Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th-20th Centuries 9789048529995

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. External linguistic politics and policies in the German-speaking countries of Central Europe in early modern times and in the nineteenth century. With some references to the present age
2. German global soft power, 1700–1920
3. French as a polemical language for Russian writers in the age of Nicholas I
4. The external cultural and linguistic policy of the Italian government in the Mediterranean region and the issue of the National Association for Aid to Missionaries (1886–1905)
5. Expansion du français et des manières françaises en Europe aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles. Résultat d’une politique royale extérieure ou effet d’un certain prestige?
6. Literary translation as a foreign language policy tool. The case of Russia, mid-eighteenth – early nineteenth centuries
7. L’usage diplomatique de la langue française, instrument de la puissance?
8. The political implications of the idea of génie de la langue in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Index

Citation preview

Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States, 18th – 20th Centuries

Languages and Culture in History This series studies the role foreign languages have played in the creation of the linguistic and cultural heritage of Europe, both western and eastern, and at the individual, community, national or transnational level. At the heart of this series is the historical evolution of linguistic and cultural policies, internal as well as external, and their relationship with linguistic and cultural identities. The series takes an interdisciplinary approach to a variety of historical issues: the diffusion, the supply and the demand for foreign languages, the history of pedagogical practices, the historical relationship between languages in a given cultural context, the public and private use of foreign languages – in short, every way foreign languages intersect with local languages in the cultural realm. Series Editors Willem Frijhoff, Erasmus University Rotterdam Karène Sanchez-Summerer, Leiden University Editorial Board Members Gerda Hassler, University of Potsdam Douglas A. Kibbee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Marie-Christine Kok Escalle, Utrecht University Joep Leerssen, University of Amsterdam Nicola McLelland, The University of Nottingham Despina Provata, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Konrad Schröder, University of Augsburg Valérie Spaëth, University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle Javier Suso López, University of Granada Pierre Swiggers, KU Leuven

Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States 18th – 20th Centuries

Edited by Karène Sanchez-Summerer and Willem Frijhoff

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: ‘Europa recens descripta à Guilielmo Blaeuw’, in Willem Janszoon Blaeu and Joan Blaeu, Novus Atlas Blaeu, Amsterdam: Van der Hem 1630-1662, Vol. 22 plate 11. Scale ca. 1:15.000.000. Coloured copper engraving with gold plating in the place markers. ­Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Kartensammlung, Signatur 389.030-F.K.22. Reprint by ADEVA Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt Graz. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 94 6298 060 0 e-isbn 978 90 4852 999 5 doi 10.5117/9789462980600 nur 610 / 697 © Karène Sanchez-Summerer and Willem Frijhoff / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2017 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.



Table of Contents

Introduction 7 Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn

1 External linguistic politics and policiesin the Germanspeaking countries of Central Europe in early modern times and in the nineteenth century

25

2 German global soft power, 1700–1920

45

3 French as a polemical language for Russian writers in the age of Nicholas I

69

4 The external cultural and linguistic policy of the Italian governmentin the Mediterranean region and the issue of the National Association for Aid to Missionaries (1886–1905)

91

5 Expansion du français et des manières françaises en Europe aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles

113

6 Literary translation as a foreign language policy tool

139

With some references to the present age Konrad Schröder

Nicola McLelland

Derek Offord

Paolo Pieraccini

Résultat d’une politique royale extérieure ou effet d’un certain prestige? Henri Besse

The case of Russia, mid-eighteenth – early nineteenth centuries Vladislav Rjéoutski

7 L’usage diplomatique de la langue française, instrument de la puissance? 157 Lucien Bély

8 The political implications of the idea of génie de la langue in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Gilles Siouffi

179

Index 199

Introduction Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn* Sanchez-Summerer, Karène & Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th – 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980600/intro

introduction (english version) When considering the linguistic and cultural policies of European states, the historian might expect to find plenty of concrete material: guidelines and orders, debates and treaties, recommendations from experts. Such sources do exist of course, but it very soon becomes obvious that the situations exceed the written evidence. The internal linguistic and cultural policies of states are fairly easily defined. For a long time language and culture have been considered as a cement that binds the state: to make laws and take measures to promote linguistic unity or to mark a respect for local cultures and languages was a legitimate and even natural instrument of the exercise of power. External policies, on the other hand, are far more vague. The era of the official promotion of national languages and cultures beyond borders is, in fact, very recent. A quick look at the dates when the cultural institutes of different countries were founded is enough to convince us. The Alliance française (1883) and the Società Dante Alighieri (1889) are looked on as pioneers. It was especially between 1930 and the beginning of the 1950s that the movement really got going: the Balassi Institute was created at the beginning of this wave (in 1927), before the British Council (1934), Pro Helvetia (1939), the Danske Kulturinstitut (1940), the Svenska Institut (1945), and the Goethe Institut (1951). The late 1980s and 1990s saw the movement to found linguistic and cultural institutes reach its peak with the Instituto Cervantes (1991), the Istituto Camoes (1992), the Icelandic Language Institute (1985), and the Österreich Institut (1997). Naturally the diffusion of language and culture does not come down to the existence of such institutions. Nevertheless, they are a sign of the *

UMR 8547 Pays germaniques: transferts culturels; CNRS/École normale supérieure

8

PASCALE R ABAULT-FEUERHAHN

existence of a policy that is systematic and endorsed – and especially one that is accepted and recognized as legitimate by the countries that accommodate them on their soil. It is hardly surprising therefore that the period after the Second World War – a period of peace, prosperity, territorial stability, and hope of a common European future – should be a privileged period in this context. But what about previous periods? The long, unofficial, and even secret dimension of the linguistic and cultural external policies of European states can perhaps explain why historians spurned a research subject that seemed too elusive. This volume is the result of just the opposite feeling: these policies are worthy of attention precisely because of their elusive nature. This leads us to imagine what sources can be mobilized, and so challenge the very notion of ‘policy’: its shape, its means of communication, and even its purpose. Cultural and linguistic policies concern entities – culture and language – that are embedded in what is human, and are therefore evolving. If it is indeed individuals who give substance to them, they nevertheless proceed from collective practices that are firmly anchored. Although these practices are not fixed forever, to want to define the moment, the form, and the direction of the way they change always meets with fierce resistance. In order to grasp this tension between dynamics and inertia – and at the same time the complex interplay between the philosophical, economic, sociological, and anthropological factors that participate in this evolution – we must take time. Meeting this requirement, this volume covers two whole centuries, from the treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt (1713 and 1714) to the First World War. Corresponding to major diplomatic upheavals – the two treaties are generally considered as having confirmed French as the language of diplomacy – these chronological milestones are, moreover, good observation posts for the relation between general foreign policy and the cultural and linguistic external policies of European states.

What language are we speaking of? As languages and cultures are constantly evolving, the study of linguistic and cultural policies requires a clear vision of the sociolinguistic context in which they are embedded, in order to avoid misunderstandings and anachronisms. This observation is useful even for a lingua franca like Latin which, often mixed with local languages, took varied forms according to place and context. As early as the seventeenth century, the Germans were proud of their Latin as being supposedly purer than that of their French

Introduction

9

neighbours. As Henri Besse reminds us, Ferdinand Brunot was to impute the use of French in the negotiations for the treaties of Münster and Nijmegen to the lesser mastery of Latin of the French plenipotentiaries – counter to the idea according to which it was a deliberate policy on the part of Louis xiv. ‘National’ languages also need to be defined precisely in order to understand the issues and the dynamics of their export. For example, how can one approach the cultural influence of French outside the borders of France in the eighteenth century without knowing the status of the language in France itself, in particular the sociological and geographical distribution of its use compared with that of regional languages? National languages were the result of a standardization process and of long-term linguistic policies whose terms varied according to the states and their organization. The policy concerning the French language under the Ancien Régime has very little in common with that conducted under the Third Republic. A federal republic will not organize its linguistic policy in the same way as a centralized republic; according to its policy of territorial integration, a kingdom or an empire will apprehend the linguistic diversity of its territories in different manners. Finally the acquisition of colonies obliges the colonizing state to rethink the presence of its national language. The contribution of Nicola McLelland shows the direct impact of the changes of political regime in the spread of the German language beyond its borders. If this influence was for a long time dependent on circumstances – linked, for example, to migratory movements – the unification of Germany marked a turning point. The new Wilhelmine Empire initiated an active external linguistic policy via the networks of German schools abroad; in the colonies, this policy was expressed with increased determination at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributions gathered here are proof that, in every situation of cultural transfer, everything that circulates is subject to a series of transformations. To promote a language abroad, we leave it to an archetype – necessarily artificial and fantasized – of this language. So there is already a prior selection process. If the language itself does not lend itself to division, it is never the whole range of linguistic practices that circulates. One language is exported as the favourite language of communication, another as the language of negotiation, another as a literary language. In all cases the social image of the idiom in question – in its home country as in the one where it arrives – determines the possibility and the forms of its export. Retracing the varying uses of French and English in the German-speaking countries of Central Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Konrad Schröder underlines the force of political decisions in the construction of the

10 

PASCALE R ABAULT-FEUERHAHN

images and usages of languages, which vary considerably from one area to another – the Austro-Hungarian Empire is not the Holy Roman Empire – as they do in time. If French was, at least unofficially, the privileged language of diplomatic negotiations from the seventeenth century onwards, it is because of the anticipation of the prominent role France was to play on the European stage. On the other hand, after 1870, Prussia made this language disappear from secondary education as it was considered that of the hereditary enemy.

Performativity Whether the representation of the language coincides with reality is unimportant: what counts is the dynamic it provokes (or not). The notion of génie de la langue (‘the unique character of the language’) is a perfect example of this. Even if the génie attributed to a language is the result of a learned and philosophical version of a cliché or a moral judgement, it has nonetheless a performative force. Gilles Siouffi follows the tortuous evolution of this notion through to the threshold of the nineteenth century in order to understand what type of collective identity it was supposed to promote, at a time prior to the nation states. Leading inevitably to the question of the connection between language and people, the notion of génie de la langue is proof of the struggle within European thought between particularism and universalism, rationalism and mysticism. Through its insistence on linguistic idiosyncrasies, it favours a typological and characteristic approach. But, assuming the homogenous and trans-historic nature of languages, it also served as a counterweight to rationalist and historical comparative explanations of their formation and their differentiation. The notion of génie français plays an important role in the argumentation developed by Ferdinand Brunot to prove that the spread of French in Europe was less the result of an active policy on the part of the French monarchs than of the prestige of a language associated with a whole art de vivre and polished by a centuries-old work of standardization. The performative effects of the ‘génie’ associated with a language are perfectly obvious here. What is more, Henri Besse indicates that the term as used by Brunot has for synonyms vertu (‘virtue’) and force (‘strength’). But if both the popular and the learned representations of a language are a driving force for its export, it is because they resonate with the needs of the receiving culture. The intensive use of French by Russian elites from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries can be explained largely by the prestigious and aristocratic image of the language. But we need to

Introduction

11

go further in our analysis. Because of practice, the sociolinguistic uses of French made it a favoured vehicle in the eyes of Russian writers who wanted to address the elites of Western Europe as well as of Russia. Thus Derek Offord invites us not to reduce the use of French to a mere infatuation. The varied and even opposing political messages whose spread it served seem rather the result of veritable strategies that need to be analysed in detail. Often, the correlation between linguistic spread and cultural diffusion means nothing more than the fact that mastery of a language is a necessary condition to access a culture expressed in that language. The performative dimension of the representations and the imagination associated with a language tend to make complex this broad outline, remembering that the reverse is true too: the degree of familiarity with a culture (by means of the image we have of it, the circulation of translations, the importation of material goods, and so on) is often the motor of linguistic diffusion.

Agents and factors of linguistic and cultural influence The same attention must therefore focus on the situation of the language in the context of its departure and that of its export/import. Finally – but the same can be said of all trans-national history – the policies of cultural and linguistic influence can really only be controlled by varying the focus between the local, regional, national, and trans-national scales. Behind linguistic policies, it is the usage which is at work; and the latter is part of a territoriality whose contours vary according to the period, the political regime, and the questions being considered. The French productions in Russia mean we have to consider the dual public, the Russian and the European, to whom they are addressed. They also bring into play the spatial distribution of the Russian elites, their urban concentration, and their presence beyond the borders of the tsarist empire. The notion of usage also reminds us that languages, cultures, and their transmission are necessarily personified. In this sense, the link between the different levels can be understood as a combining of both micro- and macro-historic perspectives. The agents of cultural and linguistic diffusion can be identified as much at the individual level as that of social groups. Describing the role of migrants in the diffusion of the German language, Nicola McLelland unveils both isolated individual initiatives and the impact of mass migrations. If the contributions to this volume show that cultural and linguistic diffusion relies on a plurality of agents, they also bring to light the prominent role

12 

PASCALE R ABAULT-FEUERHAHN

of certain social or professional categories – nobles, diplomats, missionaries, administrators, men of letters, teachers, translators, and interpreters – as well as the type of structure (institutional or informal) on which they lean: scholarly, commercial and aristocratic networks, and links by marriage, schools, or missions. These different categories remind us that cultural and linguistic diffusion is never the result of just one factor. The role of the politician has been evoked earlier, but denominational factors are also very important. Their role is obvious in the missionary context, as shown by Paolo Pieraccini following the example of the action of the Associazione Nazionale per Soccorrere i Missionari Cattolici Italiani. But we could also mention the decisive impact of the Huguenots on the spread of French in northern Europe, or even the greater or lesser weight of Latin and vernacular languages – according to whether one is situated in a Catholic or Protestant context. The force of economic factors should not be neglected either. The concomitant creation of the Virginia Company of London and the East India Company at the beginning of the seventeenth century, devoted respectively to trade with North America and India, was the first agent of the diffusion of English on a large scale outside the British Isles. Nor must we underestimate the role of the Teutonic Knights and the Hanseatic trade in the propagation of German on the Baltic perimeter.

Intentionality in question To speak of agents does not imply intentional or even conscious policies; far from it. To study the cultural and linguistic external policies of the European states means, in many cases, to assess the real action of states compared to the dynamics initiated by the speakers themselves (individuals or population groups). There is already the fact that systematic external linguistic policies were only put into place by states belatedly. Lucien Bély challenges the idea that the diplomatic use of French was an instrument of the power of France abroad. Not only was the use of French in no way exclusive, but it was also linked to factors of a more pragmatic than strategic order. Moreover, the implementation of official linguistic policies still did not mean that they were effective. That is the ultimate meaning of the works of Ferdinand Brunot, synthesized by Henri Besse: to assume that the spread of French was helped by the skill of the kings of France, who, rather than trying to impose its use, always favoured a sort of spontaneous francophonie in Europe. In contrast, aggressive policies put in place later under the Revolution, and then the First Republic, were to prove counterproductive.

Introduction

13

As a last resort, this calling into question of the effectiveness of aggressive or coercive policies raises the question of what has the most influence on linguistic practice. Thus we will see that exiles (for political or religious motives) are important agents in the spread of their mother tongue beyond the borders of their native country, while being in an antagonistic relationship with its authorities. Nicola McLelland cites the case of the German radical Charles Follen, a political exile in the United States who became Professor of German at Harvard. On a larger scale, the Huguenots – émigrés in various European countries – formed a sort of Francophone culture against the King of France. In this precise case, we could go as far as to say that the spread of French was made at the expense of the royal power. These different examples indicate, in any case, that the culture conveyed by the language that is spreading is far from neutral. Far from being obvious, it can even be the object of rival definitions. The case studies presented in this volume also demonstrate brilliantly that the spread of a language is not often the effect of its native speakers. The penetration of German in Russia in the eighteenth century corresponded to a willingness to make up for the perceived lack of a written culture in Russian. But the importing of a language is also a sign addressed to the outside. Vladislav Rjéoutski explains this mechanism with examples of translations into European languages realized in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century. If we need to distinguish between those that were the result of individual initiatives and those that corresponded to a concrete policy of tsarist power, they all seem to be guided by the same determination to promote, in Europe, the image of a cultivated and modern Russia. In this sense, the external cultural and linguistic policies of the European states must be understood not only in the sense of the exporting of languages and cultures but also in their importing.

Comprehending multilingualism To use notions such as ‘importing’, or to ask questions about what the spread of a language corresponds to in terms of needs of the receiving culture, is to recognize the fact that linguistic movement directly affects the private life of those who receive or appropriate a language or those on whom it has been imposed. For this reason, the failures of linguistic policies are as important as the successes. Coercive policies generate important efforts of resistance, which results in a gap between laws decreed and their implementation. What does this resistance correspond to politically and

14 

PASCALE R ABAULT-FEUERHAHN

culturally? The interest of such situations for the historian is that they are often an opportunity for each side to explain the reasons for the adoption or rejection of such and such a language. Whatever the case, the different contributions to this volume invite us to go back over the commonly admitted representations according to which external cultural and linguistic policies have always been the instruments of a state’s power. Certainly, the spread of a language is often linked to a situation of economic, social, or political domination of the culture it comes from. But the belated nature of official policies, the prevailing role of non-governmental agents, and the equal importance of exports and imports nuance this vision and call on us to make complex the very notion of imperialism. Are not the policies of linguistic imposition often expressed in a roundabout way? This is the case when a mastery of English becomes indispensable to gain access to certain posts in India. We must not forget that the question of knowing whether cultural and linguistic imperialism within Europe is of the same nature as that exercised by European countries in their colonies is still the subject of a lively debate. So what then is the situation of the speakers? As we observed earlier, the exported language often already coexisted with other languages in its own original environment (for example, French with Latin and with regional languages). Being used in other environments, it raises new, plurilingual configurations distinguished from one another not only by the languages in use locally but also by the situation of the language that is spreading. In spite of traits that are frequently common, a same language will not be used in the same way in different countries: majority or minority, mother tongue or secondary language, popular or elitist, chosen or imposed, hybrid or not. At the end of the nineteenth century, to speak German in Prussia, on the banks of the Volga, or in Cameroon has not at all the same impact – whether political, identity-forming, or cultural – even if the language is supposed to signify a belonging to a community. The degree of mastery of the language will not be the same from one country to another, or even within the same country, from one social class to another. If French was present in numerous European courts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, few princes knew more than a few basic phrases. The concept of plurilingualism is not enough to render an account of the very diverse situations. It is necessary to take into account not only the number of languages present but also their effective distribution in order to discriminate, for example, between bilingualism and diglossia. Gilles Siouffi suggests the expediency of introducing still another term – that of ‘colinguism’ (of vernacular languages) – to account for the turning point in

Introduction

15

European linguistic history represented by the use of languages of modern cultures (Italian, French, then English and so on) by non-native speakers. By taking note of the fact that external cultural and linguistic policies of European countries cover more than a simple diplomatic or administrative arsenal, and by recognizing the profoundly human dimension of linguistic facts, the present volume demonstrates brilliantly the need for an interdisciplinary approach. It also allows a glimpse of the interesting possibility of opening a joint workshop with, for example, specialists on the history of books, of translation, trans-national history, or even linguistic hybridization. No doubt the initial pitfalls of the empirical approach will find their best solution here. Translated by Mary Robitaille-Ibbett

introduction (version française) En matière de politique linguistique et culturelle des États européens, l’historien pourrait s’attendre à bénéficier d’un matériau riche et concret, constitué de directives et de décrets, de débats et de traités, ou encore de recommandations d’experts. De telles sources existent bien sûr, mais le constat s’impose assez vite que les situations outrepassent cette documentation. Les politiques linguistiques et culturelles dirigées vers l’intérieur des États sont encore assez aisément cernables. Langue et culture sont considérées de longue date comme des ciments de l’État; légiférer et prendre des mesures pour promouvoir l’unité linguistique ou pour marquer le respect des langues et cultures locales était un instrument légitime et presque naturel de l’exercice du pouvoir. Les politiques extérieures offrent en revanche des contours beaucoup plus flous. L’ère de la promotion officielle des langues et cultures nationales à l’extérieur des frontières est somme toute très récente. Un rapide survol des dates de création des instituts culturels des différents pays européens suffit à s’en convaincre. L’Alliance française (1883) et la Società Dante Alighieri (1889) font figure de pionnières. C’est surtout entre les années 1930 et le début des années 1950 que le mouvement est lancé: le Balassi Institut est créé au début de cette vague, en 1927, avant le British Council en 1934, la Pro Helvetia en 1939, le Danske Kulturinstitut en 1940, le Svenska Institut en 1945 et le Goethe Institut en 1951. Les années 1990 verront se parachever le mouvement de dotation des États européens en instituts linguistiques et culturels avec l’Instituto Cervantes en 1991, l’Istituto Camoes en 1992, l’Icelandic Language Institute ou le Österreich Institut en 1997.

16 

PASCALE R ABAULT-FEUERHAHN

L’effort de rayonnement culturel et linguistique des États ne se résume naturellement pas à l’existence de semblables institutions. Néanmoins, celles-ci signent l’existence d’une politique systématique et assumée – et surtout, acceptée et reconnue comme légitime par les pays qui les accueillent sur leur sol. Il n’est guère étonnant alors que l’après-Seconde Guerre mondiale, ère de paix, de prospérité, de stabilité territoriale et d’espoir en un avenir européen commun, ait été un moment privilégié en la matière. Mais qu’en est-il des périodes précédentes? La dimension longtemps officieuse, secrète même, des politiques linguistiques et culturelles extérieures des États européens pourrait expliquer que les historiens se soient détournés d’un objet de recherche qui semblait par trop fuyant. Ce volume procède de l’intuition inverse: ces politiques doivent retenir l’attention précisément en vertu de leur caractère a priori insaisissable. Celui-ci invite à imaginer quelles sources peuvent être mobilisées et amène ainsi à questionner la notion même de ‘politique’: ses contours, ses vecteurs, et jusqu’à son degré d’intentionnalité. Les politiques culturelles et linguistiques ont ceci de particulier qu’elles touchent à des entités – la culture et la langue – en prise avec l’humain et donc foncièrement évolutives. Si ce sont bien des individus qui leur donnent corps, elles procèdent néanmoins de pratiques collectives fermement ancrées. Aussi plastiques soient-elles, vouloir décréter le moment, la forme et la direction de leur changement suscite toujours d’importantes résistances. Pour saisir cette tension entre dynamique et inertie, mais aussi le jeu complexe des facteurs philosophiques, économiques, sociologiques ou anthropologiques qui participent à leur évolution, on ne peut faire l’économie du temps long. Répondant à cette exigence, ce volume fait porter l’enquête sur deux siècles complets, des traités d’Utrecht et de Rastatt (1713 et 1714) à la Première Guerre mondiale. Correspondant à des ruptures diplomatiques majeures – les deux traités sont généralement considérés comme ayant consacré l’utilisation du français comme langue diplomatique – ces bornes chronologiques constituent en outre de bons postes d’observation de la relation entre la politique extérieure générale et les politiques culturelles et linguistiques extérieures des États européens.

De quelle langue parle-t-on? Puisque langues et cultures évoluent constamment, l’étude des politiques linguistiques et culturelles requiert d’avoir une vision précise du contexte sociolinguistique dans lequel elles s’inscrivent, afin d’éviter contre-sens ou

Introduction

17

anachronismes. L’observation vaut même pour une lingua franca comme le latin qui, souvent mâtiné des langues locales, prenait des formes variables selon les lieux et les contextes. Dès le dix-septième siècle, les Allemands s’enorgueillissent d’un latin supposément plus pur que celui de leurs voisins français. Comme le rappelle Henri Besse, Ferdinand Brunot imputera d’ailleurs l’usage du français dans les négociations des traités de Münster et de Nimègue à la moindre maîtrise du latin par les plénipotentiaires français – à rebours donc de l’idée selon laquelle il se serait agi d’une politique délibérée de Louis XIV. Les langues ‘nationales’ demandent elles aussi à être cernées précisément pour comprendre les enjeux et les dynamiques de leur exportation. Comment par exemple aborder le rayonnement culturel extérieur du français au dix-huitième siècle sans connaître déjà le statut de cette langue en France même, notamment la distribution sociologique et géographique de son usage par rapport aux langues régionales? Les langues ‘nationales’ résultent de processus de normalisation et de politiques linguistiques de longue durée, dont les modalités varient selon les États et leur organisation. La politique du français sous l’Ancien régime n’a que peu à voir avec celle menée sous la Troisième République. Une république fédérale n’organisera pas sa politique linguistique de la même manière qu’une république centralisée; en fonction de leur politique d’intégration territoriale, un royaume ou un empire appréhenderont la diversité linguistique sur leur(s) territoire(s) selon des modalités différentes. L’acquisition de colonies enfin, oblige l’État colonisateur à repenser l’extension de sa langue nationale. La contribution de Nicola McLelland montre l’impact direct des changements de régime politique concernant la diffusion de la langue allemande à l’étranger. Si ce rayonnement fut longtemps conjoncturel, lié par exemple à des mouvements migratoires, l’unification allemande marqua un tournant. Le nouvel Empire wilhelminien initia une politique linguistique extérieure active, via des réseaux d’écoles allemandes à l’étranger; dans les colonies, cette politique s’exprima avec un volontarisme accru au tournant des dix-neuvième et vingtième siècles. Les contributions rassemblées ici en témoignent: dans toute situation de transfert culturel, ce qui circule est soumis à une série de transformations. Pour promouvoir une langue à l’étranger, on se réfère souvent à un archétype – forcément artificiel et fantasmé – de cette langue. Il y a donc bien, dès en amont, un processus de sélection. Si la langue ne se prête pas en soi à la division, ce n’est jamais l’ensemble des pratiques linguistiques qui circule. Telle langue s’exportera de manière privilégiée comme langue de communication, telle autre comme langue de négociation, une autre

18 

PASCALE R ABAULT-FEUERHAHN

encore comme langue littéraire. Dans tous les cas l’image sociale de l’idiome considéré – dans son pays de départ comme dans celui d’arrivée – détermine la possibilité et les formes de son exportation. Retraçant l’usage variable du français et de l’anglais dans les pays germanophones d’Europe centrale aux dix-huitième et dix-neuvième siècles, Konrad Schröder souligne la force des déterminants politiques dans la construction des images et des usages des langues, qui varièrent considérablement dans l’espace – l’Empire austro-hongrois n’est pas le Saint Empire romain germanique – comme dans le temps. Si le français fut, au moins officieusement, la langue privilégiée des négociations diplomatiques dès le dix-septième siècle, c’est bien parce qu’on anticipait le rôle prépondérant que la France allait jouer sur la scène européenne. À l’inverse, après 1870, la Prusse fit disparaître de l’enseignement secondaire cette langue considérée comme celle de l’ennemi héréditaire.

Performativités Que la représentation de la langue coïncide ou non avec la réalité importe peu: ce qui compte, c’est la dynamique qu’elle enclenche (ou non). La notion de ‘génie de la langue’ en témoigne parfaitement. Même si le ‘génie’ attribué à une langue ressortit d’une version savante et philosophique du cliché ou du jugement de valeur, il n’en a pas moins une force performative. Gilles Siouffi suit l’évolution sinueuse de cette notion et de ses usages jusqu’au seuil du dix-neuvième siècle afin de comprendre quel type d’identité collective elle était censée promouvoir, à une époque antérieure aux États-nations. Débouchant inévitablement sur la question des rapports entre langue et peuple, la notion de ‘génie de la langue’ témoigne du tiraillement de la pensée européenne entre particularisme et universalisme, rationalisme et mysticisme. Par son insistance sur les idiosyncrasies linguistiques, elle favorisa une approche typologique et caractérologique. Mais, postulant la nature homogène et transhistorique des langues, elle servit aussi de contrepoids aux explications rationalistes et historico-comparatives de leur formation et de leur différenciation. La notion de ‘génie français’ joue un rôle important dans l’argumentation développée par Ferdinand Brunot pour prouver que la diffusion du français en Europe fut moins le fait d’une politique active des monarques français, que du prestige d’une langue associée à tout un art de vivre et polie par un travail séculaire de normalisation. Les effets performatifs du ‘génie’ associé à une langue sont ici tout à fait manifestes. Henri Besse indique d’ailleurs que le terme, sous la plume de Brunot, a pour synonyme la ‘vertu’ et la ‘force’.

Introduction

19

Mais si les représentations populaires ou savantes d’une langue fonctionnent comme un moteur de son exportation, c’est bien parce qu’elles entrent en résonnance avec des besoins de la culture d’accueil. L’emploi intensif du français par les élites russes du milieu du dix-huitième au milieu du dix-neuvième siècle s’explique largement par le prestige et l’image aristocratique de cette langue. Mais il faut aller plus loin dans l’analyse. Par un effet d’entraînement, les usages sociolinguistiques du français le désignaient comme véhicule privilégié aux yeux des écrivains russes qui souhaitaient s’adresser aux élites d’Europe occidentales comme de Russie. Derek Offord invite ainsi à ne pas réduire l’usage du français à un simple engouement. Les messages politiques variés et même opposés dont il servit la diffusion ressortissent de véritables stratégies qu’il convient d’analyser en détail. Bien souvent, la corrélation entre diffusion linguistique et diffusion culturelle est ramenée au fait que maîtriser une langue est la condition pour accéder à la culture exprimée dans cette langue. La dimension performative des représentations et de l’imaginaire associés à une langue invite à complexifier ce schéma en rappelant que l’inverse se vérifie aussi: la familiarité plus ou moins grande avec une culture (par le biais de l’image que l’on s’en fait, de la circulation de traductions, de l’importation de biens matériels, etc.) sert souvent de locomotive à la diffusion linguistique.

Acteurs et facteurs du rayonnement linguistique et culturel La même attention doit donc être portée à la situation de la langue dans son contexte de départ et dans celui de son exportation/importation. Au fond – mais on pourrait l’affirmer de tout sujet d’histoire transnationale – les politiques de diffusion culturelle et linguistique ne peuvent être véritablement circonscrites qu’en faisant varier la focale entre l’échelle locale, régionale, nationale et transnationale. Derrière les ‘politiques’ linguistiques, ce sont bien des ‘usages’ qui sont en jeu, et ceux-ci sont inscrits dans une territorialité dont les contours varient selon les époques, les régimes politiques, et les questions considérées. Les productions en français en Russie impliquent de mettre en regard le double public, russe et européen, auquel elles s’adressent; elles mettent aussi en jeu la répartition spatiale des élites russes, leur concentration urbaine comme leur présence hors des frontières de l’Empire tsariste. La notion d’usage vient également rappeler que les langues, les cultures et leur transmission sont nécessairement incarnées. En ce sens, l’articulation des échelles se comprend aussi comme la combinaison des perspectives

20 

PASCALE R ABAULT-FEUERHAHN

micro- et macro-historiques. Les acteurs de la diffusion culturelle et linguistique peuvent être identifiés autant au niveau individuel qu’à celui de groupes sociaux. Décrivant le rôle des migrants dans la diffusion de la langue allemande, Nicola McLelland met au jour à la fois les initiatives d’individus isolés et l’impact des migrations de masses. Si les contributions de ce volume montrent que la diffusion linguistique et culturelle repose sur une pluralité d’acteurs, elles font toutefois émerger le rôle prépondérant de certaines catégories sociales ou professionnelles: nobles, diplomates, missionnaires, administrateurs, hommes de lettres, enseignants, traducteurs et interprètes, ainsi que le type de structures (institutionnelles ou informelles) sur lesquelles elles s’appuient: réseaux savants, commerciaux, aristocratiques, liens matrimoniaux, écoles ou missions. Ces différentes catégories viennent rappeler que la diffusion linguistique et culturelle ne se laisse jamais ramener à un facteur univoque. Le rôle du politique a déjà été évoqué plus haut. Les facteurs confessionnels sont également très importants. Leur rôle est évident en contexte missionnaire, comme le montre Paolo Pierracini à l’exemple de l’action de la Société d’aide aux missionnaires italiens en Méditerranée (Associazione Nazionale per Soccorrere i Missionari Cattolici Italiani). Mais on pourrait mentionner aussi l’impact décisif des Huguenots sur la diffusion du français en Europe du Nord, ou bien encore le poids plus ou moins grand du latin et des langues vernaculaires selon que l’on se situe en contexte catholique ou protestant. La force des facteurs économiques ne saurait non plus être négligée. La création concomitante de la Virginia Company of London (Compagnie coloniale anglaise de la Virginie) et de l’East India Company (Compagnie des Indes orientales) au début du dix-septième siècle, dédiées respectivement au commerce avec l’Amérique du Nord et avec l’Inde, fut le premier ressort de la diffusion de l’anglais à grande échelle hors des îles britanniques. On pourrait aussi évoquer le rôle des chevaliers teutoniques et du commerce hanséatique dans la propagation de l’allemand sur les pourtours de la Baltique.

L’intentionnalité en question Parler d’acteurs n’implique pas, loin s’en faut, que l’on soit en présence de politiques intentionnelles ou même conscientes. Étudier les politiques linguistiques et culturelles extérieures des États européens revient, dans bien des cas, à évaluer l’action réelle des pouvoirs étatiques en regard des dynamiques initiées par les locuteurs eux-mêmes (individus ou groupes de populations). Il y a, déjà, le fait que les politiques linguistiques extérieures

Introduction

21

systématiques n’aient été mises en place que tardivement par les États. Lucien Bély met ainsi en question l’idée que l’usage diplomatique du français aurait été un instrument de la puissance de la France à l’étranger. Non seulement l’usage du français n’avait rien d’exclusif, mais il était lié à des facteurs d’ordre plus pragmatique que stratégique. En outre, la mise en œuvre de politiques linguistiques officielles n’implique pas encore qu’elles soient efficaces. C’est là le sens ultime des travaux de Ferdinand Brunot dont Henri Besse fait la synthèse: postuler que la diffusion du français fut favorisée par l’habileté des rois de France qui, plutôt que de chercher à en imposer l’usage, privilégièrent toujours une sorte de francophonie spontanée de l’Europe. Les politiques volontaristes mises ensuite en œuvre sous la Révolution puis sous le premier Empire auraient au contraire prouvé leur caractère contreproductif. En dernier ressort, de telles mises en cause de l’efficacité des politiques volontaristes ou coercitives amènent à se demander qui a le plus de prise sur les pratiques linguistiques. On relèvera ainsi que les exilés (pour des motifs politiques ou religieux) sont des acteurs importants de la diffusion de leur langue maternelle hors des frontières de leur pays d’origine, tout en étant dans une situation conflictuelle avec les autorités de celui-ci. Nicola McLelland cite le cas du radical allemand Charles Follen, exilé politique aux États-Unis et qui devint professeur d’allemand à Harvard. À une plus large échelle, les huguenots émigrés dans différents pays d’Europe constituèrent une sorte de culture francophone commune contre le Roi de France. Dans ce cas précis, on pourrait aller jusqu’à dire que la diffusion du français s’est faite aux dépens du pouvoir royal! Ces différents exemples indiquent en tout état de cause que la culture véhiculée par la langue qui se diffuse n’a rien de neutre. Loin d’être un donné, elle peut même faire l’objet de définitions concurrentes. Les études de cas menées dans ce volume démontrent aussi de façon éclatante que la diffusion d’une langue n’est souvent pas le fait de ses locuteurs natifs. La pénétration de l’allemand en Russie au dix-huitième siècle correspond à une volonté de pallier l’absence ressentie de culture écrite en russe. Mais l’importation d’une langue est aussi un signe adressé à l’extérieur. Vladislav Rjéoutski explique ce mécanisme à l’exemple des traductions en langues européennes réalisées en Russie dans la deuxième moitié du dix-huitième siècle. S’il faut faire la part des choses entre celles qui relèvent d’initiatives individuelles et celles qui correspondent à une politique concrète du pouvoir tsariste, toutes semblent bien guidées par une même volonté de promouvoir vis-à-vis de l’Europe l’image d’une Russie moderne et cultivée. En ce sens, les politiques culturelles et linguistiques

22 

PASCALE R ABAULT-FEUERHAHN

extérieures des États européens ne doivent pas seulement s’entendre au sens de l’exportation de langues et de cultures, mais aussi de leur importation.

Appréhender le multilinguisme Faire intervenir des notions comme celle d’‘importation’ ou s’interroger sur ce à quoi la diffusion d’une langue correspond en termes de besoins de la culture d’accueil, c’est prendre acte du fait que les circulations linguistiques affectent directement la vie intime de ceux qui reçoivent ou s’approprient une langue, ou à qui on cherche à l’imposer. Pour cette raison, les situations d’échec des politiques linguistiques importent tout autant que celles de réussite. Les politiques coercitives génèrent d’importants effets de résistance, qui se traduisent par un écart entre les règles édictées et leur mise en œuvre. À quoi ces résistances correspondent-elles sur le plan culturel et politique? L’intérêt de telles situations pour l’historien est qu’elles sont souvent l’occasion pour chacun des camps en présence d’expliciter les raisons de l’adoption ou du rejet de telle ou telle langue. En tout état de cause, les différentes contributions de ce volume invitent à revenir sur la représentation communément admise selon laquelle les politiques linguistiques et culturelles extérieures auraient toujours été des instruments de la puissance étatique. Certes, la diffusion d’une langue est souvent liée à une situation de domination économique, sociale ou politique de la culture dont elle émane. La frontière semble alors ténue entre diffusion et impérialisme linguistique. Mais le caractère tardif des politiques officielles, le rôle prédominant d’acteurs non gouvernementaux, l’importance égale des phénomènes d’exportation et d’importation viennent nuancer cette vision et appellent à complexifier la notion même d’impérialisme. Les politiques d’imposition linguistique ne s’expriment-elles pas de façon détournée? C’est le cas lorsque la maîtrise de l’anglais devient indispensable pour accéder à certains postes en Inde. On rappellera d’ailleurs que la question de savoir si l’impérialisme linguistique et culturel au sein de l’Europe est de la même nature que celui exercé par les pays européens sur leurs colonies est toujours vivement débattue. Qu’en est-il, alors, de la situation linguistique des locuteurs? Comme nous l’observions plus haut, bien souvent la langue exportée coexiste déjà avec d’autres langues dans son propre environnement d’origine (par exemple, le français avec le latin et des langues régionales). En étant utilisée dans d’autres environnements, elle suscite de nouvelles configurations

Introduction

23

plurilingues qui se distinguent les unes des autres non seulement par les langues en présence, mais aussi par la situation de la langue diffusée. En dépit de traits parfois communs, une même langue ne sera pas employée de la même manière dans différents pays: majoritaire ou minoritaire, maternelle ou secondaire, populaire ou élitaire, choisie ou imposée, hybridée ou non. Parler allemand à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle en Prusse, sur les bords de la Volga ou bien au Cameroun n’a assurément pas la même portée politique, identitaire ni culturelle, même si la langue est censée signer une communauté d’appartenance. Le degré de maîtrise ne sera pas non plus le même d’un pays à l’autre ni même, au sein d’un même pays, d’une classe sociale à l’autre. Si le français était présent dans de nombreuses cours d’Europe aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles, peu de princes en connaissaient plus de quelques phrases types! Le concept de plurilinguisme ne suffit donc pas pour rendre compte de situations très diverses. Il est nécessaire de prendre en considération le nombre de langues en présence mais aussi leur distribution effective af in de discriminer par exemple entre bilinguisme et diglossie. Gilles Siouffi suggère l’opportunité d’introduire encore un autre terme, celui de ‘colinguisme’ (des langues vernaculaires), pour rendre compte du tournant que représenta, dans l’histoire linguistique européenne, l’usage de langues de culture modernes (italien, français, puis anglais…) par des locuteurs non maternels. En prenant acte du fait que les politiques linguistiques et culturelles extérieures des pays européens recouvrent plus que de simples arsenaux diplomatiques ou administratifs et en faisant droit à la dimension profondément humaine des faits langagiers, le présent volume démontre avec éclat la nécessité d’une approche interdisciplinaire et laisse dès lors entrevoir l’intérêt d’ouvrir des chantiers communs avec, par exemple, les spécialistes d’histoire du livre, d’histoire des traductions, d’histoire transnationale, ou encore de métissages linguistiques. Sans doute les écueils initiaux de l’approche empirique trouveraient-ils là leur meilleure résolution.

About the author Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn is a CNRS researcher (UMR Pays GermaniquesTransferts culturels, PSL Research University, Paris) who specializes in the transnational history of the human sciences, with a focus on Oriental philology. She is the author of Archives of Origins: Sanskrit, Philology,

24 

PASCALE R ABAULT-FEUERHAHN

Anthropology in 19th Century Germany (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013; French ed. Paris, 2008), and has edited several books on nineteenth-century philology and on the intercultural history of institutions of knowledge (universities, congresses, museums). She is currently writing a book on the contours of Oriental studies, based on a long-term study of the International Congress of the Orientalists. Another area of interest is the history of the comparative method in the human sciences. Email: [email protected]

1

External linguistic politics and policies in the German-speaking countries of Central Europe in early modern times and in the nineteenth century With some references to the present age Konrad Schröder* Sanchez-Summerer, Karène & Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th – 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980600/ch01 Abstract This chapter addresses the impact of internal and external language politics and policies in the German-speaking countries of Central Europe from Renaissance times to the present age. The fate of post-Renaissance German in the pre-1806 Holy Roman Empire is contrasted with the roles of French and English as national and international languages of early modern times. German is not a national language before the postNapoleonic period and, due to the tragedies of the twentieth century, its heyday is short-lived. Instead of German, the Holy Roman Empire, not being a nation state, pushes Latin as its official language – though inconsistently. On the whole there is very little explicit language policy and linguistic legislation in Germany before the twentieth century. As in other European countries, most of the language support given is implicit and very often indirect. This, however, does not mean that linguistic legislation does not exist. Implicit linguistic legislation – through popular belief, widespread opinion, hetero-stereotypes, sets of dominant values, and emotional constellations – is just as powerful, and possibly even more effective.

*

University of Augsburg

26 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

Keywords: Language of freedom, early modern times, EU linguistic policies, enemy language, Holy Roman Empire, nation state, national language, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany, rise and fall

The Holy Roman Empire: not a nation state Before 1871, Germany was not a nation state. In the sixteenth century – unlike France, Britain, or Spain – the German-speaking countries had not had a chance of forming a unified territory, of harmonizing their dialects into a unified national language, and of developing a national culture; nor had there been any colonial efforts in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Holy Roman Empire (HRE), which most of the German-speaking countries belonged to – from Luxembourg and the German-speaking territories of what is today eastern France (in fact to the German-speaking part of the Austrian Empire), and from eastern Prussia to what is now northern Italy – was a medieval form of state grouping. These were different territories and regional nations – in the original sense of natio (the region where somebody is born) – under an Emperor originally migrating between his various imperial castles. There was no permanent centre of power, neither institutionally or even locally. The HRE broke up in 1806, making room for independent kingdoms; dukedoms of various shapes and degrees of importance; and even a fair number of small earldoms sometimes of no political importance at all. These were in addition to the Austrian Empire of the nineteenth century, which in turn was a multi-ethnic and multicultural compound of territories under Austrian and Hungarian rule where German was, to a certain extent, the language of administration and the armed forces. The Austrian Empire was the direct survivor of the HRE, albeit transfigured; it was politically moribund, and its end came with the shooting at Sarajevo and World War I; and when the end came, Austria was politically no longer part of Germany. But close linguistic, cultural, and ethnic links remained – not between Austrian-speaking Austria (called ‘Deutsch Österreich’ after 1918, with Austrian being a standard of German) and Germany perhaps, but definitely between Austria and Bavaria. The Second German Reich, founded under Prussian leadership (not to say dominance) in 1871 at the end of the French War, was Bismarck’s vision of what a unified, strong, nationalistic (basically Protestant) Germany should be like. But this was a vision definitely not shared by the Austrians and Bavarians or by the traditionally Catholic inhabitants of the post-1815 Prussian protectorate on

Ex ternal linguistic politics and policies

27

the left bank of the Rhine (called Rheinpreußen), and neither, of course, by the inhabitants of the Reichsland Elsass-Lothringen, newly reincorporated into the Reich (Alsace-Lorraine). Bismarck did not ask Austria in, because of its multi-ethnic and Catholic/multi-religious orientation. Culturally speaking, the post-1871 German Reich, which still worked on a federal principle in many domains (for example, Bavaria had its own railway and postal service), did not bring forth the degree of amalgamation that post-romantic intellectuals would have longed for in order to create a genuine nation state. But of course, and like everywhere in nineteenth-century Europe, a lot of cheap beer-bench patriotism was around. As this brief overview shows, the HRE of pre-1806 cannot be named in any way alongside Renaissance and post-Renaissance nation states. In practice, it was but a fairly loose confederation of semi-independent states, dominions, and free cities, decentralized and under the leadership of a potentially weak Emperor who was elected by a set of Kurfürsten (‘electors’) and who depended on the resolutions of the Reichstage (assemblies of the realm). But no doubt it was a political structure with a wonderful name. In fact, the HRE considered itself the legal successor to the ancient Roman Empire, made up of the deutsche Nation (‘German nation’, a fifteenth-century addition to the name); this is German nation again in the pre-nationalistic sense of ‘German by language and by cultural belonging, ethnically (in a non-racial sense) German.’ In the course of history, the HRE had dwindled as regions formed their own countries. For example, the Netherlands, where dialects of Nederduits were spoken (Low as opposed to High German – ‘Dutch’ being the anglicized form of the adjective deutsch), opted out; and so did Switzerland, with its Alemannic German dialects, nowadays termed Schwiizerdütsch. After the Truce of Augsburg between the Protestant and the Catholic factions in 1555, the remaining states within the HRE were virtually independent politically and religiously: they followed their own interests and formed their own coalitions.

Linguistic and cultural politics and policies: some general remarks The domain of linguistic and cultural politics and policies concerns internal and/or external power politics and cultural traditions and aspirations. Projects and actions in this field require some kind of legislation, whether law, decree, formal suggestion even, or simply general consent – the latter

28 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

being the case of the ‘unwritten law’. Linguistic and cultural legislation may be explicit or implicit, and either direct (focused on the intended target) or indirect (focused on changing constellations that are linked with the intended target). As part of internal power politics, linguistic and cultural legislation and action will normally be directed against unwanted (regional) languages and cultures, or towards the further embellishment and growth of the national language. As part of external power politics, the action will be directed towards implanting the national language and its culture abroad, or towards suppressing existing languages abroad, in order to gain political and cultural influence. Internally or externally suppressing languages has also been used as a means of retaliation and long-term punishment. In the course of the last 500 years, there has obviously been rather little explicit linguistic and cultural legislation, most of it possibly happening in the twentieth century as part of ethnic cleansing and political retaliation. Governments do not need proper laws or decrees for power plays they can accomplish with the help of the zeitgeist; through widespread public opinion; by taking advantage of the ideology of the leading party; or by making use of political adventurers on their payroll. From the early days of nation building until the nineteenth century, linguistic legislation was implicit rather than explicit, working by means of suggestions and common consent; using wide-spread clichés in the political, religious or cultural field; and acting indirectly rather than directly – for example, by regulating the education and influx of preachers (as in the case of eighteenth-century Prussia exercising cultural pressure on the Sorb minority) or by manipulating school curricula. If there was explicit linguistic legislation before the twentieth century, it tended to be internal rather than external, as in the case of the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts of 1539, which established French (‘le langage maternel français’) as the language of administration and of the courts of France, to the detriment of Latin. In the twentieth century, the use of Yiddish (the German-based dialect of the Jewish minority) was explicitly forbidden by the Nazi government; and German was explicitly forbidden at the end of the Second World War to be used by the German-speaking minorities of Poland and Czechoslovakia, before these minorities were expelled in an act of ethnic cleansing in 1946. Internal linguistic legislation, whether implicit or explicit, was used in the past as an appropriate means of fostering cultural centralization and, thus, national unity. As measures of this kind were normally directed against linguistic and cultural minorities, exposing them to collective and

Ex ternal linguistic politics and policies

29

personal distress, they can be classified as an act of violence and a crime against humanity – the unobstructed use of one’s native language being a human right. The ethics of external language politics and policies (implicit or explicit) depend on whether the measures concerned are directed against other cultures or not, and whether they are accepted by the people they are intended for. Internal and external language politics and policies have a number of features in common: – Both can be used as a tool for building linguistic and cultural bridges. – They both serve the spread of the dominant language and, consequently, the spread of the dominant culture. – Both can be used as a means of proper warfare, or as a tool within a much softer approach, turning people into bilingual or even plurilingual beings. – They both use existing media and educational facilities as a means of propagation.

German, Latin, and French in early modern times, and the HRE’s non-existant linguistic and cultural foreign policy Successful, implicit external language politics and policies, as in the case of France, imply as a tool the existence of a dominant, high-profile national language – or, as Nebrija (1492) would have argued, as a companion.1 From the time of King Francis I (reigned 1515–1547) onward, French was such a language, as were Spanish, Portuguese, and English. The German-speaking world, however, was different. It was also different from the cultural universe of (disunited) Italy, with its four well-established literary dialects (Veneziano, Fiorentino, Romano, and Napolitano). The HRE did not have a national language, only a fair number of low-profile dialects of a vernacular which did not have a written standard. The official language of the HRE in politics and in academic matters was Latin, which fitted with the idea of a post-Roman empire.

1 Spanish scholar Antonio de Nebrija, in the dedication of his 1492 Grammatica Castellana to Queen Isabella, states: ‘que siempre la lengua fue compañera del imperio’. The quotation is an early instance of a political statement with regard to an emerging national language. Since it was part of a more widespread campaign for Spanish, it may be regarded as an example of implicit direct linguistic legislation.

30 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

In addition to this, dialects of two closely related languages coexisted throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in some of the Germanspeaking regions: High German and Low German (the lingua germanica as opposed to the lingua teutonica, the latter term being used for Dutch in particular once it had started to become a language of its own). Until then, the only attempt, until then, at standardization had been Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible (finished in 1534), a High German translation with some vocabulary taken from Low German. Its linguistic impact, though, was limited to the Protestant parts of Germany. In the late seventeenth century, Low German in northern Germany started to come under High German pressure. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the political and academic signif icance of Latin in the German-speaking countries slowly decreased, as it was diminishing throughout Europe. Ever since 1524, Protestant preaching had been in German. In the 1650s, the work of the baroque poet Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664) marked the beginning of a ‘proper’ literature in the vernacular. After the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), the book catalogues of the Leipsic Fair showed a slowly growing number of publications in German (and other modern languages), and about a generation later the Leipsic professor Christian Thomasius started using German for some of his lectures. Nevertheless, initiatives towards the establishment of a national language in Germany were scarce. There was no national academy that might defend the aesthetic qualities of German and foster its further embellishment: the ‘Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft’ (Societas fructifera, or Fruitbearing Society) of 1617–1680 had been of very limited influence. The only academy of international repute, the Prussian Academy of the eighteenth century, was strongly influenced by the Berlin Huguenots, and functioned largely in French. German academics prided themselves on their knowledge of foreign tongues, and in fact the average eighteenth-century German student was truly plurilingual, with partial competency in three to five foreign languages: an advanced knowledge of Latin and French; a working knowledge of Italian; and possibly some Spanish, Dutch, and/or English. According to eighteenth-century international opinion, the Germans of the day were good language learners, if only to make up for the lack of a national language of their own that would be acceptable both within their own regions and abroad. The contemporary role of Latin as the official language of the HRE in international affairs becomes evident when looking at the Münster peace talks of 1644–1648 between the imperial and the royal French delegations

Ex ternal linguistic politics and policies

31

to end the Thirty Years War. As the privy councillor Friedrich Karl Moser reports in his 1750 documentation, when the Imperial envoy, Isaac Volkmar, visited his French counterpart, the Comte d’Avaux, on 21 March 1644,2 he addressed him with a speech in Latin, which the Comte answered in French. On the occasion of the counter-visit of the French legation (on the 8 April), Volkmar answered his French colleague’s greetings in Latin: ‘Ego primum […] sermone latino respondi.’ The French envoy then continued in French: ‘Ipse deinde Comes hanc meam responsionem latius prosecutus est idiomate Gallico.’ So far, so good. More than a year later, on 16 October 1645, the Imperial legation visited the Mediatores (the translators and interpreters) and put on record: Es wäre Ihro Kayserlichen Majestät sehr lieb, daß die Herrn Franzosen erinnert würden, ihre künfftige Declarationes in Lateinischer Sprache zu übergeben, dann solches in der Regenspurgischen Friedens-Handlung auch also gehalten worden, und würde man dadurch des Transferirens enthebt seyn, auch die etwa daraus entspringende ungleiche Interpretationes fürkommen werden.3 His Imperial Majesty would be delighted to see the French gentlemen reminded of the fact that future declarations should be submitted in Latin, since this has also been the practice during the peace negotiations in Ratisbon, whereby translations would no longer be needed and diverging interpretations stemming from them would no longer exist.

In the end, the interpreters agreed to take the Latin answers of the Imperial legation to the French party and add, if necessary, a French translation: Woferne aber einige Sache vorfallen sollte, dessentwegen die Franzosen eine schrifftliche Erklärung von sich zu geben haben würden, da wollten sie [die Mediatores] mit ihnen handeln, daß, wann sie je solche Schrifften übergeben sollten, sie wenigstens von sich selbst ein Lateinisches Translatum dazu legen sollten. 4

2 Moser, Abhandlung von den europäischen Hof- und Staats-Sprachen und deren Gebrauch im Reden und Schreiben, 49ff. 3 Ibidem, 50. 4 Ibidem, 51.

32 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

But if there was any case in which the French would have to produce a written declaration, they [the mediators] would negotiate with them, that if ever they wanted to hand such documents over, they themselves [i.e. the mediators] might at least add a Latin translation.

The language quarrel between the Imperial and the French delegations was one reason for the slow progress of the Münster peace negotiations, and the debate went on well into the eighteenth century. At almost all times, the Imperial envoys presented their resolutions and papers in Latin. This the French envoys would not accept, asking for documents in French, whereupon the members of the Imperial delegation would argue that they did not intend to change the rules and would present their papers in the official language of the Empire, which was Latin. Vice versa: when the French presented their memoranda in French, the Imperial envoys would ask for a Latin version, as they argued, in order to properly understand. It goes without saying that the French legations, consisting of highly educated specialists, were able to read Latin fluently enough; and the same was true for their counterparts on the imperial side reading French. In Münster, and later in Nijmegen (1679) and in Rijswijk (1697), language was used as a symbol of sovereignty, and as a trump-card in a power-play. Nevertheless the actual peace treaties of Münster, Nijmegen, and Rijswijk were all in Latin. This, however, was no longer the case with the Treaty of Rastatt (1714), which was in French. For this reason, the following separate article was introduced by the Imperial side: Le present Traité par les raisons mentionnées […] ayant été commencé, poursuivi & achevé sans les solennitéz & formalitéz requises & usitées à l’égard de l’Empire & composé & redigé en langue Françoise, contre l’usage ordinairement observé dans les Traités entre Sa Majesté Imperiale & Sa Majesté Trés-Chrétienne, cette difference ne pourra être alleguée pour exemple, ni tirer à consequence, ou porter préjudice en aucune manière à qui que ce soit, et l’on se conformera à l’avenir à tout ce qui a été observé jusqu’à present dans de semblables occasions, tant à l’égard de la langue Latine, que pour les autres formalités.5 Though the present treaty, for the reasons given […] was begun, pursued, and finished without the pomp and formalities customary and needed with regard to the [Holy Roman] Empire, and composed and edited in 5

Ibidem, 56ff.

Ex ternal linguistic politics and policies

33

the French language, contrary to the practice normally observed in the treaties between His Imperial Majesty and His Very Christian Majesty, this difference cannot be used as an example, nor have as a consequence or be established as a precedent in any manner with regard to whoever there be; and contracting parties will conform in the future to all that has been observed until now on similar occasions, both with regard to the use of Latin and the other formalities.

German did not play any role in the various encounters – and it was not even mentioned. In the end, and this is the irony of history, both the HRE and France had to depend on ‘mediators’, on the translators – in those days a new profession of dubious reputation at times. They came from various backgrounds and had their own political affiliations and if, on the one hand, they managed to keep the negotiations going, on the other hand, they would certainly find ways of serving their own interests. For a regional power in the process of political decay, such as Venice, providing translators and interpreters to the world of politics was a way of exercising political power. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the use of language as a political tool and a weapon had become a common feature. When it came to pushing the national language, to implanting it abroad as the linguistic medium of diplomacy, France led the way, the official policy being ‘French only’. Putting this somewhat crude strategy into practice was not difficult, since the role of Latin as the international language of Christendom, and thus of Western and Central Europe, was questioned. The French position, while not based on explicit legislation of any type, was based on the common persuasion that France was entitled to play the leading role in the world surrounding it, and on Nebrija’s idea of 1492 underlining the use of the ‘proper’ language as an important feature of power politics. The success of the French approach shows how strong the effects of implicit linguistic legislation can be. By the time of Louis XIV, the French had developed a sense of what they thought was the cultural mission of their national language: they hailed its capacity to transport national identity and its power as a political and cultural agent. One way of developing such common persuasions was through educational measures. This is why, in order to further explain the phenomenon, it might be worth looking at sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury educators in French noble families. How alert were they to the new trends and targets in language education? The HRE did not have anything similar to offer. For sure, by the time of the Münster peace talks, French had been present in Germany as a cultural

34 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

herald for more than 400 years. France had been thought of by more than a dozen consecutive generations as the more refined country, a haven of poetry and music and the arts, of civilizational values and academic wisdom. French in Germany had always been a high-profile language. With King Francis I and his Catholic successors on the throne of France, however, it had also become the idiom of the most important and most dangerous direct neighbour. The expansion of French by way of hostile political action, including blatant military aggression, by and by helped develop a highly negative image of France in Germany which persisted well into the nineteenth century, in spite of widespread Protestant solidarity with the Huguenots and in spite of Frederic II’s love for anything French. When about a century later Napoleon turned French into a pan-European enemy language, anti-French feeling in Germany was deeply ingrained.

Criticism of the French and their language Cultural opposition to French first made itself felt in Germany towards the end of the seventeenth century. In his pamphlet Von Nachahmung der Franzosen (‘On imitating the French’) the Leipsic professor Christian Thomasius stated: Heutzutage muss alles französisch sein, französische Sprache, französische Kleider, französische Speisen, französischer Hausrat, französisches Tanzen, französische Musik und französische Krankheiten.6 Today everything must be French: French language, French garments, French food, French household equipment, French dancing, French music, and French illnesses.

One decade later, in his famous Entretien de la méthode entre un maître de langue et un écolier – a communicative manual of French in dialogue form, bilingual and including intercultural features – the Nuremberg master of languages Matthias Cramer bitterly criticized the way in which the ‘French tyrants’ treated the Germans: ‘destroying their lives, torturing their souls, and taking away their belongings’. He continued:

6 Schmidt, Der französische Unterricht und seine Stellung in der Pädagogik des 17. Jahrhunderts, 4.

Ex ternal linguistic politics and policies

35

Es sind unter allen Nationen der Welt wir Deutschen solche Vögel, die am leichtesten gefangen werden. […] Was nur etwas glänzet, verblendet uns gleich, wir rennen stracks darauf zu, wie die Frösche auf ein Läpplein Scharlacken und wie die Zwiefalter und Motten auf das Licht einer angezündeten Kerze, und wir werden auch nicht eher gewitzigt, als nachdem wir erhaschet und bis auf die Flügel unseres Beutels, unseres Verstandes und endlich unserer Seele verbrannt worden.7 Amongst all nations on earth we, the Germans, are such birds as are most easily caught. […] Whatever shines just a little will immediately blind us; we will run after it as frogs do after a scarlet cloth or as butterflies and moths fly into the light of a burning candle; and we do not realize what is happening to us until we are caught and burnt down to the wings of our wallets, our brains and finally our souls.

Cramer had lived in Heidelberg as a master of languages when French troops had taken the city in the winter of 1689, pillaging and burning it, and later blowing up its famous Renaissance castle. No wonder that he considered the French as immoral, and the Germans blindly adoring their culture as töricht, foolish.8 Cramer spoke excellent French, but he was no Francophile.9 In the summer of 1813, just a few months before the Leipsic Battle of the Nations, the German romantic poet Ernst Moritz Arndt wrote his pamphlet Über Volkshass und über den Gebrauch einer fremden Sprache, an evil little book preaching hatred of the French, in which he echoed cheap popular opinion concerning the French influence in Germany: Ich will denn Hass gegen die Franzosen, nicht bloß für diesen Krieg, ich will ihn für lange Zeit, ich will ihn für immer. […] es wird kein großer Verlust für uns sein, wenn die französischen Sprachmeister, Tanzmeister, Abbés, Kammerdiener, Köche, Salbenkrämer, Kammerzofen und Gouvernantinnen [sic] unserer Töchter und unserer Bordelle das grobe Allemannien als ein unausstehliches und abscheuliches Land künftig fliehen.10

7 Cramer, Entretien de la méthode entre un maître de langue et un écolier, 41. 8 Ibidem, 51. 9 For a comprehensive biography of Matthias Cramer [Kramer] see Glück, Häberlein and Schröder Mehrsprachigkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit, 155–160. 10 Arndt, Über Volkshass und über den Gebrauch einer fremden Sprache, 18ff.

36 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

What I want to see is hatred towards the French, not only for this war; I want hatred for a long time, I want it for ever. […] It is not going to be a big loss for us, if the French maîtres de langue, maîtres de danse, priests, valets de chambre, chefs, vendors of ointments, chambermaids and governesses [sic] of our daughters and our brothels shun unrefined Germany as being insufferable and atrocious.

Arndt’s booklet is another instance of implicit yet powerful linguistic and cultural legislation.11 In fact, two years later – immediately after the Battle of Waterloo – explicit political action against French was taken by the Prussian Department of the Interior, Section of Education. In 1816, French was eliminated as a school subject in Prussian grammar and Stadtschulen (city schools); at the same time, German was upgraded to become ‘the only modern language subject worthy of being included in any curriculum in the field of general education’. Apart from an anti-English verdict pronounced by Empress Maria Theresa in 1778, trying to ban the teaching of English in Austrian universities as an ideologically dangerous language, this is possibly the only instance of explicit linguistic legislation in pre-1871 Germany. Furthermore, it was of limited success for several reasons: (a) The verdict of the Prussian privy councillor Süvern applied to state schools only. (b) Other German states did not follow suit. (c) Schools in the newly created Prussian protectorate of the Rhineland protested. (d) There was a general resurrection of French in its traditional format of being a first modern foreign language in the 1830s.

The nineteenth century and later: the rise of English, the foibles of the Germans for Britain, the United States as a promised land, and German as an emerging national language Public opinion in Germany remained hostile to France and the French language throughout the nineteenth century. Where French was taught to male students at grammar-school level after 1830, it was taught without proper regard to the spoken language and to French culture, but rather more 11 Compare in this context Schröder, ‘Über Volkshass und über den Gebrauch einer fremden Sprache’.

Ex ternal linguistic politics and policies

37

like Latin: in a grammar-oriented way with the aim of translating classical French literature. The teaching of French to girls, however, remained more communicative, which had to do with the role of bourgeois women in contemporary society and the fact that they were banned from the higher levels of education. Political action against French as the language of the hereditary enemy continued throughout the nineteenth century. It was implicit, and it was both external and internal, since it was directed not only against France herself but also against the possible impact of French immorality etc. on the spiritual well-being of the emerging German nation. Discrimination worked through preventing any further growth and modernization of French as a school subject wherever possible; and, after 1871, through celebrating the decisive German victory over the French army in the Battle of Sedan on 2 September 1870 as a special school holiday, Sedantag – ‘Sedan Memorial Day’. French was pedagogically marginalized; but, where it was taught at all, it largely remained the first modern foreign language or the third language after Latin and Greek. The linguistic repercussions of the Napoleonic era had left a language vacuum in the curricula of German secondary schools. This was partly filled by Latin and Greek, but also by a new language which had been on the scene for quite a while, though not as a major player: English. Throughout the eighteenth century, German merchants and academics had shown a growing interest in things British, and there had been a strong dynastic link between London and the duchy of Hanover since 1714, when the Electors of Hanover (as a Protestant line within the House of Stuart) became kings of England and Scotland. After 1737, the University of Göttingen – founded by King George II of England and therefore third after Oxford and Cambridge – had acted as an ideal academic platform for the cultural exchange between Britain and Central Europe in all domains. Göttingen had a Professor of English, John Tompson of London – a charismatic teacher and, in the opinion of his German contemporaries, the incarnation of the true gentleman.12 German Anglicists still think of him: in 2012, the 250th anniversary of his becoming Ordinarius (full-time professor) was celebrated at the University of Göttingen. Cultural contacts between Britain and Germany had become more intensive in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the pre-Romantic German mind turned to Shakespeare, and English landscaping became 12 An analysis of John Tompson’s Göttingen career can be found in Finkenstaedt, ‘Auf der Suche nach dem Göttinger Ordinarius des Englischen, John Tompson (1697–1768)’.

38 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

fashionable in Germany. The German national poet Friedrich Schiller, as a pupil at the Stuttgart Military Academy, was the weakest student of his class in French; in Italian he was average, but he was excellent in English. Both Goethe and Van Beethoven had a good working knowledge of English, and even Mozart for some time dreamt of starting a second career in London. With the Industrial Revolution, knowledge of English became imperative for technicians, engineers, and business people at almost all levels, since steam engine technology was British. No wonder, therefore, that even before the beginning of the French Revolution some schools in Germany and the more private sectors of education responded to the new demand. Germans started buying English books; one generation later, these books were even being printed in English inside Germany. By about 1815 at the latest, Anglomania was a common feature in Germany. English gradually became a school subject in Germany after 1830, when it was established in the Realschulen (secondary modern schools) of several northern German states. The new subject was hailed as an alternative to Latin and French by the revolutionaries of 1848. Since most of them were fighting for a constitutional monarchy, Britain served as a model for them, and the English language was conceived as the idiom of political freedom, of liberalism, of free trade and prosperity. Above all, it served as the mother tongue of a nation that was spiritually on an equal footing with the Germans, whereas French modes of thinking were considered alien. A fair number of the 1848 commentators also mentioned the idea that the English were blutsverwandt (‘ethnically related’). The idea of Anglo-German blood relationship was taken up later, in 1937, by the National Socialist (Nazi) government. Again, in the case of English in the nineteenth century, there was never any explicit language legislation on the German side, the fact being that nobody needed it: the vast majority of Germans considered Britain to be a friendly, ethnically related neighbour, sharing the same values and willing to act as a political and scientific tutor. People realized that Germany had never been overrun by the British, in spite of the odd battle on German soil – such as the one of 1704 at the village of Blindheim (Blenheim), north of Augsburg, during the Spanish War of Succession, when the English and the Imperial armies jointly beat a Bavarian and French coalition. There had never been any large-scale British spying on Germany, and Britain had never tried to exercise mental constraints – as Matthias Cramer would have put it – on the German people. This explains why, in the ensuing nineteenth- and twentieth-century linguistic battle between French and English for communicative hegemony on the Continent, French was in a

Ex ternal linguistic politics and policies

39

deplorable position, whereas English had all the trump-cards, including the American one. In 1785, the Tübingen professor Johann Christoph Schwab13 in his treatise on why and how long French was going to remain the international language (a prize-winning dissertation sponsored by the Prussian Academy), had argued that the French language would stay in place for a long time to come, unless the French did something politically foolish. They actually did a few years later, first by turning French into the communicative medium of an obsolete era, the Ancien Régime, and then by hailing Napoleon. According to Schwab, English was no competition for French as yet, mainly because of Britain’s insular position, and this in spite of the country’s brilliant political, scientific, and cultural development in recent years. But then he continued: ‘Ich rede aber bloß von Europa, denn in dem nördlichen Amerika kann diese Sprache mit der daselbst wachsenden Volksmenge eine ungeheure Herrschaft erlangen.’14 This quote is possibly the first mention of the linguistic impact of the newly founded United States on the world. German mass emigration started in the 1830s, to reach a first peak in the 1840s and 1850s. There was now a second incentive for learning English: getting away from German misery by moving to the ‘Promised Land’. There was a fair number of emigration handbooks on the German-speaking market by 1850, publications that included conversational grammar, American studies for immigrants, and all sorts of useful information to keep migrants from falling victim to criminal offences. As a result, at least for the lower social strata, American English became yet another prestigious variation of English, one that did not have to be pushed by any kind of explicit legislation. British English, however, remained the standard form within the German educational system until after 1945. Following Germany’s defeat in the First World War, there was discussion in Germany about which modern languages to teach at school. As a result, Spanish – one of the less commonly studied languages of the early modern era – re-entered the scene, basically because of its role in South and Central America; and some schools even started teaching Russian, most prominent amongst these being the Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf) Schools. In 1920, the German Foreign Office in Berlin claimed the right to co-decide on the languages to be selected. In the end, however, its influence remained 13 For a biography of Schwab, see Schröder, Biographisches und bibliographisches Lexikon, IV, 138–141. 14 Schwab, Von den Ursachen der Allgemeinheit der französischen Sprache, 112.

40 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

almost nil, since the new Weimar Republic functioned on federal principles, and so the domain of educational politics remained with the individual states. Nevertheless, this was an overt attempt at introducing an explicit, basically external, linguistic legislation – directed first and foremost against French, which, because of the longevity of stereotypes and the negative experiences of the First World War, remained the enemy language pure and simple. In 1923, five of the federal states of the Weimar Republic (including Bavaria, France’s former ally) turned to English as their first modern foreign language – French henceforth being in second or even third place. With the advent of National Socialism in Germany in 1933, education was gradually centralized. In 1937, English was declared the first foreign language in all secondary schools of the Reich (apart from a few Traditionsschulen, well-known schools having their individual traditions and mostly starting with Latin). Officially the change-over was for racial reasons, Britain being defined as a blood-related Teutonic brother nation, an Empire builder, and thus the home of yet another Herrenvolk. After 1938, and until the end of the Second World War, there was very little teaching of French in Germany. The rest of the story is quickly told. In the four Zones of Occupation the Allied Forces established their national languages as first foreign languages, which was once again an act of explicit external language policy. In the French Zone and in the Saar District, French was thus reinforced. With the end of the French Zone, however, the system changed back to English, a step that was cemented in 1964 by the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education (Germany) in the notorious Hamburger Abkommen (‘Hamburg Agreement’). French, however, survived in its post-1945 position in the Saarland due to a special agreement between France and Germany in the Saarvertrag (the treaty concerning the return of the Saar District to Germany in 1957–1960) – another instance of explicit internal/external language policy. Russian dominated the school system of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a ‘socialist brother language’ until just after 1989, when it collapsed by way of public consent rather than proper legislation. In accordance with the European spirit of our era, the present government of the Saarland has declared turning the state into a bilingual region (adding French to German): Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis. Meanwhile, in the new federal states, Russian has stabilized at a comparatively low quantitative level; but the long-term negative effects of the Kremlin’s Novaya Rossiya (‘New Russia’) policy remain to be seen. German as an emerging national language had its heyday between 1815 and 1914 in the eyes of the world as a language of poets, philosophers, and musicians; and, moreover, as the language of archaeology, psychology,

Ex ternal linguistic politics and policies

41

and also of mining and engineering. During this era, German was never pushed by way of explicit linguistic legislation, either inside or outside the country, apart perhaps from the tentative linguistic policies during Germany’s short-lived colonial adventures, when administrators tried to fix the role of the new colonial language with regard to existing vernaculars and other colonial idioms. Inside Germany, a lot was done implicitly and indirectly to stabilize the new national language: within the educational system, for instance, through rigorously teaching its orthography; through making young students learn long classical or contemporary poems by heart; through translating Latin into German; and through all kinds of educational campaigns aimed at propagating the idea of its beauty and international significance. Just as with French, Spanish, and English in Renaissance times, German became a symbol of national sovereignty and belonging, and its veneration inside Germany was reinforced through patriotic songs and poems. In this sense, people were proud of being German and of speaking the language. At the same time, however – and this makes a big difference from the point of view of the linguistic ethnocentrism of the Renaissance – it was quite clear to any educated nineteenth-century German that there were at least three ‘important’ languages in Europe: German (the beloved mother tongue in its various spoken standards); English (the language of powerful friends, of seafaring, and of Shakespeare); and French (in spite of its somewhat negative image, still a truly international language). The First World War turned out to be a catastrophe for everybody anywhere, and the decline of German at its end was international, deep, and lasting. But the worst was still to come with the National Socialist government and the Second World War. Explicit linguistic legislation against German after 1918 had been practically nil, but negative reactions remained implicit. This was different after 1945, when the use of German was forbidden in parts of Eastern Central and Eastern Europe, partly in retaliation for German linguistic legislation against Jewish minorities, to the effect of banning Yiddish from the streets as a preliminary step to the Holocaust. At present, by number of native speakers in Europe, German is the second largest language in Europe, after Russian. It is, in its three modified national standards, the idiom of powerful nations with good records in the fields of democracy, peace-keeping, and international aid and solidarity. Yet German is not a language that will be readily included (e.g. as a conference language) unless there is an interpreting service, for the simple reason that too few people have studied it. And this is where history catches up. With regard

42 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

to the non-observance of German, which has had such a long tradition in Europe, speakers of German cannot but feel for their many neighbours whose less widely spoken languages never give them the chance to say something complex and important outside their own national borders, in their own words.

A last note The present contribution may have shown that terminological distinctions and classifications in the field of linguistic and cultural politics and policies are difficult. Internal policies may indirectly target external goals, as in the case of foreign language politics in the educational field. On the other hand, external policies sometimes have internal effects, as, for instance, the proliferation of French abroad, which was also a means of internal linguistic centralization and stabilization. Linguistic legislation of the explicit kind obviously hardly exists. But if there is a high-profile national language, linguistic and cultural targets can be achieved implicitly. As has been justly stated by the organizers of the 2015 Societas Linguistica Europaea conference in Leiden, most of what happens in the field of external linguistic and cultural policy-making is implicit rather than explicit – and possibly, as far as strategies are concerned, more indirect than direct. Explicit linguistic and cultural legislation will be through verdicts, decrees, or laws; implicit legislation is through popular belief, widespread opinion, heterostereotypes, sets of dominant values, and emotional constellations. The power of linguistic and cultural legislation and its success do not depend on whether the underlying policy is explicit or implicit, direct or indirect. In any case, complex constellations as well as short- and long-term results have to be taken into account. And this makes both decision-taking and its interpretation complex and difficult. All in all, it looks as if the twentieth century saw a lot more in the way of linguistic legislation than previous periods. In the European Union (EU), language politics and policies have become a key issue – in fact an issue on which the political and cultural future of Europe may depend: Europe needs plurilingual citizens for a multilingual society. It is no wonder, therefore, that both the external and internal linguistic politics and policies of the EU and its member states are monitored by a general directorate in Brussels. A positive side-effect of this development is the fact that, for the first time in European history, linguistic and cultural policies have become at least semi-transparent.

Ex ternal linguistic politics and policies

43

Bibliography Arndt, Ernst Moritz, Über Volkshass und über den Gebrauch einer fremden Sprache (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1813). Cramer, Matthias, Entretien de la Méthode entre un maître de langue et un écolier: Gespräch von der Lehr-Kunst zwischen einem Sprachmeister und einem Scholaren (Nürnberg: Endter, 1696). Finkenstaedt, Thomas, ‘Auf der Suche nach dem Göttinger Ordinarius des Englischen, John Tompson (1697–1768)’, in Fremdsprachenunterricht 1500 bis 1800, ed. by Konrad Schröder (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), 57–74. Glück, Helmut, Mark Häberlein & Konrad Schröder, Mehrsprachigkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit: Die Reichsstädte Augsburg und Nürnberg vom 15. bis ins frühe 19. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013). Moser, Friedrich Karl, Abhandlung von den europäischen Hof- und Staats-Sprachen und deren Gebrauch im Reden und Schreiben: Mit authentischen Nachrichten belegt (Frankfurt am Main: Andreä, 1750). Schmidt, Bernhard, Der französische Unterricht und seine Stellung in der Pädagogik des 17. Jahrhunderts (Halle: Klinz, 1931). Schröder, Konrad, ‘Über Volkshass und über den Gebrauch einer fremden Sprache: Zur historischen Dimension des Schulsprachenstreites Englisch–Französisch, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der nach-Napoleonischen Zeit’, in Fremdsprachenunterricht zwischen Sprachenpolitik und Praxis. Festschrift für Herbert Christ zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Eberhard Kleinschmidt (Tübingen: Narr, 1989), 58–70. Schröder, Konrad, Biographisches und bibliographisches Lexikon der Fremdsprachenlehrer des deutschsprachigen Raumes, Spätmittelalter bis 1800 (6 vols.; Augsburg: Universität, 1991–1999). Schwab, Johann Christoph, Von den Ursachen der Allgemeinheit der französischen Sprache und der wahrscheinlichen Dauer ihrer Herrschaft: Eine Preisschrift (Tübingen: Heerbrandt, 1785).

About the author Konrad Schröder trained as a teacher (French, English, philosophy, pedagogy), and worked as a foreign-language teacher in grammar schools in the Saarland and as a college lecturer in Ludwigsburg and Karlsruhe. He received his doctorate in 1967 from the University of Saarbrücken, Germany with a thesis on the development of ELT and pre-Anglistics in early modern times and in the post-Napoleonic period. From 1970 he served as Professor of Didactics (English) at the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Augsburg, and has been Professor Emeritus since 2009. Special fields of interest include language politics and policies in Europe; the history of FLT with special regard to Central Europe; and FLT at upper secondary level, evaluation, and testing. Schröder is author/co-author of several reports on FLT in Germany, including the DESI-Project of the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education, and consultant to the Institute for the Development of Quality

44 

KONR AD SCHRÖDER

in Education, Berlin. He is also co-founder and co-developer of the German National FL Contest, President of the German FL Teachers’ Association, and was president of the EL Teachers’ Association ‘English and Multilingualism’. Schröder has co-edited the journal Die Neueren Sprachen and Neusprach­ liche Mitteilungen; his books and articles in the field of ELT didactics include Bio-Bibliographical Dictionary of FL Teachers in the German-Speaking Countries before 1800 (6 vols., 1987–2001). His awards include the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of the Federal Republic of Germany). Email: [email protected]

2

German global soft power, 1700–1920 Nicola McLelland* Sanchez-Summerer, Karène & Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th – 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980600/ch02 Abstract This chapter examines the reach and ‘soft power’ of German language and culture in Europe and beyond, from 1700 to shortly after the end of the First World War. It discusses the role of the state – weak, until deliberate policies began to be formulated from the late nineteenth century. In addition, it shows the role of language societies; religious, educational, and scientific institutions, and other sociocultural and political factors (including migration and colonization) in promoting German soft power in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and China. It also considers the changing status of German language and culture in these parts of the world, and the extent of local and ‘home’ support – through explicit policy or otherwise – for German as a first, foreign, or additional language abroad. Keywords: German as a foreign language (GFL), colonialism, migration, language societies, Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, Jiaozhou Bay concession (Kiautschou)

In 2013, Monocle magazine ranked Germany top in its global soft power index, beating the USA (second) and the UK (third).1 With about 100 million native speakers (sixth behind Chinese, English, Hindustani, Spanish, and Russian), German also has some claim to be a world language. Its advocates point to its global reach: a map titled Weltsprache Deutsch (‘German-World * University of Nottingham 1 Germany lost the top spot to the USA in 2014, however. See http://www.thelocal.de/20131121/ germany-number-one-for-soft-power and http://monocle.com/f ilm/Affairs/soft-powersurvey-2014-15/ (accessed June 2015). On the notion of soft power, see Nye, Soft Power, and for a critique of it as an analytical category, see Hall, ‘An unclear attraction’.

46 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

language’) in a recent textbook for English learners of German suggests that German is spoken in Europe, Africa, Australia, North and South America, and Asia. 2 A series of high-prof ile publications reflect concern about German’s status on the world stage: Thierfelder’s Die Deutsche Sprache im Ausland (‘The German language abroad’, 1957); Ammon’s comprehensive Die Stellung der deutschen Sprache in der Welt (‘The status of the German language in the world’, 2014, updating his earlier Die internationale Stellung der deutschen Sprache); and Gardt and Hüppauf’s more anxiously titled Globalization and the Future of German (2004). A historical perspective is provided in two recent monographs by Glück.3 Germany is today assiduous in promoting German cultural and scientific endeavour internationally, 4 as well as its linguistic study – through the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (since 1964) – and/or its ‘preservation’ or ‘protection’, for example, through Verein Deutsche Sprache (since 1997). But for most of the period 1700–1920 there were no such official or semiofficial bodies to promote German language and culture nationally or internationally; and a German empire immatériel de la langue was carried, unintentionally, by civic institutions: churches, schools, universities, and societies.5 In this article, I consider the ways in which the German language and culture attained, whether by accident or design, recognition and status in the world beyond the borders of the German-speaking countries: through trade, religious and educational institutions; migration, including political exile, literary, and scientific endeavours; and, finally, explicit cultural diplomacy and linguistic policies in German colonies in Africa and China.6 We shall see that the history of the global soft power or ‘immaterial empire’ of the German language is paradoxical. It is a history of expanding influence in the absence of deliberate policy, followed, from the late nineteenth century onwards, by deliberate policies that ended abruptly after World War I in a loss of ground in all areas. 2 McNeill et al., Neue Aussichten: Etappen, 6. 3 Glück, Deutsch als Fremdsprache in Europa vom Mittelalter bis zur Barockzeit (up to 1700) and Die Fremdsprache Deutsch im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, der Klassik und der Romantik Grundzüge der deutschen Sprachgeschichte in Europa (circa 1700–1800). 4 See, for example, the cultural and scientific institutions listed by Böhm, Deutsch in Afrika: Die Stellung der deutschen Sprache in Afrika vor dem Hintergrund der bildungs- und sprachpolitischen Gegebenheiten sowie der deutschen Auswärtigen Kulturpolitik, 36–44; Ammon, Die internationale Stellung der deutschen Sprache, 1069–1146. 5 On the notion of empire immatériel, see the introduction to Cabanel, Une France en Méditerranée: Écoles, langue et culture française, XIXe–XXe siècles. 6 I shall not deal with the policies of Switzerland or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but see Wiesinger, ‘Nation und Sprache in Österreich’ and Kolle, ‘Nation und Sprache in der Schweiz’.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

47

Early beginnings: German and international trade The earliest interest in German abroad was prompted by commercial interests. A school in Venice for merchants to learn German is attested in 1424.7 German merchants also traded with England, Scandinavia, and the states around the Baltic Sea under the control of the Teutonic Order. In England, German merchants trained their own interpreters to trade with the English, rather than encouraging knowledge of German; but in the Baltic, under the Teutonic Order, at least some Latvians and Estonians could speak German in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In Scandinavia, the use of Low German in Hanseatic trade had a lasting influence on Swedish vocabulary and structures.8

Migration and political exile In the absence of conscious policy, the migration of German speakers to other parts of the world was one of the main ways in which the influence of German language and culture was unwittingly spread. The first grammar of German for English speakers was published in 1680 by a German who, before leaving Germany, had been on the cusp of admission to the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (Fruitbearing Society, founded 1617), the largest of the seventeenth-century societies seeking to promote the cultivation of the German language. Printed in England, Martin Aedler’s grammar still reflects the Society’s commitment to promoting German – it begins with a collection of Testimonia, well-worn assertions of the antiquity, purity, and excellence of the German language.9 Two centuries after Aedler, when the Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein (‘General German Language Society’) was established in Germany in 1885, branches were soon set up by German migrants abroad too. Among 7 See Pausch, Das älteste italienisch–deutsche Sprachbuch, and Glück & Morcinek, Ein Franke in Venedig: Das Sprachlehrbuch des Georg von Nürnberg (1424) und seine Folgen. 8 Glück, Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 325, 265; Naumann, ‘Das Deutsche im Sprachkontakt: Skandinavisch/Deutsch’. 9 These may well all have come from the leading study of the German language of the time: Schottelius’s Ausführliche Arbeit (1663) or its earlier incarnation, the Sprachkunst (1641, 1651); see McLelland, Schottelius’s Ausführliche Arbeit von der Teutschen Haubtsprache (1663) and Its Place in Early Modern European Vernacular Language Study. Aedler’s use of an idiosyncratic but, to his mind, theoretically grounded spelling system also attests to his desire to contribute to the cultivation of correct German.

48 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

the seventeen set up outside Germany – including six in the USA, one in Windhoek (Namibia), and one in Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania), and even one in Hobart, Tasmania – was the London branch founded in 1898 by Professor Aloys Weiss.10 Members included not only German emigrants but also prominent teachers of German in schools and universities keen to improve language teaching in Britain, among them: Walter Rippmann (born in England to German parents, he taught at Cambridge and in women’s schools); Louis Camille von Glehn (teacher at a school in Cambridge); and Karl Breul (lecturer and later Professor of German at Cambridge). The Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein was just one of a number of German-interest societies established at the start of the twentieth century in London that, to quote Flood, ‘still await their historians’ – including the Deutscher Verein für Kunst und Wissenschaft (‘German Society for Art and Science’) and the Verband deutscher Barbier- und Friseur-Gehilfen Londons (‘Association of German London Barbers’ and Hairdressers’ Assistants’). In addition, a German theatre was in existence in 1900–1908, and there were at least two local German newspapers.11 The English Goethe Society had already been founded in 1886; it still exists, with a journal appearing three times a year. Another key figure in the teaching of German in late nineteenth-century Britain was Otto Siepmann, who had come to England in 1885, ‘finding his liberal outlook unwelcome in Germany’.12 He was not the only political emigrant to play a significant role in the championing of German abroad. A generation earlier, and across the Atlantic in the USA, Charles (Karl) Follen (1796–1840) – a German political radical who left Germany in 1819 after a group he was associated with assassinated a conservative diplomat – became Harvard Professor of German. He published a practical grammar in 1828 and a reader in 1836. These individual migrants could have had significant roles in promoting German language and culture abroad in their new homes, but mass migration also had a considerable influence on the host culture. Heinrich Kloss claimed that migration had made German ‘the only language spoken by immigrant groups in almost all parts of the New World, from Canada to Southern Chile’.13 Australia, too, had German migrants, most notably 10 Flood, ‘The London branch of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein’, 231. 11 On the Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein, see ibidem, 252, footnote 7. 12 Whitehead, ‘Siepmann, Otto’. 13 Kloss, ‘German as an immigrant, indigenous, foreign, and second language in the United States’, 110.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

49

concentrated in the wine-growing Barossa Valley of South Australia from the 1840s.14 A total of 4.8 million people migrated from Germany to the USA between 1700 and 1917.15 In Wisconsin, the US state with the highest proportion of migrants in the nineteenth century, 14% of its population in 1880 had been born in Germany, and 33% were ‘of German stock’ (a census term for those with at least one parent born in Germany); these figures were still 10% and 34% in 1910.16 Wisconsin had a ‘strong and vociferous’ German press: the first German newspaper was founded there in 1844, and by 1900, the high point, there were about 100 German newspapers, of which four appeared daily. In 1884, the three German newspapers of Milwaukee had roughly twice the circulation of the three English newspapers in that city.17 In Pennsylvania, ethnically based societies such as the Pennsylvania German Society (founded 1891) celebrated members’ German ancestry and the achievements of great Pennsylvanian Germans.18 Not surprisingly, perhaps, German was, until 1917, ‘the most widely studied language at universities and colleges’ in the USA. In 1915, a quarter of all high-school pupils learnt German: 284,000 compared to 103,000 French and only 32,000 Spanish. Kloss asserts that ‘Up to 1917, German in the United States enjoyed unequalled prestige as the language of education and learning […] the ability to read German was indispensable to many disciplines’ – from natural sciences and technology to sociology, philosophy, and linguistics.19 We shall return to this below.

Education: Religion and the Reformation In the absence of state external cultural policy, one important means of asserting German language and culture abroad was via educational and religious institutions (overlapping categories for most of their history). The Reformation was largely carried to Scandinavia by men who had studied in 14 See Harmstorf & Cigler, The Germans in Australia; Harmstorf, Insights into South Australian History; and further bibliography at http://www.germanaustralia.com/e/bibliography.htm (accessed June 2015). 15 Not all had German as their mother tongue – in 1910, 10% spoke Polish. Nevertheless, another 500,000 from outside Germany had German as their mother tongue. See Kloss, ‘German as an immigrant’, 107. 16 Eichhoff, ‘German in Wisconsin’, 49. 17 Ibidem, 47, 49. For the history of the German-American press, see Arndt & Olson, GermanAmerican Newspapers. 18 Yoder, ‘Pennsylvania German folklore research: a historical analysis’. 19 Kloss, ‘German as an immigrant’, 118–119.

50 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

Wittenberg: around 1600, 80% of Swedish students studied abroad, the majority of them at Dutch or German universities. As a result, German was the most important foreign language in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (while in England, Italy, and the Netherlands, French was most in demand).20 From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, many foreign German schools were run either by Protestant or Catholic Church authorities. A key concern of Lutheranism was education in reading and writing in people’s own language so that they could read God’s word for themselves. The influence of these Reformist educational ideas led to the establishment or re-dedication of German schools in Protestant northern Europe. This includes Stockholm and Gothenburg (around 1570); Copenhagen (1575), where the Sankt Petri Schule remains a bilingual German–Danish school to this day (Danish only gained equal recognition with German in the school in 1814); 21 Moscow (1626); St. Petersburg (1710, 1736); Bucharest (around 1740); London (1769); and Warsaw (1780).22 German Catholic missionaries also played a role further afield, including in South America and India.23 I shall return to German missionary schools in Africa and China below.

German language and cultural influence in Russia There is evidence of German parish schools in the German quarter of Moscow and other Russian towns from the sixteenth century, where Baltic Germans had been forcibly resettled by Ivan the Terrible (1533–1583).24 But, from the seventeenth century onwards, German expertise was welcomed in all spheres of life. In the eighteenth century, German was used in many domains as Russia rapidly modernized, in part because there was as yet no strong tradition of a written Russian language. German was used at court, in diplomacy (where French began to take over only from about 1750), and in administration (where Germans or Baltic Germans were systematically 20 Glück, Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 128–129, 133. 21 German was the language of instruction in the Danish academy for the nobility which operated in Sorø between 1623 and 1665; Danish was forbidden. See ibidem, 136. 22 Werner, Deutsche Schulen im Ausland, 21. 23 There were 414 German-speaking Jesuit missionaries (out of 3189) in South America and New Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but they cannot be said to have made any key contribution to the spread of German language and culture there. One missionary, José Domingo Mayr (born 1680 in Sigmaringen) even noted that he was never able to use his German. See Zwartjes, ‘Toward a history of missionary work by German-speaking Jesuits’, 147, 152. 24 On the history of Russian-Germans, see Mertens, Handbuch Russland-Deutsche.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

51

appointed to key positions, yielding many borrowings in administration and almost 1000 legal terms).25 Important decrees were published in both German and Russian. Of the 111 members of the Academy of Sciences (founded in St. Petersburg in 1725) in the eighteenth century, 68 were native German speakers, and the German language dominated in the Academy. German expertise was also crucial in medicine, mining, trade, building, and many crafts, again yielding many borrowings from German into Russian. German military experts were particularly numerous, and were even responsible for the training of Russian soldiers, leading to borrowings of common military commands into Russian. German dominance was aided by Peter the Great’s interest, through his personal doctor, in the work of the Pietists (an offshoot of German Lutheranism) under the leadership of August Hermann Francke. Pietists founded the University of Halle in 1694, and Halle went on to supply large numbers of German Pietists to be preachers and tutors in Russian noble houses, as well as to establish and teach in German-language schools in Russia.26 Textbooks between 1700 and 1750 were almost always in German, and German was probably Russia’s most learnt foreign language in the eighteenth century. At the St. Petersburg Cadet Corps for nobles in 1732, 89% of the Russian cadets and 100% of the non-Russian cadets for whom figures are available learnt German; in 1764, nearly all Russian cadets took Russian-to-German translation,27 although German began to yield to French in prestige in the second half of the eighteenth century. Over half of the translations published in Russia between 1756 and 1775 were from French originals; German titles made up only 22.9% of the whole.

German schools abroad In the nineteenth century, when large numbers of Germans emigrated to other parts of the world, including South America, schools were generally first established along confessional lines. In the USA, there were 254 Lutheran or Reformed (Calvinist) schools by around 1800, though the first Catholic school did not follow until 1836, in Cincinnati. The first German schools in Chile, run by school associations rather than by religious groups, 25 Here and in the remainder of this paragraph, I follow Koch, Deutsch als Fremdsprache in Rußland, 51–58, 60–65, 41–42, 173, 87, 97. 26 On Pietism, see the introduction in Brecht & Deppermann, Geschichte des Pietismus. 27 Rjéoutski, ‘Native tongues and foreign languages in the education of the Russian nobility’.

52 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

were established from the 1850s onwards – eight were still operating in 1988.28 After the German unification in 1871, among the ‘boom’ of around 600 new German schools founded abroad between 1871 and 1914 were those in São Paulo (1878), Santiago de Chile (1891), Asunción (1893), Mexico City and Caracas (1910), Puebla (1911), and Barranquilla and San José de Costa Rica (1912).29 In 1914, the German Foreign Office estimated that the total number of German schools abroad, strictly defined, was around 900: 100 in Europe, 38 in Asia, 21 in Africa, 734 in America, and 14 in Australia. However, Werner estimated that in practice more than 5000 schools, attended by about 360,000 pupils, could have described themselves as German schools. The rapid expansion of German schools world-wide was supported by the establishment of a dedicated fund from 1878. In one sense this was a purely administrative change, as the same monies had previously flowed from the Prussian King to the schools via the budget of the Evangelische Kirche (‘Lutheran Church’), of which the King was patron; but bringing the budget into the Foreign Office made German schools abroad an explicit part of German foreign policy and also allowed for the growing number of non-denominational schools. The budget in 1878 stood at 75,000 marks, and by 1913, 513 schools were supported (including schools of further education from 1898). In 1906 a new schools section was established within the Foreign Office, with responsibility not just for financial support but also for staffing and inspection. Between 1906 and the outbreak of World War I, some 700 German teachers were sent to various schools, especially to the Ottoman Empire. In addition, a Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA, Association for German Abroad) was set up in 1881, growing out of the earlier Berlin section of the Vienna German School Association; in 1916, it supported schools with almost 500,000 marks. Germany also followed the example of other European countries in setting up so-called ‘propaganda schools’, aimed specifically at non-Germans rather than at Germans abroad, initially in the Middle East (Aleppo, Baghdad).30 (For such schools in China, see below.)

28 Werner, Deutsche Schulen im Ausland. 29 Ibidem, 32. Others noted by Werner are Helsinki (1881), Madrid and Thessaloniki (1886), Rotterdam (1888), Barcelona (1894), Madrid and Athens (1896), Porto (1901), Valencia (1909); in Africa, Cairo (1873), Johannesburg (1890), Windhoek (1909); in Asia, Tokyo (1904) and Kobe (1909). Schools run by school associations had already been set up in Brussels (1803), Antwerp (1840), Rome (1851), Genoa (1867), and Constantinople (1868). 30 Werner, Deutsche Schulen im Ausland, 37, 32–36.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

53

German in literature, science, and academia: eighteenth to early twentieth centuries The numberless Archivs, Jahrbücher, Zeitschriften, Zentralblätter, and so on, which have been yearly increasing in number and volume, have gradually monopolized the whole of the scientif ic production of the world by gathering widely, and even demanding, the collaboration of learned men of all countries. Thus were apparently built up international scientific organizations, but in reality German instruments of control and monopoly of science.’ (Eugenio Rignano, editor of Scientia, 1917).31

German literature and thought began to gain prestige in Europe in the eighteenth century. In England, the number of German textbooks published for English-speaking learners increased from two in the seventeenth century to over a dozen in the eighteenth century.32 The fact that the House of Hanover held the throne from 1714 helped raise German prestige; but there was new interest in German literature from the 1770s onwards, with recommendations for reading from the 1770s and the first literary anthology for an English readership in 1800 (by George Crabb). Render recommended hundreds of German authors to the English readers of his 1800 German grammar, especially in theology, philosophy, science, law, and medicine. German became Britain’s de facto ‘second’ foreign language, the only other modern language beside French offered when the first public school examinations were established in 1858.33 In the nineteenth century, the emerging international scientific associations typically adopted one or all of French, English, and German as their operating languages, although others (Spanish and Italian, mainly) were sometimes also permitted. Reinbothe speaks of Vorherrschaft der Dreisprachigkeit (‘the predominance of trilingualism’).34 When, from 1896, the Royal Society in Britain sought international help in compiling its International Catalogue of Scientific Literature (established 1867), the 31 Letter to the editor by Eugenio Rignano, editor of the international journal Scientia, in Nature, 98 (25 January 1917, 408–409). Cited by Reinbothe, Deutsch als internationale Wissenschaftssprache und der Boykott nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, 177. 32 Van der Lubbe, ‘One hundred years of German teaching’. 33 On the literary recommendations of Crabb, Render, and others, see Guthke, ‘Deutsche Literatur aus zweiter Hand’; and on growing interest in German in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see McLelland, ‘German as a foreign language in Britain’. 34 Here and in the remainder of this paragraph, I follow Reinbothe, Deutsch als internationale Wissenschaftssprache, 23, 25, 33, 36. Citation, 25).

54 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

Berlin branch was very well resourced with ten employees and an annual budget of 40,000 marks from the German Empire’s budget, and sent huge quantities of German references. By the end of 1902, nearly 79,000 out a total of 136,139 items sent to the central office were German; and since they were listed in their original language, this made German very visible indeed. The German bibliographical entries were also published in a separate German publication, the Bibliographie der Deutschen Naturwissenschaftlichen Literatur, which, appearing earlier than the International Catalogue, also promoted German publications ahead of others in the scientific world. In the American Chemical Abstracts of 1909, 45% of all items were German (compared to 20% American and 13% British). When World War I broke out, German publishers were initially prevented from exporting their journals for fear that German scientific advances could fall into the hands of the enemy. From 1916, the export ban was largely replaced by strengthened censorship via a Fachwissenschaftliche Zensurberatungsstelle (FZB), though authors and publishers were expected to self-censor and to turn to the FZB only when in doubt. Similar measures were not taken by the French until April 1918. As an example of cultural policy via the law of unintended consequences, Reinbothe summarizes that ‘The restrictive interventions and prohibitions of the Kaiserreich’s military authorities damaged the reputation of German academic literature, and thus also the standing of the German language abroad.’35 After the war, the damage to the international standing of German continued, thanks to more or less explicit boycotts of German in newly founded international scientific organizations, which often replaced the principle of trilingualism with French–English bilingualism. Just as the languages of the Versailles Treaty itself were French and English only, the International Research Council, founded by the victorious powers in 1918, also adopted French and English only. (German and Austrian scientists were initially excluded anyway.) To take another example, before the war, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) had recognized English, German, French, and Italian as official conference languages. German was simply removed from the list at IUPAC’s General Meeting in 1920.36 Even before the war, but more so after it, English-speaking scientists began to object to the fact that science was too much ‘dominated by German knowledge and German science’, criticizing ‘the habit of most of our English and American scientists, as well as those in other countries, to publish their 35 Ibidem, 122–127, 127; my translation from the German here and throughout. 36 Ibidem, 158–159.

55

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

discoveries first in German’, and ‘how persistently the representatives of the German scientific societies endeavoured […] to dominate the discussions, especially on the subject of the rules of nomenclature’.37 After the war, deliberate efforts were made by the Allied powers to found new journals to supplant the German ones.38 Though such measures to boycott German were not without countermeasures, Germany’s standing in international science was certainly weakened. The proportion of major scientific organizations with their main office in Germany, and of major congresses held in Germany, dropped. By 1932, only 2.5% of 359 organizations did not list French as an official language, and only 16.5% did not list English – but 39.5% excluded German. German never recovered this lost ground; indeed, Reinbothe considers that the French–English bilingual principle was itself only a phase, ultimately yielding to the dominance of English.

German colonial language and cultural policies in Africa and China Noch ist die Welt nicht ganz verteilt Noch manche Flur auf Erden

The world is not yet quite divided up Still many a field on earth

Harrt gleich der Braut. Die Hochzeit eilt; Des Starken will sie werden.

Waits like the bride; the wedding fast approaches; She wants to become [the bride] of the strong. […] Plant this waving banner In the fallow ground of each new land. Wherever we go, we take With us the German language.

[…] Pflanzt auf dies rauschende Panier In jedes Neulands Brache; Wohin wir wandern, tragen wir Mit uns die deutsche Sprache. (Felix Dahn, ‘Aufruf’, 1911).39

37 Examples ibidem, 166–168; see also 47, 53. 38 Ibidem, 181. The remainder of this paragraph follows ibidem, 245–343, 403, 410–11, 447. 39 Cited by Mühleisen, ‘Zwischen Sprachideologie und Sprachplanung: Kolonial-Deutsch als Verkehrssprache für die Kolonien’, 98.

56 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

Germany has a history of early successful colonization. In the Middle Ages it expanded eastwards into Slavic territories. The Teutonic Order colonized much of today’s Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; from the sixteenth century, the territories were variously fought over by Germany, Sweden, Russia, and Poland, but German speakers remained in these areas. There were various experiments in shortlived colonies in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century too, in the Caribbean and on the west coast of Africa. But none of these was lasting, and Germany famously came late to the nineteenth-century European colonial ‘race for Africa’. From 1884 until World War I, Germany had control over German south-west Africa (present-day Namibia), Togo, Cameroon, and German East Africa (present-day Tanzania and parts of Burundi and Rwanda).40 As late as 1898, Germany also obtained a concession in Jiaozhou Bay, China. In Africa, we see German colonial language policy at work; in China, we see the first attempts at cultural and linguistic policies whose explicit aim was to exercise soft power avant la lettre.

German language policy – and pipe dreams – in Africa By the time Germany found a foothold in Africa, the much more established presence of other European powers limited the scope for German cultural and linguistic influence; but its colonies there do provide examples of explicit German external linguistic policies for the first time. The shaping of linguistic policy in Togo is a useful case study because, Sokolowsky argues, the decisions made there were viewed at the time as setting a precedent for other German colonies. 41 In Togo, English had already been widely adopted as a lingua franca, since there was no single native language across the whole area – nor any autochthonous lingua franca (like Swahili in East Africa). Even after Germany made Togo a protectorate in 1884, demand for English remained so strong that the Catholic Steyler Mission, which originally planned to teach only German, offered English from 1892, contrary to the wishes of the government. A decade later, in October 1903, a report of the German colonial office noted that Togo still had ‘more the character of an

40 See Warnke, Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus: Aspekte der nationalen Kommunikation 1884–1919, 17. 41 Sokolowsky, Sprachenpolitik des deutschen Kolonialismus: Deutschunterricht als Mittel imperialer Herrschaftssicherung in Togo (1884–1914), 58.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

57

English than of a German colony’. 42 A Verordnung des Gouvernements von Togo über die Erteilung deutschen Unterrichts (‘Togo government regulation on the teaching of German’) stipulated that, from 1906 onwards, schools must teach no living language except German – a regulation directed not only against English but also against teaching in the local vernaculars. Missionary societies pleaded in 1904 for education in the local vernacular as the best means of assuring a good general education, but Governor Zech feared that teaching in the vernacular would encourage native nationalist sympathies instead of creating loyalty to the German Empire. By 1909 Zech had accepted the missionaries’ argument that general education was more important than a Halbbildung (‘half education’) in German. 43 But only a small and carefully chosen minority should be offered education in German in post-elementary education; for now, the authorities were nervous that those exposed to wider cultural horizons through German language and literature could become restless. It seems there was no truly ‘safe’ linguistic policy for Togo. 44 In Cameroon the situation was not dissimilar. The missions had a number of reasons to promote German. First, promoting German as a lingua franca might combat the influence of Fulbe, the virtual lingua franca of north Cameroon, seen as the carrier of a process of Islamification of the region. Second, German was sought after by some locals. The Catholic and Baptist missions had taught through German from the outset, whereas the Basle mission initially only offered German as a foreign language. After its vain attempts to establish the native language, Duala, as the language of instruction, it too switched to German in order not to lose out to the katholische Konkurrenz (‘Catholic competition’), in the words of a contemporary Protestant missionary memorandum. 45 Third, following a regulation established in 1896, any missions receiving state support were required to teach German. As in Togo, this policy was driven by the desire to weaken the position of English. From 1909, teaching in local vernaculars, including Duala, was permitted; but, besides these, keine andere lebende Sprache (‘no other living language’) apart from German 42 Ibidem, 47. 43 Cited ibidem, 68. 44 In Namibia, by contrast, the Catholic missionary schools for the native population taught all subjects through German, in line with the aspiration of the government for a German colony with German culture and language; in the Rhine mission schools, German was taught as a foreign language only (Böhm, Deutsch in Afrika, 526). See also Wahba, ‘Erziehung und Sprache gestern und heute’. 45 Boulleys, Deutsch in Kamerun, 54–56 (citation, 56).

58 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

was permitted (in a draft regulation cited by Boulleys) – in other words, not English. A Governor’s regulation in 1913 required administrative and military officials to avoid using Neger-Englisch with the local population – eradicating it would not be possible overnight, so Ausdauer und Stetigkeit (‘perseverance and constancy’) would be required. 46 The ideal of a single language for the German colonies was tackled in a speech at the 1910 Deutscher Kolonialkongress (German Colonial Congress) by the linguist Carl Meinhof, who reported that he had been asked by some to advocate the use of Esperanto in the colonies, as a readily learnable language. In 1916, similar considerations prompted Emil Schwörer to propose an artificial Kolonial-Deutsch (‘colonial German’) that, imitating simplification processes of natural contact varieties, would be supposedly learnable within weeks. Schwörer called Kolonial-Deutsch ‘a modern linguistic weapon in the coming economic war of the peoples’, 47 in particular against English, which had already become the de facto language of communication in many parts of Africa. Schwörer had been inspired by Adalbert Baumann’s neue, leichte Weltdeutsch (‘new, easy world German’), which Baumann intended to help German compete against English on the world stage: In disem kampfe hat England einen ungeheüren fortail […] di notwendigkait der ferbraitung der deütschen sprache als grundlage jedes dauernden wirtshaftlichen und politishen erfolges ist in Deütschland in sainer bedeütung stets zu nider gewürdigt worden. 48 In this battle England has a huge advantage […] the necessity of spreading the German language as the foundation of any lasting economic and political success has always been rated too low in importance in Germany.

Kolonial-Deutsch was intended to have a much reduced vocabulary, at most 800 words: verbs would be used in their infinitive form with auxiliaries; definite articles were de (singular) and die (plural) only, without case or gender distinctions. There was just one plural ending, -en; only one adjective ending, -e; and case markings were replaced by prepositions. In one of Schwörer’s model dialogues, an African speaker tells his white boss that he learnt the language in four weeks: ‘De neue Sprache ist gut für die 46 Ibidem, 62. 47 Schwörer, Kolonial-Deutsch, 6, cited by Mühleisen, ‘Zwischen Sprachideologie und Sprachplanung’, 105. 48 Cited by Mühlhaüsler, ‘Deutsche schlümpfen, Chinese schümpfen, plenty sabbi’, 106.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

59

Eingeborenen; de ist leicht für uns, weil de hat nit viele Worten’ (‘The new language is good for the natives; it is easy for us because it has not many words’). 49 There is, however, no evidence that Kolonial-Deutsch, developed when World War I was already under way, was ever trialled or implemented.

German soft power avant la lettre: the case of the Jiaozhou concession The clearest case of deliberate German state foreign linguistic and cultural policy before 1920 concerns Germany’s intended ‘model colony’ of Jiaozhou Bay (then Kiao-Chau or, in German, Kiaotschou) in China’s Shandong province, with its port capital, Qingdao, between Beijing and Shanghai.50 Despite the fact that China had effectively been coerced into conceding a 99-year lease in 1898, the colony came to be viewed by Germany as an example of enlightened imperial policy suitable for positive propaganda, particularly from about 1905.51 In the words of a 1907 document,52 the goal was a deutsches Kulturzentrum (a ‘German cultural centre’) that would demonstrate Germany’s cultural and scientif ic achievements, and so present a positive image of Germany to China and the world. Kim has analysed the different ways in which, and reasons why, the various German missionary societies aligned their aims with those of the German government.53 The Catholic missionary society Societas Verbi Divini (SVD) had been established during the years of the so-called Kulturkampf, the time of Prussian efforts to limit the power and influence of the Catholic Church (1871–1878). It was also known as the Steyler Mission, after the Dutch town where it was founded, deliberately just beyond the German border and so beyond the reach of Prussian control. The society’s involvement with the German colonial concession can thus be interpreted as a calculated rapprochement between the Catholic Church and Prussia after the Kulturkampf. The Lutheran Berlin Mission’s goals were ‘from the outset worldly

49 Schwörer, Kolonial-Deutsch, 56, cited by Mühleisen, ‘Zwischen Sprachideologie und Sprachplanung’, 111. 50 Warnke, Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus, 21. See the sources and analysis in Leutner, Musterkolonie Kiautschou: die Expansion des Deutschen Reiches in China, and Reinbothe, Kulturexport und Wirtschaftsmacht: deutsche Schulen in China vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg. 51 Leutner, Musterkolonie Kiautschou, 36, 48. 52 Cited ibidem, 45. 53 Kim, Deutscher Kulturimperialismus in China.

60 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

as well as spiritual’.54 Perhaps not surprisingly given its base in Berlin, the seat of the Prussian government, it sought not just to Christianize but, in so doing, also to prepare the ground for German trade links, spreading German culture and lifestyle. The more liberal Allgemeiner EvangelischProtestantischer Mission (General Evangelical-Protestant Mission, or AEPM) always considered its mission less to convert and baptize than to open up new cultures to Christian, Western values and ways of thinking, which meant that it too was relatively open to activities that encouraged secular cultural transfer.55 Altogether, in the seventeen years of German rule in Jiaozhou, one government school for German children was set up, 27 elementary schools (teaching Chinese pupils according to the Chinese curriculum), ten mission schools, four Berufsschulen (vocational colleges), one Fachhochschule (senior technical college), and a library (made available to Chinese inhabitants too) as well as a hospital.56 Initially, educational policy was pragmatic, aiming to train workers for German companies and institutions. For example, a school in the shipyard taught Chinese, German, and the sciences to apprentices in classes fitted around their work at the shipyard;57 about 1200 apprentices were schooled there in ten years, though only about half completed their training. But from about 1905 such pragmatic provisions were replaced by a more deliberate cultural policy, which was intended to form the third pillar alongside diplomacy and economic policy in relations with China. Alongside the mission schools, a secular education policy sought to create pro-German feeling in Chinese elementary schools, especially among the future elites, including the children of the many former high functionaries who came to Qingdao after the 1911 revolution, and who welcomed the specialist knowledge and discipline that the German schools promised.58 A German-Chinese girls’ school, founded in 1911, was likewise intended to achieve long-lasting influence by educating women where, hitherto, it was argued, crippling foot-binding had gone hand in hand with intellectual crippling too.59 American and English educators had made more progress in girls’ education in China than Germany, and Germany could not afford to be left behind. Germany also established schools outside its own concession: a German-Chinese school in Jinan (1911) and a medical 54 Ibidem, 103, citation, 114. 55 Ibidem, 118–119. 56 Leutner, Musterkolonie Kiautschou, 431, note 1, 432. 57 Ibidem, 433. 58 Ibidem, 440. 59 Gründungsbericht, ibidem, 468.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

61

school in Shanghai (1907), later incorporated into an engineering school (today Tongji University), where teaching was generally in German.60 An Ausschuß zur Förderung der deutschen Kultur in China (‘committee for the promotion of German culture in China’, founded in Berlin in 1906, supported the Shanghai medical school.61 A key source for German cultural policy in Jiaozhou is a 1905 memorandum written by the acting Governor Jacobson to the Imperial Marine Office.62 In it, Jacobson set out the rationale for a German-run secular Chinese elementary school which would operate in Chinese but according to modern German education principles – for example, das Memorieren der Klassiker fällt weg (‘memorizing the classics is dropped’). The German language was not to be taught. The chief goal was to make the children literate and numerate in their own language; but teaching materials for geography and other subjects would provide opportunities to expose the children to the Deutschtum that surrounded them and give an insight into the expansives Europa (‘expansive Europe’) in contrast to dem starren Chinesentum (‘the rigid Chinese world’).63 Teaching would be rooted in Chinese culture, but it would be ‘mit deutschem Ideengehalt und deutscher Methode durchsetzte Bildung’ (‘with education permeated by German ideas and German method’).64 German missionaries had been in China since 1860 when the freedom to proselytize in China had been granted, initially under French protection then under German protection from 1890;65 and the German government was fully aware of their potential importance as bearers of German culture given that they had permission to establish schools in China’s interior, not just on the coast.66 However, Jacobson was dismissive of the modest influ60 Ibidem, 436. 61 Ibidem, 437. 62 Ibidem, 444–453. Governor Oskar von Truppel was on furlough at the time. 63 Jacobon’s words, cited by Leutner, Musterkolonie Kiautschou, 446. The assumption that Germany could bring civilization and enlightenment to a China that had been left behind in its development compared to Europe pervades the sources in both Leutner, Musterkolonie Kiautschou and Reinbothe, Kulturexport und Wirtschaftsmacht. 64 Leutner, Musterkolonie Kiautschou, 450. 65 Ibidem, 39, 41. 66 Reinbothe, Kulturexport und Wirtschaftsmacht, 90. In the mid-1920s there were still about 1000 schools for Chinese children run by Evangelical or Catholic congregations from Germany, catering to some 25,000 pupils (Werner, Deutsche Schulen im Ausland, 15). In African colonies, too, the missions were crucial in providing education: in Namibia, where the Rheinische and Catholic missions had been active since the 1840s, they were still responsible for educating the native population; the German administration was concerned only with education for white people (Böhm, Deutsch in Afrika, 519, 524).

62 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

ence of the German mission schools compared to the influence achieved by other nations. But no other nation had succeeded in training the Chinese in educational methods. This, then – the area of pedagogy, including training elementary teachers – was where Jacobson felt Germany could make its unique contribution. He wrote: In unserer Kolonie dürfen wir uns nicht wie in Hongkong darauf beschränken, solche Chinesen heranzuziehen, die in der Schulbildung nur das Rüstzeug zu einem leichteren Lebensunterhalte finden, wir sollen vielmehr in umfassender Weise auf Geist und Charakter einwirken und das Mittel sein zu einer Durchtränkung der ganzen Provinz, des von Qingdao abhängigen Hinterlandes mit deutschem Wissen und deutschem Geiste.67 In our colony we cannot limit ourselves, like in Hong Kong, to educating Chinese whose schooling merely equips them to earn their living more comfortably, but we should rather have an influence in a comprehensive way on spirit and character, and be the means of saturating the whole province, the hinterland dependent on Qingdao, with German knowledge and German spirit.

In this way, Germany could win the sympathy of millions of Chinese and, in turn, materielle Erfolge (‘material success’).68 ‘Der Handel muß hier der Kulturflagge folgen’ (‘Trade must follow the flag of culture here’), wrote a certain Paul von Salvisberg in Hochschul-Nachrichten in 1913.69 Similarly the Fachhochschule – opened in 1908, with sections for law, medicine, engineering, and forestry/agriculture – had a German principal, but teaching took place in Chinese and was subject to a Chinese inspector.70 These concessions meant that, significantly, it was the only such foreign-run institution whose qualifications were recognized by the Chinese. The soft power that could accrue to Germany from such expertise sharing in education was patently clear to Alfred von Tirpitz, State Secretary of the Imperial Navy, but should be minimized in public. Setting out plans for German educational investment in China, he advised the Foreign Office in 1907: 67 Cited by Leutner, Musterkolonie Kiautschou, 449; see also 450. 68 Jacobson writing in 1905, cited ibidem, 450. 69 Reinboth, Kulturexport und Wirtschaftsmacht, 63. 70 Leutner, Musterkolonie Kiautschou, 436.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

63

So sehr ich auch meinerseits den politischen Zweck des ganzen Unternehmens für maßgeblich erachte, scheint es mir doch angezeigt, nach außen hin, nicht nur den Chinesen und dritten Mächten gegenüber, sondern auch bei der Vertretung der Forderungen im Reichstage jenes Moment tunlichst ganz zurücktreten zu lassen und lediglich die kulturellen Ziele der geplanten Maßnahmen in den Vordergrund zu stellen.71 However important I myself consider the political purpose of the whole undertaking, it nevertheless seems to me appropriate to keep this aspect in the background as much as possible in our external communications, not just towards the Chinese and third powers, but also when making the case for these demands in the Reichstag, and to foreground only the cultural goals of the planned measures.

Conclusion: after 1918 For most of its history up to 1920 Germany had no explicit policy to cultivate soft power. The export of expertise, migration, and religiously motivated education were the main avenues through which German language and culture spread globally, more by accident than by design. That changed after German unification in 1871. Generous support of German academic activities helped ensure that German scientific achievements were duly recognized in the international scientif ic community and publishing world. German culture was also promoted internationally through German schools abroad, with state support from 1878. But only from the turn of the nineteenth century can we speak of explicit external linguistic policy, in the embryonic German colonies of Africa. The clearest articulation of a German policy of building soft power came only from about 1905, when a softly-softly approach to educating the Chinese population in the Jiaozhou concession was intended to create positive attitudes to German culture among key target groups – future elites, educators, and girls who would, in turn (as mothers), influence their children. That all this was intended to bring material benefits to Germany was well understood, but was deliberately played down. After World War I, these achievements in German soft power, intentional or otherwise, were largely undone. As we saw above, international scientific organizations were now only too sensitive to Germany’s earlier vigour in 71 Cited ibidem, 449; see also 450.

64 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

self-promotion, and adopted various strategies to reduce the status of the German language and of German publications in their fields. German as a foreign language lost ground too. In the USA, 28% of all high-school pupils learned German in 1915, but by 1922 the number had dropped to a tiny 0.7%.72 Many German schools abroad were lost, and Germany had to start again with its foreign cultural policy in which, however, ‘die Grundlage jeder Kulturpolitik im allgemeinen die deutsche Schule sein muß’ (‘the foundation of any cultural policy in general must be the German school’).73 This remains true in the twenty-first century, where a third of the entire budget for foreign cultural policy supports German schools abroad.74 Germany was forced to give up its colonies too. Its brief colonial presence in Africa ‘left barely any lasting cultural or linguistic traces’,75 though there is evidence of German pidgins elsewhere (for example, in New Guinea and Jiaozhou).76 In East Africa, the position of German is perhaps weakest of all: in Tanzania, the German colony left ‘no linguistic traces’;77 in Cameroon, the long-lasting links between the Duala elite and Germany are reflected in the fact that members of the Cameroon elite, who had been encouraged under German colonization to send their offspring to Germany for education, continued to do so.78 A prominent example is Cameroon’s Prince Alexandre Kum’a Ndumbe III (born 1946), (until recently Professor of Political Science in Berlin), who writes in both German and French. The most obvious lasting German influence in Africa is Namibia, the only colony with a substantial number of German settlers – nearly 3000 in 1903, of a total white population of 4640.79 After World War I, teaching in German was initially banned in its state schools, was permitted again after 1922, but lost its place again after World War II.80 In 1984 Germany was recognized there as ‘the third official language within the administration for whites’, though it lost that status after Namibia declared independence from South Africa in 1990 and English was made the official and national language.81 72 Thierfelder, Die Deutsche Sprache im Ausland, 369. 73 Foreign Minister Gustave Stresemann in 1928. Cited by Werner, Deutsche Schulen im Ausland, 39. 74 Böhm, Deutsch in Afrika, 45. 75 Ibidem, 61. 76 See Mühlhäusler, ‘Deutsche schümpfen’ and studies cited by Deumert, ‘Namibian Kiche Duits: the making (and decline) of a neo-African language’, 350. 77 Böhm, Deutsch in Afrika, 410, 443. 78 Boulley, Deutsch in Kamerun, 70. 79 Mühleisen, ‘Zwischen Sprachideologie und Sprachplanung’, 102. 80 Böhm, Deutsch in Afrika, 538. 81 Deumert, ‘Namibian Kiche Duits’, 357.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

65

Still, a non-matrilectal German did outlast colonization. Deumert’s oldest informants, born in the 1920s and 1930s, spoke a non-standard but often fluent German in 2000; and it is significant that they had typically been taught German by older members of their family. This suggests that even though German was, until independence, chiefly taught only to native speakers,82 it was still considered prestigious and useful enough for nonmatrilectal speakers to pass it on through families in the 1920s and 1903s. From 1920 onwards, as Germany sought to rebuild its reputation internationally, politicians now fully understood the role of cultural policy in creating soft power in order to do hard politics; the case of Jiaozhou Bay was an early example. The German Academic Exchange Service was established in 1925; the Verband deutscher Auslandslehrer supporting German schools abroad was established in 1927; and the Goethe-Institut to promote the learning of German as a foreign language was established in 1952. As Theodor Heuss, the Federal Republic’s first President, said gnomically in 1920: ‘Mit Politik kann man keine Kultur machen; vielleicht kann man mit Kultur Politik machen’ (‘You can’t do culture through politics; perhaps you can do politics through culture’).83

Bibliography Ammon, Ulrich. Die internationale Stellung der deutschen Sprache (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991). Ammon, Ulrich, Die Stellung der deutschen Sprache in der Welt (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014). Arndt, Karl J.R. & Mary E. Olson, German-American Newspapers and Periodicals 1732–1955: History and Bibliography (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1961). Baumann, Adalbert, Das neue, leichte Weltdeutsch ‘das verbesserte Wedé’ für unsere Bundesgenossen und Freunden! Seine Notwendigkeit und seine wirtschaftliche Bedeutung von Prof. Dr. Adalbert Baumann: Vortrag geh. 1915 ‘in Einzelh. ergänzt’. In laut-shrift geshriben! (Diessen vor München: Huber, 1916). Böhm, Michael Anton, Deutsch in Afrika: Die Stellung der deutschen Sprache in Afrika vor dem Hintergrund der bildungs- und sprachpolitischen Gegebenheiten sowie der deutschen Auswärtigen Kulturpolitik (Frankfurt: Lang, 2003). Boulleys, Vera Ebot, Deutsch in Kamerun (Bamberg: Collibri, 1998). Brecht, Martin & Klays Deppermann (eds.), Geschichte des Pietismus (2 vols.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993, 1995). Cabanel, Patrick, ‘Introduction’, in Patrick Cabanel (éd.), Une France en Méditerranée: Écoles, langue et culture française, XIXe–XXe siècles (Grâne: Créaphis, 2006), 9–29. Deumert, Ana, ‘Namibian Kiche Duits: the making (and decline) of a neo-African language’, Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 21 (2009), 349–418.

82 Böhm, Deutsch in Afrika, 545. 83 Here cited in Markovits & Reich, Das deutsche Dilemma, 302.

66 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

Eichhoff, Jürgen, ‘German in Wisconsin’, The German language in America: A Symposium, ed. by Glenn G. Gilbert (Austin: University of Texas, 1971), 43–57. Flood, John, ‘The London branch of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein’, in ‘Proper Words in Proper Places’ Studies in Lexicology and Lexicography in Honour of William Jervis Jones, ed. by Máire Davies et al. (Stuttgart: Heinz, 2001). Gardt, A. & B. Hüppauf (eds.), Globalization and the Future of German (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004). Gilbert, Glenn G. (ed.), The German Language in America: A Symposium (Austin: University of Texas, 1971). Glück, Helmut & Bettina Morcinek (eds.), Ein Franke in Venedig: Das Sprachlehrbuch des Georg von Nürnberg (1424) und seine Folgen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006). Guthke, Karl, ‘Deutsche Literatur aus zweiter Hand: Englische Lehr- und Lesebücher in der Goethezeit’, Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts, 2011, 163–237. Hall, Todd, ‘An unclear attraction: a critical examination of soft power as an analytical category’, Chinese Journal of International Politics, 3 (2010), 189–201. Harmstorf, Ian & Michael Cigler (eds.), The Germans in Australia (Melbourne: AE Press, 1985). Harmstorf, Ian, Insights into South Australian History. Vol. 2: South Australia’s German History and Heritage (Adelaide: Historical Society of South Australia, 1994). Kim, Chun-Shik, Deutscher Kulturimperialismus in China: deutsches Kolonialschulwesen in Kiautschou (China) 1898–1914 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004). Kloss, Heinrich, ‘German as an immigrant, indigenous, foreign, and second language in the United States’, The German Language in America: A Symposium, ed. by G.G. Gilbert (Austin: University of Texas, 1971), 106–127. Koch, Kristine, Deutsch als Fremdsprache im Rußland des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002). Koller, Werner, ‘Nation und Sprache in der Schweiz’, in Nation und Sprache: die Diskussion ihres Verhältnisses in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. by Andreas Gardt (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), 563–609. Leutner, Mechthild, Musterkolonie Kiautschou: die Expansion des Deutschen Reiches in China: deutsch-chinesische Beziehungen 1897 bis 1914: eine Quellensammlung (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997). Markovits, Andrei S. & Simon Reich, Das deutsche Dilemma: die Berliner Republik zwischen Macht und Machtverzicht (Berlin: Alexander Fest, 1998). McLelland, Nicola, J.G. Schottelius’s Ausführliche Arbeit von der Teutschen Haubtsprache (1663) and Its Place in Early Modern European Vernacular Language Study (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011). McLelland, Nicola, ‘German as a foreign language in Britain: the history of German of a “useful” language since 1600’, Angermion Yearbook, 8:1 (2015), 1–34. McNeill, Jeannie, Judith Ram Prasad & Steven Williams, Neue Aussichten: Etappen (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000). Mertens, Ulrich, Handbuch Russland-Deutsche: ein Nachschlagewerk zur Russland-Deutschen und Deutsch-Russischen Geschichte und Kultur (mit Ortsverzeichnis Ehemaliger Siedlungsgebiete) (Nürnberg: Historischer Forschungsverein der Deutschen aus Russland, 2001). Mühleisen, Susanne, ‘Zwischen Sprachideologie und Sprachplanung: Kolonial-Deutsch als Verkehrssprache für die Kolonien’, in Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus: Aspekte der nationalen Kommunikation 1884–1919, ed. by Ingo Warnke (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 97–118.

German global sof t power, 1700–1920

67

Mühlhäusler, Peter, ‘Deutsche schümpfen, Chinese schümpfen, plenty sabbi: die deutsche Sprache in Kiautschou’, in Kolonialzeitliche Sprachforschung: Die Beschreibung afrikanischer und ozeanischer Sprachen zur Zeit der deutschen Kolonialherrschaft, ed. by Thomas Stolz, Christina Vossmann & Barbara Dewein (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011), 187–202. Naumann, Hans-Peter, ‘Das Deutsche im Sprachkontakt: Skandinavisch/Deutsch’, in Sprachgeschichte: ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung, ed. by Werner Besch et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 3282–3290. Nye, Joseph, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). Pausch, Oskar, Das älteste italienisch–deutsche Sprachbuch: Eine Überlieferung aus dem Jahre 1424 nach Georg von Nürnberg (Vienna: Böhlhaus, 1972). Reinbothe, Roswitha, Kulturexport und Wirtschaftsmacht: deutsche Schulen in China vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1992). Reinbothe, Roswitha, Deutsch als internationale Wissenschaftssprache und der Boykott nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt: Lang, 2006). Rjéoutski, Vladislav, ‘Native tongues and foreign languages in the education of the Russian nobility: the case of the Noble Cadet Corps (the 1730s–1760s)’, in The History of Language Learning and Teaching. Vol. I: 16th–18th Century Europe, ed. by Nicola McLelland & Richard Smith (forthcoming). Schwörer, Emil, Kolonial-Deutsch: Vorschläge einer künftigen deutschen Kolonialsprache in systematisch-grammatischer Darstellung und Begründung (Diessen vor München: Huber, 1916). Sokolowsky, Celia, Sprachenpolitik des deutschen Kolonialismus: Deutschunterricht als Mittel imperialer Herrschaftssicherung in Togo (1884–1914) (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2004). Thierfelder, Franz, Die Deutsche Sprache im Ausland (Hamburg: Decker, 1957). Van der Lubbe, Fredericka, ‘One hundred years of German teaching’, AUMLA: Journal of the Australian Universities Modern Language Association (December 2007), 143–152. Wahba, Sabine, ‘Erziehung und Sprache gestern und heute: ein historischer Abriß der Situation in Namibia, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Deutschen als Fremd- und als Muttersprache.’ InfoDaF: Informationen Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 21:4 (1994), 422–430. Warnke, Ingo H., Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus: Aspekte der nationalen Kommunikation 1884–1919 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009). Werner, Harry, Deutsche Schulen im Ausland. Vol. I: Werdegang und Gegenwart (Berlin: Westkreuz, 1988). Whitehead, Maurice, ‘Siepmann, Otto (1861–1947)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, October 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/36088, accessed 27 June 2011]). Wiesinger, Peter, ‘Nation und Sprache in Österreich’, in Nation und Sprache: die Diskussion ihres Verhältnisses in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. by Andreas Gardt (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), 525–562. Yoder, Don, ‘Pennsylvania German folklore research: a historical analysis’, in The German language in America: A Symposium, ed. by Glenn G. Gilbert (Austin: University of Texas, 1971), 70–105. Zwartjes, Otto, ‘Toward a history of missionary work by German-speaking Jesuits in 17th and 18th century Latin America’. [Review article of Desde los confines de los imperios ibéricos: Los jesuitas de hable alemana en las misiones americanas, ed. by Karl Kohut & María Cristina Torales Pacheco (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2007)], Historiographia Linguistica, 37 (2010), 143–163.

68 

NICOL A MCLELL AND

About the author Nicola McLelland studied at the universities of Sydney (Australia), Bonn (Germany), and Cambridge (UK). Her first post was at Trinity College, Dublin, and since 2005 she has been Professor of German and History of Linguistics at the University of Nottingham. She has published widely on the history of German grammar-writing and language-learning. Her most recent book is German Through English Eyes: A History of Language Teaching and Learning in Britain, 1500-2000 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015). She is co-editor of the journal Language & History. Email: [email protected]

3

French as a polemical language for Russian writers in the age of Nicholas I Derek Offord*

Sanchez-Summerer, Karène & Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th – 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980600/ch03 Abstract This chapter examines one of the functions that French came to have in nineteenth-century Russia, where many members of the social and political elite were francophone – namely, its function as an international language in which Russians could participate in pan-European debate. It focuses on works written by Russians in French in response to the European revolutionary disturbances of 1848. The writers it considers were of several political persuasions: the poet and conservative nationalist Fedor Tiutchev; Nikolai Turgenev (a liberal opponent of autocracy); and the socialist political thinker Alexander Herzen. By using French, these writers aimed to inform western readers about a nation of which they were largely ignorant, and to which there was widespread hostility in the West during the repressive reign of Nicholas I. Most importantly, command of French enabled them to extend into the international arena the debate taking place within the Russian elite about Russia’s historical destiny; to inscribe their nation in the European community; and to stake a claim for Russian leadership in that community. Keywords: French language, Franco-Russian bilingualism, language and politics, Russian political thought, philosophy of history, Petr Chaadaev, Alexander Herzen, Fedor Tiutchev, Nikolai Turgenev

The use of the French language for many purposes in communities in which it was not the mother tongue was a virtually pan-European phenomenon in *

University of Bristol

70 

DEREK OFFORD

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The spread of French was assisted both by the richness and refinement of the social and literary culture that the language bore, from the age of Louis XIV in particular; and by the flight of francophone Protestant religious refugees, the Huguenots, to nonCatholic countries in northern Europe after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. From the Netherlands to Prussia, Poland, and Sweden in the north of the continent, in the Bohemian Lands in Central Europe, and from Piedmont to the Romanian lands in the south, French commonly served as the language of courts, diplomats, nobilities, polite society, and men and women of letters. It was the language of an education designed to create the honnête homme (‘man of honour) and the vehicle for conversation in the sites of refined sociability, including the salon, the soirée, and the masonic lodge. It was preferred to the vernacular as the medium for various types of literary output, especially in works (many of them penned by women) that belonged to the unprofessionalized realm of aristocratic writing, such as the diary, the album amicorum, the récit de voyage, and personal correspondence in the family circle or among members of a coterie. French vocabulary permeated other languages, either by providing loanwords or models for calques in numerous domains: from architecture, town-planning, and fortification to drama, fashion, costume, coiffure, cuisine, and card-playing. French verbal etiquette and epistolary conventions helped shape terms of address and the expression of wishes, requests, apologies, compliments, and condolences in many a vernacular.1 Among the countries whose elites enthusiastically embraced French culture and the French language in the eighteenth century, Russia is often cited as an outstanding example. It is questionable whether Russian francophonie, when viewed in the broad European context I have described, was a strikingly exceptional phenomenon or whether it caused the bilingual westernized elite to become so estranged from native soil as a pronounced strand of Russian literature, thought, and scholarship has encouraged us to believe. However, the Russian elite undoubtedly did use French over a long period, from around the mid-eighteenth century to at least the mid-nineteenth, and for particularly numerous purposes. Moreover, Russian francophonie can be seen, in the broadest perspective, to have been an important tool for the modernization and secularization of a

1 See Rjéoutski, Argent & Offord, European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

71

relatively backward country that was joining the mainstream of European civilization.2 One important function of French in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russia – besides those common functions of francophonie to which I have already referred – was to project a certain image of this expanding empire and emergent nation to other European peoples who, lacking knowledge of Russian, had access to little or no unmediated information about the country. From an early stage, this essentially propagandistic function of Russian francophonie had both a cultural and a political dimension. The French language could serve as a vehicle through which sovereigns and patriots could publicize the achievements of Russia’s nascent secular culture abroad, and defend Russia’s society and polity against their detractors.3 However, French could just as well be used by opponents of the Russian regime as by supporters of it, in order to broadcast grievances, enhance solidarity among like-minded compatriots, and, more generally, contribute to debate about Russia’s relationship with Europe. My aim in this chapter will be to examine the ways in which French, in the age of Nicholas I (1825–1855), became a tool for Russian writers at different points on the political spectrum as they tried simultaneously to win over to their point of view both a European public and members of Russia’s own political, intellectual, and cultural elites. I shall argue that French, while continuing to serve a propagandistic purpose that was already in evidence in the mid-eighteenth century, also became, in the nineteenth, a language of historiosophical polemic for Russians wanting to address both an external and an internal readership. That is to say, it functioned not only as a vehicle for the expression of loyalist or oppositional views on an international stage but also for the speculative philosophy of history, or what is known in Russian as istoriosofiia (‘historiosophy’). This was a field of enquiry to which nineteenth-century Russian writers and thinkers were strongly attracted. Influenced by Hegel’s philosophy of history and weighing 2 It should also be noted that French was by no means the only foreign European language that was widely used in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia. Its main rival was German, although German tended to be used not so much as a means of displaying or seeking social prestige, but rather as a practical tool for conducting business or mastering and applying technical skills in such fields as medicine and mining. German also functioned as a natural means of communication among the large number of ethnic Germans who in the eighteenth century found themselves within the expanding territory of the Russian Empire. See Argent, Offord & Rjéoutski, ‘The functions and value of foreign languages in eighteenth-century Russia’; Dahmen, ‘The use, functions, and spread of German in eighteenth-century Russia’. 3 On use of French to broadcast Russian cultural achievement, see the chapter in this volume by Vladislav Rjéoutski.

72 

DEREK OFFORD

up the evidence for providential design and human agency, they searched for patterns in historical development and for teleological explanations of national destiny. I do not say that French was the only vehicle for such speculation, for most of the writers to whom I refer expressed their views on Russian historical destiny in Russian as well as French. Nonetheless, command of French enabled Russians to inform themselves about and participate in an international debate in which the place of Russia itself in the European world featured more and more prominently. French, in any case, was perceived as la langue de l’Europe (‘the language of Europe’). 4 Its use for international debate about portentous historical developments therefore seemed natural, even if it raised questions about Russia’s cultural dependency. Perhaps the most striking example of the use of French for the sort of purposes I have described in the reign of Nicholas is the ‘Lettre philosophique’ (Philosophical letter) written in 1828–1829 by Petr Chaadaev, a well-known figure in Moscow’s literary salons. The letter was published in the periodical Teleskop (The Telescope) in 1836. So unpalatable were Chaadaev’s views to the authorities that the periodical was closed down by the government, and Chaadaev was declared insane. Chaadaev admired the ‘principle of unity’ with which the Catholic Church – so he believed – had endowed the West, and he praised the sense of duty, justice, law, and order with which he thought western society was infused. His own country, on the other hand, had been left untouched by the universal education of mankind. Russians were a young and backward people who belonged neither to East nor West, and had neither a past nor a future. Without history or moral compass, they resembled primitive nomads. Chaadaev’s choice of French as the vehicle for this severe criticism of his ahistorical nation, or rather non-nation, seems implicitly to bear out his view of Russia’s culture as ‘entirely imported and imitative’.5 In this chapter, though, I shall dwell on three other Russian writers who used French for the purposes I have defined in works published in the 1840s and early 1850s: the poet and diplomat Fedor Tiutchev (1803–1873); the civil servant, economist, and political theoretician Nikolai Turgenev (1789–1871); and the political thinker, essayist, novelist, and autobiographer Alexander

4 Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Complete works], vol. 14, 187. 5 Chaadaev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i izbrannye pis’ma [Complete works and selected letters], vol. 1, 86–106; see especially, 89–93.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

73

Herzen (1812–1870).6 For these three writers, French was a vehicle for transmission of a view of Russia to both a European and a Russian readership at a crucial historical moment when revolutionary disturbances were breaking out in France, the Austrian Empire, and various Italian and German states; and when a geopolitical struggle was developing between Russia and the major western powers that would lead in the mid-1850s to the Crimean War. At the same time, these writers’ respective views of Russia need to be considered in the light of the internal debate about Russia’s relationship to the West that was unfolding in the 1840s between the so-called Westernizers and Slavophiles. Tiutchev responds to these developments as a staunch supporter of autocratic government and a conservative nationalist who dreamed of the creation of an immense Orthodox empire that included the one-time stronghold of Eastern Christendom, Constantinople. His contribution to the debate was written, for the most part, inside Russia, to which he had recently returned after living abroad for more than two decades (from 1822 to 1844), mainly in Bavaria and Piedmont. Turgenev writes as an opponent of autocracy and an advocate of constitutional reform who in the last decade of the reign of Alexander I (1801–1825) had belonged to secret societies which can be seen in retrospect as having prepared the ground for the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, when army officers refused to swear allegiance to Nicholas as he acceded to the throne on Alexander’s death. Turgenev’s French works were written abroad, where he found asylum after the revolt. Herzen, finally, responds to the events of 1848 as a Westernizer who had come to preach a form of utopian socialism. His works published in French, like Turgenev’s, were produced in the West, where he had arrived with his family on a Grand Tour in 1847 and where he would find himself stranded in permanent exile, since his support for the European revolutionaries of 1848 made it unthinkable that he could safely return to Russia.

6 I shall use the commonly accepted anglicized form of his name rather than the transliterated form Aleksandr Gertsen. There is an extensive scholarly literature on Herzen: see, for instance, Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812–1855; Berlin, Russian Thinkers; Acton, Alexander Herzen and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary; Kelly, Toward Another Shore: Russian Thinkers between Necessity and Chance (1998 and 1999) and Views from the Other Shore: Essays on Herzen, Chekhov, and Bakhtin; and Offord, ‘Alexander Herzen’. However, nothing has been written specifically on Herzen’s use of French, as far as I am aware, apart from my account of Herzen’s corpus of writings in French, which is less oriented towards language use and its functions than my discussion here. See Offord, ‘The French writings of Alexander Herzen’.

74 

DEREK OFFORD

Fedor Tiutchev It was against the pessimistic background established by Chaadaev that Tiutchev began to write in French about Russia’s relationship to ‘Europe’ in the 1840s. He produced three substantial articles on this subject, responding in each case to developments in contemporary politics, in which he took a passionate interest. At least two of these articles were conceived by Tiutchev as chapters in a larger work, La Russie et l’Occident (‘Russia and the West’), of which some other fragments – including the draft of an introductory chapter on ‘La situation en 1849’ – have survived. The first article, entitled ‘Lettre à M. le docteur Gustave Kolb, Rédacteur de la “Gazette Universelle”’ (‘Letter to Dr. Gustav Kolb, editor of The Universal Gazette’), was written in Munich in 1844. On one level, this article was a response to one of the most eloquent manifestations of the growing Russophobia in Western Europe, the unmitigated critique of Nicholaevan despotism mounted by the French Marquis de Custine in his book La Russie en 1839 (‘Russia in 1839’). Tiutchev explicitly condemned Custine’s book as an example of the moral and intellectual degeneracy of the age. However, the target at which he directed most of his ire was the German press, which reflected resentment at Russia’s policy of thwarting the desire for unification of the German lands. Germans, Tiutchev protested, ought in fact to have been thankful to Russia for liberating them from Napoleonic rule, and for the long period of peaceful development that ensued. This demand for gratitude was accompanied by a threat: the German states would be heading towards an abyss, Tiutchev warned, if they allowed relations with Russia to deteriorate.7 The second of Tiutchev’s political articles in French, ‘La Russie et la révolution’ (‘Russia and Revolution’), was written in April 1848 as a memorandum for Nicholas I. In this instance, Tiutchev was responding to the February uprising in Paris that had toppled the ‘July Monarchy’ of Louis-Philippe. Tiutchev detected an epoch-making struggle in progress between Russia and the forces of revolution that he associated with the West. The roots of the brewing European crisis, he alleged, lay in the French Revolution of 1789, which had suppressed the Christian virtues of humility and selfrenunciation and translated the demands of the human ego into social and political rights.8 7 Tiutchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pis’ma v shesti tomakh [Complete works and letters in six volumes], vol. 3, 11–28. 8 Ibidem, 42–54.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

75

Tiutchev’s third programmatic tract, ‘La Papauté et la question romaine’ (‘The papacy and the Roman Question’), was prompted by events in Italy in 1849, when Louis Napoleon had intervened militarily to defeat the insurgency of 1848 and to reinstall Pius IX as Pope. Here Tiutchev marshalled conventional Orthodox arguments against the western churches. Protestantism, which was moribund everywhere except in England, Tiutchev claimed, elevated the human ego over the Church. The Church of Rome, meanwhile, had become a political power rather than a community of the faithful, and the Pope led it as a temporal sovereign.9 It might be argued that Tiutchev’s choice of French as the vehicle for his political views merely illustrates a preference for that language among the Russian nobility of his generation. After all, Tiutchev was perfectly francophone from childhood. ‘French reigned almost exclusively’ in the Tiutchev family, we are told by the poet’s son-in-law, the Slavophile and later Pan-Slavist Ivan Aksakov, ‘so that not only all conversations but also all the correspondence of the parents with the children and of the children among themselves, both then and later on, throughout their lives, were conducted in nothing but French’.10 Moreover, French remained Tiutchev’s main domestic and social language in his adult life. Neither his first wife, Nelly (a Bavarian widow née Countess Bothmer whom he married in 1826), nor his second wife, Ernestine Dörnberg (née Pfeffel, a member of an aristocratic family from Alsace whom he married in 1839), was russophone. In King Ludwig’s Munich, to which Tiutchev was posted as a diplomat at the age of nineteen, French was the language of the salons where the young Russian cut an impressive figure as a sparkling conversationalist. Even after his return to Russia, Tiutchev continued to use French for correspondence with members of his family and Russians of his class. Take, for example, a private and confidential ‘Lettre sur la censure en Russie’ (‘Letter on Censorship in Russia’), addressed in 1857 to a high-ranking ethnically Russian servant of the Russian Empire, Prince Mikhail Gorchakov.11 And yet, the dominance of French in Tiutchev’s parents’ household did not prevent his mother, Aksakov also reports, ‘from adhering to Russian customs’: French ‘surprisingly coexisted with her Church Slavonic reading of psalters, books of hours, and prayer books in her bedroom and, more generally, with all the features of the Russian Orthodox and noble way of

9 Ibidem, 55–74. 10 Aksakov, Biografiia Tiutcheva, 10. 11 Tiutchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 96–106.

76 

DEREK OFFORD

life’.12 Thus Tiutchev grew up bilingual, and as an adult came to write Russian verse that was very highly regarded by his contemporaries, including Ivan Turgenev and Lev Tolstoy. Indeed, he is remembered as one of the outstanding Russian poets, second only, in the eyes of some, to Pushkin. Nor was Tiutchev averse to expressing his nationalistic ideas in Russian political verse, of which he produced a prodigious quantity – amounting to almost one-sixth of his total poetic output from the 1840s on.13 In a poem written in 1848, for example, Russia stands firm as an immovable barrier to revolutionary chaos, a cliff in the face of a turbulent sea.14 In another, written as the Crimean War raged, Russia’s enemies were ‘blasphemous minds’ and ‘impious peoples’.15 In ‘Russian Geography’, probably written in 1848–1849, contemporaneously with the French polemical tracts, we see the immense extent of the empire of which Tiutchev dreamed: ‘From the Nile to the Neva, from the Elbe to China, / From the Volga to the Euphrates, from the Ganges to the Danube’.16 This empire, Tiutchev exulted in 1849 at the end of a poem entitled ‘Dawn’, would amount to a realization of the universal triumph of Christianity in its Orthodox form.17 Faced with the perfect bilingual competence of this Russian nobleman, some literary scholars have indulged in psychoanalytic speculation about the extent to which Russian biculturalism may have brought about ‘psychosocial dislocation’. This affliction, it is argued, produced a ‘compensatory nationalism’ that caused Tiutchev to reject the West, in which he was at ease, and to idealize Russia, in whose rural heartland he was bored.18 From the sociolinguistic perspective, it is more rewarding to reflect on the precise functions and benefits of Tiutchev’s choice of French in his political writings than to seek Freudian explanations of his ideas. The most obvious benefit, of course, was that Tiutchev’s use of French brought his prose tracts to a much wider readership than his Russian poetry could reach, including a foreign readership across Europe which Tiutchev seems – despite his well-known reticence about publication of his Russian lyric poetry – to have purposefully targeted.

12 Aksakov, Biografiia Tiutcheva, 10. 13 Gregg, Fedor Tiutchev: The Evolution of a Poet, 108. 14 Tiutchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 197–198. 15 Ibidem, vol. 2, 66. 16 Ibidem, vol. 1, 200. 17 Ibidem, vol. 1, 218. 18 Conant, The Political Poetry and Ideology of F.I. Tiutchev, 10; Gregg, Fedor Tiutchev, 92–93, 145–146.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

77

The letter to Kolb was submitted to the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung (the Gazette Universelle to which Tiutchev’s title refers), and when the periodical did not publish it, Tiutchev had it printed privately in Munich as a political pamphlet.19 The bulk of ‘La Russie et la révolution’ was first published – without Tiutchev’s permission, with a different title, and within a hostile commentary on it – in a pamphlet by the French diplomat Baron Paul-Charles-Amable de Bourgoing.20 Substantial quotations and paraphrased passages from Tiutchev’s memorandum were then reproduced in a ‘Chronique de la quinzaine’ (‘Diary of the Fortnight’) in the important Parisian periodical La Revue des Deux Mondes (‘Review of the Two Worlds’) in June 1849.21 The work also circulated in the diplomatic community in Munich.22 ‘La Papauté et la question romaine’, finally, was published in full in the Revue des Deux Mondes, on 1 January 1850, this time with Tiutchev’s approval and thanks to the intercession of his then brother-in-law, Karl Pfeffel.23 Whether Tiutchev had official permission to publish all these tracts abroad and whether, in particular, they amounted almost to a statement of official Russian foreign policy is open to question, for Tiutchev’s PanSlavism was at odds with Nicholas’s legitimist support for existing monarchic regimes. However, Tiutchev was believed in the West to have political influence in Russia, as Ronald Lane has shown, and his French polemical writings had impact there. His intellectual acuity, his command of the French language, and the excellence of his French style won praise, to be

19 This work was later published in Russian under the title ‘Rossiia i Germaniia’ (‘Russia and Germany’), in Russkii arkhiv, 10 (1873), cols. 1993–2019. On the history of the composition and publication of Tiutchev’s polemical works in French, see especially the authoritative article by Lane, ‘The reception of F.I. Tyutchev’s political articles in Russia and abroad, 1844–1858’ (here 206, note 6). 20 Bourgoing, Politique et moyens d’action de la Russie, impartialement appréciés. Only a very small number of copies of this work were printed, but they were sent to some important personages, including Louis Bonaparte; the former French Prime Ministers Adolphe Thiers and Louis-Mathieu Molé; and other influential political and journalistic figures: see Lane, ‘The reception of Tyutchev’s political articles’, 211; and Dewey, Mirror of the Soul: A Life of the Poet Fyodor Tyutchev, 305. 21 See https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Chronique_de_la_quinzaine_-_14_juin_1849, 1053–1056 (last accessed 29 September 2015). 22 Lane, ‘The reception of Tyutchev’s political articles’, 211–212; Dewey, Mirror of the Soul, 305, 497. 23 Lane, ‘The reception of Tyutchev’s political articles’, 213. The text from Revue des Deux Mondes, 117–33, is available online at https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Revue_des_Deux_ Mondes_-_1850_-_tome_5.djvu/123 (last accessed 29 September 2015).

78 

DEREK OFFORD

sure;24 but his antipathy to modern western civilization in general and the Catholic Church in particular provoked much hostile reaction. His article on the papacy, for example, drew criticisms from the French anti-Gallican monarchist Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie, whose objections are summarized in a work entitled La Papauté, Réponse à M. de Tutcheff, Conseiller de Sa Majesté, l’Empereur de Russie (‘The Papacy, a Reply to Mr Tiutchev, Adviser to His Majesty the Emperor of Russia’), which was published in Paris in 1852.25 At the same time, it is important to remember that the readership of Tiutchev’s French political writings was not exclusively foreign, for they were also accessible to the francophone Russian public in Moscow and St. Petersburg. This public included the Slavophiles, to whom Tiutchev was close and one of whom, Aleksei Khomiakov, contributed to the polemic that Tiutchev’s article on the papacy had generated, when he responded to Laurentie with a pamphlet of his own, Quelques mots par un chrétien orthodoxe sur les communions occidentales, à l’occasion d’une brochure de M. Laurentie (‘A few words by an Orthodox Christian on the western communions, prompted by Mr. Laurentie’s pamphlet’), which was first published in Paris in 1853.26 Tiutchev’s domestic readership, it should be added, included Nicholas I himself, who found his own views well expressed in the letter to Kolb,27 and whom Tiutchev flatteringly described in ‘La Russie et la révolution’ as a steadfast opponent of revolution.28 Shortly after the letter to Kolb had been published, Nicholas obligingly reinstated Tiutchev in the Russian Foreign Ministry, from which he had been dismissed in 1837 after he had deserted his post in Turin, and in 1848 Tiutchev was appointed senior censor in the ministry. Thus Tiutchev used his consummate knowledge of French to make a loyalist case for Russian foreign policy in a turbulent period in European politics, and he enhanced his own standing in Nicholas’s eyes in the process. However, he also had ideas of a more metaphysical nature which demanded 24 Lane, ‘The reception of Tyutchev’s political articles’, 213. 25 Ibidem, 219–20. 26 See Khomiakov, ‘French writings’, 55. Quelques mots par un chrétien orthodoxe was the first of six works in French in which Khomiakov set out to explain the Orthodox faith to the western communions. The various French writings of Khomiakov, which included some of his most important statements on the Orthodox faith, were collected in a volume entitled L’Église Latine et le Protestantisme au point de vue de l’Église d’Orient: Recueil d’articles sur des questions religieuses, écrits à différentes époques et à diverses occasions, published posthumously in Lausanne and Vevey in 1872. 27 Lane, ‘The reception of Tyutchev’s political articles’, 210, note 18; Dewey, Mirror of the Soul, 286. 28 Tiutchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 45.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

79

expression in the ‘language of Europe’, for he was contributing to a debate which was both national and international about Russia’s relationship with the West, the wholeness of Europe (or the absence of wholeness in the continent), and the emergence of new worlds.29 The three French tracts I have described and the extant notes for La Russie et l’Occident are strewn with propositions on these subjects that make up the staple diet of Russian Orthodox conservative nationalism. For instance, the human reason so prized by westerners, it is claimed, has serious limitations, and overreliance on it is dangerous. The western public have become ‘the people of individualism and negation’, and they hate authority.30 They have been infected by the spirit of revolution, for that is what ‘modern thought in its entirety since its rupture with the Church’ amounts to.31 Observers may therefore be witnessing ‘the bankruptcy of an entire civilization’.32 The Russian people, on the other hand, are apolitical and un-revolutionary. Deeply rooted in the Russian character is a capacity for renunciation and self-sacrifice.33 Most importantly, all three tracts affirm the paradigm dear to nationalistic Russian thinkers and many later students of them, according to which ‘Russia’ and some imagined entity known as ‘the West’ or ‘Europe’ are ‘two worlds, two humanities’ diametrically and irreconcilably opposed to one another.34 The European West must realize that it is only ‘half of a great organic whole’ and that the solution to the apparently insoluble difficulties it faces lies in the other half of the European world – that is to say the eastern half of which western ‘savants and philosophers’ have omitted to take account.35 The soul of this other Europe, which has its own unity and lives its own ‘organic’ and ‘original’ life, is Russia.36 The West, Tiutchev warns in his letter to Kolb, must come to terms with this assertive new power. Like Nikolai Gogol’, in a famous passage at the end of the first part of Dead Souls (published in 1842) in which the novelist transforms Chichikov’s troika into an image of Russia hurtling towards a momentous destiny while other 29 It is worth noting that the title of the review in which Tiutchev published his articles ‘La Russie et la révolution’ and ‘La Papauté et la question romaine’ – La Revue des Deux Mondes (founded in 1829) – itself invokes the notion of ‘two worlds’, in this instance Europe and America. 30 Tiutchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 80–81. 31 Ibidem, 76. 32 Ibidem, 77. 33 Ibidem, 42. 34 Ibidem, 58. 35 Ibidem, 82, 89. 36 Ibidem, 17–18.

80 

DEREK OFFORD

peoples make way, Tiutchev raises the largest historiosophical questions about the nation: What is Russia? What is its raison d’être, its historical law? Where does it come from? Where is it going? What does it represent? The world, it is true, has made a place in the sun for it, but the philosophy of history [my italics] has not yet deigned to assign it one.37

Thus Tiutchev, pace Chaadaev, believes that as ‘the West’ collapses the eastern land that has preserved Christianity in its pure form will sail up like a holy ark to fulfil its mission, bringing to an end a millennium of imperial usurpations, from Charlemagne to Napoleon, and restoring a legitimate universal empire by reuniting the two Christian churches.38 Such messianic ideas, which concern the rise and fall of civilizations over the millennia, were political, of course – but they also transcended politics. Moreover, their significance was pan-European and consequently, according to understandings of civilization at the time, universal. It was therefore not inappropriate that they should be expressed in French rather than Russian. Which language, after all, could have seemed more apt for discussion of world history and for imperial pretensions than the language that had made the strongest recent claim to universalité (‘universality’), most famously asserted in Antoine de Rivarol’s prize-winning essay of 1783 for the Royal Berlin Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts?39

Nikolai Turgenev Turgenev belonged to a slightly older generation than Tiutchev, and his outlook was accordingly shaped more by the ideas of the French Enlightenment than by the German counter-current to it. Like Tiutchev, Turgenev served for many years in the imperial administration, though in an earlier reign, under Alexander I. He had a deep interest in financial and legal matters. Although he had gone abroad on leave in April 1824, ostensibly because of poor health, and was still outside Russia when the Decembrist Revolt broke out at the end of 1825, Turgenev’s earlier involvement in the secret societies the mutineers had frequented in the years leading up to 37 Ibidem, 17. 38 Ibidem, 54, 91–94. 39 Rivarol, De l’universalité de la langue française.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

81

the revolt attracted suspicion, and he was sentenced to death in absentia. (Nicholas commuted the sentence to lifelong exile in Siberia.) Turgenev’s stay abroad therefore turned into permanent political emigration. In 1832 he settled in France and there, over many years, he wrote a three-volume work, La Russie et les Russes (‘Russia and the Russians’), which was eventually published in Paris in 1847. In Volume 1 of this work, Turgenev describes his government service up until his departure from Russia and the development of the political disaffection among the elite that culminated in the Decembrist Revolt. In Volume 2, he examines Russia’s social structure, especially the institution of serfdom, and its political organization and various legal and educational matters. In Volume 3, he sets out his ideas on the need for reform and the types of reform required. Turgenev’s views are situated in the liberal band of the political spectrum. He is a champion of free trade and a free press. He advocates the emancipation of the serfs and other humanitarian measures, such as the abolition of corporal punishment. At the same time, as we learn from a pamphlet to which I shall turn shortly, Turgenev fears ‘the revolutionary plague’ no less than Tiutchev does, and deplores the socialist doctrines that were attracting such a following in Europe in the 1840s.40 Turgenev himself raises the question why he has written La Russie et les Russes in French, since he had used Russian in all the writings he had previously published. 41 In the course of the work he provides various answers to this question, explicit or implicit. The use of French enabled him, of course, to reach an international readership and to inform Europeans about things of which they were ignorant. 42 In particular, Turgenev wished to publicize the extent of despotism in Russia. He wanted also to show that the Russian serfs were not so degraded as westerners generally thought they were. 43 However, in choosing French, Turgenev by no means intended to ignore Russian readers. Indeed, it was to Russians, first and foremost, that the work was ‘truly and primarily’ addressed, Turgenev claimed, and he hoped it would have an impact in his own country. 44 French, after all, was no less effective than Russian as a means of conveying unpalatable truths about Russia to compatriots of his own social stratum. It also served Turgenev just as well as Russian for protesting his personal innocence of the charge 40 41 42 43 44

N. Tourgueneff [N.I. Turgenev], La Russie en présence de la crise européenne, 32. N. Tourgueneff, La Russie et les Russes, vol. 1, ix. Ibidem, 407. Ibidem, 20. Ibidem, x.

82 

DEREK OFFORD

that he was complicit in the Decembrist Revolt: some two-fifths of his first volume is taken up with the Mémoire justificatif (‘Justificatory memoir’) he had sent to the Russian authorities after his conviction. La Russie et les Russes was a long and somewhat unfocused work; but the revolutionary events that broke out the year after it was published demanded a profession de foi that was more succinct and polemical. For this purpose, Turgenev, like Tiutchev, resorted to a genre that had flourished in France itself since before the revolution of 1789, the political pamphlet. In his own essay in this genre, La Russie en présence de la crise européenne (‘Russia in the face of the European crisis’), he too used French to defend his country (even though he had left it) against foreign invective directed at ‘the barbarians of the North’ and to clarify his position on the European political spectrum. 45 At the same time, he made a further contribution to discussion of the grand topical subject of the destiny of the Slavs in European civilization. Turgenev did not believe, as Tiutchev and the Slavophiles did, that Russia should define itself in opposition to the western world. In particular, he had no concerns about the extent of the influence that France had had over his country, and he would have no truck with Russian Gallophobia: The Russian people, for their part, are far from being driven by hostile feelings towards France; on the contrary, they live by its civilization just as it is; they draw sustenance from its literature, good or bad; they speak its language in preference to any other foreign tongue; they buy its fashions and objets d’art; they drink its wine; and, lastly, a certain class of Russian society regards France’s capital as an Eldorado which is the object of its sweetest dreams, another Mecca which all believers aspire to visit at least once in their lives. 46

If Turgenev conceived of Europe as a bipolar world, then it was not because he was alienated by western forms of Christianity or because he rejected the principles that supposedly underlay western civilization, but because he believed Russia was isolated by its own political absolutism. Russia would be weakened, he thought, if it continued to set itself against the development of democratic states; and people would come to regard the continent as divided into ‘free and constitutional Europe’, on the one hand,

45 Tourgueneff, La Russie en présence de la crise européenne, 22–23. 46 Ibidem, 22.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

83

and ‘enslaved Russia’, on the other. 47 If his nation was to be actively involved in the further progress of European civilization, as Turgenev hoped it would be, then it too would have to adopt a representative form of government which operated in the interests of all classes. 48 However, Turgenev did agree with conservative nationalists that Russia had particular racial or religious affinities with populations outside its borders – affinities which had almost always eluded European commentators, he thought, hence the unfairness of their judgements about his country. 49 Russians’ fortunes, he argued, were closely linked to the fortunes of fellow Slavs or co-religionists, especially the Poles, with whom a rapprochement should be sought and whose harsh treatment by Russia was a major cause of European Russophobia.50 Despite his objections to Russian autocracy, Turgenev could not resist making a claim to Russian leadership in the Slav world, although he did try to convince readers that this leadership would be benevolent and protective, not dominant or oppressive.51 He also seemed to weaken his proposals for a ‘brotherly embrace’ in the Greco-Slav world by suggesting more than one possible scenario for its realization. One scenario was to grant different constitutions to the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Poland; another was to grant a single constitution to all the populations that were subject to the Russian Empire, uniting them under the same laws.52 In the final analysis, then, Turgenev’s pamphlet was a further meditation on ‘Russian and Slav things’.53 Even though it was informed by the secular and constitutional values prized among the Decembrists, rather than by the Orthodox and Pan-Slavist dreams of conservative nationalists, Turgenev still had great expectations of his nation. He, no less than Tiutchev, was sure that Russia had been called by Providence to a lofty destiny and that ‘the Russian people have not yet said their last word in history’.54 And, quite naturally, he too used French as an international language of speculation about the Russian national mission, the destiny of the Slavs in general, and European wholeness or disunity.

47 Ibidem, 37. 48 Tourgueneff, La Russie et les Russes, vol. 1, vii; La Russie en présence de la crise européenne, 39. 49 Tourgueneff, La Russie en présence de la crise européenne, 8. 50 Ibidem, 26–30, 39, 42. 51 Ibidem, 37–38, 42. 52 Ibidem, 45–46. 53 Ibidem, 38; Turgenev’s italics. 54 Ibidem, 37, 30.

84 

DEREK OFFORD

Alexander Herzen Herzen, like Tiutchev, produced a number of political essays that were published in French in the later years of the reign of Nicholas. Although these essays too appeared at different times and in different places, they amounted to a coherent set of reflections on the historical role of Russia, as Herzen viewed it in the light of the revolutionary disturbances of 1848–1849 and European governments’ reactions to them.55 With the exception of ‘Le peuple russe et le socialisme’ (‘The Russian people and socialism’), on which I shall draw heavily here, they were not written by Herzen in French; but French was the language in which they became best known to a readership outside Russia. Herzen organized his thoughts around the same opposition between Russia and the West that Tiutchev (and Chaadaev and the Slavophiles) had used. He too attacked the principles on which western civilization was based, though for him the roots of the evil in it lay in its economic, social, and political soil. He condemned capitalism as an inhuman system driven by pursuit of profit, regarded the ascendant bourgeoisie as mercenary and vulgar, and dismissed parliamentary democracy as a system that enfranchised the ‘orangutans’. He agreed with conservative nationalists that the West was moribund and that the Slavs represented a fresh force whose historical moment had arrived. However, for Herzen, the new civilization that would grow in place of the rotting old one would not be nourished by the Orthodox faith or upheld and protected by Russia’s autocratic government. It would be sustained instead by the instinctive collectivism of the Russian peasantry and the conscious socialism of the independent intellectual elite that was emerging in the age of Nicholas. The Russian peasant, Herzen argued in his writings published in French, possessed ‘so much strength, agility, intelligence, and beauty’.56 His dealings with his peers were ‘full of honour and loyalty’, so that no contractual agreements of the sort to which people have recourse in western society were necessary in Russia. Most importantly, the Russian peasants had preserved a supposedly ancient institution, the village commune, which periodically redistributed the land allocated to the serfs by the landowner as the needs 55 The works in question are ‘La Russie’, ‘Lettre d’un russe à Mazzini’, Du développement des idées révolutionnaires en Russie, ‘Le peuple russe et le socialisme’, and ‘La Russie et le vieux monde’. See Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, vol. 6, 150–186 and 224–230; vol. 7, 9–132 and 271–306; and vol. 12, 134–166 respectively. 56 Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 6, 172.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

85

of families in the community changed.57 This institution, Herzen argued, had saved the Russian people from ‘Mongol barbarism’ and ‘German bureaucracy’ (that is to say, the imperial state), and fortunately it had survived until the advent of socialism in Western Europe.58 The powerful but dormant force of the Russian peasantry, which thus proved to be in harmony with ‘Europe’s revolutionary idea’, could now be harnessed by the intelligentsia, ‘the germ and intellectual centre’ of the impending revolution.59 Herzen exploited an argument about the advantages of backwardness that Chaadaev had used in the repentant ‘Apologie d’un fou’ (‘Apology of a madman’) that he had written (also in French) in 1837, after the publication of his ‘Lettre philosophique’.60 This embryonic intelligentsia, Herzen contended, could benefit from its late development. Russians were ‘morally freer than Europeans’, he supposed, and not only ‘because we are exempt from the great trials through which the West develops, but also because we have no past that controls us’.61 There was undoubtedly an element of self-promotion in Herzen’s defence of the Russian nation before a European public, as there was in Tiutchev’s. After all, Herzen himself represented the ethically exemplary intellectual elite, which was drawn above all, he asserted, from ‘the middle nobility, whose moral centre is in Moscow’.62 He also heroized himself as a Romantic exile. Even within his own country, he said, he was a foreigner, metaphorically speaking – the ‘son of another world’.63 Once in the West, when he was literally a political refugee, he sacrificed everything for a noble cause, he claimed: he had left Russia ‘with the sole aim of making the free Russian word reverberate in Europe’.64 On another level, though, Herzen also aimed, as had Tiutchev and Turgenev, to acquaint European readers with sides of Russia of which he thought they were ignorant.65 Thus in the ‘Farewell’ from Russia with which he prefaced his Russian masterpiece From the Other Shore, he declared that it was time to acquaint Europeans with this neighbouring nation whose government and façade they knew but whose ‘mighty’ people were 57 Ibidem, p. 164; see also vol. 7, 129. 58 Ibidem, vol. 7, 288. 59 Ibidem, 281. 60 Chaadaev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 289–304. 61 Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 6, 150–151. 62 Ibidem, 178. 63 Ibidem, 150. 64 Ibidem, vol. 7, 272. 65 Ibidem, 276.

86 

DEREK OFFORD

an ‘unresolved mystery’ to them.66 In the process of educating westerners about ‘these Russians, these barbarians, these Cossacks’, Herzen too would counter western Russophobia.67 In Le peuple russe et le socialisme, he responds specifically to disparaging remarks about the Russian people that the historian Jules Michelet had made in a work of 1851 on Poland and Russia.68 He also delivers a riposte in this essay to the one-sided view of Russia that Custine had put forward in La Russie en 1839. Not that Herzen, as an enemy of autocracy, was disappointed by Custine’s attack on Russian despotism; but, in assailing the official realm of the St. Petersburg court, Custine had overlooked the unofficial realm of the Russian peasant. Herzen may even be seen as offering readers, in his French writings, an alternative scenario to that advanced by Alexis de Tocqueville, who in his own speculation on the old and new worlds had recently identified America as the site of the ascendant civilization.69 Besides his propagandistic purpose, then, Herzen too wished to inscribe Russia in the European world and to formulate a national mission, which he conceived, moreover, in terms scarcely less messianic than Tiutchev’s. He contended that the Slavs were a strong, intelligent race who possessed ‘a great elasticity’, which enabled them to absorb and transcend the cultures of other peoples.70 They were peculiarly suited to the libertarian socialism to which Herzen subscribed: Centralization is contrary to the Slav genius; federation, on the other hand, springs from its nature. Once it has been gathered and bound together in an association of free and autonomous peoples, the Slav world will be able at last to begin its true historical existence.71

Like Tiutchev again, and like Turgenev too, Herzen left readers in no doubt that it was the Russians who were hegemonic in the Slav world, not least because they had long lived under a strong, independent state.72 66 Ibidem, vol. 6, 17. 67 Ibidem, 154. 68 The version of Michelet’s work ‘Pologne et Russie: légende de Kościuszko’ to which Herzen was responding appeared in instalments in L’Avènement du peuple (August–September 1851). Michelet revised this work in the light of Herzen’s comments before the publication of it in book form in 1852 (Paris: Librairie nouvelle). For extracts from Michelet’s work to which Herzen takes exception, see Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 7, 271–272, 282, 284, 292, 293–294. 69 Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique. 70 Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 7, 68–69. 71 Ibidem, 280. 72 Ibidem, 27–28, 279, 281.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

87

Not that it was the Slav world alone that Russia, in Herzen’s scheme of things, aspired to lead; it was European civilization as a whole. Reversing Chaadaev’s linkage of Russia with death and Europe with life, Herzen suggested to his European readers that their dying civilization could be remade by a people whom they barely knew and whom they should therefore study.73 He repudiated the official view of Russia’s past and present that had been famously formulated – in French – by Count Benckendorff, the first head of the Third Section set up by Nicholas in 1826 to oversee state security. And yet, he still offered a bright futurity. Russia’s ‘past has been poor’, Herzen agreed, and ‘its present is monstrous’, to be sure; but it did have ‘colossal ambitions’ for the future.74 Like Tiutchev again, Herzen is not averse to playing on western fears of this ‘threatening, hostile empire’ and its military might.75 Russia will pose a danger to western nations, he argues, if its autocratic regime remains unchecked by the revolutionary forces he represents: ‘oriental barbarians’ may overrun Europe and destroy western civilization.76 Herzen even appeals to supra-rational intuition to drive home his point. Just as Tiutchev, in a famous quatrain of 1866, would express the view that Russia could not be understood by the intellect, so Herzen claimed there was some force ‘difficult to express in words’ which sustained the Russian people through all their adversities.77 My discussion of the French writings of Tiutchev, Turgenev, and Herzen shows that French in the age of Nicholas served several overlapping purposes for Russian writers. It could help a writer achieve a personal goal, for instance to win back the favour of the ruler, to plead innocence, or to cast himself as a heroic martyr. It could function as a means of defending the Russian nation against the charge of barbarism in the court of European public opinion. Again, in a society where most people whom we might now describe as opinion-formers were still francophone, it could be a supplementary means of conducting a domestic debate that was also taking place in Russian. The journal article or pamphlet written in French was an instrument of cultural or political propaganda in which a writer could project an exemplary image of the nation or some group within it, backed up 73 Ibidem, 273, and vol. 6, 183. 74 Ibidem, vol. 6, 183–184. Benckendorff had opined: ‘Russia’s past is admirable; her present situation is more than wonderful; as for her future, this exceeds even the boldest expectations.’ Quoted by Walicki, A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism, 88. 75 Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 7, 275. 76 Ibidem, vol. 6, 225, and vol. 7, 113, 125. 77 Tiutchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 2, 165; Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 6, 162–163, and vol. 7, 16.

88 

DEREK OFFORD

sometimes by implicit threats of imperial military intervention if foreigners did not heed the writer’s warning. On the grandest scale, French was the pre-eminent international language for speculation about the historic role of nations in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, despite influential German contributions to the philosophy of history. Tiutchev, Turgenev, and Herzen all used French for this purpose too, participating in a discussion about the futurity of the Slavs, the Russians, and Europe as a whole to which Custine, Michelet, and Polish poets such as Adam Mickiewicz, as well as compatriots such as Chaadaev and Khomiakov, also contributed. We cannot argue that Russian writers’ willing use of French for the purpose of participation in pan-European debate on Russia’s historical destiny exemplifies diglossia – that is to say that it was considered de rigueur in mid-nineteenth-century Russia to use French rather than Russian in the domain of historiosophical speculation. After all, Russian writers were concurrently examining the same questions in Russian (Tiutchev through his political verse, for instance, and Herzen in From the Other Shore and another cycle of essays, Letters from France and Italy).78 What the polemical function of Russian francophonie that I have described does demonstrate, though, is the multi-functionality of French in Russia, and the advantages of bilingualism there. French remained valuable, to be sure, as the cultural capital of a cosmopolitan aristocracy which had as much in common with aristocracies of other nationalities as with the peasants of its own nation; but it also had value for writers wishing to promote an Orthodox Pan-Slav empire or to discredit the autocracy or even to associate themselves with the international rise of socialism and revolutionism. Whatever the political standpoint of members of the elite, then, command of French enabled them to make a vigorous contribution to pan-European debate; to strengthen their credentials as members of the European community; and to inscribe their nation in it, even when they seemed keen to distance themselves from Western Europe in its contemporary form.

Bibliography Acton, Edward, Alexander Herzen and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Aksakov, I.S., Biografiia Fedora Ivanovicha Tiutcheva (Moscow: Tipografiia M.G. Volchaninova, 1886; repr. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms Int., 1980).

78 In Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5, 7–224.

French as a polemical l anguage for Russian writers in the age of Nichol as I

89

Argent, Gesine, Derek Offord & Vladislav Rjéoutski, ‘The functions and value of foreign languages in eighteenth-century Russia’, Russian Review, 74:1 (2015), 1–19. Berlin, Isaiah, Russian Thinkers (London: Hogarth Press, 1978; 2nd edn., London: Penguin, 2008). Bourgoing, Paul-Charles-Amable de, Politique et moyens d’action de la Russie, impartialement appréciés (Paris: Gerclès, 1849). Chaadaev, P.Ia., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i izbrannye pis’ma [Complete works and selected letters] (2 vols.; Moscow: Nauka, 1991). Conant, Roger, The Political Poetry and Ideology of F.I. Tiutchev (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1983). Custine, Marquis de, La Russie en 1839 (4 vols.; Paris: Librairie d’Amyot, 1843). Dahmen, Kristine, ‘The use, functions, and spread of German in eighteenth-century Russia’, Russian Review, 74:1 (2015), 20–40. Dewey, John, Mirror of the Soul: A Life of the Poet Fyodor Tyutchev (Shaftesbury: Brimstone, 2010). Gertsen, A.I. [Herzen], Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh [Collected works in 30 volumes] (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954–1965). Gregg, Richard A., Fedor Tiutchev: The Evolution of a Poet (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965). Kelly, Aileen M., Toward Another Shore: Russian Thinkers between Necessity and Chance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). Kelly, Aileen M., Views from the Other Shore: Essays on Herzen, Chekhov, and Bakhtin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). Khomiakov, A.S., ‘French writings’, in On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader, trans. and ed. by B. Jakim & R. Bird (New York: Lindisfarne, 1998). Lane, Ronald C., ‘The reception of F.I. Tyutchev’s political articles in Russia and abroad, 1844–1858’, European Studies Review, 1:1 (1971), 205–231. Malia, Martin, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812–1855 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961). Offord, Derek, ‘Alexander Herzen’, in A History of Russian Philosophy, 1830–1930: Faith, Reason, and the Defense of Human Dignity, ed. by G.M. Hamburg & R.M. Poole (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 52–68. Offord, Derek, ‘The French writings of Alexander Herzen’, in Bicultural Literature and Film in French and English, ed. by Peter Barta & Phil Powrie (London: Routledge, 2016), 143–160. Pushkin, A.S., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Complete works] (16 vols.; Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1937–1949). Rivarol, Antoine de, De l’universalité de la langue française (Paris: Obsidiane, 1991). Rjéoutski, Vladislav, Gesine Argent & Derek Offord (eds.), European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language (Oxford/Bern/Berlin: Peter Lang, 2014). Tiutchev, F.I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pis’ma v shesti tomakh [Complete works and letters in six volumes], ed. by N.N. Skatov et al. (Moscow: Klassika, 2002–2004). Tocqueville, Alexis de, De la démocratie en Amérique (2 vols.; Paris: Gosselin, 1835–1840). Tourgueneff, N. [N.I. Turgenev], La Russie et les Russes (3 vols.; Paris: Au comptoir des imprimeursunis, 1847). Tourgueneff, N. [N.I. Turgenev], La Russie en présence de la crise européenne (Paris: Au comptoir des imprimeurs-unis, 1848).

90 

DEREK OFFORD

About the author Derek Offord is a Senior Fellow in Russian at the University of Bristol and a specialist in pre-revolutionary Russian history and culture. He has published books on the Russian revolutionary movement, early Russian liberalism, Russian travel writing, and the broader history of Russian thought, as well as two books on contemporary Russian grammar and usage. He has recently led a multidisciplinary project, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), on the history of the French language in Russia. Within the framework of this project he has co-authored and co-edited (with Gesine Argent and Vladislav Rjéoutski) a book on European francophonie; a cluster of articles on foreign-language use in eighteenth-century Russia; and two volumes on the interplay of French and Russian in Imperial Russia. Email: [email protected]

4

The external cultural and linguistic policy of the Italian governmentin the Mediterranean region and the issue of the National Association for Aid to Missionaries (1886–1905) Paolo Pieraccini

Sanchez-Summerer, Karène & Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th – 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980600/ch04 Abstract In 1886, the archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli promoted an association with religious, cultural, and patriotic aims devoted to: the protection of Italian missions; the spread of Catholicism; and, at the same time, the spread of Italian language and culture. During the years of harsh conflict between Italy and the Holy See, this association found it difficult to collaborate with both the Italian government and the Vatican authorities. For the majority of Catholics in Italy at the time, the association was accused of contiguity with the Freemasons: to the Italian government, the association was considered a tool of the Vatican. It was only at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the ‘Roman Question’ began to fade, that the association met with the approval of the Holy See and the government, both of which then financed it. The association brought valuable help to the missions, supporting Italy’s colonial policy. Keywords: National Association for Aid to Missionaries (ANSMI), Holy See, Italy, France, Franciscans, Roman Question, religious missions, Italian schools abroad, colonialism

92 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

The founding of the Associazione Nazionale per Soccorrere i Missionari Cattolici Italiani The Associazione Nazionale per Soccorrere i Missionari Cattolici Italiani (National Association for Aid to Italian Catholic Missionaries, ANSMI) was established by Ernesto Schiaparelli (1856–1928). During his first archaeological mission at Luxor (1884–1885), the young Egyptologist had the chance to listen to the recriminations of the Franciscans operating in Upper Egypt, all Italians coming from the Reformed Province of Tuscany. According to the Franciscans, both Protestant and Catholic missions belonging to different nationalities were supported significantly by their own governments and private associations, whereas the Italian ones were working without any aid in extremely difficult conditions. All Italian missions had fallen rapidly into decay from the mid-1800s because of the dissolution of religious orders as well as the closure of the novitiates in their homeland. Being therefore impossible to guarantee adequate staff turnover in such conditions, the institutes in charge of Italian missions had to seek help from foreign religious orders and finance from other countries, which then asked them to spread their language and culture in exchange. Persuaded by such arguments, Schiaparelli endorsed the founding of a private association serving religious, cultural, and patriotic purposes, which mainly aimed to protect Italian missions abroad and promote Catholicism as well as Italian language and culture. It was perfectly natural for him to make that decision, given his involvement with the Catholic party supporting the Concordat between the Vatican and the Italian State, or ‘conciliatorist Catholics’. Such a position was in open contrast with the instances of so-called ‘Italian intransigent Catholics’, the large majority in Italy by then, who claimed that only secular power could guarantee the papacy to freely carry out its spiritual deeds. Moreover, the intransigent fringe called for a ban on Catholics from voting in parliamentary elections (non expedit) as a form of protest against the lay State, traditional enemy of the Pope. In contrast, Catholics supporting the Concordat pledged loyalty to liberal institutions and the monarchy, arguing that the best way to safeguard the Church’s interests was to embed more firmly Catholic masses into the country’s life. They were also strong supporters of Italy’s colonialism, which was taking its first steps at that very moment (5 February 1885) by occupying the Eritrean port of Massawa. On 12 January 1886, the provisional Association’s committee was constituted in Florence, consisting almost exclusively of Tuscan aristocrats. A written statement sent to influential personalities potentially sympathetic

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

93

towards the project declared that the Association would be administratively independent and autonomous, extending ‘to all Italian provinces’. In addition, funds raised would enable missionaries: To free themselves from foreign protection, maintain their Italian character, establish new missions, [and] open schools for boys and girls everywhere, in which the Italian language would be taught alongside the Catholic truth, paving the way for the Christian civilization and opening at the same time new trading routes.1

This proclamation inspired several leading aristocratic, political, cultural, diplomatic, and military figures – and, more generally, a large part of the Catholic conservative bourgeoisie. A new official declaration issued by the founding members on 12 December 1886 stated that the Association would operate in collaboration with other ‘already existing meritorious institutions […] under the direction of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith [Propaganda Fide]’ and establish itself as an ‘eminently religious institution’. Lastly, in March 1887, the definitive statute was officially approved: the Association aimed to promote ‘the founding of new schools and the spread of the Italian language, especially in Africa and the East, and to nourish, along with the Faith, the love for their country amongst the many Italians living in remote areas’ (art. 1). Moreover, the Association would grant ‘subsidies to Italian missionaries’ in order to ‘expand and establish new schools’, where the Italian language would be taught, to provide them with ‘school books […], rewards and charitable items’ and to help ‘their charity institutions’ (art.2).2 ANSMI executives held several conferences in order to promote the Association. Schiaparelli’s talks turned out to be the most effective ones. In his opinion, Italy had the obligation to comfort morally and materially underdeveloped countries in Africa and the East, even at the cost of exploiting massive human and financial resources which would be beneficial to Italian expansion only in the mid to long term. To do so, he strongly argued in favour of the Concordat between the Italian State and the Church. Italy could have taken France as an example, where strong anticlericalism did not prevent internal policy from supporting its religious missions abroad, given the patriotic role played by them in terms of cultural penetration 1 Piano, Memorie e documenti per una storia dell’Associazione Nazionale per Soccorrere i Missionari Cattolici Italiani (1884–1928), 1. 2 Ibidem, 6.

94 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

into the many areas in which they were operating. Unlike many other influential members of the Association, Schiaparelli thought that a cultural and educational expansion was preferable and more advantageous for a country with high expectations but scanty resources, like Italy.

The educational policy of the Italian government Already in summer 1887, the ANSMI delivered the first funds (50,000 Lire) to several Franciscan institutions in Egypt, Maghreb, Turkey, Albania, Eritrea, and Palestine. At the same time, the central government in Rome was pursuing a specific educational policy for Italian schools abroad, which made its first appearance in the national budget right after Italian unification. The allocated funds were quite meagre and were supposed to subsidize educational institutes already founded by mutual aid associations in several colonies. In 1869, a governmental committee recognized the merits of both Freemason and Franciscan missionaries serving the Custodia Terrae Sanctae (‘Holy Land’) for having established many schools in that region. At any rate, the committee believed that the preference showed by those missionaries for Italy had to be ‘accepted conditionally’ because it was derived from a ‘temporary resentment against France’. Nevertheless, it would have been ‘sheer folly’ to ignore them. They were exerting a significant influence over the Levant, where the religious and political battle was raging. It was always preferable to found lay schools. Yet, in ‘small colonies’, where founding schools was hard and expensive, missionaries came in very useful, given that ‘just a slight subsidy’ could turn them into ‘great teachers’.3 The government decided to regulate subsidized schools with appropriate procedures, carrying out regular inspections, and to raise the yearly funds to 40,000 Lire, which was, however, not a remarkable figure. The College of Alexandria in Egypt, the most important colony of the East with a population of 17,000 people, received 5000 Lire. The same amount was granted to the boys’ school of Constantinople, whereas Tunis and Izmir received respectively 3500 and 3000 Lire. More substantial funds were allocated to three schools situated in South America (7200 Lire), and in London (3000) and New York (3000). 4 Other locations in Egypt received no further funds for educational purposes. Two elementary schools founded by Freemasonry were active in Cairo, where approximately 5000 Italians 3 4

Relazione della Commissione ministeriale sulle scuole italiane all’estero, 11–12 and 24. Ibidem, 67.

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

95

lived at that time; in Alexandria and in many other Egyptian cities there were countless Franciscan schools, which did not benefit from any financial support from the State. The year after the seizure of Rome, the efforts to consolidate national unity and the resulting financial straits prevented the educational budget from rising proportionally to the increased number of schools active in Italian colonies due to the growing emigration. In the next ten years, however, the allocated budget almost trebled, in order to allow the founding of new lay schools and the distribution of subsidies to non-religious institutes. Lastly, in 1879, when the financial situation of Italy improved and its international ambitions had grown, the government felt the need to control these institutions more firmly. Prime Minister Benedetto Cairoli (in office 1879–1881) considered that, in times of ‘financial constraints’, the more effective and less expensive system was to grant ordinary and extraordinary subsidies mainly to two types of schools: those founded on independent initiatives of the settlers and those religious ones held by Friars, ‘Protestant pastors’, or ‘Israelites’. Only in exceptional cases, when these initiatives were deemed to be insufficient to guarantee Italian interests, should the government take action. Cairoli – in spite of his strong opposition to the Vatican and the existence of religious congregations in the homeland – used to define the Franciscans as ‘the most ancient and glorious missionaries and undoubtedly most meritorious school tutors of the East’. It was his firm belief that in mission lands the contrasts between the Holy See and Italy would mitigate remarkably. Furthermore, he considered that the schools of the Friars, notwithstanding the scanty resources, were much more effective than the lay ones, thanks to their ability to integrate well into specific local situations.5 The two chambers accepted the government’s proposals to rearrange and improve Italian schools abroad. Parliamentarians decided to add 80,000 Lire to the 110,000 annually assigned to these institutions (about 40 in total), including also several religious ones. Government policy remained unaltered during the following six administrations led by Agostino Depretis between 1881 and 1887, which asked religious schools only to comply with a few conditions: compulsory teaching of the Italian language; acceptance of consuls’ supervision; and admission to any school for all pupils from any nationality or religion. The ordinary expenditure on government schools abroad and the subsidies for institutes run by companies, private bodies, and religious congregations reached 222,000 Lire for the school year 1884–1885. A great part of this 5

Relazione al Parlamento sulle scuole italiane all’estero, 14.

96 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

amount (177,270 Lire) was provided to the governmental schools (sixteen in total, with approximately 3000 pupils) located ‘in the main centres of Italian colonies in the East, where once Italian was the language commonly spoken’ – such as Tunis, Tripoli, Beirut, Constantinople and Izmir, Alexandria and Cairo. The schools managed by associations or private bodies (seventeen in total, with approximately 5000 pupils), serving much more densely populated Italian communities, were situated mostly in the Americas and Europe. These colonies were ‘so much vital’ to providing on their own ‘education’ through efficient schools. Not only did the government of Rome subsidize these institutes with ‘very modest funds’ (28,600 Lire), but it was also wondering whether such funds could have been better ‘distributed [to] the schools in the East with greater chances of profit’. It was towards this very region – where emigrants were much less numerous and lacking any enterprise – that Italy was directing its expansionism. Finally, the schools run by ‘Italian religious corporations’ (the government supported fourteen institutes, with a total of 1000 pupils, allocating 11,500 Lire) were situated mostly in minor centres, where it would have been very difficult ‘to establish a government school without an expense disproportionate to the interests at stake’. In those places, religious congregations were still so highly rated that lay schools stood no chance ‘of beating off’ competition. The governmental institutes most heavily subsidized were those of Alexandria (36,000 Lire), Tunis (35,700), and Constantinople (32,000). The religious schools most consistently funded were those run by the Franciscans serving the Holy Land for the College of Aleppo (3700 Lire) and Tripoli in Syria (1000) and those run by the Mekhitarists for the College of Constantinople (2000) and the Capuchins in Trabzon (1000).6

ANSMI facing the first serious difficulties Conciliatorist Catholics founded the ANSMI mainly by focusing their attention on the abovementioned favourable preconditions. However, they completely overlooked the social, political, and ecclesiastical climate of those years and the difficult economic situation of the country, which could greatly affect the development of their association. Not surprisingly, the Association had to work its way through serious financial straits and political-religious opposition over a long time. Intransigent Catholic as 6 Appunti sulle scuole italiane all’estero, 8, 16–17.

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

97

well as anticlerical parties antagonized the Association since its inception: its ambiguous nature then turned out to be a major weakness. The ANSMI, at least in its first years, was neither predominantly ecclesiastical nor governmental. Rather, it was a private organization formed by laymen who intended to channel private and public funds into religious institutions. Moreover, its leaders proved themselves devoted to both the nation and the papacy, just as the conflict between State and Church was reaching its peak in Italy. Several newspapers sympathizing with the intransigent Catholic party accused the ANSMI of being wedded to Masonry. Other journalists wrote that an organization willing to aid foreign missions could only operate under the strict supervision of the pontiff and his bishops. Otherwise, it would have risked turning into a political association close to government positions – that is, of a purely anticlerical character. Such difficulties were compounded by additional hostilities connected to Masonry, as the ANSMI itself found out. It was difficult to overcome such distrust. The Association, at least at government level, found favour with Agostino Depretis’s last cabinet (in power until 29 July 1887) and, for few months, even with his successor, Francesco Crispi. It was in this very moment that the conflict between Italy and the Holy See escalated further. First, in just a couple of months, the reconciliation between State and Church prompted in May 1887 by Crispi, Defence Minister in the last Depretis cabinet, failed completely. Then, the pro-French policy adopted by the Holy See came into play, resulting in the invitation to French Catholics de se rallier (‘to join/come round to’) the Third Republic. As a consequence, when Crispi took power on 29 July, those alleged advantages from which he thought he could benefit by closing the ‘Roman issue’ were vanishing in terms of both State consolidation and Vatican support for his expansionist policy. In addition, France was becoming increasingly influential abroad – already spreading in West and Equatorial Africa – thanks to the Holy See supporting French missions, just as Germany and Italy were officially contesting and openly challenging the exclusivity of Paris’s religious protectorate. Further escalation of anticlericalism followed, which exacerbated the already growing hostility of intransigent Catholicism. Such a situation made it even more difficult for the leaders of the ANSMI to pursue their ambitious objectives. Another serious problem for the Association was the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide (‘for Spreading the Faith’) circular entitled Aspera rerum conditio (22 May 1888), which reiterated the exclusivity of French religious protectorates. The government, having perceived the initiative of the Holy

98 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

See as a provocation, imposed several restrictions on the people responsible within religious missions that it was financing directly or by means of the ANSMI. First, they had to accept to be under the patronage of the King of Italy and supervised by government inspectors; they had to officially name their educational institutes ‘Italian Schools’; and they had to adopt the same programmes and use the same textbooks as in the Kingdom of Italy. Schiaparelli realized quickly how serious the situation was. Laymen could not manage missionaries. They feared excessive government interference – which could have affected the purely spiritual direction of their schools – as well as the reaction of the Holy See. Therefore, by the end of July 1888, the secretary rushed to Rome in order to mediate between Propaganda Fide and government leaders in an attempt to resolve a conflict potentially fatal to his Association.

The antagonism of Propaganda Fide Schiaparelli asked Propaganda Fide to support and endorse the ANSMI from its inception by pointing out that the Association had no ‘political aspirations’ and did not intend ‘to disrupt the magisterium’ of the Congregation. Likewise, it did not wish to affect the ‘constitution of missions’ which would remain ‘essentially Catholic and, as such, dependent on the Congregation’. By means of its own subsidies, moreover, the ANSMI could favour at the same time the spread of the Italian language, the ‘civil commitment’ of the missionaries, and an even broader propagation of Christianity.7 Propaganda Fide replied that they would not acknowledge any of the associations for assisting the missionaries founded in several Catholic nations in those last years. The faithful had to continue supporting the Œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi of Lyon and the Œuvre des Écoles d’Orient of Paris, which did not discriminate between missions that they financed, regardless of nationality.8 Propaganda Fide kept thinking that way until the end of July 1888. The secretary of the Congregation, Monsignor Domenico M. Jacobini, with whom Schiaparelli had a close relationship – being one of the few prelates close to conciliatorist positions – stated that the Congregation, ‘having to 7 See the speech of Senator Fedele Lampertico, 31 July 1887, in La Rassegna Nazionale, 9 (1887, XXXVI, 710. 8 Rome, Archive of Propaganda Fide (APF), Lettere, vol. 383, Bishop Giovanni Simeoni (prefect of the Propaganda) to the Archbishop of Florence, Agostino Bausa, 8 January 1887, 6–7.

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

99

serve the religious needs of all Christianity’, did not intend ‘to negotiate with any government for political or economic interest’. Nevertheless, the Congregation did not prevent Italy from benefiting from the activity of missionaries, provided that any political interests did not conflict with the religious ones they had to pursue. Jacobini implied also that the religious schools would agree to many of the conditions imposed by the government of Rome. However, they could not accept the use of the Italian flag as an ‘official expression of patronage’.9 France would have interpreted such a gesture as an official renunciation of its religious protectorate, which, on the contrary, the Holy See kept acknowledging.

The aversion of the Italian government Shortly after, Schiaparelli conferred with Crispi. The strong anticlericalism and aggressive colonialism of the Prime Minister was in stark contrast with the intentions of the young archaeologist. He pointed out that lay schools could be established in major centres where ‘Italian colonies were quite numerous’, whereas it would be too expensive to maintain them in minor ones only inhabited by local people. By using religion as an instrument to gain a foothold, better results could be obtained with considerably less expenditure. The secretary added that the conflict between State and Church should not have been the reason for mistrusting the missionaries. The Holy See never ordered them to oppose the colonial aspirations of the government of Rome. On the contrary, missionaries had demonstrated many times their ‘patriotism and affection’ towards Italian institutions.10 Crispi argued that the patronage of the schools that Propaganda Fide had just refused was not dependent on the ‘protectorate of the missions’. A foreign protectorate could coexist very well with the ‘patronage of the King of Italy on Italian schools, run by Italian missionaries’.11 The Prime Minister added that, ‘in the current situation of Italian politics’, his government could not make any use of Italian missionaries because they depended on ‘a hostile authority’ as the Catholic Church. Furthermore, being under the protectorate of foreign powers, they taught primarily French.12 The 9 Piano, Memorie e documenti, 25. 10 See Schiaparelli’s speech at the Consiglio dei delegati (Florence, 14–15 November 1888), in La Rassegna Nazionale, 10 (1888), XLIV, 686. 11 Piano, Memorie e documenti, 25. 12 La Rassegna Nazionale, 10 (1888), XLIV, 687.

100 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

irritation of the Italian government with regard to passing the circular Aspera rerum conditio could not be more evident. Thus, aversion towards Italian Catholic missions – considered to be more likely swayed by French expansionistic objectives as a result of the new direction taken by Vatican diplomacy – increased enormously.

The increase of lay state schools ANSMI leaders could not ignore Crispi’s allegation, according to which the Association was favouring the French influence in financing religious institutes that refused the patronage of the King of Italy. Thus, on 5 August 1888, in order to reassure the founding members that their money would not be used ‘to expand the French influence abroad’, they decided to stop funding all the institutions under French protectorate. At the same time, they asked to extend the patronage of King Umberto I to the schools owned by the ANSMI (three at that time, all situated in Upper Egypt),13 quickly meeting with outright refusal.14 To strengthen the hostility towards the schools managed by religious congregations, a report on the Riordinamento delle scuole italiane all’estero (‘Reorganization of Italian schools abroad’) was presented to Parliament on 11 February 1889.15 The inspectors found that boys’ schools run by missionaries were deficient in many respects concerning: mistrust between local authorities and the people; discipline; insufficient preparation of teachers; widespread aversion towards the Italian State; and the atmosphere of religious intolerance. Crispi claimed that such conditions made those schools ‘useless’ to the propagation of the national language abroad. Since the hopes placed by his predecessors in the Franciscans ‘had failed’, he promoted centralized reform according to which ‘all primary and secondary [Italian] schools abroad were declared governmental’.16 Furthermore, additional schools would be founded mostly in the Mediterranean basin, where ‘the political and commercial interests of Italy were more vital’. Many of these would be established ‘in important centres which, though lacking 13 Piano, Memorie e documenti, 26. 14 See the letter of Urbano Rattazzi to Augusto Conti (President of the ANSMI), Rome, 25 November 1888, in La Rassegna Nazionale, 11 (1889), XLV, 77. 15 Raccolta degli atti stampati per ordine della Camera dei deputati: XVI legislatura – Sessione terza, 1889 (Rome, 1889), vol. 205, doc. nr. VIII, 7. 16 Ibidem, 9.

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

101

Italian families at present, will hopefully become trading hubs to the East in the near future’.17 Senator Alessandro Rossi, member and main backer of the ANSMI – and ‘tireless advocate of many initiatives aimed at encouraging Italian colonialism’18 – lashed out against this plan (27 June). The wool industrialist argued that many of the missionaries subject to the French protectorate were able to ‘serve the scopes pursued by the [Italian] Government for furthering [its] political influence on the East’. The ANSMI was born just to enhance such valuable resources. Since its foundation, the Association had already spent the considerable sum of 85,369 Lire to subsidize existing schools and to build others managed by the Association itself. In these institutes there was total religious freedom, since half of the students were Catholics and the other half were Eastern Christians and Muslims. Thus, it was necessary for the government to resume financial funding to private missionary schools by placing them under the supervision of the ANSMI. The government had also to consider that the Franciscans in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean were managing a very consistent educational system: 2000 students in Egypt; 4000 between Syria and Mesopotamia; 1000 in Albania; 2000 in the remainder of the Balkan Peninsula and in Asia Minor. In all, there were approximately 9000 pupils of both genders whom those religious were teaching Italian. This fact was even more remarkable when compared with the number of students attending missionary French schools in the same territories (30,000), for which the government of Paris provided ‘huge funds’.19 Crispi replied to having established lay schools for ‘extreme necessity’, once he had ‘noted that the religious ones […] lacked all those conditions […] that would provide a good education and a good instruction […] to our fellow nationals’ abroad. He added that collaboration with the congregations that had accepted the conditions imposed by the government was continuing, as in the case of the nuns of Ivrea and the Franciscan missionary nuns. Not only were religious schools inefficient, but also they had often misused government financing. In Crispi’s view, the schools founded on his initiative ‘bloomed’ in a few months because they were lay and welcomed ‘people

17 Ibidem, 12. 18 Ianari, Lo stivale nel mare. Italia, Mediterraneo, Islam: alle origini di una politica, 39. 19 Atti parlamentari della Camera dei Senatori. Discussioni. XVI Legislatura – Sessione 1889 (Rome, 1889), vol. 61, 910–921.

102 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

from all nationalities, leaving […] their families [the freedom] to introduce them to their own religion’.20

A first detailed report on Italian schools abroad Few weeks later, the government started elaborating on specific legislation on the reorganization of Italian schools abroad – issued by royal decree on 8 December 1889 – that changed completely the policy pursued by previous governments. As homage to its anticlerical tendencies and to the importance assigned to the educational institutes in the framework of Italy’s expansionistic plans, the government would favour lay public schools and more than double the financing for their foundation and maintenance (from 405,000 to 1,033,710 Lire). Many of the pre-existing lay private schools – founded a few decades earlier on the initiative of the colonies and afterwards financially supported by the government – were nationalized (teachers, nominated by the government, would then have held the rank of public employees). At the same time, many others were opened in the East and in the Mediterranean basin to reinforce the bond between Italian emigrants and their mother country. The private schools situated in the Americas and Europe – a great part of which succeeded because they had arisen from and were supported by several flourishing colonies – preserved their autonomy; they continued receiving only modest subsidies. In the report presented to King Umberto for approval of the decree, the government pointed out that it was not possible to count on mission schools. Though still receiving subsidies from the State, they had progressively turned their teaching against the ‘Italian national sentiment’ (the inspectors sent by Crispi in the East had noticed that some missionaries refused to teach that Rome was the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, in order not to endorse the usurpation of the Pope). Primary schools would ask no admission fee. Also, the poorest families should have been granted the opportunity of sending their children to these schools. Otherwise, ‘left on the street’ where languages different from Italian were spoken, ‘little by little [they] would have stopped speaking their native language’.21 Some of the Egyptian centres selected to establish these new schools overlapped with those where the ANSMI had long since been managing some institutes of its own. The public ones, obviously, started to compete 20 Ibidem, 930–933. 21 Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia, 2 January 1890, nr. 1, 2–6.

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

103

right away with those run by missionaries. In the following months, ANSMI’s leaders found themselves in serious difficulties. At last, once again Alessandro Rossi got back in at the Senate (19 June 1890), claiming that lay schools were not enough ‘to gain a foothold’ in the region. It was therefore necessary ‘to let government lay schools and missionary schools grow in harmony’. The public action of the government should have been coupled with private action of the missions.22 Crispi replied that the schools founded by him were providing 21,820 students with free education, in comparison with the 7427 of two years earlier (school year 1887–1888). The government had instituted them mostly in response to the interference of foreign religious orders, in particular the Jesuits. The French schools in particular exerted ‘considerable influence over all countries in the East’, where they had started a real war against the Friars Minor (Franciscans). Such struggles for influence between religious communities became ‘strongly political’ – and he did not intend to finance institutes endorsing the political interests of Paris.23

First fall of Crispi and its impact on religious schools abroad While the ANSMI was facing such hostilities and Crispi was trying to regain Italy’s prestige by leading expansionary action in Eritrea, the number of schools directed by the Association increased: four in the territory of the apostolic prefecture of Upper Egypt (al-Fayum, Beni-Suef, Assiut, and Luxor); and three on the Red Sea, one at Assab and two at Massawa and Otumlo. These were mainly elementary boys’ and girls’ schools (exceeding 600 units) with pupils of every religion, handled in the main by Franciscan missionaries. Donations however, after those rather conspicuously dated to 1888, diminished drastically. In Italy, only members of certain political and industrial sectors appreciated the government’s colonial policy, after all. Many people considered it more convenient to employ the already scant public resources for developing non-cultivated lands and education within the country, where the illiteracy rate, 30 years after unification, was still quite high. Therefore, given the shortage of offers, the leaders of the Association could not send sufficient funds to their own institutes between 1890 and 1892.

22 Atti parlamentari della Camera dei Senatori. Discussioni. XVI Legislatura – Sessione 1889–90, (Rome, 1890), vol. 63, 1287–1295. 23 Ibidem, 1304–1305.

104 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

In this context occurred the first fall of Crispi (6 February 1891), whose education bill, at least from a quantitative standpoint, had turned out to be quite effective. Government schools abroad amounted to 92: 20 in Asian Turkey and 18 in the European part (several of which were in the Albanian region, where Italy aimed to exert more significant influence at the expense of Austria); 16 in Egypt: 31 in Tunisia; 11 in Greece; 7 in Tripolitania; 6 in Rumania; and 1 in Bulgaria. Seven were secondary schools, 61 elementary, and 24 kindergartens. They absorbed a large part of the 1.5 million Lire invested by the government to support these institutes. Funded schools (including those in Europe and the Americas), on the other hand, comprised almost 200 units. Within this group, the religious ones (about ten) absorbed the meagre sum of 28,700 Lire in subsidies, half as much they used to receive during the last Depretis governments.24 The plan of the new government, headed by Antonio Starrabba di Rudinì (February 1891), besides mitigating Crispi’s anti-French and adventurist policy, envisaged putting an end to the finanza allegra (‘haphazard finance management’) of previous executive commissions. Rudinì considered it necessary to take action also with respect to the funds allocated to Italian schools abroad. The Prime Minister argued that, ‘in the interest of national Treasury’, the first criterion to implementing the reform of schools abroad was to transform ‘some’ of the public ones into ‘local subsidized schools’. In fact, in the school year 1887–1888 foreign educational institutes had received 333,000 Lire for 7000 students, whilst in 1890–1891 (three years after Crispi’s reform) almost four times that amount had been allocated for not even twice that number of pupils (13,935) – 7995 of whom were foreigners. A large part of that figure was meant for the children of the 80,000 Italians living in the East – mainly in Tunisia (28,000), Turkey (25,000) and Egypt (20,000). It was too much, even for a region where Italy had important political and economic interests to safeguard. The new government’s reform relied on two other criteria: first, schools had to be ‘mainly’ for Italians – otherwise the government would have been burdened too much because it also exploited resources intended for reducing homeland illiteracy; second, it was necessary to establish schools only where it was possible to get ‘some good results in terms of both commercial and political interests’.25 24 ‘Relazione sulle scuole italiane all’estero’ (9 March 1892), in Raccolta degli atti stampati per ordine della Camera dei deputati. Vol. III (Documenti): XVII legislatura – Sessione unica, 1890–1892 (Rome, 1892), vol. 223, doc. nr. XXXIV, 3. 25 Atti del Parlamento italiano. Camera dei deputati. XIV. Sessione 1890–91, Discussioni. Vol. II, (Rome, 1891), vol. 158, 2094.

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

105

In accordance with its programme, the government closed 50 out of 92 government schools abroad by royal decree of 28 June 1891.26 Approximately 80% of the 900,000 Lire allocated was assigned to government schools. To continue teaching Italian in Luxor, al-Fayum, and Beni-Suef, the government assigned the ANSMI an annual subsidy of 4000 Lire for the three schools managed by the Association there (saving therefore 13,200 Lire a year, since the three state schools abolished cost 17,200 Lire). All the teaching material left from the latter schools was also moved to the Association, which obviously had no problems accepting the strict conditions imposed by the government.27 The following years were not easy, at least financially. The subsidies that the Association were able to distribute were so meagre as to be totally ‘ineffective’. However, the goodwill of the Italian authorities started to seem comforting. In April 1893, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Benedetto Brin (1892–1893), reassured Schiaparelli that the government was ‘always glad to grant moral support to the Associations that aim[ed] at maintaining Italy’s good name’.28 That year the governmental subsidy of 4000 Lire was also renewed. Furthermore, prominent figures from the business world, mostly supporting Italian colonialism, started to join the Florence conciliatorist group – within which the Association was born and developed – together with several important members of the aristocracy and wealthy bourgeoisie from northern and central Italy. The 100 members of 1886 multiplied, as did the regional committees, spreading also to some cities in southern Italy.29 The ordinary income, however, did not increase. After having reached 50,000 Lire in 1888, it fell to approximately 30,000 Lire on average. Only in 1895 did the ordinary income regain its original 1888 level.

Cooperation between State and Church in Eritrea: the founding of the apostolic prefecture Collaboration with the Italian government increasingly became closer in the Eritrean colony. A large part of the ANSMI’s proceeds was diverted towards this region, with the main goal of spreading Italian culture among 26 Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia, 25 July 1891, nr. 173, 5–6. 27 Ibidem, 6. 28 Piano, Memorie e documenti, 62. 29 In 1888, the number of committee members amounted to 1400, further increasing to 1500 in 1896; Grange, L’Italie et la Méditerranée: les fondements d’une politique étrangère, I, 836, 838.

106 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

the recently conquered population. In this context, the Holy See adopted an important measure aimed at backing up the Italy’s expansionistic plans in the region by creating an apostolic prefecture in Eritrea, entrusted to Italian Capuchins and separate from the apostolic vicariate of Abyssinia administrated by French Lazarists. In order to achieve this goal, ANSMI members acted as official mediators between the liberal State and the Holy See. The operation was successful also thanks to the more moderate political approach adopted by Crispi’s new government. After having been reinstated as Prime Minister (December 1893), the Sicilian statesman had to face a severe economic-financial crisis, further aggravated by the escalation of social unrest. More than ever, the enemies were anarchism and socialism, which seemed to threaten the very survival of the State – a fear shared by both Catholics and the anticlerical lay bourgeoisie. By that time, Crispi had realized how imperative it was to mitigate as much as possible the bitter conflict between State and Church. The political support of Catholics, in fact, could play a decisive role in tackling socialist and anarchical leanings, as well as in furthering his colonial ambitions, especially through missionary organizations. Secret negotiations between the government and the Holy See aimed at resolving the Eritrean issue had a positive outcome through the will of the Pope himself in early September 1894. The institution of the new apostolic prefecture was meant to ease Italian migratory flows in Eritrea. However, such hopes were irreparably shattered by the defeat of the Italian army at Adwa (1 March 1896), so disastrous that it brought about the end of Crispi’s political career. The failure of Crispi’s colonial initiative (10,000 dead and about 500 million Lire splurged in times of severe economic downturn and social unrest) dragged the ANSMI into an unprecedented crisis. The strong anti-colonialist reaction within public opinion resulted in the demise of the government and yet another press campaign against the ANSMI. The Association had to face a severe haemorrhaging of members and significant reduction in income.30 Whilst ordinary subscriptions remained relatively stable, the major ones supporting Eritrea – which had reached 129,000 Lire in just two years of Italian ‘Ethiopian imperialism’ (1894–1895) – almost disappeared. In 1896, its income (60,000 Lire) could barely cover the administrative expenses and the maintenance of seven boys’ and girls’ schools in Upper Egypt (22,000 Lire), in Izmir (7000 Lire), and in the Eritrean prefecture (16,200), as well 30 The committee of Milan, by far the most important one, lost one-third of its members and three-quarters of its income. See Grange, L’Italie et la Méditerranée, I, 838.

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

107

as the supply of educational material to other religious schools in Eritrea, in the East, and in Lower Egypt.31

Initial progress of ANSMI In the following months, the Association began to slowly recover and to be regarded with greater favour by the government. This was mainly due to the increasing attention the government was giving the missions after the disastrous colonial experience and the little success met by government lay schools. The failure of these schools had been determined mostly by the poorly prepared staff sent to manage them and by the hostility of emigrants, who, on the contrary, should have benefited from them. Given the reluctance of the religious orders to let the government interfere in the management of their institutes, the Association was considered finally as a valuable intermediary. Thanks to its involvement, the mission’s educational and charitable resources could be used for the Italian expansion towards Africa and the East. The concepts that ANSMI’s leaders had been advocating in vain for years seemed finally to prevail. Many more government members were convinced of the necessity to change attitude towards the papacy. At that time, the government started to entrust newly established schools directly to missionaries (in particular to Salesians and Franciscans) and to replace lay teaching members by religious staff in government schools. Furthermore, more and more Italian religious headed to Italy. In addition, France, having tightened up a firm alliance with Russia – a well-known protector of Greek Orthodox clergy – seemed to have a far less significant religious protectorate over the missions. Government support for the ANSMI appeared publicly evident when Rudinì appointed Emilio Visconti Venosta as Minister of Foreign Affairs within his third and fourth cabinets (1896–1898). On 15 April 1897, in a circular sent to consular and diplomatic officers, the Minister underlined having regarded the ANSMI ‘with favour since its inception’. Moreover, his ministry, appreciating the ANSMI’s ‘civil and national’ contribution, would continue to provide it with moral and financial support.32 The government

31 Le Missioni Cattoliche Italiane, I (1897), 129. Additional subsidies were distributed for ‘assisting Italian emigrants’. 32 De Robbio, Le scuole italiane all’estero, 14.

108 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

also signed an agreement with the Association to maintain, in addition to its own institutes, the girls’ schools in Izmir and other centres in Upper Egypt. At that time, state schools again totalled 51, out of which 8 were secondary, 23 elementary for boys, 18 for girls, and 11 kindergarten, for an overall school population of 8685 pupils (2000 more than in 1892). The schools managed by emigrants numbered 96, costing a total of 91,000 Lire in government subsidies for 10,607 pupils. Lastly, religious schools that had accepted all the conditions imposed by the government – actually less restrictive than those demanded by Crispi (inspections, textbooks used in the Kingdom, and ‘acts of reverence for patriotic celebrations’) – amounted to 30, with 5926 pupils and costing 51,000 Lire in subsidies, allocated by the ANSMI or directly by the government through the consuls. In these schools, learning Italian was not only compulsory but Italian was also the teaching language for all disciplines. The ANSMI, however, made small progress. Schools under its authority were rather limited in number. Besides, the Association was never granted the unconditioned patronage of diocesan bishops, as was the case with similar organizations founded in other nations. The long-standing hostility of a large part of the Church hierarchy prevented the establishment of a firm network of parishes supporting the ANSMI with appropriate donations. This, among other things, prevented it from becoming a popular association like the Œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi in Lyon. Moreover, Italian members of the ANSMI did not intend to give up the lay educational support introduced by Crispi, which, however, never again reached the 1891 quantitative and budget levels. At any rate, that lay educational system was never able to fulfil expectations. In comparison, the religious one became more prominent in terms of both the number of schools and the amount of subsidies allocated by the State. At the turn of the twentieth century, the renewed colonial ambitions of Rome’s government and the increasingly fierce conflict with the French religious protectorate turned the ANSMI into a valuable ally that had to be supported financially in an adequate manner.

The ANSMI overcoming financial straits, and its role in Italian foreign policy Few months later, the ANSMI overcame its financial straits definitively. In December 1901, the government of Rome decided to award the Association the compensation received from the Chinese government for the heavy

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

109

damage caused to Italian Catholic missions during the anti-colonialist Boxer Rebellion (18,600,000 Lire, to be paid over 39 years).33 The Association gained greater efficiency, enabling its leading members to implement action as regards international affairs. A large part of the first annuities was employed in reconstructing, restoring, setting up, and running missions in China. However, the Rome government asked the ANSMI to allocate 22% of this annual sum to Africa and the East (approximately 170,000 Lire), thereby allowing the Association to fit organically into its plans for the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, the decennial cooperation between the government and several lay or religious associations that were taking care ‘of the civil, moral, and religious education’ of emigrants had yielded tangible results: government lay schools amounted to 79, whereas the subsidized ones had literally multiplied, reaching 320 units for an overall school population of 38,677 students. Administrative efficiency also improved markedly, since the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was allocating barely 985,000 Lire annually to finance all these institutes, which corresponded to 25 Lire for each student (in Crispi’s time 45 Lire).34 In 1904, the Association was managing 23 educational and charitable institutes founded on its own behalf or inherited from the government or from religious institutes: five in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica run by Franciscan missionary nuns; seven in Egypt (entrusted to the same nuns and the Reformed Friars Minor); six in Palestine (five held by Salesians and one by Franciscan nuns); four in Asia Minor (three by Salesians and one by the nuns of Ivrea); and one in Constantinople, also directed by Salesians.35 Seventeen of these were schools, three orphanages (one in Bethlehem and two in the Libyan region), and three agricultural colonies (one in Tripolitania and two in Palestine). Using the ANSMI as mediator, the government of Rome could now also avoid – in the light of a rapprochement policy with France – overly offending the sensibility of Paris. The strategy of purchasing lands and of managing first hand newly founded schools, hostels, orphanages, hospitals, clinics, and kindergartens – usually entrusted to Catholic congregations consisting of Italian religious men – was applied on a large scale, especially across China, 33 See Prinetti’s letter to Fedele Lampertico (ANSMI President), Rome, 23 December 1901, Le Missioni Cattoliche Italiane, VIII (1904), 1–6, 5. 34 Relazione sulle scuole italiane all’estero, written by the General Inspector for ‘Royal Italian schools abroad’, Professor Angelo Scalabrini (s.l., undated), 8. 35 Le Missioni Cattoliche Italiane, VIII (1904), 1–6, 7.

110 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. In some cases, the ANSMI just took over religious institutions that were barely surviving, or state schools at a standstill over a long time for not having met with the favour of the local population. The fact that these institutions were independent of the Propaganda Fide, and belonged officially to a non-ecclesiastic association such as the ANSMI, had the major advantage of keeping them away from foreign religious protectorates. Invariably, outside these schools, turned into effective instruments for Italian penetration into the East, the Italian flag was flying. The Propaganda Fide itself seemed to have changed attitudes, as Schiaparelli pointed out in July 1903: the relationships had become ‘good’, even if only ‘unofficially’. The Congregation ‘complies with this directive: to not acknowledge our existence officially, but not to counter our actions; it neither approves us nor counters us, therefore indirectly it favours us’.36 In Italy at that time, several important factors within Internal Affairs were leading to a rapprochement between State and Church: first, the growth of the Socialist Party, then the popular riots in spring 1898, followed by the murder of King Umberto two years later. Such events prompted liberal Catholics to close ranks, so that a temporary solution to the not expedit was imposed by the Pope for the general election in November 1904, which had as a corollary the development of a strong patriotic sentiment in a growing number of different Catholic groups.

Franco-Italian agreement on the religious protectorate (August 1905) At the same time, favourable political and diplomatic events allowed Italy to challenge successfully the secular role of France in the East. First, Tommaso Tittoni – long sympathizing with conciliatorist stances and appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in September 1903 – placed at the core of its policy achieving a détente between the Vatican and the State.37 In his opinion, missionary clergy was a real ‘diplomatic force’ and a ‘backup asset’ to Italian diplomacy. With him, Italy embraced definitively the foreign policy approach of France, according to which – drawing on the famous statement of Prime Minister Léon Gambetta (1881–1882) – anticlericalism would have never had to be un article d’exportation.38 36 Grange, L’Italie et la Méditerranée, I, 830, footnote 12. 37 Tittoni was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs from September 1903 to December 1905 and from May 1906 to December 1909. 38 Spadolini, Giolitti e i Cattolici, 46.

The ex ternal cultural and linguistic polic y of the Italian government

111

While Italy was moving in this direction, the government of Paris was heading the other way: the French Parliament pushed forward the anticlerical stance adopted since the first years of the Third Republic, approving of a series of legislative measures in ecclesiastical matters which culminated in the separation between State and Church (July 1905). At the same time, Italy’s friendship was becoming ever more important for the government of Paris, considering the increasingly harsh contrast with Germany and the weakening of its international alliances, with Russia in particular. Therefore, Italian and French internal policy issues, coupled with the favourable international situation and the Holy See’s change of attitude, enabled the Rome government to come to an agreement with Paris and put an end to French monopoly on religious protectorates in the East. Signed in August 1905, this agreement stipulated that the government of Rome could take over the protection of religious congregations and Italian institutes that filed official requests. The ANSMI played a central role on this occasion. Given the absence of any official relationship between Church and State, the Association was for long acting as an intermediary between ecclesiastical institutions and national diplomacy, significantly easing the rapprochement process between secular and religious powers in Italy. Schiaparelli, promising adequate subsidies from the ANSMI – i.e., being able to replace the then lacking French ones – succeeded in convincing Eastern congregations, mainly consisting of Italians, to operate under the protection of Rome. Having witnessed how the ‘Roman issue’ gradually was mitigated and how France was losing prestige due to its anticlerical politics, these congregations agreed wholeheartedly to join the network of educational and charitable institutions dependent on Italy, and started to play a central role within Italian expansionist plans. Eastern Italian congregations, now under the protectorate of their own nation, allowed the government of Rome to further increase its activities, applying the same strategies already experimented with by the other nations: founding schools, hospitals, educational and charitable institutes, hostels for pilgrims, and sanctuaries. The agreement of August 1905 furthered an even faster development of the ANSMI. In the following years, Italian nationalists – among whom conciliatorist Catholics were out in front – realized that it was urgent for Italy to become a more powerful country by pursuing a more active foreign policy. Furthermore, it was necessary to provide an adequate outlet for the massive manpower surplus (in 1913 emigration reached its peak, with a steady number of 800,000 departures a year). Such a surplus should have been channelled towards colonial regions directly controlled by the government, not only to ensure that those who left their country would not lose

112 

PAOLO PIER ACCINI

their national identity too, but also to prevent such vast human resources from benefiting other competing powers. Paralysed during World War I, the ANSMI became fully operative again after the war, greatly implementing its activities and playing an even more significant role within Italian expansionist policy during the interwar period.

Bibliography Appunti sulle scuole italiane all’estero (Rome: 1895). Archive of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (APF), Rome. Atti parlamentari della Camera dei Senatori. De Robbio, Gabriele, Le scuole italiane all’estero (Naples: Pierro e figlio, 1908). Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia. Grange, Daniel J., L’Italie et la Méditerranée (1896–1911): les fondements d’une politique étrangère, (2 vols.; Rome: École française de Rome, 1994). Ianari, Vittorio, Lo stivale nel mare. Italia, Mediterraneo, Islam: alle origini di una politica (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2006). Le Missioni Cattoliche Italiane, I (1897), VIII (1904). Piano, Erminia, Memorie e documenti per una storia dell’Associazione Nazionale per Soccorrere i Missionari Cattolici Italiani (1884–1928) (Civitella S. Paolo, 1970) [unpublished typescript kept at the ANSMI archive, adapted from a manuscript probably written just before World War II]. Raccolta degli atti stampati per ordine della Camera dei deputati: XVI legislatura – Sessione terza, 1889 (Rome, 1889). La Rassegna Nazionale, 9–11 (1887–1889). Relazione al Parlamento sulle scuole italiane all’estero (Rome: Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 1880). Relazione della Commissione ministeriale sulle scuole italiane all’estero (Florence, 1869). Spadolini, Giovanni, Giolitti e i Cattolici (Florence: Le Monnier, 1970).

About the author Paolo Pieraccini obtained PhDs in history and international politics, and in history of international relations and law. He has published several books on the diplomatic, religious, and legal aspects of the question of Jerusalem, and Palestinian and Cypriot Catholicism. He is currently working on a book on the political purposes of archaeology in Israel/Palestine (1967–2016), and on the relationship between Zionism and Catholicism in the Holy Land (1897–1948). Email: [email protected]

5

Expansion du français et des manières françaises en Europeaux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles Résultat d’une politique royale extérieure ou effet d’un certain prestige? Henri Besse*

Sanchez-Summerer, Karène & Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th – 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980600/ch05 Abstract In order to answer the question of the title, we first recall Ferdinand Brunot’s thesis, as defended in an article (1913) and in volume V (1917) and VIII (1934) of his Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900: the royal policy is for nothing in the expansion of the French language in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. For further support of Brunot’s views, we also review Le Papillotage, a short ‘comical and moral work’ anonymously printed in Rotterdam in 1765, which is an ironical allegory of the role played by France’s fashion and manners in the diffusion of its language. Brunot’s thesis and the anonymous criticism of this expansion are then confronted with recent studies which seem to conclude to the contrary. We also expand on three main concepts used by those various authors (language of civilization, language of culture, language of prestige), arguing in favour of the third one. Keywords: Foreign and cultural policy, French culture and language, French juridical model, language of civilization, language of culture, language of prestige

* ENS-Lyon

114 

HENRI BESSE

Lors des négociations préalables à l’un des deux traités de Westphalie (1648), celui de Münster (entre la France et les puissances catholiques, dont l’Empire des Habsbourg de Vienne), les plénipotentiaires français refusèrent de soumettre à la discussion des textes rédigés en latin et s’en tinrent à une version française. Une divergence d’interprétation quant au comportement des négociateurs français est à l’origine de l’idée de ce colloque. Faut-il interpréter ce refus comme résultant d’une politique linguistique extérieure de la France, analogue à celle menée à l’intérieur du royaume depuis François Ier, laquelle visait à substituer la langue du roi à la langue de Rome? Ou faut-il l’interpréter, entre autres hypothèses, comme résultant de la relative inhabileté des plénipotentiaires français à manier le latin? Pour résoudre cette divergence interprétative, anecdotique de prime abord, nous rappellerons la ‘thèse’ de Ferdinand Brunot dans son Histoire de la langue française quant au politique dans l’expansion du français et de sa culture en Europe aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles,1 puis nous présenterons un petit ‘ouvrage comique et moral’ d’un auteur anonyme, sorte d’allégorie du rôle de la mode française dans cette expansion (ce dont Brunot ne traite qu’incidemment), avant de confronter et cette ‘thèse’ et cet anonyme aux études actuelles à même d’infirmer ou de confirmer ce que l’un et l’autre avancent.

La ‘thèse’ de Brunot: une langue qui s’est imposée en Europe par son prestige Brunot ne dénomme pas thèse son point de vue, en raison de sa conception positiviste de la science:2 ‘quand on aura amassé tous les faits et tous les textes et qu’on en aura fait la critique […] on pourra en déduire3 des faits généraux qui seront de l’ordre de ceux auxquels, dans nos sciences approchées, 4 on donne le nom de lois’.5 1 Nous nous appuyons sur un article paru fin 1913 dans la Revue de Paris et deux des tomes de son Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900, le t. V (un volume) paru en 1917 et le t. VIII (deux volumes) paru en 1934, cités dans la réédition (1966-1972) de cette Histoire (t. V, 1966 ; VIII, 1967). 2 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. VIII, VII. 3 Nos it. ; nous abrégeons nos italiques en nos it., vs. ital. orig. (italiques originales). 4 Il y est question de ‘sociologie historique’ et de ‘philologie psychologique’, sciences qui n’ont pas l’exactitude des sciences de la nature mais qui s’en ‘approchent’, et que Brunot oppose à tout ce qu’il taxe de ‘métaphysique’ ou de ‘théologique’. 5 Nous avons critiqué cette épistémologie (où déduire a le sens d’induire) dans l’application que Brunot en a fait à l’enseignement de la grammaire d’une langue, dont il conçoit les règles

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

115

Une ‘universalisation’ qui ne doit rien à la politique extérieure des rois de France La thèse de Brunot est formulée brièvement dans la Préface de son tome V (1917), dont les chapitres ont été écrits peu avant ou peu après un article paru dans la Revue de Paris (1913), qui est une sorte d’abrégé des six derniers chapitres de ce tome.6 Il la nuancera après la Grande Guerre dans son tome VIII (1934), aboutissant non à des ‘lois’ mais, plus modestement, à un Essai d’explication.7 On lit dans la Préface de 1917, à propos de ‘la diffusion de la langue française hors des frontières du royaume, qui a fini, dans les premières années du XVIIIe siècle, par l’élever au rang de langue diplomatique’, que:  ‘Rien dans sa [de Louis XIV] politique n’a été calculé, aucune mesure n’a été prise, aucune intrigue n’a été menée en vue d’obtenir ce privilège, au point qu’à tout prendre les victimes et les ennemis de la monarchie de droit divin, les réfugiés et les pamphlétaires, ont peut-être plus contribué au résultat que ses ministres, ses agents et ses pensionnés.’8 Pour Brunot, ‘le vainqueur ici […] fut le génie français’: une ‘élite, groupée à Paris et à Versailles, avait fait son idéal d’un esprit de politesse dont la séduction était irrésistible’;9 ce qui engendra ‘une culture consciente’, fruit de ‘cent ans de travail’ (depuis la Renaissance donc) que cette petite élite effectua sur sa langue et sur son art de vivre. Point de vue très élitiste10 qui peut surprendre chez un républicain engagé comme Brunot et que les tenants du ‘matériel’ ou de la puissance militaire jugent volontiers hypocrite ou naïf. Dans l’Avertissement de 1934, on lit que, dans la période ‘qui va de 1715 à 1789’, alors que la situation de la langue française ‘en Europe est la plus brillante, des événements politiques et militaires compromettent son avenir sur tous les points de la Terre où elle avait commencé à s’implanter’, et que, plus tard, lorsque ‘la force’ vint appuyer son extension, ‘ce fut de façon si peu systématique et si maladroite que la politique l’a desservie en la soutenant mal’.11 Bref, Brunot répond à la question de notre titre en affirmant que si la politique royale a joué un rôle dans l’expansion européenne de la langue comme ‘des faits observés et généralisés’ (Besse, ‘Ferdinand Brunot’). 6 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. V, 387-431. 7 Ibidem, t. VIII, 799-838. 8 Ibidem, t. V, V-VI. 9 Ibidem, nos it. 10 Proche de la sanior pars de Vaugelas : celle de la Cour et de Paris, des écrivains et des gens savants en la langue. 11 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. V-VIII, nos it.

116 

HENRI BESSE

et de la culture françaises durant les dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles, ce rôle a été d’autant plus efficace que ses rois (de Louis XIII à Louis XVI) se sont abstenus de les diffuser hors de France.

Sur ‘les débuts du français dans la diplomatie’ De l’histoire compliquée de ces ‘débuts du français dans la diplomatie’, retenons quelques ‘faits’ qui ne sont pas toujours rappelés quand on se réfère à l’Histoire de la langue française de Brunot. Son article dans la Revue de Paris s’ouvre sur un principe de droit, qu’oublient parfois les tenants actuels du ‘français, langue de la diplomatie’:12 De l’avis commun de tous ceux qui ont traité du droit international […] il n’y a pas de langue diplomatique, j’entends par là qu’il n’y a aucune langue, ni morte ni vivante, dont les conventions et les usages diplomatiques imposent universellement l’emploi sans une entente préalable. Le principe de l’égalité des États s’y oppose, […] chacun des États garde le droit de négocier et de traiter dans sa langue.13

Mais ce principe n’exclut ‘ni les usages contraires, ni les conventions par lesquelles, dans une circonstance donnée, on s’accorde à choisir, soit la langue d’une des parties, soit une langue tierce’.14 Le latin a longtemps joué ce rôle tiers en Europe avant que le français ne lui succède. Un avantage non de droit mais de fait, dont Brunot veut ‘rechercher quand, comment et pourquoi il a [été] obtenu’. Pour lui, si, en France, ‘certains hommes d’État’ ont fait du français, à partir du seizième siècle, ‘la langue nationale’, il n’existe, à sa connaissance, aucun document autorisant ‘à croire qu’un seul d’entre eux ait compris l’intérêt qu’il y aurait eu à en faire aussi la langue internationale’.15 Cependant, le latin ne s’employant plus dans ‘la vie pratique, publique ou privée’ sans ‘une certaine gêne’, le français en profita: il était déjà d’usage, dès la fin du ministère Richelieu, ‘dans les réceptions, les audiences et la correspondance diplomatique’, et certaines ‘puissances

12 D’après le TLFI, le mot diplomatie ne date que de la Révolution (1790), et l’expression langue diplomatique ne semble être entrée dans l’usage qu’au dix-neuvième siècle. 13 Brunot, ‘Les débuts du français dans la diplomatie’, 699, nos it. 14 Ibidem. 15 Ibidem, 700-707.

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

117

se servaient avec nous du français’, même si la France continuait à écrire en latin ‘à l’Empire, aux États du Nord, à d’autres aussi’. Et toujours selon cet article de 1913, des trois plénipotentiaires envoyés par la France à Münster (1648), un seul, le comte d’Avaux, ‘savait bien l’allemand’ et était bon ‘latiniste’; Abel Servien ne parlait pas allemand et mal latin; le duc de Longueville ‘comprenait le latin mais ne le parlait pas’. Une mésentente entre Servien et d’Avaux fit que ce dernier fut rappelé, et ne restèrent donc, pour les négociations finales, que deux médiocres ‘latinistes’. Dans son tome V, Brunot ajoute toutefois: ‘Quoi qu’il en soit, nos ambassadeurs avaient de bons clercs, et aucune des questions qui se posèrent à propos de langue ne s’explique par l’embarras où auraient été les Français de parler latin.’16 Le conflit entre les plénipotentiaires français et impériaux éclata à propos des pièces écrites à produire pour alimenter les débats. Les impériaux demandèrent que les Français produisent ‘leurs “déclarations” en latin, en se conformant à l’usage suivi à la Diète d’Empire à Ratisbonne’; les Français leur firent réponse en français, refusant de les traduire en latin. Pour Brunot: ‘Tout le débat sur les langues entre la France et l’Empire est là en germe, avec le caractère qu’il garda jusqu’à la fin. Dans le traité, il ne fut même pas un instant question d’employer le français.’17 À ses yeux, ‘si la langue française joua son rôle’ à Münster, ‘ce rôle fut extrêmement modeste, et comme au dehors’, mais il n’en fut pas moins ‘très important’, car c’est ainsi que le français, ‘fût-ce par occasions et comme langue mondaine’, a fini par s’introduire ‘plus tard dans les débats et enfin dans les traités’.18 À Nimègue (1675-1678), les discussions portèrent de nouveau ‘sur la langue dans laquelle devaient être rédigés les pouvoirs’.19 Louis XIV, consulté, refusa ‘le stile de l’Empire’ jugeant qu’il fallait ‘ne rien changer à l’usage estably […] l’usage et la coustume [étant] l’unique regle et la decision de ces sortes de difficultéz’. En d’autres termes, c’est un domaine où le droit coutumier l’emporte sur le droit romain. Et à la diète de Francfort (1682), il aurait maintenu 20 ce point de vue: ‘si c’est le stile de l’Empire de faire ces sortes d’ecrits en latin, l’usage de la France est de les faire en françois’. Doctrine opposant pour ainsi dire deux droits coutumiers, même si celui 16 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. V, 394-395. 17 Brunot, ‘Les débuts du français dans la diplomatie’, 706. 18 Ibidem, nos it. 19 Ibidem, 711-716, nos it. 20 Lucien Bély (voir dans ce volume, ‘L’usage diplomatique de la langue française, instrument de la puissance’) cite Guido Braun qui conteste ‘l’interprétation trop forte que Brunot a donnée de cette affaire en utilisant un mémoire d’origine douteuse’.

118 

HENRI BESSE

de l’Empire était beaucoup plus ancien que celui de la France, que le Roi ne suivit pourtant pas au traité de Rastatt (1714). En marge d’une lettre que son plénipotentiaire, le maréchal de Villars, avait envoyée à son homologue impérial, le prince Eugène, où il lui rappelait que l’usage de la France était le français, le vieux monarque écrivit: ‘Le roy consent que le traitté soit dressé en latin.’ Mais Villars, ‘peu confiant en sa latinité’, fit attendre sa réponse au prince: ‘Le prince Eugène se lassa, et très vite. En deux jours, on signa un traité en français, le premier.’ Les impériaux se bornant à faire insérer un article21 précisant qu’il s’agissait d’un précédent ne pouvant pas être invoqué à l’avenir. Et ce n’est qu’à Hubertsbourg, en 1763,22 que cet ‘article spécial disparut’ et qu’on ‘traita en français sans condition ni réserve’. D’où la conclusion de Brunot: Je crois que si le français a fini par être adopté, c’est peut-être parce que les hommes d’État français n’ont jamais prétendu l’imposer, ni même le proposer. […] Et comme ils se gardaient, soit sagesse, soit plutôt indifférence, de prétendre faire accepter leur propre idiome, ils n’éveillèrent aucune susceptibilité, ils n’eurent qu’à laisser agir les facteurs puissants qui travaillaient pour eux. La révolution se fit d’elle-même.23

Ces ‘facteurs puissants’ sont liés à ce que le français était alors, dans les milieux diplomatiques européens, dominant sinon ‘au dedans’ du moins ‘au dehors’. Brunot récuse l’argument de certains ‘pamphlétaires allemands du commencement du dix-neuvième siècle’: ‘A quoi bon parler de contrainte, les princes allemands n’en avaient point besoin. Outre qu’ils se laissaient aller à leur goût, ils suivaient l’exemple de l’Europe entière.’ Pour lui, ‘notre agent le meilleur, celui dont l’ascendant fut irrésistible, ce fut le prestige de notre civilisation, de nos arts, de notre littérature, l’élégance attrayante de notre vie de cour et de salon.’ On retrouve dans le dernier chapitre du tome V à peu près les mêmes mots, sauf sur un point: Brunot y féminise singulièrement cet ‘agent’, nombre de princesses de France ayant épousé des princes étrangers.24 On a parfois dit qu’en Europe, le français était, aux dix-septième et dix-huitième

21 Cité dans ce volume par Schröder (‘External linguistic politics and policies in the German-Speaking countries of Central Europe’). 22 Traité qui mit officiellement fin à la guerre de Sept Ans entre la France et l’Autriche. 23 Brunot, ‘Les débuts du français dans la diplomatie’, 719-728, nos it. 24 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. V, 429-431.

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

119

siècles, le latin des femmes; Brunot dira, en 1934, que ‘dans les hautes classes’ européennes, il était ‘l’érudition de leur sexe’.25

Le français, langue dominante mais loin d’être exclusive dans les traités européens Après la Grande Guerre, Brunot entreprit, avec l’aide de correspondants (agents de la France ou universitaires locaux)26 dans diverses capitales, de vastes recherches dans les archives européennes non françaises, dont il rendit compte dans son tome VIII27 paru en 1934. Quant aux traités ou conventions ‘où la France est partie’28, Brunot en liste huit, entre 1735 et 1783, qui portent la réserve du traité de Rastatt; vingt-sept, entre 1713 et 1780, sans cette ‘réserve d’usage’; et un ‘fort petit nombre’ de traités bilingues, ‘rédigés en français et dans une autre langue’; la France continuant par ailleurs à traiter en latin ‘en 1727, en 1735, etc.’. Mais, pour Brunot, la politique de la France est désormais fixée même si elle accepte de signer des traités bilingues jusqu’en 1778: ‘Elle répugne à se servir d’une autre langue que la sienne.’ D’où il résulte que, au dix-huitième siècle, la ‘langue française n’avait point de droit ni de privilège reconnu et définitif’. Quant aux traités ou conventions ‘où la France n’est pas partie’,29 il en liste quarante-sept rédigés en français (le plus souvent sans la réserve de Rastatt); six bilingues où une des deux parties s’est servie du français; quelques-uns en latin, concernant ‘surtout des puissances vouées au latin (Papauté, Ordres religieux, Empire)’, et un ‘nombre considérable’ usant du latin et d’une autre langue, dont il ne retient qu’une douzaine. A quoi s’ajoutent une trentaine de traités ou conventions ‘rédigés dans une ou plusieurs langues autres que le français’.30 En ce qui concerne les négociations préparatoires aux traités et la ‘vie diplomatique’ qui les accompagne,31 Brunot s’appuie sur des ‘théoriciens 25 Ibidem, t. VIII, 913. 26 Un secrétaire d’ambassade à Berlin ; un directeur d’Institut à Lisbonne, Vienne et Madrid ; un archiviste-paléographe à Londres ; un professeur honoraire à l’université d’Uppsala en Suède (Ibidem, t. VIII, 802). 27 Ibidem, t. VIII, 799-838. 28 Ibidem, t. VIII, 804-810. 29 Ibidem, t. VIII, 811-818. 30 Dont le traité de Kutschouc-Kainardii de 1774 entre la Russie et la Turquie, rédigé en russe d’une part, en italien et en turc d’autre part, et que l’impératrice fera aussitôt traduire en français. 31 Ibidem, t. VIII, 819-824.

120 

HENRI BESSE

du protocole’ (dont F.-K. Moser auquel se réfère dans ce volume Konrad Schröder), souvent minutieux quant à l’emploi des langues dans les usages diplomatiques. Pour la France, ‘la tradition tenait lieu d’instruction: les envoyés français devaient user de leur langue’. Mais dans les correspondances, il n’y a ‘pour ainsi dire aucune nation qui suive […] un usage constant’, chacun ayant recours, selon ses compétences et celles de ses destinataires, à la langue convenant le mieux; à l’exception toutefois des envoyés de France à Londres, Berne et La Haye qui n’usent que du français, ‘l’usage les autoris[an]t à agir ainsi’. Pour Brunot, dans ces échanges écrits ou oraux corrélatifs aux traités, ‘toute généralisation se heurterait à des faits attestés’: Louis XV répond en latin, en 1738, à un envoyé de l’Empire. D’où sa conclusion: le français dispose certes dans les relations diplomatiques en Europe, au dix-huitième siècle, d’une ‘prééminence incontestée’, mais, et il insiste sur ce point, ‘il n’a pas de droits, d’aucune espèce’. Son Essai d’explication de 1934 reprend une grande partie des arguments avancés en 1913 et en 1917.32 Mais Brunot leur adjoint, entre d’autres, celui-ci: si le français l’a emporté sur le latin, c’est, ‘peut-être’, que ‘le Saint Empire Germanique en avait fait sa langue’ pour ses relations extérieures, et qu’il n’était dès lors ‘plus tout à fait une langue neutre’. À quoi il ajoute: ‘dans bien des cas, très réellement, les négociateurs ne se sentaient plus en état de rédiger des textes, où tout est souvent en nuances, avec la précision et l’habileté nécessaire’. Et cet essai se termine par des propos qui ne contredisent guère ceux de 1913 et 1917: Ces faits et une foule d’autres analogues expliquent le succès du français. Ce n’était pas le prestige de la France, si souvent battue, qui le recommandait. C’était encore moins une pression du Cabinet de Versailles qui l’imposait, elle l’eût plutôt compromise. On s’inclinait devant des goûts généralement répandus chez tous les Princes de l’Europe et autour d’eux. On peut dire, sans rien exagérer, que, dans ces circonstances, notre langue n’apparaissait pas comme celle de la monarchie française. Elle n’était plus à personne, étant à tous.

Un ‘ouvrage comique et moral’: Le papillotage Si nous retenons le petit ouvrage, paru sous le titre Le Papillotage, ouvrage comique et moral, sans nom d’auteur à Rotterdam en 1765, c’est qu’il apporte 32 Ibidem, t. VIII, 828-835.

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

121

des éléments complémentaires à la question que soulève la thèse de Brunot: comment ce goût pour l’art de vivre à la française, qui a fait du français la langue dominante de la diplomatie européenne au dix-huitième siècle, s’est-il répandu en Europe? Brunot ne répond qu’incidemment à cette question, son projet ayant été initialement d’écrire une histoire interne de la langue française, ce qui l’a contraint à ‘serrer d’aussi près que possible le fait linguistique, [à] l’isoler en le distinguant de tout ce qui l’environne et l’approche, même de tout près’.33 Et donc à n’aborder que marginalement cette ‘élégance attrayante de notre vie de cour et de salon’ dont il faisait pourtant, dès 1913, la cause principale de l’expansion du français en Europe. De cet art de paraître français, même quand on ne parle pas français, l’auteur du Papillotage est une sorte de sociologue critique, dont la ‘brochure’ (il la nomme ainsi) a connu un indéniable et pérenne succès, sans que son anonymat en soit pour autant levé.34

À propos des papillotes et du papillotage Le Robert date papillotage de 1684 et le Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé [TLFI] de 1611, mais le dictionnaire de l’Académie ne le retient qu’en 1762.35 Notre anonyme se doit donc de le gloser d’emblée: Les Papillotes sont anciennes, & le Papillotage est nouveau. Les Papillotes ne contribuent qu’à l’ornement des cheveux, & le Papillotage embellit toute une personne. C’est lui qui donne cette semillante légereté, si propre à faire briller les esprits, & à orner la société, qui répand ces gentillesses, dont notre siècle tire avec raison son mérite & sa gloire, qui chamarre les hommes de graces, & les femmes d’agrémens, qui communique une impression d’amabilité, au moindre sourire une nuance d’enchantement, 33 Ibidem, t. VIII, VII. 34 La première édition de Le Papillotage, ouvrage comique et moral (en deux formats, in-8° et in-12°) est de 1765, à Rotterdam chez E. V. D. W. & Compagnie, où il est republié, toujours sans nom d’auteur, en 1766, 1767 et 1769, date à laquelle il paraît chez plusieurs éditeurs de province en France (par exemple, à Rouen chez la Veuve Besongne en 1769), ainsi que dans d’autres pays d’Europe (par exemple, à Vienne chez Jean-Thom de Trattner, également en 1769). Les notices bibliographiques qualifient souvent cet ouvrage de ‘divertissement libertin’, certaines ajoutant qu’il ‘connut un grand succès en Allemagne à la fin du siècle suivant’ (fin du dix-neuvième), et il a été récemment réimprimé (par Nabu Press en 2010 et par Anonymus en 2012). 35 Le TLFI signale qu’il n’apparaît que dans sa quatrième édition.

122 

HENRI BESSE

& qui laissant à l’écart tout systême économique & politique, ne connaît d’étude que celle des modes & des plaisirs. [Le Papillotage36, éd. 1765, 5-7, nos it.]. 

Et notre auteur se moque [ibidem, ital. orig.] de ce que, ‘depuis l’époque du Papillotage’, on parle, écrit, pense et aime ‘artistement’, qu’on ‘subtilise les choses’, qu’on ‘les divinise’, qu’on dise ‘d’un beau visage qu’il est miraculeux, d’un bel habit qu’il est ravissant, d’un homme à saillies qu’il est étonnant’, ‘(qu’)on escalade les superlatifs pour exprimer la moindre passion’ et que l’on ‘a peine à distinguer l’individu mâle de l’individu femelle’. D’où cette première moralité [7, nos it.]: Au majestueux succéde l’agréable, au beau le joli […]. La France fastueuse engendra la Saxe galante, comme le siecle d’Auguste amena celui de Seneque;37 & ces superbes fêtes, & cette noble magnificence qui exciterent l’admiration de nos Peres, s’éclipserent insensiblement pour faire place au Papillotage, dont nos meubles, nos habits, nos mœurs, nos personnes portent la livrée & l’empreinte.

Bref, on cherche à se distinguer par un usage affété et hyperbolique du français, mais on se conduit comme des domestiques, asservis à des modes dispendieuses qui laissent ‘à l’écart tout systême économique & politique’.

Comment ‘la France fastueuse engendra la Saxe galante’ Débute alors, sans transition, un roman allégorique dont l’action se passe autour de 1720, durant la Régence [7-8, ital. orig.]:38 Un certain Seigneur, nommé le Marquis de Florimene, & qui le premier parmi nous fut appelé petit-Maître, s’associa pour compagne la femme la plus sensuelle & la plus élégante. Couple admirable! Ils introduisirent les caprices, les minauderies, les bagatelles en tout genre, en un mot, le Papillotage; et il faut avouer qu’ils en étoient dignes. La plume légère de 36 Édition originale in-12°, 136 pages. Pour ne pas multiplier les notes de bas de page, et parce que toutes les citations qui suivent relèvent du même ouvrage, nous en indiquons les pages par leur seul chiffre entre parenthèses. 37 Rappelons qu’il fut le précepteur de Néron, lequel finira par acculer Sénèque au suicide. 38 Une lettre y est datée ‘Ce 13 mai 1722’ (Le Papillotage, 1765, 73).

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

123

l’Auteur de Ververt pourroit seule décrire dignement leur parure & leur maintien, la délicatesse de leur table & l’élégance de leurs ameublemens, la lesteté de leurs équipages & la somptuosité de leur garde-robe, la magnificence de leurs bijoux & les graces de la conversation.

Ce qui ne dit rien aux lecteurs d’aujourd’hui en disait beaucoup aux lecteurs, quelque peu lettrés, de la seconde moitié du dix-huitième siècle.39 Impossible ici de restituer l’intertexte du ‘papillotage’ ainsi allégorisé, bornons-nous à dire que, de ce ‘couple admirable’, naquit [14-15, ital. orig.] un garçon ‘brillant comme l’aurore’, puis ‘dans l’espace de sept ans’ huit autres enfants, trois filles et cinq garçons, d’une ‘taille divine, [d’]un visage miraculeux’, ce qui n’était pas alors si fréquent. Florimène éduqua ses enfants à la mode du temps (nous allons y revenir), et décida de ‘faire à chacun [de ses garçons] un état’, afin qu’ils concourent à ‘la reformation du genre-humain, qu’il brûloit du désir de façonner’ [22]. Son aîné ‘devint homme de Cour, le cadet Militaire, le troisième Magistrat, le quatrième Abbé, & le cinquième Religieux, afin que les Cours, les Armées, le Barreau, le Clergé eussent des modèles pour se maniérer’ [29]. Et son épouse ‘tint la même conduite à l’égard des Demoiselles’, destinant ‘l’une pour un riche financier, l’aînée pour le Couvent, la derniere pour demeurer fille, afin que la Finance, les Religieuses, & les Filles qui restent dans le monde sans s’établir, trouvassent des originaux capables d’être copiés’ [Ibidem]. La France fut ainsi rapidement réformée à leur image, et Florimène décida qu’il devait ‘étendre sa sollicitude jusque chez les nations étrangeres’, dont ‘les échantillons qu’il en voyait dans Paris, lui persuaderent que tout ce qui n’étoit pas François, avoit grand besoin d’être maniéré’ [83]. Il envoya donc son fils aîné pour leur ‘faire entendre le langage du goût & de la civilité’, dont le français n’est pas la composante principale [85]. Pour être imité, il faut être admiré. On passa donc deux ans [85-86] ‘à préparer les équipages qui devoient transporter le réformateur de l’Europe entiere’; tout y fut ‘disposé avec un art extrême, avec une prévoyance 39 Petit-maître, déjà courant au dix-septième siècle, signifiait ‘un jeune homme élégant à la mise recherchée, à l’allure maniérée et prétentieuse’, mais au début du dix-huitième siècle, le dictionnaire de Trévoux en fait un synonyme de ‘petit Monsieur’ ou de ‘petit mignon’ (voir le TLFI). Les italiques de lesteté suggèrent qu’il s’agit, en 1765, d’un néologisme ayant été peut-être forgé par notre auteur (le TLFI en fait à tort un hapax sorti de la plume de Stendhal en 1838) ; il ne réapparaît pas dans le reste de son texte, mais l’adjectif leste y revient souvent, au sens ‘qui ne se soucie guère des principes, des convenances’. L’auteur de ‘Ververt’ était Jean-Baptiste Gresset (1709-1777), qui avait publié en 1734, sans nom d’auteur, un ‘poëme heròïque’ intitulé Ver-vert, ou le Voyage du perroquet de Nevers.

124 

HENRI BESSE

inconcevable, afin d’attirer les regards de tous les Etrangers’, des voitures, dont ‘une dormeuse pour courir la poste entre deux draps’, aux postillons qu’on voulut ‘les plus lestes’. Le marquis donna quelques conseils à son fils aîné [86-88, nos it]: Ne meprisez extérieurement personne, d’autant mieux qu’on accuse les François d’être méprisans. […] Louez avec adresse les modes de l’Etranger, pour mieux faire valoir les nôtres. Soyez discret sur le sujet de votre voyage, & ne manquez pas de nous informer de tous les événemens. Descartes s’expatria pour enseigner les systèmes, & vous vous expatriez pour apprendre à vivre, & à jouir de la vie.

À quoi le jeune comte, bon élève, répondit: Je serai en garde contre moi-même, & je me défierai de la vivacité Françoise, afin de ne rien brusquer. […] je vous supplie de m’envoyer tout ce qu’il y aura de nouveau. Il ne faut souvent qu’un colifichet pour persuader une femme opiniâtre, & les femmes, là, comme ici, donnent le ton sur tout, lorsqu’elles sont jolies.

Ainsi équipé et prévenu, le jeune comte partit faire son tour d’Europe en colporteur magnifique de l’art de vivre à la française [89-109, nos it.]. Il commence par l’Italie, de Turin, où il ‘leur apprit à s’habiller avec goût, à mieux parler français’, à Venise, rétive à toute imitation, il s’en tient à se ‘faire des maîtresses & y réussit’, en passant par Rome et Naples, où l’on se contenta de faire ‘des carrosses à l’imitation de ceux du comte, des livrées semblables à celles de ses gens, & quelques jolis cabriolets’. Passé de Venise à Trente, il écrit à son père de lui envoyer ‘incessamment cinquante poupées, habillées selon le dernier goût’ et lui demande de le tenir informé ‘du progrès de toutes les modes, & de lui en envoyer des échantillons’. Il se rend ensuite à Munich et à Vienne, où l’on ‘se livra avec une espèce de fureur au plaisir de le copier.’ Il passe ensuite en Pologne et en Russie, où, en ‘martyr des modes, & de la volonté de ses parens’, il fut contraint de ‘passer plusieurs nuits dans des étables qu’on nomme cabarets, & y dormir au milieu des animaux’, mais où ‘il trouva moyen d’appeler à Pétersbourg & à Moscou des Marchandes de modes, & des Limonadieres qui s’enrichirent, et qui par la suite devinrent des Dames de conséquence’. Revenant par la Suède et le Danemark, il y fit venir ‘une colonie de Femmes de chambre, & de Cuisiniers’. Il passe ‘rapidement en Hollande, mais sans fruit. Les Habitans se contenterent de le suivre d’un oeil fixe & stupide, & de ne dire mot.’ De là, il part pour Londres, où ‘tout

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

125

le monde affectoit un air rustique, & des façons anti-Parisiennes’, mais il réussit à convaincre ce peuple ‘fier’ de l’imiter quant à ‘l’article de la parure & des modes’, pour le plus grand profit de ‘l’industrie Angloise’. Repassant par la France, où l’on ne douta plus ‘que Paris donnât incessamment le ton à toutes les nations’, il se rend ‘en Espagne, & en Portugal, afin de terminer ses voyages’. Périple qui peut évoquer certains représentants actuels du commerce de luxe, sauf que notre jeune comte ne vend rien et ne craint pas les contrefaçons. Son but est de les multiplier, de faire en sorte qu’on l’imite en matière d’habits et de coiffure, d’onguents et de parfums, d’ameublement et de voitures beaucoup plus qu’en matière de langue (il n’est question du français qu’à Turin). Il s’agit de ‘maniérer’ l’Europe à la française. Nulle allusion, dans ce périple, aux ambassades françaises ou à leurs agents, à un quelconque réseau royal à même d’introduire notre colporteur magnifique dans la meilleure société; son équipage, son allure, son charme, ses relations y suffisent.

De l’auteur du Papillotage Il est difficile de lire un texte anonyme sans s’interroger sur son auteur. À première lecture, la figure de quelque protestant, irrité par les mœurs françaises de son temps, semble s’imposer. Des relectures plus attentives à ses préventions, ses allusions, ses prédilections, inclinent à penser qu’il s’agit plutôt d’un catholique, respectueux de sa religion et de la cour de France. Si notre auteur s’en prend à l’usage hyperbolique de certains adjectifs que la tradition catholique réservait à Dieu, c’est qu’il le perçoit comme impie: ne va-t-il pas jusqu’à diviniser (c’est son mot) ce qui relève des créatures et non du Créateur? Les pages [36-38 et 54-58] où sont narrées les prouesses des deux fils envoyés maniérer le clergé, celles [64-77] décrivant les habiletés que sa fille aînée déploie pour maniérer les bénédictines et les bernardines, ainsi que les parodies moqueuses des sermons à la mode papillotante qu’on y trouve [39-52], attestent qu’il est un familier des milieux ecclésiastiques catholiques. Le triomphe du papillotage est d’ailleurs ainsi jugé [119-120, ital. orig.]: La religion, comme trop ancienne & trop austère, dut céder aux charmes du plaisir & de la nouveauté. Le siecle commença par en frémir, mais pour l’apprivoiser avec l’impiété on le nomma le siecle philosophique, & fier de cette dénomination il devint l’époque de l’incrédulité. […] Tout Ecrivain qui osa révendiquer les droits de la Religion fut déclaré imbécile & cagot.

126 

HENRI BESSE

Même respect pour la Cour [30]: ‘on y étoit fier sans être dédaigneux, on y avoit de l’esprit sans sçavoir décider de celui des autres, on s’y ennuyait sans connoître les vapeurs, on y étoit malade sans ressentir des évanouissemens, on y aimoit sans avoir une foule d’amans, on y étoit galant, sans y être coquet’. Il y a là une révérence pour la religion (catholique) et pour la cour (de Versailles) qui ne semble pas feinte. À quoi s’ajoute son conservatisme en matière économique et éducative. Critiquant d’emblée le papillotage pour laisser ‘à l’écart tout systême économique & politique’, notre auteur est manifestement plus proche des premiers physiocrates (dont Diderot et Voltaire se moquèrent) que des mercantilistes (tel Voltaire à Fernay). 40 À propos des ‘ouvriers’ que Florimène et son épouse ‘vinrent à bout de former’ [11]: ‘De là ces générations de Marchandes de modes & d’Artistes, dont nos cités sont remplies, ces boutiques & ces magasins, où l’on apperçoit d’un coup d’œil tout ce qu’une industrieuse frivolité peut imaginer.’ Frivolité que notre jeune comte ne manque pas d’exporter dans toute l’Europe, au profit des cuisiniers, limonadiers, coiffeurs et autres modistes français. D’où ce résultat [113]: ‘Les Campagnes se dépeuplerent pour entretenir les Manufactures, & chaque saison vit éclore de nouvelles étoffes, à dessein de renouveller les habits & de former des ameublemens’. Notre auteur n’ignore rien des innovations promues par les Lumières en matière d’éducation, servilement adoptées par Florimène dans l’éducation de ses fils, mais c’est pour les épingler ironiquement une à une [16-22, ital. orig.]. Qu’il s’agisse des soins d’accouchement par des médecins (et non par des sages-femmes), de la variolisation, du choix des nourrices et précepteurs (non ecclésiastiques, car ‘il étoit déjà du bel air de savoir, qu’ils ignorent la législation, & qu’ils ne sont pas propres à former des Citoyens’), de l’étude des langues (‘quelques mots de latin, mais beaucoup de circonlocutions Angloises & Allemandes’), de la formation morale (dès dix ans, on leur apprend ‘à devenir économes, pères de famille & hommes d’état’) ou des bonnes manières (‘on les mis dans les mains de gens propres à les maniérer, […] à jetter des regards de dédain sur tout ce qui n’est pas noble et opulent, à se railler de ce qu’on n’entend point, à ridiculiser tous ceux qu’on n’aime pas’). Et notre auteur de s’en prendre aux multiples plans visant à réformer la société de son temps [117, ital. orig.]: 40 François Quesnay (un des premiers physiocrates à avoir pensé l’économie comme un système où tout est interdépendant, du statut des fermiers au commerce du luxe, en passant par celui des blés) avait fait paraître en 1758 Le tableau économique de la France.

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

127

On ne vit que projets, soit pour la réformation des finances, soit pour celles du monde entier, & il n’y eut pas jusqu’aux vers à soie dont on traça des plans d’éducation. Chacun […] osa donner des leçons aux Ministres & même aux Souverains; chacun voulut leur apprendre comment il falloit imposer les taxes & les lever; chacun vint nous montrer, après six mille ans d’exercice, la maniere de labourer la terre & de l’ensemencer. 

À ses yeux, ‘l’esprit des Lumières’ relève clairement du papillotage. Il réduit par exemple l’ouvrage majeur d’Helvétius, De l’esprit paru en 1758, à cette parenthèse ironique [16]: ‘(Cet Ouvrage dit que les hommes de génie aiment tout ce qui fait époque.)’ En 1762, le Parlement de Paris parvint à obtenir la fermeture des collèges jésuites de son ressort et à interdire aux Pères de porter leur habit ou de correspondre avec leurs supérieurs. Notre auteur ne serait-il pas un jésuite émigré depuis peu en Hollande? Cette hypothèse permettrait de mieux comprendre pourquoi cette ‘brochure’ qu’on peut dire anti-philosophique n’apparaît guère dans les études françaises de ces deux derniers siècles, en dépit de son actualité, en son temps et au nôtre. En 1934, Brunot a consacré deux chapitres de son tome VIII au ‘procès du français’ au dix-huitième siècle, particulièrement en Allemagne. Citons en deux brefs passages qui conviennent parfaitement à notre jeune comte. Dans son chapitre XV, Brunot cite longuement (traduit par ses soins) Johann Gottfried von Herder, qui est, sur l’art de vivre à la française, encore plus incisif que l’auteur du Papillotage. Si notre colporteur magnifique est si volontiers copié dans toute l’Europe, c’est qu’il est lui-même une copie: Quel théâtre est devenu davantage une mécanique de marionnettes bien réglées, quelle manière de vivre s’est davantage changée en singerie d’une politesse, d’un enjouement, d’une élégance verbale, facile et mécanique? […] Singes de l’humanité, du génie, de la gaieté, de la vertu, et précisément parce qu’ils ne sont que cela, et qu’ils peuvent être plus facilement singés, voilà ce que les Français sont pour toute l’Europe. 41

En d’autres termes, les Français et leur langue sont dépourvus de tout naturel humain, de toute authenticité originelle: ‘De la force nationale, de cette particularité, qui tient au sol, de l’originalité, elle [la nation française] n’en a pas tant que cela’. 42 Brunot considère, non sans raison, que, ‘une fois 41 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. VIII, 648-649, nos it. 42 Ibidem, t. VIII, 651

128 

HENRI BESSE

sur ce terrain’, Herder ‘ne critique plus, il déblatère’. 43 Dans son chapitre XVI, il retrouve néanmoins chez lui ‘à peu près tous les raisonnements et les paradoxes qui ont servi aux polémistes du temps’44 pour critiquer le français et le vivre à la française. Ce qui suggère que si le Papillotage a bien été réédité en Allemagne à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, 45 c’est que le prisme de Herder lui donnait alors un nouvel éclat. Dans Quand l’Europe parlait français – un titre qui relève de ce que Brunot appelle ‘l’hyperbole courante’46 –, Fumaroli présente positivement ce que regrettait l’auteur du Papillotage: Est apparu depuis la Régence (1715-1723) une vaste scène multiple dont la vivacité, l’inventivité et le rayonnement hors de France ne doivent rien à la Cour. Paris est alors devenu le laboratoire des charmes de la vie privée, l’aristocratie de ville donne le ton de son urbanité à toute l’Europe. Pour servir une clientèle française et internationale, le marché de l’art et du haut artisanat de luxe se concentre à Paris. 47

L’art de notre colporteur magnifique préfigure l’art du commerce pratiqué par les envoyés du bien nommé Comité Colbert, 48 dont les soixante-huit ‘maisons de luxe’ assurent le quart du commerce mondial du luxe.

Une thèse qui n’a été jusqu’alors que marginalement contestée Un passage du tome VIII de Brunot nous paraît bien résumer sa thèse telle qu’il la reformula en 1934, après un tiers de siècle de recherches menées en France et hors de France: C’est dans cette situation que le français se présente, fort à la fois d’une jeune et éclatante gloire littéraire et de la puissance de la monarchie la plus peuplée de l’Europe, organe d’une société dont les qualités étaient 43 Ibidem, t. VIII, 653. 44 Ibidem, t. VIII, 661. 45 Voir ci-dessus. 46 Ibidem, t. VIII, 913. 47 Fumaroli, Quand l’Europe parlait français, 15-16. 48 Colbert est à l’origine – par l’importation frauduleuse de savoir-faire vénitiens (pour les miroirs), flamands ou allemands (pour les tapisseries ou la porcelaine dure) et par l’exportation du savoir-faire des artisans du Roi (de l’art des jardins d’un Le Nôtre à l’art des meubles d’un Boulle) – du développement de l’industrie française du luxe.

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

129

les plus estimées de l’époque, reconnu dans toutes les épreuves où on l’avait essayé, apte à tous les emplois, en art comme en politesse, parvenu, grâce au travail d’élaboration qu’il avait subi, et qui lui assurait sinon la fixité du moins la sûreté et la perfection d’une langue morte, à acquérir toutes les qualités nécessaires pour succéder au latin comme langue des études, des recherches, des doctrines, et pour s’adapter aux exigences d’un monde que la France avait porté à la recherche de jouissances délicates et à l’amour des manières polies. 49

Thèse qui a été égratignée çà et là, mais qui, à notre connaissance, n’a pas été jusqu’à maintenant invalidée.50 Bornons-nous à deux contestations indirectes de cette thèse, Brunot n’y étant pas directement affronté. La première est d’un historien du droit, qui ne le cite pas, et la seconde, d’un linguiste historien du français, qui le cite et s’en inspire souvent mais pas sur ce point.

De l’exportation du ‘modèle juridique français’ Sylvain Soleil suggère que le rôle du pouvoir royal dans l’exportation du ‘modèle juridique français’ serait manifeste dès le début du dix-septième siècle, au moins dans certains discours ‘royaux’.51 Il s’est posé la question, au sein d’un groupe interdisciplinaire de juristes et en réaction à des textes actuels émanant du ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Conseil d’État, de savoir [83] ‘quel discours sur la magnificence et la propagation du droit français peut-on [la France] encore bien tenir au monde?’ Il a tenté d’y répondre en s’interrogeant sur le passé de ce discours. Les études antérieures montrant [84] ‘ce que l’idée de modèle juridique français doit au Code civil, aux institutions napoléoniennes en général et à la conception révolutionnaire des Droits de l’Homme’, il s’est interrogé sur ce qu’il en était auparavant. Son intuition de départ – proche de celle à l’origine du colloque de Leyde – a été que ce discours datait du [85] ‘Grand Siècle avec Richelieu et Louis XIV, la création de l’Académie française, le thème de la gloire et l’organisation des colonies’. Ses recherches ont porté sur les préambules des 49 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. VIII, 913, 985-986. 50 Les discussions lors du colloque qui s’est tenu à Leyde en juin 2015 nous paraissent le confirmer. 51 Soleil, ‘Le modèle juridique français. Recherches sur l’origine d’un discours’, 83-95. Les pages des citations en sont données dans le texte par un simple chiffre entre parenthèses.

130 

HENRI BESSE

ordonnances et édits ‘royaux’, du seizième au dix-neuvième siècles, tels que compilés dans le Recueil Général des anciennes lois françaises de 1829, et ont abouti à deux résultats: c’est avec le code de Michel de Marillac (1629) qu’apparaît [86] ‘l’idée que le droit français s’exporte’; c’est avec l’édit de Saint-Germain (1641) qu’y apparaît [91] ‘le mot modèle’. Certes, il n’est pas dit, dans le préambule du code de Marillac, que le droit français s’exporte, mais une idée voisine y est effectivement présente. À propos des ‘rois nos prédécesseurs’, on y lit que le royaume de France [90-91, nos it.] ‘a fleuri plus que tous les autres de la terre, ce qui donne sujet à leurs voisins et étrangers, d’emprunter souvent et se servir des réglemens qu’ils avoient faits’. Ce que Soleil commente prudemment: ‘Il s’agit (autant que nos lectures puissent le laisser penser) de la première allusion, dans un texte royal, à une idée proche du concept de modèle juridique français.’ Le préambule de l’édit de Saint-Germain s’ouvre, quant à lui, sur [91] ‘un long et très remarquable retour sur l’histoire récente de la monarchie française’ et se conclut par l’éloge des deux derniers rois: ‘au milieu des plus grands désordres de l’état, la France qui estoit une image d’horreur et confusion, devint, par sa vertu [celle de Henri IV], le modèle parfait des monarchies les plus accomplies’; ‘après que nous [Louis XIII] avons affermi l’autorité royale, la France a repris sa premiere vigueur, et au lieu qu’elle s’affaiblissoit par ses divisions, elle s’est rendue si puissante que ses actions ont donné de l’admiration à toute l’Europe’. Ce que Soleil commente ainsi [92]: ‘Le but est donc aussi de modéliser le système français, en quelque sorte pour apprendre leur métier aux autres monarques de l’Europe. […] La pratique de la monarchie française est tournée vers l’extérieur, elle a valeur d’exemple.’ Deux conclusions qui laissent entendre, sans le dire expressément, que les rois de France ont développé, depuis Louis XIII, une politique extérieure sinon culturelle du moins juridique, mais deux conclusions critiquables. D’abord, Marillac et Richelieu ont rédigé ces deux préambules à des fins de politique intérieure et non extérieure: il s’agissait de persuader les parlements de ne plus se mêler des affaires du royaume comme ils le faisaient régulièrement en se réclamant de leur pluriséculaire ‘droit de remontrance’. S’il y est question de ‘l’extérieur’, c’est pour susciter une certaine émulation des parlementaires (ne pas faire moins que les étrangers). Ensuite, ces textes, pour être ‘royaux’, ne sont pas de la plume du roi lui-même, lequel pouvait soit renvoyer son ministre (ce fut le cas, peu après 1629, pour Marillac), soit l’amener à se dédire. Brunot le remarque à propos du vieux Louis XIV annotant de sa main (‘Le roy consent que le traitté soit dressé en latin.’) la lettre où Villars rappelait au prince Eugène que son roi tenait à ce que les traités avec la France aient au moins une version française. Enfin, l’intuition

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

131

de départ de Soleil et de son groupe nous paraît tributaire d’une idée déjà très répandue au dix-neuvième siècle, siècle des nationalismes naissants, à savoir que l’expansion de la langue et de la culture françaises en Europe aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles ne pouvait être que l’effet d’une politique extérieure analogue à celle menée à l’intérieur du royaume, idée dont tout ce qui précède montre la fragilité.

Du rôle des divers émissaires royaux dans la diffusion européenne du français Gilles Siouffi consacre deux chapitres au ‘français hors de France’, où rien ne contredit vraiment la thèse de Brunot. Il ne s’en éloigne que sur un point, non précisément référencé: Si on a souvent associé le français, au XVIIIe siècle, au monde de la diplomatie et des échanges politiques internationaux, c’est surtout que, outre les traités, le français était très présent en Europe de par l’envoi de nombreux émissaires. Cela fit partie de la politique des gouvernements de Louis XV, puis de Louis XVI, que de développer à l’étranger des réseaux humains très importants […] Sans doute doit-on beaucoup à ces mondes parallèles, autant qu’aux politiques officielles, pour l’usage politique du français en Europe pendant ces décennies.52

Idée qu’on retrouve, entre autres, chez Fumaroli, pour qui ‘Versailles’ était le ‘centre nerveux’ d’un réseau regroupant ‘des ambassadeurs de profession, des agents ou intermédiaires secrets ou à temps partiel, des gens du monde et du grand monde’, un réseau qui ‘s’offre le luxe de deux diplomaties, l’une officielle, conduite par le ministre en place des Affaire étrangères, l’autre clandestine, et doublant l’autre: le Secret du roi’.53 Mais Fumaroli corrige cette idée peu après: ‘Comme l’Amérique aujourd’hui, sans recourir au volontarisme d’une ‘politique culturelle’ ou d’une ‘politique linguistique’, la France du dix-huitième siècle et sa langue étaient tout simplement contagieuses et irrésistibles’.54 Allusion à un soft power qui n’est guère éloigné de ce que dit Brunot. Examinant les mémoires du concours de Berlin, il note le ‘lien’, qu’établissent certains de ces mémoires rédigés 52 Rey, Duval & Siouffi, Mille ans de langue française, 824-825, nos it. 53 Fumaroli, Quand l’Europe parlait français, 11. 54 Ibidem, 18.

132 

HENRI BESSE

par des Allemands, ‘entre l’envoi d’ambassadeurs permanents dans toutes les Cours’ et l’expansion du français outre-Rhin, lien dont ces Allemands ne doutent pas ‘que ce soit là le résultat d’un dessein préconçu’.55 Mais Brunot en conteste la réalité plus loin: Les étrangers ont beaucoup parlé des ambassadeurs que le Roi [Louis XIV] entretenait en abondance de façon permanente, chose nouvelle alors. Mais ils n’avaient pas été envoyés pour cela, cela va sans dire. En plein XVIIIe siècle, les agents diplomatiques avaient bien l’air de ne pas se rendre compte de ce qu’on voulait dire quand on parlait de l’empire de la langue française.56

Pour lui, le ‘facteur principal’ du succès du français en Europe est ‘la civilisation française’, dont l’imitation ne requiert pas nécessairement une bonne maîtrise de la langue française: ‘Ni les monuments, ni les statues, ni les tableaux, ni les tapisseries, ni les mille objets où éclatait la supériorité de notre goût ne parlaient d’autre langue que la langue éternelle et directe de l’art, qui se passe de mots’.57 À quoi il faut ajouter que cette multiplication d’émissaires officiels et officieux, ne respectant pas toujours la discrétion et la modestie que Florimène conseille à son fils, ne pouvait que conforter, par leur vivacité arrogante, les préjugés anti-français.

Le français au dix-huitième siècle: langue de culture, langue de civilisation ou langue de prestige? Le français s’est-il imposé en Europe au dix-huitième siècle en tant que langue de culture, langue de civilisation ou de prestige? Question oiseuse si l’on emploie ces trois termes comme des synonymes, ce qu’ils ne sont pas.58 La notion de ‘culture’ liée à la langue est, de loin, la plus ancienne. Le TLFI date culture de leur langue de 1549, culture des belles-lettres de 1638: il s’agit de cultiver son esprit comme on cultive ses terres, de faire fructifier ses facultés intellectuelles, d’améliorer son goût et son jugement par l’étude 55 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. VIII, 921. 56 Ibidem, t. VIII, 994. Allusion à l’étonnement que causa à l’ambassade française à Londres une lettre de ‘Mr. d’Éon’ employant cette expression (Ibidem, t. VIII, 792-793). 57 Ibidem, t. VIII, 927. 58 Diff icile de substituer civilisation à culture dans ces deux phrases célèbres : La culture [civilisation ??], c’est ce qui reste quand on a tout oublié ; Nous autres, civilisations [cultures ??], nous savons maintenant que nous sommes mortelles.

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

133

des langues et des textes qui les illustrent. A. Rey cite dans le Dictionnaire culturel en langue française [DCLF] une traduction de L’homme de Cour (1647) de Baltasar Gracián qui souligne bien ce que cette notion met alors en jeu: ‘L’homme naît barbare, il ne se rachète de la condition des Bêtes que par être cultivé. Plus il est cultivé, plus il devient homme’.59 Ses deux autres sens, ‘caractéristiques diverses à même d’identifier un groupe ou un peuple’ (proche de Kultur en allemand) et son sens ethnologique (celui de primitive cultures en anglais), n’apparaissent qu’au vingtième siècle. Civilisation n’entre dans l’usage, au sens qui nous intéresse ici, que vers 1760 et sous la plume d’un physiocrate:60 c’est ‘ce qui rend les individus plus aptes à vivre en société’, résultat d’un ‘processus historique aboutissant à un état matériel, social, culturel considéré comme plus développé, plus avancé’. Non dissociable de l’idée de progrès, le mot n’est alors utilisé qu’au singulier, et il faudra attendre le dix-neuvième siècle pour qu’il le soit au pluriel. Civilisation et culture ont en commun l’idée qu’on peut s’élever, par un effort de perfection sur soi-même, au-dessus d’un certain état de nature, mais les deux mots s’opposent en ce que civilisation est lié à la notion de ‘société’, alors que culture l’est, dans le sens qui était le sien au dix-huitième siècle, à celle de ‘personne’.61 Prestige et papillotage entretiennent des connivences étymologiques. D’après le DCLF, prestige provient du latin praestigium (‘artifice, illusion’) apparenté à l’expression prestigiare oculos (‘éblouir les yeux’), et il ne prend son sens moderne (‘pouvoir d’imposer à autrui le respect, l’admiration, l’envie d’imiter’) qu’au milieu du dix-huitième siècle. L’auteur du Papillotage n’use pas du mot prestige, le papillotage en étant l’envers ridiculisé. Brunot, chez qui nous n’avons pas relevé papillotage, cultive ces connivences. Par exemple, à propos des participants au concours de Berlin, il note le dédain de certains d’entre eux ‘pour tout ce qui brille ou papillote’; il qualifie le mémoire de Schwab de ‘chef d’œuvre d’un illusionniste’ qui donne ‘la sensation d’un art prestigieux’; et pour caractériser ‘l’attraction de la France’ à l’étranger, il parle d’un ‘effet d’éblouissement’.62 Brunot préfère langue de civilisation, Siouffi langue de culture, et ni l’un ni l’autre n’usent, sauf inadvertance de notre part, de langue de prestige, locution que privilégie un ouvrage récemment paru en anglais sous la direction de Vladislav Rjéoutski, Gesine Argent et Derek Offord, titré European Francophonie, 59 Rey, Dictionnaire culturel en langue française, 2005. 60 Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau et père de deux futurs révolutionnaires. 61 C’est sans doute pourquoi, y compris de nos jours, Je me civilise ne se dit que de manière ironique, ce qui n’est pas le cas de Je me cultive. 62 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. VIII, 901-938, nos it.

134 

HENRI BESSE

et sous-titré The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language. Dans la préface (datée de février 1905) du tome I de son Histoire, Brunot pose que la langue française, dont son ouvrage doit être l’histoire, est ‘l’expression’ de la civilisation française.63 Mais Gérald Antoine, qui présente l’édition de 1966-1972, note que, de tome en tome, Brunot accroît considérablement le ‘champ de la civilisation’, plus ou moins déliée de la langue supposée l’exprimer. C’est net dans l’Avertissement du tome VIII, où se retrouvent les poupées que réclamait notre héros colporteur du Papillotage: À plus forte raison faut-il se garder de croire […] que les sujettes de nos modes étaient, par voie de conséquence, francisées de langage. Vraie dans quelques cas, la conclusion serait d’une absurdité complète, si on l’étendait sans précaution. La poupée de modes, qui arrivait de Paris, coiffée et attifée, dans son silence, était polyglotte.64

S’interrogeant dans ce même tome65 sur les ‘forces d’expansion’ du français, il avance que ‘la plus considérable est […] le prestige de la culture chez le peuple dont la langue se répand’, mais jugeant que ‘ce mot de culture est bien vague’, il s’en tient à celui de civilisation. Et pour être ‘civilisé à la française’, nul besoin de bien parler français, les œuvres d’art, y compris les poupées de mode, se passent aisément de mots. Siouffi en revanche privilégie le ‘français comme langue de culture en Europe’, glosé peu après comme ‘langue de la littérature, du théâtre, des publications philosophiques’.66 Il s’agit donc d’une culture lettrée, que Siouffi lie néanmoins à une ‘culture des mœurs, de la politesse, du raffinement’, le ‘facteur culturel’ à même d’expliquer l’expansion du français en Europe engageant selon lui ‘un large ensemble de faits qui tiennent autant des “mœurs” et du domaine de la civilité que des productions intellectuelles et artistiques’.67 Ce que Siouffi entend par langue de culture ne diffère donc guère de ce que Brunot entend par langue de civilisation. Pour avoir trop servi à ‘civiliser’ les ‘sous-civilisés’, langue de civilisation a perdu une partie de sa légitimité, que langue de culture a davantage conservée. Mais langue 63 64 65 66 67

Ibidem, t. I, XVI. Ibidem, t. VIII, VIII, ital. orig. Ibidem, t. VIII, 997, nos it. Rey, Duval & Siouffi, Mille ans de langue française, 740, 743. Ibidem, 802, 825.

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

135

de culture nous paraît tenir à l’écart tous ces ‘sujet(te)s de modes’ non ‘francisé(es) de langage’ dont parle Brunot, qui ont contribué à l’expansion sinon linguistique (à l’exception de quelques tournures ou mots français à même de se distinguer du vulgaire)68 du moins culturelle de la France en Europe depuis au moins trois siècles. L’auteur du Papillotage n’emploie pas prestige, et si Brunot en use, il n’en fait pas une notion déterminante dans ses analyses. Ce qui n’est pas le cas de son quasi contemporain, Antoine Meillet, qui, dans Les langues dans l’Europe nouvelle, hiérarchise les langues européennes en fonction de leur seul prestige, certaines étant ‘sans prestige’, d’autres ayant ‘le prestige d’une langue qui exprime une civilisation supérieure’.69 Meillet n’use cependant pas de langue de prestige, s’en tenant comme Brunot à langue de civilisation. Ce qui n’est pas le cas des auteurs de European Francophonie, dont l’index énumère les multiples fonctions prêtées au French language, entre autres, as ‘language of civilization’ (que les guillemets délégitiment), as language of culture, as prestige language or language of distinction. C’est cette dernière fonction que privilégient les trois coordonnateurs de cet ouvrage: We believe […] the prestige of French was a major factor in the development of historical francophonie, même s’ils admettent, tout comme Brunot pour celle de culture, que The notion of prestige is […] not clearly defined.70 Et pour la définir, ils s’appuient davantage sur l’actuelle sociolinguistique anglo-saxonne que sur la française (à la notable exception de Pierre Bourdieu), en adoptant a nuanced approach: We should consider which social groups French was associated with and spoken by, whether it was a useful lingua franca, and to what extent speaking French constituted demonstrative behaviour that served to inscribe the speaker in a pan-European culture. Notons qu’on ne trouve, dans ce même index, ni policy ni politics, y compris dans les sous-entrées de French language, ce qui suffit à suggérer que, pour les auteurs de cet ouvrage, la politique extérieure des rois de France est loin d’avoir été un facteur déterminant dans l’expansion du français et de sa culture en Europe aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles. À nos yeux, il reste clair que c’est le prestige/papillotage de Versailles et de Paris qui a suscité un peu partout en Europe, de la seconde moitié du dix-septième siècle à la seconde moitié du dix-huitième, un désir d’imitation des manières de vivre à la française, dont le français a bénéficié auprès 68 Près de deux siècles après le triomphe du papillotage, ces afféteries de langage d’origine française perdurent dans la bouche de nombreux locuteurs natifs de l’allemand ou de l’anglais. 69 Meillet, Les langues dans l’Europe nouvelle, 112. 70 Rjéoutski, Argent & Offord, European Francophonie, 28-31.

136 

HENRI BESSE

d’une élite sociale relativement restreinte. Prestige/papillotage voulu, en particulier par Louis XIV, afin de domestiquer – les historiens l’ont souvent souligné – une noblesse frondeuse et des Parlements revendicatifs. Mais si cette volonté relevait de la politique intérieure des rois de France et des tenants de la ‘monarchie absolue’, elle n’a été inscrite que marginalement dans leur politique extérieure, ‘fait’ que Brunot, en 1913, paraît découvrir avec surprise. L’idée d’une politique extérieure visant à conforter cette expansion ne fut certes pas absente, dans la seconde moitié du dix-huitième siècle, de quelques initiatives: outre la lettre de ‘Mr. d’Eon’ à l’ambassadeur de France à Londres sur ‘l’empire de la langue française’, Brunot cite la Gazette littéraire de l’Europe de l’abbé Arnaud qui ‘fut placée sous les auspices du ministère des Affaires Étrangères, recommandée aux agents de la France’,71 laquelle ne parut que deux ans. Mais ces initiatives ne constituent pas une politique conçue et promue par le pouvoir royal, et la thèse de Brunot nous semble, dans l’état présent de nos investigations, encore valide. Si nous l’avons rappelée ici, un siècle après son élaboration, c’est qu’elle est présentement trop souvent ignorée, ou bien discréditée sur tel ou tel point, en négligeant l’ensemble des ‘faits’ qui la fondent.

Bibliographie Besse, Henri, ‘Ferdinand Brunot, méthodologue de l’enseignement de la grammaire du français’, Histoire, Épistémologie, Langage, XVII, 1 (1995), 41-74. Brunot, Ferdinand, ‘Les débuts du français dans la diplomatie’, La Revue de Paris, année 20, tome 6 (novembre-décembre 1913), 699-728. Brunot, Ferdinand, Histoire de la langue française, des origines à nos jours. Réédition avec compléments bibliographiques (Paris: Armand Colin, 13 tomes, 23 volumes, 1966-1972). Fumaroli, Marc, Quand l’Europe parlait français (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2001). Rjéoutski, Vladislav, Gésine Argent, & Derek Offord (eds.), European Francophonie. The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language (Oxford/Bern/Berlin: Peter Lang, 2014). Meillet, A. [1917], Les langues dans l’Europe nouvelle, avec un appendice de L. Tesnière sur la statistique des langues de l’Europe (Paris: Payot, 1928). Rey, Alain (dir.), Dictionnaire culturel en langue française (Paris: Le Robert, 2005). Rey, Alain, Fréderic Duval, & Gilles Siouffi, Mille ans de langue française. Histoire d’une passion (Paris: Perrin, 2007). Soleil, Sylvain, ‘Le modèle juridique français. Recherches sur l’origine d’un discours’, Droit. Revue française de théorie juridique, 38 (2003), 83-95.

71 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, t. VIII, 791.

Expansion du fr ançais e t des manières fr ançaises en Europe

137

About the author Henri Besse, after teaching French as a foreign language in Scotland and Egypt, specialized in linguistics and the didactics of languages. He has published over 100 articles: key publications include Grammaires et didactiques des langues (1984) and his Thèse d’État entitled Propositions pour une typologie des méthodes de langues (2000). Email: [email protected]

6

Literary translation as a foreign language policy tool The case of Russia, mid-eighteenth – early nineteenth centuries Vladislav Rjéoutski*

Sanchez-Summerer, Karène & Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th – 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980600/ch06 Abstract Translations from Russian into French often show propaganda objectives. From the middle of the eighteenth century literary works played a key role in this propaganda, literature being regarded in Europe as a sign of cultivated society. Translation into European languages, French in particular, was a ‘soft power’ used quite often by the Russian government and by high-ranking dignitaries as a means of presenting the Empire in Europe. The Russian language became a subject of debate in these translation projects: it was often presented as one of the major European languages supported by literature which was young, but of excellent quality. Thus, Russian literature and language became a tool which ultimately helped Russia to be considered as a European nation. Keywords: Russia, literary translation, French, propaganda, Russian language, soft power

* Deutsches Historisches Institut Moskau. Part of the research presented in this chapter was carried out within the research project of Bristol University on the social history of the French language in Russia. For the website of the project see http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/research/ french-in-russia/. I would like to express my gratitude to Andrey Kostin (Institute of Russian literature, St. Petersburg) for his valuable suggestions.

140 

VL ADISL AV R JÉOUTSKI

In the middle of the eighteenth century, despite several efforts to improve its image, Russia was still often represented in Western Europe just as it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when it was thought to be a country of ‘infinite brutality’, a ‘rude and barbarous kingdom’.1 The image of a country and that of its court was of particular importance in Europe because diplomatic, dynastic, and even economic relations depended on it. Several actions that could be described today in terms of ‘media’ or ‘propaganda’ helped improve the image of Russia in Europe. 2 Some of them, like Voltaire’s famous book on Peter the Great, were only indirectly related to translation; for others, translation was central to the issue.3 Among the best known is the translation of Catherine II’s Instruction to the Legislative Commission, or the famous Nakaz (1767), which was guided by enlightened principles and therefore presented a positive image of the sovereign and her country; or the translation of the Plans and Statutes of the educational establishments instituted by Catherine II, written by Ivan Betskoy, translated by the historian Nicolas-Gabriel Le Clerc, and published with the help of Diderot. 4 Such books, translated into Western European languages and published in Europe, sometimes in Russia too, enjoyed a certain popularity. Though the question of the language arose from time to time in the discussion of these works, it still remained secondary. The importance of the question grew when it concerned the translation of literary works, which was also an important issue in the battle of images. An abundant literary life was considered to be a sign of civilization. France, in particular, enjoyed the image of a literary nation throughout Europe at the time. There is, however, a paradox, because Russian language and literature were virtually unknown in Europe, so it is somewhat surprising that they became a subject of debate focused on Russian civilization and carried out in Western European languages. This debate is less known than that concerning Catherine II’s reforms; however, it deserves attention because it allows us to see strategies employed by some Russian writers and by the 1 Mervaud & Roberti, Une infinie brutalité: L’image de la Russie dans la France des XVIe et XVIIe siècles; Berry & Crummey, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of the Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers. Such words are repeated for example by Saint-Simon, reflecting the general attitude to Russia in France at the beginning of the eighteenth century: see Mezin, Vzgliad iz Evropy: frantsuzskie avtory XVIII veka o Petre I, ch. 1. 2 These terms are used knowingly, not forgetting that they sound anachronistic for the period. 3 Voltaire’s work is based on a collection of documents provided by the Court of St. Petersburg; some of them were translated for him into French. 4 Betskoy, Les plans et les statuts des différents établissements ordonnés par Sa Majesté impériale Catherine II. There is a considerable corpus of research on these translations which I do not cite here, my focus being on literary translation only.

Literary translation as a foreign language polic y tool

141

Russian government. Translation from Russian into European languages became a basis for these strategies and, in many ways, its functions differed from those fulfilled by the translation of foreign works into Russian.5 I will first describe briefly the main steps in this literary self-representation of Russia in foreign languages, mainly limiting myself to the francophone area. Indeed, at the time, due to the predominance of the French language in Europe, the majority of Russian literary works were translated into French, with German occupying the second place – although a fairly significant one.6 Several cases will be presented in chronological order. I will analyse how the issue of language was addressed in these translation projects. Their main actors will be determined in order to understand whether these translations were due to individual initiatives or whether the government (or people close to it) played some role in their origin and realization. This will help us understand whether, together, they might be interpreted as an aspect of language policy that is in line with the official Russian foreign policy of the time. Probably the first, or one of the first, cases of literary translation from Russian into French concerns the works by Prince Antiokh (Antiochus) Kantemir. Son of a Moldavian hospodar (or gospodar, ‘lord’ or ‘master’) who joined the Russian service during the reign of Peter the Great (1696–1725), Kantemir is known for his numerous translations from foreign languages into Russian, including works by Boileau, Fontenelle (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds), Algarotti, Montesquieu (Persian Letters), and so on. A Russian diplomat in England and later in France, Kantemir became acquainted there with several writers, Italian and French in particular. As a representative of Russia, Kantemir naturally defended the interests of his country. He especially put forward the figure of Peter the Great as a sovereign who had ‘led Russia out of darkness’.7 In 1738 or 1739, Kantemir supported a project to stage a tragedy in a Parisian theatre. The tragedy, by Pierre de Morand and called Menchikoff (Menshikov) after one of the best-known collaborators of Peter the Great, was published in The Hague 5 A short presentation of the functions of translation from European languages into Russian can be found in the article by Jean Breuillard, ‘Les enjeux de la traduction dans la Russie du XVIIIe siècle’. See also Levin, Istoriia russkoi perevodnoi khudozhestvennoi literatury. 6 French served as the main intermediary language for the British people, who were keen to become acquainted with Russian literary works. Alekseev, Russko-angliiskie literaturnye sviazi (XVIII vek–pervaia polovina XIX veka), 116. Alekseev cites French journals which played a role in this rapprochement between British people and Russia: Le Journal des savants, Le Mercure, L’Europe littéraire, and also the German journal Gelehrte Anzeigen. 7 Kantemir, Sobranie stikhotvorenii, 22.

142 

VL ADISL AV R JÉOUTSKI

in 1739.8 In this play, the Tsar was represented as a great sovereign; his right-hand man, Menshikov, saved him from a plot by Amilka, a prince of the blood and father of a woman loved by Menshikov. This play contributed to laying a foundation for the legend of Peter the Great in France. The better known Amilka, or Peter the Great, by Claude Joseph Dorat, was written in 1767 under its influence. In 1743, Luigi Riccoboni – the leader of an Italian troupe in Paris, and one of the theatre reformers – published a book on the theatre, which he dedicated to the Russian Empress.9 This was probably done with the encouragement of Kantemir, whom the author knew in person. Kantemir addressed the Russian Court to ask for this dedication to be accepted. However, translation still occupied a secondary place in the cultural propaganda efforts of the time. Thanks to Kantemir, a French translation of the History of the Ottoman Empire,10 a work by his father, was published and reprinted and became well known among French intellectuals, including Voltaire and later Diderot (the Encyclopédie recommends only two books on the history of the Ottoman Empire, one being that by Prince Dimitrie Kantemir [Cantemir]).11 In doing so, Kantemir took care of the reputation of his father and his family. At the same time, he contributed to a better knowledge of Russia in France. A talented poet himself – but deprived, for various reasons, of opportunities to publish his works in Russia – Kantemir aspired to become known in French literary circles. This was only possible through translation. Although he spoke some foreign languages, including Italian and French, Kantemir was not bilingual, at least not in French.12 He therefore could not translate his satires himself. He translated them into Italian for his friend, the Abbot Guasco, to then translate into French. This translation in prose was published in 1749, after the untimely death of the poet-diplomat (second edition 1750). In 1752, a versified German translation was published.13 In a brief overview of the poet’s life that precedes this translation, Guasco presented Kantemir as the best poet of his country, the founder of the 8 de Morand, Menzikof, tragédie. It seems that it was staged under the title Phanazar, in 1738. See Annales dramatiques, ou dictionnaire général du théâtre, 6 (1810), 244. 9 Riccoboni, De la Réformation du théâtre. 10 Cantemir, Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman. 11 Kantemir, Sobranie stikhotvorenii, 22. 12 See Rjéoutski & Offord, ‘French in Russian diplomacy’. 13 [Cantemir], Satyres du Prince Cantemir: Traduites du Russe en François; Spilker, Versuchte freye Uebersetzung der Satyren des Prinzen Kantemir. On the publication place of the first edition and the name of the publisher, see Kopanev, ‘O pervykh izdaniiakh satir A. Kantemira’, 150.

Literary translation as a foreign language polic y tool

143

Russian Parnassus. Although Kantemir was Russian by adoption, his literary work and his acquaintances, both in noble circles and among writers, obviously cast a favourable reflection on the Russian society from which this brilliant poet came. Russia was presented by Guasco very briefly, only as a background to Kantemir’s life, but still at its best; we find no trace of the image of a barbarous country situated outside the civilized world. However, the question of Russian as a working language of literature was hardly discussed by Guasco. Johann Christoph Gottsched, a well-known German writer and literary critic, wrote favourable reviews of the French and German editions of Kantemir’s Satires.14 Many writers from the time of Pushkin, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were interested in Kantemir. Batyushkov, a well-known poet of this generation, even devoted a prose dialogue to him. In this dialogue, Kantemir is talking to Montesquieu (whom Kantemir knew in person) about the future glory of Russian literature. The historian Mikhail Alekseev believes that one of the reasons for Batyushkov’s interest in Kantemir lies in his image as the first Russian writer to enjoy a certain renown in Europe. For this generation of writers who had participated in the war against Napoleon, who crossed Europe and came to Paris, Kantemir was a symbol of the beginnings of the European destiny of their literature, and also of their movement towards Europe, which had begun with Peter’s reforms. Alekseev noted in this regard that in 1814–1815 Russian periodicals eagerly published articles showing that Russian literature was becoming known outside Russia.15 However, Kantemir’s contemporaries, and particularly the Court of St. Petersburg, did not see him as a representative of Russian culture who, by his stature, could have helped change Russia’s image – although he would have perfectly fitted such a role on account both of his involvement in western literary and social circles and of his literary works. Instead, Kantemir should be regarded as one of the first Russian dissident poets who, deprived of the possibility to publish his works in Russia and in Russian, was forced to disseminate them in translation abroad or in manuscript form within Russia. Moving forward in time, let us pause at the second part of the reign of the Russian Empress Elizabeth (1741–1762). Elizabeth’s best-known and most successful cultural propaganda action was certainly Voltaire’s History of the Russian Empire during the Reign of Peter the Great. Its main goal, at least on 14 Das Neueste aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeit, 1751, 259–66; 1752, 503–19. See Gukovskii, ‘Russkaia literatura v nemetskom zhurnale XVIII v.’, 384. 15 Alekseev, Sravnitel’noe literaturovedeniie, 122, 127–128.

144 

VL ADISL AV R JÉOUTSKI

the Russian side, was to present the reign of the great sovereign at its best to the European public, and in a language understood by the educated people of Europe – written, moreover, by the great Voltaire. Russian science too was becoming known in Europe thanks to the efforts of members of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, including some foreigners, helped by such institutions as the Academy of Berlin, which published several articles on the St. Petersburg Academy in its periodicals (Bibliothèque germanique and Nouvelle bibliothèque germanique). However, Russian literature was still virtually unknown in the West. For those among Russian writers who saw French literature as a model and an important landmark, and for some highly placed Russian aristocrats who were close to these writers, the appearance of Russian literature on the European scene became an important issue. It is certainly not by chance that in some cases works by these writers appeared in French or German translation before being published in Russian. For example, Semira, a tragedy by Alexander Sumarokov, was published in German in 1762 before being published in Russian. His other tragedy, Sinav and Truvor, staged in 1750 and published in Russian in 1751, appeared the same year in a French translation by the Russian Prince Alexander Dolgorukov.16 It should be noted that the writer had to plan this translation beforehand to make it possible for the original and its translation to appear the same year. This fact tells us a lot about the strategies used in this literary milieu. Gottsched used the French version of the text to write a laudatory review in 1753.17 He praised Sumarokov for having followed classical models, and cited him as an example for German writers. At this point the question of the language arises: Gottsched emphasized that it was a translation (and a very successful one), by which he meant that the original was certainly even better. In 1755, another review of the same play was published by an influential Enlightenment periodical, Journal des savants.18 It was translated and published in Ezhemesyachnye sochineniya, a literary periodical which appeared in St. Petersburg, thus confirming that Sumarokov’s fame extended beyond the borders of Russia.19 16 Sumarokov, Sinav i Truvor: Tragediia Aleksandra Sumarokova; Sumarokov, Sinave et Trouvore, tragédie russe en vers, faite par monsieur Soumarokoff et traduite par mr. le prince Alexandre Dolgorouky. For more details on the translations of this tragedy, see Rjéoutski & Offord, ‘Translation and propaganda’. See also Evstratov, ‘Russian drama in French: Sumarokov’s Sinav and Truvor and its translations’. 17 Das Neueste aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeit, 1753, 684–91. 18 Journal Étranger, 1755, April, 114–56. 19 Ezhemesyachnye sochineniya [Monthly works], 1758, vol. 2, 507ff.

Literary translation as a foreign language polic y tool

145

Another translation of the same tragedy, in verse this time, was carried out simultaneously but remained in manuscript. We can probably understand why it was not published: this rather wordy versification betrayed the original work far more than did the prose translation by Dolgorukov.20 But the detail that is intriguing is not this. We know that the translator’s name is Antoine-Nicolas Lespine de Morembert. He was an actor serving in a Court troupe in St. Petersburg. He was also close to Ivan Shuvalov, the new favourite of the Empress of Russia. Sumarokov moved within the entourage of Shuvalov, too. This suggests that the favourite may have been no stranger to the translation project. We know that Shuvalov had been seeking to improve the image of Russia abroad by every means possible. It is thanks to him that Voltaire was invited to write the history of Peter the Great, and it was again Shuvalov who orchestrated the preparation of manuscripts for the great writer’s work on the Emperor. One of the texts that Shuvalov had sent to Voltaire attracted my attention: the translation of a Panegyric to Peter the Great, written by Mikhail Lomonosov, an outstanding Russian scientist and man of letters. Originally, it was decided to translate this text into French when the speech was delivered by Lomonosov at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in 1754, on the occasion of the Empress’s birthday. There was no question at the time of asking Voltaire to write a history of Peter the Great, so it is obvious that there was a different reason for this translation project. The goal was to make the Panegyric known to the western reader in general. The subject – Peter the Great – was in itself promising because Peter was the most glorious figure of Russian history, having become a true legend in Western Europe, and in France in particular.21 However, this was not the only aim of the project, as we shall see. There is an important detail: the decision to translate the speech into French was not taken by Lomonosov himself, but by the President of the Academy of Sciences, Count Kirill Razumovskii. Although being the brother of the former favourite of the Empress, Razumovskii was close to her new favourite, Ivan Shuvalov. The translation took a long time for various reasons. In 1757, when the Russian Court addressed Voltaire to ask him to write the history of Peter the Great, Lomonosov proposed sending him the Panegyric dedicated to the great Russian sovereign. Shuvalov ordered his secretary, Baron de Tschudy, to translate the play into French. The translation was finally ready in 1759, but it angered the author, who wrote on the cover of a 20 Rjéoutski & Offord, ‘Translation and propaganda in the mid-eighteenth century’. 21 See Mezin, Vzgliad iz Evropy.

146 

VL ADISL AV R JÉOUTSKI

published copy, after ‘translated from the Russian original’: ‘but translated very badly and against the protests of the Author’.22 The original and the translation have been compared in detail.23 The latter does not substantially change the meaning of the original text. However, stylistically, the text is very different: while Lomonosov’s style is remarkable for its heavy syntax and archaic vocabulary befitting the Russian panegyric, Tschudy’s text is vivid. It was written in modern French but kept the solemn aspect of Lomonosov’s panegyric. However, the translator erased all the evocations of Providence, probably judging that, in the eyes of a cultivated French reader, speaking of the actions of Russian sovereigns with a constant reference to God would minimize the role of Peter the Great and his daughter. After having received the text, Voltaire made only a sarcastic comment on the choice of the genre (panegyric) and remained polite regarding the quality of the text (‘the work is not devoid of literary beauty’), which barely disguised his indifference.24 What is interesting in relation to our subject are Ivan Shuvalov’s comments that precede Voltaire’s reaction, and those made by his other contemporaries later. In a letter accompanying the translation, Shuvalov said that Lomonosov’s work was supposed to prove to Voltaire that Russian was not as poor as it was presented in the history of Brandenburg, where it was written that Russian had no words to express the notions of ‘honour’ and ‘virtue’.25 Friedrich II indeed wrote in his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la maison de Brandebourg that Menshikov and ‘all that nation [that is, Russians] were so barbarous that in their language there were no expressions which meant “honour” or “good faith”’.26 It is thus clear that the translation of the Panegyric was sent to Voltaire not as a historical document but as a literary work, and that the linguistic challenge was probably crucial in this case. It is also significant that it was Shuvalov, one of the leading personalities of the Court of St. Petersburg, who defended the Russian language and the honour of Russian literature. Later, in a funeral eulogy written after Lomonosov’s death, Count Andrei Shuvalov, who was a writer himself and knew Voltaire in person, said that Lomonosov’s Panegyric was disfigured by the translator, who did not know a single word of Russian.27 The translator 22 On this translation, see Rjéoutski, ‘Baron de Chudi: perevodchik M.V. Lomonosova’. 23 Ibidem. 24 Voltaire, Correspondance, D8429. 25 Voltaire, The Complete Works of Voltaire, vols. 46–47, 117. 26 I used the edition of 1767. [Frédéric II], Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la maison de Brandebourg, II, 77. 27 Berkov, Lomonosov i literaturnaia polemika ego vremeni, 1750–1765, 279.

Literary translation as a foreign language polic y tool

147

was therefore seen as ultimately responsible for the bad reception of the work, whereas on the contrary, as we have seen, he did everything for the Panegyric to have a chance of being well received by the French reader. At the time translation was used repeatedly as a tool to introduce western audiences to Russian literary works that they could not read otherwise. An example can be taken from the periodical Le Caméléon littéraire, published in 1755 in St. Petersburg by the same Théodore-Henri de Tschudy who was to translate Lomonosov’s Panegyric. Tschudy published in his journal a ‘Dissertation sur l’origine et les progrès de la poésie’ (‘Essay on the origin and progress of poetry’).28 As he said, it was translated from a Russian manuscript, which is not untrue. The reference was not necessary, so it is obvious that the publisher emphasized this fact intentionally. The text was not chosen by chance; it was meant rather to show that the Russians were no strangers to belles-lettres. It was also, at least partly, the function of another work, ‘Le Voyageur moscovite ou lettres russes’ (‘The Moscow Traveller or Russian letters’). Its real author, the chevalier Jean Maugues Desessart (who lived in Russia from 1757 onwards), said that his only mission was to translate these letters from Russian. He attributed this work to two Russians, which was a pure literary hoax. His characters want to overcome those ‘blind prejudices’ that ‘affect to banish literature’ from Russia: they want to become authors. ‘The literary public will learn in their spare time that there are some talents in the snow of what is commonly called Muscovy.’29 An important detail: the ‘Traveller’ was dedicated to Ivan Shuvalov. We will now make a leap in time, leaving aside some other translation projects – including translations of works by Nikolai Karamzin – which also contributed to improve the image of Russian society. One of the most translated Russian writers of the period 1820–1830 is undoubtedly the fabulist Ivan Krylov. His work was translated into several European languages, including French. One of the most interesting editions 28 ‘Dissertation sur l’origine et les progrès de la poésie, fondée sur le témoignage des anciens auteurs grecs et latins, auquels on a joint celui des auteurs modernes’, Le Caméléon littéraire 11, 16 March 1755; 15, 13 April 1755. Tschudy is certainly the translator and not the author of this piece because we find this text in Russian entitled ‘O kachestvakh stikhotvortsa rassuzhdeniie’ [Essay on the qualities of a poet], published two months later in the journal Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia. This text should be attributed to Grigorii Nikolaevich Teplov: see Achinger, Der französische Anteil an der russischen Literaturkritik des 18. Jahrhunderts, 83–104 (cited in Volmer, Presse und Frankophonie im 18. Jahrhundert, 194). 29 Russian National Library (RNB), St. Petersburg, Mss, Fr. Q XV 38, fols. 4, 7. See Rjéoutski & Somov, ‘Shevalie Dezessar, moskovskii guverner i pisatel’ (iz frantsuzskikh kontaktov I.I. Shuvalova’.

148 

VL ADISL AV R JÉOUTSKI

was that undertaken by Count Orlov, who brought together dozens of literary figures. Each of them was responsible for translating one of Krylov’s fables.30 This beautiful edition with dozens of fine engravings drew my attention not for its literary merits, which vary from one translator to another, but for all the paratexts showing the true ambition of the project. The foreword, written by Orlov and published in Russian, says: Let all the foreigners, who have experienced the hardness and the strength of the Russian sword, know that these people, brave and faithful to their homeland and their Tsar, are not devoid of fine arts, that they have their Poets, their Historians, their Scientists, and that for this they deserve as much esteem and consideration as for their glories and victories resounding to their honour throughout the universe. Let them read these imitations of your fables and, in doing so, let them feel the desire to read them in their national language. […] Let this example make our compatriots feel the desire to follow us and to communicate to foreigners the treasures of our belles-lettres, by pure and faithful translation.31

The text was in Russian without translation, but it would be wrong to think that it was only addressed to Ivan Krylov. It seems that it also had another function: to present Russian to western audiences visually; to put the foreign public in contact with the text in Cyrillic, and thereby affirm a kind of autonomy of the Russian literary tradition. This could be particularly significant because many of Krylov’s fables are versions of fables of La Fontaine, so could be regarded as imitative and not original creations. The introduction, written in French by M. Lémontey, has the same tone: Une Russie littéraire naît et croît réellement. Non-seulement la vie s’y manifeste par des productions originales et variées, mais des besoins nouveaux y ont fait établir, pour chaque semaine, chaque mois, chaque 30 Krylov, Fables russes tirées du recueil de M. Kriloff, et imitées en vers français et italiens par divers auteurs, vol. 1. 31 Translated from Russian: ‘Пускай иноземцы, кои испытали всю твердость и силу русского меча узнают, что сей народ благочестивый и преданной Отечеству и Царю, не лишен также и изящных дарований, что он имеет своих Поетов, своих Историков, своих ученых, что и с сей стороны он заслуживает не менее уважения и почтения как со стороны славы и побед гремящих в честь его во всей вселенной. Пускай читая подражания басней ваших, почувствуют они желание понимать оныя и в национальном языке. [...] Пускай пример сей возбудит в соотечественниках наших желание последовать и сообщить иноземцам, наши сокровища в словесности, верным и чистым переводом.’ Ibidem, v.

Literary translation as a foreign language polic y tool

149

année, des journaux et des recueils périodiques, consacrés aux sciences, aux lettres et aux arts. Des académies volontaires se forment en divers lieux pour le même dessein, et décèlent l’agitation de la pensée et l’impatience de savoir.32 A literary Russia has been born and is growing now. Not only is life manifested by original and varied productions, but, due to its new needs, some new papers and periodicals, devoted to science, literature and the arts, issued every week, every month, every year have been introduced. Voluntary academies are being founded in different places for the same purpose; they show the agitation of the mind and the eagerness for knowledge.

The French preface is not everywhere as laudatory as that by Count Orlov. Lémontey wrote, for example, on the Russian poetic language: ‘Poets have subjugated it to rhyme; and some attempts – of uncertain success – to produce purely metric verses cast doubt on its ability to reach the rhythm of the old days.’33 But he was still full of praise for some poets. He wrote, for example: ‘I know in no language anything superior in this genre [war songs] to Zhukovsky’s poem.’34 Lémontey welcomed several names of the new Russian literature and praised the effort of those writers who renounced writing in French: ‘They also had to resist the seductions of the glory that invited them to write in a different language, common to nearly the whole of Europe, and for which their ability is not in question.’35 Among these new writers, Karamzin particularly deserved the honours, due to his history of Russia. Therefore, the goal of the project was to show – in French – that the Russians had their authors and that their language was able to support this literary effort. Other translations of Krylov’s works can be mentioned. Some of them were performed by a certain Hippolyte Masclet, one of those French expatriates who fell in love with the language and culture of their host country 32 Ibidem, x. 33 Translated from French: ‘Les poètes l’assujettirent à la rime; et quelques tentatives d’un succès incertain pour y produire des vers purement métriques, font douter qu’elle puisse atteindre au rythme des anciens.’ Ibidem, xii. 34 Translated from French: ‘Je ne connais dans aucune langue rien de supérieur en ce genre (chants guerriers) au poème de Joukoffsky.’ Ibidem, xix. 35 Translated from French: ‘Il leur fallait en outre résister aux séductions de la gloire, qui les invitait à écrire dans une autre langue presque commune à toute l’Europe, pour laquelle leur aptitude n’est pas douteuse.’ Ibidem, xiv.

150 

VL ADISL AV R JÉOUTSKI

and who worked to make them known in their homeland. Masclet wrote in one of his books that he was publishing his translation in order to give ‘further proof of [his] admiration for one of the most beautiful languages, according to [him], to be spoken since the time of Homer and Cicero’.36 Masclet’s sincerity should not be questioned. He is one of the first among the French Russophiles of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1823, an Anthologie russe (‘Russian anthology’) containing translations of numerous poems by the best Russian authors was published in Paris.37 The author of this anthology is a certain Émile Dupré de Saint-Maure. This collection is interesting for its introduction and for the other texts that accompany the translations, which are not always of high quality. In his dedication to the Emperor Alexander I, the translator explained that his goal was ‘to make known in France some notable productions of poets who honour Russia’, and thus ‘to pay homage to its illustrious Sovereign and to the flourishing state of the Letters and Arts under his glorious reign’.38 Until then the goal had been to affirm the very existence of literature in Russia along with the qualities of the Russian literary language. Saint-Maure changed the strategy. Evidently, he did not dare say that Russian literature was superior to that of France. His readers would not have supported such audacity. But still he compared the two languages: La langue russe est si harmonieuse, elle a de si heureuses témérités dans ses inversions, une telle abondance de mots composés et de beautés imitatives, que j’ai souvent éprouvé l’insuffisance de notre langue pour rendre la grâce ou l’énergie de l’original.39 The Russian language is so harmonious, has such a happy temerity in its inversions, and such an abundance of compound words and imitative beauties, that I have frequently felt the insufficiency of our language to express the gracefulness and energy of the original.

36 Translated from French: ‘une nouvelle preuve de [s]on admiration pour une des plus belles langues, selon [lui], que l’on ait pu parler depuis Homère et Cicéron’. Fables de M.J. Krylof traduites du russe, d’après l’édition complète de 1825. Par Hippolyte Masclet. 37 Saint-Maure, Anthologie russe, suivie de poésies originales. 38 Translated from French: ‘faire connoître, en France, quelques productions remarquables des poëtes qui honorent la Russie’, ‘rendre hommage à son illustre Souverain, et à l’état florissant des Lettres et des Arts sous son règne glorieux’. Ibidem, unpaginated dedication. 39 Ibidem, iv.

Literary translation as a foreign language polic y tool

151

A lengthy introduction describes the evolution of literature in Russia, and finishes with this remark: Ce court aperçu historique suffira pour donner une assez juste idée d’une littérature trop peu connue en Europe; le lecteur partagera peut-être le sentiment d’admiration que me cause la miraculeuse rapidité avec laquelle elle prit rang dans la république des Lettres. Je ne pense pas qu’à aucune époque et chez aucun peuple, il y ait exemple d’une croissance aussi rapide. 40 This short historical summary will suffice to give a fairly accurate picture of a literature too little known in Europe; the reader may share my feeling of wonder at the miraculous speed with which it took its place in the Republic of Letters. I do not think that there is an example of such a rapid growth at any period or in any nation.

The tone is so admirative and appreciative that one might wonder whether the author was sincere. Some of his biographical details indicate that SaintMaure had spent several years in Russia and that he knew literary figures close to the government. This was a time when the Russian government was concerned with the image of Russia in Europe and tried to improve it by using the service of both Russian and western writers. In the subsequent period, 1840–1850, Michel Cadot showed repeated attempts of this sort. 41 Presumably, Saint-Maure was one of those literary ‘mercenaries’ who were charged with singing the praises of Russia: its literature, language, and rulers. It is worth noting that the role of French as the main vehicle for Russian literature was now contested by German, and significantly by English, as we see similar anthologies of Russian literature appearing at the same time in these two languages. 42 40 Ibidem, xli. 41 Cadot, La Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française (1839–1856). 42 Borg, Poetische Erzeugnisse der Russen: ein Versuch. See on this translation Schippan, ‘Karl Fridrikh von der Borg’; Bowring, Rossiskaia antologiia: Specimens of the Russian Poets. Bowring’s Anthology had considerable success, was reprinted in America, and was favourably reviewed in the English, French, and Russian press. The ‘Advertisement’ mentions ‘the infant literature of an extraordinary and powerful nation’. In his detailed study of Russian–English literary relations, Mikhail Alekseev hardly touches upon the question of the image of the Russian language and that of Russia in the West in relation to Bowring’s Anthology. However he mentions that Bowring visited Russia, where he became acquainted with a number of Russian figures, including some close to the government, and that he was authorized to dedicate the second

152 

VL ADISL AV R JÉOUTSKI

Sometimes these translations became the subject of fierce discussions. The anthology was harshly criticized in the Journal de Paris on 2 January 1824. Jacques Tolstoy, a Russian living in Paris, replied to this criticism in a letter that he was obliged to print at his own expense, as no newspaper agreed to do so – perhaps because his reputation as an unofficial agent of the Russian government was already well established.43 Tolstoy defended the translator and the author of the fables; but he agreed that the translations were not always successful, and that not a single one was close to the original text. 44 In other words, if the French reader was not entirely convinced by the genius of Russian writers, it was, as always, the fault of the translator. Translations from Russian into French often reveal propaganda objectives. They sometimes remained marginal, but at other times they were at the centre of translation projects. Literary works played a key role in this propaganda: Russia wanted to be seen as a nation that had made enormous progress along the path of civilization and become part of the civilized world. It is significant, as shown by the example of Kantemir, that this ‘political’ use of literary translation appeared relatively late, probably along with the generation of well-educated francophone Russian nobles who considered the glory of Russia and its literature their personal responsibility. The figure of Count Orlov is not unlike that of Ivan Shuvalov, the difference being that Shuvalov was an official character who actually defined Russian politics in many areas. There were other actors, such as foreigners who had spent a long time in Russia. Some of them were voluntarily in charge of the mission; others received moral and perhaps material encouragement from the Russian government, never far away. Significant consistency is observed in Russian cultural policy, where translation into European languages was a ‘soft power’ used quite often by the government and by high dignitaries who were close to the government. Little changed over the lifetime of three generations. In the mid-eighteenth century, literature and history were considered by Ivan Shuvalov as workhorses in the presentation of the Empire outside Russia and in showing Peter the Great as a hero capable of opening the doors of enlightened Europe to Russia. In the early nineteenth century, Russian belles-lettres and history

volume of his Anthology to Alexander I and was gratified with a gift from the Emperor. Alekseev, Russko–angliiskie literaturnye sviazi, 187–246; see in particular, 206. 43 [Tolstoy], Quelques pages sur l’Anthologie russe. On Jacques Tolstoy and his activity in France, see Cherkasov, Russkii agent vo Frantsii: Yakov Nikolaevich Tolstoi. 44 [Tolstoy], Quelques pages sur l’Anthologie russe, 17.

Literary translation as a foreign language polic y tool

153

were still highlighted, and the new heroes’ names were Krylov, Karamzin, and soon Pushkin. A circular letter from the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Karl Nesselrode, dated 1824, shows that the existence of the press published in French in Russia and controlled by the authorities corresponded to the objectives pursued by the government – to provide the public inside the Empire with information consistent with government policy, and to provide the reader outside Russia with ‘complete and authentic information on the internal state of the Empire, on the acts of our government, as well as on everything that would be used to show to Europe the true progress of the social order among us of civilization in Russia’. 45 One does not often find evidence of the genuine aims of translation practices. It is not inconceivable that we may one day find some first-hand documents that would show that literary translation was regarded by the government as a political issue to be addressed seriously. Language, as we have seen, became a subject of debate in these translation projects. Already at the time of Ivan Shuvalov, the goal was to present Russian as a language that could be used as a base for high-quality literature. This presentation of Russian became stronger during the reign of Catherine II, who – according to the French model – began the promotion of the national language by founding the Russian Academy and by ordering the compilation of a dictionary of the Russian language, where Princess Catherine Dashkova was one of the main actors. At the end of the eighteenth century, Karamzin stated that Russian literary language had yet to be perfected; and, in the early nineteenth century, Pushkin deplored the almost total absence of Russian literary prose worthy of the name. Meanwhile, outside the country, Russian was often presented as one of the major European languages supported by literature which was certainly young, but still of excellent quality. Thus, the language became a weapon to enable Russia to take its place in the family of European nations.

45 Translated from French: ‘[fournir] des renseignements complets et authentiques sur l’état intérieur de l’Empire, sur les actes de notre gouv[ernemen]t, de même que sur tout ce qui servirait à constater aux yeux de l’Europe, les veritables progrès de l’ordre social parmi nous la civilisation en Russie’. The corrections were made by Nesselrode himself. Archives of the Foreign Politics of the Russian Empire (AVPRI), fond 1, razriad IV, op. 50, d. 1, part 1, fol. 396–396 v. Quoted from Rjéoutski & Speranskaia, ‘The Francophone Press in Russia’, 92.

154 

VL ADISL AV R JÉOUTSKI

Bibliography Achinger, Gerda, Der französische Anteil an der russischen Literaturkritik des 18. Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Zeitschriften (1730–1780) (Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1970). Alekseev, Mikhail, Russko–angliiskie literaturnye sviazi (XVIII vek–pervaia polovina XIX veka) [Russian–English literary connections, eighteenth to the first half of the nineteenth century] (Moscow: Nauka, 1982). Alekseev, Mikhail, Sravnitel’noe literaturovedeniie [Comparative literary criticism] (Leningrad: Nauka, 1983). Annales dramatiques, ou dictionnaire général du théâtre (Paris: Babault, 1810), vol. 6. Berkov, Pavel, Lomonosov i literaturnaia polemika ego vremeni, 1750–1765 (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1936). Berry, Lloyd E. & Robert O. Crummey (eds.), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of the Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968). Betskoy, Ivan, Les plans et les statuts des différents établissements ordonnés par Sa Majesté impériale Catherine II: pour l’éducation de la jeunesse, et l’utilité générale de son Empire (Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1774). Borg, Karl Friedrich von der, Poetische Erzeugnisse der Russen: Ein Versuch (2 vols.; Riga and Dorpat, 1820, 1823). Bowring, John, Rossiskaia antologiia [Russian anthology]: Specimens of the Russian Poets, with Preliminary Remarks and Biographical Notices (2 vols.; London: R. Hunter, 1821–1823). Breuillard, Jean, ‘Les enjeux de la traduction dans la Russie du XVIIIe siècle et du début du XIXe siècle’, Slavica Occitania 6 (1998), 119–142. Cadot, Michel, La Russie dans la vie intellectuelle française (1839–1856) (Paris: Fayard, 1967). [Le] Caméléon littéraire 11, 16 March 1755; 15, 13 April 1755. [Cantemir, Antiochus], Satyres du Prince Cantemir: Traduites du Russe en François, avec l’histoire de sa vie (London: Jean Nourse, [1750]). Cantemir, Demetrius, Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, où se voyent les causes de son aggrandissment et de sa décadence avec les notes très instructives. Par S. a. S. Demetrius Cantemir, prince de Moldavie: Traduite en François par M. de Joncquieres (Paris: Barois fils, 1743), vols. 1–2. Cherkasov, Petr, Russkii agent vo Frantsii: Yakov Nikolaevich Tolstoi [A Russian agent in France: J.N. Tolstoy] (Moscow: KMK, 2008). ‘Dissertation sur l’origine et les progrès de la poésie, fondée sur le témoignage des anciens auteurs grecs et latins, auquels on a joint celui des auteurs modernes’, Le Caméléon littéraire, 11, 16 March 1755; 15, 13 April 1755. Evstratov, Alexei, ‘Russian drama in French: Sumarokov’s Sinav and Truvor and its translations’, Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia Newsletter, 37 (2009), 24–34. [Frédéric II], Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la maison de Brandebourg (Berlin: Chrétien Frédéric Voss, 1767), t. II. Gukovskii, Grigorii, ‘Russkaia literatura v nemetskom zhurnale XVIII v.’ [Russian literature in German journals of the eighteenth century] (Moscow: Gos. uchebno-pedagogicheskogo izd-vo, 1939). Kantemir, Antiokh, Sobranie stikhotvorenii [Collected poems] (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1956). Kopanev, Nikolai, ‘O pervykh izdaniiakh satir A. Kantemira’ [On the first editions A. Kantemir’s satires], in XVIII vek [The eighteenth century], ed. by A.M. Panchenko (Leningrad: Nauka, 1986), vol. 15, 140–154.

Literary translation as a foreign language polic y tool

155

Krylov, Ivan, Fables de M.J. Krylof: Traduites du russe, d’après l’édition complète de 1825. Par Hippolyte Masclet (Moscow: A. Semen, 1828). Krylov, Ivan, Fables russes tirées du recueil de M. Kriloff, et imitées en vers français et italiens par divers auteurs; précédées d’une introduction française de M. Lémontey, et d’une préface italienne de M.Salfi. Publiées par M. le comte Orloff: Ornées du portrait de M. Kriloff et de cinq gravures (Paris: Bossange, 1825), vol. 1. Levin, Yuri (ed.), Istoriia russkoi perevodnoi khudozhestvennoi literatury [History of Russian translated fiction] (St. Petersburg: Dmitri Bulanin, 1995, 1996), vols. 1–2. Mervaud, Michel & Jean-Claude Roberti, Une infinie brutalité: l’image de la Russie dans la France des XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: IMSECO-Institut d’études slaves, 1991). Mezin, Sergey, Vzgliad iz Evropy: frantsuzskie avtory XVIII veka o Petre I [A view from Europe: eighteenth-century French authors on Peter I] (Saratov: Izd. Saratovskogo universiteta, 1999). Morand, M. de, Menzikof, tragédie (The Hague: Chastelain, 1739). [Das] Neueste aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeit (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1753). Offord, Derek, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski & Gesine Argent (eds.), French and Russian in Imperial Russia (2 vols.; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015). Riccoboni, Louis, De la Réformation du théâtre ([Paris], 1743). Rjéoutski, Vladislav, ‘Baron de Chudi: perevodchik M.V. Lomonosova. K istorii perevoda i perevodchikov v Rossii epokhi Prosveshcheniia’ [Baron de Tschudy – a translator of Lomonosov’s works: on the history of translation and translators in the Russian Age of Enlightenment, in Lomonosov: Sbornik statei i materialov [Collected articles and material] (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2011), vol. 10, 269–280. Rjéoutski, Vladislav & Derek Offord, ‘Translation and propaganda in the mid-eighteenth century: French versions of Sumarokov’s tragedy Sinav and Truvor’, Online corpus of documents. https://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/introduction/translation-and-propaganda-mid-eighteenthcentury-french-versions-sumarokov’s-tragedy#_edn13 (last accessed 20 May 2015). Rjéoutski, Vladislav & Derek Offord, ‘French in Russian diplomacy: Antiokh Kantemir’s address to King George II and his diplomatic and other correspondence’, Online corpus of documents. https://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/introduction/french-russian-diplomacy-antiokh-kantemir’saddress-king-george-ii-and-his-diplomatic (last accessed 20 May 2015). Rjéoutski, Vladislav & Vladimir Somov, ‘Shevalie Dezessar, moskovskii guverner i pisatel’ (iz frantsuzskikh kontaktov I.I. Shuvalova’) [Chevalier Dezessar, Moscow governor and writer, from the French contacts of I.I. Shuvalov], Filosofskii vek: Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov (1727–1797), 8 (1998), 220–240. Rjéoutski, Vladislav & Natalia Speranskaia, ‘The francophone press in Russia: a cultural bridge and an instrument of propaganda’, in French and Russian in Imperial Russia, ed. by Derek Offord et al. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), vol. 1, 84–102. Russian National Library (RNB, St. Petersburg), Mss, Fr. Q XV 38. Saint-Maure, Émile [Dupré] de, Anthologie russe, suivie de poésies originales, dédiée à S.M. l’empereur de toutes les Russies, par P.T. Émile de Saint-Maure, chevalier de l’ordre royal de la Légion d’Honneur, ex-membre du corps législatif, ancien sous-préfet, auteur des satires publiées, en 1818, sous le titre d’Hier et Aujourd’hui. Avec six dessins lithographiés (Paris: Trouvé, 1823). Schippan, Michael, ‘Karl Fridrikh von der Borg: perevodchik Ivana Dmitrieva’ [Karl Friedrich von der Borg: translator of I. Demetriev], in Ivan Dmitriev (1760–1837): Zhizn’, tvorchestvo, krug obshcheniia [Life, works, social circle], ed. by A.A. Kostin & N.D. Kochetkova (St. Petersburg: IRLI, 2010), 120–128. Spilker, Heinrich Eberhard von, Versuchte freye Uebersetzung der Satyren des Prinzen Kantemir (Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1752).

156 

VL ADISL AV R JÉOUTSKI

Sumarokov, Aleksandr, Sinav i Truvor: Tragediia Aleksandra Sumarokova (St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaia akademiia nauk, 1751). Sumarokov, Aleksandr, Sinave et Trouvore, tragédie russe en vers, faite par monsieur Soumarokoff et traduite par mr. le prince Alexandre Dolgorouky (St. Petersburg: Académie impériale des Sciences, 1751). [Tolstoy, Jacques de], Quelques pages sur l’Anthologie russe; pour servir de Réponse à une critique de cet ouvrage, insérée dans le Journal de Paris du 2 janvier 1824; par J. de Tolstoy: Suivies d’une fable traduite du russe (Paris: de Plassan, 1824). Volmer, Annett, Presse und Frankophonie im 18. Jahrhundert: Studien zur französischsprachigen Presse in Thüringen, Kursachsen und Rußland (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2000). Voltaire, Correspondance, ed. by Theodore Besterman (Geneva: Les Délices, 1968–1977). Voltaire, The Complete Works of Voltaire, vols. 46–47: Histoire de l’empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand I, ed. by Michel Mervaud (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999).

About the author Vladislav Rjéoutski is a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Moscow, having previously worked on a project studying the social and cultural history of the French language in Russia at the University of Bristol. He is a specialist in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian history and culture, and the history of education and the press. He has published books on the French language in Europe, and in Russia in particular, on French emigration to Russia in the eighteenth century and on history of education. His latest publications include European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language (edited with G. Argent & D. Offord, 2014) and French and Russian in Imperial Russia (edited with D. Offord, L. Ryazanova-Clarke, & G. Argent, 2015, 2 volumes). Email: [email protected]

7

L’usage diplomatique de la langue française, instrument de la puissance? Lucien Bély*

Sanchez-Summerer, Karène & Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th – 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980600/ch07 Abstract This chapter describes the linguistic situation in France where French was the royal and administrative language. During the seventeenth century, some authors asserted that the power of Louis XIV would encourage the progress of French as an international language. The presence of the French Huguenots throughout Europe may also have been an important element of this linguistic feature. The use of French became common among European princes as a useful instrument for international negotiations. The evolution of French during Louis XIV’s reign towards a simpler and poorer language helped the diplomatic sphere to choose it as the most suitable means of communication. Even some treaties were written in French then, without any political consequence but as a common language for princes and diplomats. Keywords: Europe seventeenth–eighteenth centuries, French language and diplomacy, international congresses, negotiations, international treaties, Society of Princes, Huguenots

Les études récentes invitent à une grande prudence à propos de l’universalité de la langue française en Europe au seizième et au dix-septième siècles. Cette affirmation d’écrivains français ou de langue française sert surtout à valoriser leurs travaux et leur maîtrise en la matière. Elle suscite une réaction des fiertés nationales qui se révoltent face à une telle prétention.1 * 1

Université Paris-Sorbonne Siouffi, ‘De l’“universalité” européenne du français au XVIIIe siècle’.

158 

LUCIEN BÉLY

L’histoire de la langue s’est construite au dix-neuvième siècle dans une perspective nationale voire nationaliste, et les historiens ont souvent repris sans hésiter des conclusions sans nuances. À leurs yeux, le poids historique de la langue servirait ainsi à mesurer la puissance d’une nation, dans le passé comme dans le présent. Si les débats sont aujourd’hui moins intenses, ils renaissent volontiers. Alors qu’un auteur français a évoqué le temps où l’Europe parlait français,2 des historiens ont repris l’examen des faits dans le domaine politique.3

La nation française et les langues Le regard porté sur la langue a une histoire et il ne faut pas considérer la réalité du passé avec les idées nées au dix-neuvième siècle autour de la nation dont la langue constitue la principale caractéristique. Celle-ci est devenue alors l’acteur essentiel des relations internationales à travers l’État-nation. Aujourd’hui, alors que l’idée nationale, au moins en Europe, se transforme à mesure que se renforce l’union européenne, l’approche scientifique échappe à ces cadres idéologiques. 4 À l’époque moderne, la situation linguistique est complexe et le regard porté sur la langue diffère du nôtre.5 Nous proposons de voir d’abord le rapport entre la nation et l’État, mais aussi entre l’État et la langue.6 Nombre d’États européens sont des agrégations de populations aux cultures très différentes. La France acquiert sans doute assez tôt une unité géographique et en partie linguistique. Le royaume englobe néanmoins de nombreuses langues que parlent les différentes populations qui le composent. Le français est la langue du roi et de ses agents mais ceux-ci ont parfois bien du mal à se faire comprendre. La France est-elle une nation? La notion de nation à l’époque moderne a sans doute déjà une dimension linguistique importante. Le collège des Quatre-Nations créé par la volonté de Mazarin doit accueillir des élèves venus des territoires acquis par la France au temps du cardinal-ministre, où l’on ne parle pas forcément français: Pignerol, l’Alsace, le Roussillon et l’Artois. 2 Fumaroli, Quand l’Europe parlait français. 3 Braun, La connaissance du Saint-Empire en France, 1643-1756. 4 Il faut noter néanmoins que la volonté d’indépendance en Catalogne, au début du vingt-etunième siècle, se réfère avant tout à la langue catalane. 5 Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe. 6 Cohen, ‘L’imaginaire d’une langue nationale’.

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

159

Le royaume de France est pourtant regardé comme une nation que le roi incarne depuis le Moyen Âge.7 Fénelon, en pleine guerre de succession d’Espagne, en 1710, appelle la nation à sauver le royaume puisque le roi est discrédité.8 Cette idée reste inadmissible pour le pouvoir royal car le roi incarne la nation qui se confond avec le souverain: ils ne peuvent être distingués et l’État royal en France parle au nom de la nation. Cela tranche avec d’autres situations en Europe. En effet, une nation peut exister sans un État. Il y a une langue allemande, une nation allemande, une Allemagne, des États allemands, mais aucun État ne parle au nom de l’Allemagne. Il y a une langue italienne, peut-être une nation italienne, l’Italie existe mais c’est une mosaïque d’États.9 Toute la France parle-t-elle le français au temps de Louis XIV? C’est très douteux. Une autre question se pose: les nouveaux sujets du roi de France sont-ils obligés d’adopter la langue du conquérant? Le débat reste très vif du côté de Perpignan. Le Roussillon s’intègre peu à peu au royaume sous l’impulsion de l’État royal. Il faut désormais s’habiller à la française. En 1676, Trobat, Catalan rallié à la France, prononce un discours en français au conseil souverain, même si les arrêtés sont en catalan jusque vers 1685. La même année, à l’occasion du Carême, on prêche en langue française dans la collégiale Saint-Jean. Les petites écoles et le collège des jésuites favorisent les progrès de la langue française. Les historiens ont discuté à propos de cette intégration. Certains insistent sur les résistances durables,10 d’autres sur un attachement précoce des populations à leur nouvelle patrie. En Alsace, la langue locale germanique reste très vivante. C’est sans doute un des arguments lancés jusqu’au XXe siècle contre la France par les plus extrêmes soutiens de la nation allemande qui considèrent que l’acquisition de l’Alsace (de 1648 à 1681) est inacceptable.11 On parle donc français en France mais tout le monde ne le parle pas. Nul n’est vraiment obligé de l’utiliser dans la vie quotidienne même s’il faut bien, de plus en plus, le comprendre dans des moments importants. On le voit bien lors de la révolte des Bonnets rouges en 1675.12 Madame de Sévigné peut 7 Beaune, Naissance de la nation France. 8 Correspondance de Fénelon, t. XIV, Guerre, négociations et théologie 1708-1711, 261 : Fénelon au duc de Chevreuse, 4 août 1710. 9 Bély, ‘Je n’aurais pas cru, Monsieur, que vous eussiez oublié que vous êtes italien’, 285-410. 10 Jané Checa, Catalunya i França al segle XVII. 11 Hartmann, ‘La politique française à l’époque de Richelieu’, 103-112 ; Voss, ‘Un itinéraire contrasté : les traités de Westphalie à travers les siècles’. 12 Garlan & Nières, Les révoltes bretonnes de 1675 ; Cornette, Histoire de la Bretagne et des Bretons, I.

160 

LUCIEN BÉLY

raconter qu’un curé est inquiété parce qu’il a reçu une pendule: ‘Ils se mirent tous à crier dans leur langage que c’était “la Gabelle”, et qu’ils le voyaient fort bien’. Le prêtre leur dit qu’ils se trompent et que c’est le jubilé: tous se mettent alors à genoux. Mme de Sévigné commente à un autre moment: ‘Nos pauvres Bas-Bretons, à ce que je viens d’apprendre, s’attroupent quarante, cinquante par les champs; et dès qu’ils voient les soldats, ils se jettent à genoux, et disent mea culpa: c’est le seul mot de français qu’ils sachent’.

La puissance et la langue La plupart des auteurs datent du règne de Louis XIV le changement qui voit le français imposer sa présence au-delà des frontières de la France. Nombre d’écrivains français y devinent un signe et un instrument de la grandeur du roi. Les études actuelles ont tendance à minorer le rapport entre la puissance (politique et militaire) et les phénomènes linguistiques, soulignant que le français devient vraiment langue internationale dans la seconde moitié du dix-huitième siècle alors que la France connaît de grandes difficultés sur la scène mondiale face à l’Angleterre. Néanmoins le poids de la France en Europe a sans doute contribué à donner à sa langue une place originale. La puissance ne fait pas la présence linguistique mais elle la favorise sans doute. Le règne de Louis XIV correspond à l’affirmation d’une puissance en Europe.13 L’effort vient de loin, du temps d’Henri IV et de Louis XIII, mais il prend une dimension nouvelle dans les guerres que lance Louis XIV. L’expansion du français est-il un signe de cette puissance militaire, en est-il un élément? Le Père Bouhours franchit le pas en considérant que les dames de Bruxelles sont curieuses des livres et des modes français mais le peuple même ‘tout peuple qu’il est’ apprend le français ‘comme par un instinct secret qui l’avertit malgré lui, qu’il doit un jour obéir au roi de France comme à son légitime maître’.14 Même s’il ne faut pas exagérer cet aspect ni laisser supposer une politique de puissance linguistique, la puissance française n’a pu que favoriser les usages du français. La France est un pays très peuplé et ce poids humain est essentiel. Face à la politique agressive de la France, il a fallu négocier et il vaut mieux savoir la langue de la plus grande et inquiétante puissance du 13 Bély, Louis XIV. Le plus grand roi du monde. 14 Bouhours, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène (1671), cité par Guion, ‘Langue et nation’, 347-363.

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

161

temps. Les soldats français ont été présents sur tout le pourtour du territoire et il faut aussi discuter avec eux. Le roi de France fait peur mais il impressionne aussi les princes de son temps qui cherchent à l’imiter. Cette imitation a contribué à faire parler français aux princes de ce temps-là et des temps qui ont suivi.15 L’administration française apparaît aussi comme habile à taxer les Français, les méthodes de centralisation y semblent efficaces. Les administrateurs et financiers français assurent un transfert d’ingénierie administrative. En Espagne, ils pénètrent dans le sillage de Philippe V, petit-fils de Louis XIV, mais ils suscitent un phénomène de rejet avec le temps: ainsi c’est le cas d’Orry.16 Mais le cas de Du Tillot à Parme prouve que l’idée s’enracine. La France est aussi un important marché qui attire les marchands hollandais, les artistes italiens, les mercenaires suisses. Les gentilshommes allemands fréquentent les académies d’équitation en France. La culture française acquiert un éclat nouveau, en particulier à travers son théâtre. Des comédiens et des comédiennes français viennent jouer à Utrecht en 1712. Surtout, de nombreux huguenots français ont gagné l’étranger et forment le ‘Refuge’. Ils deviennent souvent écrivains ou journalistes, professeurs ou historiens, et accablent le roi qui les a persécutés. Une France protestante s’enracine ainsi dans de nombreux pays européens, en Hollande17 ou au Brandebourg, en Suisse et en Angleterre, où se construit une culture politique originale, qui a le français comme langue commune. Les réfugiés s’appuient sur les gazettes en langue française, mais aussi sur tout un ensemble de périodiques consacrés à l’actualité et ils travaillent à écrire l’histoire du temps présent.18 Finalement, à la fin du règne de Louis XIV, le débat s’installe entre la monarchie et ces écrits venus de Hollande essentiellement, dans une sphère culturelle où le français sert d’arme commune. Il y aurait, dans le Refuge, la naissance d’une autre France. Ces discussions s’installent aussi dans une sphère plus large, la société des cours et des négociateurs, qui fait du français sa langue de travail. Ainsi à l’affrontement militaire global s’ajoute en parallèle une guerre de plumes en langue française. Des huguenots français deviennent souvent des secrétaires de princes et de puissants, Adam de Cardonnel auprès de Marlborough, Jean de Robethon auprès de l’Électeur de Hanovre. Ainsi ces personnalités peuvent accéder et participer à ce débat politique qui marque l’Europe coalisée contre la 15 Bély, La Société des princes. 16 Hanotin, Jean Orry : un homme des finances royales ; Désos, Les Français de Philippe V. 17 Frijhoff, ‘Le Français en Hollande après la Paix de Westphalie’. 18 Brétéché, Les Compagnons de Mercure.

162 

LUCIEN BÉLY

France. Bien des Français protestants se mettent au service des princes européens et adaptent aussi, paradoxalement, les méthodes autoritaires qui ont prévalu en France au temps de Louis XIV.19 Le français sert aussi de langue scientifique à côté du latin et Leibniz écrit certaines de ses œuvres dans cette langue.

La langue du roi La langue du roi se transforme au dix-septième siècle (sans doute comme d’autres langues l’ont fait auparavant, notamment l’italien). La monarchie prolonge ensuite cet effort qui se caractérise par la volonté de donner au français une plus grande clarté et de le débarrasser des hyperboles, des métaphores forcées, des périphrases, même des longues périodes, des équivoques et des mots composés.20 Louis XIV suit lui-même de tels préceptes. Il prend volontiers la parole en public et il s’exprime alors avec clarté et simplicité, mais aussi avec force. Ses remarques, souvent brèves, étonnent les auditeurs. Il n’aime pas les discours complexes et affectés. Il maîtrise ses propos, se méfiant de toute familiarité, de toute grossièreté. Sainte-Beuve a écrit: ‘On a des Œuvres de Louis XIV, où le langage est empreint de noblesse et de bon sens, vrais modèles d’un style royal élevé et modéré. Mais ce ton même de modération les range dans le genre tempéré, qui n’est pas celui de Napoléon.’ Les écrivains accompagnent ce cheminement politique. Racine, dans ses tragédies, fait surtout parler des rois et des reines, et le public s’habitue à cette langue singulière. Une autre tentation se maintient néanmoins et des auteurs regrettent cette évolution vers une noble simplicité. Gilles Ménage (1613-1692) publie en 1650 les Origines de la langue française. Il s’intéresse aux parlers régionaux et aux langues étrangères, manifeste de l’intérêt pour la vieille langue et les poètes anciens. Quelques auteurs considèrent même que l’effort favorisé par la monarchie appauvrit la langue. Bayle écrit qu’elle est devenue ‘disetteuse’, donc pauvre et affamée. Fénelon, dans sa Lettre à l’Académie de 1714, remarque: ‘Notre langue manque d’un grand nombre de mots et de phrases: il me semble même qu’on l’a gênée et appauvrie, depuis environ cent ans en voulant la purifier’. Le prélat considère qu’il ne faut pas hésiter à emprunter aux autres langues: ‘Prenons de tous côtés tout ce qu’il nous

19 Birnstiel, ‘Les réfugiés huguenots en Allemagne au XVIIIe siècle’. 20 Truchet, Le XVIIe siècle. Diversité et cohérence ; Claude Hagège, L’homme de paroles.

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

163

faut pour rendre notre langue plus claire, plus précise, plus courte et plus harmonieuse…’. De façon singulière, dans les Mémoires qu’il fait rédiger pour l’instruction du Dauphin, Louis XIV souligne qu’il peut seul vraiment écrire en roi parce que les secrétaires n’osent pas s’exprimer à la place du souverain. Les lettres rédigées par le monarque y prendraient donc un éclat singulier: ‘On remarque presque toujours quelque différence entre les lettres que nous nous donnons la peine d’écrire nous-mêmes, et celles que nos secrétaires les plus habiles écrivent pour nous, découvrant en ces dernières je ne sais quoi de moins naturel et l’inquiétude d’une plume qui craint d’en faire trop ou trop peu’. Dans ce passage, les collaborateurs du roi définissent un style royal, fait de majesté et de retenue.

La langue simple et pauvre de la sphère politique C’est cette langue-là qui devient un outil de l’Europe politique. Ce n’est ni la langue de Madame de Sévigné, ni celle du duc de Saint-Simon. C’est celle de Fénelon qui a été le professeur des petits-fils du roi et qui écrit pour un futur roi. C’est celle de Voltaire qui a toujours rêvé de jouer un rôle politique dès sa jeunesse, c’est celle de Montesquieu qui a voyagé et qui scrute les structures politiques de l’Europe. Ce français est d’abord celui des ambassadeurs et des envoyés qui parlent et écrivent au nom du roi. Voltaire, dans une lettre de 1716 à Jean François Lériget de La Faye, a ironisé sur le sort des négociateurs: Au reste, je suis charmé que vous ne partiez pas si tôt pour Gênes; votre ambassade m’a la mine d’être pour vous un bénéfice simple. Faites-vous payer de votre voyage, et ne le faites point. Ne ressemblez point aux politiques errants qu’on envoie de Parme à Florence, et de Florence à Holstein, et qui reviennent enfin ruinés à Paris pour avoir eu le plaisir de dire: le roi mon maître.21

Ce français plus pauvre peut-être (en matière de vocabulaire) est plus facile pour le chiffrement et le déchiffrement des dépêches. Rappelons que c’est la tâche de Rousseau à Venise et il la trouve facile. En revanche, les dépêches 21 Lettre D 39, p. 53, Voltaire, Correspondence and related documents, éd. T. Besterman, tome I, Décembre 1704-décembre 1729, 1968 ; cité dans le Recueil des instructions aux ambassadeurs, Savoie-Sardaigne-Mantoue, II, 373.

164 

LUCIEN BÉLY

diplomatiques révèlent une syntaxe très sûre parce qu’il s’agit de fixer un raisonnement. Comme la ponctuation et l’usage des majuscules restent en revanche aléatoires, les accords de l’imparfait du subjonctif permettent souvent d’éviter de mal comprendre un texte. La graphie elle-même devient d’une grande clarté, sans ornements, avec seulement quelques abréviations. Tout cela correspond à un souci d’’élégance’ qui est exigée des diplomates. N’oublions pas qu’ils passent leur temps à écrire ou à préparer des dépêches avec des secrétaires. Ils écrivent au nom du roi mais aussi au roi. Le rêve d’un ambassadeur est qu’une missive puisse être si bien écrite que non seulement elle soit lue au monarque (ce qui est loin d’être toujours le cas) ou par le secrétaire d’État, mais surtout que l’élégance et la pertinence du propos frappent le prince et lui laissent une impression favorable, bien utile pour la suite d’une carrière. Ce français devient un instrument de la diplomatie européenne car, plus simple, il est sans doute plus facile à comprendre et à apprendre pour des étrangers.

La langue des rois Les ambassadeurs étrangers s’adressent à Louis XIV dans leur propre langue. Ensuite un interprète en lit la traduction. C’est ainsi en entendant la traduction d’un discours de Holles que le roi s’étonne de l’impertinence de ce diplomate anglais.22 Lorsque Louis XIV annonce à la cour son acceptation du testament du roi d’Espagne pour son petit-fils, il indique à l’ambassadeur d’Espagne que le jeune homme ne parle pas encore espagnol et qu’il lui parlera à sa place. Le roi de France est aussi heureux d’avoir en face de lui un envoyé qui parle français, ainsi Matthew Prior le 3 août 1712: ‘A çà, Monsieur, je suis bien aise de vous voir, vous parlez français, je sais’.23 Philippe V d’Espagne parle français. Un envoyé anglais à Madrid, Lexington, cite en français les mots employés par le roi d’Espagne: ‘Mais nous savons que la paix vous est aussi nécessaire qu’à nous, et vous ne voulez pas la rompre pour une bagatelle.’ La bagatelle en question, c’est le sort des Catalans.24 En revanche, la cour de Vienne utilise longtemps l’italien. Guido Braun signale que l’administration impériale s’adresse en latin au roi de France lorsque les documents viennent de la chancellerie mais que l’empereur 22 Tessier, Alexandre, ‘Des carrosses qui en cachent d’autres’, 197-240. 23 Report on the manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland, preserved at Welbeck Abbey (London: printed for Her Majesty’s stationery office, 1899), ‘Prior’s Negotiations in France’, 41. 24 Bély, ‘Les langues de la diplomatie’, in Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV, 450-55.

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

165

s’adresse en italien au roi lorsque sa lettre est censée être de sa main. Pour négocier un traité secret en 1667-1668, la cour de France a le bonheur d’avoir à Vienne le chevalier de Grémonville qui utilise l’italien25 (il a eu des missions en Italie). Cet usage décline ensuite mais il faudrait des précisions à ce sujet pour voir quand l’allemand l’emporte. La cour de Turin au temps de Victor-Amédée II offrirait un exemple intéressant des usages du français. Si le duc a des sujets piémontais, il gouverne aussi la Savoie. Il est le fils d’une princesse savoyarde venue de France et amie de Madame de La Fayette. Il a épousé une nièce de Louis XIV et il prend comme maîtresse une Française, la comtesse de Verrue (née Luynes). Il donne deux de ses filles à des princes français (le duc de Bourgogne et Philippe V). À la fin du dix-septième siècle et au dix-huitième siècle, les princes qui s’intéressent aux affaires étrangères semblent maîtriser plus ou moins le français, comme leurs principaux ministres ou généraux. George Ier, Électeur de Hanovre, devenu roi d’Angleterre en 1714, parle français avec ses ministres. Cela peut nous étonner, cela paraissait sans doute très naturel, l’anglais n’étant pas une langue que l’on apprenait volontiers. Le français s’impose dans la frange étroite des hommes et des femmes qui s’occupent des affaires d’État. Il faudrait des études plus précises pour voir s’il est employé dans les cours elles-mêmes par les courtisans qui ne se mêlent pas des affaires générales. Voici un exemple d’un billet de la tsarine de Russie Catherine II qui mêle sa langue natale au français dans une lettre à son confident le baron Grimm en 1780: Mon bon ami, un de ces jours vous entendrez dire que certaine déclaration a été déclarée et vous direz que c’est du volcanique […] mais il n’y avait plus moyen de faire autrement, denn die Teutschen hassen nichts so als wenn die Leute ihnen auf die Nase spielen wollen […]. Le confrère Charles [d’Espagne] échauffe nos oreilles dans ce moment; je vous prie de nous préter la vôtre pour écouter ce que nous allons lui dire et à d’autres aussi, denn das ist eben so raisonnable wie die Projekte des Abts von St. Pierre […] il y aura au printemps et pendant l’été des vaisseaux russes à Livourne.26

25 Bély, Les Secrets de Louis XIV. Mystères d’État et pouvoir absolu. 26 Catherine II au baron Grimm, le 2/13 février 1780, cité par Madariaga, Britain, 157.

166 

LUCIEN BÉLY

L’usage du français par les princes et leurs ministres permet également d’éviter le truchement des interprètes. Ceux-ci sont regardés avec méfiance car ils ne devraient pas entrer dans le monde du secret. Ils pénètrent par effraction dans la société des princes. L’exemple des drogmans à la Sublime Porte montre à toute l’Europe que la nécessité d’utiliser ces interprètes conduit à introduire une nouvelle strate de négociation: les drogmans (souvent des chrétiens convertis) ne traduisent pas exactement ce que les diplomates européens présentent, pour ne pas encourir la colère des autorités ottomanes. De plus, ce sont souvent des agents doubles et leur fidélité est douteuse. Ainsi, le souci d’éviter de tels intermédiaires est une des causes importantes de l’utilisation du français de base. Ajoutons qu’il est parfois difficile de trouver des interprètes, ainsi pour le russe ou l’arabe.

Autour du latin, une tour de Babel dans le monde diplomatique Quelle est l’évolution dans le monde de la diplomatie? Le congrès de Westphalie voit l’apogée du latin dans la diplomatie européenne, mais les diverses langues servent à la fois d’instruments et d’objets de la négociation. Théodore Godefroy, l’un des experts qui accompagnent la délégation française,27 juge qu’il vaut mieux utiliser la langue latine pour éviter ‘les doutes qui peuvent naître sur le sens des mots, si le roi fait le traité en français, et l’empereur en allemand, qui sont langues du tout différentes, et n’ont rien de commun l’une avec l’autre’.28 Les Suédois ont reçu l’instruction de préférer aussi le latin et l’un d’entre eux, qui utilise avec les Français le français, reçoit l’ordre absolu d’utiliser dorénavant le latin. Ils utilisent en revanche l’allemand, même dans leur correspondance entre eux. Une dispute éclate entre d’Avaux qui juge nécessaire la maîtrise du latin et de l’allemand et Servien qui préconise plutôt l’usage du français. Guido Braun avance une hypothèse à propos des discussions orales: ‘À Osnabrück, on parlait en général un allemand parsemé de latin tandis qu’à Münster, nous trouvons, à côté du latin, surtout le français – pourtant moins répandu qu’au milieu du siècle suivant – et l’italien’.29 Lors des discussions, Français et impériaux emploient le français, mais le recours à l’italien s’avère possible aussi. Les représentants espagnols acceptent de traiter à égalité les envoyés néerlandais, mais, de plus, de renoncer à l’espagnol dans les discussions et 27 On peut se reporter à Zur Perzeption des Deutschen Reiches im Frankreich des 17. Jahrhunderts. 28 Cité par Guido Braun, ‘Une tour de Babel ? Les langues de la négociation’, 147. 29 Ibidem, 160.

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

167

à consigner par écrit les résultats des négociations soit en néerlandais, soit en français: si le premier plénipotentiaire du roi Catholique avoue ne pas parler français, il a auprès de lui un Comtois, Antoine Brun, et un Anversois, Joseph de Bergaigne. Lors de l’échange des ratifications, on utilise le latin, le français, l’espagnol et le néerlandais. Avec les Français, les Espagnols refusent d’imiter l’exemple du traité de Vervins, rédigé en français, en alléguant que l’archiduc Albert l’a négocié au nom du roi d’Espagne, et la Cour de France, le 15 mars 1647, accepte l’idée d’un traité bilingue. Quant à Servien, il mesure la froideur nouvelle des Hollandais, lorsqu’à La Haye, au début de 1647, le président des États-Généraux ne lui répond pas en français, contre toutes les traditions, ce dont s’offusque Mazarin. Les négociateurs rencontrent sans doute aussi des difficultés pour traduire des notions difficiles en langue allemande, comme Reichsunmittelbarkeit, transposé au plus tard en 1684 en ‘immédiateté’ ou Landeshoheit, traduit comme ‘supériorité territoriale’ ou même simplement ‘souveraineté’.30 Un incident a lieu lorsque la Gazette traduit en français et publie une lettre circulaire en latin des représentants français: le mot ‘tyran’ appliqué à l’empereur indispose les impériaux qui demandent au médiateur vénitien d’intervenir. Pour arrêter l’affaire, le gouvernement français fait alors porter la responsabilité sur Renaudot qui aurait tronqué le sens du texte.

L’évolution des usages diplomatiques Au long du règne de Louis XIV, le monde diplomatique semble plus volontiers utiliser le français. Guido Braun semble vouloir répondre à une affirmation un peu glorieuse des historiens français, considérant l’usage de la langue comme un signe de prépondérance.31 Il revient sur l’incident des négociations de Francfort en 1682 à propos des idiomes à utiliser. Il conteste l’interprétation trop forte que Ferdinand Brunot a donnée de cette affaire en utilisant un mémoire d’origine douteuse. Ce texte semble montrer que les négociateurs français veulent défendre le droit de s’exprimer en français en laissant l’allemand à leurs homologues impériaux alors que ceux-ci mettent en avant la tradition de l’Empire où seul le latin est admis. Ces discussions 30 Sur la difficulté de cette notion et sa place dans la réflexion politique, on peut se reporter à la thèse de Jérémie Griard, ‘Le concept de souveraineté dans la pensée politique de Leibniz’, soutenue à l’Université Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV, 12 octobre 2003. 31 Braun, La connaissance du Saint-Empire.

168 

LUCIEN BÉLY

ayant lieu au sujet de Strasbourg, les autorités impériales considèrent qu’il ne s’agit pas d’une discussion internationale mais d’une affaire intérieure à l’Empire dont il convient de respecter les règles. On convient que chacun donne des mémoires en sa langue, français ou allemand, en s’obligeant à en donner une copie en latin. Contrairement à ce que pensait Brunot, il ne s’agit pas d’un règlement définitif puisque d’autres diplomates français utiliseront le latin à la diète de Ratisbonne. Guido Braun propose de renoncer à parler de ‘doctrine’ en matière d’usage linguistique. En réalité, Guido Braun démontre avec force qu’une forme de sagesse l’emporte le plus souvent et que la question des langues n’est sans doute pas encore totalement un moyen d’affirmation politique. Le français apparaît comme utile, par exemple aux Hollandais, eux-mêmes souvent utilisés comme médiateurs de fait. ‘Langue des cours, de l’aristocratie, des savants, le français était, depuis la seconde moitié du dix-septième siècle, entré dans la culture des diplomates, et il était naturel qu’il finît par s’imposer dans leurs documents professionnels.’ Étudiant les langues de la diplomatie, Guido Braun suit l’ouvrage publié en 1750 par Frédéric-Charles Moser, Traité des langues des cours et des états européens. Moser distingue trois usages des langues: pour des ambassades, pour des congrès et dans la correspondance.32 Lors d’une ambassade, l’envoyé parle la langue de son maître lorsqu’il apparaît en public et dans ses discours. Il doit proposer une traduction. Dans la suite de ses négociations, il est préférable qu’il parle la langue du pays où il se trouve pour éviter d’avoir recours à un interprète. Nous avons vu que les langues des cours changent. Pour les congrès, Moser souligne qu’il n’y a pas de règle générale en s’appuyant sur des exemples qui vont de Westphalie (1648) à Rastatt (1714). Trois phases sont à distinguer: les négociations menées de vive voix, les documents rédigés au cours des conférences, les traités eux-mêmes. Pour la correspondance, le choix de la langue est assez libre. On peut accompagner les lettres d’une traduction. Dans ses études, Guido Braun semble penser que le français s’impose d’abord dans les cours, le monde des noblesses et celui des savants avant de devenir commun dans la sphère diplomatique. En tout cas, cette pratique du français comme langue commune apparaît alors que la question d’une langue universelle continue à se poser.33 Cette chronologie peut sans doute être discutée car le monde des diplomates au contraire montre peut-être la voie. 32 Braun, ‘Frédéric-Charles Moser et les langues de la diplomatie européenne (1648-1750)’. 33 Simon, ‘Utopie et régulation sociale’, 143-161.

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

169

La langue de la négociation orale Le français devient une langue de communication dans des pays étrangers, en particulier en Hollande. Voyons la situation révélée par les correspondances diplomatiques au temps de la paix d’Utrecht (1713).34 En 1709, le Grand Pensionnaire Heinsius organise une discussion avec un intermédiaire au service de la France, Florisson, et un député des États-Généraux, de Leyde. Le Grand Pensionnaire demande quelle langue ce dernier veut employer, ‘si le français lui était plus facile’. L’homme lui répond qu’il préfère sa langue naturelle. Ainsi, dans le monde hollandais même, le français devient une langue de la négociation politique. Heinsius a lui-même eu une mission en France. Quant à Florisson, une lettre le qualifie de ‘génie médiocre qui s’exprime très mal en français, mais il a du bon sens’. Du côté des ennemis de la France, l’usage du français suscite bien des réticences. Un correspondant d’Eugène de Savoie raconte un repas auquel participe Harley, le Grand Trésorier d’Angleterre, qui dirige la politique du pays. Il essaie de deviner ce que pense cet homme d’État ‘autant qu’une conversation d’un homme très réservé et qui s’explique par affectation mal en français me paraît permettre’. Harley veut sans doute apparaître comme un homme simple qui dédaigne la sophistication que suppose la maîtrise de la langue française en Angleterre. Par ailleurs, il s’entend très bien avec un simple curé, Gaultier, que la France utilise comme agent officieux. Pendant les négociations d’Utrecht en 1712-1714, le français est la langue commune mais l’envoyé impérial Sinzendorf ne veut pas que cela devienne une règle, tout en rappelant celle en usage qu’il trahit: ‘le comte de Sinzendorf y parla français par complaisance pour l’assemblée, et il en fit une réservation pour que cela ne pût tirer à conséquence, les ministres de l’empereur ne devant jamais parler que latin’. Les déclarations off icielles des alliés se font en français. L’envoyé pontifical Passionei mentionne celle du plénipotentiaire anglais à propos des concessions françaises et, dans sa lettre en italien, cite les mots en français: ‘Elles approchent de si près à une satisfaction juste et raisonnable pour chacun des hauts alliés’. Les correspondances mentionnent les agents qui s’expriment mal en français. Ainsi l’envoyé anglais à Paris Prior évoque le duc d’Ossone, diplomate espagnol comme ‘une personne qu’aucun mortel ne peut comprendre ou décrire: il a un jargon qui ne sera jamais du français et qui ne fut jamais de 34 Tous ces éléments ont été présentés dans Bély, ‘Les langues de la diplomatie’, in Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV, 450-455.

170 

LUCIEN BÉLY

l’espagnol’. Le maréchal d’Huxelles qui représente Louis XIV discute avec un agent qui défend les intérêts de l’Électeur de Bavière: ‘il me paraît avoir du sens autant que je peux juger d’un Anglais qui parle médiocrement français’. Ainsi les diplomates et les agents font des efforts pour communiquer entre eux et ils ont volontiers recours au français qu’ils maîtrisent plus ou moins bien. Tout se complique pour des envoyés qui ne parlent que l’allemand. Ainsi un envoyé du tsar de Russie en 1711: ‘il est Allemand de nation, né en Livonie, sous la domination du roi de Suède; il ne sait ni le français ni l’anglais, ayant résidé ci-devant à Berlin’.

Les écrits en français Le français devient aussi la langue écrite pour les textes préparatoires aux traités et certaines correspondances. Des diplomates hollandais correspondent entre eux dans cette langue. On voit un diplomate anglais transmettre à un diplomate hollandais une lettre de deux feuilles en français qu’il suppose ‘par le style’ écrite par un homme du pays de Rotterdam. À Paris, Prior traduit pour Torcy, le ministre français, une lettre en anglais qu’il a reçu du secrétaire d’État anglais. Le même Prior ayant été présent au congrès de Ryswick, il rassemble ses souvenirs pour éclairer la diplomatie anglaise à propos de la forme de langage et de style (the form of language and style) à utiliser pour les traités. Tout ce qui se fera à Utrecht est décidé à Paris entre Torcy et les envoyés anglais: ‘Nous avons communiqué à MM. Les plénipotentiaires d’Angleterre ce dont vous êtes convenu avec M. le duc de Shrewsbury et le sieur Prior à l’égard des titres et de la langue des traités.’ La négociation d’Utrecht s’accompagne d’autres, parallèles. À Madrid, le baron Lexington suit la procédure qui aboutit à la renonciation de Philippe V à ses droits sur la France et toute l’Europe veut avoir le texte de ces renonciations, base de la pacification. Il discute aussi du traité accordant l’asiento des esclaves noirs à une compagnie anglaise. Ainsi il souligne que ‘le nombre de papiers qui doivent être insérés et traduits en différentes langues’ est si grand qu’il aurait ‘de grandes difficultés à faire croire cela en Angleterre parce que nous pourrions faire traduire et copier toute la Bible en moins de temps’. Cette remarque correspond à des négociations particulières entre Espagne et Angleterre où le français n’est sans doute pas aussi bien accepté. Le traité est publié dans une feuille volante en anglais et en espagnol par l’imprimeur John Baskett, et Jean Dumont en donne plus tard une version française.

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

171

Les traités Ces textes s’imposent comme des règles entre États européens. La langue que ceux-ci emploient pourrait être un signe des hiérarchies et des choix linguistiques d’un temps. Cette situation renvoie à des données historiques: la préséance honorifique de l’empereur en Europe, une égalité relative entre les têtes couronnées (royales) comme acteurs internationaux, néanmoins une hiérarchie de tous les princes de l’Europe. Les usages sont variés pour les traités de la France: avec la Hollande, le texte est rédigé en français, avec l’Empire en latin, avec l’Espagne en espagnol et en français, ainsi à Ryswick en 1697 (les archives françaises ne conservent qu’un original en espagnol). Voyons ainsi les traités signés à Utrecht en 1713.35 Le traité de succession et de barrière entre la Grande-Bretagne et les Provinces-Unies de 1713 est en latin, comme la convention entre parties belligérantes pour l’évacuation de la Catalogne du 14 mars 1713. Le traité entre l’empereur et le roi de Prusse à propos du haut quartier de Gueldre est en allemand (nous sommes dans l’Empire). Le traité entre la Grande-Bretagne et la France semble avoir été en français, mais une version en latin fut rédigée et publiée. La ratification par la reine Anne est rédigée en latin, celle de Louis XIV en français. Un article séparé signale: Nous soussignés Ministres, Ambassadeurs extraordinaires et plénipotentiaires de S.M.T.C. déclarons à la réquisition des Ministres, Ambassadeurs extraordinaires et plénipotentiaires de S.M.B. qui n’ont pas voulu arrêter la conclusion de la Paix, que s’il se trouve que l’un des Instruments des Traités faits et signés à Breda, et depuis entre la France et la Grande-Bretagne ne soit point en français, nous en fournirons un autre en latin avant la ratification de la convention faite aujourd’hui.36

Le traité de commerce est en français. Le traité entre France et Provinces-Unies est en français ainsi que celui entre France et Savoie. La discussion s’avère difficile avec le roi de Prusse. Le roi de France affirme qu’il veut bien reconnaître l’Électeur de Brandebourg comme roi (en Prusse), ‘lui accorder les honneurs de tête couronnée’, mais il affirme: ‘il ne doit pas y avoir de parité de moi à lui’ et il conclut: ‘ainsi le traité de 35 Nous nous appuyons sur Dumont, Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens, VIII, 1. 36 Ibidem, 344.

172 

LUCIEN BÉLY

paix doit être signé simplement en français et vous n’en signerez aucun en latin’. La rédaction en latin renvoie seulement aux traités entre le roi et l’empereur. Les négociateurs français annoncent cette décision et indiquent qu’à aucun moment ils n’admettraient que les diplomates prussiens pussent signer avant eux: ‘Ils furent si sensibles à cette déclaration que l’un d’eux ne put s’empêcher de dire en allemand au comte de Strafford que la nouvelle qu’en recevrait leur maître était capable de le faire retomber malade’. En réalité, le monarque est déjà mort, le 25 février. Or, Jean Dumont publie le texte en latin. Soit cet auteur a voulu ménager la susceptibilité des Prussiens en donnant une traduction latine, soit la diplomatie française a bien voulu un traité en français et en latin. Henri Vast indique: ‘Nous avons copié sur l’instrument original le texte français que nous publions’.37 La difficulté vient du fait que le roi de Prusse reste un prince allemand, vassal et électeur de l’empereur, et que, de plus, sa reconnaissance comme roi est très récente (1701). Peut-il être aussitôt reconnu par la France devenir l’égal de son roi? L’instrument de la cession de la Sicile par le roi d’Espagne au duc de Savoie est en espagnol et en français. Le traité entre Philippe V et la reine de Grande-Bretagne le 13 juillet 1713 est en latin. L’article X suscite encore toute l’attention des juristes pour une concession capitale: ‘plenam, integramque proprietatem urbis et arcis Gibraltar’ (la propriété pleine et entière de la ville et forteresse de Gibraltar). Le traité entre la Prusse, le roi de Pologne (aussi Électeur de Saxe) et le tsar de Russie contre la Suède utilise l’allemand (6 octobre 1713). Nous voyons ces deux ‘plaques tectoniques’ évoquées par Guido Braun: une pour la langue française et une autre pour le latin, mais d’autres langues sont présentes. Les exemples donnés montrent que plusieurs données interviennent: le respect des usages du passé, des ‘précédents’ comme dans toute la culture politique ancienne, la commodité d’une langue connue du plus grand nombre pour rédiger dans l’urgence un texte sans retarder la paix, le souci de la préséance linguistique lorsque la relation entre deux États est inégale.

Le cas de Rastatt38 Villars négocie en 1714 avec Eugène de Savoie la paix entre la France et l’empereur. Il fait venir le recteur des jésuites de Strasbourg à Rastatt:39 37 Vast, Henri, Les Grands traités du règne de Louis XIV, III, 64. 38 Duchhardt & Martin Espenhorst, Utrecht-Rastatt-Baden 1712-1714. 39 Souvent orthographié Rastadt.

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

173

Comme je n’ai pas grande confiance, Monsieur, dans ma latinité, et que le père recteur désire de venir à Rastatt pour parler à M. le baron de Hundheim de quelques intérêts qui regardent sa maison, je m’en servirai pour ne faire aucun solécisme et qu’il n’y ait aucun terme dans le traité que je ne puisse entendre parfaitement. 40

Eugène a vécu en France pendant sa jeunesse et parle français. Il a commandé les troupes impériales mais quelle langue y utilisait-il alors? En tout cas, à Rastatt, l’usage de français est commode. Le traité est finalement rédigé en français et signé le 6 mars 1714. Cette date de 1714 a souvent été interprétée comme une étape importante puisque dans un traité entre l’empereur et le roi de France, le premier renonçait à l’usage du latin. 41 Un article séparé précise les choses: Le présent traité, par les raisons mentionnées dans l’article XXXIII ayant été commencé, poursuivi et achevé sans les solennités et formalités requises et usitées à l’égard de l’Empire, et composé et rédigé en langue française, contre l’usage ordinairement observé dans les traités entre Sa Majesté Impériale, l’Empire et Sa Majesté Très-Chrétienne, cette différence ne pourra être alléguée pour exemple, ni tirer à conséquence, ou porter préjudice en aucune manière, à qui ce soit, et l’on se conformera à l’avenir à tout ce qui a été observé jusqu’à présent dans de semblables occasions tant à l’égard de la langue latine que pour les autres formalités et nommément dans le congrès et traité général et solennel à faire entre Sa Majesté Impériale, l’Empire et Sa Majesté Très-Chrétienne le présent traité ne laissant pas d’avoir la même force et vertu que si toutes les susdites formalités y avaient été observées et comme s’il était en langue latine, et le présent article séparé aura pareillement la même force que s’il était inséré mot à mot dans le traité de paix. Fait au palais de Rastadt ce sixième mars 1714. 42

Dans l’article XXXIII, l’empereur déclare qu’il n’a pas eu le temps de consulter les électeurs, princes et États de l’Empire mais que ceux-ci donneront

40 De Courcy, La Coalition de 1701 contre la France, 256-257 : Maréchal de Villars au marquis de Torcy, 25 février 1714. 41 Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900, IV, 1-2. La langue classique (1660-1715). 42 Dumont, Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens, VIII, 1, 422.

174 

LUCIEN BÉLY

des pleins-pouvoirs ou enverront une députation pour signer le même texte qu’à Rastatt pour un ‘traité général ou solennel’. En effet à Baden en Suisse, le 7 septembre 1714, Villars et Eugène signent un nouveau traité qui est la traduction en latin du traité de mars: seuls diffèrent les articles 12, 24 (en partie), 26 et 32 à 38. 43 Cette traduction montre, aux yeux des historiens contemporains, que la règle ordinaire n’a pas été bafouée, et que le latin demeure la langue entre la France et l’Empire. Néanmoins, l’article séparé devient bien un modèle: si le français est utilisé, cela n’a pas de conséquence juridique et cela ne doit pas en avoir. Cette précaution apparaît désormais. Voici l’article pour le traité de Paris de 1763 entre France, Grande-Bretagne et Espagne: Il a été convenu et arrêté que la langue française, employée dans tous les exemplaires du présent traité, ne formera point un exemple, qui puisse être allégué, ni tiré à conséquence, ni porter préjudice, en aucune manière, à aucune des puissances contractantes; et que l’on se conformera, à l’avenir, à ce qui a été observé, et doit être observé, à l’égard, et de la part, des puissances, qui sont en usage, et en possession, de donner, et de recevoir, des exemplaires, de semblables traités, en une autre langue que la française. Le présent traité ne laissant pas d’avoir la même force et vertu, que si le susdit usage y avait été observé.

Des princes maîtrisent le français plus ou moins bien. Est-ce le cas de tous au dix-huitième siècle? Le cas de Frédéric II de Prusse est-il emblématique? Les gouvernements ont sans doute recours au français pour les affaires étrangères. Qu’en est-il dans les autres affaires, militaires ou civiles? L’usage se diffuse dans les cours et dans les noblesses mais jusqu’à quel point? Le monde diplomatique utilise le français comme langue de travail dans les négociations générales, quand la France est partie prenante. Quand ce n’est pas le cas, la question se pose. L’allemand se maintient dans l’Empire et sans doute longtemps avec la Russie. Peut-être le latin se révèle-t-il encore longtemps utile à l’est de l’Europe. Le français est langue des traités en Europe lorsque la France y est intéressée. Le traité signé à Paris en 1783 entre les États-Unis et la Grande-Bretagne est bien entendu en anglais. L’usage de la langue ne donne aucun droit. Il a sans doute une signification culturelle mais celle-ci laisse indifférents les diplomates qui veulent établir des droits solides. 43 Vast, Les Grands traités du règne de Louis XIV, III, 187.

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

175

Comme pour l’anglais aujourd’hui, l’usage de la langue n’est pas sans rapport avec la puissance politique, culturelle et économique. Néanmoins, la diplomatie française ne cherche pas à marquer des points à travers l’usage de sa langue. Elle insiste sur la révérence que l’Europe doit au roi de France sans chercher à humilier ses frères et sœurs, les souverains chrétiens. Le français dans sa forme de la fin du dix-septième siècle, simplifié et fixé, apparaît comme un instrument commode comme le plus petit dénominateur commun des relations politiques internationales. Néanmoins, longtemps, toutes les langues sont présentes: l’important est de trouver un moyen de se faire comprendre. Le latin demeure longtemps comme langue des traités mais il cède de plus en plus devant le français. Si l’on considère la carrière diplomatique, la maîtrise de plusieurs langues reste très utile pour un diplomate afin de percer les secrets de ses interlocuteurs et de deviner le sens des apartés. Il permet aussi de vérifier les termes d’un traité en confrontant les documents disponibles et les textes préalables. Néanmoins, pour ceux qui veulent se mêler des affaires d’État ou bien le servir, il devient de plus en plus nécessaire de maîtriser le français.

Bibliographie Beaune, Colette, Naissance de la nation France (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). Bély, Lucien, Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1990). Bély, Lucien, La Société des princes (Paris: Fayard, 1999). Bély, Lucien, Louis XIV. Le plus grand roi du monde (Paris: Gisserot, 2005). Bély, Lucien, ‘Je n’aurais pas cru, Monsieur, que vous eussiez oublié que vous êtes italien’ L’Italie et les Italiens pendant la guerre de Succession d’Espagne’, in Bernard Barbiche, Jean-Pierre Poussou & Alain Tallon (dir.), Pouvoirs, contestations et comportements dans l’Europe moderne. Mélanges en l’honneur du Professeur Yves-Marie Bercé (Paris: PUPS, 2005), 285-410. Bély, Lucien, Les Secrets de Louis XIV. Mystères d’État et pouvoir absolu (Paris: Tallandier, 2013). Bouhours, Dominique, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène (1671), éd. par Bernard Beugnot & Gilles Declercq (Paris: Champion, 2003). Birnstiel, Eckart, ‘Les réfugiés huguenots en Allemagne au XVIIIe siècle’, in Jean Mondot, Jean-Marie Valentin & Jürgen Voss (dir.), Deutsche in Frankreich, Franzosen in Deutschland, 1715-1789. Institutionelle Verbindungen, Soziale Gruppen, Stätten des Austausches | Allemands en France, Français en Allemagne, 1715-1789. Contacts institutionnels, groupes sociaux, lieux d’échanges (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1992), 73-87. Braun, Guido, ‘Frédéric-Charles Moser et les langues de la diplomatie européenne (1648-1750)’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique (1999: 3), 261-278. Braun, Guido, ‘Une tour de Babel? Les langues de la négociation et les problèmes de traduction au Congrès de la paix de Westphalie (1643-1649)’, in Rainer Babel (dir.), Le Diplomate au travail. Entscheidungsprozesse, Information und Kommunikation im Umkreis des Westfälischen Friedenskongresses (München: Oldenbourg, 2005), 147. Braun, Guido, La connaissance du Saint-Empire en France, 1643-1756 (München: Oldenbourg, 2010).

176 

LUCIEN BÉLY

Brétéché, Marion, Les Compagnons de Mercure. Journalisme et politique dans l’Europe de Louis XIV (Ceysérieu: Champ Vallon, 2015). Brunot, Ferdinand, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900 (13 vols.; Paris: A. Colin, 1905-1953, 1969-1979). Burke, Peter, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Cohen, Paul, ‘L’imaginaire d’une langue nationale: l’État, les langues et l’invention du mythe de l’ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts à l’époque moderne en France’, Histoire Épistémologie Langage, 25: 1 (2003), 19-69. Cornette, Joël, Histoire de la Bretagne et des Bretons (2 vols.; Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2005). Courcy, Marie-René Roussel de, La Coalition de 1701 contre la France (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1886). Désos, Catherine, Les Français de Philippe V. Un modèle nouveau pour gouverner l’Espagne, 1700-1724 (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2009). Duchhardt, Heinz, & Martin Espenhorst (dir.), Utrecht-Rastatt-Baden 1712-1714. Ein europäisches Friedenswerk am Ende des Zeitalters Ludwigs XIV (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). Dumont, Jean, Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens, VIII, 1 (Amsterdam, Brunel & Wetstein / La Haye: Husson & Levier, 1731). Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe, Correspondance de Fénelon, tome XIV, Guerre, négociations et théologie 1708-1711, éd. J. Orcibal, Jacques Le Brun & Irénée Noye (Genève: Droz, 1992). Frijhoff, Willem, ‘Le français en Hollande après la Paix de Westphalie: langue d’immigrés, langue d’envahisseurs, ou langue universelle?’, Documents pour l’histoire du français langue étrangère ou seconde [SIHFLES], 18 (1996), 329-350. Fumaroli, Marc, Quand l’Europe parlait français (Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 2001). Garlan, Yvon, & Claude Nières, Les révoltes bretonnes de 1675. Papier timbré et bonnets rouges (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1975). Griard, Jérémie, ‘Le concept de souveraineté dans la pensée politique de Leibniz’, thèse soutenue à l’Université Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV, 12 octobre 2003. Guion, Béatrice, ‘Langue et nation: l’invention du “Siècle de Louis le Grand”’. Revue française d’histoire des idées politiques. Numéro spécial: Langues et nations (XIIIe-XVIIIe siècles), 36 (2e semestre 2012), 347-363. Hagège, Claude, L’homme de paroles (Paris: Fayard, 1985). Hanotin, Guillaume, Jean Orry: un homme des finances royales entre France et Espagne (1701-1705) (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 2009). Hartmann, Anja Victorine, ‘La politique française à l’époque de Richelieu: interprétations allemandes de 1648 à 1998’, in 1648, Belfort dans une Europe remodelée (Belfort: Ville de Belfort, 2000), 103-112. Jané Checa, Òscar, Catalunya i França al segle XVII. Identitats, contraidentitats i ideologies a l’època moderna (1640-1700) (Barcelona: Afers, 2006). Madariaga, Isabel de, Britain, Russia and the armed neutrality of 1780. Sir James Harris’s Mission to St. Peterburg during the American Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962). Recueil des instructions données aux ambassadeurs et ministres de France: depuis les traités de Westphalie jusqu’à la Révolution française. Savoie-Sardaigne et Mantoue, avec introductions et notes par Le Comte Horric de Beaucaire (2 tomes; Paris: Félix Arcan, 1899). Report on the manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland, preserved at Welbeck Abbey (London: printed for Her Majesty’s stationery office, 1899).

L’usage diplomatique de l a l angue fr ançaise, instrument de l a puissance?

177

Simon, Fabien, ‘Utopie et régulation sociale: l’espace social européen des concepteurs de langues universelles (XVIe-XVIIe siècles)’, in François Brizay (dir.), Les Formes de l’échange. Communiquer, diffuser, informer de l’Antiquité au XVIIIe siècle (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012), 143-161. Siouffi, Gilles, ‘De l’”universalité” européenne du français au XVIIIe siècle: retour sur les représentations et les réalités’, Langue française, 167 (septembre 2010), 13-29. Tessier, Alexandre, ‘Des carrosses qui en cachent d’autres. Retour sur certains incidents qui marquèrent l’ambassade de Lord Denzil Holles à Paris, de 1663 à 1666’, in Lucien Bély & Géraud Poumarède (dir.), L’Incident diplomatique (Paris: Pedone, 2010), 197-240. Truchet, Jacques (dir.), Le XVIIe siècle. Diversité et cohérence (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1992). Vast, Henri, Les Grands traités du règne de Louis XIV, III (Paris: Picard, 1899). Voss, Jürgen, ‘Un itinéraire contrasté: les traités de Westphalie à travers les siècles’, in Jean-Pierre Kintz & Georges Livet (dir.), 350e anniversaire des Traités de Westphalie. Une genèse de l’Europe, une société à reconstruire (Strasbourg, Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 1999), 175-190. Zur Perzeption des Deutschen Reiches im Frankreich des 17. Jahrhunderts: Théodore Godefroy, Description de l’Alemagne, éd. par Klaus Malettke & Ullrich Hanke (Münster: LIT, 2002).

About the author Lucien Bély graduated from the École Normale Supérieure. Since 1997, he has been Professor of History at Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV) and since 2008 president of the Association des historiens modernistes des universités françaises (AHMUF). His research deals with the history of international relations and diplomacy. He is the author of several recent books, including: Les Secrets de Louis XIV: mystères d’état et pouvoir absolu (Paris: Tallandier, 2013); La paix des Pyrénées (1659) ou le triomphe de la raison politique (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015); and Dictionnaire Louis XIV (Paris: Laffont-Bouquins, 2015). Email: [email protected]

8

The political implications of the idea of génie de la langue in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Gilles Siouffi*

Sanchez-Summerer, Karène & Willem Frijhoff (eds.), Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th – 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980600/ch08 Abstracts This contribution traces how the idea of génie de la langue was used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, first in France and then throughout Europe. It is an idea typical of the modern era, and we suggest that it has worked as a metonymic laboratory before the emergence of nationalism in the nineteenth century. We explore how it changed the perception of cultural differences, changing the perception of otherness and unity, and explore the political implications of this idea in some specific contexts. Keywords: Language, nationalism, identity, culture, difference, unity

The idea of génie de la langue (‘genius or spirit of language’)1 was a popular theme in the study of modern languages around Europe between the * Paris-Sorbonne/Sens, Texte, Informatique, Histoire (STIH) 1 This is a phrase which is very difficult to define, but basically expresses the idea that each language is endowed with a set of peculiarities or particular qualities. We first use the phrase in French because, as we will see, it is in French that it appeared first. Later on, we will see how the French phrase also made its way into translations in various languages, often using ‘code-mixing’ forms. Besides, in commenting on the génie de la langue, we will use the term ‘idea’ rather than ‘notion’ or ‘concept’. Indeed, even if some attempts have been made in the past to give the idea some rational grounds, and to make a concept out of it, our aim here is less to analyse the function of the term within a set of metalinguistic terms taken in a moment of history than to deal with its political or cultural implications. Whether the idea can be asserted is for us of less interest here than its proper impact, regardless of justifications.

180 

GILLES SIOUFFI

beginning of the seventeenth century and the end of the nineteenth – a fairly specific, although broad, amount of time.2 Of course, there have been some later occasional developments around this theme, but the idea itself was not given much credit by the more serious specialists, and the aim of trying to convey a precise meaning of that phrase no longer appealed to grammarians. Those who made such attempts generally did so with ideological or nationalistic motives, and their discourse gained little value. As Henri Meschonnic put it, the idea was ‘banned from serious work in linguistics’, so to speak.3 It is usual to say that the three great forces of identification that govern human communities, and their perception of similarities and differences, are the people (and the nation), religion, and language. In that respect, it is interesting to examine the historical coexistence that can be seen between the idea of génie de la langue and the first of these forces (we will set aside here the aspect of religion), at a time before the great political reconfiguration at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the emergence of the idea of nation – or, as Peter Burke put it, the time when national identity began to be more important than social identity. 4 Thus we will briefly set out here a series of questions: – Is there a link between the circulation of the idea of génie de la langue around Europe, and the emergence of this great political and cultural shift? – The link between the general idea of génie and the emergence of nationalism, and of Völkerpsychologie (‘folk psychology’), has been well emphasized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; but what came before, at a time when the conscience of the identity and unity of the people was not yet so precise? – Would the reflection on languages work as a form of metonymic laboratory for a future, more direct, political form of questioning?

2 See, among others, the following studies: Christmann, ‘Bemerkungen zum Genie de la langue’; Crépon, Le malin génie des langues: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rosenzweig; Meschonnic, Et le génie des langues?; Siouffi, Le génie de la langue française; Hassler, ‘La description du génie de la langue dans les grammaires françaises et les grammaires d’autres langues’. 3 ‘Interdite de linguistique’, as stated in the ‘Présentation’ by Meschonnic, Et le génie des langues?, 8. 4 Burke, ‘Diglossia in early modern Europe’, 49.

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF GÉNIE DE L A L ANGUE

181

These questions will concentrate entirely on the ideological aspect of the issues, and will not explore the linguistic realities.5 We can start with some of the questions that are raised in the argument, such as: What ‘Italian genius’ can explain the impact of Italian culture and the Italian language in France, in England, and in Germany at a time when Italy did not yet exist as a political entity?; or What ‘English genius’ is involved in the French anglomania of the eighteenth century? In these questions, an adjective of nationality is directly applied to the word génie. It means that it is deemed useful, in order to deal with actual linguistic policies, to analyse the way in which representations of languages are elaborated and develop their own logic. In France, the link between the development of the idea of génie de la langue around the time when Louis XIV established his personal power and the will to determine the unity of the kingdom and to establish a form of political and cultural hegemony has already been studied, and there is no need to dwell again on that theme.6 If we have a closer look at the chronology, however, we note that the discursive development of this theme – such as can be found in the well-known and often referred to Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène by Dominique Bouhours (1671) – comes before, and not after, the monarch’s major effective conquests. Some of the most striking statements by Bouhours, such as ‘on parle déjà français dans toutes les Cours de l’Europe’,7 cannot be understood as a description of the reality of the time. The popularity of the French language in the European courts and among the European aristocracy is only at its very beginning in the year 1670. Hence it is clear that Bouhours’s over-optimistic declaration contains a form of proselytism, and is meant to anticipate future possible realities. Describing a not yet existing linguistic hegemony is a way to pave the way for a future political hegemony. We will take this previous discourse on facts as our primary question. If it is not based on acknowledged facts, on what grounds does such a discourse work? How can it establish the basis for his argument? Indeed, in this contribution we will try to develop the point that some linguistic representations – such as those which are contained in the idea of génie de la langue – can operate as experimental training grounds, on a different level to the invention of a new concept of collective identity preparing 5 The question of the comparison between the representations of languages and the realities has been dealt with in Siouffi, ‘De l’“universalité” européenne du français au XVIIIe siècle: retour sur les représentations et les réalités’. 6 See Fumaroli, ‘Le génie de la langue française’. 7 Bouhours, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène, 221.

182 

GILLES SIOUFFI

the idea of nation, which, as we know, is not yet an operating concept in the seventeenth century. Of course, working on a purely speculative level, this preconception can be seen as entirely imaginary. In a famous statement, Benedict Anderson has developed the idea that nation itself can always be seen as ‘an imagined political community’ ‘because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion’.8 From this point of view, language can be seen as a convenient tool to achieve this common feeling of this ‘image’ of a communion. Indeed, language is shared by people who do not know each other, and yet it works. It is hence practical proof that an entirely abstract structure can work as a very practical and concrete way to unify people. Although undoubtedly existing, in a way, through the fact of use, a language works only with the aid of some definite and useful beliefs – such as when we speak the ‘same’ language we use the same words, the same phrases, the same ways of speaking, and give the words the same meaning.9 And indeed, as can be shown through the development in the twentieth century of the human sciences in general and of structuralism in particular, language is often apt, when it is used as a basis for thought, to structure our ideas on social behavior. This contribution will be divided into three parts. In the first part, we will trace the historical path of the use of the idea of génie de la langue and show how this idea helped the people to believe in their ‘differences’ and, at the same time, to believe in the universality of the link between language and human communities. Then we will see its consequences in the way ‘otherness’ has been perceived. Finally, we will explore the two different poles of specificity and of unity in order to see, following our title, how the idea of génie de la langue could have a political impact.

The génie de la langue: an invention of the early modern era Although the word génie itself is of Latin origin (ingenium and genius),10 the idea of génie de la langue cannot be found in Antiquity: it is definitely 8 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6. 9 See Harris, The Language Myth. 10 As happens with some words, it is difficult to establish a unique etymological path for the word génie. The impact of popular etymology, in this case, can be deemed as important as scientific etymology. Two different paths have been followed by commentators in history, making génie a crossroads of rather confused ideas – a characteristic that is at the basis of the vagueness of the representations attached to this word (see Meschonnic, Et le génie des langues?, 61–63).

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF GÉNIE DE L A L ANGUE

183

a modern invention. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, several Greek or Latin terms were used to describe what seems to be peculiar to a language, such as the Greek idioma (which some translate into Latin as proprietas) and ingenium.11 It is often while working on the task of translation, and while thinking over it, that authors come across the postulation that each language contains something unique – or, as Du Bellay puts it, that ‘chacune Langue a je ne scay quoy propre seulement a elle’.12 The first combined use of the two words génie and langue in French can be found, as far as we know, in one of the discourses delivered at the inauguration of the Académie française (1635), and that were to set the basis for the future collective work on the dictionary, the grammar, the rhetoric, and the poetics. ‘Chaque langue a son air et son génie particulier’13 wrote Amable de Bourzeis, author of one of these discourses – making the word génie the centre of the idea that there exists a fundamental difference between languages. However, it is possible that the validity of this statement is antedated by future research. The term génie then begins to become central within a group of terms on which linguists will soon play, and between which they will create a complex set of relations, going from synonyms to antonyms and through various nuances: idiome, grammaire particulière, talent, règles, propriétés, goût(s), caractère(s), nature. According to the authors, one or other term will be used, but all share common questions about precise definitions. The questions are whether this precision can be identified, or if a general theory can be established: whether that specificity becomes a constraint that could be explained, for example, by the rules of grammar; whether the génie is basically positive or just neutral; and whether this furthers the discussion. In France, this appeal to the idea of génie takes place in a general context of crisis over what is published under the general banner of ‘grammar’. Some authors even choose to abandon the traditional form of the grammaires de la langue française and, in a more empiric way, to propose a series of separate observations that draw attention to the details of the language rather than general and perhaps not necessarily accepted ‘rules’.14 Their work will convince the public that something like a génie de la langue française exists, and that it sums up all these minor differences in which an 11 The term ingenium has been used by Dante speaking of the ‘Sicilian’ (De vulgari elo­quen­tia, 54). 12 Du Bellay, Deffence et illustration de la langue Françoyse, 527–536. 13 Bourzeis, Sur le dessein de l’Académie et sur le différent génie des langues (1635), in Dryhurst, ‘Les premières activités de l’Académie française’, 233. 14 These will be called remarqueurs, after the title of the first and main book of the time, Remarques sur la langue françoise by Claude Favre de Vaugelas.

184 

GILLES SIOUFFI

exercised eye notes that the French language is significantly different from what can be deduced from knowledge of Latin, or from the simple appeal to ‘reason’. One major aim of the research on language is to identify what is then called grammaires particulières,15 the rules specific to a language, between which grammarians try to make a rigid system – a system that will work for that language and not another, and from which one derives the idea that languages are indeed different, and further from each other than one would think. Applied to the French language, the idea of génie de la langue soon becomes a theoretical tool that will help explain all the different points that cannot be related to a Latin origin (such as the article) or in which the French language has become signif icantly different (such as word order). Whether or not the French language entirely, or predominantly, derived from Latin was a major source of debate in the sixteenth century. Other possibilities have been invoked (Greek, Celtic, and so on); but, in the seventeenth century, the idea of a Latin origin, be it a pleasant idea or not, was widely accepted. It is sometimes difficult to imagine today how this idea of a strong link with Latin could be considered a disadvantage for the French language. But many texts are here to show that grammarians sometimes longed for a French language that would be freer from its origin – more itself, so to speak. Indeed, Latin heritage could be sensed as a heavy burden, keeping the French language in a state of infancy and preventing it from gaining its linguistic and cultural dignity. In that respect, a major advantage of the idea of génie de la langue was to distance the links that united French and Latin – more generally to distance the links between modern and ancient languages, and even modern related languages. Through this theoretical tool, each language was finally able to define and describe its own identity. France was undoubtedly, in the eighteenth century, the country where this idea was most popular. But, during the years 1700–1710, the phrase génie de la langue began to spread beyond its borders: first to Germany and England (where it has been used by the philosophers Leibniz and Locke); then to Spain and Italy, and finally to Portugal and Russia. The international (pseudo-Latin) phrase genius linguae was sometimes used,16 but we soon find the vernacular forms (in the form of loan translations often including hybrids) such as Genie der Sprache, ‘genius of the tongue’, ‘genius of a 15 Buffier, Grammaire françoise sur un plan nouveau, 8–9. 16 See, for example, the dissertation De genio linguae by the German Zacharias David Schuleman (1739).

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF GÉNIE DE L A L ANGUE

185

language’, genio della lingua, genio grammaticale, Genio einer Sprache, genio de la lengua, génio da língua, свойство нашего языка. The general idea of génie itself deserves a closer look. Whereas during the first decades of the eighteenth century the tendency was to rationalize (sometimes over-rationalize) description of the languages in a more regular and systematic way (grammaire générale), the expansion of the idea of génie appealed to other types of concept. In the history of linguistic descriptions (which is not our main theme here), it must be noted that the idea of génie de la langue conveyed interesting possibilities in the development of early typological schemes. It is on the basis of such ideas as génie de la langue that the study of languages ceased to be dominated by ideas of rhetoric, and became more linguistic and more philosophical. By questioning both the formal and the specific, grammarians and philosophers in general began to develop key concepts for the research – ones that will prove rich for future developments, such as ‘central form’ (Reynolds) or innere Form (Wilhelm von Humboldt). In Germany, in the works of Herder or Humboldt, one can find a broad use of the terms Organismus, Charakter, charakteristische Form, Geist/Sprachgeist that could not have been possible without the first concept of génie. This ever more advanced questioning of the idiosyncratic aspects of languages led to a general questioning of the natural versus the artificial character of human languages. By comparing languages and exploring their history, grammarians dug out the borrowings and influences – the passive form in French, for example, thought by some to be the result of Italian influence; hence a necessity to stick to a ‘pure’ core of the language that would be deprived of these influences. Indeed the development of the idea of génie de la langue is parallel, in modern European cultures, to that of certain purism. If we want to analyse the political implications of the idea of génie de la langue at those times, a significant question cannot be ignored: has the link already been made between génie d’une langue and génie d’un peuple – an idea that will be so exploited in the nineteenth century? On a purely speculative level, it looks more like a form of guesswork than the result of rational reasoning. But, already at the end of the seventeenth century, Bouhours is able to write: ‘le langage suit d’ordinaire la disposition des esprits; & chaque nation a toujours parlé selon son genie’.17 We find the same quiet and undemonstrative assertion in François Charpentier’s Defense de la langue françoise pour l’inscription de l’Arc de triomphe (1676). 17 Bouhours, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène, 221.

186 

GILLES SIOUFFI

It is remarkable that this postulation, at the end of the seventeenth century, does not seem to need any further explanation: it takes the form of a blunt and unexpected statement that will incite, in the eighteenth century, a desire to inquire as to the basis of the génie and what are the causes and the principles – the two major terms by which one tries to explain why modern languages are the way they are. Obviously, the term génie contains something which is not entirely within the reach of reason, and that is a challenge at a time when reason is thought to be an overwhelming power. This dilemma is notable in the works of l’abbé Batteux, for whom two great forces are at work in the discussion of language: analogy and génie. In modern terms, we could say that analogy is what gives languages their systematic aspect, whereas génie is to be taken account of when, beyond the sphere of rapports, a language offers characteristics that cannot be related to others – in other words what makes a saut a ‘jump’. What is the origin of such gaps or such anomalies? For Batteux, there are only two possible explanations – the génie of the people who speak the language, or the génie of the language itself: ‘Or ce génie ne peut être que dans le caractère des hommes qui parlent une même langue, ou dans le caractère de la langue même qui est parlée.’18 The génie can remain a purely intra-linguistic feature, or lead us to explore the extra-linguistic. That is the point where the idea of génie de la langue is at a crossroads, so to speak. Trying to maintain it within the intra-linguistic sphere of analysis soon becomes a harder task than it seemed. Grammarians do not really discover the local sources of génie. In the more ‘serious’ linguistics that begins to develop at the beginning of the nineteenth century, génie does not really find its place. It is more in ideological or poetical general reflections on language that we will come across its mention. For Jacques-Philippe Saint-Gérand, at the end of the nineteenth century, we progress towards what he calls an accaparement littéraire de la notion (a ‘literary hold-up’), together with a conversion politique (‘political twist’).19 Some commentators realize that a direct and wide political use can be made out of the concept of génie de la langue. At a time when German science and culture tended to dominate in Europe, France tried to resist pointing out its ‘Roman’ identity. This is very clear in Jean-Jules Le Coultre’s Du génie de la langue française comparé à celui de la langue latine.20 The idea of génie de la langue appears as a way to enhance the Latin origins 18 Batteux, Principes de la littérature, vol.5, 206. 19 Saint-Gérand, ‘Un des mots dont l’acception est la plus vague’, 50. 20 Discours prononcé le 17 octobre 1893.

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF GÉNIE DE L A L ANGUE

187

of the French language (while establishing the differences), and a way of making up for the aims of German philology, giving different outlines to what can be understood as a language. This political inflexion can be noted every time there is tension in the general political context. Thus we can single out the publication, in the middle of the Second World War, the work of the great linguist Albert Dauzat.21 The nationalist implications of this publication are as clear as can be. Later in the twentieth century, we will come across occasional mentions of the idea of génie de la langue, but such an exploration is beyond the chronological scope we have adopted here. Let us simply note that, when ‘génie de la langue’ is used, it will be mostly under a general cover – to make clear a difference with a definite language that is not always explicitly named (German or English) – or to condemn some new social or political use of the French language. Throughout history, the idea of génie de la langue contributed to enhancing, among the cultured population, the perception of what in a language seems both specific and idiosyncratic. In a way, we could relate its use to a form of ‘cultural narcissism’ if, by that phrase, we describe the procedures by which we turn our eyes to what seems to be unique to us and cannot really be shared. Through an emphasis on the idea of génie de la langue, some modern cultures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – among them, predominantly but not exclusively, French culture – managed to preserve a way of individualizing the representation of their languages while keeping a certain sense of mystery untouched by history and reason. They also discovered that, through scientific methods, all languages could gradually be interconnected and, by means of the search of rational principles, they could be described in similar terms. This characteristic has important consequences in the idea of ‘otherness’ and unity – two concepts that are key in the elaboration of political representations.

The perception of otherness The idea that languages could derive from another, be ‘mothers’ and ‘children’, change, see their physiognomy altered, mix with one another and become interwoven had fascinated in the sixteenth century. There is countless research at that time around these topics. With the idea of génie de la langue, the seventeenth century started to establish borders between languages, on something that looked like a map. Each language started to 21 Dauzat, Le génie de la langue française.

188 

GILLES SIOUFFI

correspond (in the representations) to an identity of some kind that could be traced and defined. Thus languages became neighbours and not members of the same family. Above all, it was important to dispel the impression that all languages deriving from Latin were so close to one another. Latin still represented a massive continent in the seventeenth century. What the language conveyed, in terms of culture, still remained intimidating and inhibiting. In that respect, the idea of génie de la langue had a major advantage in helping the modern cultures, still based in some respects on Latin heritage, put it at a distance and construct a linguistic and cultural heritage of their own. Significantly, the idea of génie de la langue began to spread shortly before the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. This was important not only for the French culture that was heavily dependent on Latin culture, but also for any society that wanted its language to become a language of culture. Sure enough, Latin represented a root language in Europe among the cultivated population. Scientists and philosophers could share their views while sharing a common language where a set of terms had acquired f ixed meanings. New concepts could always be recognized since they were expressed in a language that had been in ancient use. But Latin was the language of no one in particular. It became, so to speak, an ‘abstract’ language, deprived of that special power that allows someone with a strong personality to make significant and subjective use out of it. This process of ‘abstraction’ of Latin, far from geographical and cultural roots, certainly played a role in its gradual unpopularity.22 For France, specifically, the issue was also to cut loose from the influence of its powerful neighbours, Spain and Italy (considered here as cultural rather than political entities). Through the idea of génie de la langue, evidence of a link between the romance languages became second to the consideration of individuality. Some even challenged the idea that French was a ‘romance’ language at all; or discussed, with varied success, some of the most Latin aspects of the French language.23 Most discourses that dwell on the idea of génie de la langue at the end of the seventeenth century do so in order to alienate Spanish and Italian, and to dismiss those two concurrent languages that could affirm a ‘romance’ identity of their own. At the beginning of the

22 See Stroh, Le latin est mort, vive le latin! 23 See Siouffi, ‘Le français est-il une langue romane? Inquiétudes dixseptiémistes’.

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF GÉNIE DE L A L ANGUE

189

eighteenth century, there was a famous controversy opposing French and Italian on several key linguistic and cultural issues.24 As Marc Crépon has shown in numerous books and papers, the popularization of the idea of génie in modern Europe is parallel to the development not only of real maps, but also of a way of ‘mapping’ the cultures in their loci, a process often oversimplified.25 Europe became a collection of separate entities at a time when they could not yet be easily conceived in political terms (see the case of Italy) but could be identified through their languages. According to Saint-Gérand, this process of mapping can be illustrated through the work of the Danish author Conrad Malte-Brun, who, in his Géographie Universelle (1810), makes use of the term génie de la langue in order to apply it to a simplified characterization of the people, following an idea already present in Chavannes’s Anthropologie of 1768.26 In that respect, languages are tools to locate people. Whereas political realities are often complex and do not allow for the making of clear decisions, languages appear as convenient alternatives. But this new habit of identifying people through their languages had two major drawbacks. It ignored two important features of the linguistic and cultural state of Europe at the time: the porosity between some languages (dialects, for example); and the development of some important languages outside their borders, as non-maternal vehicular or cultivated languages. A new issue of rayonnement (‘influence, standing, prestige’)27 of languages appeared, which is difficult to comprehend and is more ambiguous than one thinks. This new spread of some languages outside their borders was followed by reactions of pride and vanity in the original countries. But, mostly, this relied on confusion between two different states of the language: as maternal and as cultivated. This new use of some languages in a purely instrumental way, in a specific context (writing), altered the representations of languages in general. The development of non-maternal uses helped French and English, notably, to gain ‘prestige’, a highly subjective and indeterminate concept. This new ‘colinguism’ between modern vernacular languages (although colinguism existed mainly, up to now, between Latin and one modern language) was the basis on which new 24 See Viola, Tradizioni letterarie a confronto: Italia e Francia nella polemica Orsi-Bouhours; also Minerva, ‘The two Latin sisters: representations of the French and the French language in Italy’. 25 See Crépon, Le malin génie des langues and Les Géographies de l’esprit. 26 Saint-Gérand, ‘Un des mots dont l’acception est la plus vague’, 27. 27 See Siouffi, ‘L’apologétique de la langue française et la problématique du “rayonnement” à la fin du XVIIe siècle’.

190 

GILLES SIOUFFI

forms of multiculturalism or, more precisely, transculturalism appeared in the eighteenth century.28 In the history of early modern Europe, three languages underwent this process: Italian (in the sixteenth century), French (mainly in the eighteenth century), and English (starting from the eighteenth century). But this phenomenon takes place at a time in the history of these languages when standardization had not yet been completely achieved. The sociolinguistic situations of the countries where these languages were in use remained complex. These very languages were far from being spoken by the entire population. It is only while considering those major facts that we can fully appreciate the political impact of the use of the idea of génie de la langue. We have seen that the idea of génie de la langue drew attention to the specificity of languages, but there is a limit to this. It is quite remarkable that it was not equally applied to every form of speech or every ‘language’: only the major languages were deemed worthy of being described using the term génie. Paradoxically, the emphasis put on génie is not incompatible with the development of universalism – a major tendency of the second half of the eighteenth century. As Goethe remarked with some humour on French translators, one consequence of the belief in génie de la langue was to consider that every thought expressed in a foreign language could easily become ‘French’, rather than to consider that thought in its full foreign potential.29 Thus, the emphasis on génie de la langue also appears as a way to disparage linguistic uniqueness. German romanticism, as Antoine Berman analysed it, had the major task of dealing with this paradox.30 On the one hand, génie de la langue has created artificial forms of ‘uniqueness’; on the other hand, each of these forms contains linguistic variations.

The claim for unity In this last section, we will develop how the idea of génie de la langue served as a laboratory for the concept of political unity. The first thing to take into account in order to explain the success of the idea of génie de la langue in the context of modern Europe is the climate of insecurity concerning the 28 See Haskins Gonthier and Sandrier, Multilinguisme et multiculturalité dans l’Europe des Lumières, especially 14–24. 29 ‘Pour chaque fruit étranger il [le Français] exige un succédané qui ait poussé sur son propre sol’ (Goethe, Le Divan occidental-oriental, 431). 30 Berman, L’épreuve de l’étranger.

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF GÉNIE DE L A L ANGUE

191

origins of languages and people. Europe is marked by linguistic complexity. If we choose not to rely entirely on the easy explanation via Babel, one has to inquire rigorously, and even to postulate things. In his Recherches de la France, Etienne Pasquier tried to convince the King that, compared to Antiquity, modern France had nothing to be ashamed of. The book that he dedicates to linguistic topics begins with this sentence: ‘Nostre France appellée au temps passé la Gaule, eut sa langue originaire qui se continua longuement en son naïf, comme toute autre.’31 The idea is that there is a continuous link between the past and the present. The time has not yet come when the French had to realize that the Gaulois had abandoned their language for Latin, and that very little remained of that language. The idea of the same people changing their language is profoundly disturbing. In Pasquier’s view, languages develop their original naïveté (‘naiveness’) – which is, as we have seen, a first preconception of génie. It is only through political accidents that a language, according to Pasquier, can be led on the way to ‘corruption’, which is the loss of original purity by ‘mutation’, influences, and borrowings; and in that respect Pasquier acknowledges that French appears to contain much Germanic, Normand, and so on. If we refer to history, all languages appear mixed and changing. Conversely, if we listen to spontaneous representations, languages appear fixed, unified, and containing a powerful source of identity and unity. On the other hand, grammarians (and then linguists) are always tempted to make use of internal and external factors when they want to ‘explain’ the physiognomies of languages. This dilemma appears clearly in the answers that were sent to the questions raised by the Académie de Berlin in 1782.32 For some it should be possible, although it is not supported by tradition, to establish a link between a language and the outside circumstances in which it developed. To them, it is history, in fact, that governs languages and that explains their actual state. In his Recherches, Pasquier had examined de combien d’Idiomes nostre Langue Françoise est composee (‘of how many languages French is composed’).33 This idea of composition had already been developed by some before him – for example Charles de Bovelles, who saw the French language as a combination of different linguistic unities fitting into a global and complex system. Each of these unities is in itself homogenous, but not the final result. That could be considered a solution to the problem of diversity 31 Pasquier, Les Recherches de la France, 1496. 32 See [Académie de Berlin], De l’universalité européenne de la langue française. 33 Pasquier, Recherches, 1500, Chapter II of Book VIII.

192 

GILLES SIOUFFI

in languages. At the time of the Berlin concours, the idea of a link between internal and external factors became more acceptable. Among the different dissertations that were written for that occasion, the one by Johann Christoph Schwab (who was originally awarded the prize, together with Rivarol) puts a decisive stress on external factors. According to him, the propagation of a language depends on the nature of this language, the qualities of the people who use it, and the political relationships between these people and the ones around.34 Looking at real uses of a language raises two major questions: what is that language? (what is ‘French language’, for example); and who speaks that language? (who ‘speaks French’). The idea of génie prepares convenient answers to both of these questions. To the question ‘what is French?’, for example, the answer will be: what is French is what corresponds most to its génie; and to the question ‘who speaks French?’, it is the person who speaks according to its génie. Anything beyond that primary simplification has to be related to external factors. Thus, important aspects of the actual linguistic situation are put aside, such as complexity and heterogeneity. Languages appear as potentially homogeneous entities that remain themselves no matter what happens in history. In the context of human and cultural developments, they appear thus as examples of any conception we can postulate. But this simple and clear scheme is sometimes at odds with the complexity of reality. An interesting case of discrepancy between the idea of génie de la langue and the reality is francophone Switzerland. Timothée Léchot recently examined the debates that occurred in the Société littéraire de Lausanne, founded in 1772 and whose members were prominent individuals from the local intelligentsia and foreigners who gathered to discuss literary and linguistic matters.35 Most of the participants clearly had the view that there was little in common between the génie of the French people and the génie of the Swiss people. Or, more significantly, they thought the idea génie conveyed the impression that differences between people were more numerous and more important than common features. Besides, they had the impression that something united the Alemannic and French-speaking parts of Switzerland – according to the pre-romantic ideas, something profound and mysterious.

34 ‘La propagation d’une langue dépend de la nature de cette langue, des qualités du peuple qui la parle, et des rapports politiques de ce peuple avec les autres nations’. [Académie de Berlin], De l’universalité européenne de la langue française, 256. 35 Léchot, ‘Une poésie sans langue propre: la tentation suisse d’une littérature nationale’.

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF GÉNIE DE L A L ANGUE

193

That was particularly the idea of the poet Philippe-Sirice Bridel (17571845), who, in his Poésies helvétiennes (published in 1782), tried to establish the grounds for a poésie nationale (‘national poetry’), and relates this unity of the Swiss génie to a unity in climate according to the well-known and popular ‘theory of climates’ at the end of the eighteenth century. He imagined a theory of poetic language that no longer depended on the qualities of the language itself – as was the case at the beginning of the century (the divergence of opinion between France and Italy that we have referred to) – but on the use of poetic images; and he questions the validity of the theory of génie de la langue. For Bridel, language itself is not responsible for poetry. We understand that his position received severe critical reaction in France. As Léchot puts it: Accepter que le peuple suisse, si différent du peuple français, comprenne et s’approprie le génie de la langue française au point d’écrire une poésie de qualité, ce serait compromettre la nécessité du lien entre langue et nation, si profondément ancré dans le discours linguistique français.36 To accept that the Swiss people, who seemed so different from the French people, understood the génie de la langue to the point of producing highquality poetry would compromise the concept of a link between language and nation that was so fundamental at that time in France.

In reality, if we take a broader historical look at the development of the idea of génie de la langue, we discover an interesting difference between a first phase that would go from the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century, and a second phase that starts at the beginning of the nineteenth century. During the first phase, the idea of génie de la langue represents a dream, a product of imagination. One has not yet identified what languages clearly are. The existence of dialects, of international forms, hybrids, of terminology – artificial words that are often created on the basis of ‘dead’ languages (Greek and Latin) and that can be found with minor differences in many different modern languages – is a challenge to anyone who wants a clear idea of what a language is. One also has the sense that, contrary to Latin and Greek – which finally fossilized themselves in fixed lexical and grammatical features – modern languages will soon be engaged in a process of change that will depend on political, social, and cultural factors that are entirely new and difficult to anticipate. In the seventeenth century, the idea 36 Ibidem, 193.

194 

GILLES SIOUFFI

of génie de la langue was defended through a series of detailed enquiries on the phrases and grammatical and linguistic features that appeared specific. In the eighteenth century, this curiosity was replaced by the question of the link between linguistic and cultural features (including literary features). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at a time when political unity begins to be a reality in some cases, this idea of génie de la langue gradually tends to become less a dream than a nostalgic pattern – as, paradoxically, something that could be seen more clearly at a time when political unity, precisely, was not achieved. The phrase génie de la langue acquires the charm of something outmoded, as if we were speaking of former times, when this génie was not yet obscured by the complexity of the modern world. While being permanently attached to the past, language is a cultural product that stimulates the attachment to the self.37 Hence the ongoing use of the idea of génie de la langue in the romantic period appears as a way to counter-balance the progress of science, of rationalization, of universalism. Against the new forces of the human spirit, it restores a confidence in the hidden resources of human communities. Whereas everything tends to be ‘explained’, génie de la langue keeps hidden a potential of irregularity, anomaly – and also of creative power. Génie de la langue is highly narcissistic, in the sense that it centres everything on the potentialities of the self. It also has the function of a myth in the sense that a myth is here, in some respect, to provide convenient answers to difficult questions. Together with the je ne sais quoi – an idea (and a phrase) which is contemporaneous – it belongs to these alternative schemes that can be found when the ‘normal’ explanation is considered unsatisfactory. But these patterns themselves soon prove unsatisfying. As the German scholar and philologist Ernst Robert Curtius put it in 1931, there is always something stimulating and even playful to engage in ‘serious’ enquiries about those pseudo-concepts; but, at the end, nothing decisive appears: ‘Ramener l’esprit français à une simple définition est un jeu littéraire plus ou moins attrayant. On n’en retire aucune connaissance réelle.’38 As we have shown, the idea of génie de la langue was mostly active between the mid-seventeenth and the end of the eighteenth century, a time when early modern Europe was on the way to building its new identity. It is thus typically a ‘modern’ idea. What is strange to our eyes is that this idea was regularly used at a time when, paradoxically, the emphasis was 37 Zemb, La racine langagière du génie français. 38 Curtius, Essai sur la France, 271.

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF GÉNIE DE L A L ANGUE

195

on ideas of reason, rationalism, and universalism. But indeed this paradox, as we have tried to show here, is all the more significant. On the one hand, research on languages gradually proved that the idea of génie de la langue relied on a weak foundation. On the other hand, the idea clearly remained necessary in the general mentality of the time. It is here that we suggest that, while claiming to speak of language, the authors who made use of the génie de la langue had more political ideas in mind. Indeed, there are three major corollaries in the idea of génie de la langue, as we have shown: the idea of specificity (that which belongs to a language does not belong to another); the idea of uniqueness (languages can be seen as different, using the concept of génies); and the idea of unity or homogeneity (through their génies, languages are strongly united and have a firm consistency). These three notions are important in creating political ideas, or in suggesting a political stance. Hence the idea of génie de la langue appears undoubtedly as having paved the way for future nationalist theoretical elaborations. Yet, if we want to end with a more nuanced statement, we prefer to say that its political implications appear more striking than its linguistic and even philosophical aspects, and that a close look at this idea reveals how much, in the development of thinking, metonymy is an important process that needs to be considered. Translation revised by Sally Milner

Bibliography [Académie de Berlin], De l’universalité européenne de la langue française (Paris: Fayard, 1995). Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism [1983] (New York: Verso, 1991). Batteux, Charles, Principes de la littérature, 5th edition (5 vols.; Paris: Desaint & Saillant, 1774). Berman, Antoine, L’épreuve de l’étranger (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). Bouhours, Dominique, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène (Paris: S. Mabre-Cramoisy, 1671). Buffier, Claude, Grammaire françoise sur un plan nouveau, pour en rendre les principes plus clairs et la pratique plus aisée, contenant divers traités sur la grammaire en général, sur l’usage, sur la beauté des langues et sur la manière de les apprendre, sur le style […] (Paris: Nicolas Le Clerc, Michel Brunet, Leconte & Montalant, 1709). Burke, Peter, ‘Diglossia in early modern Europe’, in European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language, ed. by Vladislav Rjéoutski, Gesine Argent & Derek Offord (Oxford/Bern/Berlin: Peter Lang, 2104), 33–49. Christmann, H.H., ‘Bemerkungen zum Genie de la langue’, Lebendige Romania, Festschrift für Hans-Wilhelm Klein überreicht von seinen Freunden und Schüler (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1976), 65–79.

196 

GILLES SIOUFFI

Crépon, Marc, Le malin génie des langues: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rosenzweig (Paris: Vrin, 2000). Crépon, Marc, Les Géographies de l’esprit (Paris: Payot, 1996). Curtius, Ernst-Robert, Essai sur la France (Paris: Grasset, 1931). Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, ed. by Sergio Cecchin (Turin: UTET, 1988). Dauzat, Albert, Le génie de la langue française (Paris: Payot, 1942). Dryhurst, James, ‘Les premières Activités de L’Académie française: Le Discours sur le dessein de l’Académie et sur le différent génie des langues, de Bourzeys’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, 81 (1971), 225–242. Du Bellay, Joachim, Deffence et illustration de la langue Françoyse, J.-Ch. Monferran & E. Caldarini (éds), (Geneva: Droz, 2007). Fumaroli, Marc, ‘Le génie de la langue française’, in Trois institutions littéraires (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 211–314. Goethe, Le Divan occidental-oriental, trad. H. Lichtenberger (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1963). Harris, Roy, The Language Myth (London: Duckworth, 1982). Haskins Gonthier, Ursula & Alain Sandrier (éds), Multilinguisme et multiculturalité dans l’Europe des Lumières (Paris: Champion, 2008). Hassler, Gerda, ‘La description du génie de la langue dans les grammaires françaises et les grammaires d’autres langues’, in Bernard Colombat, Jean-Marie Fournier & Véronique Raby (éds), Vers une histoire générale de la grammaire française: Matériaux et perspectives (Paris: Champion, 2013), 192–209. Léchot, Timothée, ‘Une poésie sans langue propre: la tentation suisse d’une littérature nationale’, in Yen-Maï Tran-Gervat (éd.), Traduire en français à l’âge classique: génie national et génie des langues (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2013), 183–193. Lecointe, Jean, L’idéal et la différence (Geneva: Droz, 1993). Le Coultre, Jean-Jules, Du génie de la langue française comparé à celui de la langue latine: Discours prononcé le 17 octobre 1893 (Paris: Attinger, 1894). Meschonnic, Henri (éd.), Et le génie des langues? (Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2000). Minerva, Nadia, ‘The two Latin sisters: representations of the French and the French language in Italy’, in European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language, ed. by Vladislav Rjéoutski, Gesine Argent & Derek Offord (Oxford/Bern/ Berlin: Peter Lang, 2104), 113–144. Pasquier, Etienne, Les Recherches de la France [1621], M.-M. Fragonard & F. Roudaut (éds) (Paris: Champion, 1996). Rjéoutski, Vladislav, Gesine Argent & Derek Offord (eds.), European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language (Oxford/Bern/Berlin: Peter Lang, 2014). Saint-Gérand, Jacques-Philippe, ‘Un des mots dont l’acception est la plus vague et l’usage le plus étendu dans les idiomes modernes, et le génie de la langue française au XIXe siècle (1780–1960) […] avec un petit prolongement jusqu’à nos jours’, in Henri Meschonnic (éd.), Et le génie des langues? (Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2000), 17–66. Schuleman, Zacharias David, De genio linguae (Lübeck: Breitkopf, 1739). Siouffi, Gilles, Le génie de la langue française: études sur les structures imaginaires de la description linguistique à l’âge classique (Paris: Champion, 2010). Siouff i, Gilles, ‘De l’”universalité” européenne du français au XVIIIe siècle: retour sur les représentations et les réalités’, Langue française, 167 (September 2010), 13–29. Siouffi, Gilles, ‘Le français est-il une langue romane? Inquiétudes dixseptiémistes’, Revue des Langues Romanes, 116:1 (2012), 115–137.

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA OF GÉNIE DE L A L ANGUE

197

Siouffi, Gilles, ‘L’apologétique de la langue française et la problématique du ‘rayonnement’ à la fin du XVIIe siècle’, Littératures classiques, 76 (2011), 175–187. Stroh, Wilfried, Le latin est mort, vive le latin!, trad. S. Bluntz (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2008). Vaugelas, Claude Favre de, Remarques sur la langue françoise (Paris: Barbin, 1647). Viola, Corrado, Tradizioni letterarie a confronto: Italia e Francia nella polemica Orsi-Bouhours (Verona: Fiorini, 2001). Zemb, Jean-Marie, La racine langagière du génie français: Discours lu dans la séance du lundi 21 mai 2001 de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques. Online: http://www.asmp.fr/ travaux/communications/2001/zemb.h.

Index Abyssinia 106 Adwa (Ethiopia), battle (1896) 106 Aedler, Martin 47 Africa 45-46, 50, 52, 55-56, 58, 61, 63-64, 93, 101, 107, 109-110; East 56, 64; Equatorial 97; South 64; West 56, 97 Aksakov, Ivan 75-76 Albania 94, 101, 104 Albert I, archduke 167 Alekseev, Mikhail 141, 143, 151-152 Aleppo 52, 96 Alexander I, tsar (emperor) 73, 80, 150, 152 Alexandria (Egypt) 94-96 Al-Fayum (Egypt) 103, 105 Algarotti, Francesco 141 Allemagne, see Germany Alsace 75, 158-159; Alsace-Lorraine 27 America 12, 20, 39, 45, 52, 54, 60, 79, 86, 96, 102, 104, 131, 151; Central 39; North 12, 20, 39, 46; South 39, 46, 50-51, 94; see also United States Amilka, prince (literary figure) 142 Ammon, Ulrich 46 Angleterre, see England Antoine, Gérald 134 Antwerp, Anvers 52, 167 Argent, Gesine 133 Arnaud, abbé François 136 Arndt, Ernst Moritz 35-36 Artois 158 Asia 46, 52, 104; Asia Minor 101, 109 Assab (Eritrea) 103 Assiut (Egypt) 103 Asunción 52 Athens 52 Augsburg 38, 77; truce (1555) 27 Augustus, Roman emperor 122 Australia 46, 48, 52; South 49 Austria 26-27, 36, 54, 104; Austrian (AustroHungarian) Empire 10, 18, 26, 73, 114; Deutsch Österreich 26; Österreich Institut 7, 15 Avaux, Jean-Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’ 31, 117, 166 Babel 166, 191 Baden (Switzerland), treaty (1714) 174 Baghdad 52 Balkan Peninsula 101 Baltic region, Baltique 12, 20, 50 Baltic Sea 47 Barcelona 52 Barossa Valley (Australia) 49 Barranquilla 52 Baskett, John 170 Basle Mission 57

Batteux, abbé Charles 186 Batyushkov, Konstantin 143 Baumann, Adalbert 58 Bavaria, Bavière 26 Bayle, Pierre 162 Beethoven, Ludwig van 38 Beijing 59 Beirut 96 Bély, Lucien 12, 21, 117 Benckendorff, count Alexander von 87 Beni-Suef (Egypt) 103, 105 Bergaigne, Joseph de 167 Berlin 30, 52, 54, 61, 64, 119, 131, 170; Foreign Office 39, 52; Lutheran Mission 59-60; Prussian Academy (Concours 1782-1783) 30, 39, 80, 131, 133, 144, 191-192 Berman, Antoine 190 Bern, Berne 120 Besongne, Veuve 121 Besse, Henri 9-10, 12, 17-18, 21 Bethlehem 109 Betskoy, Ivan 140 Bismarck, Otto von 26-27 Blenheim (Blindheim), battle (1704) 38 Bohemia 70 Boileau(-Despréaux), Nicolas 141 Bonaparte, Louis 77 Bonaparte, Napoleon, see Napoleon I Borg, Karl-Friedrich von der 151 Bothmer, countess Tiutchev, née Nelly 75 Bouhours, père Dominique 160, 181, 185 Boulle, André-Charles 128 Boulleys, Vera Ebot 58 Bourdieu, Pierre 135 Bourgogne, Louis, duc de 165 Bourgoing, Paul-Charles-Amable, baron de 77 Bourzeis, Amable de 183 Bovelles, Charles de 91 Bowring, John 42 Brandenburg, Brandebourg 146, 164, 171 Braun, Guido 117, 164, 166-168, 172 Breda, treaty (1667) 171 Breul, Karl 48 Bridel, Philippe-Sirice 193 Brin, Benedetto 105 Britain, British Isles, see England; Great Britain British Council 7, 15 Brun, Antoine 167 Brunot, Ferdinand 9-10, 12, 17-18, 21, 113-121, 127-136, 167-168 Brussels, Bruxelles 42, 52, 160 Bucharest 50 Bulgaria 104 Burke, Peter 180 Burundi 56

200 INDEX Cadot, Michel 151 Cairo 52, 94, 96 Cairoli, Benedetto 95 Calvin, John 51 Cambridge 37, 48 Cameroon, Cameroun 14, 23, 56-57, 64 Camoes, Istituto 7, 15 Canada 48 Cantemir, see Kantemir Caracas 52 Cardonnel, Adam de 161 Caribbean 56 Catalonia, Catalogne 158-159, 164, 171 Catherine II, empress of Russia 140, 153, 165 Cervantes, Instituto 7, 15 Chaadaev, Petr 72, 74, 80, 84-85, 87-88 Charlemagne, emperor 80 Charles III, king of Spain 165 Charpentier, François 185 Chavannes, Alexandre-César 189 Chichikov (literary figure) 79 Chile 48, 51-52 China 46, 50, 52, 55-56, 59-63, 76, 108-109 Cicero 150 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste (comité) 128 Constantinople 52, 73, 94, 96, 109 Copenhagen 50 Cossacks 86 Costa Rica 52 Crabb, George 53 Cramer (Kramer), Matthias 34-35, 38 Crépon, Marc 189 Crimean War 73, 76 Crispi, Francesco 97, 99-104, 106, 108-109 Curtius, Ernst-Robert 194 Custine, Astolphe-Louis-Léonor, marquis de 74, 86, 88 Cyrenaica 109 Czechoslovakia 28 Dahn, Felix 55 Dante Alighieri 183; Società 7, 15 Danube 76 Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania) 48 Dashkova, princess Catherine 153 Dauzat, Albert 187 Denmark, Danemark 7, 15, 50, 124 Depretis, Agostino 95, 97, 104 Deutsche Nation, Deutschtum, see Germany Diderot, Denis 126, 140, 142 Dolgorukov, prince Alexander 144-145 Dorat, Claude-Joseph 142 Du Bellay, Joachim 183 Du Tillot, Guillaume 161 Duala (Cameroon) 57, 64 Dumont, Jean 170, 172 East Africa (Tanzania), 56, 64 East India Company 12, 20

Egypt 92, 94-95, 101-102, 104, 109; East 107; Lower 107; Upper 92, 100, 103, 106, 108 Elbe 76 Eldorado 82 El-Fayum, see Al-Fayum Elizabeth, empress of Russia 143 Elsass-Lothringen, see Alsace Empire tsariste 11, 13, 19, 21; see also Russia England, Angleterre 20, 36-41, 47-50, 53-55, 58, 60, 75, 125-126, 135, 141, 160-161, 164-165, 169-170, 181, 184; see also Great Britain Éon, Charles de Beaumont, chevalier d’ 132, 136 Eritrea 92, 94, 103, 105-107 Espagne, see Spain Estonia 47, 56 États-Unis d’Amérique, see United States Ethiopia 106 Eugène, prince, see Savoy Euphrates 76 Europe 7-15, 18-23, 26-27, 30, 34, 40, 46, 52-53, 56, 61, 69-74, 76, 78-79, 80-88, 96, 102, 104, 113-136, 140-141, 143-144, 147, 149, 151-153, 157-164, 166, 168, 170-171, 174-175, 179-181, 185-186, 188-191, 194; Central 9, 18, 25-43, 70; Eastern 101; Northern 12, 20, 50, 70; Western 11, 19, 33, 74, 79-80, 85, 140, 145; European Union 42, 158 Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe 159, 162-163 Fernay 126 Florence 29, 92, 98, 105, 163 Florimène, marquis de (literary figure) 122-123, 126, 132 Florisson, le Sieur 169 Follen, Charles (Karl) 13, 21, 48 Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de 141 France 7-13, 15-21, 28-29, 31-37, 40, 70, 73, 81-82, 88, 93-94, 97, 99, 107, 109-111, 113-136, 140-142, 145, 150, 152, 157-175, 179, 181-184, 186, 188, 191, 193-194; Eastern 26 Franche-Comté 167 Francis I, François Ier, king of France 29, 34, 114 Francke, August Hermann 51 Frankfurt am Main, diète (1682) 117, 167 Frederick II, Friedrich II, king of Prussia 34, 146, 174 Fulbe (Cameroon) 57 Fumaroli, Marc 128, 131 Gambetta, Léon 110 Ganges 76 Gardt, Andreas 46 Gaul, Gaule 191 Gaultier, abbé Jean-Baptiste 169 Gelderland (Gueldre) 171 Genua, Gênes 163 George I, elector of Hanover, king of England 165

201

Index

George II, king of England 37 Germany, Allemagne 7-13, 15-17, 21, 25-42, 58, 65, 71, 73-74, 89, 85, 88, 97, 111, 118, 121, 127-128, 132, 141, 143-144, 159, 161, 166, 170, 172, 181, 184-187, 190-191, 194; Northern 30, 38; Deutsche Nation (German nation) 27, 37-38; Deutschtum 61; Deutsch-Österreich 26; Kaiserreich 26-27, 54, 57; Unification (1871) 52, 63; Weimar Republic 40; Third Reich 38, 40; French Zone 40; German Democratic Republic 40 Gertsen, Alexander, see Herzen Gibraltar 172 Glehn, Louis Camille von 48 Glück, Helmut 46 Godefroy, Théodore 116 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 38, 190; Goethe Institut 7, 15, 65; Goethe Society 48 Gogol, Nikolai 79 Gorchakov, prince Mikhail 75 Gothenburg (Göteborg) 50 Göttingen 37 Gottsched, Johann Christoph 143-144 Gracián, Baltasar 133 Great Britain, Grande-Bretagne 7, 12, 15, 20, 26, 36-40,48, 53-54, 141, 171-172, 174; see also England Greece 104 Grémonville, Jacques Bretel, chevalier de 165 Gresset, Jean-Baptiste 123 Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, baron von 165 Gryphius, Andreas 30 Guasco, abbé Ottaviano 1422222 Gueldre, see Gelderland Habsburg, Habsbourg 114 Hague, The, La Haye 130, 141, 167 Halle 51 Hamburg, agreement (1964) 40 Hanover (Hanovre), duchy, electorate 37, 161, 165; House of 53 Hanseatic League 12, 20, 47 Harley, Robert, Lord high treasurer, 169 Harvard (Cambridge, Mass.) 13, 21, 48 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 71 Heidelberg 35 Heinsius, Antonie 169 Helsinki 52 Helvétius, Claude-Adrien 127 Henri IV, king of France 130, 160 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 127-128, 185 Herzen (Gertsen), Alexander 73, 84-88 Heuss, Theodor 65 Hindustan 45 Hobart (Tasmania) 48 Holland, Hollande, see Netherlands Holles, Lord Denzil 164 Holstein 163 Holy Land 94, 96

Holy Roman Empire, Saint-Empire 10, 18, 25-43, 120 Holy See (Vatican) 92, 95-99, 100, 106, 110-111; see also Rome, Church of Homer 150 Hubertsbourg, treaty (1763) 118 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 185 Hundheim, Lothar Friedrich, baron von 173 Hungary 10, 18, 26, 46 Hüppauf, Bernd 46 Huxelles, Nicolas Chalon du Blé, maréchal d’ 170 Icelandic Language Institute 7, 15 India 12, 14, 20, 22, 50 Isabella, queen of Spain 29 Israelites 95 Italy 7, 12, 15, 20, 29-30, 91-112, 124, 142, 159, 161, 165, 181, 184-185, 188-189, 193; Northern 26 Ivan the Terrible, tsar 50 Izmir 94 Jacobini, Domenico Maria 98-99 Jacobson, Leo 61-62 Jiaozhou Bay (Kiautschou, China) 45, 56, 59-65 Jinan (China) 60 Johannesburg 52 Kantemir (Cantemir), Antiokh 141-143, 152 Kantemir (Cantemir), Dimitrie 142 Karamzin, Nikolai 147, 149, 153 Khomiakov, Aleksei 78, 88 Kiautschou (China), see Jiaozhou Kloss, Heinrich 48 Kobe 52 Kolb, Gustave 74, 77-79 Kramer, Matthias, see Cramer Krylov (Kriloff), Ivan 147-150, 153 Kutschouc-Kainardii, treaty (1774) 119 La Fayette, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, dite Madame de 165 La Haye, see Hague, The Lane, Ronald 77 Latvia 47, 56 Laurentie, Pierre-Sébastien 78 Lausanne 78, 192 Le Clerc, Nicolas-Gabriel 140 Le Coultre, Jean-Jules 186 Le Nôtre, André 128 Léchot, Timothée 192-193 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 162, 184 Leiden, Leyde 42, 129, 169 Leipzig, Leipsic 30, 34; Fair 30; battle (1813) 35 Lémontey, Pierre-Édouard 148-149 Lériget de La Faye, Jean-François 163 Lespine de Morembert, Antoine-Nicolas 145 Levant 94 Lexington, Robert Sutton, baron 164, 170

202 INDEX Leyde, see Leiden Libya 109 Lisbon, Lisbonne 119 Lithuania 56 Livonia, Livonie 170 Livorno, Livourne 165 Locke, John 184 Lomonosov, Mikhail 145-147 London, Londres 37-38, 48, 50, 94, 119-120, 124, 132, 136; Ambassade de France 132, 136; East India Company 12, 20 German Theatre 48; Royal Society 53; Virginia Company 12, 20 Longueville, Henri II d’Orléans, duc de 117 Louis Napoléon, see Napoléon III Louis XIII, king of France 116, 130, 160 Louis XIV, king of France 9, 17, 33, 70, 115, 117, 129-130, 132, 136, 159-165, 167, 170-171, 181 Louis XV, king of France 120, 131 Louis XVI, king of France 116, 131 Louis-Philippe, king of France 74 Ludwig I, king of Bavaria 75 Luther, Martin 30, 50-52, 59 Luxemburg, Luxembourg 26 Luxor (Egypt) 92, 103, 105 Lyons, Lyon 98, 108 Madrid 52, 119, 164, 170 Maghreb 94 Malte-Brun, Conrad 189 Maria Theresa, empress 36 Marillac, Michel de 130 Marlborough, John Churchill, duke of 161 Masclet, Hippolyte 149-150 Massawa (Eritrea) 92 Maugues Desessart, Jean 147 Mayr, José Domingo 50 Mazarin, Jules 158, 167 McLelland, Nicola 9, 11, 13, 17, 20-21 Mediterranean, Mediterranée 20, 100-102, 109 Meillet, Antoine 135 Meinhof, Carl 58 Ménage, Gilles 162 Menshikov, Aleksandr 141-142, 146 Meschonnic, Henri 180 Mesopotamia 101 Mexico City 52 Michelet, Jules 86, 88 Mickiewicz, Adam 88 Middle East 52 Millwaukee (USA) 49 Mirabeau, Victor de Riqueti, comte de 133 Moldavia 141 Molé, Louis-Mathieu 77 Mongolia 85 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de 141 Morand, Pierre de 141 Moscow, Moscou 50, 72, 78, 85, 124, 147; German quarter 50; Kremlin 40

Moser, Friedrich Karl, Frédéric-Charles 31, 120, 168 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 38 Munich 74-75, 77, 124 Münster, treaty (1648) 9, 17, 30, 32-33, 114, 117, 166 Muscovy 147 Namibia 48, 56-5, 61, 64 Nantes, edict (1685) 70 Naples 29, 124 Napoléon I, emperor 25, 34, 37, 39, 74, 80, 129, 143, 162 Napoléon III (Louis Napoléon), emperor 75 Ndumbe III, prince Alexandre Kum’a 64 Nebrija, Antonio de 29, 33 Neron, Roman emperor 122 Nesselrode, Karl153 Netherlands (Hollande, Provinces-Unies) 27, 50, 59, 70, 124, 127, 161, 167-171 Neva 76 New Guinea 64 New Spain 50 New York 94 Nicholas I, tsar 69-88 Nijmegen, Nimègue, treaty (1678-79) 9, 17, 32, 117 Nile 76 Nimègue, see Nijmegen Norway 50 Offord, Derek 11, 19 Orlov, count Grigory 148-149, 152 Orry, Jean 161 Osnabrück 166 Ossone, Pedro Giron, duke of 169 Ottoman Empire 52, 110, 142, 166 Otumlo (Eritrea) 103 Oxford 37 Palestine 94, 109 Paris 74, 77-78, 81, 97-98, 101, 103, 109, 111, 115, 123, 125, 128, 134-134, 141-143, 150, 152, 163, 169-170; Académie française 121, 129, 162, 183; Parlement 127; traité (1763) 174; traité (1783) 174 Parma, Parme 161, 163 Pasquier, Étienne 191 Passionei, Domenico Silvio 169 Pennsylvania 49 Perpignan 159 Peter I the Great, tsar 51, 140-146, 152 Pétersbourg (Saint-), see Saint-Petersburg Pfeffel, Ernestine Dörnberg née 75 Pfeffel, Karl 77 Philip V, Philippe V, king of Spain 161, 164-165, 170, 172 Piedmont, Piémont 70, 73, 165 Pierracini, Paolo 12, 20 Pignerol 158

Index

Pius IX, pope 75 Poland, Pologne 28, 56, 70, 83, 86, 88, 124, 172 Porto 52 Portugal 125, 184 Prior, Matthew 164, 169-170 Provinces-Unies, see Netherlands Prussia, Prusse 10, 14, 18, 23, 26, 28, 30, 36, 39,52, 59-60, 70, 171-172, 174; Eastern Prussia 26 Puebla 52 Pushkin, Aleksandr 76, 143, 153 Qingdao (China) 59-60, 62 Quesnay, François 126 Racine, Jean 162 Rastatt, treaty (1714) 8, 16, 32, 118-119, 168, 172-174 Ratisbon, Ratisbonne, see Regensburg Razumovskii, count Kirill 145 Regensburg, Ratisbonne 31, 117, 168 Reinbothe, Roswitha 53-55 Renaudot, Théophraste 167 Render, William 53 Rey, Alain 133 Reynolds, Joshua 185 Rheinpreußen, see Rhineland Rhine 132; Rhine mission 57, 61 Rhineland 27, 36 Riccoboni, Luigi 142 Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, duc de 116, 129-130 Rignano, Eugenio 52 Rijswijk, see Ryswick Rippmann, Walter 48 Rivarol, Antoine de 80, 192 Rjéoutski, Vladislav 13, 21, 133 Robethon, Jean de 161 Roman Empire (ancient) 27, 29; see also Holy Roman Empire Romania, Rumania 70, 104 Rome 29, 52. 94-96, 98-99, 102, 108-109, 111, 114, 124, 186 Rome, Church of 75; Roman Question 75, 91, 97, 111; see also Holy See Rossi, Alessandro 101, 103 Rotterdam 52, 120-121, 170 Rouen 121 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 163 Roussillon 158-159 Rudinì, Antonio Starrabba di 104, 107 Rumania, see Romania Russia, Russie, Russian Empire 10-11, 13, 19, 21, 40-41, 50-51, 56, 69-88, 107, 111, 119, 124, 139-153, 165, 170, 172, 174, 184 Rwanda 56 Ryswick, Rijswijk, treaty (1697) 32, 170-171 Saarland, Saar district 40; treaty (1960) 40 Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin 162

203 Saint-Empire, see Holy Roman Empire Saint-Gérand, Jacques-Philippe 186, 189 Saint-Germain, edict (1641) 130 Saint-Maure, Émile Dupré de 150-151 Saint-Petersburg, Pétersbourg 50-51, 78, 86, 124, 140, 143-147; Academy of Sciences 51, 144-145, 153 Saint-Pierre, Charles-Irénée Castel, abbé de 165 Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de 140, 163 Salvisberg, Paul von 62 San José (Costa Rica) 52 Santiago de Chile 52 São Paolo 52 Sarajevo 26 Savoy, prince Eugène of 118, 130, 169, 172-174 Savoy, Savoie 164, 171-172 Saxe 122, 172 Scandinavia 47, 49 Schiaparelli, Ernesto 92-94, 98-99, 105, 110-111 Schiller, Friedrich 38 Schröder, Konrad 9, 18, 118, 120 Schuleman, Zacharias David 184 Schwab, Johann-Christoph 39, 133, 192 Schwörer, Emil 580 Scotland 37 Sedan, battle (1870) 37 Seneca, Sénèque 122 Servien, Abel 117, 166-167 Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de 159-160, 163 Shakespeare, William 37, 41 Shandong (China) 59 Shanghai 59, 61 Shrewsbury, Charles Talbot, duke of 170 Shuvalov, count Andrei 146 Shuvalov, Ivan 145-147, 152-153 Siberia 81 Sicily, Sicile 106, 172, 183 Siepmann, Otto 48 Sigmaringen 50 Sinzendorf, count Philipp Ludwig Wenzel von 169 Siouffi, Gilles 10, 14, 18, 23 Slavic territories, (Pan-)Slavism 56, 73, 75, 77-78, 82-84, 86-88 Soleil, Sylvain 129-131 Sorbs (people) 28 Sorø, Academy 50 South Africa 64 South-West Africa (Namibia) 56 Spain, Espagne 26, 29, 38, 125, 159, 161, 164-167, 169-172, 174, 184, 188 Starrabba di Rudinì, see Rudinì Steiner, Rudolf 39 Stendhal, Marie-Henri Beyle, dit 123 Steyler Mission 56, 59 Stockholm 50 Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, count 172 Strasburg, Strasbourg 168, 172

204 INDEX Stresemann, Gustav 64 Stuart, house of 37 Stuttgart, Military Academy 38 Suède, see Sweden Suisse, see Switzerland Sumarokov, Alexander 144-145 Süvern, Johann Wilhelm 36 Swahili 56 Sweden, Suède 7, 15, 47, 50, 56, 70, 166, 170, 172 Switzerland, Suisse 7, 15, 27, 46, 161, 174, 192-193 Syria 96, 101 Tanzania 48, 56, 64 Teplov, Grigorii Nikolaevich 147 Teutonic knights, chevaliers teutoniques 12, 20, 47, 56 Thessaloniki 52 Thierfelder, Franz 46 Thiers, Adolphe 77 Thomasius, Christian 30, 34 Tirpitz, Alfred von 62 Tittoni, Tommaso 110 Tiutchev, Tutcheff, Fedor 72-88 Tocqueville, Alexis de 86 Togo 56-57 Tokyo 52 Tolstoy, Jacques (Yakov) 152 Tolstoy, Lev 76 Tompson, John 37 Torcy, Jean-Baptiste Colbert de 170 Tourgueneff, see Turgenev Trabzon 96 Trattner, Jean-Thom de 121 Trente 124 Trévoux 124 Tripoli (Syria) 96 Tripolitania 104, 109 Trobat i Vinyes, Raymond de 159 Truppel, Oskar von 61 Tschudy, Théodore-Henri, baron de 145-147 Tübingen 39 Tunis 94, 96 Tunisia 104 Turgenev, Ivan 76 Turgenev, Tourgueneff, Nikolai 72-73, 80-88 Turin 78, 124-125, 165 Turkey 94, 104; Asian 104

Tuscany 92 Tutcheff, see Tiutchev Umberto I, king of Italy 100, 102, 110 United Kingdom, see Great Britain United States of America, États-Unis 13, 21, 36, 39, 49, 174; see also America Uppsala 119 Utrecht, treaty (1713) 8, 16, 161, 169-171 Valencia (Spain) 52 Vast, Henri 172 Vatican, see Holy See Vaugelas, Claude Favre de 115, 183 Venice, Venise 29, 33, 47, 124, 163 Verrue, Jeanne-Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes, comtesse 165 Versailles 115, 120, 126, 131, 135; treaty (1919) 54 Vervins, treaty (1598) 167 Victor-Amadeus II, duke of Savoy 16 Vienna, Vienne (Austria) 52, 114, 119, 121, 124, 164-165 Villars, Claude-Louis-Hector, maréchal de 118, 130, 172, 174 Villers-Cotterêts, ordinance (1539) 28 Virginia Company 12, 20 Visconti Venosta, Emilio 107 Volga 14, 23, 76 Volkmar, Isaac 31 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet dit 126, 140, 142-146 Waldorf Schools 39 Warsaw 50 Waterloo, battle (1815) 36 Weimar Republic 40 Weiss, Aloys 48 Werner, Harry 52 Westphalia, treaty (1648) 114, 166, 168 Windhoek (Namibia) 48, 52 Wisconsin 49 Wittenberg 50 Yiddish 28, 41 Zech, Julius von 57 Zhukovsky, Vasily 149