridionale. Les écrivains qui ont l’art de plaire contribuent beaucoup au sort des langues. Le provençal n’est retombé dans l’oubli que parce que les productions italiennes l’ont effacé par leur mérite.3

Interesting, indeed: not only have those too precocious writers and their language dropped into oblivion, but this fate is due to the superiority of other languages and cultures like Italian. ‘Provençals’ dropped behind in the onwards march of literary progress and were swept aside by more gifted competitors. History itself and their own lack of staying power (rather than, say, the Albigensian crusade), may be held responsible for the demise of Occitan literature. For Millot, troubadour poetry, on the long run, lacked depth and variety. Marvelous though these poets are, they are slightly repetitive, unable to renew their art and explore new paths. As a man with of high moral standards (he is a cleric, after all) he also denounces their immorality. This opinion, too, remained current for a long time. At the time, however, Millot’s work and saccharine translations met with some success: at the end of the century, a ‘mode troubadour’ occurred, which does not of course imply a true understanding and knowl3

ibid. 1: 413-414. ‘In the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Provençal language had that status among educated persons that was later enjoyed by Italian, and nowadays by French. The fame and works of the troubadours made its fortune. Nothing equaled those poets. Everyone was eager to know them, and sing their pieces. They were like the heralds of chivalry and gallantry, whose empire took in all of southern Europe. Authors who know how to please always contribute largely to the prestige of their language. Provençal only fell into oblivion because Italian works outshone it by their merit’.

192

Philippe Martel

edge of what the troubadours actually were. This success understandably provoked some jealousy in the small circle of those who had an interest in medieval literature. A severe critique of Millot’s views was brought forward from, precisely Saint-Palaye’s staff, with a book by Legrand d’Aussy. Himself an editor of old French fabliaux, he may have resented the success of his ex-colleague, which was withheld from himself and his own works. But on another level, he seems to be the first French scholar to understand what danger the canonisation of long-forgotten troubadours might constitute for the ways in which the beginnings of French language and literature were seen. His Observations sur les Troubadours, par l’éditeur des fabliaux are a lengthy and circumstantial attack on ancient Occitan poets: Le hasard (...)m’ayant associé aux travaux d’un savant estimable, lequel s’était consacré spécialement à l’étude approfondie des deux Romanes, française et provençale, je me vis enfin à portée d’apprécier les Poëtes des deux Langues. Quelle fut ma surprise, lorsque en parcourant ces troubadours si vantés, ces troubadours qu’on nous représentait comme les précepteurs de la Nation, je ne trouvai chez eux que des poésies tristes, monotones, insipides et illisibles; tandis que les rimeurs de nos provinces septentrionales, inconnus et dédaignés, m’offraient, à mon grand étonnement, des productions pleines de gaieté, d’esprit et d’imagination.4

Legrand d’Aussy is unimpressed by climate theory and its application to the different qualities and flaws of northern trouvères and southern troubadours. Against Millot he argues: (...) quoiqu’il en dise, je ne crois pas qu’au nord de la Loire le climat soit glacé; qu’on y naisse au milieu des brouillards, et avec des organes épais et engourdis. Ces tristes couleurs avec lesquelles on nous peint ordinairement le ciel de Sibérie ou celui du Groenland ne sont point celles qui conviennent au ciel de Paris et d’Orléans. (...) Non, ce n’est point, je le répète, la température favorable de tel ou tel climat qui fait que les hommes y excellent dans la Poésie ; ce n’est point cet avantage d’une latitude plus

4 Legrand d’Aussy 1781, 1-2: ‘As chance had associated me to the works of an esteemed scholar, [Lacurne de Sainte Palaye], who had specially devoted himself to the elaborate study of both Romance languages, French and Provençal, I became at last capable of appreciating the poets of both traditions. What a surprise it was for me, when, reading through those much-celebrated troubadours, who had been represented to us as the preceptors of our nation, I found their works woeful, monotonous, dull and unreadable, whereas the rhymers of our northern provinces, though unknown and despised, provided me, to my great astonishment, with productions full of cheer, wit and imagination.’


193

méridionale qui nous a procuré les chefs-d’oeuvres des Grecs et des Romains.5

Legrand d’Aussy clearly prefers northern trouvères: Aussi ne sont-ce point les deux idiomes que j’ai comparés, mais les productions des deux peuples, car pour qu’un musicien se fasse une réputation, il ne lui suffit pas d’avoir le meilleur des instrumens; il faut encore qu’il sache le toucher. Plus celui qu’avaient à manier nos trouveurs était ingrat et plus leur gloire est grande d’avoir néanmoins réussi à nous plaire. Leur langue, d’abord informe, s’est perfectionnée avec le temps (...) Le sort qu’a obtenu la Provençale me paraît presque entièrement opposé. Accueillie dès sa naissance par l’Italie et l’Espagne, elle se voit appelée en quelque sorte à une destinée brillante. Mais bientôt tout change. A peine les deux Nations qui l’avaient adoptée ont-elles à leur tour produit des Poëtes, que tout à coup la médiocrité des siens lui fait perdre sa renommée. Elle retombe dans l’obscurité et dans l’oubli, et n’est plus que le patois d’un canton particulier, dans lequel la Romane française, plus heureuse, vient par la suite s’établir avec éclat et dominer comme souveraine.6

Legrand d’Aussy’s venomous attack was answered by a Provençal, Bérenger, whose ‘Lettre à M. Grosley’ was published in the prestigious Mercure de France on 24 August 1782. It points out the fundamental incompetence of both Millot and Legrand, Northerners unable to appreciate Occitan language and poetry properly: Il ne faut pas juger de ces poésies par la mauvaise traduction qui en a été donnée, mais (...) on doit les lire dans la langue originale; or, cette langue 5

ibid. 55: ‘Whatever he may say about it, I do not believe that north of the Loire the climate is icy; that up there one is born amidst fog, and with thick and sluggish organs. Those dull colours in which the skies of Siberia or of Groenland are usually represented to us, are not those which belong to Paris and Orleans (...) No, it is not, I repeat, the favourable temperature of one climate or another that makes the men there excel in poetry; it is not the advantage of a more southerly latitude that bequeathed to us the masterpieces of Greeks and Romans.’ 6 I bid. 523-53: Therefore I did not compare the two idioms, but the productions of both people: because for a musician to become famous, it is not enough to have the best instrument; he must also play it well. The poorer the instrument our trouvères had to use, the greater is their glory at being nonetheless able to please us. Their language, inform at first, improved with time (...) [What happened to Provençal] seems to me almost entirely opposite. Welcomed by Italy and Spain as soon as it was born, it was in some way marked out for a brilliant destiny; but soon this all changed. As soon as the two nations which had adopted it began to produce their own poets, its own inner mediocrity made it lose its fame. It has fallen back into obscurity and oblivion, and is now nothing more than the patois of a particular district, whereas the happier Romance language of France succeeds to establish itself with splendour, and to dominate as a sovereign.’

194

Philippe Martel

n’est pas facile à entendre. M. Legrand convient lui-même qu’il ne l’entend qu’avec beaucoup de peine. Quel jugement peut-il donc porter sur les tournures, les expressions, les métaphores, les images qui lui sont particulières, & qui n’ont plus aucune valeur quand elles sont mal interprétées, affoiblies & dénaturées, en passant dans un idiome étranger ? (...) Pour bien comprendre les poésies des Troubadours, il faut avoir reçu le jour dans le pays où ils ont eux-mêmes vécu: encore même tout le monde ne pourroit-il en venir à bout parce qu’il ne suffit pas de savoir le langage actuel, il est encore nécessaire de connoître l’ancienne Romance provençale, qui en diffère beaucoup & qui n’a pas plus de rapports avec lui que l’italien du douzième siècle peut en avoir avec l’Italien modene. Mais enfin, en supposant qu’un habitant des provinces méridionales voulût bien s’appliquer à ce genre de travail, il seroit infiniment plus propre qu’un étranger à découvrir des beautés dans ces poèsies, par les analogies encore subsistantes. Telles expressions qui paroitroient foibles ou vides de sens à celui-ci, offriroient quelquefois de très belles images à celui-là.7

Three years later, another Provençal, Achard, gave his opinion about the troubadours and their language in the introduction of his Dictionnaire de la Provence. He went further than Berenger in his praise, making ‘Provençal’ the mother tongue of all Romance languages – an idea which others would adopt later. La langue provençale fut long-tems celle des Cours de l’Europe. Elle a la gloire d’avoir donné naissance au François, à l’Espagnol, à l’Italien & à plusieurs Langues analogues à celles-ci. Cette vérité incontestable semble avoir échappé aux connoissances de plusieurs Auteurs qui font dériver ces idiomes de la Langue Latine (...) Parfaitement analogue à la langue provençale, la Romance, qui étoit la langue des François, éprouva des variations, elle différa bientôt dans chacune des provinces de la France, & ce n’est que dans le douzième siècle que la langue françoise prit un caractère 7

Bérenger, ‘Lettre à Monsieur Grosley’, Mercure de France, 24 August 1782: ‘This poetry is not to be judged by the bad translation that was given of it, but has to be read in its original language. However, this language is not easy to understand. M. Legrand himself confesses he understands it only with difficulty. What opinion is he therefore competent to give about its proper turns of phrase, expressions, metaphors, imagery, as these, having passed through a foreign idiom, are ill-interpreted, weakened and disfigured? In order to understand the troubadours’ poetry properly, one must have been born in the country where they lived themselves. Additionally, it is not enough to know the present language, one must also understand the old Provençal Romance, which differs greatly from the modern and has no more link with it than twelfth-century Italian has with modern Italian. And finally, supposing that an inhabitant of the southern provinces would undertake to put his mind to this kind of work, he would be infinitely more able than a foreigner to find beauty in these poems because of the analogies that still remain. Those expressions, which would seem weak or meaningless to outsiders, to him would still offer very charming pictures.’


195

différent de la langue mère. Celle-ci se conserva dans quelques provinces parmi le peuple; elle s’est maintenue dans sa perfection en Provence où le génie patriotique l’a perpétuée.8

Thus, the marvelous French language extolled by Legrand is represented as merely a late offshoot of southern Provençal, which survived the troubadours and but maintained itself in all its purity among Achard’s Provençal compatriots... Despite Achard’s obvious, strenuous Provençal patriotism, it would be wrong to see this as the only motivation behind those answers to Legrand d’Aussy; indeed Achard was about to produce a Provençal grammar, which some years later he sent to none other than the patois-hunting Henri Grégoire. But Berenger published only in French, in the Parisian press, and obviously sought a nation-wide French (rather than provincial) career. We may assume therefore that his main purpose was not so much to stand up for Provençal glories as to offer his expertise as, shall we say, an indigenous guide able to lead strangers in the maze of an ill-understood language. That trend was to be followed by many southern-born intellectuals: to claim of a position in the national (Paris-centered) cultural world as the recognised specialist of southern particularities. Berenger has no special interest in Occitan, which he does not write, and which, furthermore, people of his social position are beginning, at this precise moment (the late eighteenth century), to abandon as their customary and familial speech. No real Provençal patriotism, then, and of course not the least idea of any claims towards a separate, let alone national identity. For Millot and all his contemporaries, Provençal is evidently a part of French. The celebrated symmetrical pair of oc and oïl plays into this idea, and engenders the notion of what can be termed the original race between the twins: At the beginning there were two varieties of french, and its is only through historical contingency that the French monarchy was based around Paris, thus favouring the final choice of oïl variety as the basis for true present 8 Achard 1785, ‘Iinstructions préliminaires’, 1: xi-xii: ‘The Provençal language was for a long time that of the European courts. Its glory is to have given birth to French, Spanish, Italian and several languages akin to these. This indisputable truth seems to have been missed by several authors who derive these languages from Latin (...) Wholly analogous to Provençal, the Romance spoken by the Frenchmen underwent variations, and soon differed in each French province; not before the twelfth century did the French language take on features alien to its mother speech. That mother speech remained alive in some provinces among common people. It maintained itself in its perfection in Provence, where it was maintained by the spirit of patriotism.

196

Philippe Martel

official French. Unlike Legrand d’Aussy’s model, this theory does not blame the decline of Occitan on a lack of intrinsic qualities, is political rather than literary and invokes something like a raison d’état. But it leaves the nature of historical causation open: what precisely were the contingencies which made Paris the centre of choice for the political powers, and brought it into a position to enforce its rule upon southern country? Still many authors, whatever their mutual differences, concur in applying the ‘race between the twins’ model, and play the little rhetorical ‘what if’ game of the failed opportunities: we find it both in the writings of the Languedocian lexicologist Boissier de Sauvages’s (Dictionnaire Languedocien-français (1785 ed., 2: 143) and in §6 of Rivarol’s Universalité de la langue française (1784): Si le provençal, qui n’a que des sons pleins, eût prévalu, il auroit donné au français l’éclat de l’espagnol et de l’italien; mais le Midi de la France, toujours sans capitale et sans loi, ne put soutenir la concurrence du nord, et l’influence du patois Picard s’accrut avec celle de la couronne. C’est donc le génie clair et méthodique de ce jargon et sa prononciation un peu sourde qui dominent aujourd’hui dans la langue française.9

This has become the accepted version to the point that Henri Grégoire, the Convention representative (who had no common ground with the reactionary Rivarol apart from their love for the French language) asserted almost literally the same thing in his notorious Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française of 1794: (...) probablement, au lieu de la langue des trouvères, nous parlerions celle des troubadours si Paris, le centre du gouvernement, avoit été situé sur la rive gauche de la Loire.10

‘Probably’: it was after all only a question of chance. As a consolation, southern intellectuals claimed the famous Oaths of Strasbourg as a monument of their language, dating from a time when the scales had not yet 9 Rivarol as quoted in Lafont 1982: ‘Had Provençal, which knows only full sounds, prevailed, it would have given to French the glamour of Spanish and Italian; but the Midi of France, always deprived of a capital and lawless, could not cope with the competition of the North, and the influence of the Picard patois grew along with that of the crown. Hence the clear and methodic genius of this idiom, and its somewhat muffled pronunciation, now dominate in the French language.’ 10 Grégoire as quoted in De Certeau 1975, 306: ‘Probably, instead of the trouvères' language, we would speak that of the troubadours, if Paris, the centre of government, had been situated on the left bank of Loire.’


197

tipped towards the north: thus in 1807, a distinguished member of the Academy of Nîmes, Jean-Julien Trelis, ‘demonstrated’ to his colleagues that the language of these Oaths (‘the oath of Charles the Bald’s army (...) spoken at Strasbourg in 842’) is pure modern ‘langue d’oc’: ‘Sé Louis lou sacramen Kë a soun fraire Karlë a jurat counservo, & Ke Karlë moun signour dé sa part noun lou tenié; se lou destournar noun lou podi ni ieou ni deguz que ieou destournar noun poësse, en nullo ajudo contro Louis noun I iren:’ C'est le serment de l’armée de Charles le Chauve à l’occasion de son traité avec Louis le Débonnaire [sic]. Il fut prononcé à Strasbourg en 842.11

A problem, though: here is the genuine original version: Si Lodhuigs sagrament que son fradre Karlo jurat conservat Et Karlus meos sendra de suo part non lo stanit, si io returnar non lint pois ne io ne neuls cui eo returnar int pois in nulla aiudha contra Lodhuig nun li iu er.

The sad reality is that honest Trelis has simply translated the text in his contemporary dialect, for the sake of his demonstration. But he is not the only one to use that stratagem, which was in vogue not only in Occitan regions. Catalan or northern Italian intellectuals did exactly the same around this time, as they had done before, and would continue to do afterwards... Revolution and Empire: A Crossroads With the 1789 Revolution, all those debates ceded to others, far less innocent. The new-born nation’s concerns are far removed from serene speculation about France’s linguistic and literary origins. In contrast, the more crucial question that arises is the one of the linguistic unity as a necessary condition for the achievement of the nation’s ideological and political unity. At this point we meet again with Gregoire, his linguistic survey of 1790, and his aforementioned Report (cf. De Certeau 1975). During the summer of 1790, abbé Henri Grégoire, representative in the Assemblée constituante (1789-1791), and later in the Convention (1792-1795) sent to ‘societés populaires’ in the provinces a questionnaire of 43 points about the various idioms spoken on French territory. Those questions appear purely scientific (origin of the patois, its phonetic features, exis11 Trélis 1807, 104. There is also a historical lapsus here: the Louis mentioned in the Oaths of Strasbourg was not Louis the Debonaire (better known as Louis the Pious), but his son Louis the German.

198

Philippe Martel

tence of a literature in patois, etc.); but the core lies in points 30 and 31. Question 30 asks whether the correspondents would consider it useful to eradicate the patois; the next suggests the correct answer, by asking through what means this eradication could be achieved. Grégoire’s view, which he shared with many revolutionary thinkers, is that linguistic variety in France is the product of feudalism, the result of a devious aristocratic plot to divide the common people into mutually unintelligible jargons, in order to hinder any concord between them. Grégoire, like many others (and not all of them on the side of the Revolution), is further convinced that those jargons, rude and defective, are unable to express modernity, Reason and Progress. To connect with those forces, citizens must master French, the language of law and power, and in the same gesture abandon their ancient idioms, in a kind of quasi-religious conversion: a new language for a new Man. A problem: if the correspondents, mostly militant revolutionaries, duly and eagerly agree with Grégoire’s purpose, their answers give rise to a good deal of contradictions, mostly with regard to Occitan dialects. As we have seen, Achard naively sent along his grammar – whereas Grégoire believed that a patois could not have any established grammatical rules. Others assert that their patois is understood over great distances – whereas Grégoire suggests in his question nr 16 that it changes from one village to the next. And many actually give titles of books, and names of patois authors...Four years later, Grégoire’s Report cannot but take account of those elements. It concludes, unsurprisingly, by stating the necessity of eradication, but acknowledges the existence of what could be called the Occitan exception, of which we had a glimpse earlier: the vivid idiom of no less vivid Southerners could have been the official language of France, if... This idiom has its dignity and its merits, its authors and its literature. Therefore, if other patois-speaking regions should be relieved to abandon their useless idioms, for Southerners it has to be a heroically patriotic sacrifice – Grégoire speaks of ‘abjuring’. Also, dialects may have their philosophical and scientific interest, for they provide elements towards understanding the history of the French language, in that they have conserved remains of former stages of its evolution. Moreover, southern dialects in particular (that is to say, Provençal; and here perhaps Achard’s ideas show their impact) could provide new post-revolutionary French with fresh words and turns of phrase.


199

These, then, are the contradictions mentioned earlier: according to Grégoire’s report, patois dialects are bound to die, the sooner the better, but at the same time, they are granted a sort of interest: they are to be studied as tools to a better knowledge of French cultural history. They are both inside and outside the field of legitimate French national culture. Accordingly, Grégoire’s report, representative of a large consensus among militant revolutionaries and bourgeois intellectuals as well, generated two contradictory processes: on the one hand it justified and paved the way for French linguistic policy, whose goal is to spread French, and only French, at the expenses of pre-existent languages which are ruthlessly rejected. On the other hand, Grégoire, by making the illfated patois an object of study and scholarly interest, may be considered as the unwilling harbinger of the later revivals of Occitan (as well as Breton and Basque). It is perhaps not uninteresting to note that some of the first to devote themselves to studying patois at the beginning of the nineteenth century were, precisely, ex-colleagues of Grégoire in revolutionary assemblies. Raynouard and Rochegude (whom we shall meet anon) had been members of the Convention, and the oïl dialect of the Poitou was first explored by La Revellière-Lépeaux, a former member of the post-Convention Directoire. In 1803, a Languedoc-born author, Fabre d’Olivet, who had likewise been a participant in the revolutionary movement, published in two volumes a so-called medieval text; his Le Troubadour: Poésies occitaniques du XIIIe siècle has the same degree of authenticity as Trelis’ transcription of the Oaths of Strasbourg, and much less than Macpherson’s Ossianic texts. But it testifies to the interest that the troubadours met with. The Napoleonic Empire was a time of great administrative surveys of all kinds: the control of the territory, and a thorough knowledge of its resources, was crucial for a nation at war. One of the side effects of this gigantic inventory enterprise was the launching of the great survey, instigated by Coquebert de Montbret, of the Empire’s regional patois, under the supervision of the Ministère de l’Intérieur (1807-12). This survey gathered a large collection of dialect texts with important annotations produced by those local erudites whom Napoleon’s prefects tended to involve in their research – sometimes, it is the préfet himself who takes on the task. Trellis’ observations on l’idiome languedocien are part of this material, and the survey itself more generally signals growing interest in the

200

Philippe Martel

topic of linguistic variety at large, which in turn was beneficial to Occitan studies. Of course, one this may have been the intention neither of the authorities nor those intellectuals gathered in Académie Celtique who inspired the survey (cf. Belmont 1995) They still followed the line of reasoning indicated by Grégoire: to improve the knowledge of national history by a data inventory from the obsolescent and doomed regional patois. Indeed, the survey’s first effect was to spread awareness among the learned public as to the position of Breton, Occitan and other idioms. This interest is above all manifest through the impact of books like Essai sur la littérature provençale (Aubin-Louis Millin, 1808) or Sismondi’s De la littérature du Midi de l'Europe (1813). Millin was known for having previously published an account of his journey in southern France, bound to nourish both knowledge and imagination about what at the time was still a rather exotic and distant part of France (Gardy 1989). The Swiss Sismondi is more important still for the early nineteenth-century history of ideas (cf. Lafont 1982). A historian as well as a literary specialist, and even something of an economist (he has his place among the early critics of capitalism), he was a member of the famous Coppet circle, where Madame de Staël gathered first-rate intellectuals such as Fauriel, Benjamin Constant and the Schlegel brothers. The importance of this circle in the French diffusion of German romanticism and Herderian ideas is well known; which makes Sismondi an intellectual opinionmaker of European, rather than merely French, importance. Sismondi did not know either old or modern Occitan and confesses his ignorance frankly. What he knows of Troubadours comes directly from Millot. He adds some interesting ideas, for example about a possible influence of Arab poetry (an enduring debate). Moreover, he points out what he perceives as a fundamental gap between northern and southern France, between two ‘races’, two peoples, each with its own character, its own culture, its own territory (his Provençals include Catalans as well). This idea was shared, independently perhaps, by notables from the South itself. The comte de Portalis, of an old Provençal family, presented the following sentiments in 1813 to the Academy of Aix (of which he was a member): La Provence, située sous un ciel pur et serein, avoit mieux conservé les bienfaits de la civilisation, parce qu’elle avoit été moins souvent visitée par les barbares. La féodalité s’y établit plus tard, avec moins d’empire et moins d’universalité, et ses liens s’y relachèrent plutôt [sic]. Le commerce des villes


201

libres de Marseille et d’Arles, et leurs fréquentes communications avec les Arabes y entretinrent le mouvement des esprits et y introduisirent la politesse. Aussi la langue provençale donna-t-elle naissance à la Littérature vulgaire en Europe. (...) Bientôt, l’italien, l’espagnol, le français s’élevèrent sur les ruines du provençal, et ces filles orgueilleuses firent oublier leur mère. (...) Le français prévalut en tout (...) On en vint jusqu’à ne plus entendre dans leur Patrie le langage des Troubadours: on en vint jusqu’à oublier qu’ils avoient laissé des ouvrages complets tant en prose qu’en vers. Il fallut que les prétentions exagérées des partisans des vieux trouvères français obligeassent les Provençaux, sensibles à l’affront que recevoit leur nation, à exhumer de la poussière des bibliothèques leurs anciens titres de gloire.12

Troubadours and Albigensians: The Unholy Crusade Sismondi, though widely read, is an amateur, after all. Enter, now, the true founders of nineteenth-century troubadour studies, former revolutionaries, now sobered, Raynouard and Rochegude. Raynouard (member of the Académie Française) published in 1816 the first anthology of original troubadour texts (Choix des poésies originales des Troubadours). Although he gives no translations – this will happen immediately after publication of the first dictionary of old Occitan – he nonetheless offers direct access to a hitherto inaccessible corpus. In 1819 followed Rochegude’s anthology, Le Parnasse occitanien, with more than 200 original texts. Raynouard, the academician, publishes in Paris, Rochegude in Toulouse; he will therefore remain less well-known. But they are both Occitanborn. Raynouard is Provençal, Rochegude of the Toulouse region. Here we encounter again what we had noticed concerning Bastero: where authors come from influences the way they conceive their subject, as shown by their very nomenclature. Raynouard’s troubadours are provençaux, Rochegude’s Parnassus is occitanien, a word which at this stage is 12

Portalis as quoted in Merle 1990, 2: 523: ‘The Provence, situated under a pure and serene sky, had kept the blessing of civilisation better, because it had been less often visited by barbarians. Feudalism was established here later, with less might and less thoroughly, and its links loosened sooner. The trade of the free cities of Marseille and Arles, and their frequent communication with Arabs, kept intellectual movement alive and introduced politeness. Thus, the Provençal language gave birth to vernacular literature in Europe. (...) Afterwards, Italian, Spanish and French arose on the ruins of Provençal and those proud daughters obscured the memory of their mother. (...) French prevailed in all respects. The language of the troubadours was forgotten in their fatherland, as were the books, both in prose and in verse, that they had left. Only the exaggerated pretentions of the adepts of old French trouvères compelled the Provençals, aware of the outrage that their nation suffered, to unearth from the dust of libraries their ancient titles to glory’.

202

Philippe Martel

a somewhat pedantic synonym of ‘languedocien’. But both agree in celebrating early Occitan language and literature. Rochegude adds a strong anticlerical colour. Raynouard goes very far in the direction, once explored by Achard, of conceiving a ‘langue romane’ as a mother tongue for all of southern Europe, which thenceforth will be termed ‘Romance’ languages. Between classical Latin and those modern idioms, he imagines an intermediary stage, the Romance proper, of which the language of Troubadours gives the best idea. This (audacious) idea was refuted as early as 1818 by August Wilhelm Schlegel, but would remain popular for a long while, particularly in southern cultural circles. But the Troubadours are not the only focus of interest for Restoration scholarship. Another dimension of the Occitan Middle Ages is about to emerge up, and complete the picture: the record of the Albigensian Crusade and its horrors (cf. Martel 2002). Form the sixteenth century, this episode had been mainly interpreted in very general, catholic vs protestant terms: Are Protestants the heirs of old Albigensians? From a catholic point of view, they share a lineage of heresy. From a protestant point of view, it means that the True, pure Church was alive as early as the twelfth century, and that the Reformation will vindicate the martyrs of old times. Later, the theme of the Albigensian Crusade is used by Voltaire as an example of entrenched clerical fanaticism. Whatever the use the old Cathars are put to, in those very general debates the regional Occitan dimension is of no import, except perhaps in purely regional histories like the aforementioned Histoire Générale du Languedoc. Following the French Revolution and the Restoration of the monarchy, the Albigensian theme obtains a fresh function: as metaphor for the conflict between Progress and Reaction. Here we encounter Sismondi again, and his copious Histoire des Français. The sixth volume of this monument of liberal historiography (1823) contains an extensive account of Albigensian Crusade, seen less as a religious than as a political and social event. I gather together some key passages: Jamais la poésie n’avoit été cultivée avec plus de zèle. Presque tous les troubadours dont les noms sont restés célèbres pendant six siècles et dont les ouvrages ont été récemment rendus à la lumière appartenoient à l’époque où nous sommes parvenus. (...) Dans le même temps et les mêmes régions, l’esprit humain brisoit les antiques chaînes de la superstition; les Vaudois, les Paterins, les Albigeois s’élevoient à une religion plus sûre, ils soumettoient à l’examen des erreurs


203

longtemps consacrées par les fraudes des fourbes et par l’aveugle confiance des peuples.) Les Provençaux s’efforçoient de se constituer en corps de nation et de se séparer absolument des Français auxquels ils étoient inférieurs dans l’art de la guerre, mais sur lesquels ils l’emportoient par tous les progrès de la civilisation. (...) Les Provençaux, arrivés alors au terme le plus élevé de leur civilisation, regardoient les Français du nord comme des Barbares (...) Chez eux, les commerces et les arts avoient fait des progrès rapides. Leurs villes étoient riches et industrieuses, et chaque jour elles obtenoient de leurs seigneurs de nouveaux privilèges. Les villes (...) étoient toutes gouvernées selon des formes à peu près républicaines par des consuls nommés par le peuple.13

Here, the old Midi is not only shown as a sunny and poetically gifted country, but as the privileged theatre of the first attempt of human mind to establish civic democracy: economical development engineered in towns, with political liberty and cultural progress as natural consequences, and, to be sure, free thought. Cathars and Waldensians, are cheerfully conflated, claiming interest less by what they actually believed in (Sismondi does not know and does not care) than by the mere fact that they stood against the catholic church. But this tale has a sad ending, when northern barbarians, aroused by clerical fanaticism, come and crush this fascinating civilisation: Cette belle région fut abandonnée aux fureurs des fanatiques (...) sa population fut moissonnée par le fer (...) son commerce fut détruit, ses arts repoussés dans la barbarie, et son dialecte dégradé du rang d’une langue poétique à celui d’un patois (...) Les Provençaux cessèrent de former une Nation. (...) Eclairés de trop bonne heure, marchant trop rapidement dans la voie de 13 Sismondi 1821-44, 6: 158-59, 250-251:‘Poetry had never been cultivated more zealously. Almost all the troubadours whose names have remained famous for six centuries and whose works have been recently brought back to light belonged to this time’ (158). ‘At the same time and in the same regions, the spirit of humanity was breaking the ancient chains of superstition: Waldensians, Paterins and Albigensians were moving towards a more certain religion, and scrutinizing errors long established by deceptive fraud and by blind popular credulity’ (159). ‘The Provençals were trying to constitute themselves as a nation, and to get absolutely separated from Frenchmen, to whom they were inferior in regard to art of warfare, but whom they surpassed in every progress of civilisation’ (250). ‘The Provençals, having by then come to the acme of their civilisation, looked upon the Northern French as barbarians. By them, trade and arts had known rapid progresses. Their towns were wealthy and industrious, and everyday they obtained from their lords new privileges. Cities were all governed in almost republican form by consuls elected by the people’ (251).

204

Philippe Martel

la civilisation, ces peuples excitèrent la jalousie et l’aversion des barbares qui les entouroient. La lutte s’engagea entre les amis des ténèbres et ceux des lumières, entre les fauteurs du despotisme et ceux de la liberté. (...) Le parti qui vouloit arrêter les progrès de l’espèce humaine anéantit ses adversaires, et profita avec tant de fureur de sa victoire que le parti qu’il avoit vaincu n’a jamais pu se relever dans les mêmes provinces ou parmi la même race d’hommes.14

Enlightenment and Darkness: we move here in the realm of great principles and eternal abstractions, far from the actual land where took place what appears, indeed, as one phase in a long confrontation which the Revolution itself failed to bring to an end and which is still awaiting its conclusion. No Occitan particularism here: in fact, Sismondi, along with all progressive opinion of the 1820s, has no sympathy for present-day Southerners, generally considered brutal, underdeveloped and fanatic rustics (witness the quotations last sentence). The challenge he speaks of is a French, or even universal one. It is a battle between two principles, not between two peoples, notwithstanding the use he makes of ethnic categories. Still, unwittingly, the Swiss Sismondi provided the basis for a southern appropriation of medieval Occitan history. Any Provençal or Languedocian intellectual who subscribes to the notion that his patois had been the first literary vernacular of the West and had even given birth to other languages and literatures, will henceforth also acknowledge that his country was the first fatherland of Progress, Economic Development, Republican Democracy, free thought, and other progressive ideals. He will also hold that the collapse of this brilliant civilisation was not the fatal consequence of an inner deficiency, leading to weakness, decadence, and final extinction, but the result of military conquest by illiterate barbarians. Once our southern-born intellectual was a provincial, living in France’s backwaters amidst rude rustics; he will be now the progeny of a 14 ibid. 6: 251-252: ‘This beautiful land was left to the fury of a horde of fanatics, its population was mown down by iron. Its trade was destroyed, its arts thrown back to barbarism, and its dialect degraded from the rank of a poetical language to that of a patois. Provençals were no longer a nation. (...) Too early enlightened, walking too swiftly on the road of civilisation, those people stirred up jealousy and aversion from the barbarians who surrounded them. The struggle began between the friends of darkness and those of enlightenment, the supporters of despotism and those of freedom (...) The party opposing the progresses of mankind poured forth his foes, and profited with such fury of his victory that the vanquished party could never come back in the same provinces or in the same kind of people.’


205

medieval avant-garde. Starting from this point, it is now possible for some of those intellectuals to conceive the idea of a return to this ancient state of glory: the Occitan renaissance has here won a ‘national’-ideological basis. Gradually, such intellectuals began to claim their ancestry. Not without resistance, even at home. One example: the anonymous correspondent (apparently not southern-born) of the Marseilles newspaper Le caducée, who in on 25 June 1821 reproduced the line of reasoning of Legrand d’Aussy, as if nothing had occurred in the forty-year interval: Les Provençaux, les Languedociens, les Gascons se sont toujours piqués d’avoir beaucoup d’esprit ; mais ce que je leur conteste, c’est d’avoir plus d’imagination, qu’elle soit plus vive et plus abondante que celle des habitans du nord de la France. Mr Legrand d’Aussi ayant publié le recueil de nos fabliaux a prouvé que dans les troubadours il n’y avait jamais un trait de sentiment profond ni une aventure touchante. Les Méridionaux prétendent que le soleil y étant plus chaud et plus brillant, leur imagination doit être plus féconde. De sorte qu’en suivant ce beau raisonnement, les peuples basanés doivent avoir plus d’esprit que les blancs, les nègres plus que les basanés. Le soleil au contraire ne ferait-il pas sur les esprits ce qu’il fait sur la terre ? Il rend la Provence aride. L’exaltation dont les peuples du Midi se vantent détruit presque toujours le jugement, et sans jugemet l’enthousiasme n’est que folie: le grand mérite d’un auteur est d’unir à un raisonnement profond une sensibilité exquise, et Mr Legrand nous a démontré qu'on ne peut citer aucun ouvrage de troubadour à opposer aux fables des trouvères.15

Still, such outbursts did not hinder a growing interest in the Occitan Middle Ages, favoured by the climate of Romanticism. Did this mean that the time has come for a recognition of the Occitan heritage as part 15 Unsigned article, Le caducée 25 June 1821, quoted in Merle 1990, 664: ‘Provençals, Languedocians, Gascons always have boasted of having plenty of wit. But what I challenge is that their imagination is greater, bolder or more plentiful than that of the inhabitants of northern France. Mr Legrand d’Aussi [sic], having published the collection of our fabliaux, has proved that the troubadours never exhibited any deep sentiment or any moving adventure. The Southerner pretends that the warmer and brighter sun renders his imagination more fertile; so that, following that nice line of reasoning, dark-complexioned people must have more wit than whites, and black ones more than the dusky ones. On the contrary, does not the sun do to minds what it does to the soil? It makes the Provence an arid land. The exaltation which the southerners boast of nearly always destroys judgement, and without judgement enthusiasm is nothing but madness: the great merit of an author is to join deep reasoning to exquisite sensibility, and Mr Legrand has proved to us that you cannot name one work from a troubadour that matches the tales of the trouvères.’

206

Philippe Martel

of a wider, truly inclusive French heritage acknowledging its diversity? Not quite. 1830-1850: The Scissors By ‘scissors’, I mean two contradictory movements taking place at the same time, in those years of relative stabilisation in French society under bourgeois rule and with a national ideology. On one side the troubadours and their Albigensian accomplices were disconnected from the national discourse concerning culture and history. But on the other side, new actors enter the fray: those who take part, in increasing numbers, in the beginning of the Occitan renaissance. Of course, the rejection of the troubadours is neither immediate nor ruthless. Some first-rate French intellectuals maintain an interest in the topic, at least for a while. First of all Claude Fauriel, whose role in European as well as French cultural history is well known. His main interest is in popular literature, including that of Greece and the Balkans, as well as French culture. He may be considered a key player in a Europe-wide circulation and transfer of ideas, particularly of German origin (and more particularly still of Herderian origin; cf. Denis 1982). His university career was justified by his production and intellectual influence; his birthplace, Saint-Etienne, is some ten kilometers north-east from the linguistic boundary between Occitan and Franco-Provençal. Fauriel scrutinised medieval literatures for the origins of national cultures, each vernacular language and culture being the product of a particular Volksgeist. For him (and he was not alone in this respect), vernacular literatures are the expression of both an ethnic and a popular aspiration to selfarticulation. In their texts he seeks a primeval naturel, a naivete which the further developments of established literatures have somewhat forgotten. Occitan literature in particular was very important for him, as he saw in it the very beginning of all French literature, its status nascendi: not only the famous troubadours, but epics as well. To Occitan literature Fauriel devoted a lecture series at the Sorbonne in 1830-1831. This could be considered as the final promotion of Occitan culture into the canon of national culture – were it not for the fact that these lectures formed part, not of a French literature course, but of fauriel’s remit of foreign literature. Fauriel’s preoccupations constitute an end, not a beginning; that also goes for his following works on the subject: the 1836 Histoire de la Gaule méridionale sous la domination des conquérants


207

germains. Domination, Germanic conquerors: the very title is a declaration, and the indication of a polemical position. In 1837 Fauriel edited a medieval text, one of the early Occitan literary masterpieces as well as a historical document of great interest: the Cançon de la Crosada, the versified story of the event which Sismondi had before put under light. Fauriel has often been criticised, subsequently, for failing to notice that the poem has in fact two authors; but at least he made a text available which had remained unnoticed since at least the fourteenth century, and which Frédéric Mistral would call ‘the Bible of our nationality’. Fauriel is not in the mainstream of French literary and historical studies as they develop after 1830: he is of an older generation, the generation of those who had been young in the revolutionary years and had reached maturity during the Napoleonic regime. The younger generation of French scholars held other views, far less favourable to Occitan roots. The general context has shifted: Sismondi’s heroic tale of Enlightenment fighting Darkness was fashionable and ideologically productive when France was ruled by the two last Bourbon kings, and their revenge-thirsty aristocrat followers, when the possibility of a complete Restoration of the ancien régime style absolute monarchy was to be apprehended. With the 1830 revolution, this risk disappears, and the new regime, a constitutional monarchy, claims to incorporate also the heritage of the Revolution: a bourgeois king, and his bourgeois prime ministers (Thiers, Guizot, Soult) are now in charge, and their motto ‘enrichissez-vous par le travail et par l’épargne’ fits admirably well with the ideal of many former opponents to the Bourbon monarchy. Enlightenment has triumphed over Darkness and fanaticism, and the new battle is now between Order and what Thiers calls the vile multitude: those workers and republican hotheads who from time to time mount their barricades in the city streets. In this scheme, Albigensian ‘victims of fanaticism’ and their troubadour spokesmen have no role to play. The priority has shifted to provide French society with a common origin-tale, emphasizing its long quest for unity; here, again, the idea of a North-South conflict is counterproductive. There were civilian conflicts and wars throughout French history, and regrettable as they are, they can not go unmentioned, but at least they involved in their time the whole of French society, on every point of national territory, which made them, in a sense, mere episodes of domestic conflict within the big French family. Not so with the North/South question, which proffers the incommodious idea of two mutually hostile

208

Philippe Martel

original families, and implies that French unity was obtained, as far as the Languedoc was concerned, through the veritable extinction of one of those families. This skeleton is stored deep in the recesses of the tricoloured closet. Jules Michelet, inspiration of the republican discursive tradition concerning the nation’s history, makes this clear. As his master Sismondi had given the Albigensian crusade so prominent a place as to render it impossible to ignore, Michelet subtly revises its import. He retains the words Sismondi has used to describe pre-French ‘Provençals’ and their country, but then plays with these words: Ces gens du Midi, commerçants industrieux et civilisés, comme les Grecs, n’avaient guère meilleure réputation de piété ni de bravoure. On leur trouvait trop de savoir et de savoir-faire, trop de loquacité. Les hérétiques abondaient dans leurs cités demi mauresques; leurs moeurs étaient un peu mahométanes. (...) Le Languedoc était le vrai mélange des peuples, la vraie Babel. L’élément sémitique, juif et arabe était fort en Languedoc (...) les Juifs étaient innombrables.16

Industrious, civilised, knowledge, cities, heretics, even bourgeois urban republics: the elements of the picture are there, but distorted. And in spite of Michelet’s reputation as a democrat and humanist, one cannot but wonder at the way he insists on the racial mixture that is the characteristic of southern society, and the place he assigns to Jews in particular. As for troubadour poetry, it is swiftly dismissed: Gracieuse, légère et immorale littérature, qui n’a pas connu d’autre idéal que l’amour, l’amour de la femme, qui ne s’est jamais élevée à la beauté éternelle. Parfum stérile, fleur éphémère qui avait crû sur le roc et qui se fanait d’elle-même quand la lourde main des hommes du Nord vint se poser sur elle et l’écraser.17

16 Michelet 1975 (1833), 2:. 433 and 501: ‘Those southerners, industrious and civilised traders like the Greeks, had not really a better reputation of godliness or bravery. They were thought to have too much knowledge, too much ability, too much loquaciousness. Heretics were abundant in their half-Moorish cities. Their morals were somewhat Mahomedan (...) The Languedoc was the true mixture of people, the genuine Babel. The Semitic element, Jewish and Arab was strong in Languedoc (...) Jews were numerous.’ 17 406: ‘A graceful, frivolous and immoral literature, which did not know any ideal but love, love of woman, and which never rose up to eternal beauty. A sterile perfume, short-lived flower grown on rock, which was already withering when the heavy hand of Northerners came and covered it to crush it.’


209

If someone is to blame, it is feudal barons, and church authorities. As for the king of France, he is the one who after the crisis recovers the land for the sake of the building the French state, preparing, in the long run, the reconciliation under his banner between north and south, henceforth united in the same homeland, fighting side by side against the same hereditary (all too numerous) enemies, and happily oblivious of their ancient grudges.. Literary history follows the same trajectory, which tends to bypass more and more the specific culture of southern France in order to preserve the master narrative of a necessary national unity around a common unique language – this being the clear and precise French. A case in point are the remarks on medieval literature in the Cours de littérature française taught in 1830 by Villemain, a professor at the Sorbonne and future member of the Académie Française: Pendant que la France du Nord était livrée à des dominations dures et violentes (...) le Midi avait été plus paisible, plus industrieux, plus riche (...) La douceur du climat, je ne sais quelle impression chevaleresque et généreuse venue de l’Espagne et même des Maures avaient communiqué aux habitants une élégance poétique qui se rapproche un peu de l’humanité des temps modernes (...) La poésie provençale, c’était, pour ainsi dire, la liberté de la presse des temps féodaux, liberté plus âpre, plus hardie et moins réprimée que la nôtre. Dans les sirventés provençaux apparaît donc non seulement une source de poésie nouvelle, mais un principe de raisonnement et de liberté qui s’oppose à ce qui était alors bien plus puissant que le fer, l’influence théologique et monacale.18

This sums up the liberal doxa about the achievements of progressive Occitan literature, blessed by its climate. The author’s carefully chosen anachronisms establish an ideological complicity with a public sharing liberal ideas and happy to see them anticipated even in the so-called dark ages. But Villemain is not altogether convinced by the troubadours: ‘We Northerners, with our rainy summers and cold winters, I wonder if we 18 Villemain 1830, 1-ff.: ‘While northern France underwent hard and violent domination (...), the Midi had been more peaceful, more industrious, wealthier (...). The mildness of climate, a certain impulse of chivalry and magnanimity coming out of Spain and even from the Moors, had communicated to the inhabitants a poetic elegance that is not unlike the humanity of modern times. (...) Provençal poetry was, so to say, the liberty of press in feudal times: a tougher, bolder, less repressed one than ours. (...) In Provençal sirventé verse appears then not only a source of new poetry, but a principle of reasoning and freedom that stands against what was then far stronger than iron: theological and monastic influence.’

210

Philippe Martel

are good judges for southern poetry’ (p. 161). Climate now recurs as a cleavage between north and south. Cette poésie des Troubadours, en devenant satirique et haineuse, perdait quelque chose de sa brillante inspiration. Elle semble née pour chanter le beau ciel de Provence, le printemps, les plaisirs; quand elle s'arrachait à ce doux emploi, elle était souvent plus injurieuse qu'énergique (...) Il est manifeste, il est visible que les Provençaux haïssaient les Français et voulaient exister à part. Un peuple, une langue, une langue, un peuple. Si la Provence fût devenue indépendante, c'était un peuple du Midi de plus, avec son nom, sa langue, ses arts, son génie propre.19

This anticipates Michelet’s verdict of ‘gracious and immoral’. Worse: the linguistic singularity of those southerners, and the hatred they felt for their northern neighbours could have led to a historical catastrophe: the birth of a separate nation with a separate language and conscience; to the detriment of France proper. In the equation ‘a language, a people’, Villemain’s France offers no space for Occitan. Anyway, Villemain at this point dismissed Occitan with a cursory obituary, moving to this true topic: Messieurs, nous avons rapidement esquissé les traits principaux de l’esprit provençal, qui, d’abord parent de l’esprit français, s’en était séparé, avait brillé d’un vif éclat, et s’affaiblit et s’éteint au moment où les provinces du Midi sont absorbées dans le territoire français. Maintenant, nous nous rapprochons de notre véritable patrie, et nous tâcherons de démêler les premiers caractères, les premiers indices du génie purement français.20

‘Purely French’ ... Those who were building the edifice of a ‘purely French’ literary history, had the stroke of good fortune around this time. In 1837, the very moment of Fauriel’s edition of Cançon de la Crosada, Francisque Michel retrieved the Chanson de Roland from the Bodleian 19 223: ‘This troubadour poetry, by becoming satirical and hateful, was losing something of its brilliant inspiration. It seems to be born to sing the beautiful sun, the spring and pleasures of the Provence. Once it tore itself away from this sweet use, it was often more injurious than energetic. It is manifest, it is visible that Provençals hated Frenchmen, and wanted to live apart. A people, a language; a language, a people. Had Provence remained independent, it would have been a was a southern people, with its name, its arts, its own spirit’. 20 ibid.: ‘Gentlemen, we have rapidly outlined the main features of the Provençal spirit, which, at first akin to the French spirit, had left it, had had a vivid glamour, and weakened and vanished as the Midi’s provinces got absorbed into French territory. By now, we get actually nearer to our true fatherland, and we will try to make out the first features, the first clues of the purely French genius.’


211

Library at Oxford. An epic dealing with Charlemagne, the emperor of Douce France (as the text calls it); an epic opposing the Christian hero Roland and the Saracens whose descendants France was just then confronting once again in Algeria: what could be more convenient as a foundational text for French literature? Its rough-hewn virility, too, made it different from the effete amorousness of troubadour poetry. Henceforth (and until the present day) the canonic presentation of French literary history in schoolbooks and handbooks will prioritise epics and chansons de geste, relegating lyrical poetry to a more modest place. Two samples of those handbooks will suffice as examples. La poésie provençale, déjà si languissante vers la fin du siècle précédent, s’éteignit au XIIIe siècle avec la civilisation qui l’avait fait naître. En limitant ce travail à la littérature française, je devrai laisser dans l’ombre tout ce qui se rapporte aux lettres latines et même à la poésie provençale, qui ne nous a rien donné ou fort peu de chose, et qui se rattache plus naturellement, par l’analogie de la langue comme par l’influence des sentiments, à l’Italie et à l’Espagne.21

After 1860 After 1860, medieval philology in Paris was dominated by Gaston Paris and Paul Meyer, who through the Ecole des Chartes, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, and the Collège de France, held a hegemonic position in the field of philological studies until the beginning of twentieth century, helping their disciples to install themselves in strategic positions throughout the university system. Although Meyer was a friend of Mistral, and capable of dealing with old Occitan texts, it is clear that the two masters and their pupils locate early French literature within the langue d’oïl. Both doubt any real difference between southern and northern ‘gallo-romance’ dialects: the various and varied idioms across the national territory constitute a tapestry in which their colours get imperceptibly mingled – and Occitan disappears (Lafont 1991).

21

Nisard 1844, 102: ‘Provençal poetry, yet languishing by the end of the twelfth century, died in thirteenth century with the civilisation that had given it birth’, and Gérurez 1852, ix: ‘By restricting this work to French literature, I shall have to let aside all that has to do with Latin literature and even Provençal poetry, which left us nothing or hardly anything, and which is more naturally linked, both through analogy of language and through influence of feelings, to Italy and Spain.’

212

Philippe Martel

In Paris at least. Elsewhere, things are different. In Germany, where Gaston Paris (who studied there) and Meyer seek their methodological models (grudgingly so, after the defeat of 1870), ‘Provenzalisch’ philology flourish since the time of Diez and his disciples. The part played by German universities for two centuries in the field of Occitan research would be a subject by itself, and can here only be hinted at here in passing. Numerous text editions, anthologies, grammars, theses were published in Germany and in German, such as Levy’s modestly-titled Supplement Wörterbuch complementing the old dictionary of Raynouard: several volumes which constitute until now the best available old Occitan dictionary. I also pass over those German poets like Heine and Lenau, who use Provençal material (featuring Albigensians or troubadours) as subjects for verse or theatre. Instead, another development needs to be highlighted: the local disciples of Raynouard and Rochegude. Thus the Provençal Diouloufet, a correspondent of Raynouard who published Occitan poetry as soon as 1819. In a 1829 selection of his poems, the memory of the old troubadours is showcased: Graci a tu, Muso prouvençalo, / Nouestre païs es immourtel / Adounc n’avies pas toun egalo / Toun regno semblo eternel: / La fiero Muso de la Seino / Hui voou regnar en souveraino / Despiei que siam vengut francés. / Mai a qu amo bèn sa patrio / Et leis cançouns et l’armounio / Toujour plai lou prouvençalés.22

But who reads Occitan poetry? Some (rare) southern intellectuals undertake to study and edit old Occitan texts, but these are not established academics. A case in point is Gatien-Arnoult from Toulouse, the editor in 1841 of the Leys d’Amor, a fourteenth-century handbook for troubadour poetry and Occitan grammar: In a somewhat ironic introduction, he relates how he tried to obtain financial support for his work from the Department of Education, and how support was promised but vainly so; so that Gatien-Arnoult in order to get his book published was compelled to apply to the Académie des Jeux Floraux and the municipality of Toulouse. The uncooperative Education Minister who strung Gatien-Arnoult along with vain promises turns out to be Villemain, whose opinion about the troubadours we have encountered. Gatien-Arnoult was, politically 22 Diouloufet 1829: ‘Thanks to you, Provençal muse, our land is immortal. By then you had no equal, your reign seemed eternal. The proud Muse of the Seine today wants to reign supreme, since we have become French. But, to whom loves his fatherland, and songs, and harmony, the provençalés is always pleasing.’


213

speaking, republican-minded, not a very good idea in 1841; but that does not fully explain the lack of interest among national institutions. Another Occitan intellectual was more fortunate. Bernard MaryLafon, born in the Montauban region, published his patriotic Histoire politique, religieuse et littéraire du Midi de la France in 1845 – in Paris, where Mary-Lafon had previously tried (rather unsuccessfully so) to make his mark as a novelist. His purpose: to tell the story of a Midi characterised by its love for freedom, gifted with qualities such as tolerance and cleverness. This Midi finds itself regularly confronted with the oppressive jealousy of a semi-barbarous North, the country of the Franks. Throughout the centuries, the dramatic conflicts in Southern France (the Albigensian crusade, the sixteenth-century wars of religion, popular revolts, and the federalist insurrection of 1793) mark so many moments of struggle between North and South. In the end, Mary-Lafon endorses post-revolutionary France because it subscribes to the values so long defended by Southerners; but this does not alter the vindictive tone of his history. Of course in this epic of the indomitable Southern spirit, the troubadours have their place (Mary-Lafon 1845 2: 343-390). Immediately afterwards comes the Albigensian Crusade, which ends the second volume and opens the third. Mary-Lafon not only quotes troubadour poems in the original but also gives a fairly accurate translation, and biographic comments about the main poets. Against national historians and literary specialists who have at that time begun to dismiss both the troubadours and the Albigensian Crusade, Mary-Lafon founds a counter-discourse cleverly using the topoi established some twenty years earlier by Sismondi. Just as Michelet draws up the outline of a national French history, whose great principles, events and heroes constitute a canonical doxa about Eternal France, Mary-Lafon, with his recurrent cycle of northern attacks against freedom-loving southerners, provides his Félibrige and Occitanist successors (on whom, cf. Martel 1992) with an Occitan doxa. And successors he had, even if he himself did not like them very much. Frederic Mistral (the 1904 Nobel Laureate and most prominent representative of the Occitan renaissance) and his Félibrige friends present themselves as the heirs of the medieval poets, and never fail to celebrate their glory. One example among many others is Mistral’s 1861 poem ‘Odo i troubaire catalan’, an ode dedicated to Catalans poets and to the freshly re-established Occitan-Catalan fraternity:

214

Philippe Martel

Li Troubaire – e degun lis a vincu despièi / A la barbo di clergue, à l’auriho di rèi / Aussant la lengo poupulàri, / Cantavon amourous, cantavon libramen / D’un mounde nòu l’avenimen / E lou mesprès di vièis esglàri. Alor i’avié de pitre, e d’aspre nouvelun./ La republico d’Arle au founs de si palun / arresounavo l’Emperaire / Aquelo de Marsiho en plen age feudau / Moustravo escri sus soun lindau / Tóuti lis ome soun de fraire. Alor, d’eilamoundaut, quand Simoun de Mountfort /pèr la glòri de Diéu e la lèi dóu plus fort/ Descaussanavo la Crousado, / E que li croupatas, abrasama de fam, / Voulastrejavon, estrifant / Lou nis la maire e la nisado, Tarascoun e Beucaire, e Toulouso, e Beziés, / Fasent bàrri de car, Prouvènço li vesiés, / Li vesiés bouie e courre is armo / E pèr la liberta peri tóuti counsènt.../ Aro, nous agroumelissèn / Davans la caro d’un gendarmo.23

However, although Mistral and his fellow Félibres from 1854 onward would invoke the troubadours in poems, discourses, quotations and epigraphs, they showed little interest in seriously studying them. Their knowledge of the topic is most often second-hand and superficial. One exception was that circle of Montpellier intellectuals who in 1869 founded a Société des Langues Romanes, and a journal (which still exists), the Revue des Langues Romanes combining studies about contemporary and medieval Occitan, editions of medieval and modern literary texts, even folktales and songs (Martel 1988). But they soon become embroiled in rivalry with Paris-based institutional Romance Studies, and its leaders Gaston Paris and Paul Meyer: Parisian academics against provincial amateur scholars... By 1890, the founders of Societé des Langues Romanes, the félibres Tourtoulon and Roque-Ferrier, lost editorial control of their journal, which from that moment onwards would (until recently) devote less and less space to proper Occitan studies. Generally speaking, the Félibrige had precious few professional academics on its rolls, and those never played a prominent role in it. And the young fervid militants each generation provided to the Félibrige do not seem very interested in austere 23 Mistral 1889, 166-168: ‘The troubadours – and no one since then surpassed them, in spite of the priests – raising the common people’s language to the ear of kings, sang lovingly, sang freely, the coming of a new world, and the scorn of old fears. By then there were hearts, and sharp revival. The Arles republic, back in its marshes, faced down the Emperor. That of Marseille, in feudal times, displayed written on his gate: ‘All men are brethren’. By then when from far away to North, Simon de Montfort, for the glory of God and the law of the strongest unchained the crusade and when the starving raven, came flying, tearing apart nest, mother and brood. Tarascon and Beaucaire, and Toulouse, and Beziers, their body a bulwark, Provence, thou saw’st them, thou saw’st them seething, running at arms, and for freedom willingly dying. Nowadays, we crouch in front of the face of a constable.’


215

studies of the language they use, and of the troubadour ancestry they boast of. It comes as no surprise, then, to see that after1850 the main studies about ancient Occitan and its literature, as well as the editions of the fundamental Occitan corpus, continue to be pursued in Paris or in German universities. Conclusion The problem with the troubadours is perhaps they have been spoken of far more than actually studied: what Robert Lafont calls the ‘texte-troubadours’, as substitute for the ‘texte des troubadours’. Just as if they were not that important in themselves, but only as a pretext to speak of something else. However, they had their chance, at one moment. They could have been integrated into the official national canon as the first vernacular lyric poets in France’s literary history. Their moment begins around 1774, and for all practical purposes may be considered as closed around 1840. They could sow an entitlement to canonicity: their international renown in their own day, to begin with, had been long testified to by Italian scholars. There was also their reputation of poetic elegance and polish, which made them stand out amidst the crudeness commonly attributed, in the late eighteenth century, to the Gothic Middle Ages. Their style was both more natural and more naive, as befits the first generation to use vernacular Romance for literary purposes; cultivated, almost modern. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the troubadours’ standing was boosted by their association with the political and social events of the Albigensian Crusade: progressive thought and progressive poetry stood shoulder to shoulder against feudal and clerical violence. But in the long run they faded from the family photograph of France’s glorious past. For their language is not French The illusion that Occitan is a variant of French, nourished by the false symmetry Langue d’oc – Langue d’oïl and the confusing linguistic category of patois, only lasted as long as the original texts remained unavailable; a more accurate picture of France’s linguistic landscape only emerged after the 1789 Revolution and with the linguistic surveys of the Napoleonic Empire. Occitan is then recognised as distinctly non-French, not even some collateral ancestor of present French. Worse, its only obvious living

216

Philippe Martel

relative is the contemporary patois of the Midi, doomed to be eradicated. As for its association with the Albigensian Crusade, politically useful to by left-wing, liberal intellectuals of the during Restoration period, it becomes problematic after 1830. Before Sismondi, inhabitants of southern France and speakers of southern Oc-French could figure as a part of a larger whole, the people of France at large, of which they were merely the most sunburnt and extraverted component. But the very insistence of liberal historiography upon their racial difference and the recriminations over the horrors of the crusade breaks through this illusion as well: this Midi definitely was non-French. The building of a national French ideology after 1789 demands unity first of all, and rejects anything that can limit or endanger this unity. History, including literary history, has to serve a purpose: to tell the reassuring story of a difficult but steady march towards unification. In this context, there is no place for any Occitan exceptionalism. Other factors play a role as well: the interference of a ‘Midi’ ethnotype based upon climate theory, giving rise to a characterisation of the sun-dominated South as less truly French, leaning towards a Spanish or Italian temperament (two nationalities enjoying little prestige in French public opinion). Romantic exoticism and an apprehensive view of southern mobs as particularly prone to political violence (from the time of the Revolution to the ‘White Terror’ of 1815) widen this perceived temperamental gap and serve to alienate and depreciate Southerners as seen by the intellectual and cultural circles of the capital. In fact the ethnotypical representation of Southerners is somewhat contradictory: the bright southern sun is held to breed both the sensual, frivolous troubadours and the disquieting, violent brown-skinned Provençal and Languedocian peasants, with their illiteracy and their incomprehensible patois.24 But at any rate, and whatever the variant chosen, the final picture is not positive. At this point, French official culture feels it is more expedient to dismiss the troubadours, their poetry and their language, all together. Of course, southern intellectuals could have recuperated it all, and have turned it into a trump card in the assertion of cultural dignity, of autonomy, perhaps even, in due course, of political action towards the acknowledgement by the Centre of the rights of the Periphery: the well24 On climate theory and on the ambivalence inherent in many ethnotypes, see the relevant articles in Beller & Leerssen 2007.


217

known transition, first identified by Miroslav Hroch (1985) between the A and B phases of national movements. Indeed, some did try to follow that more activist path. Their failure was die in the first place to institutional factors: they lacked the institutions that could match the weight and influence of national French culture and the national ideology, and sustain and diffuse an alternative ideology locally. The Paris/Province power imbalance, so pronounced in French history since at least the sixteenth century, left no place for any local counterforce, be it political or simply cultural. Moreover, most of the local intelligentsia preferred to establish their career moves at the Centre rather than to linger unknown at the periphery – witness the figure of Bérenger and the early ambitions of Mary-Lafon. Only after those early ambitions had miscarried did he reorient his career strategy and try to position himself as the spokesman of southern difference on the central cultural market. Even Mistral himself initially sought acclaim in Paris with his first poem in 1859, hoping that the endorsement of ‘national’ critics would gain him attention from his fellow provincials, back there, at home. But that is another story. Socially speaking, the protagonists of the Occitan renaissance are mainly middle-class men: marginal to the cultural elite in terms of class as well as geography. They possessed neither the cultural capital nor the actual wealth and social weight to enable them to establish an alternative society milieu. That is why they may use the troubadours as a totemic reference, something like an ancestor-worship (rhetorically eloquent rather than historically accurate) without evincing any desire for specific knowledge about those ancestors. In fact, what knowledge they have is culled from Parisian sources rather than homegrown. And that, in turn, is why it will be a long time before the troubadours, neglected in Paris, will meet with a better treatment within their own homeland...

References Beller, Manfred, and Joep Leerssen, eds. 2007. Imagology. The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of national characters. A critical survey. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Belmont, Nicole. 1995. Aux sources de l’ethnologie française: L’Académie Celtique. Paris: CTHS.

218

Philippe Martel

De Certeau, Michel, Dominique Julia and Jacques Revel. 1975. Une politique de la langue. Paris: Gallimard. Denis, Andrée. 1982. Poésie populaire, poésie nationale. Deux intercesseurs: Fauriel et Mme de Staël. Romantisme 35: 3-24. Rieger, Angelika, and Bernadette Schmidt. Der deutsche Beitrag zur Okzitanistik, 1803-1983. Eine Bibliographie. www.occitania.de/bibliografie /bibliografie.htm. Diouloufet, Jean. 1829. Odo a la Muso Prouvençalo. Id., Fablos, contes, epitros e autros pouesios prouvençalos. Aix. Fabre d’Olivet, Antoine. 1803. Le Troubadour: Poésies occitaniques du XIIIe siècle. Paris. Fabre d’Olivet, Antoine. 1988. La langue d’oc rétablie, ed. Georg Kremnitz. Wien: Braumüller. Fauriel, Claude. 1836a. Histoire de la poésie provençale. 3 vols., Paris. Fauriel, Claude. 1836b. Histoire de la Gaule méridionale sous les conquérants germains. Paris. Fauriel, Claude. 1837. Histoire de la croisade contre les hérétiques albigeois. Paris. Gardy, Philippe. 1987. L’Occitanie d’Aubin-Louis Millin. Amiras 15-16: 149-158. Gatien-Arnoult, Adolphe Félix. 1841. Les Leys d’amor. Toulouse: Académie des Jeux Floraux. Géruzez, E. 1852. Histoire de la littérature française du Moyen Age aux temps modernes. Paris. Hroch, Miroslav. 1985. Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lafont, Robert. 1982. Le ‘Midi’ des troubadours: Histoire d’un texte. Romantisme 35: 25-48. Lafont, Robert. 1991. La Geste de Roland. 2 vols., Paris: L'Harmattan. Lafont, Robert. 1999. Pour rendre à l’oc et aux Normands leur dû: Genèse et premier développement de l’art épique gallo-roman. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 42: 139-178. Legrand d’Aussy, Pierre Jean-Baptiste. 1781. Observations sur les troubadours. Paris: Onfray. Martel, Philippe. 1982. Les historiens du début du XIXème siècle et le Moyen Age occitan: Midi éclairé, Midi martyr ou Midi pittoresque. Romantisme 35: 49-71. Martel, Philippe. 1988. La Revue des Langues Romanes. Romanische Forschungen 100: 246-257. Martel, Philippe. 1992. Le Félibrige. Les Lieux de Mémoire, ed. P. Nora, 3.2: 567-611. Paris: Gallimard. Martel, Philippe. 1997. Occitanum est, non legitur. L’estatut de la literatura occitana dins los manuals de literatura francesa (Sègles XIX e XX). Textes occitans 2: 71-84.


219

Martel, Philippe. 2002. Les Cathares et l’histoire. Toulouse: Privat. Mary-Lafon, Bernard. 1842-45. Histoire politique, religieuse et littéraire du Midi de la France. 4 vols., Paris: Mellier. Merle, René. 1990. L’Ecriture du provençal de 1775 à 1840. 2 vols., Béziers: CIDO Michelet, Jules. 1975 (1833). Histoire de France. Paris: Flammarion. Milllot, abbé Claude François. 1774. Histoire littéraire des Troubadours. 2 vols., Paris. Mistral, Frédéric. 1889 (1876). Lis Isclo d’or. Paris. Nisard, Désiré. 1844. Histoire de la littérature française. Paris. Raynouard, François. 1816-18. Choix des poésies originales desTroubadours. 3 vols., Paris. Rochegude, amiral Henri de. 1819. Parnasse occitanien. Toulouse. Schlegel, August-Wilhelm. 1818. Observations sur la langue et la littérature provençales. Paris. Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte. 1996. Idéologie, Révolution et uniformité de la langue, Sprimont: Mardaga. Sismondi, Jean Simonde de. 1821-44. Histoire des Français. 31 vols., Paris. Trélis, Jean-Luline. 1807. De l’idiome languedocien et de celui du Gard en particulier, ed. Ph. Martel in Lengas 24 (1988): 101-118 Villemain, Abel-François. 1830. Cours de littérature française. Paris.

CASE STUDIES II EUROPEAN CROSS-CURRENTS: ENGLAND, GERMANY AND THE LOW COUNTRIES


THE CASE OF BEOWULF Tom Shippey Abstract The poem Beowulf proved to be, from its first publication, a contested site for nationalist scholarship. Though written in Old English, it dealt exclusively with Scandinavia and its nearest neighbours. Was the poem, then, in essence a poema danicum, as its first editor called it? Or did it emanate from the disputed borderland of Schleswig, where Low German speakers were still in the nineteenth century under Danish rule? Interpretation of the poem was affected at every level by nationalist sympathies, but even more by sub-national and supra-national sentiments expressed by scholars of divided loyalties, including pro-German Schleswigers, pro-Danish Icelanders, and Englishmen such as Stephens and Kemble (respectively pro-Danish and pro-German, but outstripping all others in intemperate chauvinism). The poem’s early politicisation continues to affect scholarship to the present day. Beowulf has now been known to scholarship for almost two hundred years, and has generated an immense amount of scholarly activity and publication. In several important respects, though, we are no nearer certain knowledge than we were at the beginning, and the problems apparent to the scholars of the 1810s remain problematic in the 2000s. I will begin, accordingly, by stating first three (I think) incontrovertible facts about the poem; go on to indicate three areas of general agreement; and then point to three embarrassing contradictions.

224

Tom Shippey

First, the facts: – we have only one manuscript of the poem; – its provenance is unknown; – it can be dated palaeographically to approximately the year 1000. Second, the areas of general agreement: – the poem is in Old English; – there is general agreement (now) that it must have been a written composition, and is not a record of an oral epic; – and there is general agreement (now) that the many references to God and to Christian belief indicate a securely Christian milieu for composition. Third, the contradictions, which deny successively the three agreements just above, in reverse order: – though there are many references to God, and several to the Old Testament, there is never any mention of Christ, or the Saviour, or the Redeemer, or anything similar; – in the same way, though the poem uses the native verb (for)writan and the loan-word (ge)scrifan, they never mean ‘to write’, rather ‘to cut’ and ‘to judge’; – finally, and most embarrassingly for a potential national epic, there is no mention in the poem of England, or Britain, or the English, or the Saxons, or anyone who might be considered English except for two dubious and marginal figures, Offa and Hengest, both names known to English history, but both firmly localized within the poem in Continental Europe. The poem is centred on the Danes, the Swedes, and the Geats – whom most scholars have identified with the Gautar or South Sweden. In brief, our literate Christian English poet has created a poem which is entirely about illiterate pre-Christian Scandinavians. The poem, and the events of the poem, do not seem to match each other. We have no context in which to place it. One result of this is that the poem became, immediately upon publication, available for appropriation by competing theorists. It also immediately became a contested site in both a philological, and a geo-

THE CASE OF BEOWULF

225

graphical, contested area. I can perhaps illuminate this briefly by inviting readers to consider three brief quotations. The first is the title given to the poem in its editio princeps, brought out in 1815 in Copenhagen by Grímur Jónsson Thorkelín, Étatsraad and National Archivist first to King Christian VII of Denmark, and then to King Frederik VI. It is probably significant, on several levels, that Thorkelin was an Icelander rather than a Dane, though of course Icelanders were then and long remained subjects of the King of Denmark. He demonstrated his loyalty – and his desire to justify the expenses of his long stay in England almost thirty years before (see Kiernan 1986, 14-16) by calling the new poem: De Danorum Rebus Gestis Secul[is] III et IV: Poema Danicum Dialecto Anglosaxonica. Ignoring the date and the claim to be a ‘Danish poem’, what did Thorkelin mean by ‘Dialecto Anglosaxonica’? Lurking in this is the claim that Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, was just a dialect of Old Norse, of which Thorkelin, as an Icelander, could claim to be a native speaker. The claim was useful personally as establishing his editorial credentials. Besides, both languages could be said to be dialects of a common tongue, sometimes called (for instance by Thorkelin’s opponent N.F.S. Grundtvig) ‘Gammel-Nordisk’, or ‘Old Nordic’. Since this was also referred to (in Old Norse) as dönsk tunga, or ‘the Danish tongue’, AngloSaxon could be seen as a dialect of ancestral Danish, which helped to make the point that it was in every way Poema Danicum. I do not think that Thorkelin thought any further than that, though later scholars were to make a serious controversy out of its implications (see, e.g. Brynjolfsson 1852, discussed below).1 My second quotation is the famous runic inscription from the golden horn of Gallehus, discovered in 1734, stolen and melted down in 1802, but with its inscription fortunately recorded: Ek HlewagastiR HoltijaR horna tawido2 It is agreed that this means, ‘I Hlewagast the Holting made the horn’. But what language is it in? Professor Hans Frede Nielsen (Nielsen, 2002: 22) translates the inscription into, successively, Old English, Old Norse, Old Saxon, and Gothic, as follows: 1 Most of the nineteenth-century works cited here are discussed and excerpted, with translation into English, in Shippey and Haarder 1998. Translated quotations are taken from there, unless otherwise stated. 2 Scholarly convention is to print transcriptions from runic letters in bold.

226

Tom Shippey

Ic hléogiest hylte horn táwode Ek hlégestr hyltir horn *táða Ik hleogast hulti horn tóida Ik hliugasts hulteis haurn tawida One might say that the only sensible conclusion is that it is in the language Prof. Nielsen calls Early Runic. But this was not immediately apparent. For one thing, it is clear that the letter given by scholars nowadays as R, at the end of the second and third words of the inscription, is not the same as normal runic r, as in ‘horna’. It was read early on as m, which allowed Karl Müllenhoff (see Nielsen 2002, 15) to read both words as dative plurals, so that the inscription meant ‘I made the horn for the Holtings (or Holsteiners), the people of the forest’. But perhaps it should be transliterated Z? An –r ending on ‘gastir’ would be very like regular Old Norse gestr. But a –z ending would leave it possible to take the inscription as Primitive Germanic, or even German, rather than Norse. Remember that the horns were found no more than ten kilometres from the present Danish-German border, on the Danish side. But if the inscriptions were in Primitive German, not Norse, then that would imply that the area had been originally German-speaking, and that Danish had been imposed on it at some later period. Which, of course, in the early nineteenth century, many German-speakers in Schleswig-Holstein thought was exactly what was still happening. Both the Gallehus horn and the poem of Beowulf accordingly became involved in the question of Schleswig-Holstein, or Slesvig-Holsten (in future written in the compromise form of Slesvig-Holstein). See here my third quotation, a rather longer one. This comes from a letter written by the Norwegian philologist P.A. Munch (1810-63), and sent to the Copenhagen professor George Stephens (1813-95). (I should add that it was Munch who first suggested the R transliteration for the disputed Gallehus rune). The letter is dated 27th April 1848, just after the first clashes of the first Prusso-Danish war, expresses strong support for the Danes and ends with a remarkable PS: Aren’t you enthusiastic, by the way, about the Danes’ bravery and strength? Hwæt we Gar-Dena guð-frumena þegena and eorla þrym gefrunon! hu þa æþelingas ellen fremedon! Sona Scylding sceaðena þreatum

THE CASE OF BEOWULF

227

meodosetla oftyhð! monegum mægþum Seaxna and Pryssa, þara þe sittað ymbe Fifeldor facen-fulle, wraðe wærlogan, wod-frecan; habban willað Hæðaburh, and frumlond Ongelcynnes; þæt is aglæc þeod. (Indrebø and Kolsrud, 1924-71, I: 277)

This is of course Old English pastiche.3 The first five lines are based on Beowulf lines 1-5, though they move into the present tense. Especially striking, though, is the echo in line 7 of the story of Offa in lines 35-44 of the poem Widsith, who ‘fixed the boundary against the Myrgings bi Fifeldore, on the Eider: the Engle and Swæfe kept it from then on as Offa struck it out’. Munch’s point is that the border which was being fought over in the fourth (?) century, and which seemed to have been settled then, was still being fought over in the nineteenth, and by what he regarded as the same adversaries, the Danes and the Germans. In lines 9 and 10 he was perhaps, in writing to an Englishman, trying to get English support and sympathy (which the Danes of 1848 badly wanted) by alleging that the Prussians and the Holsteiners were trying to seize ancestral England too: not that there was any problem in gaining George Stephens’s sympathy. His sympathies are well indicated by the title of his Handbook of the Old-Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England (1884) – Stephens meant by this title to claim (a) that England and Scandinavia had a common culture, as shown by their use of the runic alphabet (b) that they had possessed a common language too, indeed ‘Gammel-Nordisk,’ ‘Old-Northern’ (c) that this common culture was not shared by Germany, which, whatever Wilhelm Grimm or John Kemble might say, had never used runes or the runic alphabet.4 Munch, in short, saw Old English poetry as preserving memory of a political situation 3 The meaning: ‘Lo, we have heard of the power of the warriors of the SpearDanes, thanes and nobles, how the princes carried out deeds of valour. Quickly the Scylding carries off the mead-benches from troops of enemies, from many tribes of Saxons and Prussians, those who are camped by the Eider, cruel oath-breakers, full of treachery, mad for war; they want to have Hedeby, and the ancestral land of the English race: that is a monstrous people.’ 4 For Kemble on runes, see Kemble 1840. The essay is famous for giving the first fairly correct reading of the inscription on the Ruthwell Cross, and for Kemble’s merciless mockery of the earlier attempts by the Icelanders Thorleifr Repp and Finnur Magnusson. Just to show that the issue is not dead, the Icelanders have been defended, and Kemble in his turn attacked, by another Icelander, see Fjalldal 2005.

228

Tom Shippey

very similar to that of his own time, and seeing it from the Scandinavian side. George Stephens’s last work, incidentally, written at the age of ninety-one, was titled Er Engels en Tysk Sprog? (1894, ‘Is English a German Language?’), and the answer was a resounding ‘No!’ One can see that an English poem which was all about Danes was very welcome, in 1815 and later, to some factions. It showed that the English were really Scandinavians; and more importantly that their ancestral homeland of Angeln, in Slesvig, had also always been Scandinavian, and should remain so; regardless of the question of Holstein, the Danish border should run along the river Eider, as in Widsith. Any Slesvigers who thought different were just being ungrateful. But then they always had been, as you could see from Beowulf. It is this thought, I think, which explains Thorkelin’s sudden panegyric on King Hrothgar in his Latin ‘Preface’ to the edition: Fuit aliis una et vetus causa bellandi, profunda cupido imperii et divitiarum. HRODGARO longe alia mens fuit. Ut suos ille subditos protegeret, posteris firmam redderet pacem, et libertatem darit mari, necessum habuit arma ferre in Jutos, et horum socios Frisones, populos immanes, duros, feros, barbarosqve, qui tam fidei et honestatis, quam humanitatis et religionis expertes nihil non ad effrænatæ libidinis sugestionem gerebant. Multa igitur Regi optimo pericula domi, militiæ multa adversa fuere, qvorum omnia Deorum auxiliis et virtute suâ superavit: inqve his omnibus, neqve animus negotio defuit, neqve decretis labos. Malæ secundæqve res opes, non ingenium mutabant. Qvod bonum, faustum, felixqve esset populo Danico, semper ante oculos habuit, et jugiter in id ferebatur, ut Jutos et Frisones Scyldingis conjungeret, horum plebi civitatem daret, primores in patres legeret, unam gentem, unam rem publicam faceret.5

5 Thorkelin 1815, xiii-xiv: ‘Others had an old and single motive for making war, the deep greed for power and riches. Hrodgar was of far different mind. In order to protect his subjects, restore a lasting peace for his descendants, and give them the liberty of the sea, he found it necessary to lead an army against the Jutes, and their associates the Frisians, monstrous people, hard, fierce and barbarous, who, wanting in faith and honesty no less than in humanity and religion, did nothing unprompted by their unbridled lust. There were therefore great dangers for this best of kings at home, and in the field much adversity, all of which he overcame with the help of the Gods and by his own valour: and in all of this, neither did his courage fail in any hardship, nor his industry in any decision. Good and bad fortune affected his wealth, but not his character. He always had before his eyes what was good, favourable and fortunate for the Danish people, and worked continually to join the Jutes and Frisians together with the Scyldings, giving citizenship to their common people, appointing their nobility as senators, making them one people, one state.’

THE CASE OF BEOWULF

229

There are two things underlying this passage: an editorial confusion, and a political motive, the one serving the other. One aspect of the editorial confusion is this. The monster Grendel is described as an eoten – a rare word in Old, Middle and even modern English, but used some eight times in the poem. It was, however, one which Thorkelin understood well enough, because of its similarity to the Norse-Icelandic word iötunn, ‘giant’. However, the poem also refers some five times, if one accepts modern editorial decisions, to the tribe of the Jutes, the Eote in Old English. Unfortunately, the genitive plural of eoten is eoten-a, and the genitive plural of Eote is Eot-ena. The two are easily confused, and indeed it seems likely that the Beowulf-scribe himself confused them a thousand years ago. Moreover, in one of the most confusing ‘digressions’ of the poem – a paraphrase of a heroic song sung to entertain the company in King Hrothgar’s hall, lines 1068-1159 – the Eotena, as they have become, are associated with the Frysan, or Frisians, and in strong opposition to the Danes. This explains Thorkelin’s account of ‘the Jutes, and their associates the Frisians, monstrous people’, enemies of the Danes: he takes Jutes and giants to be the same thing, explaining in an Index that this is the way people talk about their enemies. I can, however, see nothing in the poem to explain the remarks about Hrothgar working continually ‘to join the Jutes and Frisians together with the Scyldings, giving citizenship to their common people, appointing their nobility as senators, making them one people, one state’. This, I think, is contemporary politics. Thorkelin praises Hrothgar for doing what his master Frederik VI was engaged in doing, namely, trying to persuade the inhabitants of Slesvig-Holstein, who might well be called Jutes, that they were actually and in spirit Danes: and trying to draw in at the same time, NB, another awkward and anomalous group, namely the North Frisians, in the North Sea islands and along what is now the Danish-German border. (The conviction that the poet was really thinking of the North Frisians rather than the more familiar West Frisians lasted a long time.) Finally, the remark about ‘appointing their nobility as senators’ looks to me like a reference to the repeated attempts by Danish kings to deal with an especially troublesome body, the Ritterschaft of Slesvig-Holstein, which apparently had unusual independence and autonomy. This, we might say, is the Danish view of the question, perhaps especially forceful as coming from another Danish colonial. There was of

230

Tom Shippey

course another view, and it was expressed immediately. The most interesting of the seven reviewers of Thorkelin’s edition (for whom see Haarder 1988) is Pastor Nicholaus Outzen. He was a Dane. Or, he ought to have been a Dane: he was a knight of the Dannebrog, and he was born in Terkelsbøl, which is still (just) inside Denmark. But he spent much of his life as Pastor in Brecklum, now part of Germany, and he wrote in German. He wrote also for Kieler Blätter, a journal which was shut down three years after his review appeared by the Danish authorities for its German-nationalist views. And just to add further uncertainty to his standpoint, he was an authority on the North Frisian dialects – his Glossarium der Friesischen Sprache was published posthumously in 1837. I suspect that Outzen was a precursor of Uwe Lornsen, a North Frisian from Sylt who argued (a few years later) that the solution to the SlesvigHolstein question was to form one united independent multilingual grand duchy to be called Nordalbingien. Be that as it may, Outzen saw the problem of the poem which I outlined at the start very clearly: it was an English poem about Danes. His solution was very straightforward (Outzen 1816). It was a poem from North Schleswig, indeed from ancient Angeln, the frumlond Angelcynnes, as Munch called it. That was why it was in English. And it appeared to be about Danes. But that was because the inhabitants of ancient Angeln had been forced to call themselves ‘Danes’, just as he himself had. The striking thing, to him, was that these ancient NorthSchleswigers distinguished themselves from both the Jutes of Jutland and the Frisians of the islands, as, he said, they still did. Outzen backed this up with a string of identifications between places in the poem and places on the contemporary map, which have found very little favour. But he did at least offer a solution to the problem of the poem, though it was one which stemmed from contemporary politics: the poem was a product of ancient Danish imperialism. Outzen’s view was in effect the mirrorimage of P.A. Munch’s, above. Outzen’s editor at Kieler Blätter was Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, who was at once one of the Göttingen Seven; the dedicatee of Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, ‘Dahlmann, dem Freunde’; secretary to the Ritterschaft of Schleswig; and the man who in some views created the conditions for the second Prusso-Danish war of 1864 (for the last claim, see Cooley 1949). Dahlmann was also very interested in Beowulf, so interested that he added his own views to Outzen’s, in the form of editorial

THE CASE OF BEOWULF

231

notes; and his view was that Outzen had not gone far enough. His three main points, which he then developed independently (Dahlmann 1840) were that the North Schleswig area was urdeutsch (see the arguments over the Gallehus horn above); that Anglo-Saxon was not a dialect of ‘Old Nordic’ at all, but a Low German branch of West Germanic; and that the Danes had entered the area, indeed taken it over, as a consequence of the mass emigration of the Angles. The poem itself had however been written in England on a basis of Continental tradition. Rather surprisingly, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm did not have very much to do with these arguments, though of course Jacob was responsible for the generally-accepted classification of Old English as the northernmost branch of West Germanic, rather than the southernmost branch of North Germanic, of which more later. Their place was filled for them by one of Grimm’s most devoted acolytes, the Englishman John Mitchell Kemble. Kemble has been treated very kindly by English scholars, as the founding father of their discipline, but I have to say that in my opinion he became, in the end, clinically insane, and that he was also, from the start, very reluctant to give credit to other scholars, even when he used their work. Be that as it may, he set himself in the 1830s to edit this great English poem, and produced, in quick succession: – an edition in 1833, which lacked its glossary; – an excited letter to Grimm immediately thereafter, announcing a new solution of the poem’s problems of nationality (for which see Wiley 1971, 61-5); – a second edition of the poem in 1835, still without its glossary and with the same prefatory matter; – a treatise in German in 1836 summing up his letters to Grimm; – and a translation of the poem in 1837, which added the glossary that should have gone with the editions, and a further preface which completely retracted his prefaces of 1833 and 1835, saying it was all the fault of the Danish historians for having misled him.6 It is not surprising that scholars have been confused by him ever since. But Grimm’s insertion of much of Kemble’s material first into an Appendix of the 1835 Deutsche Mythologie, and then into the main body of the 6 For an account of this extremely confused process, see Shippey and Haarder 1998, 29-34, and the excerpted quotations from Kemble in that collection.

232

Tom Shippey

work, as also the fact that the 1835 edition and 1837 translation were the first productions, in this area, of the ‘philological revolution’, meant that Kemble’s later views dominated the field for perhaps fifty years. Kemble’s new idea was this. It had long been noticed that there were two characters in the poem called Beowulf. One was the hero of the poem, Beowulf the Geat, grandson of King Hrethel, henchman of King Hygelac, slayer of monsters. The other was Beowulf the Dane, who appeared only once, near the start, as the third in a genealogical line of five (or four) kings, Sceaf – Scyld – Beowulf – Healfdene – Hrothgar. Kemble argued that this second character was the true hero, not of the poem, but of the myth from which the poem derived. He was the culture-hero, the monster-slayer. His exploits had been transferred to the other Beowulf, and embedded in a historical context of wars between Danes and Geats and Swedes. But Beowulf, or rather Beowa, was the important figure, and he was not a hero but a god, and not just a god but the divine ancestor of the English people. So the poem really was about the English, who furthermore were entirely German, not just Germanic, not Scandinavians at all. If they were not to be called ‘Saxons’, which was the term Kemble preferred, then they were ‘Northalbingians’. But the poem Beowulf, as it stood, had been appropriated in antiquity by the Scandinavians, and then again in modern times. Kemble’s main pieces of evidence for this were, first, a document he found in Cambridge, which is however far later than the poem – Kemble commits the errors he often accuses the Danes of making, namely jumbling evidence from widely different periods, and also seizing eagerly on any similarity of names as proving identity (see Wiley 1971, 61-65). Secondly, and later, he discovered a number of place-names in OE charters which appear to preserve the names of Beowa and Grendel, sometimes close together (see Kemble 1849, 416). He also tried to re-read lines 1925-31 of the poem, from the very confusing ‘Modthrytho’ episode, as showing that Beowulf’s uncle Hygelac was the successor of the Anglian King Offa, so that the Geats were really Angles from Hedeby, not from Southern Sweden at all (Kemble 1837, 78-9).7 The idea that the poem 7

To illustrate the kind of problem the poem set for all its editors: modern editors assume a very violent change of subject in line 1931, where the generosity of Hygd, daughter of Hæreþ, the young queen of Hygelac, is suddenly opposed to the murderous and un-queenly behaviour of a legendary lady, Modþryþo (?), whose ways were reformed by the Anglian hero Offa. Kemble saw a lacuna four lines earlier, took ‘modþryþo’, not unreasonably, as an abstract noun, and concluded that Hygelac’s

THE CASE OF BEOWULF

233

was stratified, with its deepest and most original stratum a mythical and German or Germanic one, overlaid by history, Scandinavianism, and Christianity, remained dominant in many forms for many years. One problem with it, though – apart from those just indicated – was that one fact had been discovered about the events of the poem, and a most surprising one. The poem is in essence about three royal dynasties, the Danish Scyldings, the Swedish Scylfings, and the Geatish Hrethlings. The first two of these are well corroborated by later Scandinavian tradition, but this knows nothing of the Hrethlings at all. Yet it is the Hrethlings who are corroborated by evidence from outside the area: Beowulf’s uncle Hygelac is the same person as the king, variously spelled and identified, who was killed while making a raid on the Rhine round about the year 525 AD. The identification had been made as early as 1817, by Grundtvig, and Grundtvig is always given the credit for the discovery in modern times. However, Grundtvig very characteristically made the point only in a footnote on p. 285, and he did not bother to state the really convincing argument, which is that we have, in Gregory of Tours, in the anonymous Liber Historiae Francorum, and in Beowulf, three independent accounts which nevertheless corroborate each other: the Liber’s ‘Attoarii’, for instance, are the Hetware of Beowulf. These points were made in 1839 by Heinrich Leo, and generally accepted: German scholars regularly gave the credit to Leo, not Grundtvig. The only scholar who refused to accept this valuable and indeed unique piece of information was Kemble. In his 1849 book The Saxons in England (note the title, one might say a mirror-image of George Stephens’s) he said the name-similarity was just coincidence. He wrote to Grimm, ‘Beowa, the god in Angeln, I cannot give him up’ (Wiley 1971, 231). I mean to bring only two more scholars into this discussion, and they are Karl Victor Müllenhoff and Gísli Brynjolfsson, one might say a ‘colonial German’ and a ‘colonial Dane’. Müllenhoff dominated the field of Beowulf studies for the best part of forty years, approximately 1844-84. One might well say he terrorized it, for he was an extremely forbidding personality, quite prepared to destroy careers, such as those of Christian queen, Hæreþ’s daughter, was the murderous lady of legend. She must, therefore, have married Hygelac after being married to Offa, which to Kemble meant that Hygelac was Offa’s successor to the Anglian throne, and therefore an Englishman. Since Hygelac was Beowulf’s uncle, Beowulf could then be claimed as English too. It is characteristic of Kemble that his 1837 translation does not match the reading of his 1835 edition, 136-137.

234

Tom Shippey

Grein or the even more unfortunate Hermann Dederich. Editorially, he was a disciple of Lachmann, and applied the Lachmann methods to Beowulf. His main pupil, and intended successor, was Wilhelm Scherer, who in 1872 was appointed to a Chair at the University of Strassburg with the approval of Bismarck, and the avowed intention of strengthening proGerman sentiment in a disputed and recently regained province. But Scherer died young, in 1886, only two years after his mentor, and Müllenhoff’s views on the poem – once he too was safely dead – were rapidly rejected. His two main contributions were these. On the one hand Müllenhoff applied Lachmann’s Liedertheorie to the poem, arguing that it was full of Widersprechungen or ‘contradictions’, that it must be the work of several hands at different periods. In the end he identified the work of four original writers and two increasingly incompetent interpolators, and with typical certainty assigned each line and half-line of the poem to one or the other (Müllenhoff 1869). This view was taken further in the years after his death, for instance by Bernhard ten Brink (1877), who ran the score of authors up to eleven, but has now been completely rejected: the modern view is that the poem is completely unified. Müllenhoff’s other main contribution was to take Kemble’s idea of the poem as not merely composite but also as stratified a good deal further. He argued that it was, at bottom, a myth about a semi-divine figure, and furthermore a kind of allegory (Müllenhoff 1849a and b). This view has not been quite so firmly rejected, though the view as to what kind of myth or allegory it is has changed completely. I have to say that my understanding of the whole issue of the reception of Beowulf was changed completely by realising that Müllenhoff was another Holsteiner, indeed a native of Dithmarschen. Müllenhoff was much too professional and too wary ever to say this explicitly, but it is my conviction that in his heart he believed, or wanted to believe, that Beowulf was in fact a product of his native province, the Ditmarsh; and that if the poem was in Old English, the myth it sprang from had been spoken in his native language, as it were Proto-Plattdeutsch. Old English in any case, Müllenhoff would probably have said, was really another dialect, not of course of ‘Gammel-Nordisk’ as the Scandinavians would have it, but of ‘Alt-Nieder-Deutsch’. There are several indications of this underlying belief:

THE CASE OF BEOWULF

235

– It is revealing that Müllenhoff’s first publication in this area was his very long article, ‘Die deutschen Völker an Nord- und Ostsee in ältester Zeit’, published in – note the journal title – Nordalbingische Studien for 1844. – In the following year Müllenhoff brought out the most engaging and enduring of his publications, his collection Sagen Märchen und Lieder der Herzogthümer Schelswig Holstein und Lauenburg. And he included in it, without explanation, a paraphrase of the poem of Beowulf, as no. 345. Immediately after it he put folktales which he had collected, one or two of which do indeed appear as analogues of the fight with Grendel in Heorot. – In 1849 he brought out two connected articles on ‘Sceaf und seine Nachkommen’ and ‘Der Mythus von Beowulf’ in Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum, in which he argued, at great length and quite persuasively, that the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and his mother, were allegories of the great fear of the marshmen: flood. Grendel in particular ist der riesische gott oder dämon des wilden düstern meeres um die zeit des frühlingsäquinoctiums. um diese zeit unternimmt auch Beóvulf mit Breca seine schwimmfahrt. es wüten die stürme und das meer konnte sich einst ungehemmt über die weiten flachen küstenländer an der nordsee ergiessen, wo die bewohner, friesische und sächsische völkerschaften, auf einsamen warten hausten, Plin. h. n. 16, 1, und wo sie rettungslos dem wilden elemente preisgegeben waren, wenn nicht ein gott half; von unglaublichen verwüstungen, von dem untergang vieler tausende von menschen berichtet noch die leider allzu glaubhafte geschichte dieser gegenden. diesen allerdings auch localen grund, glaube ich, hat der menschenverschlingende, häuserverwüstende meerriese Grendel und der ganze mythus.8

I have to say that I am one of the very few Beowulfian scholars now active who thinks that possibly Müllenhoff might be right. Not that I 8 Müllenhoff 1849a, 423-424 (capitalization sic): ‘[Grendel] is the gigantic god or demon of the wild and stormy sea at the time of the spring-equinox. At this time Beowulf undertakes his swimming expedition with Breca. The storms rage and the sea could, once it is unchecked, pour over the broad, flat coast-lands of the North Sea, where the inhabitants, Frisian and Saxon tribes, lived on lonely mounds (Pliny 16, 1), and where they were helplessly at the mercy of the wild element, if no god came to their aid; the unfortunately all-too-credible story of these deities still tells of unbelievable devastations, of the death of many thousands of people. I believe that the man-swallowing, house-smashing sea-giant Grendel, and the whole myth, has this definitely local basis.’

236

Tom Shippey

think the poem is an allegory, etc., but I do think that scholarly opinion has become ‘Scandinavianized’, and sees the poem’s landscape in terms of high moor and mountain tarn, whereas it seems to me to be a boggy sort of poem, set in the fen: to quote Philip Cardew, the monster Grendel and his mother are ‘oicotypes of the marsh’ (Cardew 2005, 205). Müllenhoff’s views extended of course not only to myth and allegory, to folktale, to Liedertheorie and to the origins of the poem, but also to the very nature of the English language, and the English nation. As Andrew Wawn has pointed out (Wawn 1994, 216-217; 2000, 237-239), there was in the mid-nineteenth century a certain controversy in England over the nature of the English: were they really Saxons (and so Germans, as Kemble for instance would have it), or were they really Scandinavians (a view popular in the North, and often in the manufacturing as opposed to landowning classes)? The official view on this, still very firmly held and expressed in British government circles, is that of Sir Walter Scott, namely that there was never any such thing as English: just Saxons and Danes and Normans, all now happily assimilated, a model for the present and future. Nevertheless, the issue was at one time a live one, especially during the two Prusso-Danish wars, of 1848-50 and 1864 – as we have seen from Professor Munch’s little poem above. Thus, in May 1852 George Stephens – Munch’s correspondent – wrote a long and angry piece in The Gentleman’s Magazine (Stephens 1852), in which he argued against Grimm’s classification of the Germanic languages, and declared that English was not West Germanic but South Scandinavian. Such features as the Scandinavian ‘middle voice’ and suffixed definite article could be found in English dialects too – and Stephens, it should be remembered, was expert not only in standard Danish but also in the southern Danish dialects, which, probably erroneously, have been thought to be more similar to English than modern scholars can readily recognize. The last word on this may perhaps be given to Professor Hans Frede Nielsen, who has shown recently that the Early Runic language must be considered as the ancestor of Old Norse alone (Nielsen 2000). But Professor Nielsen also points out a number of anomalies in Old English, of which I will mention only one: it is the only Germanic language with two complete present tense paradigms for the verb ‘to be’, one very similar to the Scandinavian one, and one very similar to Old Saxon (Nielsen 2000, 222-223). A natural conclusion is that while a majority of the fifth- and sixth-century emigrants to Britain

THE CASE OF BEOWULF

237

were speakers of Anglian, or Saxon, from the south of what would become a linguistic boundary, a large minority were Jutes, from the north of the boundary (Nielsen 2000, 292-293). The dialects influenced each other, as English and Danish would do again in later periods. Gísli Brynjolfsson’s own point, however, was a very telling one, which is that not only is Beowulf all about Danes and Swedes and Geats, its characters are also often figures known from Scandinavian legendary cycles; and – this point severely challenges the Kemble/Müllenhoff belief in a stratified Anglian-mythological/Scandinavian-historical poem – the link between monster-slaying and the Skjoldung court is made independently in the Hrólfs saga kraka (Brynjolfsson 1852). So even if a ‘historical’ element was added to a ‘mythical’ element, the mythical element also has connections with Denmark, not with the Ditmarsh. I may perhaps add as a final coda to this story that in the prevailing twentiethcentury view of the poem, a critical character in it is the silent figure of Hrothulf, addressed at one point by Hrothgar’s queen Wealhtheow, though he makes no reply. He is now regularly identified with the sagahero Hrólfr kraki; this realization is also largely to the credit of a Danish writer, Ludvig Schrøder, now almost completely forgotten by scholarship, who wrote in the to him very personal aftermath of the PrussoDanish war of 1864 (Schrøder 1875). What I have tried to show is how the editing of Beowulf and national selfdefinitions mutually influenced each other: national feeling influenced the editing, and editing and interpreting helped to create national, subnational, and supra-national feeling, in Denmark, in Germany, in Slesvig, in Holstein, in Norway (and eventually elsewhere). What has been largely missing has been, to quote Sherlock Holmes, the strange case of the dog that did not bark in the night. Was there, and is there, no English sentiment about this potentially English national epic? The answer is, effectively, ‘no’. The only English scholars to take a serious interest in the poem were for many years expatriates like Stephens or Benjamin Thorpe, or intellectual expatriates like Kemble, widely disliked for his devotion to everything German. Partly this was caused by the intense amateurishness of the two English universities, Oxford and Cambridge. In modern times the need to suppress any feelings of English autonomy in the interests of unity and the United Kingdom has also been powerful, see Shippey 2000. But Anglo-Saxon England seems never to have rooted itself in the

238

Tom Shippey

national imagination. On the other hand, four movies based on Beowulf have appeared in recent years.9

References Brynjolfsson, Gísli. 1852. Oldengelsk og Oldnorsk. Antikvarisk Tidsskrift 1: 81143. Cardew, Philip. 2005. Grendel: Bordering the Human. In The Shadow-walkers: Jacob Grimm’s mythology of the monstrous, ed. Tom Shippey, 189-205. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Cooley, Franklin D. 1949. Early Danish Criticism of Beowulf. English Literary History 7: 45-67. Dahlmann, F.C. 1840. Geschichte von Dänemark. Hamburg. (Author’s trl. of Danmarks Historie, Copenhagen 1840). Fjalldal, Magnús. 2005. ‘A Lot of Learning is a Dang’rous Thing’: The Ruthwell Cross Runes and their Icelandic Intepreters. In Correspondences: Medievalism in Scholarship and the Arts, eds. Tom Shippey and Martin Arnold, 30-50. Woodbridge: Boydell. Grundtvig, N.F.S. 1817. Om Bjovulfs Drape eller det af Hr. Etatsraad Thorkelin 1815 udgivne angelsachsike Digt. Danne-Virke 2: 207-289. Haarder, Andreas. 1988. The Seven Beowulf Reviewers: Latest or Last Identifications. English Studies 69: 289-292. Indebrø, Gustav and Oluf Kolsrud, eds. 1924-71. Lærde Brev fra og til P.A. Munch. 3 vols.; Oslo: University of Oslo. Kemble, J.M., ed.. 1833. The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, the Traveller’s Song, and the Battle of Finnes-burh. London (2nd rev. ed. London, 1835). Kemnble, J.M., trl. 1837. A Translation of the Anglo-Saxon Poem of Beowulf, with a Copious Glossary, Preface, and PhilologicalNotes. London. Kemble, J.M. 1849. The Saxons in England: A history of the English Commonwealth till the Period of the Norman Conquest. 2 vols.; London. Kemble, J.M.: see also Wiley 1971. Kiernan, Kevin. 1986. The Thorkelin Transcripts of Beowulf. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger. Leo, Heinrich. 1839. Beowulf, dasz älteste deutsche, in angelsächsischer mundart erhaltene, heldengedicht. Ein beitrag zur geschichte alter deutscher geisteszustände Halle. Müllenhoff, Karl Victor. 1844. Die deutschen Völker an Nord- und Ostsee in ältester Zeit. Nordalbingische Studien 1: 111-174.

9 They are: Beowulf (directed Graham Baker, 1999); The Thirteenth Warrior (directed John McTiernan, 1999); Beowulf and Grendel (directed Sturla Gunnarsson, 2006); and Beowulf (directed Robert Zemeckis, 2007).

THE CASE OF BEOWULF

239

Müllenhoff, Karl Victor. 1845. Sagen Märchen und Lieder der Herzogthümer Schelswig Holstein und Lauenburg. Kiel. Müllenhoff, Karl Victor. 1849a. Sceaf und seine Nachkommen. Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum 7: 410-419. Müllenhoff, Karl Victor. 1849b. Der Mythus von Beowulf. Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum 7: 419-441. Müllenhoff, Karl Victor. 1869. Die innere Geschichte des Beovulfs. Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum 27: 193-244. Nielsen, Hans Frede. 2000. The Early Runic Language of Scandinavia Heidelberg: Winter. Nielsen, Hans Frede 2002. Guldhornsinskriften fra Gallehus: Runer, sprog, politik. Odense: Odense University Press. Outzen, Nicholaus. 1816. Das angelsächsische Gedicht Beowulf, als die schätzbarste Urkunde des höchsten Alterthums von unserm Vaterlande. Kieler Blätter 3: 307-327. Shippey, Tom. 2000. The Undeveloped Image: Anglo-Saxon in Popular Consciousness from Turner to Tolkien. In Literary Appropriations of the AngloSaxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, eds. Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg, 215-236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shippey, Tom, and Andreas Haarder, eds. 1988. Beowulf: the Critical Heritage. London: Routledge. ten Brink, Bernhard Konrad Aegidius. 1877. Geschichte der Englischen Literatur. Erster Band, Bis zu Wiclifs Auftreten. Berlin. Thorkelín, Grímur Jónsson. 1815. De Danorum Rebus Gestis Secul[is] III et IV: Poema Danicum Dialecto Anglosaxonica. Copenhagen. Wawn, Andrew. 1994. The Cult of Stalwart Frith-thjof in Victorian Britain. In Northern Antiquity: the Post-Medieval Reception of Edda and Saga, ed. Andrew Wawn, 211-254. Enfield Lock: Hisarlik Press. Wawn, Andrew. 1995. George Stephens, Cheapinghaven, and Old Northern Antiquity. In Medievalism in England II, eds. Leslie Workman and Kathleen Verduin, 63-104. Woodbridge: Boydell. Wawn, Andrew. 2000. The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain. Woodbridge: Boydell. Wiley, Raymond A., ed./trl. 1971. John Mitchell Kemble and Jakob Grimm: A Correspondence 1832-52. Leiden: Brill.


WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE AND EARLY-NINETEENTH-CENTURY LEARNING Thomas Bein Abstract Nineteenth-century scholars edited the verse of Walther von der Vogelweide in various ways. Their different methods led to different text editions, which exerted an interesting influence on the reception of Walther’s works both in the academic field and in public cultural life. Every text’s edition is a component of a society’s cultural foundations. A case in point is scholarly editing in Germany, which in the first half of the nineteenth century contributed – more or less intentionally – to the formation of national concepts. Although the paradigmatic example chosen here is that of the famous poet Walther von der Vogelweide, it would be inadmissible to leave the prime example of the Nibelungenlied unmentioned, if only by way of a preliminary.1 The case has been extensively researched and documented. The discovery of the Hohenemser Nibelungen manuscript in the mid-eighteenth century and the following printings and editions of parts and of the whole of the work raised its popularity. ‘Allenthalben suchte man damals nach dem “Nationalepos”, dem großen Epos, in dem jegliche Nationalliteratur ihren Identitätsstiftenden Ursprung und Höhepunkt haben sollte’,2 and finally, such a national epic, supposedly reflecting a German 1 Cf. Heinzle 1996, Müller 2002, Ehrismann 1987, Göhler 1989, Hoffmann 1992, Schulze 1997; and especially on the reception history: Heinzle & Waldschmitt 1991. 2 See 2003, 315: ‘Everywhere, people were searching for the “national epic”, the major epic in which every national literature was considered to have its identity-building origin and high-point.’

242

Thomas Bein

cultural tradition, was found – which is remarkable, given the text’s depressing, pessimistic nature. (The first and the last stanza of the song mark out, albeit not in all manuscripts, the scope: weinen unde klagen, crying and complaining.) The text’s social and political triumph was mainly due to the various Nibelungen editions, which gathered pace from the late eighteenth century onwards. The following editions came out in the first third of the nineteenth century in relatively rapid succession: 1807 Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen: Der Nibelungenlied 1815 August Zeune: Das Nibelungenlied 1815 Johann Gustav Büsching: Das Lied der Nibelungen 1826 Karl Lachmann: Der Nibelungen Not 1827 Karl Simrock: Das Nibelungenlied Even if the editors’ philological orientations differed considerably, they all made their contribution to the Nibelungen myth – and mainly because of their entirely diverse ideas of how medieval texts should be ‘worked up’. Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen, the first editor (who presented the whole text in a strange mixture of Middle High German and Modern High German), enhanced with his prefaces the national interest in the text (which, ‘durchaus aus Deutschem Leben und Sinne erwachsen’ he considers one of the greatest and most admirable of all times) to a high degree. ‘Kein anderes Lied mag ein vaterländisches Herz so rühren und ergreifen, so ergötzen und stärken, als dieses’.3 Karl Lachmann stirred up the fire in his own way, by declaring all existing editions ‘useless’ and setting himself a goal to bring the oldest extant text as close to the original record as was allowed and possible (Lachmann 1960 [1826], v). In the process two things were accomplished: on the one hand the Nibelungenlied was introduced to a non-academic readership, charged with feelings of nationalism; on the other hand, the text was raised to a firstrate philological object, entailing decades of struggling, even fighting, for the correct, ‘true’ text as a result. Against this background it is easier to understand how the poet Walther von der Vogelweide could rise to the status of ‘singer of the 3 Hagen 2003, 359: ‘grown from German life and attitude’; ‘No other poem can thus touch and enrapture, delight and fortify a patriotic heart’.

WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE

243

medieval Reich’ (Richter 1988). What early philology did to the Nibelungenlied, also happened to Walther a little later – albeit not with the same intensity. Participants were, again, Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen, Karl Lachmann, Karl Simrock and – joining as a new member – Franz Pfeiffer. But the prime instigator in Walther philology was Ludwig Uhland, who had been working on a major presentation of the poet since 1819, and published his work in 1822 with the title ‘Walther von der Vogelweide, an Old German Poet’ (Uhland 1984). As in the case of the Nibelungenlied these philologists worked on the restoration of the medieval poet’s texts on different levels and with partly incompatible methods. What they all have in common is the high regard of the poetry and the conviction of having a cultural mission. In what follows I shall first outline Uhland’s initial achievement and then address the other four editors. Ludwig Uhland The aim of Uhland’s monograph was to make a contribution to ‘das Erforschen der altdeutschen Poesie’ (‘exploring Old German Poetry’), with the ultimate goal to create a ‘lebendiges und vollständiges Bild von dem dichterischen Treiben jenes Zeitalters’ (‘a living and complete picture of poetical practices in that period’; Uhland 1984, 31n7). It is the first well-thought-out and well-structured attempt to describe Walther’s poetry and its poetical achievement. In a surprisingly sober and detached mode (by the standards of that time), Uhland analyses the extant texts, refrains from judging, makes an obvious separation between subjective opinion and factual description. In nine paragraphs Uhland devotes himself to Walther’s biography (based on the texts), his poetical apprenticeship, his political commitment, his wandering life, the Minnesang with its various hues, his (alleged) participation in a crusade, his literary-historical position, his religious opinions and the last phase of his life. Nearly everywhere Uhland relies on the evidence of Walther’s texts. He presents these in New High German or in close paraphrases, because his first priority is to make them understandable. However, Uhland was well aware of the fact that this procedure would meet with disapproval: ‘Nicht unbekannt ist mir, wie wenig dieses Verfahren bei gründlichen

244

Thomas Bein

Kennern des deutschen Altertums empfohlen ist’.4 Only two years before, Jacob Grimm had written to Karl Lachmann: ‘Uhland ist einer der guten neuen Dichter, aber im Altdeutsch wohl ungelehrter als Köpke’.5 In the second paragraph of his monograph Uhland characterises Walther as a ‘Vaterlandsdichter’ (‘patriotic poet’): Wir haben die schmerzliche Klage des Dichters über den Verfall von Deutschland vernommen. Es hat uns daraus eine seiner schönsten Eigenschaften angesprochen, die Vaterlandsliebe. Dieses edle Gefühl ist die Seele eines bedeutenden Teils seiner Dichtungen. Überall erregt es ihn zu der lebhaftesten Teilnahme an den öffentlichen Angelegenheiten. Ihm gebührt unter den altdeutschen Sängern vorzugsweise der Name des vaterländischen. Keiner hat, wie er, die Eigentümlichkeit seines Volkes erkannt und empfunden.6

This characterization of Walther by Uhland was to influence literary history-writing as well as monograph studies for more than a century and a half, with the period of National Socialism – when Walther counted as a ‘Vorkämpfer deutscher Gesinnung’ (‘a champion of German-mindedness’) – undoubtedly presenting the most inglorious highlight (see Bein 1993). Still, it is not Uhland who should be blamed for the anachronistic connection between the literary and political conditions of the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century. Karl Lachmann and the poet’s ‘dignified character’ It is well known that Karl Lachmann ranks equal with the Grimm Brothers as a founding father of German philology. The discipline was basically founded by this triumvirate. The Grimms and Lachmann were linked by a deep personal friendship; and the philological interests and the ethical conception of this kind of scholarship were rooted as deeply as this friendship. This mixture of private and philological matters is obvious in numerous letters, mixing scholarly discussions, scolding of 4

Uhland 1984, 33n7: ‘I am aware of the fact that this method is not recommended by the experts of the German antiquity’. 5 Leitzman 1927, 1: 238, ‘Uhland is a brilliant new poet, but in the Old German probably more uneducated than Köpke.’ 6 Uhland 1984, 42n7 and 48ff.: ‘We heard the poet’s painful complaint about Germany’s decline. What appealed to us here was one of his most beautiful qualities, the love of his fatherland. This noble emotion is the soul of an important part of his poetry. It excites him everywhere to the liveliest participation in public matters. Among all the Old German singers he deserves the name of patriotic singer. No one recognised and felt his people’s peculiarities the way he did.’


245

colleagues, and private matters such as the raging cholera epidemic: ‘Die Cholera hat mir keine Angst gemacht, weil ich sogleich theils den Glauben an die Contagiosität aufgegeben hatte, theils die ruchlose Meinung womit sich viele auf kurze Zeit gesichert haben, sie treffe nur den Pöbel.’7 In a constant interchange the three scholars set out to refurbish the discipline’s foundation. This implies on the one hand differentiating and describing the historical gradations of the language starting with Gothic and Old Saxon, and continuing with Old and Middle High German until Early New High German (as per Jacob Grimm’s ‘German Grammar’); and on the other hand examining und securing the textual culture of the Middle Ages, involving scholarly editing. In matters of editorial method it is Lachmann who sets the tone. He transfers his text-critical expertise, based on his experience in classical philology (regarding which, cf. Lachmann 1876), to the Middle High German textual culture. His strong belief in the possibility of establishing a stemma, which at least leads to the archetype if not to the original, will dominate German philology for decades. Besides, all three founders are connected by the strong conviction that a (literary) text in the course of its handwritten tradition steadily suffers losses, for which the persons involved in the transmission process are to blame: heedless copyists, philistines, arbitrary patrons and so on. There is a fundamental mistrust of the text in its diverse handwritten manifestations. The early philologists of Grimm’s and Lachmann’s type see themselves as the poets’ advocates, who help them get back their very own words. They do this with the help of text-healing operations, called corrections and conjectures. A conjecture is an ‘assumption’, which means that a considerable part of the process is speculation. But that is exactly what is demanded and appreciated as a special ‘scientific achievement’ in the discipline’s early phase. Even today, Lachmann’s Walther edition is regarded as one of his best editorial performances. This reputation was established immediately after its first and second editions, not least because of the high esteem from the brothers Grimm. In 1827, Jacob Grimm wrote to Lachmann: 7 Leitzmann 1927, 579n10: ‘I was not afraid of the cholera, because on the one hand I have begun to dismiss the belief in contagion and on the other hand the dastardly opinion, that it would happen only to the rabble, an opinion with which a lot of people secured themselves for a short time’.

246

Thomas Bein

‘Nun Ihr Walther gefällt mir sicher, die arbeit ist reinlich, gedrängt, bestimmt, es wird ihr kaum was anzuhaben sein.’ (‘Well I truly like your Walther, the work is clean, concise, firm, there will hardly be anything that can be said against it’). Grimm criticises Lachmann only on one point: ‘Ich wollte, Sie hätten bei Gelegenheit dieses buchs sich über das metrische näher herausgelassen, doch weiß ich nicht, was Sie damit vorhaben; aber den lesern wirds schwer werden, Sie zu errathen und zu begreifen’.8 Lachmann’s work is ‘hard’ philology. One can almost see him suffer when he discovers misprints in his works. Frequently it upsets him so much that he has to talk about it to friends at once. Thus he writes to Moritz Haupt in 1843: ‘Der elende Setzer hat meinem Walther doch mehr geschadet als ich dachte. S. 45,27 steht und für unde, S.82,23 dar für har [etc.]’.9 Lachmann’s Walther edition quickly obtained the status of the benchmark, truly scientifically philological edition. It is part of what would later come to be called the ‘Berlin School’ of ‘Lachmannians’, who adopted the patriarch’s methodical heritage and often applied it much more rigorously than Lachmann himself. It is no surprise that in 1880 Willibald Leo characterised Lachmann’s edition as follows: Es ist die eigentliche Editio princeps Walthers von der Vogelweide und gilt mit Recht als eine der besten Leistungen Lachmanns. Der Herausgeber verwendete seine ganze Kraft darauf, eine mustergültige Ausgabe zu schaffen, und dies ist ihm auch von seinem Standpunkte aus vollkommen gelungen.10

But Leo also emphasises that Lachmann’s edition is ‘nur für Gelehrte berechnet’ (‘only intended for scholars’), alongside other philologists who popularised the poet. One of these philologists who surely deserves to be mentioned in this context is Franz Pfeiffer, whose edition, according to Leo, finally enabled Walther von der Vogelweide to find his way back 8 Leitzmann 1927 517n10: ‘I wish you would have taken this opportunity to say more about the metrical aspects; I do not know what you intentions are in that regard, but it will be hard for the readers to guess and understand you.’ 9 Vahlen 1892, 188: ‘The miserable typesetter did more harm to my Walther than I thought he would. On page 45,27 the text reads und instead of unde, on page 82,23 dar instead of har [etc.]’. 10 Leo 1971, 14ff:: ‘This is the real editio princeps of Walther von der Vogelweide and rightly counts as one of Lachmann’s best performances. The editor used his whole strength to create a exemplary edition and from his point of view he fully succeeded’.


247

into the heart of the German nation. ‘Man sagt nicht zu viel, wenn man Pfeiffers Werk ein Epochemachendes nennt.’11 Karl Simrock: Walther in Poetic Renewal Prior to Pfeiffer, the aim of bringing Walther closer to a non-scholarly audience and to actually popularise his poetry had also been pursued by Lachmann’s erstwhile student Karl Simrock (1802-1876). Simrock devoted himself intensely to the poetic translation of medieval texts, a translation which ought to show a peculiar aesthetic. In 1833 he published his Walther rendition, based on Lachmann’s text (Simrock 1833). It was reprinted repeatedly into the early twentieth century, which is an indication of the enterprise’s great success. In contrast to Lachmann Simrock was aware of the necessity (and the scholar’s task) to impart cultural knowledge beyond academia. In his opinion, medieval literature should not only be a matter of a few insiders with a good command of Old and Middle High German. These texts were important to all people interested in literature, culture and art. The majority of them did not have the necessary historical-linguistic expertise, nor was there any realistic hope that they would learn their own ancient language (Simrock 1833, Vorrede, note 18). Friedrich von der Hagen: Pioneer and Amateur Hagen12 delivered a truly gigantic editorial performance with his Minnesinger: Deutsche Liederdichter des zwölften, dreizehnten und vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (1838). For the first time it was possible for a wider audience to take note of the richness of Middle High German poetry. Even today, nearly two centuries later, his edition remains the only one for some texts. Von der Hagen worked idiosyncratically. For that reason he was often reprimanded, especially by the Grimms and by Lachmann – who were in league here as usual. Two examples may illustrate this. In 1831 Lachmann wrote to Jacob Grimm: Die Arbeit [i.e. the ‘Minnesinger’ edition] hat mich doch überrascht durch ihre unerwartete Schlechtigkeit: sie ist im Ganzen grade so gut wie ich sie

11 Leo 1971, 16: ‘One does not say too much, when one calls Pfeiffer’s work an epoch-making achievement’. 12 Cf. Hagen 1838; see also Grunewald 1988.

248

Thomas Bein

1816 gemacht hätte. (...) Wenn bei Hagen nicht alles Lüge wäre, so könnte er viel mehr leisten.13

And one year later a withering comment followed (characteristic in its combination of editorial punctilio and judgemental harshness) on Hagen’s philological competence: ‘Auch ich habe inzwischen den Verdruß gehabt zu sehn daß Hagen Walth. 106,21 hat treffe drucken lassen, mit der Note “vermutlich ist zu lesen reife”. Wer das kann, dem ist beinah nichts mehr zuzurechnen’.14 Nowadays Hagen’s achievements are judged quite differently. His editorial concept is very similar to the ones that are used more and more today. He largely does without reconstruction, which is frequently committed to aesthetic principles, and instead devotes himself intensely to the wording of the actual textual sources (mainly the Codex Manesse). Hagen gives detailed information and comments concerning his editorial procedure. His interventions, including his thoughts on phonetic (and orthographic) normalisations, his grammatical and dialectological as well as his metrical discussions, are of great interest, too. He follows the ‘principle of a leading manuscript’, does not insert many conjectures and rejects any method of extensive mixed-editing: ‘bei mehreren Handschriften habe ich vornämlich immer nur eine, und versteht sich, die älteste und beste, so viel als möglich, zum Grunde gelegt, und die übrigen nur zu Hülfe gerufen’.15 With his edition of the ‘Nibelungenlied’, Hagen had already pursued a patriotic aim; the same applies to his Minnesinger edition. As he pointed out in his dedicatory preface to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III, he intended it as of the ancient ‘Herrlichkeit des Deutschen Vaterlandes’ (‘glory of the German fatherland’; Hagen 1838, 111). Among the many poets in his edition, Walther von der Vogelweide takes the most promi-

13

Leitzmann 1927 579n10: ‘The work surprised me by its unexpected inferiority: in its entirety it is just as good as I would have done it in 1816. […] If Hagen’s work would consist of more than just lies, he could achieve much more’. 14 Ibid. 588n10: ‘In the meantime I have also had the displeasure of seeing that Hagen has printed treffe in Walth. 106,21 with the note “probably one can read reife”. You can’t expect anything from someone who is capable of such a thing’. It should be pointed out that treffe had been given as a conjecture by Lachmann in his 1827 edition. 15 Quoted Richter 1988, 111n6: ‘In case of several manuscripts I usually took for my basis only one, of course the oldest and best, as far as possible, and used the others for support.’


249

nent position, because Walther had struggled for the honour of medieval Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. With von der Hagen’s gigantic collection of poetry (including Walther), with Karl Lachmann’s severe philological edition and with Simrock’s poetic renewal sources had been made available rendering access to Walther von der Vogelweide for all types of readership. The only thing that was missing was a counterbalance to Lachmann, a synthesis between philology and popularisation. This was achieved by Franz Pfeiffer. Franz Pfeiffer: Against Academic Pedantry Franz Pfeiffer (1815-1868), professor of German linguistics and literature in Vienna, quickly became the academic antagonist to the Lachmannianer. He moved into position against Lachmann’s so-called ‘songtheory’ (to the effect that the Nibelungenlied was a cluster of independent cantos) and against Lachmann’s edition. With his students and supporters, Pfeiffer engaged in a polemic regarding the question to what extent a philologist should address a non-professional audience (Krohn 1994). In Pfeiffer’s opinion, as in Simrock’s, the editor had to offer more than ‘naked’ philology à la Lachmann. Because of this attitude he was accused of vulgarisation. But Pfeiffer defended his conviction with enthusiasm; witness the eloquent preface to his 1864 Walther von der Vogelweide edition. Pfeiffer’s basic aim is to bring certain poems of the middle ages closer to the present-day German nation. In his opinion none of the earlier editions fulfilled this main purpose. Pfeiffer intensely reprimands an editorial tendency (on the increase since the 1830s) to confine oneself to the production of a ‘critical text’, denouncing ‘jene Reihe glänzender kritischer Ausgaben, die in Abwesenheit aller und jeder Erklärungen ihren Stolz setzen und dafür in einem Schwall ungenießbarer Lesarten ein seliges Genügen finden’.16 According to Pfeiffer this was the reason why only a small group of teachers and students took note of medieval German texts. ‘Man darf sagen, daß gegenwärtig kaum jemand mehr ein

16 Pfeiffer 1877 [1864], ix: ‘that series of brilliant critical editions, which take pride in not providing any explanation and instead indulge lavishly in a flood of unpalatable variants’.

250

Thomas Bein

altdeutsches Buch kauft und liest, als wer muß, d.h. wer durch seinen Beruf dazu veranlaßt und genöthigt ist.’17 Pfeiffer pursued his fight against this development by bringing to life a new series of editions: the ‘German Medieval Classics’. He dedicated the first volume to the poetry of Walther von der Vogelweide, which he wanted to make accessible to a greater audience by putting the main emphasis on the commentary. Da unsere Sammlung sich zum Ziele gesetzt hat, die Theilnahme der Gebildeten für die mittelhochdeutsche Literatur zu gewinnen, genauere Kenntnisse der alten Sprache aber nur bei den Wenigsten vorausgesetzt werden kann, so mußte vor allem auf jene weit überwiegende Zahl von Lesern Rücksicht genommen werden, ‘die vom Altdeutschen gar nichts verstehen’.18

Pfeiffer’s concept was very successful. After one year the first edition had already sold out and a second one was printed. In the preface to this second edition Pfeiffer proclaims, with obvious pride, the success of his approach. At the same time he takes the opportunity to cross swords with the ‘so-called critical school’. He reacts to fierce criticism from the Berlin school by levelling a few polemic swipes himself. He emphasizes that ‘die [Berliner] Schule nicht nur keine Ahnung hat von dem, was unsere Ausgaben wollen, sondern daß ihr auch vollständig die Fähigkeit gebricht, in einfacher verständlicher Weise lehrend und unterrichtend vor die Gebildeten unsers Volks zu treten’.19 Pfeiffer was confirmed by the success of his edition, which was reissued seven times until 1911, with several reprints following even afterwards. It is true that he could not oust the Berlin School – after all Lachmann’s Walther edition maintained its canonical status and remained in print until recently – but Pfeiffer and his edition occupied an important market position, and deservedly so. Every editor has to carefully ask 17

Ibid.: ‘One can say that nowadays hardly anyone buys and reads an Old-German book, except when those who must, i.e. those who are professionally required to do so’. 18 Ibid., xii: ‘Since our collection intends to inspire interest among educated people in Middle High German literature, but can only assume a few of these to have a thorough command of the old language, it is necessary to show consideration for that majority of readers “who do not understand a single word of Old German”.’ 19 Ibid. xvii: ‘the Berlin school is not only ignorant of what our editions intend, but it is also absolutely incapable of teaching our nation’s educated classes in an understandable way’.


251

himself, for what purpose he edits and which audience his edition is meant to reach. These questions are of a surprising topicality. In a similar way as in Pfeiffer’s time, one cannot assume today that German students have the linguistic abilities to deal with ‘naked’ Middle High German texts on their own. That is why in the first half of the twentieth century numerous editions with translations and comments were published. Very influential in this respect was Friedrich Maurer: he shaped the picture of Walther for many generations of students (Maurer 1955-56, with a new edition Maurer 1972). Meanwhile, the Reclam publishing house offers a complete edition with translation and comments (Schweikle 1994-98), and even the ‘most philological’ of all Walther editions, published by De Gruyter in the Lachmann-von Kraus-Cormeau tradition, will include several ‘additions’ in the next edition, in which I myself am involved. These ‘additions’ (commentaries, translations and so on) ought to simplify the reception for unpractised readers. To conclude: In the first half of the nineteenth century, in various different places and with different methods and aims, a corpus of sources was retrieved that could be used for widely different purposes. The early philologists were aware of the fact that the texts and authors they devoted their work to played important roles in many attempts to reconstruct a cultural (and political) tradition for the ‘German nation’. That this involved real trench wars between divergent philological schools did no harm. On the contrary: the issue appeared all the more important the harder one was fighting for the right ways to deal with it. This applies not only to the long-lasting quarrel about the genesis and best presentation of the Nibelungenlied but also to the quarrel about the appropriate method of editing Walther and the most ‘authentic’ way of reconstructing his work, based on the manuscripts. The Nibelungenlied was ‘talked about’; Walther was ‘talked about’. Learned philologists were able to hunt around in cleverly thought-out critical apparatuses and variant listings, while at the same time grammar school pupils were also offered some Walther verse for their perusal. German classes in school tended to become lessons about cultural roots and traditions. In such an environment it is not astonishing that Walther soon acquired the status of a mythical figure. On the basis of his political poetry he was styled the ‘singer of the medieval Reich’ (cf. Richter 1988, note 6). The narrator in his texts was

252

Thomas Bein

understood to be identical with the real-life author, without any distinction. That is why it seemed as if Walther personally intervened and determined the fate of the ‘German empire’, defending its secular power against the clergy and glorifying German men and women beyond all others. In this context the reception of Walther’s so called ‘praise-song’ plays an important role. This song, which does have chauvinistic features, glorifies the German people, stating that even after having seen many parts of Europe, nowhere can one find such outstanding human qualities as in Germany. This song and its a-historical reading established Walther’s fame as a ‘patriotic singer’, as a visionary pioneer for German virtues. It comes as no surprise, then, that Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben in his famous Lied der Deutschen (‘Song of the Germans’, 1841: ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’) fell back on Walther’s ‘praise-song’. In 1922 this ‘Song of the Germans’ was declared the German national anthem by Friedrich Ebert (Brunner et al 1996, 236-40). The name of Hoffmann von Fallersleben brings us back to our focus period – the first half of the nineteenth century. Philology – at times clearly politically motivated – freed Walther’s texts from their manuscript limbo and published them – in the literal sense of the word: bringing them before a public. In the many-faceted cultural and political search for roots and unity, these new accessible texts filled an obvious need. In the early nineteenth century the basis was established for what was to find its inglorious apex in National Socialism: ‘Whoever touches Walther von der Vogelweide, touches the deepest nerve of the German-nation’s character.’ That was how Conrad Arnold Bergmann, professor of history, literature and education, pointed out the poet’s ‘living significance’ in 1933, ‘during the contemporary days of national crisis’ (Bergmann 1933, 1). In those days, Walther was called a ‘real German’ (Friedrich Panzer, 1934), a ‘speaker and admonisher’ (Herta Gent, 1938), ‘the highest blossom of the Teutonic branch’ (Wilhelm Dilthey, 1933), the ‘oldest voice crying for national renewal’ (Kurt Jacob, 1935), the ‘courageous champion of freedom and right, truth and human dignity’ (Franz Rolf Schröder, 1930), a ‘priest and ruler, poet, judge and prophet’ and the medieval Reich’s ‘poetical evangelist’ (Hans Naumann, 1934), an originator ‘of a very German purview’ (Friedrich Neumann, 1942), a prophet ‘of centuries of German fate’ (Friedrich Knorr, 1941), a ‘pioneer of Christian-national thinking’ (Conrad Arnold Bergmann, 1933), an author-


253

ity on the ‘German task’ (Hans Teske, 1935) and a ‘secular collector of forces beyond time, which shaped the German character for ever and always’ (Hans Böhm, 1942).20 Fortunately these times of politically-motivated distortions and travesties of literary history are over. Both the Nibelungenlied and Walther von der Vogelweide have survived the distortion of meanings and misinterpretations of Nazi Germanistik, and can nowadays be explored for what they are: important heirlooms of the textual culture of the thirteenth century.21

References Bein, Thomas. 1993. Walther von der Vogelweide: Ein ‘unheimlich naher Zeitgenosse’: Werkprofil und nationalsozialistische Mißdeutung. Leuvense Bijdragen 82: 363-381. Bergmann, Conrad Arnold. 1933. Walther von der Vogelweide: Lehrer und Führer des deutschen Volkes. Freiburg i.Br: Herder. Brunner, Horst et al. 1996. Walther von der Vogelweide: Epoche, Werk, Wirkung. München: Beck. Ehrismann, Otfrid. 1987. Nibelungenlied: Epoche, Werk, Wirkung. München: Beck. Grunewald, Eckhard. 1988. Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen, 1780-1856: Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der Germanistik. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. von der Hagen, Friedrich Heinrich. 1838. Minnesinger. Deutsche Liederdichter des zwölften, dreizehnten und vierzehnten Jahrhunderts. 4 vols.; Leipzig. von der Hagen, Friedrich Heinrich. 2003. Der Nibelungen Lied. In Heinzle et al., 359-60.

20 Documentation and source-referencing of all these quotations in Bein 1993. The original German phraseologies: ‘echter Deutscher’ (Friedrich Panzer, 1934), ‘Sprecher und Mahner’ (Herta Gent, 1938), ‘die höchste Blüte des germanischen Zweiges’ (Wilhelm Dilthey, 1933), der ‘älteste[] Rufer nach völkischer Erneuerung’ (Kurt Jacob, 1935), eine ‘Symphonie von deutschen Tönen’ (Hans Naumann, 1935), ‘der unerschrockene Vorkämpfer für Freiheit und Recht, für Wahrheit und Menschenwürde’ (Franz Rolf Schröder, 1930), ‘Priester und Herrscher, Dichter, Richter und Prophet’ (Hans Naumann, 1934), Urheber ‘eine[r] Welt deutschester Umschau’ (Friedrich Neumann, 1942), ‘dichterischer “Evangelist des Reichs”’ (Hans Naumann, 1934), Seher ‘deutsche[n] Schicksal[s] von Jahrhunderten’ (Friedrich Knorr, 1941), ‘Vorkämpfer (...) des christlich-völkischen Denkens’ (Conrad Arnold Bergmann, 1933), Erkenner des ‘deutschen Auftrag[s]’ (Hans Teske, 1935), ‘zeitliche[r] Sammler überzeitlicher Kräfte, die deutsches Wesen je und je geformt haben’ (Hans Böhm, 1942). 21 Many thanks to Esther Ehlen (Aachen) for the English translation of this article.

254

Thomas Bein

Heinzle, Joachim; Anneliese Waldschmitt. 1991. Die Nibelungen, ein deutscher Wahn, ein deutscher Alptraum: Studien und Dokumente zur Rezeption des Nibelungenstoffs im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Heinzle, Joachim. 1996. Das Nibelungenlied: Eine Einführung. Frankfurt/M: Fischer. Heinzle, Joachim et al., eds. 2003. Die Nibelungen. Sage, Epos, Mythos. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Hoffmann, Werner. 1992. Nibelungenlied. Stuttgart: Metzler. Göhler, Peter. 1989. Das Nibelungenlied. Erzählweise, Figuren, Weltanschauung, literaturgeschichtliches Umfeld. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Krohn. Rüdiger. 1994. ... daß alles allen verständlich sey. Die Altgermanistik des 19. Jahrhunderts und ihre Wege in die Öffentlichkeit. In Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Germanistik im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Jürgen Fohrmann et al., 264333. Stuttgart: Metzler. Lachmann, Karl. 1876. Kleinere Schriften zur classischen Philologie, ed. J. Vahlen. Berlin. Lachmann, Karl. 1960 [1826]. ‘Vorrede’. In Der Nibelunge Noth und die Klage. Nach der ältesten Überlieferung mit Bezeichnung des Unechten und mit den Abweichungen der gemeinen Lesart, ed. K. Lachmann. Berlin. Leitzmann, Albert (ed.). 1927. Briefwechsel der Brüder Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm mit Karl Lachmann. Jena: Frommann. Leo, Willibald. 1971 [1880] Die gesammte Literatur Walther’s von der Vogelweide: Eine kritisch-vergleichende Studie zur Geschichte der Walther-Forschung. New ed. Erich Carlsohn; Niederwalluf: Sändig. Maurer, Friedrich (ed.). 1955-56. Die Lieder Walthers von der Vogelweide. 2 vols.; Tübingen: Niemeyer. Maurer, Friedrich (ed.). 1972. Walther von der Vogelweide. Die Lieder. München: Fink. Müller, Jan-Dirk. 2002. Das Nibelungenlied. Berlin: Schmidt. Pfeiffer, Franz (ed.). 1877 (1864). Walther von der Vogelweide. 5th ed. by Karl Bartsch; Leipzig. Richter, Roland. 1988. Wie Walther von der Vogelweide ein ‘Sänger des Reiches’ wurde. Eine sozial- und wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Rezeption seiner ‘Reichsidee’ im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Göppingen: Kümmerle. Schweikle, Günther, ed. 1994-98. Walther von der Vogelweide, Werke: Gesamtausgabe. Stuttgart: Reclam. Schulze, Ursula. 1997. Das Nibelungenlied. Stuttgart: Reclam. von See, Klaus. 2003. Das Nibelungenlied: Ein Nationalepos? In Heinzle et al., 309-343. Simrock, Karl (trl.). 1833. Gedichte Walthers von der Vogelweide, übersetzt von Karl Simrock und erläutert von Wilhelm Wackernagel. 2 vols.; Berlin. Uhland, Ludwig. 1984. Werke. Band IV. Wissenschaftliche und poetologische Schriften, politische Reden und Aufsätze, ed. Hartmut Fröschle & Walter Scheffler, 31108. München: Artemis & Winkler. Vahlen, J. (ed.). 1892. Karl Lachmanns Briefe an Moriz Haupt. Berlin.


HOFFMANN VON FALLERSLEBEN AND DUTCH MEDIEVAL FOLKSONG Herman Brinkman Abstract The German poet/philologist Hoffmann von Fallersleben (17981874) was celebrated during his lifetime for his pioneering work on medieval Dutch literature; after his death his philological merits were questioned. This article attempts to place Hoffmann’s pioneering work in perspective, taking into consideration his objectives in searching, listing and editing medieval Dutch folk song. Special attention is given to discrepancies between his research strategies in Germany and in the Netherlands. A muted response to his several appeals to Dutch literati to forward samples of medieval song, as well as his literary taste and preconceptions about what he believed was the extinction of a native song culture in Holland, prevented Hoffmann from recording the living heritage of folk song in the Netherlands. Hoffmanns views as an editor are also discussed with respect to his other, less academic objective: restoring medieval folk song to popularity. The German romantic poet and philologist Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874) was one of the first scholars, and arguably the most important one, who took an interest in the Dutch literature of the Middle Ages for other than purely linguistic or historical reasons. During three phases in his life he paid scholarly visits to the Netherlands. Apart from an early trip to the Walloon provinces of present-day Belgium, the first stay took place in the year 1821. After that he returned three times during 1836-1839, and once again, from 1854-1856 for three consecutive years (Poettgens 1993, 20-23). The results of these philological under-

256

Herman Brinkman

takings found their expression in twelve volumes which were published between 1830 and 1862 as Horae belgicae (Hoffmann von Fallersleben 1830-1862; see the appendix to this article). The importance of his pioneering work, which led the way to a new appreciation of Dutch medieval literature, was fully recognized both during his lifetime, and after his death, both in the Netherlands as in Belgium. Various papers and monographs that were dedicated to him, whether they highlighted the poet, his encouragement of the Flemish Movement or the philologist, all point at the official tokens of honour he obtained: a doctorate honoris causa at the University of Leiden (1823), the bestowal of a royal gold medal (1836), the appointment as Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion (1856) and the honorary membership of the Society of Dutch Literature (1865) (De Raaf 1943; Logghe 1991; Poettgens 1993). Changing Appreciation In view of this recognition, it seems remarkable that the light shed on Hoffmann’s achievements in the one great monument of Middle Dutch philology, the Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek (MNW, Dictionary of Middle Dutch) is of quite a different nature. In the volume Bouwstoffen, which presents detailed analyses of the sources used for the dictionary, paleographer Willem de Vreese, a man of undisputed standing, provided judgements on the quality and reliability of the printed sources (Verwijs and Verdam 1927-1952). His comments on Hoffmann’s editions speak for themselves: ‘Een zeer willekeurig gewijzigde herdruk (...) die niet zonder fouten is’; ‘een philologisch nauwelijks bruikbare uitgave’; ‘onbetrouwbaar’; ‘philologisch nauwelijks briuikbaar’; ‘vrijwel onbruikbaar’.1 It is hard to imagine a greater contrast between these words and the praise that Hoffmann received during his lifetime. Apparently after Hoffmanns death a change in the appreciation of his scholarly work had taken place. When Matthias de Vries, initiator of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (WNT, Dictionary of the Dutch Language) published the first installments of a dictionary of Middle Dutch, an undertaking which he soon afterwards was forced to abandon, he dedicated his work in progress to Hoffmann, writing: ‘Aan niemand

1 Verwijs and Verdam 1927-1952, art. 606.1a, 1b, 5b, 6, 8a: ‘A very arbitrarily altered reprint which is not without mistakes’; ‘A philologically hardly serviceable edition’; ‘unreliable’; ‘philologically barely of use’; ‘hardly useful’.

HOFFMANN VON FALLERSLEBEN AND DUTCH FOLKSONG

257

heeft ons Vaderland voor de kennis en waardering zijner letterkunde uit de middeleeuwen hoogere verplichting dan aan U’.2 It is all the more remarkable therefore, that Jacob Verdam, who was to take up and fulfill the enormous task of writing the MNW, omitted this dedication, replacing it by a dedication to Matthias de Vries, and leaving no more than a casual allusion to Hoffmann’s role at the conception of the dictionary. In the end, one may wonder if Hoffmann’s philological work has earned true recognition. Some historical differentiation seems called for. A Conversion to Germanic Philology How much in fact we owe to Hoffmann becomes all the more apparent if we look at the things he did not do. A hardly recognized, yet striking omission in his work, which I will go into presently, may have had far-reaching consequences not only for our knowledge but even for the actual transmission of the old Dutch folk song – this being, paradoxically, precisely the area which Hoffmann cherished most fondly. I will come to this later on. But first, in order to put both appreciation and underestimation in perspective, I have to analyse the way Hoffmann developed his ideals and tried to realise them in Germany; and contrast this with the way he operated in the Netherlands. In doing this I will look at his literary ambitions, his research strategies and the role of editing. Hoffmann’s concern with Dutch literature started when he was a student of classical philology at Göttingen. Following an early, as yet unfocused interest in Germanic languages and dialects, his commitment to these studies gained momentum after an encounter with Jacob Grimm. At some point the then twenty-year-old student expressed his fascination for antiquity and told Grimm of his plans to make a literary journey to Italy and Greece. Grimm, with a subtle hint, managed to put him on a different track by asking: ‘Is not your fatherland closer to you?’ What followed may justly be called a ‘conversion’. It took place on September 5, 1818 and determined the course of his life. Never has Hoffmann been unclear about his motives. The thing we hear him talk about the most, in his early writings, is his determination to 2 De Raaf 1943, 92: ‘To no-one does our nation have a greater debt than to you, for its knowledge and appreciation of the literature of the Middle Ages.’

258

Herman Brinkman

demonstrate the dissemination of German songs and to clarify the affinity between the cultures of the Germanic peoples. In a letter of New Year’s Day 1820, addressed to Jacob Grimm, he writes: ‘Auch müssen die Volkslieder anderer Länder in und ausser Europa berücksichtigt werden weil sich nur so eine allgemeine Ansicht über das Volkslied gewinnen lässt’.3 The scope of his vision is reflected in the formulation of what he considered to become his new field of study: Ich begriff darunter das Gotische, Alt-, Mittel-, Neuhochdeutsche mit allen seinen Mundarten, das Altsächsische, Niederdeutsche und Niederländische, das Friesische, Angelsächsische und Englische, und das Scandinavische; ferner die deutsche Litteratur- und Culturgeschichte, alles Volksthümliche in Sitten, Gebräuchen, Sagen und Märchen, sowie endlich Deutschlands Geschichte, Kunst, Alterthümer und Recht.4

An additional motivation played into this. To Hoffmann, the impact of folk song revival should be far more than antiquarian, philological or even patriotic. He discerned a definite aesthetic component, that, to his opinion, should influence the developing romantic poetics. Drawing on this he aimed at restoring and cultivating esteem and love for the purity and beauty of old folk songs. As a poet, he tried to emulate form and content of these songs and ardently hoped that others as well would start reading and singing them, be inspired by them, and in this way would give a new impulse to contemporary poetry. First Encounters with Dutch Songs Hoffmann’s first encounter with Dutch songs goes back to his stay in Göttingen. In 1818 he found a reference in the local library to an edition of the so-called Souter-liedekens (‘psalter-songs’, i.e. vernacular psalm adaptations) dating from the sixteenth century. The songs in this book had no musical notation, but were provided with melodic indications that referred to opening lines of unknown Dutch secular songs. From then on he set his mind on retrieving this lost heirloom. 3

Hoffmann 1892-93, 305-6: ‘the folk songs of other countries within and outside Europe need also to be taken into account; for only in this way a general perspective on folk song can be achieved.’ 4 ibid. 100-1: ‘It comprised Gothic, Old-, Middle- and New High German with all its regional dialects, Old Saxon, Low German, Dutch, Frisian, Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian; furthermore the history of German culture and literature, folklore in morals, customs, sagas and fairy tales, as well as the history, art, antiquities and law of Germany.’


259

As early as November 1818, Hoffmann, in a letter to Grimm, displayed some views on his proposed studies of Dutch folk song. He alluded to a possible journey to Holland the next year, in the company of a friend who was a good composer (and who was probably invited as a recorder of folk melodies). Especially in Brabant he expected rich harvest, because people there, he assumed, loved singing much more than they did in the ‘deserted dunes of Holland’. Grimm supplied him with a list of songs, extracted from Dutch bluebooks, some of which Grimm had already published in 1813 in Deutsche Wälder. Hoffmann realised that there was no reason for him to stay in the classically oriented university of Göttingen and decided to register at the newly founded university of Bonn, where he arrived in May 1819. His hopes of a radically different programme were frustrated. The lectures by Schlegel, whom he considered a very vain man, were disappointing. More stimulating was the student community, which consisted of travelling students from all over the German territories. The following year he was working on several fronts: language acquisition, library research, transcription, the establishment of a network of correspondents, source collection and field work. His objective was to master the languages he needed for his studies both actively and passively. In the summer, instead of travelling to Holland, he roamed through the Walloon region of the Low Countries. Of a short visit to Maastricht he wrote to Grimm that to his regret he was unable to trace any oral legends (Hoffmann 1892-93, 308). Research Strategies in Germany The rest of 1819 Hoffmann spent in the village of Poppelsdorf, near Bonn, where he stayed in a house next to the church. Later in life he recalled the way in which he collected folk songs there, ‘from the lips of the people’. He was on very friendly terms with the daughter of his landlord: ‘Sie sprach das eigentliche Bönnisch und wusste alle die Lieder, die man zum Tanze oder im Freien und bei Zusammenkünften zu singen pflegte’.5 These girls taught him their dialect and their songs and when they were insecure about some texts, they would call in others. A vicar in the village of Kessenich assisted in melody transcription. In this way 5 ibid., 82.: ‘She spoke the true dialect of Bonn and knew all the songs that used to be sung when there was a dance, when people went into the fields, or when there were gatherings’.

260

Herman Brinkman

Hoffmann was able to collect many songs, including some versions of the Song of the Two Royal Children. Apart from this, his fellow students Karl Reuter and Peter Adams provided him with several beautiful songs they had recorded in their own homelands: the Rheingau and the Middle Moselle. Around that time he realized that he was severely lacking in study materials, since the Bonn library did not fulfil all his needs. He conceived the idea of establishing a private library, which was problematic given his lack of financial backing. Nevertheless, using the small funds available, he was able to accomplish a great deal. In the fall of 1819 he discovered a manuscript on the market in Bonn, which contained about a hundred songs and dated from the sixteenth century. To his great delight he was able to buy it. From this manuscript he instantly published two student songs, maintaining the old orthography. Encouraged by this find he continued browsing through the stocks of second-hand booksellers, by which means he obtained several German manuscripts, originating from Nonnenwerth monastery. In addition to this he travelled, mostly on foot, to princely and private libraries throughout the country. In the library of linguist Johann Gottlieb Radlof he discovered a copy of the Oud Amsterdamsch Liedboek (Old Amsterdam Songbook), to which he was granted free access. This book, which contained a Dutch version of the Song of the Two Royal Children once again put him on the track of the study of Dutch literature. Some of the songs he translated and added to a collection of his own poetry, Lieder und Romanzen (Cologne, 1821). In November 1819 he received an unpaid position as library assistant, which enabled him to peruse and excerpt many volumes of both old and new reviews and collections, and to improve on his foreign language skills: German dialects, Danish and Dutch. Sometimes his best luck mingled with serious setbacks. In the ducal library of Wolffenbüttel he discovered the only existing copy of the Antwerps Liedboek (Antwerp Song Book), a unique collection of more than 200 worldly songs, printed in 1544. How he would have liked to transcribe these songs! However, despite his pleadings, no permission was granted. When he found references to song books in the catalogue of Mainz library, no one was prepared to take the books from the shelves. He asked local friends to return to the library at a later date and to transcribe the songs for him, but to his amazement, they replied that


261

the library was closed during the winter and that no one could locate the key. In 1820, after a short stay in his native Fallersleben, he took up travelling again, visiting acquaintances and libraries. This kind of research, travelling on foot, was extremely arduous. Reading Hoffmann’s accounts of constantly getting wet and losing his way, one can understand that such work could only be done by a young researcher. The first immediate contacts with the Netherlands were established through a professor Van Swinderen from Groningen. Van Swinderen took a letter by Hoffmann to the antiquarian Nicolas Westendorp, who obligingly mentioned it in his periodical Antiquiteiten as follows: De Verzamelaar zou gaarne, zoo als velen ten opzigte van Duitschland reeds gedaan hebben, de volkswijzen, Sagen, Märchen, (vertelsels), legenden en soortgelijke, verzamelen, welke nog in ons Land in den mond van het volk leven.6

Westendorp strongly supported this call, but also indicated that as an ageing cleric, he himself could be of little help, since he seldom had the opportunity to witness the people singing their old songs at merry times. A letter Hoffmann sent to the legal scholar Hendrik Willem Tydeman at Leiden (July 9, 1820) shows his plan to undertake similar researches in Holland as he had done in Germany: Zunächst möchte ich wissen, ob der jetzige Volksgesang noch Spuren alter merkwürdiger Lieder, oder auch noch Weisen bewahre, und in welchen Gegenden das Volk am singlustigsten geblieben sei.7

Recording the living cultural heritage was, at that point in time, his foremost research priority. First Expedition into the Netherlands In the meantime Hoffmann compiled an overview of all remaining sources of Middle Dutch literature, the result of which was published in 1821. Considering the short period of time and the working conditions 6

Westendorp 1820, 454: ‘The collector wishes, as many already have done for Germany, to record the folksongs, folk- and fairytales, legends etc. which in our country are still alive on the lips of the people.’ 7 Brachin 1965, 193: ‘Most of all I would like to know, whether present-day folksong has preserved traces of remarkable songs of the past, or melodies for that matter; and in what parts of the country the people still take most pleasure in singing’.

262

Herman Brinkman

(with practically no help from Dutch scholars and without setting foot on Dutch soil) one cannot be but amazed of what he had accomplished so far. Yet he knew that a visit to Holland held the promise of a much richer harvest. In June 1821 the time had finally come for him to make his journey to the Netherlands. Shortly before his departure, he wrote to the 81-year-old Hendrik Van Wijn, whose Letterkundige Avondstonden (Literary Lucubrations) had supplied him with valuable information. He tried to win over this ailing and somewhat confused old man and asked him to encourage his Dutch friends to track oral versions of the Song of the Two Royal Children (Gaedertz 1888, 26-27). On his arrival in the Netherlands, his first encounter with academic circles was far from encouraging. The Utrecht professor Simons, on whom he called, was not amused by Hoffmann’s ambitions, and pointed out that it was no custom in the Netherlands to make literary journeys. He was better received in Leiden, where he stayed with his fellow countryman, the physician Salomon. What is more, without much ado the keys of the well stocked library of the Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde (Society of Dutch Literature) were entrusted to him. This allowed him to draw up the first catalogue of medieval manuscripts in this collection. Up to a certain point Hoffmann proceeded in the same way as in Germany: visiting large and small libraries, browsing the second-hand book trade for old manuscripts and prints. This approach once again proved very successful. In a relatively short period of time he acquired an extremely valuable collection of medieval books, mostly by receiving gifts and swapping cleverly with booktraders. Yet there was one striking difference in his approach. One would have expected him to start a thorough investigation into oral traditions. But he did nothing of the kind. Nowhere in his autobiography do we find any hint that he made endeavours in this field, neither during this first visit nor during any of six consecutive ones. Later in life he stated that he had started with high expectations, but that his hopes for abundant material proved unrealistic (1833). The awkward thing is that Hoffmann’s notion on the dearth of material was also preconceived to a degree. It appears that professor Siegenbeek of Leiden university, with whom he had corresponded, had successfully tried to discourage him on this point. For even before his first journey Hoffmann wrote:


263

In Holland ist aber gar keine Theilname dafür, und der Volksgesang lebt nicht mehr fort (...). Ferner sind auch daselbst die älteren Liedersammlungen untergegangen, oder, wie H. Prof. Siegenbeek zu Leiden mir schreibt, in den Besitz von Privatleuthen gerathen; denn auf öffentlichen Bibliotheken hielt man wol seit Jos. Scaliger’s Zeit bis zu Ruhnken weder hdschr., noch gedruckte Sammlungen der Art, des Aufbewahrens werth. Und auch im Privatbesitz liegen sie unbeachtet oder verachtet.8

From the moment of his arrival in the Netherlands, Hoffmann finds his expectations confirmed. Three published appeals to the Dutch literary and scholarly world, to come forward with song texts or songbooks, remained without response, in spite of Hoffmann’s deliberate appeal to patriotic sentiments among the Dutch: Ik wenschte gaarne aan mijn Vaderland het êelste uit den Nederlandschen volkszang medetedeelen; en daaruit te doen zien, hoe ook Nederland in ouden tijd met echten Duitschen geest voor poëzij, muzijk en onvervalschte zeden bezield was. (...) Dat deze gezangen, in den waren zin des woords, Volksliederen waren, ziet men ook uit derzelver overeenkomst met Duitsche en andere Germaansche Volksliederen, die veelal in schriftelijke, maar ook in gedrukte verzamelingen gevonden, en ook thans nog meer of min volledig door het volk gezongen worden.9

In an amazingly short period of time Hoffmann became convinced that Dutch folk song up until the sixteenth century had been related to German song, but that later on it had been suffocated by learning; with the result that all that was left were insignificant tunes and dialogues. Eine Volkspoesie in dem frühern Sinne ist jetzt weder in Holland noch in Flandern und Brabant vorhanden; wenn der Holländer singt, so hat er

8 Hoffmann 1821, XXII: ‘In Holland folk song is no longer alive; and what is more, all the older song collections are lost, or, as professor Siegenbeek of Leiden writes to me, they are in private possession, for since the days of Scaliger neither manuscripts nor early printed collections have been considered worth preserving. And in private ownership they remain unnoticed or even scorned.’ 9 Hoffmann 1821, 50, 55: ‘I would like to present to my fellow countrymen the most noble specimen of Dutch folk song; and thereby demonstrate that in the old days the Netherlands were inspired by a true German spirit for poetry, music and unspoiled morals. (...) That these songs, in the true sense of the word, were folk songs, can be seen from their resemblance to such German and other Germanic folk songs as can be found in handwritten and printed collections, and up to the present day are being sung in more or less complete form by the people.’

264

Herman Brinkman

nichts als einzelne gute Lieder der neuesten gefeierten Dichter und übersetzte Operntexte des Auslandes, und der Vlaming singt lieber französisch.10

Hoffmann’s View on Contemporary Dutch Song Culture Pierre Brachin rightly remarks that Hoffmann may have seen a lot of both the Netherlands and Belgium, but he did not get to know the countryside. And yet, he travelled a lot, on foot, mostly, or by track barge, passed through many villages on his way and must have seen as many taverns. Something of his shocked reaction to contemporary folk songs he did hear can be read in his recollection of a village fair, which he happened to witness during one of his travels on foot to Haarlem or The Hague. This was very unlike a popular festivity in Germany, he writes, and it did not resemble the old paintings by Teniers in any way. It was a chaotic mess, in which boys, girls and children were screaming, dancing and singing. In a dancing hall he was irked by the musicians, who played worse than beer fiddlers at home. The people were awkwardly dressed and, worst of all, the words of the revellers’ songs so inappropriate as to become revolting. Dancing to a cheerful tune, a stanza was such from the eighteenth-century poet of childrens’ verse Hieronymus Van Alphen, which went as follows: Ach mijn zusjen is gestorven, Maar eerst dertien maantjes oud, ‘k Zag haar in haar doodkist leggen, Ach, wat was mijn zusjen koud11

– which was followed, he writes, by a wildly sung refrain: ‘Lapperdi lapperdi lorischi lorischi, Lapperdi lapperdi lorischa!’ Following such experiences Hoffmann reached the conclusion that the Dutch were truly alienated from their own national heritage. The reticence of the scholarly world on his summons told him the rest. Lack of affection for old folk poetry also revealed itself in a more embarrassing way. I have already mentioned that the Song of the Two Royal 10

Brachin 1965, 194: ‘Folk poetry, in the ancient sense, can no longer be found in Holland, nor in Flanders or Brabant; when a Dutchman sings, he comes up with some fine songs from the latest fashionable poet and with translated opera texts from abroad; when a Fleming sings, he prefers to sing in French.’ It should be understood that Hoffmann, like Herder and Goethe before him, expressly excluded the songs of street singers from folk poetry. 11 Hoffmann 1892-93, 117: ‘Ah, my little sister died /She was thirteen months of age, / I saw her laid out in her coffin, /Ah, how cold my sister was.’


265

Children was one of his favourites; it was the song that had attracted him more to Dutch literature than any other. Of all the thirty versions he had collected in various languages, he preferred the Dutch one. During his stay in Leyden, he had noticed that many people were fond of his performances of German folk songs. Naturally, he thought he was at liberty to come forward with one or two Dutch ones. In later years he recalled the incident in this way: Eines Tages wurde ich in einer grossen Gesellschaft junger hübscher Mädchen ersucht, etwas zu singen. Ich sang deutsche Lieder und Alles war erfreut. So wie ich aber das schöne altniederländische Lied: ‘Het waren twee coningheskinder’, anstimmte, brach Alles in ein lautes Gelächter aus. Ich sang nicht weiter, sagte eben auf holländisch, so gut ich eben konnte: ‘Ich nehme von den schönen Fräulein keine Rücksicht für mich in Anspruch, habe aber geglaubt, dass sie ihr eigenes Vaterland und seine schöne poetische Vergangenheit mehr ehren würden’.12

Although Hoffmann desisted from preserving the oral song tradition, he nevertheless faced an enormous task: the careful reworking of his surveys, a continuous search for new printed or handwritten sources and the realisation of his editorial plans. Hoffmann as Editor Especially the latter task would prove to be an arduous one. At an early stage, feeling insecure about the way in which he should edit a selection of the best texts in his collection, he consulted Jacob Grimm. He did not want to proceed in the manner of Von der Hagen or Arnim and Brentano, whose work was under serious criticism at that time. On the other hand he abhorred a textual treatment of Germanic texts by the standards of classical philology. At first he pleaded for a swift publication of discovered material, to preserve other texts from irreparable loss. But the situation of 1821 did not allow such a policy. He knew of the existence of important song collections, was aware, indeed, of their exact location, but restricted accessability frustrated an early realisation of his editorial plans. There12

ibid., 121: ‘One day I was invited into a large company of beautiful young girls and was requested to sing something. I sang German songs and pleased everyone. But as soon as I sang the first notes of the fine old Dutch song Once there were two royal children the whole room exploded into laughter. I stopped singing and said, in my best Dutch: ‘I did not expect the young ladies to spare me, but at least thought they would have had more respect for their own native country and its beautiful poetic heritage.’

266

Herman Brinkman

fore, there was no option but to wait for better circumstances. However, when in 1828 an anthology appeared entitled Letterkundig overzigt en proeven van de Nederlandsche volkszangen sedert de XVde eeuw (‘Literary survey and specimens of Dutch folksongs from the fifteenth century onwards’), Hoffmann felt obliged to counter this ‘monstrosity’, by releasing the songs he collected himself (Hoffmann von Fallersleben 1833). The 1828 anthology by Le Jeune once again displayed the low standards of Dutch philology. With little respect for the original text the editor replaced frivolous lines with lines of his own making. Unfortunately Hoffmann was unable to use his greatest discovery in this field: the Antwerp Songbook of 1544. As Gerrit Kalff later rightly stated (Kalff 1884, 644), this book may be considered the foundation of our knowledge of Dutch song culture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Hoffmann’s patron Von Meusebach, who prepared an anthology of German songs and contended that the majority of the songs in this Dutch collection were of German origin, monopolized its perusal for a period of more than twenty years. Only from 1843 onwards, twenty-three years after Hoffmann had discovered the copy, was he allowed to look into it and, during short intervals, and only in Meusebach’s presence, copy some of the songs. This restriction was so severe that by 1854 Hoffmann had transcriptions of only 57 of 221 songs. And when he finally obtained permission to publish the collection, he was granted a mere eight weeks to get the job done, a task he was unable to fulfill in time. With presses running, he was summoned to return the book. Only through the intervention of another patron was he allowed to use the little book for a slightly longer period of time, which was just enough to accomplish the work. This edition, by the way, was the only one that was benevolently treated by De Vreese in the Bouwstoffen of the Middle Dutch Dictionary. In more than one way, it may be argued, Hoffmann failed to live up to his high ambitions. First of all he failed to restore the affection for ancient folk song. He realized this when he wrote in 1852: Wie ganz anders hätte sich die National-litteratur dort zu Lande gestaltet, wenn die altniederländische volksthümliche Poesie als Muster und leitender Grundsatz betrachtet worden wäre, wenn sie die poetischen Geister angeregt und belebt hätte! Die heutige Poesie huldigt noch immer jener fremdartigen Geschmacksrichtung aus den Zeiten der französischen Ludwige, sie hat noch immer jenen fremdartigen Zuschnitt in ihren Formen beibehalten, sowie jene gelehrte Ausdrucksweise und bleibt dadurch dem Gemüthe des


267

Volks eben so fern, wie die Vergangenheit der Gegenwart, und oft eben so unverständlich, wie das Ausland dem Vaterlande.13

At the end of his life a certain indifference regarding editorial procedure seems to prevail. In the 1870 edition of the collection of proverbs by Tunnicius, instead of a justification of his editorial practice, we read a diatribe against the modern-day generation of narrow-minded know-it-all critics, who will never be satisfied, whatever decisions an editor may take. If you faithfully transcribe the source, he complains, they will argue that you made no effort to clarify the text; if you present a critical text they will say it is a bad thing the original is faithfully reproduced (Hoffmann 1870, 9-10). His remarks may be more than the grousing of a grumpy old man; that is, if we recall the nineteenth century appraisal of his faithful textual rendition of the Antwerp Songbook and compare it with the verdict of Wytze Hellinga, who characterized his edition as ‘as boring as it is correct’, with the addition ‘the song returned, the book remained dead’.14 The second point on which Hoffmann failed to accomplish what he set out to do, was the recording of the oral tradition. It is most unfortunate that Hoffmann seems to have been far too premature in his views on the possibilities of researching Dutch folk song as part of a living cultural heritage. The fact that his summons to the scholarly world failed to raise a response, that his appeals to the patriotic sentiment in these circles did not have the effect he expected them to have, has nothing to do with the alleged disappearance of folklore. Nor does it have anything to do with a lack of scholarly interest in history. On the contrary, precisely during the days that Hoffmann concerned himself with Dutch literature, interest in history revived as never before, within the context of an outspoken nationalism. In 1812, Jan Frederik Helmers’ De Holland13 Hoffmann von Fallersleben 1852, 123: ‘How differently the national literature of the Netherlands could have developed, had the old Dutch folk poetry been taken up as an example and lodestar; if this poetry had inspired and animated the poetic minds! Today the poetic tastes are still similar to the fashions of French classicism; it still maintains a foreign aspect in its forms, just as it has kept a predilection to phrases that show off learning; therefore it will not reach the hearts of the people any closer than the past comes close to the present, and often remains as hard to understand as a foreign country.’ 14 Hellinga 1941, 181. A recent edition of the Antwerp Songbook (Wolffenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, 236.5 Poetica) is Van der Poel, Geirnaert and Joldersma 2004.

268

Herman Brinkman

sche Natie (‘The Dutch Nation’) appeared, the most outstanding patriotic poem ever written in Dutch. In the years following the French occupation this long poem went through many printings and gained immense popularity. It is a permanent glorification of the past; in passionate phrasings the poet presents historical scenes; a portrait gallery of national heroes is established. Only, there is no place, no place at all, for the Middle Ages in this picture. It is a celebration of the Golden Age and all those who followed its protestant values. Only very slowly did this attitude change. Helmers called the Middle Ages the pitch black night of civilization; Willem de Clercq, twelve years later, still spoke of ‘the fogs of the Middle Ages’. It took the Belgian revolution in 1830 and the emergence of the Flemish Movement, with its challenge to French linguistic supremacy, to create the conditions for Hoffmann’s ideals to be taken up again and developed further.15 References Borchert, Jürgen. 1991. Hoffmann von Fallersleben: Ein deutsches Dichterschicksal. Berlin: Verlag der Nation. Brachin, Pierre. 1965. Les Pays-Bas vus par Hoffmann von Fallersleben. Études germaniques 20: 189-209. Gaedertz, Karl Theodor, ed. 1888. Briefwechsel von Jakob Grimm und Hoffmann-Fallersleben mit Hendrik van Wyn. Nebst anderen Briefen zur deutschen Litteratur. Bremen. Hellinga, W.Gs, ed. 1941. Een schoon liedekens-boeck in den welcken ghy in vinden sult, veelderhande liedekens, oude ende nyeuwe, om droefheyt ende melancolie te verdryven. ’s-Gravenhage: Boucher. Hoffman von Fallersleben, A.H. 1821. Aanzoek om mededeeling van oude Nederlandsche volksliederen. Algemeene Konst- en Letterbode 2: 50-55. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, A.H., ed. 1821. Bonner Bruchstücke vom Otfried nebst anderen deutschen Sprachdenkmaelern. Bonn. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, A.H. 1830-1862. Horae belgicae. Studio atque opera Henrici Hoffmann Fallerslebensis. 12 vols. Vratislaviae. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, A.H. ed. 1870. Die älteste Niederdeutsche Sprichwörtersammlung, von Antonius Tunnicius gesammelt und in Lateinische Verse übersetzt. Berlin. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, A.H..1892-93. Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 7, Mein Leben. Berlin. 15 For a recent perspective of Hoffmann’s role in the cultural and nationalist movements of the nineteenth-century Netherlands and Belgium, see Leerssen 2006, chapter 5; for further reading on Hoffmann see his biography by Jürgen Borchert (1991).


269

Le Jeune, J.C.W., ed. 1828. Letterkundig overzigt en proeven van de Nederlandsche volkszangen sedert de XVde eeuw. ’s-Gravenhage. Leerssen, Joep. 2006. De bronnen van het vaderland: Taal, literatuur en de afbakening van Nederland, 1806-1890. Nijmegen: Vantilt. Logghe, Koenraad. 1991. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, of hoe het literaire nationalisme gestalte nam. Teksten, kommentaren en studies 13.64: 54-59. Poel, Dieuwke E. van der, Dirk Geirnaert, Hermina Joldersma et al., eds. 2004. Het Antwerps Liedboek. 2 vols. Tielt: Delta/Lannoo. Poettgens, Erika. 1993. Hoffmann von Fallersleben. Ein Forscher und Dichter zwischen Preussen und den Niederlanden. In Brandenburg-Preussen und die Niederlande: Zur Dynamik einer Nachbarschaft, eds. Jattie Enklaar and Hans Ester, 20-40. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Raaf, K.H. de. 1943. Hoffmann von Fallersleben: voortrekker in het oude land der Dietsche letteren. Den Haag: Oceanus. Verwijs, E. and J. Verdam, eds 1927-52. Middelnederlandsch woordenboek. Vol 10, Willem de Vreese, Tekstcritiek van J. Verdam en Bouwstoffen, eerste gedeelte (A-F); G.I. Lieftinck, Tweede gedeelte (G-Z). ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Westendorp, N. 1820. Over Volksliederen en Vertelsels. Antiquiteiten. Een oudheidkundig tijdschrift (IVe stuk): 453-455.

Appendix: A.H. Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s ‘Horae belgicae’ series (1830-1862) 1: De antiquioribus Belgarum literis (Vratislavae 1830). 2nd ed.: Übersicht der mittelniederländischen Dichtung (Hannover 1857). 2: Holländische Volkslieder: mit einer Musikbeilage (Breslau 1833). 2nd ed.: Niederländische Volkslieder (Hannover 1856). 3: Diederic van Assenede, Floris ende Blancefloer. Mit Einleitung, Anmerkungen und Glossar (Leipzig 1836). 2nd ed.: Diederic van Assenede, Floris ende Blancefloer. Mit Einleitung, Anmerkungen und Glossar (Leipzig/Hannover 1854). 4: Caerl ende Elegast (Lipsiae 1836; also as dissertation, Breslau). 2nd ed.: Caerl ende Elegast (Lipsiae prostat Hannoverae 1854). 5: Lantsloot ende die scone Sandrijn. Renout van Montalbaen (Breslau 1837). 6: Altniederländische Schaubühne: Abele spelen ende sotternien (Breslau 1838). 7: Niederländische Glossare des XIV. und XV. Jahrhunderts nebst einem Niederdeutschen (Leipzig 1845). 2nd ed.: Glossarium Belgicum (Hannover 1856). 8: Loverkens: Altniederländische Lieder (Göttingen 1852). 9: Altniederländische Sprichwörter nach der ältesten Sammlung. Gesprächbüchlein, romanisch und flämisch (Hannover 1854). 10: Niederländische geistliche Lieder des XV. Jahrhunderts aus gleichzeitigen Handschriften (Hannover 1854). 11: Antwerpener Liederbuch vom Jahre 1544 nach dem einzigen noch vorhandenen Exemplare (Hannover 1855). 12: Bruchstücke mittelniederländischer Gedichte, nebst Loverkens (Hannover 1862).


PRIVATE TO PUBLIC: BOOK COLLECTING AND PHILOLOGY IN EARLY-INDEPENDENT BELGIUM (1830-1880) Jan Pauwels Abstract The Belgian Revolution of 1830, which marked the beginning of the country’s independence, was initially felt as a disruption in the private and public care of ancient books and manuscripts. Soon afterwards, however, book-collecting resumed in circles of (mainly Flemish) antiquarians and bibliophiles, whose interests were increasingly recognized as providing the fledgeling state with the literary and cultural ancestry needed to legitimise its independent existence. Soon, private initiatives were to shade increasingly into the formation of public (state-sponsored) initiatives and shifted fom the local (municipal) to the national level. The rise of Netherlandic philology in the geographical regions that today constitute the federal State of Belgium is inextricably linked with the history of book collecting. Nowadays scholars tend to spend a substantial part of their time in large libraries and archives, where the national cultural heritage is conserved and made accessible to the general public. Save for a few exceptions – mostly manuscripts or books with aesthetic appeal – hardly any truly important items are now in private hands. But when philology first manifested itself as a new discipline, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the situation was quite different: the large public institutions we know today were still under construction and the most notable manuscripts and books were in private hands. Thanks to the efforts on the part of modern European philologists, unexplored source material was discovered throughout Europe; a wave of text editions

272

Jan Pauwels

ensued. Gradually these manuscripts and rare books would become the property of public institutions. Their status shifted from antiquarian collectables to pieces of the national cultural heritage. Further institutional expansion in the course of the century, including a staff of trained and remunerated scholars, led to greater professionalism in the field. Therefore, in order to fully understand the literary activity during the Romantic era, an institutional approach is required besides a mere poetical one (Leerssen 2004). As elsewhere in Europe, there was a group of intellectuals in Belgium who, from the 1820s, began to study language and literature in the vernacular. Their main activity consisted in tracing and publishing old Dutch texts. They represented a cultural emancipation movement that strove to promote Dutch in the young, bilingual State of Belgium by studying its literary history. The three most prominent representatives of this movement, essentially amateur philologists, were also enthusiastic book collectors: the libraries of civil servant Jan Frans Willems (17931846) and his younger colleagues professor Constant Philippe Serrure (1805-1872) and doctor Ferdinand Augustijn Snellaert (1809-1872) were renowned. After the death of these collectors, large parts of their collections became public property. In what follows, I shall try to explain how this first generation of philologists came to own such significant book collections, how they used them for philological purposes, and how the public authorities subsequently took over their roles as collectors. Books Gone Astray In the early nineteenth century, unknown manuscripts and early editions were discovered all over Europe. This was largely due to the fact that, with the rise of philology, scholars were now actively searching for them. However, only decades before, any such activity would have been in vain. During the Ancien Régime, large parts of the literary heritage were conserved and studied behind the closed doors of religious institutions. These books had been standing on the library shelves of monasteries, chapters or colleges for centuries, often since the Middle Ages or the Reformation, depending on the country or region. Except for the many battles and pillaging that took place in Belgium – the proverbial battlefield of Europe, where the great powers traditionally tended to resolve their armed conflicts – these collections had remained static. Large parts of the literary heritage never made it into the marketplace.

PRIVATE TO PUBLIC

273

A series of rapid politico-religious developments thoroughly changed the structure of book possession, and numerous manuscripts and early editions began to circulate again. In the case of the Southern Netherlands, four regime changes occurred in the space of just two generations: between 1780 and 1830, the region was successively ruled by the Austrians, the French, the Dutch and, finally, the Belgian State. Each of these regimes would have a profound influence on book possession and collecting. The first development was prompted by the abolition of monasteries under Austrian rule. In implementation of the papal brief ‘Dominus ac Redemptor’, Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780) dissolved the Jesuit order and declared its property forfeit in September 1773. Between 1777 and 1780, approximately 150,000 books and manuscripts from the order’s schools were sold to the public, either item per item, or in lots, or even by weight. Some of these books were earmarked for the predecessor to the Royal Library and were transported to Brussels from all over the country, often by primitive means (e.g. in oyster barges in the case of the collection of the Jesuit College in Bruges). Several years passed between the dissolution of the Jesuit Order and the relocation of its book holdings, so that considerable irregularities occurred and many books found their way onto the market illicitly. The precise provenance of a book was hard to verify, as the Jesuits burnt their library catalogues shortly before the order’s dissolution (Opdebeeck 2004). Under the guise of rationalisation, Maria Theresa’s son and successor, Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790), decided in 1780 to disband another 150 monasteries belonging to contemplative and therefore ‘useless’ orders. Consequently, between 1782 and 1792, another 60,000 volumes went under the hammer. This abundant flow of manuscripts and books over a fifteen-year period inundated the private market, and yet more was to follow: shortly after the French revolution, all objects of art (including books) owned by fugitives, convicts, churches and monasteries, museums and schools were confiscated. In 1794, after the French empire’s annexation of present-day Belgium, all remaining monasteries were closed down. Their book collections were sold off or else donated to newly founded public libraries. The most valuable works were dispatched to France. These operations were carried out by the special agences d’extraction, which, among other things, plundered the Royal Library, the archbishopric and the University of Louvain. After the Battle of Waterloo, as the territory of Belgium was added to the Kingdom of

274

Jan Pauwels

the Netherlands, the terms of the Treaty of Paris and the Congress of Vienna ordered the restitution of any confiscated property. But the librarians who, under the protection of the occupying forces, set out to locate the stolen treasures in France were able to recoup only a fraction and, in some instances, actually brought back the wrong books (Lemaire 1981, Varry 1991, Machiels 2000, Opsomer 2001, Janssens 2005). Nor did this partial restitution mark the end of the momentous shifts in book ownership. On 25 August 1830, a revolution erupted in Brussels that would lead to the independence of Belgium and the further dispersion of a number of sizeable collections. The military commander of the revolutionaries set up his headquarters in the home of the well-known bibliophile Karel Van Hulthem (1764-1832), on the corner of the Park in Brussels. Consequently, Van Hulthem’s library was – quite literally – caught in the line of fire. Miraculously, most of the volumes survived, but an unknown number of manuscripts and books were lost, and twenty others suffered ‘bullet holes’. Some valuable manuscripts were shredded by the revolutionaries to produce cartridges. After a ceasefire had been called, Van Hulthem had the remainder of his library moved to Gent. (Leleux 1965, 421-442) The 6000 volumes in what was then Jan Frans Willems’s collection were packed in peat baskets and stored in an attic above the shed of a café in Antwerp. The most valuable items were looked after by Serrure, who, after the bombardment of the city by the Dutch, had some moved to the cellar of his own home and others to the homes of acquaintances in other towns. If Willems needed any particular volumes, they would be brought by barge to his new home, seventy kilometres from Antwerp. Willems would later, in a letter to Hoffmann von Fallersleben, complain about this dispersal and about the fact that some works, including copies of his own writing, were lost in the process (Deprez 1963, 37-38). Much research is still required to unravel the developments outlined here in their full complexity, but one thing is clear: in the space of just one or two generations, the relatively static book collections of the ancien régime in the Southern Netherlands had been superseded by a market inundated with widely dispersed valuable items. The combination of low prices and wide availability meant that private collectors at the time were able to acquire huge libraries. Van Hulthem, for example, purchased the best-known of all Middle Dutch manuscripts – which today carries his name – for a mere 5.50 francs; a bargain even at the time. The market

PRIVATE TO PUBLIC

275

also offered opportunities for ‘enterprising’ individuals: there are examples of practices that lie somewhere in between vandalism, theft, and the underhand selling of items that had supposedly been brought to ‘safety’ by monks or others. Furthermore, during these turbulent times, there was no way of telling what would happen to confiscated items. As it turned out, quite often they ended up in private collections. To name but one example: Jan Frans van de Velde (1743-1823), previously a librarian at the suspended university of Louvain, is believed to have gained access to a French warehouse in Brussels and to have taken a large number of manuscripts and books. Certainly at the auction of his library in 1833, items from the collections of some dissolved monasteries resurfaced, some of which were subsequently purchased by the Royal Library (Deschamps 1993). There were also numerous foreigners, mostly Englishmen, who bought on the continental market. Sir Thomas Phillips (17981872), arguably the greatest collector of all time, and his illustrious compatriot Richard Heber MP (1773-1833) even went so far as to rent premises to store their new acquisitions. Heber actually lived on the continent uninterruptedly from 1826 until 1831 to buy books in bulk. After their deaths, the books of such collectors were usually put up for auction, so that the effects of their activities continued to reverberate, certainly until around 1850, and, to a lesser degree, into the twentieth century. Between 1830 and 1880, all kinds of rarities freshly appeared on the market, which created an opportunity for philologists to make some important discoveries. Academics and Collectors It is no coincidence that all Dutch-speaking philologists in Belgium lived in Gent, the Flemish centre of philological and bibliophile activity during the first half of the nineteenth century. Private book ownership flourished: of the 400,000 volumes in the city no fewer than 150,000 belonged to large private collections, with another 150,000 in smaller collections and just 50,000 in the library of the university (Voisin 1840, 7580). The libraries of philologists were even mentioned with the name and address of the owner in the annual city almanacs. They were also mentioned in visitors’ guides to cities, an indication that they were (sometimes) accessible to colleagues and that they definitely served a philological purpose. Their libraries also feature in letters and documents of foreign contemporaries, and even in publications by (mostly) German phi-

276

Jan Pauwels

lologists, who again emphasised their academic significance. The German librarian L.C. Bethmann (1812-1867), for example, wrote the following in a travel account: M. Willems, qui s’est principalement occupé de la littérature flamande, possède, en ce qui la concerne, la plus riche collection de la Belgique, après celle de Van Hulthem. M. le professeur Serrure a également en sa possession beaucoup de manuscrits flamands, quelques-uns en vieux français, et un grand nombre de fragments provenant de couvertures de livres, etc., telles que les deux feuilles des Nibelungen en bas-allemand, qu’il a publiées (Bethmann 1843, 133-162)

After the Belgian revolution, which put a temporary stop to the vicissitudes of book collections, and partly under the impulse of the new government, a Belgian national literature emerged simultaneously in Dutch and in French. The newly formed State also set out in search of a national history, including in the two literatures (Couttenier 1998). Literary activity was encouraged by means of prize competitions for patriotic poetry and the subsidising of young authors and their publications, but equally by the establishment of committees entrusted with the publication of ancient sources (which was, for that matter, a continuation of the approach taken during the Dutch era). The edition of old sources, including texts in Dutch, was applauded by the largely French-speaking intellectual elite as an enhancement of the foundations of the fledgeling Belgian State. Initially, the new generation of philologists based their source editions largely on their own collections. Even in the first episode of Mengelingen, the first series of Dutch-language text editions, Willems edited a satirical poem entitled Dit es de frenesie, of which he himself possessed a manuscript (Willems 1827). The most striking example of an editor who based editions on his own collection is Serrure, who wrote just about everything that appeared in the journal he himself had established, Vaderlandsch Museum voor Nederduitse Letterkunde, Oudheid en Geschiedenis (18551862). Among the texts to be published in this journal were fifteen editions of manuscripts from his personal collection. In the series Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen, he published twelve text editions, five of which were based on manuscripts from his personal library (Deschamps 2004, 348-9, 359-63). Of course these philologists also corresponded frequently about their efforts to trace and acquire manuscripts and early editions. They also borrowed material from each other, so that break-

PRIVATE TO PUBLIC

277

throughs in Dutch philology were often achieved through cooperation. Willems, for example, was able to publish excerpts of Spiegel historiael in his journal Belgisch Museum (1837-1846), which had been made available to him by the well-known historian Alexandre Pinchart (1823-1884) after mediation on the part of Jules de Saint-Genois (1813-1867), librarian of Gent University. Inevitably, some conflicts arose regarding the return of borrowed documents: the two friends Willems and Serrure – the latter in his capacity as representative of the relatives of Richard Heber – were locked in a dispute for several years over of the tardy restitution of a manuscript of Brabantsche yeesten to the heirs of the deceased English bibliophile. Serrure even threatened legal steps (Bols 1909, 355 & 357). In such situations, a contract could offer a way out: thus, after Willems’s death, Snellaert drew up a contract with a publisher concerning the continued publication of the unfinished Oude Vlaamsche Liederen (1846-48). Article two of the agreement stipulated that the entire manuscript and any books from the library that were regarded as indispensable to this publication would be made available to him, the ultimate proof that philological endeavour and book collecting went hand in hand at the time. Indeed it was simply impossible to work as a philologist without access to private book collections. The hunt was on, not only for unknown manuscripts or old books; autograph transcripts by colleagues were also in demand. At the auction of Willems’s library, for example, there were 27 lots containing ‘manuscrits et copies de la main de M. Willems’ (Snellaert 1847, 47524778). The items fetched relatively high prices, especially the transcripts of previously unpublished manuscripts. The ferocity of competition in the auction room is apparent not only from the prices fetched or the names of the buyers (especially Serrure), but also from a written eyewitness account by the absent-minded Snellaert: ‘I feel embarrassed about the purchase of some of Willems’s manuscripts. (...) Because of an inexplicable lapse of concentration on my part, I didn’t even bid on no. 4752, so that Serrure was able to buy it on behalf of Mr De Jonge from Brussels, for the sum of 1.50 francs. I purchased nos. 4758, 4762, 4766 and 4767 for you for what I believe to be a reasonable price, especially in the case of the latter two lots, almost nothing of which has been published’ (Gent UL, G 17943/151). The hunt for transcripts by well-known philologists ties in with prevailing editorial practice at the time. Quite a few important texts were

278

Jan Pauwels

published on the basis of a transcription rather than the original. The most striking example is the Van Hulthem manuscript, a collection of Middle Dutch texts named after its owner Karel Van Hulthem. Around 1828, Serrure, who was still a student at the time, copied various texts from the collection, and Willems published a number of songs without ever having seen the manuscript. After the death of the owner, Willems was as yet able to borrow the volume and he too transcribed substantial parts of the text. Virtually all editions of known texts from the manuscript – not just those by the amateur founders of Dutch philology in Belgium, such as Blommaert and Snellaert, but also editions by established foreign philologists such as the Germans Franz Josef Mone (17961871) and August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874) and the Dutchman Jan Tideman (1821-1901) – were based on transcriptions by Willlems and Serrure (Brinkman & Schenkel 1999, 16-20). Likewise, the most significant text edition by Snellaert, Alexanders Geesten by Jacob Van Maerlant, is not based directly on the original. Because of his professional obligations, he was unable to travel to Munich to study the only complete copy of the manuscript, so that he based his edition on a transcription by the German philologist Johann Schmeller (1785-1852). Snellaert’s edition was not received favourably, and was superseded twenty years later by the German-Dutch philologist Johannes Franck (18541914), who did consult the Munich manuscript (De Smedt 1989-90). The Shift Towards Institutional Ownership Tracing dispersed manuscripts was a permanent preoccupation for the nineteenth-centruy philologist. Some even went so far as to draw up auction catalogues or to pose as antique dealers (Pauwels 2000). Often, they acted as advisors to the authorities, who tried to support national philology by setting various committees and who were also prepared to buy books and manuscripts. In 1836, for example, Willems and Serrure asked the Belgian State to purchase the only surviving manuscript of Reynaerts historie at the eleventh auction of the library of Richard Heber. It was the manuscript on which Willems had in part based his text edition of Reynaert (Willems 1836). Willems had been advising the government since the period of Dutch rule, as is apparent from an 1828 letter in which Pierre van Gobbelschroy (1784-1850), then Minister of the Interior, asks Willems about ‘old documents from former institutions, spiritual associations, abbeys etc’ that were sold in Antwerp. He also asks

PRIVATE TO PUBLIC

279

Willems to act as an adviser to the government on matters regarding the acquisition of possible rarities: ‘I regard it as my duty to do my utmost to save such items for the State, and I believe the best way to achieve that goal is to ask a knowledgeable person to keep a watchful eye for anything that may come up for sale in this manner’ (Bols 1909, 173-174). After a brief interruption, Willems continued to fulfill his advisory role in independent Belgium. The same holds for Snellaert, who was asked by the Minister in 1862 to formulate a recommendation regarding the transcription of a number of medical manuscripts from the Bibliothèque Impériale in Paris. Snellaert issued a positive recommendation, but at the same time tried to win over the State for his own (unrealised) edition of works by the fifteenth-century physician Jan Yperman: ‘Having been informed that the Ministry of the Interior has had a transcription made of the text of Jan Yperman’s Heelkunde, contained in the manuscript that was recently discovered in Cambridge, I request you, Mr. Minister, to lend the aforementioned transcription to me for a few days. I have for considerable time been preparing an edition of the works of the father of Dutch medicine, for which I have had at my disposal two manuscripts: the Hulthem manuscript and one from my own collection. It speaks for itself, Mr Minister, that it is of the greatest importance that these two texts could be compared with a third’. (the Cambridge manuscript is St John’s College, CB2 1 TP and was published on the basis of the Dutch transcription in Broeckx 1863) The Belgian State, like the earlier Dutch authorities, thus played an actively supportive role in the search for the dispersed national cultural heritage. In the event of the death of an important collector or philologist, the state sometimes purchased their entire collection. In such instances, the philological significance of the collection was invariably conflated with the state’s nation-building ambitions – as with the first major purchase, the Van Hulthem collection, consisting of more than 1000 manuscripts and 60,000 books. After the death of the most prolific of all Belgian collectors, the State had commissioned the Gent librarian Auguste Voisin (1800-1843) to compile a catalogue (Voisin 1836-37). The collection was valued at 315,000 francs, so that exceptional funding had to be requested from parliament. The young MP Charles Augustin Liedts (1802-1878) opened his report to the Chamber of Representatives on the acquisition of the library with the following evocation of one of the core duties of the newly established Belgian State:

280

Jan Pauwels

C’est de former l’esprit national, d’inspirer aux citoyens un si ardent amour de la patrie, de les rendre si idolâtres des institutions nouvelles, qu’ils s’y attachent comme à leur existence, que, présens ou absens, il n’en parlent qu’avec passion, n’y songent qu’avec orgueil et qu’ils ameraient mieux tout perdre que de renoncer à leur patrie.

Liedts referred to the significance of a national library, arguing that Van Hulthem’s manuscripts and rare books relating to the country’s literary and bibliographical history could provide the basis for such an institution. He added that it was important that the State should act before foreign speculators moved in (Parliament 1837, 57). In January 1837, the debate on the acquisition of the library took place, and even opponents of the purchase ackowledged its national significance. They found the collection too expensive to acquire in such uncertain times, and they also argued that it included too many double copies and insignificant works, and that the catalogue was unreliable. Eugène De Smet MP (1787-1872) was most outspoken of all: Les livres sont en général de trop bas aloi pour devoir même craindre la concurrence des étrangers. Et je ne crains pas de déclarer que la valeur réelle de cette collection ne vaut pas le tiers de ce qu’on nous demande; ce serait donc un scandaleux abus que de dilapider ainsi les deniers de l’état dont nous avons bien besoin pour le moment.

However, these arguments meant nothing in comparison to the nationalistic discourse of the proponents, who expressed fears that a piece of national heritage and prestige might otherwise be lost. Furthermore, the inspection report of a committee was read aloud which approved the purchase on academic grounds. The committee was made up of three heavyweights: Etienne-Constantin de Gerlache (1785-1871), the country’s highest-ranking magistrate, Joseph Marchal (1780-1858), keeper of manuscripts, and Willems, the undisputed authority in the field of medieval Dutch manuscripts, of which Van Hulthem possessed no fewer than two hundred (Moniteur belge 1837, nr. 25). The purchase by the Belgian State for the price of 300,000 francs was eventually approved by the Chamber with 56 votes in favour, 11 against and 2 abstentions (Moniteur belge 1837, no. 26). The purchase by the State of private collections – either as a whole or only the most important items – would continue to be a common occurrence throughout the nineteenth century (Bibliothèque royale: 1969, 135156), even though a shift of emphasis did occur. In 1872, the owners of

PRIVATE TO PUBLIC

281

the three most important private collections – Serrure, Blommaert and Snellaert – died within a brief time-span, so that their libraries came onto the market almost simultaneously. Now that a generation of important collectors had virtually disappeared, there would henceforth be fewer opportunities for the State to acquire old books. The lawyer and MP from Gent, Louis Drubbel (1814-1887), said as much during a debate in the Chamber on 15 March 1873: Les occasions favorables de ventes aussi importantes que celles des bibliothèques Serrure, Snellaert et Blommaert sont rares et ne se présenteront probablement plus. (...) Ne perdons pas de vue que les occasions d’achat, assez fréquentes au temps des premiers collectionneurs, deviennent excessivement rares aujourd’hui, et la plupart des bibliothèques ont disparu ou vont bientôt disparaître.

He went on to suggest that Snellaert’s library should be purchased in its entirety. Snellaert’s collection consisted exclusively of Dutch-language works, ranging from medieval manuscripts to very rare folk books and collections of drama (Deprez 1987, De Smedt 2004). After seeking advice from two experts, a professor and a librarian, and after consultation with the Administration and the Royal Library, it was decided that the collection should, by way of exception, be acquired on behalf of the university library of Gent (Deprez 1985), the ancient capital of the County of Flanders, rather than for the Royal Library: La bibliothèque de la capitale des Flandres est en effet le dépot naturel des trésors littéraires flamands. Il est bien juste que l’on trouve dans la seule bibliothèque sérieuse des deux Flandres la collection des livres flamands les plus intéressants et j’allais presque dire ce que l’on n’y rencontre pas, ce sont les ouvrages qui concernent la langue et la littérature flamandes.

Moreover, he read aloud a letter from Ferdinand Vander Haeghen (18301913), the librarian of the University of Gent, who was prepared to make a special gesture if Snellaert’s library were to be acquired: Si le gouvernement achète la bibliothèque Snellaert, je m’engage à donner gratuitement ma collection toute entière. Cette série de Gantois comprend environ 10,000 volumes et pièces et m’a coûté plus du double de la somme qui est demandée au gouvernement pour l’acquisition de la bibliothèque Snellaert.

It was on this private collection that he had based his bibliographic masterpiece, the seven-volume Bibliographie gantoise, which had earned him international acclaim (Vander Haeghen 1858-1869). He had previously

282

Jan Pauwels

also exhibited parts of this collection at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1866. In other words, it was a considerable gesture, so that one could no longer refuse to purchase Snellaert’s Dutch-language works, which was described as ‘une collection réunie à un autre point de vue, mais à un point de vue non moins national’. The Minister of the Interior, JeanBaptiste Delcour (1811-1889), added his support to the proposal and the special credit for the acquisition of the library of Snellaert was approved (Parliament 1873, 753-755). Vander Haeghen’s action set an example and several other donations (and purchases) of private collections would follow in the course of his librarianship (Vander Haeghen 1911). Clearly, a pattern had begun to emerge, as successive generations of philologists saw to it that the collections of their predecessors fell into the hands of the State, as indeed would many of their own collections subsequently. This further enhanced the shift from private to public ownership of manuscripts and early publications. The attitude of an owner vis-à-vis the State could have important consequences for the destination of their book collections. After a number of irregularities, Serrure, was dismissed as Rector of the University of Gent, and his professorial teaching assignment would subsequently also be restricted. Henceforth, he would refuse to sell parts of his collection to the State, despite a chronic shortage of money and repeated requests on the part of Louis Alvin (1806-1887), the Royal Library’s chief keeper. Nevertheless, he had acted as an intermediary for that institution at important auctions in Gent and literally provided it with hundreds of books and manuscripts. This, too, came to an end when it emerged that one could not tell for certain whether all books supplied had actually been ordered (Deschamps 2004, 381-2). It is apparent from a letter by Alvin that Serrure did not even want his books to fall into the hands of the Belgian State after his death: Nous avons, du vivant de M. Serrure, fait de nombreuses mais vaines tentatives pour acquérir in globo sa bibliothèque, mais le professeur, prétendant avoir à se plaindre du gouvernement, n’a jamais voulu traiter. Il paraît même qu’il a défendu à son fils de traiter avec l’Etat, même après sa mort. C’est ce qui oblige les héritiers à recourir aux enchères publiques. (Deprez 1985, 363-364)

Because of his dislike for the government, Serrure preferred to organise anonymous auctions of his books during his lifetime or to sell precious items to Engelbert August, the eighth Count of Arenberg (1834-1875). It

PRIVATE TO PUBLIC

283

appears from Serrure’s correspondence with the Count’s private librarian that Serrure sold him dozens of rare – unique even – Middle Dutch romances for 5000 francs, quite a substantial sum for a private collector. He would later sell numerous other unique or very rare manuscripts and early editions on language, literature and the history of the Netherlands, which today are located across the world, mostly in the United States (Cockx-Indestege & De Schepper 2000). The interest of the State – which under normal circumstances is a powerful motor for the retention of a philological collection – would appear to have had the opposite effect in this particular case. Conclusion Due to an amazing series of historical events, early philologists were able to make numerous new discoveries. They acquired manuscripts and rare books that often had lain hidden behind the walls of monasteries for centuries, and subsequently edited and published them. Through these editions the books and manuscripts themselves gained fame and were bought by the Belgian State upon the death of their owners. These efforts for the preservation of the national cultural heritage thus made way for the rise of a true professional modern philology. But even before, from the 1830s onwards, book collecting, philological activity and national politics gradually merged into one another (Pauwels 2008). The most striking example in that field will serve as the conclusion to the present article: the before-mentioned Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen, the only Dutch-speaking bibliophile society of the time, founded by Serrure and Blommaert as early as 1839. Judging by the name, it could easily have been mistaken for yet another club of wealthy collectors, but its Laws stated unambigiously the society’s higher goals: ‘1. to publish unpublished documents of literary or historical nature; 2. to reprint rare books on national history.’ The limited editions on heavy paper were intended only for the society’s 28 chosen members, the Royal Library and the university library in Gent. The Belgian State however subsidised individual editions, bought systematically twenty (and later one hundred) copies of the less luxurious trade editions of each new title and even went so far as to buy manuscripts explicitly for editorial work by the society. Afterwards they were included in the collections of the university library in Gent (Waterschoot 1990). There is no better example to illus-

284

Jan Pauwels

trate the shift from private to public book collecting and the rise of Netherlandic philology in nineteenth-century Belgium.

References Bethmann, L.C. 1843. Rapport de M. Bethmann, de Hanovre, sur les résultats de ses recherches historiques dans les bibliothèques de la Belgique, faites en 1839, 1840 et 1841. Messager des sciences historiques, 133-162. Bibliothèque royale. 1969. Bibliothèque royale: Mémorial 1559-1969. Bruxelles: Bibliothèque royale. Bols, Jan. 1909. Brieven aan Jan-Frans Willems. Gent: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie. Brinkman, Herman, and Jenny Schenkel. 1999. Het handschrift-Van Hulthem. Hs. Brussel, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, 15.589-623. Hilversum: Verloren. Broeckx, Corneille. 1863. La chirurgie de Maître Jehan Yperman, chirurgien belge. Anvers: Buschmann. Cockx-Indestege, Elly and Marcus de Schepper. 2000. ‘Il n’en existe pas d’autre exemplaire dans notre littérature’. Handschriften en oude drukken uit de Nederlanden van C.P. Serrure naar de hertog van Arenberg, en verder. In Medioneerlandistiek: een inleiding tot de Middelnederlandse letterkunde, eds. Ria Jansen-Sieben et al., 287-301. Hilversum: Verloren. Couttenier, Piet. 1998. National Imagery in 19th Century Flemish Literature. In Nationalism in Belgium: shifting identities, eds. Kas Deprez and Louis Vos, 5160. London: Macmillan. Deprez, Ada. 1963. Briefwisseling van Jan Frans Willems en Hoffmann von Fallersleben. Gent: Rijksuniversiteit Gent. Deprez, Ada. 1985. De bibliotheek van dr. F.A. Snellaert: rondom de verwerving door U.B. Gent 1872-1874. Verslagen en mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 343-391. Deprez, Ada. 1987. De verwerving en de structuur van de bibliotheek van Dr. F.A. Snellaert. In Miscellanea Neerlandica: opstellen voor dr. Jan Deschamps, eds. Elly Cockx-Indestege et. al., 3: 85-96, Leuven: Peeters. Deschamps, Jan. 1993. Handschriften van Jan Frans van de Velde in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek te Brussel. In Miscellanea Martin Wittek: album de codicologie et de paléographie offert à Martin Wittek, eds. Annie Raman et. al., 127155. Leuven: Peeters. Deschamps, Jan. 2004. Constant Philippe Serrure (1805-1872). In E codicibus impressique: opstellen voor Elly Cockx-Indestege, eds. Frans Hendrickx et. al., 3: 332-391. Leuven: Peeters. Vander Haeghen, Ferdinand. 1911. Liste sommaire des principaux fonds entrés à la Bibliothèque de la Ville et de l’Université de Gand. Gent: Vanderhaeghen. Vander Haeghen, Ferdinand. 1858-1869. Bibliographie gantoise: recherches sur la vie et les travaux des imprimeurs de Gand (1483-1850). Gent.

PRIVATE TO PUBLIC

285

Leerssen, Joep. 2004. Literary Historicism: Romanticism, Philologists, and the Presence of the Past. Modern Language Quartely: 221-243. Leleux, Fernand. 1965. Charles Van Hulthem 1764-1832. Bruxelles: Académie royale de Belgique. Lemaire, Claudine. 1981. Note sur l’activité des ‘agences d’extraction’ adjointes aux armées de la République dans le Brabant entre 1792 et 1795. Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgique, 34-50 Janssens, Jeroen. 2005. Van boekendepot tot openbare bibliotheek: de bibliotheken van de écoles centrales. In Abijdbibliotheken: heden, verleden, toekomst, eds. Pierre Delsaerdt and Evelien Kayaert, 77-97. Antwerpen: Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibliofielen. Machiels, Jeroom. 2000. Des bibliothèques religieuses aux bibliothèques publiques. Bruxelles: Archives générales du Royaume. Opdebeeck, Bart. 2004. Boeken uit de bibliotheken van de Engelse jezuïetencolleges te Brugge, bewaard in de verzameling ‘Ville de Bruxelles’. In Boekgeschiedenis in Vlaanderen, eds. Pierre Delsaerdt and Koen De Vlieger-De Wilde, 79-101. Brussel: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België. Opsomer, Carmélia. 2001. À la recherche des bibliothèques perdues. Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique: Classe des Lettres, 201-218. Parliament. 1837. Recueil des pièces imprimés par ordre de la Chambre des Représentants. Session de 1836-1837. Bruxelles. Parliament. 1873. Annales parlementaires de Belgique. Session législative ordinaire de 1872-1873. Chambre des Représentants. Bruxelles. Pauwels, Jan. 2000. Het boekenbezit van Jan Frans Willems, Prudens van Duyse en Philippe Marie Blommaert. Spiegel der letteren: 259-295. Pauwels, Jan. 2008. Les seigneurs du livre: Les grands collectionneurs du XIXème siècle à la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, eds. M. de Schepper, A. Kelders and J. Pauwels. Bruxelles : Bibliothèque royale de Belgique. Smedt, Marcel De. 1989-90. F.A. Snellaert als tekstuitgever. Spiegel der letteren 31: 313-326, 32: 181-193. Smedt, Marcel De. 2004. F.A. Snellaert als boekenverzamelaar: uit de briefwisseling met J.J. Nieuwenhuizen. In Letters in de boeken: liber amicorum Ludo Simons, eds. P. Delsaerdt and Marcus de Schepper. Kapellen: Pelckmans. Snellaert, Ferdinand Augustijn. 1847. Bibliotheca Willemsiana. Gand. Varry, Dominique. 1991. Histoire des bibliothèques françaises: les bibliothèques de la Révolution et du XIXe sciècle 1789-1914. Paris: Promodis. Voisin, Auguste. 1840. Documents pour servir à l’histoire des bibliothèques en Belgique et de leurs principales curiosités littéraires. Gand. Waterschoot, Werner. 1990. De Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen. Wildert: De Carbolineum Pers. Willems, Jan Frans. 1827-1836. Mengelingen van historisch-vaderlandschen inhoud. Antwerpen. Willems, Jan Frans. 1836. Reinaert de vos. Episch fabeldicht van de twaelfde en dertiende eeuw. Gent.


STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF DUTCH LITERARY HISTORICISM Marita Mathijsen Abstract Editing procedures for early Dutch literature went through four stages. Initially, in the eighteenth century, the main concern was the origins of the Dutch language. Next came a stage (decisively influenced by initiatives of German scholars) of collection and description with a view to the literary interest of early texts. This is the period when texts which nowadays still belong to the canon emerged from archival collections and libraries. The scholars involved also began to prepare editions by way of a scholarly and, as a rule, individual effort (third stage). By the 1840s this gave way to a concerted effort by five unruly Dutch junior scholars to professionalise editing procedures. They founded the ‘Association for the Advancement of Early Dutch Literature’, which made its mark with a feverish production of editions. The Association existed for a mere five years; yet in that short timespan it managed to alter editorial practice from the ground up and to effect a complete overhaul of the available knowledge of medieval Dutch literature. A Preliminary Stage In the Netherlands, the study of medieval history and the edition of historical texts took wing due to German influence. It would go too far to speak of a German invasion of medievalists in the Netherlands of the first decades of the nineteenth century. Still, one cannot doubt that without the German interest in medieval manuscripts the emergence of such

288

Marita Mathijsen

an interest in the Netherlands would have been much delayed, and that these manuscripts would have been edited much later. In what follows, I address the first period of Dutch medieval studies, which coincides with the first period of editing. It culminates in the foundation of the Vereeniging ter bevordering van oude Nederlandsche Letterkunde (‘Association for the Advancement of Early Dutch Literature’), a body uniting the first group of scholarly editors in the Netherlands. I shall elucidate the objectives and the mode of operation of this Association. In the process of historical editing, four successive stages may be distinguished, the Association belonging to the fourth. Incidentally, I suspect that a similar four-stage development may be encountered in other countries, too. By way of a preliminary I should define what I mean when speaking of an edition. There is no clear-cut boundary line between what one may still call the renewed publication of an early chapbook and what is already a scholarly edition. Particularly in the eighteenth century one encounters medieval stories in publications which deviate but little from those printed in the sixteenth century, but also publications preceded by a brief preface pointing at the text’s historical significance. But there are also editions proper, which provide a commentary and elucidate word meanings. My definition of a scholarly edition requires at a minimum that the new publication has been overseen by an editor who makes himself known with his name or his initials, and who regards the text as a historical artefact in need of elucidation. Furthermore, the editor takes a critical view of how the text has come down to us. Not required however in these early stages of editing are comparisons between variant readings or direct textual criticism. The First Stage: The Language at the Center In the early-nineteenth-century Netherlands, medieval studies were still very much linguistically oriented. There were only a few editions of Dutch medieval texts. At most some five texts seem to have been published which one may call editions in the sense defined.1 Buijnsters (1984) mentions just four – one of these a mystification. A twelfth-cen1 Jan Rock, Ph. D. student at the University of Amsterdam and member of the Huygens Institute, is preparing a study of the earliest editions in the Netherlands. Cf. Rock 2006.

DUTCH LITERARY HISTORICISM

289

tury monk by the name of Klaas Kolijn was supposed to have written a rhymed chronicle about Count Dirk of Holland. The fake manuscript began to cirulate early in the eighteenth century, and soon went through two editions. Considered in European perspective this was a very early mystification, fabricated c. 1700 by an engraver and sold to a wealthy collector. The few editions that were prepared were published as a rule by antiquarians who, just as elsewhere in Europe, profited from the opportunity afforded by the disestablishment of the Catholic church in the Netherlands – the market virtually abounded with manuscripts. Among eighteenth-century collectors Balthazar Huydecoper stands out. His primary interest was the language, his ultimate objective to compile a lexicon of the Dutch language, enabling a reconstruction of pure Dutch. His lexicon was never published, but tens of thousands of index cards have been preserved and later linguists have put them to good use.2 The year 1766 saw the foundation of the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (‘Society for Dutch Literature’), which still exists and which in the nineteenth century was to become central to the scholarly investigation of Dutch language and literature. The Society started its activities by bringing together a library of early manuscripts. Here, too, the production of dictionaries was the prime objective. At that time, then, people were busy collecting from a historical point of view. Surveys of the literary history of the Netherlands did not yet exist. The first dates from 1800, and soon more were written. These earliest literary histories discuss about a dozen medieval texts. Siegenbeek’s history of Dutch literature (1826) leaves the reader with the impression that no more than some ten texts from the period until 1400 had come down, and not even all of these had been edited. It was assumed that in the Netherlands no literary texts from before the thirteenth century had been preserved. Two authors stand at the centre of early literary history, Melis Stoke and Jacob van Maerlant. Melis Stoke completed his rhymed chronicle of the counts of Holland around 1305. His work was printed for the first time in 1591, and the first edition proper was published in 1772 by the aforementioned Huydecoper, who added ‘notes on early history and on the language’. Alongside Stoke, the celebrated Flemish Jacob van 2

Huydecoper is discussed in Stein 2003.

290

Marita Mathijsen

Maerlant, who lived in the thirteenth century, was taken to be the earliest writer in Dutch. A collector’s collection was not counted complete if the owner could not boast of a Maerlant manuscript in his possession. He was regarded as a civic poet, who had managed to disengage from the uncivilised Middle Ages and whose poetry was directed towards the spreading of knowledge. In addition, collectors were aware of a few songs and a few chivalric tales from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These were not valued particularly highly. Huydecoper’s statement is well known: not all manuscript fragments of poetic works needed to be preserved, it sufficed to make linguistic notes. The Second Stage: Collecting and Describing The systematic investigation of what medieval texts in Dutch still existed took off rather late. Although Huydecoper habitually took note of all that met his eye, he must be considered a linguist and lacked literary interest. The pioneer collector of manuscripts from a literary point of view, the first to do so consistently, was the celebrated author, linguist, historian, and lawyer, Willem Bilderdijk. Unlike the antiquarians, whose urge to collect was of a wholly private nature, Bilderdijk collected manuscripts with a view to society at large. Upon society, so he felt, rested an obligation to foster and preserve the treasures of the fatherland. He, too, regarded Jacob van Maerlant as the central figure. When Louis Bonaparte, then king of the Netherlands under the aegis of his brother Napoleon, founded a Royal Academy in 1808,3 its Section of Literature was chaired by Bilderdijk. In this capacity he tracked down and purchased manuscripts, and also collected materials for a dictionary and prepared editions (cf. van den Berg 1999). The most important incentive however came from Germany. In 1811, Jacob Grimm, librarian to the king of Westphalia, addressed a public letter Aan Kenners en Liefhebbers der oude Nederlandsche Letterkunde en Dichtkunst (‘To the devotees and experts of early Dutch Literature and Poetry’), which appeared in a prominent periodical, the Algemeene Konst en Letterbode (that is, ‘General Messenger of the Arts and Letters’; 2 (1811), 3 Based on the model of the Academie Française, this Academy (originally named ‘Koninklijk Instituut voor Wetenschappen, Letterkunde en Schoone Kunsten’) was meant to be the national institution for the advancement of the sciences.


291

327-330). Grimm realised that the literary heritage of the Dutch and the Germans were closely related and that all kinds of versions of medieval stories might well be written down in Lower German varieties of the language. He sought to get in touch with Dutch linguists and literary historians, and through one of them he made an appeal to search for early literary sources. By this he meant not only manuscripts, he also expressly asked for ‘popular songs still known to elderly people’. No one yet had directed such a public appeal to a Dutch audience. A decade later it was once again a German philologist who tried to elicit an interest in Dutch philology and medieval studies: August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben. He entered the archives in person, and located the texts that still constitute in good part the medieval canon. The same periodical which in 1811 had published Grimm’s appeal printed Hoffmann’s 1821 survey of medieval texts held in a variety of archival collections (Hoffmann 1821-22). Hoffmann also prepared the first editions of these and other important medieval Dutch works. Once again a German, the historian J. Mone, contributed significantly to the preparation of an inventory of medieval Dutch texts. For a few years he was professor of history at Louvain university, and in those years he worked his way through libraries in the Southern Netherlands and in Northern France. In 1838 appeared his Übersicht der Niederländischen Volks-literatur älterer Zeit. This ‘Survey of Dutch popular literature of early times’ provides a more extensive bibliographical overview than had been listed by Hoffmann von Fallersleben. The labours of these two Germans had in any case made available a highly useful overview of what literary manuscripts had been preserved in libraries both at home and abroad. True, these lists were as yet far from complete; even today, discoveries may still conceivably be made. The Third Stage: Editing as an Individual Occupation The editions prepared over the first thirty years of the nineteenth century follow from the earlier activities in collecting and describing. It is still a matter of individual proclivity. Collectors/editors may ask the government for support, but something in the nature of a shared programme or shared editing procedures has not yet been conceived. Once again Willem Bilderdijk must be mentioned first. In 1812 he published one part of Jacob van Maerlant’s Spieghel Historiael (literally,

292

Marita Mathijsen

‘Mirror of History’, that is, an anecdotal history of the world). That text was well on its way towards becoming a shibboleth text, by which I mean a text which forms the point of convergence where nationalism, early scholarly attention, canon formation, and interest in the literary past come together. Bilderdijk called van Maerlant ‘the Father of our literature’. It is interesting that he defended the preparation of a literal, diplomatic edition, as against the custom at the time in Germany, where editors met their supposedly ‘unexperienced’ readers half-way by modernising the early texts. Bilderdijk’s introduction to his edition of Jacob van Maerlant’s Spieghel historiael opens with a remarkable statement (Bilderdijk 1812). I paraphrase: Those who are less experienced in reading early texts find it convenient to have them modernised a little. Editors wished to help their readers that way.4 But one should not edit early authors for readers who are in need of such distortions. They are served better with a translation into modern Dutch. Who truly wants to read an early text, will wish to see it in its original guise. Bilderdijk was not the only individual to engage the editing business. The editors in this period were most often connected to universities, where they taught literary history. Some editions prepared by some of them have later become classic exemplars of editions as they should not be, for instance, the first edition, by L.G. Visscher, of the important chivalric tale Ferguut (1838). But in the editing business, too, we once again encounter German prominence. Jacob Grimm edited texts in medieval Dutch literature, among these the first edition of Van den vos Reinaerde, which was taken up in a large-scale Reinhart Fuchs edition of 1834.5 Eduard von Kauler published a series entitled Denkmäler altniederländischer Sprache und Literatur (1840, ‘Monuments of early Dutch language and literature’), which contained a Flemish rhymed chronicle. Hoffmann von Fallersleben prepared more editions than anybody else. His publications already fit in with the next stage, which can no longer be called individual and which is clearly marked off from the third stage by its programmatic and scholarly nature.

4 Bilderdijk must be thinking here of philologists like Von der Hagen and Büsching who unlike the Grimms were indeed in the habit of modernizing their texts. 5 The history of the Reinhart editions and the way in which editors sought to score off each other, is described in Leerssen 2006.


293

The Fourth Stage: Editing as a Scholarly Activity: The ‘Association for the Advancement of Early Dutch Literature’ Hoffmann von Fallersleben is the man whose labours truly opened up the great medieval texts which still form the Dutch canon. He began a series Horae Belgicae (‘The Horae of the Low Countries’), for which he edited texts yet unknown, such as Karel ende Elegast and Floris ende Blancefloer (both in 1836).6 Even so, we do not meet with more truly scholarly ambitions until the activities of those philologists who set out to form what they called the ‘New School’. These men turned against the editing procedures of their Dutch predecessors, but also against those of Hoffmann von Fallersleben, which they deemed unprofessional. Their real preference is for Lachmann’s procedures, but in their first editions they still lack the courage to move in one bold jump from diplomatic to critical editing. They have a programme; they debate editing procedures, and they work as a scholarly team, complete with the quarrels that tend to accompany such practices. I shall now address the objectives and procedures of these editors, who came together in the Vereeniging ter bevordering van oude Nederlandsche letterkunde or ‘Association for the Advancement of Early Dutch Literature’. Around 1840, a young generation of philologists began to criticise earlier collectors and individual editors as amateurish dabblers, and they proclaimed their intent to edit early texts in a professional manner. At least three motives inspired them. There was in the first place an awareness that something was wrong in the Netherlands if the edition of early manuscripts depended on Germans and Flemish. There was also a generational impetus: the young generation found that their predecessors had bungled their editions, lacking both sufficient knowledge of the language and a thorough investigation of the times in which a manuscript had originated. Thirdly, they were moved by a sense that early literature was misunderstood. Maerlant in his dull didacticism was being praised to the skies, so they felt, whereas a far earlier, more romantic literature from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries remained unknown. Already in 1842 young Matthias de Vries wrote to Jan Tideman that he wanted his fellow literary historians to apply themselves to early texts: Dat tijdperk onzer letterkunde is het eigentlijk, dat te veel verwaarloosd en miskend wordt. Het hooge belang daarvan is ons door Duitschers geleerd, 6

Cf. Herman Brinkman’s article in this volume.

294

Marita Mathijsen

en niets in ons vak dringender noodzakelijk, dan die letterkunde aan het licht te brengen, wier kostbaarste gedenkstukken nog den slaap der vergetelheid sluimeren. (...) Bedenk dan toch, hoe de Walewein, hoe de kinderen van Limborch, hoe de Leekenspieghel (...) hoe eene massa oude meesterstukken om regt schreeuwt en niemand hen hoort, hen, die nog niemand ooit het licht deed zien.7

And here is how, in a review in the prominent journal De Gids, another representative of the young generation, Willem Jonckbloet, urged the message upon his readers: Eens en voor altijd dus: neen, onze letterkunde vangt niet aan met de helft der dertiende eeuw; het is van dien tijd, dat haar verval dagteekent. Van 1150 tot 1270 heeft eene dichterlijke school gebloeid, rijk aan verbeelding.8

As is the case with so much in the nineteenth century, the new school marches under the banner of nationalism. The literature of the fatherland, its early period included, is extolled for its high aesthetic merits and as a witness to an uncorrupted, poetic language. All this serves the new generation to justify their appeal for state support — the government should acknowledge the existence of so fine an early literature and subsidise its being edited. To be sure, in voicing these nationalist sentiments they do not deviate from the Old School they are opposing. Beginnings The Association originated with the friendship between an archivist and a student, both living in Utrecht. The archivist, P.J. Vermeulen, had in 1840 addressed a letter to his colleagues with a plan to found a literary association capable of publishing early manuscripts and incunabula. Foreign examples, such as the Stuttgarter Verein, had inspired him. He regretted in particular that numerous small editions and studies appeared 7 28 May 1842: ‘That, after all, is the period in our literature that is being neglected and underestimated too much. The Germans have taught us its high importance, and nothing in our discipline is more urgently required than to bring to light that literature, the most precious monuments of which still dose in oblivion. (...) Pray remind yourself how Walewein, how the children of Limborch, how the Leekenspieghel (...), how a mass of early masterpieces cries out for justice and how no one hears them, they who have never yet seen the light of day.’ The records of the Vereeniging, which contain these letters, are at Leiden University, Ltk 1519. 8 Jonckbloet 1846, 3: ‘Once and for all, then: No, our literature does not start by the middle of the thirteenth century. That is rather where we must date its decay. From 1150 to 1270 flourished a poetic school rich in imagination.’


295

in obscure little yearbooks, so that one could not acquire an overview. But Vermeulen failed to strike a chord. Later he got in touch with the young student Jan Tideman, who had been charged by the Society for Dutch Literature to describe an early drama collection. Tideman and Vermeulen now jointly conceived of the plan to found an association. Tideman talked some of his fellow students into joining the editorial board, the classicist Matthias de Vries and the theologian Jacob de Hoop Scheffer. Both had already published a few small pieces about literary matters. Scheffer came up with Pieter Leendertz, a clergyman, and de Vries produced Willem Jonckbloet, who had just completed his literary studies and who was the most experienced of them all in that he had already published highly important editions of entirely unknown texts such as the Beatrijs. Naturally, in responding to the letter of invitation Jonckbloet took pains to arrogate the plan to himself. He replied that he had already envisaged founding such an association, but had not done so because he could not imagine anyone in the Netherlands willing to support it. However, now that collaboration has become feasible ‘each of us must take up the labour that his hands direct him to undertake. (...) I for one am ready and prepared to make highly important contributions’.9’ On the first of June 1843 a letter went out, entitled Berigt wegens eene Vereeniging ter bevordering der oude Nederlandsche Letterkunde (‘Message regarding an Association for the Advancement of Early Dutch Literature’, Ltk 1519), in which those addressed were called upon to become members of an association committed to publish at least 800 pages a year, for an annual subscription price of six guilders. The signatories appeal to every ‘Vriend en beoefenaar der Vaderlandsche letterkunde’ (‘Friend and practitioner of the literature of the fatherland’) to endorse and support the plan. Their particular objective is to call attention to our early literature: ‘het zal wel onnoodig zijn op het hoogstbelangrijke dier Letterkunde te wijzen, of te herinneren, hoe zij ons onze taal in haren oudsten en zuiversten toestand leert kennen’ (‘It surely goes without saying to point at the high importance of that literature, or to remind you how it acquaints us with our language at its earliest and purest’).

9 Cf. Gerritsen 1991, 174-175: ‘ (...) moet ieder onzer het werk aanvatten dat zijne hand vindt om te doen.(...) Ik ben in staat en gereed hoogst belangrijke bijdragen te leveren.’

296

Marita Mathijsen

It took a while before a sufficient number of subscriptions had come in. The correspondence between Matthias de Vries and Tideman shows that letters had gone out to everyone active in the discipline; to German and Belgian professional scholars, and to all members of the Society for Dutch Literature. But the booksellers remained lukewarm. They asserted that they had circulated the lists, but upon inquiries made with potential recipients this turned out not to be so. De Vries then went ahead to recruit members among his own acquaintances. Several months later there were enough members to put the Association on its way. Three hundred and sixty-one members for the first year, with some resounding names among them. Not only are all Grand Old Men of the discipline in the Netherlands represented, but renowned names from abroad, notably Jacob Grimm and Karl Lachmann, are among the subscribers, too. The king and the crown prince of the Netherlands subscribed as well, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs procured for itself ten copies (a form of state subsidy then currently practised). The first meeting took place on 4 October 1843. Financial matters were settled; the programme was established; the board was elected, and arrangements were made with the publisher. Vermeulen was elected chairman, Tideman secretary. The first part of the Works of the Association appeared several months later, in 1844. Programme The records of that first meeting have been preserved. Agreement was reached over who would do what. Jonckbloet was to start with the ‘Roman der Lorreinen’; De Vries with ‘Der Leken Spieghel’; Tideman with ‘Dboec van den Houte’, and Leendertz with ‘Der Minnen Loep’. In practice things went a little different. In course of the first year, 1844, three parts appeared, which contained part of the didactic poem Der leeken spieghel from 1330; Jacob van Maerlant’s Dboec van den Houte from roughly the same time, and a romance about Charlemagne, Karel de Groote en zijne 12 pairs. The respective editors were de Vries, Tideman and Jonckbloet. The speed with which they worked was remarkable (particularly so if one considers that present-day professional editors usually need years to complete an edition). Not only did they provide copies of texts hitherto unpublished, but they also compared other versions and fragments that had come down. Furthermore, they set up a glossary


297

meant in the end to lead to the publication of a dictionary of medieval Dutch. In the years to follow six editions were completed, some quite voluminous. Der leken spieghel (‘Mirror of laymen’), which de Vries edited, was the most voluminous of them all, and comprised six parts. Maerlant’s Dboec van den houte, edited by Tideman, was completed in the first year, as was Jonckbloet’s edition of Karel de Groote en zijne 12 pairs. The second volume opened with another voluminous edition, Der minnen loep (‘The course of love’); a didactic poem written by Dirc Potter in the early 15th century on love silly, good, illicit, and permitted. The entire poem which Leendertz edited comprised four volumes. No less spectacular is the first edition of the Roman van Walewein by Jonckbloet, in two parts. The final title is once again a religious work by Jacob van Maerlant, Sinte Franciscus Leven (‘The life of St Francis’), edited by Tideman. To sum up the numbers: seventeen parts comprising six editions published by four editors, with Tideman and Jonckbloet responsible for two editions each. With the exception of Der minnen loep, these works date indeed from the earliest times of Dutch literature. The most remarkable thing about them is that some have still not been replaced by new editions — for three of the six the edition published by the Association has so far remained the only one. Scholarly Outlook The new generation of philologists, united in the Association, left nothing undone to promote themselves as innovators. They called themselves ‘the new school’, so as to mark themselves off from an established ‘old school’. They felt that the cultivation of early literature had so far been in the hands of dilettantes, and that responsible scholarly editing started with the Association. Before and during the period of the New School one may roughly speak of three directions. Grimm’s direction, followed in the Netherlands by Bilderdijk, stood for the literal, diplomatic rendition of texts. Hoffmann von Fallersleben aimed at a far-reaching normalisation of manuscripts, self-evidently including the making of corrections, in accordance with the idea that a normative construction of the language of a given century can be attained. But the new development was the one pioneered by Karl Lachmann, aiming for a critical rendition of the texts based upon a comparative investigation of variants in the

298

Marita Mathijsen

lineage of textual transmission. The New School directed its critique not so much against any of these three directions as, rather, against the individuals involved. Jonckbloet in particular made his views loudly known. In reviews published in the leading literary journal of those years, De Gids, but also in his editions and in separate treatises he scolded his predecessors in an often crass vocabulary. He chose for his prize victim a professor past his prime, B.H. Lulofs, who had compiled an anthology of medieval Dutch literature. In a letter to a friend Jonckbloet observed: Om mij wat te verpoozen heb ik dezer dagen het beestachtig slechte Handboek van prof. Lulofs eens uitgekleed: gij zult die man in de Gids van januari eerstkomend spiernaakt (...) in het publiek zien staan. Ik heb bij die gelegenheid zoowat mijne opinie gezegd over de geheele oude school. Het werd tijd dat men die heeren de tanden eens liet zien.. (...) O dat verdoemde liefhebberen!10

And in De Gids itself he expresses himself thus: Het is meer dan eens gezegd, en met bewijzen gestaafd, dat de beoefening der oude Nederlandsche letteren (...) geleden heeft door een dilettantisme dat regts en links, zonder bepaald doel, beuzelend, zonder systeem, zonder overtuiging, in plaats van de wetenschap, eene schrale, onvruchtbare liefhebberij heeft daargesteld!11

Jonckbloet goes on to upbraid Lulofs for his false representations and for his incompleteness and lack of consistency, all of which he demonstrates with various examples of the lack of expertise in grammar and lexicography. What kind of editions, then, did the New School put forward in contrast to the Old School? In organisation and execution all editions prepared by the Association look the same. Most often the text begins right after the title page. Most summarily in the margin one finds an 10

Ltk 1095: ‘I have entertained myself these days by stripping to the bone Professor Lulofs’ dreadfully incompetent textbook – in the January installment of De Gids you shall find him exposed stark naked (...) before the readership. I have used the occasion to speak my mind about the entire old school. It was about time to show these gentlemen our teeth. (...) Oh, that damned dilettantism!’ 11 Jonckbloet 1846, 3: ‘It has been said more than once, and proofs have been given for it, that the cultivation of early Dutch literature (...) has suffered from a dilettantism that to the right and to the left, devoid of any well-determined objective, full of drivel and without conviction, has represented a meagre and fruitless amateurism rather than true scholarship!’


299

indication whether more than one version exists. At the page bottom the variants are rendered in a negative lemma-apparatus. This is followed by a general explanation, by notes, and by a glossary. The notes may serve to elucidate the manuscript but may also add historical explanations to the text; they are rather concise. The glossary is mostly comparative; that is, the editor lists other forms of a given word and other works where it occurs as well. There is nonetheless a curious discrepancy between the outbursts of jubilation with which the members of the Association address their own innovations in the domain of literature, and the direction they actually follow. The statutes lay it down that they shall publish their editions ‘with diplomatic accuracy’. But this was no longer in conformity with the editorial innovations of the time. De Vries and Jonckbloet, in particular, had given up their erstwhile belief in diplomatic editing. Both men sulkingly comply with the agreement, while indicating clearly that they expect more from Lachmann’s method and that they prefer critical editions. Indeed, Jonckbloet goes so far as to publish a critical edition entirely unconnected to the Association and without taking any of its rules into account. Already in the first annual report we encounter debate. Tideman writes: We geven onze stukken diplomatiesch, dat is met de grootst mogelijke naauwkeurigheid, uit, zoodat wij, na de gewone verkortingen aangevuld te hebben, het handschrift letterlijk weergeven. Het is ons geenszins onbekend, dat wij wegens deze wijze van uitgeven, die hier te lande tot nog toe meestal gevolgd werd, door Hoogduitsche geleerden van den eersten rang zijn aangevallen, die voor iedere eeuw eene grammatica, op de lezing der hun bekende stukken gegrond, hebben vastgesteld, en alle latere handschriften diensvolgens met eene zoogenaamde Rechtschreibung in het licht geven. Doch wij hebben gemeend in dezen onze eigene overtuiging te moeten blijven volgen.12

12

Tideman 1895, 31: ‘We edit our pieces the diplomatic way, that is, with the greatest possible accuracy so that, upon expanding the customary abbreviations, we render the manuscript literally. We know very well that because of this editorial procedure, which has most often been followed in this country, we have been attacked by German scholars of the first rank. These scholars have established a grammar for every century, founded upon a reading of the pieces known to them, so as to publish all later manuscripts in the so-called Rechtschreibung [orthography]. We, however, have decided in this to follow our own conviction.’

300

Marita Mathijsen

In the Association’s view, early Dutch grammar and spelling have not yet been examined sufficiently to make normalisation possible. Jonckbloet’s and de Vries’ editions show clearly that they felt bound hand and feet by the agreement. Jonckbloet writes in Karel de Groote (‘Charlemagne’) that the manuscript has been printed the diplomatic way, with all its mistakes and defects, not because he personally thinks that a critical edition would be premature, but because the homogeneity of the editorial board requires it (Jonckbloet 1844, XXX-XXXI). Quarrels and Troubles; The End It soon became impossible to speak of unity in the Association. The first troubles began even before it was formally founded, when de Vries shared with Tideman his annoyance that everyone credited Jonckbloet with the initiative. A second conflict arose over one of Jonckbloet’s publications. Just as Hoffmann von Fallersleben had wandered all over the Netherlands to find early texts, just so had Jonckbloet made a trip through Germany to discover Dutch manuscripts in archival collections and libraries. He had promised his report to the Association, but gave it to De Gids, which enjoyed wider distribution than the Association’s publications. De Vries was furious, and refused to publish the report a second time, as Jonckbloet had proposed. Here is what de Vries wrote to Tideman (4 December 1843): Onze vereeniging behoeft den schotel niet uit te likken, als het Jonckbloet behaagt heeft de taart door den Gids te laten opeten. En welk een taart nogal! Een taaije, zonder geur of kruiderij.13

This conflict was smoothed out, but soon Tideman complained about de Vries, who has taken the liberty to make alterations in his glossary and who has exploded ‘in ludicrous anger’ over his commentaries to Maerlant’s Dboec van den houtte. The next conflict involves Jonckbloet once more, as he has published a critical edition outside the frame of the Association – an action deeply resented by the other members of the board. Jonckbloet defended himself by pointing out that a critical edition did not fit into the principles of the Association.

13 Ltk 1515: ‘There is no need for our Association to lick clean the plate after it has pleased Jonckbloet to give the cake over to be eaten by De Gids. And what a cake! Hard to chew on, without smell or spices.’


301

In 1895, many years after the Association has fallen apart, Tideman, by now an old man, wrote its history, which he used to settle old scores. He still felt slighted that in the public eye Jonckbloet had come to count as the principal leader of the Association. In the journal’s fifth year the editorial board inserted a note that the number of members was diminishing, and that government support was insufficient to continue. Furthermore, the work had been done. The board has contributed to cultivating the literature of the fatherland, and it now wished to dedicate itself to other labours. The note is cool, but everything goes to show that the editorial board cannot advance any further in the accustomed manner. Two members had failed to contribute to the efforts, Tideman remained the only one still to defend diplomatic transcription, and both de Vries and Jonckbloet were awaiting appointments to prestigious professorial chairs. The objective had been attained in that the existence of an earlier literature has been acknowledged and Maerlant no longer counted as ‘the father of the fatherland’s poets’. Conclusion The Association is an early example of scholarly collaboration. Jonckbloet is among the first to formulate an opposition between academic and non-academic research, marking the start of the professionalisation of Dutch studies. Given the period when they were prepared, the editions published by the Association do indeed attain a high level of achievement. Some are still the only available edition of the text in question; not as if we were not in need of a newer publication but simply because no-one has taken the time and effort to edit them in accordance with present-day standards. In that respect de Vries’ words are still as valid as ever: ‘eene massa oude meesterstukken schreeuwt om recht en niemand, niemand hoort hen’ – a mass of early masterpieces cries out for justice and no one, no one hears them.

302

Marita Mathijsen

References Archival: Ltk: Collection Tideman. LTK 1519, LTK 1519, LTK 1095 Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde. University Library, Leiden.

Published: Algemeene konst- en letterbode 2 (1811). van den Berg, Willem. 1999. De Tweede Klasse: een afdeling met een problematische missie (1808-1816). In Een bedachtzame beeldenstorm, 137-165. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Biesheuvel, Ingrid. 2003. Strijd tegen dilettanten. Willem Joseph Andries Jonckbloet (1817-1885). In Der vaderen boek. Beoefenaren van de studie der Middelnederlandse letterkunde. Studies voor Frits van Oostrom ter gelegenheid van diens vijftigste verjaardag, ed. Wim van Anrooij et al., 49-60, 259-262, 295-297. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. [Bilderdijk, Willem]. 1812. Voorbericht. In Jacob van Maerlant, Spieghel historiael of Rijmkroniek. 3e deel met aanteekeningen van Jan Steenwinkel, Uitgegeven door de Tweede Klasse van het Hollandsch Instituut, VIII-IX. Amsterdam. van Boven, Erica. 1980. Lulofs en Siegenbeek contra Jonckbloet en De Vries: een wedstrijd in ‘scholen’? Een bijdrage aan de geschiedenis van de Neerlandistiek. In Wie veel leest heeft veel te verantwoorden… Opstellen over filologie en historische letterkunde aangeboden aan prof. dr. F. Lulofs, ed. M.M.H. Bax et al., 190-215. Groningen: Nederlands Instituut de Buck, H. 1931. De studie van het Middelnederlandsch tot in het midden der negentiende eeuw. Groningen: Wolters. Buijnsters, P.J. 1984. Kennis van en waardering voor Middelnederlandse literatuur in de 18e eeuw. Documentatieblad Werkgroep 18e eeuw 16.61-62: 39-58. Colenbrander, Dieneke. 1980. Vereeniging ter Bevordering der Oude Nederlandsche Letterkunde. In Wie veel leest heeft veel te verantwoorden… Opstellen over filologie en historische letterkunde aangeboden aan prof. dr. F. Lulofs, ed. M.M.H. Bax et al., 216-232. Groningen: Nederlands Instituut. van Dalen-Oskam, Karina. 2003. De idealistische lexicograaf. Matthias de Vries (1820-1892). In Der vaderen boek. Beoefenaren van de studie der Middelnederlandse letterkunde. Studies voor Frits van Oostrom ter gelegenheid van diens vijftigste verjaardag, ed. Wim van Anrooijet al., 61-75, 262-264, 297-298. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gerritsen, W.P. 1991. ‘De lust voor dezen studietak’. De medioneerlandicus en zijn publiek.. In Misselike tonghe. De Middelnederlandse letterkunde in interdisciplinair verband, ed. F.P.van Oostrom et al., 171-187; 231-234. Amsterdam: Prometheus. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, A.H. 1821. Over de oude Hollandsche letterkunde. Algemeene konst- en letterbode.


303

Jonckbloet, W.J.A., ed. 1844. Roman van Karel den Grooten en zijne XII pairs (fragmenten). Leiden. Jonckbloet, W.J.A. 1846. [Review of] B.H. Lulofs, Handboek . De Gids 10: 1-56. Laan, Nico. 1997. Het belang van smaak. Twee eeuwen academische literatuurgeschiedenis. Amsterdam: Historisch Seminarium van de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Leerssen, Joep. 2006. De bronnen van het vaderland: Taal, literatuur en de afbakening van Nederland, 1806-1890. Nijmegen: Vantilt. Miltenburg, A.P.J. 1991. Naar de gesteldheid dier tyden. Middeleeuwen en mediëvistiek in Nederland in de negentiende eeuw. Vier studies. Hilversum: Verloren. Rock, Jan. 2006. Literary Monuments and Editor’s Jokes: Nationalism and Professionalisation in Editions of Lodewijk van Velthem’s Spiegel Historiael (1727-1906). Variants: The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship 5: 285-314. Stein, Robert. 2003 De heer Huydecoper bezit ze; maar wie meer? Balthazar Huydecoper (1695-1778). In Der vaderen boek. Beoefenaren van de studie der Middelnederlandse letterkunde. Studies voor Frits van Oostrom ter gelegenheid van diens vijftigste verjaardag, ed. Wim van Anrooij, Dini Hogenelst, Geert Warnar, 11.21. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Tideman, J. 1895. De Vereeniging ter Bevordering der Oude Nederlandsche Letterkunde. (1843-1850.) Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche letterkunde in de negentiende eeuw. ’s Gravenhage. Verslagen en berigten uitgegeven door de Vereeniging ter Bevordering der Oude Nederlandsche Letterkunde 1-5 (1844-1848).


THE NATION’S CANON AND THE BOOK TRADE Joep Leerssen Abstract Taking the case of a book series claiming to be a ‘Library of the Complete German National Literature’ (running from 1835 until the early 1860s), this article looks at the emergence of a readership for the medieval classics in what was, around these decades, becoming a self-evidently national canon. The commercially-driven enterprise is here presented, not only in the context of the ongoing professionalisation and growing academic prestige and ethos of the philologies, but also in its competition with the dissemination forum of bibliophile societies with publications-for-members. Between sociability, academic careerism and a widening appeal of ‘nationality’, the popularisation and nationwide acceptance of the idea of a ‘national literature’ as a self-evident taxonomic unit is here traced in its early, hesitant beginnings. In 1835, the bookseller and publisher Gottfried Basse, based in Quedlinburg and Leipzig, launched a book series under the ambitious title ‘Library of the Complete German National Literature’ (Bibliothek der gesammten deutschen National-Literatur). The series ran until 1861 and produced 38 volumes in all; it was flanked by a ‘second series’ with critical studies (6 vols. in all), and an incidental ‘third series’ which went dormant after an initial volume (1835). Among the texts published in it were Kudrun, Theuerdank, the Kaiserchronik, Floris und Blanscheflur, Brant’s Narrenschiff and Lohengrin. Even in today’s libraries, those researching nineteenth-century editions of medieval German literature will find Basse’s Bibliothek a robust presence.

306

Joep Leerssen

Its guiding principles were threefold: nationality, completeness and canonicity. As the announcement put it: Von den frühesten Denkmalen, die uns erhalten sind, bis auf die neuere Zeit soll kein Werk, das auf Klassizität Anspruch macht oder in unsrer Nationalliteratur für das Studium unsrer Sprache von Wichtigkeit oder zur Kenntnis der nationalen Bildung einzelner Perioden von Bedeutung ist, in dieser Bibliothek fehlen.1

The phraseology is significant at almost every turn. The notion of ‘classical status’ or Klassizität is remarkable in that it is applied, not to the canon of classical antiquity but to a vernacular with its medieval epics and romances. The notion of Nationalliteratur or ‘national literature’ has by now obviously gained wide acceptance, but is as yet a neologism and spelled in hyphenated form. What is old-fashioned in this appellation is that ‘literature’ is not yet used in the post-Romantic meaning, as a body of writing remarkable and valuable by virtue of its artistic and poetical merits, but that the term obviously covers the entire field of belles lettres, in the traditionally-established but obsolescent meaning: any text important for linguistic or intellectual reasons. Also worth highlighting is the appellation of Bibliothek. The ideal of completeness (‘no work should be omitted’) is a librarian’s one, and emphasizes that a series of books, broadcast into a nationwide market, constitutes a ‘library’ – a term traditionally used, not only for a given collection of books, but also for the space in which that collection is placed together. In the latter sense, the term Bibliothek is metaphorical, or, to use a more fashionable word, ‘virtual’. Printed matter (periodicals, series) as a virtual place of congregation: that metaphor is on the rise in these decades and illustrates the important role that the printing press was beginning to play in creating national ‘imagined communities’. Periodicals might have names like ‘Magazine’, ‘Atheneaum’, ‘Museum’, ‘Fo-

1

Dammann 1924,7: ‘From the earliest monuments which have come down to us to the modern period, no work should be omitted from this library that can claim classical status or that is important in our national literature either for the study of our language or for our understanding of the nation’s learning in successive periods.’ Most of the information on Basse’s venture given in the following pages is from Dammann’s book, and from inspection of the actual volumes (listed in the appendix to this article) in the Widener Library, Harvard. For biographical information on the various scholars involved I have relied on the AdB 1875-1912.

THE NATION’S CANON AND THE BOOK TRADE

307

rum’ or indeed ‘Library’,2 and signal by such names that they unite a dispersed readership into a virtual concourse. And in many cases, the ‘imagined community’ constituted thereby (the insistent use of the firstperson plural our is noteworthy) is explicitly signalled as a national one: nation-wide in its geographical dispersal, united in its common interest and reading. Thus, the idea of publication plays subliminally but insistently on the related concepts of a public and of the public spaces and spheres where that public congregates. The publisher, Basse, was trying to move with the times. The firm had been active since the early nineteenth century and had become notorious in the early 1820s for trying to cash in on the success of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister by publishing forgeries spuriously credited to the author of the Wanderjahre. In a way, the roots of the Basse publishing house were close to the murky ‘underworld’ of the book trade where seditious libels (anti-Napoleonic in this case) went hand in hand with cheap novelettes of dubious moral calibre. However, after the firm had been taken over by Gottfried Basse, it attempted to catch the wave of national and literary historicism that was sweeping Germany, and to which it contributed the new wide dissemination potential of their large-volume printing techniques. Basse himself was among the early adopters of lithographic technique. His publications were printed on cheap woodpulp paper, recently invented. His position in Germany is comparable, in this respect, to that of the publisher Duffy in Ireland from the 1840s onwards, one of the first to use stereotype print on cheap paper; with his high output and social penetration, Duffy became the premier publisher for Irish nationalism, ranging from devotional Catholic literature to the Irish nationalist newspaper The Nation, the best-selling anthology The Spirit of the Nation and the tellingly-named series ‘The Library of Ireland’ (cf. Leerssen 1996, 3). Between bibliophile and national enthusiasm: Text Societies National Literature was begining to be a commercially promising publishing venture and aimed at wider readership circles. The commercial platform had to wedge itself into a market that was dominated by two other modes of book dissemination: that of the scholarly publications 2 Such names are superimposed on older ones that echo the origin of the periodical as a newsletter, or else periodicals that play on a notion of mediating social gossip (Spectator, Observer, Tatler).

308

Joep Leerssen

often produced by printing houses with university links, and that of the private bibliophile association. Text Societies had an important role everywhere in Europe from the early 1800s onwards. In Central and Eastern Europe, there were the matica rading (and publishing) societies, or the Gelehrte Gesellschaft of Dorpat (present-day Tallinn). Britain is particularly rich in examples of bibliophile-antiquarian book clubs: thus the Camden Society for the publication of Early Historical and Literary Remains (founded 1838), the Percy Society (founded 1840) and the Bannatyne Club (on which, see Ferris 2005); following in the footsteps of the old private associations of bibliophile collectors of facsimiles (such as the Roxburghe Club) they paved the way at the same time for more academic associations such as the Early English Texts Society (founded in 1864). In Ireland there was the Irish Archaeological Society, with links to the Royal Irish Academy, and its slightly more down-market counterpart the Ossianic Society (which worked, significantly, with the aforementioned publisher James Duffy; cf. generally Murray 2000). Similarly poised between academic learning and private collecting was the Belgian Maetschappij der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen. In Holland, the more academic Vereeniging ter bevordering der oude Nederlandsche letterkunde fits the same European pattern.3 Just how ‘national’ such Texts Societies could become, can be seen from the case of the Société des ancien textes français, founded on the model of the Early English Texts Society with Paulin Paris as the first president. Its first annoucement declares its national-mindedness in terms that must be seen in the bitter post-1871 climate to be fully appreciated: Nous faisons appel (...) à tous ceux qui aiment la France de tous les temps, à tous ceux qui croient qu'un peuple qui répudie son passé prépare mal son avenir, et à tous ceux qui savent que la conscience nationale n'est pleine et vivante que si elle relie dans un sentiment profond de solidarité les générations présentes à celles qui se sont éteintes

Again, the 1877 report by Paulin Paris’s son Gaston Paris (1839-1903) links the memory of Roland’s heroic defeat at Roncesvaux to post-1871 revanchisme, when he explains that the Société’s members pay their dues

3 For the Flemish society, see the contribution by Pauwels. As is pointed out in Marita Mathijsen’s contribution, the Dutch Maetschappij was inspired by the Literarischer Verein of Stuttgart. See also Fischer 1914 and more generally Arnold 1991.


309

(...) parce qu’on leur a dit: La Société des anciens textes français est une oeuvre nationale; elle a pour but de faire mieux connaître la vieille France; elle veut que l’Allemagne ne soit plus le pays d’Europe où il s’imprime le plus de monuments de notre langue et de notre littérature d’autrefois; (...) elle a besoin de l’appui (...) de tous ceux qui qui savent que la piété envers les aïeux est le plus fort ciment d’une nation, de tous ceux qui sont jaloux du rang intellectuel et scientifique de notre pays entre les autres peuples, de tous ceux qui aiment dans tous les siècles de son histoire cette ‘France douce’ pour laquelle on savait déjà si bien mourir à Roncevaux.4

Thus the establishment of a national-literary society had the evident added motivation and effect of mobilizing readers in a nationalist sense by means of historicist literacy. That link between literary historicism, sociability and nationalism is as strong in the emerging nations of Central and Eastern Europe, with their matica’s and chitaliste, as it is in the more well-established countries of Western Europe with their book clubs and bibliophile societies. These societies in themselves form an intermediary layer between the high-prestige academic editions, often sponsored by government agencies or national academies and carried out by the country’s leading scholars, and new associations uniting a wider readership of amateurs, with roots in the exclusive, bibliophile connoisseur-clubs of the previous generation but branching out into a middle-class constituency. From there it is a small step to the proverbial type of prestigiouslooking book sets in showy uniform bindings which would, by the end of the century, be displayed in the drawing room bookcases of the educated bourgeoisie. By the end of the nineteenth century, Europe’s Bildungsbürgertum would have no hesitation in considering these medieval texts as Basse had first presented them in 1835: ‘classics’ in the canon of a ‘national literature’, by now firmly established after having been dis4

Quoted Ridoux 2001, 412: ‘We call upon all those who love the France of all ages, all those who believe that a nation which repudiates its past is ill-placed to prepare its future, and to all those who know that the national conscience can only be full and alive if it joins, in deeply-felt solidarity, the present generations with the dead ones.’ ‘because they have been told that the Société des anciens textes français is a national undertaking; that its aim is to make the Old France better known; that it wants to put an end to the situation where Germany is the European country that prints most of the monuments of our ancient language and literature; that it needs the support of all those who realize that the piety towards our ancestors is the strongest cement that binds a nation, of all those to whom the intellectual and academic standing of our country amidst other nations is a point of honour, of all those who love, across the centuries of its history, that douce France for which one was willing to die bravely even at Roncesvaux.’

310

Joep Leerssen

seminated and revived in various modern adapations, canonized in the handbooks of Literary History and enshrined in the school curricula. This also made commercial publication of the Classics of National Literature a profitable enterprise. But in the 1830s and 1840s, the middle position for wide-dissemination publication was as yet tenuous between the austere and technical editions of academics, and the facsimile reprints destined only for a small circle of associates. Enterprises like Basse’s Bibliothek were ahead of their time, and found it difficult to carve out a viable commercial-popular market share alongside the high-prestige academic publication and the thriving Text Edition Societies. It is a telling fact that one of the early collaborators, Adalbert Keller,5 was later elected president of one of the foremost philological Texts Societies of Germany, the Literarischer Verein of Stuttgart (founded in 1838, with an output of some 200 volumes in the course of the century). Academic Professionalization and Philological Pecking orders Basse was eager to enlist authoritative philologists who would give academic prestige to his venture. The edition of early national texts had become a matter of considerable academic importance, and philological editing was therefore riddled with professional jealousy and competition. In the decades between 1800 and 1820, we see the establishment of the first university chairs of literature and literary history alongside the older chairs of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres – often given to scholars in combination with an appointment as university librarian. Accordingly, we see the study of literature move from the classical and classicist canon to the archival material found and opened up by the philologists; and we see this emergent discipline work in close association with the older disciplines of jurisprudence and classical studies, and develop a new style of literary history-writing that combines the old antiquarian disquisitions with the methods of romantic historiography.

5

Keller (1812-1883) was a former student of Uhland and a specialist in the relations between medieval Germany and the Latin world. He edited two texts for Basse as an aspiring young scholar in 1841, but also Li Romans des sept sages and other medieval French texts, the Romancero del Cid, translated Kudrun, became professor and university librarian at Tübingen in 1844 and ultimately rector of that university in 1858.


311

Thus the suddenly burgeoning concept and paradigm of the ‘national literature’ coincides not only with the incipience of the European nationstate but also with the professionalization of literary and historical scholarship in that state’s newly provided or refurbished academic institutions. However, much as the nationalization of literature involved conflicts between competing nationalities, so too the professionalization of literary and philological scholarship involved bitter demarcation quarrels. The most famous of these is the show-down between Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and August Heinrich von der Hagen (1780-1856).6 The latter, less famous nowadays, was the first to publish an edition of the Nibelungen, in 1807, with a famously nationalistic, rousing preface, addressing the German nation at the nadir of its infamy (the Holy Roman Empire having just been abolished under Napoleonic pressure), and offering the heroic ancestral tale to the public as a promise of national resurgence. Hagen went on to be appointed supernumerary professor of German literature at Berlin when that University was founded in 1810; as such he was the first to pursue the study of old German within an academic appointment. He was called to Breslau in 1811 but recalled to Berlin as ordinary professor in 1821, and later published further versions of the Nibelungen, as well as an edition of the corpus of courtly love poets, Minnesänger. However, his editorial procedure was considered hasty and shallow by the more slow-working and painstaking Grimm, who appears also to have suffered from a severe dose of sour grapes (Grimm was a subaltern drudge in the Kassel court library, and his own professional advance did not come until 1830 when he was appointed to a chair at Göttingen). Specifically around the Nibelungen a veritable editorial war took place (cf. generally Ehrismann 1975). Grimm’s ally Lachmann, a highly respected classical and biblical scholar, denounced Hagen’s edition and went on to provide his own counterversion (characteristically claiming, in ‘critical’-editorial fashion, that the text was a composite of various older episodes and could be deconstructed into its component parts). Quarrels also arose over the question to which extent the text should be made palatable to contemporary readers by modernizing or updating it. Lachmann and Grimm scorned this as an unscholarly and populist adulteration of the original’s integrity. The sheer bulk and intensity of the nineteenth-century German reception of the Nibelungen 6 Among the existing studies of emerging Germanistik, see Bluhm 1997, Kolk 1990, Schmidt 2000, Wyss 1979.

312

Joep Leerssen

was thus impelled by the unabating ardour of scholarly rivalry; to the extent that, when the fourth centenary of Gutenberg invention of print was celebrated in 1840, the national-bibliophile prestige publication to mark the occasion was Lachmann’s Zwanzig alte Lieder von den Nibelungen, Zur vierhundertjährigen Jubelfeier der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst, and Von der Hagen countered two years later with Der Nibelungen Lied in der alten vollendeten Gestalt, with many illustrations and aimed at the wider public. Von der Hagen called it ‘an inexpensive edition of the ancient epic poem in its original language printed in the traditional letters, and also a popular update’ – the phrase containing a dig at Lachmann’s and Grimm’s academic habit of printing German, not in the usual ‘Gothic’ Fraktur font, but in roman lettering and without capitalization of nouns.7 (Nor was this a purely German aberration. The choice of old-style or modern font also played a role among English philologists in what is now known as the ‘Anglo-Saxon controversy’: cf. Aarsleff 1967). Thus, even within the shared national and nationalistic ambience of German philology, the appropriation of ancient texts was a matter of ardent competition. Although there was a veritable damburst of new material being retrieved for publication, there was still a sense of ‘limited supply’, and scholars competed for the honour of bringing out a text or author. A goldrush-style race for the best and most prestigious sources took place. In competing presentations of ancient texts like the Edda, Otfried, Reynard the Fox, Kudrun or Heliand the philologist jostled for primacy. Manuscripts or fragments were jealously kept from sight so as to thwart the work of rivals; tips as to newly discovered documents were snatched up so as to take the wind out of a competitors’ sails; letters were mysteriously misdelivered, queries went unanswered owing to curious ‘misunderstandings’, and the reviews that the scholars gave to each others’ work were carping and partizan. Editorial technique was always a Procrustes’s bed: diplomatic editions were criticized for being a facile, antiquarian reproduction of the original; critical editions were accused of interventionist meddling in the text. And if there was no international rivalry (as was often the case, given the national indistinctness of textual material like Reynard the Fox, or authors like Veldeke; cf Leerssen 2006), then there was always the contested high ground of 7 Thus on the title page; in the original: ‘wohlfeile Ausgabe des alten Heldenliedes in der Ursprache mit der alterthümlichen Schrift gedruckt, so wie eine volksmässige Erneuung desselben’.


313

academic respectability as opposed to amateurish populism. Scholars were always torn between the ambition for academic, or else wider social-political recognition. Unfortunately for Basse, the top philologists (Benecke, Lachmann, the Grimm brothers, Hagen) seem to have found it slightly beneath their dignity to work for a publisher aiming for the popular end of the market. The most famous names that Basse was able to enlist were those of Hans Ferdinand Massmann, in later years Ludwig Ettmüller, and (a once-off occasion) Franz Josef Mone. Massmann (1797-1874) edited five volumes for Basse’s series between 1837 and 1843; at that time he held a chair of Old German literature at the Munich military academy, having previously been entrusted with a mission to Milan in 1833 by the Bavarian government concerning the Gothic fragments discovered there by Angelo Mai. Besides the Basse volumes he brought out editions of Gottfried von Strasburg’s Tristan und Isolde and Tacitus’ Germania. Massmann is a good example of the interaction between academic and political nationalism: he was an egregious exponent of the nationalist sports clubs founded by Friedrich Jahn under the name of Turnvereine, and indeed started his career at the Munich military academy as gymnastics instructor; he was also the inventor of the movement’s slogan Frisch, fromm, froh, frei. Ludwig Ettmüller (1802-1877) published six volumes with Basse between 1839 and 1852, while a teacher of German literature at the Zurich Gymnasium (he would be appointed professor at Zurich university in 1863). He gave a number of medieval text editions, notably of Veldeke’s Eneit and of Kudrun (which, in Lachmannian style, he edited as a cluster of interlinked Lieder). Ettmüller’s work was strongly panGermanic, and stressed links with Anglo-Saxon and with Nordic material (Völuspá, Edda). Mone, finally (1796-1871), published a collection of ancient plays for Basse’s Bibliothek. An adept of Grimm, he started his career as university librarian and history professor at Heidelberg, briefly taught at the University of Louvain (where he brought out a history of Netherlandic literature) and ended his career as archive director in Karlsruhe. Even in its twilight years, the series was still able to pull in some able philologists: Heinrich Rückert and Karl Bartsch. They edited three volumes each during the 1850s. Rückert (1823-1875) held a professorial chair at Breslau as of 1852, and was known for his sweeping historiographical works; Bartsch (1832-1888) was appointed professor of Ger-

314

Joep Leerssen

man Philology at Rostock in 1858 after having previously been librarian of the (then recently founded) Germanic National Museum of Nuremberg. Despite such collaborators, however, Basse’s venture flapped its wings rather than that it flew. It was looked upon with scorn by the highminded scientific philologists, who remembered Basse as a lower-echelon publisher of cheap reading, and who felt that the business of philological retrieval and editing was demeaned by this series. Letters from Wilhelm Grimm and Lachmann were stand-offish to the point of rudeness, reviews cool to hostile; witness Jacob Grimm’s reaction to Basse’s original prospectus: Welchen text z.b. des Ulfilas und Otfried denkt hr. Basse zu liefern? (...) hat er gelehrte für neue critische bearbeitungen beider werke zur hand? davon verlautet das geringste nicht. er wird also von Ulfilas, von Otfried, wie von Parzival, Iwein, den Nibelungen und einer menge andern ablassen müssen; dann aber bleibt der an sich schon geschmacklose titel seiner sammlung vollends unschicklich.8

The suspicious tone in this dour notice was amplified in an unfortunate scandal in 1838, when Basse’s associate Ziemann (1807-1842, editor of the series’ first volume Gudrun; an admirer of Grimm and Lachmann but cold-shouldered by them) was publicly accused of plagiarism by Lachmann’s protégé Wilhelm Wackernagel; an incident which illustrates how closely interconnected the concepts of authorial originality and professional authority were by now. The series never quite managed to ovecome its reputation linking commercialism and amateurishness. Massmann and Ettmüller were B-list celebrities in the junior stages of their careers, and dropped the connection after a while; Mone, Rückert and Bartsch were working from peripheral universities. The Bibliothek was an uneven mixture of canonical classics and MS oddities, of professional academics, local erudites,9 and 8 Grimm 1864-90, 5: 285: ‘Which text of, say, Wulfilas’s Gothic Bible, or Otfried, does Mr. Basse propose to furnish? Does he have scholars at his disposal for fresh critical renditions of those works? The prospectus breathes no word of it. So he cannot include [i.e. plagiaristically reprint, JL] existing editions like Wulfilas, Otfried, or for that matter Parsifal, Yvain, the Nibelungen and many others. And that renders his series title, tasteless as it is anyway, wholly unseemly.’ 9 An intriguing presence in the series is that of Albert Schulz (1802-1893), a private scholar who wrote under the pen-name ‘San-Marte’ and who more or less singlehandedly filled the entire ‘second series’ between 1842 and 1872 (when he brought out


315

occasionally cranks like Karl Roth, who imposed his own eccentric orthography and typography on the long-suffering printer. Seen as a whole, however, the sum of many decades of dogged persistence and never-quite-making-it, Basse’s Bibliothek der gesammten deutschen National-Literatur testifies to the triumph of the national-literary paradigm: the idea that each nation has, in its own language, a literary inheritance that is uniquely its own, and that this canon can be called a national literature. What is more, the series bespeaks a sense that this national canon is a matter of contemporary, public interest for the general reading public and that it can be, and should be, made available in print. Yet, while the series exemplifies the interesting conjunction between the rise of medieval philology, the rise of nationalism and the rise of the commerical book-trade, it also proves that the appropriation of the national past was a process where national and professional jealousies placed a heavy mortgage on the materials that were coming to light. Appendix: The ‘Bibliothek der gesammten deutschen National-Literatur’ As can be seen from the list below, the publication frequency is uneven. 22 volumes appeared 1835-1845; a further 13 volumes 1847-1853; finally (after a lapse of four years) a final 4 volumes 1858-1861. The peak year was 1839 when 5 volumes appeared. first series

1 Kudrun (A. Ziemann, 1835) 2 Theuerdank (C. Haltaus, 1836) 3 Deutsche Gedichte des 12. Jahrhunderts (H.F. Massmann, 1837) 4 Kaiserchronik (H.F. Massmann, 1849) 5 Herbort’s von Fritzlar Liet von Troye (G.K. Frommann, 1837) 6 Eraclius (H.F. Massmann, 1842) 7 Die deutschen Abschwörungs-, Glaubens-, Beicht- und Betformeln (Massmann, 1839) 8 Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin (C. Haltaus, 1840) 9 Sanct Alexius Leben (H.F. Massmann, 1843) 10 Deutsche Interlinearversionen der Psalmen (E.G. Graff, 1839) 11a Deütsche Predigten des XII. und XIII. Jahrhundertes (K. Roth, 1839) 11b Deutsche Predigten des XIII. und XIV. Jh. (H. Leyser, 1838) the final volumes and the entire enterprise wound down). Schulz’s main interest was medieval romance, especially the matière de Bretagne; a comparative essay on the spread of Arthurian themes from Wales to the Continent had won a prize at the Abergavenny eisteddfod of 1839. On this Celtological cross-current, see Williams 1859; other entrants for the same prize essay are mentioned there and in Constantine 2007.

316 12 13 14 15

Joep Leerssen

34 35 36 37 38 39

Flore und Blanschefleur (E. Sommer, 1846) Otte mit dem Barte von Cuonrat von Würzeburc (K.A. Hahn, 1838) Etter Heini uss dem Schwizerland (H.M. Kottinger, 1847) Auswahl der Minnesänger für Vorlesungen & zum Schulgebrauch (K. Volckmar, 1845) Frauenlob (L. Ettmüller, 1843) Das Narrenschiff von Sebastian Brant (A. Walther, 1839) Kleinere gedichte von dem Stricker (K.A. Hahn, 1839) Heinrich’s von Krolewiz ûz Missen Vater unser (G.Chr.Fr. Lisch, 1839) Gedichte des XII. und XIII. Jahrhunderts (K.A. Hahn, 1840) Altteütsche Schauspiele (F.J. Mone, 1841) Dyocletianus Leben von Hans von Bühel (A. Keller, 1841) Gesta Romanorum, das ist Der Rœmer Tat (A. Keller, 1841) Der jüngere Titurel (K.A. Hahn, 1842) Annolied (H.E. Bezzenberger, 1848) Jacob Ruffs Adam und Heva (H.M. Kottinger, 1848) Theophilus, der Faust des Mittelalters (L. Ettmüller, 1849) Engla and Seaxna scôpas and bôceras (L. Ettmüller, 1850) Vorda vealhstôd Engla and Seaxna (L. Ettmüller, 1851) Der wälsche Gast des Thomasin von Zirclaria (H. Rückert, 1852) Dat Spil fan der Upstandinge (L. Ettmüller, 1851) Das Passional (Fr.K. Köpke, 1852) Des Fürsten von Rügen Wizlâw’s des Vierten Sprüche und Lieder (L. Ettmuller, 1852) Bruder Philipps des Carthusers Marienleben (H. Rückert, 1853) Karl der Grosse von dem Stricker (K. Bartsch, 1857) Lohengrin (H. Rückert, 1858) Die Erlösung (K. Bartsch, 1858) Albrecht von Halberstadt und Ovid im Mittelalter (K. Bartsch, 1861) Heinrich und Kunegunde von Ebernand von Erfurt (R. Bechstein, 1860)

1 2 3 4 5 6

F.J. Mone, Untersuchungen zur geschichte der teutschen heldensage, 1836. A. Schulz, Die Arthur-Sage und die Mährchen des Rothen Buchs von Hergest, 1842. A. Schulz, Beiträge zur bretonischen und celtisch-germanischen Heldensage1847. A. Schulz, Zur Waffenkunde des lteren deutschen Mittelalters, 1867. A. Schulz, Über Wolfram’s von Eschenbach Rittergedicht Wilhelm von Orange, 1871. A. Schulz, Rückblicke auf Dichtungen und Sagen des deutschen Mittelalters, 1872.

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

second series

third series

1 A. Ziemann, Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch zum Handgebrauch, 1838. 2 A. Schulz, Reimregister zu den Werken Wolframs von Eschenbach, 1867.


317

References Aarsleff, Hans. 1967. The Study of Language in England, 1780-1860. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. AdB. 1875-1912.Allgemeine deutsche Biographie: Auf Veranlassung und mit Unterstützung seiner Majestät des Königs von Bayern herausgegeben durch die Commission der Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften.56 vols; Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot; also online at http://mdz2.bib-bvb.de/~adb/. Arnold, Sven, ed. 1991. Literarische Gesellschaften in Deutschland: Ein Handbuch mit Einzeldarstellungen in Texten und Bildern. Berlin: Argon. Bluhm, Lothar. 1997. Die Brüder Grimm und der Beginn der Deutschen Philologie: Eine Studie zu Kommunikation und Wissenschaftsbildung im frühen 19. Jahrhundert. Hildesheim: Weidmann. Constantine, Mary-Ann. 2007. The Truth against the World: Iolo Morganwg and Romantic Forgery. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Dammann, Oswald. 1924. Aus den Papieren der Basseschen Buchhandlung: Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der deutschen Philologie. Jena: Frommann. Ehrismann, Otfrid. 1975. Das Nibelungenlied in Deutschland. Studien zur Rezeption des Nibelungenlieds von der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg. München: Fink. Ferris, Ina. 2005. Printing the Past: Walter Scott’s Bannatyne Club and the Antiquarian Document. Romanticism 11.2: 143-160. Fischer, Hermann. 1914. Der Literarische Verein in Stuttgart-Tübingen. Die Geisteswissenschaften 1: 1073-1075 Grimm, Jacob. 1864-90. Kleinere Schriften. 8 vols; Berlin & Gütersloh. Kolk, Rainer. 1990. Berlin oder Leipzig? Eine Studie zur sozialen Organisation der Germanistik im ‘Nibelungenstreit’. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Leerssen, Joep. 1996. Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary Representation of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century. Cork: Cork University Press. Leerssen, Joep. 2006. De bronnen van het vaderland: Taal, literatuur en de afbakening van Nederland, 1806-1890. Nijmegen: Vantilt. Murray, Damien. 2000. Romanticism, Nationalism and Irish Antiquarian Societies, 1840-80. National University of Ireland (Maynooth): Department of Old and Middle Irish. Ridoux, Charles. 2001. Évolution des études médiévales en France de 1860 à 1914. Paris: Champion. Schmidt, Thomas. 2000. Deutsche National-Philologie oder Neuphilologie in Deutschland? Internationalität und Interdisziplinarität in der Frühgeschichte der Germanistik. In Internationalität nationaler Literaturen. Beiträge zum ersten Symposion des Göttinger Sonderforschungsbereich 529, ed. U. Schöning, 311-340. Göttingen: Wallstein. Williams, Jane, ed. 1859. The Literary Remains of the Rev. Thomas Price, Carnhuanawc. 2 vols. Llandovery & London. Wyss, Ulrich. 1979. Die wilde Philologie: Jacob Grimm und der Historismus. München: Beck.

r o d o p i [email protected]–www.rodopi.nl

The Case for Latvia Disinformation Campaigns Against a Small Nation Fourteen Hard Questions and Straight Answers about a Baltic Country

Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2008 295 pp. (On the Boundary of Two Worlds. Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics 15) Bound € 60 / US$ 90 ISBN: 9789042024236 Paper € 29 / US$ 44 ISBN: 9789042024243

Jukka Rislakki

What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union – interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war – now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: “Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin’s revolution in 1917”, “Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family”, “Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941”, “Nazi revival is rampant in today’s Latvia”, “The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia. . .” True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia’s recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland’s largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.

USA/Canada: 295 North Michigan Avenue - Suite 1B, Kenilworth, NJ 07033, USA. Call Toll-free (US only): 1-800-225-3998 All other countries: Tijnmuiden 7, 1046 AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel. +31-20-611 48 21 Fax +31-20-447 29 79 Please note that the exchange rate is subject to fluctuations


Exile Cultures, Misplaced Identities Edited by Paul Allatson and Jo McCormack

Exile Cultures, Misplaced Identities takes a transnational and transcultural approach to exile and its capacities to alter the ways we think about place and identity in the contemporary world. The edited collection brings together researchers on exile in international perspective from three continents who explore questions of exilic identity along multiple geopolitical and cultural axes—Cuba, the USA and Australia; Colombia and the USA; Algeria and France; Italy, France and Mexico; non-Han minorities and Han majorities in China; China, Tibet and India; Japan and China; New Caledonia, Vietnam and France; Hungary, the USSR, and Australia; and Germany, before and after unification. The international and crosscultural span of this collection represents an important addition to the fields of exile criticism and cultural identity studies. Exile Cultures, Misplaced Identities will be of interest to readers, scholars and students of exile, diasporic and transmigration studies, international studies, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, language studies, and comparative literary studies.

Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2008 319 pp. (Critical Studies 30) Bound € 64 / US$ 96 ISBN: 9789042024069 USA/Canada: 295 North Michigan Avenue - Suite 1B, Kenilworth, NJ 07033, USA. Call Toll-free (US only): 1-800-225-3998 All other countries: Tijnmuiden 7, 1046 AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel. +31-20-611 48 21 Fax +31-20-447 29 79 Please note that the exchange rate is subject to fluctuations


Borderless Beckett Beckett sans frontières Edited by / Édité par Minako Okamuro, Naoya Mori, Bruno Clément, Sjef Houppermans, Angela Moorjani and Anthony Uhlmann

Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2008 468 pp. (Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 19) Bound € 94 / US$ 141 ISBN: 9789042023932

SBT/A 19 features selected papers from the Borderless Beckett / Beckett sans frontières Symposium held in Tokyo at Waseda University in 2006. The essays penned by eminent and young scholars from around the world examine the many ways Beckett’s art crosses borders: coupling reality and dream, life and death, as in Japanese Noh drama, or transgressing distinctions between limits and limitlessness; humans, animals, virtual bodies, and stones; French and English; words and silence; and the received frameworks of philosophy and aesthetics. The highlight of the volume is the contribution by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee, the special guest of the Symposium. His article entitled “Eight Ways of Looking at Samuel Beckett” introduces a variety of novel approaches to Beckett, ranging from a comparative analysis of his work and Melville’s Moby Dick to a biographical observation concerning Beckett’s application for a lectureship at a South African university. Other highlights include innovative essays by the plenary speakers and panelists – Enoch Brater, Mary Bryden, Bruno Clément, Steven Connor, S. E. Gontarski, Evelyne Grossman, and Angela Moorjani – and an illuminating section on Beckett’s television dramas. The Borderless Beckett volume renews our awareness of the admirable quality and wide range of approaches that characterize Beckett studies.



Names of Nihil Arvydas Šliogeris Translated from Lithuanian by Robertas Beinartas Preface by Leonidas Donskis

In this book, probably for the first time in Western philosophy, an attempt has been made to point out and systematically explicate the problem scope of the Nothing (which is called Nihil in the book) and to try to explain the springhead of the excessive negativity, inherent only in the human being, or in other words, the springhead of the human’s natural nihilism. Nihilism is treated here not as a posture, pose, or an ideological attitude, but as the spread of the human metaphysical nucleus, of Nihil. Nihilistic annihilation, manifesting itself as the road of the naming of Nihil and of the production of thingly crystals (artificial world) as a result of that naming, usually is called “history”. Names of Nihil (language phenomena), being the antithesis of Nihil, falsify and cover up Nihil itself, turning it into “supreme” being, e.g. into “the One”, “God”, “Substance”, “Matter”, “Spirit”, ad infinitum. This book should be interesting not only to philosophers or humanitarians, but also to all those who concern themselves with the total human condition.

Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2008 X-136 pp. (On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics 14) Paper € 30 / US$ 45 ISBN: 9789042024021 USA/Canada: 295 North Michigan Avenue - Suite 1B, Kenilworth, NJ 07033, USA. Call Toll-free (US only): 1-800-225-3998 All other countries: Tijnmuiden 7, 1046 AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel. +31-20-611 48 21 Fax +31-20-447 29 79 Please note that the exchange rate is subject to fluctuations


Baader-Meinhof Returns History and Cultural Memory of German Left-Wing Terrorism Edited by Gerrit-Jan Berendse and Ingo Cornils This volume is dedicated to the study of artistic and historical documents that recall German left-wing terrorism in the 1970s. It is intended to contribute to a better understanding of this violent epoch in Germany’s recent past and the many ways it is remembered. The cultural memory of the RAF past is a useful device to disentangle the complex relationship between terror and the arts. This bond has become a particular pressing matter in an era of a new, so-called global terrorism when the culture industry is obviously fascinated with terror.

Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2008 345 pp. (German Monitor 70) Bound € 70 / US$ 105 ISBN: 9789042023918

Fourteen scholars of visual cultures and contemporary literature offer in-depth investigations into the artistic process of engaging with West Germany’s era of political violence in the 1970s. The assessments are framed by two essays from historians: one looks back at the previously ignored anti-Semitic context of 1970s terrorism, the other offers a thoughtprovoking epilogue on the extension of the so-called Stammheim syndrome to the debate on the treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. The contributions on cultural memory argue that any future memory of German left-wing terrorism will need to acknowledge the inseparable bond between terror and the artistic response it produces.


r o d o p i [email protected]–www.rodopi.nl Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2008 VII-254 pp. (At the Interface/Probing the Boundaries 45) Paperback € 52 / US$ 78 ISBN: 9789042023697

Territories of Evil Edited by Nancy Billias

Evil is not only an abstract concept to be analyzed intellectually, but a concrete reality that we all experience and wrestle with on an ongoing basis. To truly understand evil we must always approach it from both angles: the intellective and the phenomenological. This same assertion resounds through each of the papers in this volume, in which an interdisciplinary and international group (including nurses, psychologists, philosophers, professors of literature, history, computer studies, and all sorts of social science) presented papers on cannibalism, the Holocaust, terrorism, physical and emotional abuse, virtual and actual violence, and depravity in a variety of media, from film to literature to animé to the Internet. Conference participants discussed villains and victims, dictators and anti-heroes, from 921 AD to the present, and considered the future of evil from a number of theoretical perspectives. Personal encounters with evil were described and analyzed, from interviews with political leaders to the problems of locating and destroying land mines in previous war zones. The theme of responsibility and thinking for the future is very much at the heart of these papers: how to approach evil as a question to be explored, critiqued, interrogated, reflected upon, owned. The authors urge an attitude of openness to new interpretations, new perspectives, new understanding. This may not be a comfortable process; it may in fact be quite disturbing. But ultimately, it may be the only way forward towards a truly ethical response. The papers in this collection provide a wealth of food for thought on this most important question.


Editing the nation's memory: textual scholarship and nation-building in ninteenth-century Europe

Nations and States in South-east Europe

One Europe, 100 nations

The Powers of Philology: Dynamics of Textual Scholarship

Changing Europe: Identities, Nations and Citizens

Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe

Joseph Scaliger. A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, Volume I: Textual Criticism and Exegesis

Marginal scholarship and textual deviance : the Commentum Cornuti and the early scholia on Persius

Textual and Literary Criticism

Film and Video Editing

Colonial Memory And Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria And France (New Anthropologies of Europe)

Israel and the Nations

Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria

Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past

The United Nations and the Principles of International Law: Essays in Memory of Michael Akehurst

Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria

Objecto textual

RNA Editing

FilmCraft: Editing

Textual Practice 10:3 (Textual Practice 103)

The ELEMENTS OF EDITING

The United Nations In Action

Sensuous scholarship

Scholarship Physics

Societal Breakdown and the Rise of the Early Modern State in Europe: Memory of the Future

Asia and Europe in Globalization: Continents, Regions and Nations (Social Sciences in Asia)

RNA Interference Editing and Modification

Editing in ArcMap: ArcGIS 9

Learning and memory: the brain in action

The vampire in Europe

The Saint in Europe

Editing the nation's memory: textual scholarship and nation-building in ninteenth-century Europe

Nations and States in South-east Europe

One Europe, 100 nations

The Powers of Philology: Dynamics of Textual Scholarship

Changing Europe: Identities, Nations and Citizens

Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe

Joseph Scaliger. A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, Volume I: Textual Criticism and Exegesis

Marginal scholarship and textual deviance : the Commentum Cornuti and the early scholia on Persius

Textual and Literary Criticism

Film and Video Editing

Colonial Memory And Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria And France (New Anthropologies of Europe)

Israel and the Nations

Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria

Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past

The United Nations and the Principles of International Law: Essays in Memory of Michael Akehurst

Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria

Objecto textual

RNA Editing

FilmCraft: Editing

Textual Practice 10:3 (Textual Practice 103)

The ELEMENTS OF EDITING

The United Nations In Action

Sensuous scholarship

Scholarship Physics

Societal Breakdown and the Rise of the Early Modern State in Europe: Memory of the Future

Asia and Europe in Globalization: Continents, Regions and Nations (Social Sciences in Asia)

RNA Interference Editing and Modification

Editing in ArcMap: ArcGIS 9

Learning and memory: the brain in action

The vampire in Europe

The Saint in Europe

Recommend Documents