rassemblement national

Last night I heard a very interesting discussion on the Rassemblement national, which is the recent new name adopted by M. Le Pen for her political party. A movement, therefore, rather than the limited membership that the precedent name of Front national implied. This defunct name took its energy from the communist movement of the thirties, the Front populaire. What is now remarkable is that Le Pen has abandoned not only her father’s antisemitism, at least in its crude forms, but even the notion of a frexit, at least superficially. She has been making steady progress among the electors for the past fifteen years or so. The major and powerful argument for electing her party to govern France is the steadily growing perception among blue collar and service class—the less educated—that they have been abandoned and left behind without any collective means to restore security and dignity. They are angry about a neglect that feels like a betrayal, The anger is fed by a deep concern about their own survival as well as that of their children. So, Le Pen retools the word national to mean a community of culturally defined members whose shared identity will guarante that social programs like public schooling, pension systems and national healthcare will be competently maintained (to be seen) under her and only under her. It would be the only way to prevent their dissolution and destruction by global financial interests (mezzo voce, Jewish) for which Europe is a Trojan horse.

The big and urgent political problem created by this view, aside from its more subtle antisemitism, is that a guaranteed social welfare becomes indelibly linked in the mind of her voters, including the potential ones, to the rejection of immigration and more generally to the hate of the foreigner and a return to restrictive, narrow-minded, competitive nations. More to follow.

Pigs and cows

On our farm in the sixties and seventies, we still killed a pig every year or so (Large White, really big hogs) and would clean up intestines for instance to make andouille. I remember that job not too fondly… Before refrigeration, much of the meat was shared with neighbors, priest, family. The lard (long strips from the long back of the animal) was cured on a bed of rock salt and straw under the staircase. Over the months, a large strip of that lard/bacon was cut and cooked over the potatoes (same time). It gave taste to the potatoes. Men would eat it as replacement for butter, children were not allowed to touch it. Andouilles (all intestine skins) were cured in a chimney where there was a frequent fire… It would take books to walk back this alley of souvenirs!

It was rare to kill a cow: I remember this happening once after an accident where the cow broke a leg. We were dismayed to lose a milk cow but satisfied that a lot of meat could be shared.

Refrigeration was a cooperative building at the beginniing, no refrigerators at homes. It was a little house that all surrounding farmers had a share in and a key. It was at about 3 km from our farm. We would go there once a week or so…

No hunting in our family.

Breton

I hope that the following paper of June 1982 is still of interest.


I was born on a farm in Pommerit-Jaudy, a Breton village on the Northern coast of Brittany. Much of my formal education took place in Catholic schools, in French of course. At home, I learned to understand and even speak Breton but French had become the mamaloshen in post-WW II farming communities. Reading and writing my mother tongue came only later, in my twenties.

Until the French Revolution, Breton had an unthreatened life. It is still very much alive now, as any visitor to Brittany is bound to realize, but its existence is in immediate and great danger. A language that once counted the most speakers of all Celtic languages may nearly disappear in a few years. In a general sense, what is now happening to the Breton language and to Breton people is the result of a clash between two cultures that were not ready for each other. The major historical forces that have led to such a situation can be traced to some of the policies of the Church and especially to those of the French government in the past two or three centuries. I do not propose here to blame those institutions but simply to throw light on some of the trends.

It is not altogether certain that Breton will disappear and the Breton identity, whatever it may be, vanish into a bigger whole. Not only are many Bretons still speaking the language, but a few thousands are now consciously returning to it and trying to encourage others to do the same. But it will take a major effort on the part of all its speakers for Breton to remain their primary language.

Breton until the French Revolution

It is not within the scope of this paper to reconstitute in detail the history of the Breton language. Furthermore, the investigation of the origins of Breton and its dialects presents great difficulties, mainly because very few writings remain from the period preceding the sixteenth century. One reason for this was that most writing, i.e. official writing—Church and state documents regarding property matters—was done primarily in Latin and later on in French. There are a few inscriptions from the pre-medieval and medieval periods, rare lists of names of places or people (cartularies), glosses in Latin manuscripts, and copies of medieval texts made at a later date, in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries in the best of cases. Even with the help of toponymy, dialectology, and archaeology, which are beginning to yield good results, it is difficult to obtain a clear view of the origins of Breton.

One may begin in the fifth to sixth centuries, when Christian Britons who came from Celtic Cornwall, Devon and Wales—especially South Wales—, emigrated to what was then known as Armorica. Several things indicate that such an emigration took place. First of all, a linguistic comparison shows that Breton is extremely close to Cornish and relatively similar to Welsh. Furthermore, the toponymy preserves an abundance of place-names that reflect the tribal organization of the “invaders.” These recently christianized Brythonic tribes imposed their own social structure, in which abbots and knights were a prominent feature. This fact is independently preserved in the Lives of the Saints, although this late collection of lives of Celtic saints is otherwise very unreliable. One can also read in this widely-used book that the Britons found Armorica to be unpopulated. This may well have been the case in the western and northernmost parts of the country, where according to the evidence from dialectology and toponymy. the Britons settled without meeting any resistance. One may suppose that the population of these areas had kept strong ties with the insular Celts and perhaps welcomed them. In eastern and southeastern Brittany, on the contrary, the invaders found it much more difficult to conquer more populated areas which had been thoroughly romanized in culture and type of Christianity.

Moreover, here they were in direct confrontation with the Franks. who controlled the country. From the sixth to the ninth century. a series of battles was waged against the Franks in which the Bretons were successful enough to reach Rennes and Nantes. In this area called Upper Brittany, Breizh-Uhel in Breton, the Breton language either never took hold, became very influenced by Gaulish/Gallic, or quickly disappeared. It seems that Breton had its greatest extension in the tenth century, reaching Mount Saint-Michel and the areas east of Rennes and Nantes, but leaving these two cities outside of its influence. They both remained Roman cities, in spite of their political subjection to the Bretons.

The ninth to tenth century Norman invasions were a blow to the recently constituted kingdom of Brittany. Breton vanished from several areas in Upper Brittany. The Breton aristocracy sought refuge with the Franks and became their vassals. Add to this that they were often physically far from their own people. What was to become the fairly independent Duchy of Brittany was in effect a Frankish governorate, with a majority of Breton subjects. This trend continued in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries when Brittany was ruled by the kings of England, the French-speaking Plantagenets. Breton was the language of the people in Lower Brittany, while French and Latin were the state languages. When Brittany officially became a part of the French kingdom (1532), these relationships did not change. In the absence of clear documents, it is difficult to trace the movements of the linguistic border between French and Breton during the Middle Ages or at the beginning of the Ancien Regime. During the latter period, the royal policy was essentially indifferent to Breton. This was still true in the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, but the bourgeoisie and even the lower classes living in cities were already adopting French. The people living in the countryside, i. e. the great majority, were the only ones to keep to Breton as monolinguals. A major reason for this was that they were isolated in so many ways. Better roads came only at the end of the eighteenth century, although schools were rare and for privileged people. Breton must have been the predominant language in those schools, French and Latin being little taught. At the college or seminary level, however, one had to pass directly to Latin.

A notable fact is that Breton books were the first to be printed in any Celtic language. Manuscripts in Breton become more numerous from the fifteenth century on. A careful study of these documents reveals that Breton hasn’t changed much since. These books were for the most part devotional materials of various kinds, but there were also plays such as mystery-plays and tragedies (e.g. Ar pevar mab Aymon). People who could read would tell the stories to groups gathered around the fire, as was still done in many villages at the beginning of our century. Geographically speaking, after the initial losses during the High Middle Ages, consecutive to territorial losses, the linguistic border probably underwent few changes. At the end of the ancien régime period, it appears to be similar to the nineteenth century border, which will be described below.

Breton in modern times

Breton is spoken—around 1980—by anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 people. This estimate represents those people who use the language in their daily interactions, i.e. at least 15\% of the whole population.^[For a more recent evaluation, see Broudic 2013:441.] All or almost all of these Breton speakers are rurals, i.e. farmers, and people who keep a close connection with farmers through their trades: small shopkeepers, bakers, smiths, priests, etc. … It must be kept in mind, however, that as soon as a village takes on the trappings of a city, i.e. doctors, veterinarians, post-offices, tax offices and the like, this town or city will tend not to speak Breton, in spite of the fact that it may number fewer inhabitants than many a rural village. It was possible only a few years ago to decide what was a village and what was a city and fairly confidently add up the numbers to obtain the total population of Breton speakers. But the linguistic situation has drastically changed, even in small villages and hamlets, and more refined criteria must be applied.

I have just spoken of the social border separating Breton and French speakers as of a well-defined limit. An even clearer limit is the geographic one: Breton is spoken west of a line that runs from Plouha a few kilometers west of St-Brieuc, southward to the west of Vannes, a city on the Morbihan coast. The border runs at times through small villages and is very well defined, at least in the speaker’s minds. I remember from my high school days in Quintin that a neighboring village was so divided and that some of its hamlets were still Breton-speaking. For a little boy who felt foreign in this French-speaking area of Brittany, it was a measure of consolation to be a stone’s throw from the mother tongue. Of course, this French-speaking Brittany was not the France generally spoken of in books. It was pays gallo, i.e. Gallic country, and spoke its own rich dialect of French which we children loved to hear and imitate. Nowadays, the Gallo dialect is also studied in its own right and enjoys a rebirth in several quarters. This French-speaking Brittany is called Breizh-Uhel (“Haute-Bretagne” in French) whereas the Breton-speaking west is called Breizh-Izel (“Basse-Bretagne” in French).

Breton is conventionally divided in four dialects called in Breton: tregerieg, leoneg, yezh Kernev, and gwenedeg. To these four, one must add standard or “literary” Breton, a modern adaptation striving to assimilate what is best in each dialect, other Celtic languages, speech of neighboring villages or of relatives living only a few miles away. I remember, for instance, being struck by the fact that my father’s family, located in Penvenan, about ten miles from our village, used different words for certain objects and had a different accent. One must keep in mind that Breton was essentially a spoken language without access to literature or schooling that could serve the purposes of standardization and unification as in many other languages. It is remarkable that Breton has kept its unity for so long and that its dialects do not prevent communication. Of course, the fact that Breton speakers were economically isolated does explain in part why the language survived. But it does not explain why it did not split into smaller languages. The cultural unity must be a strong factor.

Outsiders’ views

The Breton language was often considered to be a rough, unsophisticated dialect without any redeeming qualities. A language among thousands that the lack of an army and a navy reduces to the status of a dialect or a patois. The worse is found among nineteenth century authors but even modern scholarship doesn’t avoid the basic reflexes.^[For instance, Gaulish and Latin are thought to be enriching each other, at least: see Duval in Histoire de la France rurale, tome 1, page 271 : “La langue latine se propagea…, en empruntant au gaulois des mots qu’elle habillait de ses désinences tandis que le gaulois s’enrichissait de mots latins qu’il déformait.”]

Another recent story: an 18-year-old French girl learning English in Santa Cruz in the summer of 1976 told me that Breton is a patois. She thinks, after I have presented her with a different point of view, that it is not worth studying a language like Breton, that it is a waste of time, that we are heading towards use of an international language. Another time, I meet this self-confident, arrogant young Frenchman whom I welcome to Crown College where I am an instructor and who is surprised to learn that I speak Breton, “because my use of the French language is perfect!”

Contempt for Breton and the need to eradicate it often has a political version. The “Breton-French” nobility would have used it against the population. Then the WW II “nationalists” of Breiz Atao would have created the myth of a different culture. French, on the contrary, would have presented a liberation from the social and religious oppression of Brittany.

For me, in response to this kind of view, Breton was the language that everyone spoke around me when I was a child. Breton was the world, as was French. French was freedom and slavery at the same time. As was Breton. This is true of all languages: they are used to communicate as well as to separate and shape new units. One needs to have seen parents or neighbors who are put to shame (it can be just a small gesture here or there, an intonation), to understand. The Breton nobility didn’t care about Breton, apart from the few enthusiasts who could not have any real contact with the population. We knew that they were involved in romanticism, a kind of game. Likewise the ecclesiastical authorities who occasionally served a word of Breton in their speeches—Breton which they might know perfectly besides—. Their empathy and recognition was in fact a condemnation of the tongue, a wink over the dying language. The minuscule movement of Breiz Atao and the coterie of bourgeois who were interested in Breton with the passion of converts made us weary.

So, the political dressing up of contempt for the Breton language seems to be just another nail in the coffin. My position is to appreciate the work done on and for the language by the Vallées, Mordierns, Hémons, and separate from it what they have done in politics as much as possible. I do it because I still hope that the language can be reborn and maintain itself. Of course, doing language is doing politics. But to attack what has been done linguistically by Hémon and others is in effect telling the Bretons to be content with a diminished language and accept to be steamrolled by French culture.

Chances of survival, a personal account

What is the strength of the language at the present time? The overwhelming impression is that it is dying, and yet not quite, for there are some signs of hope. It is dying because the generation that does know Breton and speaks it most of the time is now disappearing and because the next generation does not conduct its life in Breton. I could give numerous examples from my own experience in an area where everyone spoke Breton at all times, except in their dealings with outside agencies. This was true until very recently, but even in the fifties a number of children of my generation learned French only at school. For instance, a year ago, as I was sitting on a bench near the bank of the Jaudy river, near Tréguier, I heard two old ladies coming down the path, chatting in Breton. One was pushing a stroller and as they passed in front of me, the baby cried. In unison, they leaned forward and spoke in French to the baby who was not yet of speaking age. Indeed, old people now have accepted as a fact of life that one speaks French to the younger generation. It is a sort of miracle if young people speak both French and Breton correctly.

This acceptance has become general since WW II. For example, my elder brother, born before the war in 1938, was still addressed in Breton by everyone around him. But all the children born after the war were addressed in French by my parents, especially my mother, and by other members of the family. This actually made for some puzzling situations, such as my father asking my mother in Breton to have us do something for him. I always thought that his indirectness was due to his timidity and his uneasiness with marks of authority, but I realize now that it can also be explained in terms of linguistic ability. My father was not at ease in French. Yet, he himself had become more fluent in this foreign tongue because he had spent five years as a war prisoner in Germany, and therefore had to use French—not German—to get along with the other prisoners. Of course, we heard more Breton than French. At the table for instance, adults always spoke Breton to each other. Children were expected to keep quiet. When a French-speaking visitor would come to the house, my mother would ask my father in Breton to switch to French: “Come now, Jean, don’t speak Breton before foreigners,” whereby children drew the conclusion that French was good but foreign. We knew that we didn’t have to speak Breton, but in fact learned it, although it was a form of rebellion adopted by some to refuse to speak Breton. Our parents and neighbors were proud of the fact that we could speak their common language with them. My first act when I am back in my village is still to speak Breton to older friends, and this always draws the satisfied remarks “Ah! You haven’t forgotten your Breton!” But I do not speak Breton with people my age with whom I was in primary school. Even the younger people who have remained in farms use the language less and less with each other, especially at home, although they are the best speakers of the present generation.

I find it much more difficult to speak Breton with people who have learned the language at school (it is derisively known as “chemical Breton”) and often have an accent that I find difficult to associate with Breton. One of the reasons for the blockage is that I cannot detach a certain view of the world from its medium. Breton in this view was rural and I still do not know how to pass to another cultural set of rules in Breton. Neither do I dare write in Breton to my father although I can write the language, and he himself not only can read very well but in fact enjoys anything written in Breton, provided that it is brought to him. I mean by this that he will not go out of his way to borrow—or God forbid—to buy a Breton or French book, because to read books often connotes wealth, a change of social class, and perhaps some laziness. The problem is that I fear appearing too lettered, since, when one writes, one has to use words or spellings that sound odd and might smack of condescension. One must understand in this respect that the majority of the population does not read or write Breton, and that literacy is automatically associated with French. Only some segments of the population, in very Catholic areas, have learned to read and write Breton thanks to the Church. It is thanks to Breton catechism in 1912–1914 that my father could read Breton.

Another sad thing is that Bretons have learned to be ashamed of their language. They have come to believe that it is not worth anything, especially in cities, administrations, schools, or in conversations with anyone who is not rural. They even have been made to be ashamed of their accent in French. My father told me how he once was put to shame. When he arrived to accomplish his military service in 1926, he received a questionnaire which, among other things, asked which languages he spoke. Naïvely enough, he wrote Breton and French. But the officer checking the answers said that Breton was not a language and crossed it out. Not long ago, I myself was asked by a neighbor how many languages I spoke. When I included Breton, he dismissed it immediately, commenting that Breton did not count because it was not really a language. Now, it didn’t matter that this neighbor spoke much better Breton than French! Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that one should not make too much of this shame. We have also seen how proud Bretons are of their mother tongue, although it is a hidden pride that demands to be awakened. This ambivalent attitude, both of shame and of pride, has its main source in the policies of the Church and of the French government, themselves often relaying a much deeper movement having to do with industrialization and the apparition of modern values.

The role of the Catholic Church

To speak of Christianity in Brittany is to speak of the Catholic Church. The first fact to be given the proper importance is that there has not been a standard version of the Bible in Breton as there has been in several other languages. Not that the Bible has not been translated into Breton, but the Bible in Latin Catholic countries was the Vulgate, and it is still the Latin text that has a profound impact for many because it was the basis of all liturgy until 1964. This is even true for people who lack formal schooling. Most Catholic Bretons know by heart several Latin texts, e.g. the De profundis (Psalm 130), which they recite at night for their dead. The absence of a standard Breton Bible was compensated in part by hymns and other liturgical translations, but one may dream what it would have meant for the language, had a Breton Bible been allowed to exist by the Church, especially when one compares the situation with that of Wales, where the Welsh Bible and Prayer Book had a great role in shaping the language. An excellent translation of the whole Bible has been undertaken under the direction of Maodez Glanndour, who is a priest, scholar, and poet. Unfortunately, this almost completed work is not yet fully appreciated by those who could do much to encourage its circulation. One reason for this situation is the disaffection in which the Church is presently held, both in France and in Brittany. In the minds of many, the fight for Breton goes together with diverse brands of socialism which have in common their anti-clericalism, a confusion that is a reflection of the French political heritage.

We already have noted that Catholic Bretons learned to read and write in their catechism. This was still true in several communities until the Second World War. Unsurprisingly, the Church had to use Breton in order to make its mysteries accessible to little boys and girls who otherwise did not go to school. Catechisms and other devotional works were unfortunately often written in a strange Breton that borrowed heavily from French and Latin, even syntactically. Another influential book was the already mentioned collection of lives of saints called Buhez ar Sent. This book was to be found in most homes and was read at night to the household by one person who could read. Remnants of this intensely religious life conducted in Breton are the parish hymns which are still sung in Breton as before. In most places, they are the only scrap of Breton liturgy left standing.

It may come as a surprise that certain areas of Brittany are not, and may never have been, Catholic. Though visited by missionaries at different times in the past, they have remained fairly impervious to the Church and often have translated their former paganism into one form or another of modern political radicalism. This is especially true of Cornouaille (Bro-Gernev) in central Brittany. Consequently, these areas did not receive the benefit of formal Breton education via catechisms and the like. But they also happened to be the more economically isolated and were often more faithful to Breton traditions. The fact that such areas did not become strongholds of Christianity is certainly not due to the missionaries themselves. To this day, priests who misbehave were punished by being sent in quasi-exile in this area. It is noteworthy that the great missionary efforts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were conducted in Breton, most often by priests or monks who learned Breton in order to be able to approach the people. Some of these early missionaries have given us the first grammars, dictionaries, and handbooks of Breton.

The Church also had a role in preserving the language in less spectacular ways, especially through the daily interaction of priests with their parishioners. Until recently, priests sent to Breton-speaking areas normally were Breton speakers themselves, if sometimes speaking another dialect, and they carried out much of their daily business in Breton. This is especially true of those priests who showed concern for the more modest of their parishioners, since these knew only Breton. People of means, on the contrary, tended to switch to French as a mark of status, as feudal aristocrats and city bourgeois had done in previous centuries. Sermons and homilies were also in Breton. In the case of priests who knew the language very well and cared for it, their speeches must have had a good influence. My parents’ generation, for instance, remembered and still talked about a priest who “sermoned” in Breton until the end of the Second World War. He was considered an “orator” and some of his sayings were still quoted as maxims. His reputation led me to ask a neighbor if she had ever heard about his Breton sermons and whether they had been kept somewhere. She went immediately to the sideboard drawer and pulled out an old school notebook written cover to cover in purple ink. She passed it to me. “But it’s in French!” She then told me that Father Dorléac asked the children in catechism to translate on the fly in French the sermons he gave in Breton. Two or three kinds of handwriting had been used, but the first was the beautiful and regular handwriting of my neighbor, when she was ten or eleven. When she was tired, she said, she would pass the notebook to a friend or even to her mother, who had a less elegant handwriting. The spelling was impeccable. The level of education she had reached after four or five years of elementary education was simply outstanding.

On the whole, the Church has had a positive influence on Breton, protecting it, keeping it alive, and even developing some of its aspects. This happened, however, because there were enough priests of rural background who kept to Breton not only because it was a pastoral necessity but because they loved their language and culture. One must keep in mind that through those priests the Church was the only institution bestowing some dignity and respect on Breton language and culture from the world outside.

The Church iself, however, discouraged the use of Breton as a liturgical language, even when Rome finally authorized the free use of vernaculars in the second Vatican council. Breton ecclesiastics in positions of authority have always tended to avoid the use of Breton, at least in their official capacities. They turn to it in a superficial manner. For instance, I have heard bishops drop a few Breton sentences in their speeches on special occasions. Through such behavior, Bretons with power were pretending to remain at one with the people, and this was usually gratefully acknowledged. Unfortunately, they also helped to deeply engrain in the listeners’ minds the idea that not only is it an excellent idea to master the French culture, but that in order to do so, Breton has to take a back seat. In this respect, Church authorities have followed the same principles as the French government and French political parties.

One may therefore conclude that if Breton survived, it is due in part to the work of those who courageously decided that Breton was a good thing in itself, and tried to give it a wider scope from within the ecclesiastical institution. But one must add that it was not due to any favors coming from the hierarchy, far from.it. It happened to be a fact of life that Breton was for several centuries the only way to reach souls.

Breton under the French government

Unfortunately in this case, governments do not concern themselves with souls. For a variety of reasons, France embarked since the Revolution on a course of action hostile to minority languages and cultures. The first blows against Breton came with the French Revolution. At first, from 1789 to 1792, the revolution’s attitude was generally sympathetic, so much so that official documents were translated into Breton. But problems arose when the idea of establishing schools everywhere in the nation began to be implemented. What would be the content of the teaching done in these schools? Unfortunately, Égalité became equated in the minds of many with unification and systematic standardization. Worse, French became so well identified with freedom that the use of any other language in the nation and in the colonies was perceived as an attack against the new principles. Government viewed Breton as an obstacle to enlightenment. Of course, the first measures against Breton, such as the attempt to impose French in the recently created public schools or the prohibition of Breton even in churches, could hardly be applied with any success. The idea, however, was there to stay. Moreover, other destructive forces were at work. French for instance replaced Latin in higher education. Although lower education was still conducted in other languages, it became essential to learn the national tongue.

The Napoleonic administration proved to be much more lenient and even allowed a Breton translation of the “Imperial catechism” (l806). Centralization, though, was beginning to have devastating effects. Official papers were now only in French. For the first time, Breton soldiers were sent in great numbers to other countries where they spent extended periods of times. Even more important, all commercial and technical advances were synonymous with French culture and were the greatest force behind the progress of the national language, though in a moderate way at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The rest of the nineteenth century saw the language subjected to more destructive trends. It was a time of great technological breakthroughs and vastly increased communication networks. Breton was probably still taught in many schools, which would explain why so many books of piety, almanacs, and songs were printed. But French definitely came first. The universal conscription of men for three years, decreed in 1872, was to become a major enemy of Breton culture. Furthermore, the idea that a major task of the schools was to destroy provincial languages and make a place for French could finally be put in practice. Education was made compulsory in 1882 and Breton was forbidden in schools. Children were punished if caught speaking Breton, even in the playground. They were supposed to inform on each other. A wooden shoe or other wood “symbol” was given to the last child heard speaking Breton in the school yard. Much has been made of this “symbol,” called ar vuoc’h (the cow) by my parents, but I do not think that it did much in itself to instill contempt for their language in the children’s minds. It ended up often enough in a field or the bushes outside the playground. It was symbolic, however, of a pernicious philosophy that equated the use of Breton with boorishness, utter lack of intelligence and proper manners, and even with blind opposition to rationalism and progress.

The impact of French policies was crushing for Breton as soon as major ways of communication were opened up in the nineteenth century and the appeal of an easier and more interesting urban life, made itself insistently felt. Modern life appeared to be a liberation from the old circles of village relationships, since salaries allowed workers to slip into the exciting anonymity of large cities. French began to be accepted not only in cities but also in villages and even in individual farms. Adults, especially mothers, learned to speak a little French and wanted to teach it to their children in order to improve their chances in the world outside. A new feeling came about according to which Breton was ur yezh mat da vann, i.e. a useless language.

The appeal of French was rapidly internalized at the village level. Breton-speaking young men, for instance, stood little chance of obtaining a dance from a young woman, because Breton was associated with backwardness. On the contrary, the better young people spoke French, the more chance they had to meet a person of his or her choice. It also meant that one tried to imitate urban French pronunciation and drop the heavy Breton accent. Curiously enough, there has been a complete turnaround in recent years and it is now fashionable to have a slight Breton accent in French!

The twentieth century has kept the old evils and brought new ones. The ever growing industrialization and mechanization have continued to be perceived as French. The effects of long wars and large movements of population towards urban centers have been catastrophic in many respects, not only from a linguistic point of view. In this respect, one must mention the disproportionate sacrifices imposed on Breton youth by the Franco-German wars, and the deleterious effect of French nationalism on Breton identity. Most importantly, the various modern mass media have appeared in every home, first the large provincial newspapers in French, then the radio, and soon the television—each of them in turn more fascinating and less demanding intellectually.

In order to attempt to redress such a catastrophic situation, at least in a small measure, a number of organizations and individuals have repeatedly asked the French government for a minimum of rights, such as the possibility of teaching Breton as a foreign tongue, accrediting teachers, having a number of programs on the state radio and television, and so forth. These demands have always been rejected. In 1941, the right-wing Vichy government, for its own reasons, allowed the teaching of Breton as an “extra-curricular” activity and let a small part of the baccalauréat examination be in Breton, on a par with physical education. These permissions were granted again in 1951. But later they were rescinded.

The two so-called “Breton” newspapers publish small articles, in Breton, once in a while, usually on unimportant subjects. Radio and television broadcast very few Breton programs. Until two years ago, there was half an hour per week of Breton programming on the television, at impossible hours, and having to do with matters of dubious interest. In fact, both paper and electronic media constantly reinforce the impression that Breton is not a language capable of expressing all aspects of modern life. Stories carried in Breton are most often about folkloric matters, when they are not about weddings or other official functions performed at one of several Navy and Army bases scattered throughout Brittany. Yet, I have seen my father listen with great attention to these programs simply because it is Breton coming out of a radio set. One can dream how different the situation could be if serious broadcasts, especially of national and international news, were allowed on the regional network.

This is not to say that folkloric matters are not important. Indeed, they are, but taken alone, they give a distorted image of Brittany and cannot be a culture all by themselves. This is why Per-Jakez Helias’s book, The Horse Of Pride, has been so well received by non-Breton people and reviled by many of his country people. I personally read it with great pleasure and emotion. I found in it a faithful picture of a Breton culture gone by, inasmuch as it described things that were astonishingly similar to what I heard told by my parents and neighbors. But many Bretons involved in a struggle for a modern Breton culture have felt betrayed by the success given to yet another story of Brittany that has the beauty of a death mask and therefore attacked the author, mistakenly thinking that polemics could correct the picture.

The present French government is fortunately inclined to listen to cultural demands, and even to demands of a political nature (“régionalisation”). It has finally habilitated the Université de Haute-Bretagne (Rennes) to deliver university diplomas in Breton. It is not certain that it will accede to other demands concerning the teaching at the primary and secondary levels and the use of electronic media. This again is an uphill fight, especially since many strands within the French Socialist Party, and even more so the Communist Party, are frankly hostile to regional, especially linguistic, demands. The attitude towards Breton culture and language does not follow the traditional left-right division found in French political life, a fact that many Bretons haven’t yet fully realized. The best that can be asked from any French government is to stop interfering with attempts at more freedom in cultural matters, and to grant Breton the basic facilities given foreign languages in France.

Signs of hope

We have seen how the policies of the Church and especially the French government have had a negative effect on the development of the language. Its future rests solely in the hands of Breton people. This was certainly true of those recent generations who created Breton literature and various movements devoted to political and educational issues. It is even truer now. Fortunately, there are several signs of hope. First, there is presently an increasing number of young people enrolled in Breton language programs, so much so that teachers (all volunteers so far) find it difficult to meet the demand. Those programs go from “crash courses” frequently organized by the universities of Rennes and Brest to more formal courses given in primary or secondary schools and by correspondence. It is remarkable that not to speak Breton now occasions feelings of regret or even shame, at least among young people of Breton origin who live in cities and are not satisfied with present canons of French culture.

Recently, thanks to a loophole in French law, several pre-schools have come into being. There are about twenty such schools, called Diwan (“germinate”), organized on a semi-voluntary basis, and where small children speak only Breton, while also learning French and foreign languages. It is essential to develop such a network, and even more to obtain the right to continue the same work in primary and secondary schools. All in all, several thousand young people are now learning Breton in all sorts of ways.

Another sign of hope has been the great interest generated by Breton music. Numerous music groups have appeared, collecting and arranging songs and musical themes, and performing in a great variety of styles. This new phenomenon is encouraging because the listener’s interest in Breton music is often a first step towards a better understanding of the rest of the culture, especially the language. Certainly, the wide appeal of music has helped bring about a needed respect for the language and foster a feeling of self-worth among Breton people.

Another important development, with a much longer history, has been the expansion or Breton literature. The twentieth century has seen a great proliferation of novels, short stories, poetry, historical tools of all kinds, technical newspapers and periodicals, on cassettes. Breton literature comes to see the light of day through great sacrifices since editions can only be run at a few hundred or thousand copies each, even in the best of cases. This excellent and abundant literature is still awaiting a public. One reason for this is the prohibitive cost of books. Another aspect of the problem is that buying a book has been for so long a luxury associated with the upper classes, a handicap that also affects French publishing. Local lending libraries would be a step in the right direction to break such resistance.

Will the enthusiasm of many, the feelings of regret or shame of others, and the perseverance, courage, and abnegation of a few carry the day? One may at least say that if Breton becomes again a primary language of Breizh-Izel (Lower Brittany), it will be the fruit of conscious decisions on the part of the speakers. Of course, the work to be done is not only linguistic or cultural, but also political.

Quite a few Bretons think that nothing short of the existence of a Breton state will restore Breton culture to its proper place, and they diligently work towards that goal. But to give due consideration to the political issue would require yet another article. For the moment, I shall be content to note that any person who decides to learn and speak Breton wins a complete victory over cheap standardization, indifference, and him or herself. It would be a very sad day if Breton were to end its life in universities as the object of scientific autopsy. Too many languages disappear from this world without having had a chance to sing their own melody to the fullest.

June, 1982

grammar

Grammar is politics by another name. I find myself returning to the clash of verb tenses in the discussion about divine authority and life in the gospel of John, 8:58: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” I should say: grammar becomes politics. The linguist Jean Gagnepain puts it more clearly. Grammar is something implicit and part of the dialectical framing of human activities, whereas discourse (rhetoric) is the emerged part, the visible, negotiated, partial, political therefore, reinvestment of our implicit capacity for grammar. And so the question is, what politics engendered the saying attributed by the author to Jesus in his discussions with the specialists of the time of divine authority? Ἐγὼ δαιμόνιον οὐκ ἔχω, ἀλλὰ τιμῶ τὸν πατέρα μου, ὑμεῖς ἀτιμάζετὲ με. “I have not a demon; but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me.” Does the ensuing discussion about Abraham and genetic understanding of history not signify and excuse the control of men and women at work in the engine-rooms of history: Ἀβραάμ ἀπέθανεν καὶ οἱ προφῆται… σὺ μείζων εἶ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν Ἀβρααμ, ὅστις ἀπέθανεν; τίνα σεαυτὸν ποιεῖς; “Abraham died, as did the prophets; […] Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? Who do you claim to be?” … Abraham and the prophets died. There is finality to this death, which seals the expression of divine will and vision of history that we inherited from them. From Ezra on (or what Ezra stands for, no matter the chronological precision for now), the proclamation of the text engenders a dynamics of interpretation from which no one can escape. See Yerushalmi, “Réflexions sur l’oubli,” in: Usages de l’oubli (Paris, 1988: pages 7–21, 15). The expressions of divine will that one gets in the law, in its correct, on-going interpretation, or in the visions of the prophets, they are all at two removes from the original, as in politics.

The answer put into Jesus’ mouth is meant to be reactive if not rebellious, no doubt. It is anti-genetic, even though it uses fatherhood as the exclusive image of ultimate authority: πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί. “Before Abraham was, I am.” Two twists on tenses: an infinitive (aorist middle) after a conjunction, and this present forever tense, the contrary of an aorist. The clash of tenses is one thing, the choice of verbs another indication of the tension between a temporary existence, a being that died, and a being that has no predictable past and future. A being that claims not so much eternity as the right to go beyond the politically convenient adaptation to the “conditions of life.” It’s not so much the dualism of the inchoate Christian doctrine that is at stake for this author, with its forever refinable hope for an eternal life beyond Abraham, a hope within the mean-, un-redeemed time, justifying the hiccups and bogging down of political discussion and action into this aoristic world reduced to a succession of moments. In a single-substanced world, however, the present tense of eimi, I am, is not only a claim of direct access to divine will. It is calling for a history in the present and the renegotiation of all sclerotic political deals.

memory

My memory’s faultiness and durability keep puzzling me. Faulty recall first: I had to let time do its work this morning—i.e. slower chemistry in the brain—before I could remember on the bike lane, far up on the slopes, the name of the author whose angry mockery of the Supreme Court judges I had appreciated just half an hour before when reading today’s New York Times on my iPad: Maureen Dowd. I also enjoyed her use of two curious words—pervy for Thomas (a pervy liar...), and suspire for M. Monroe—, even though I shouldn’t allow myself to be overly enamored of Ms. Dowd’s vertiginous lexical vaultings. It could be argued that her own jealous anger at the Clintons and her fascinated tolerance for Trump deserve a bit of damnatio memoriae. Didn’t it cost as many votes to the Democrats as her present article might reclaim? These two words I didn’t forget yet, however, perhaps because of the work that goes into figuring out their origins (pervert and French soupirer). So, there goes a durability of sort, as well as a faulty self. I find it hard to graft new memories, a well known phenomenon. And then, while reading Tales of royalty, a recent book on Mesopotamia, I am surprised to discover that I remember right away very useful stuff such as the name of the wool dress that kings wore in Sumer—kaunakes—, for instance that of Urnanše, king of Lagaš. I could also instantly remember when and where I learned it—in 1967, in the books of the École Biblique in Jerusalem, a cool fifty-five years ago. I doubt that I used this word ever since…

French neo-liberalism

I am puzzled to discover in the latest New Yorker article on France by James McCauley that Marcel Gauchet makes room for Marine Le Pen under the great tent of democratic France. She would exemplify a new, softer, though inexperienced right that is not in continuity with Barrès or Maurras but more like the Republican party at the beginning of the Fifth Republic (the RPR: rassemblement pour la République). I don’t think he is naïve. But it is shocking at first to see his expansive ideas on democracy be so flexible (see his Le nouveau monde, vol.\ 4 of L’avènement de la démocratie (Gallimard, 2017). So, I hope he is not about to cajole her any further and perhaps even tolerate in advance her possible victory in the 2027 presidential elections, while she finds it politic to coax the likes of Poutine or Orban.

The need to criticize the destructiveness of neo-liberalism, including its European façade, and the terrible effects of the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots, which despairs and frightens about half of the French, is, I assume, the real reason behind Gauchet’s widening or rereading of the democratic church. It would be a way to recognize the “laissés pour compte,” whom Macron gives the impression of abandoning to their fate of victims of the unstoppable global world. The Europe that Macron speaks about will go larger with the integration of Ukraine, without making its decision making about taxation or social policy any more decisive and transparent. But I don’t see how this suffering, fear, and frustration can justify a ballot for the Le Pens’ profiteering. Nothing in her program—or what transpires of it—can be construed as a challenge to neo-liberalism, in spite of her couplets on nationalism, “civilization”, and immigration. Neither does Macron’s ideas qualify as a program, granted. His persona is that of a supremely competent negotiator. In fact, they both invite an acceleration of the oligarchies or oligopolies that we see at work in Russia and in another form in the US. It can go along with proto-fascist measures, like the arrest and expulsion of immigrants in the middle of the day.

Here is what McCauley says about Gauchet::

Gauchet, a historian, co-founded the journal Le Débat, a cornerstone of French intellectual life for decades. (It ceased publication in 2020.) Gauchet has recently insisted that Marine is a “sort of authoritarian right, national, popular, which for me strongly evokes—as an ancien combattant—the beginning of the Fifth Republic.” He went further, saying that “in reality, she incarnates something very different from the extreme right of the past”—even though Marine is the direct heir, literally and ideologically, of precisely that tradition.

Macauley is not fair to Marcel Gauchet. The interview that Gauchet gave to Europe One recently makes clear that he looks at both sides of the election as not providing political platforms but rather as playing superficial roles in a moral tale. Gauchet is being realistic and simply taking seriously the weakening of a Republican front traditionally opposed to the far right. The French voter is not politically represented in the presidential election because the traditional parties that were eviscerated in 2017 and especially 2022 haven’t been replaced by real political options. If not corrected—by proportional-style elections—France might see a social explosion.

Limerick

Oh what studying!
the heads are bobbing.
Some want revolution
others stick to tradition.
These hilly intellectuals
scout over the terrain,
and look for victuals
but all they get is refrain.

עֹלם

We flew to Houston
and walked by the apocalyptic space suit.
Bunny had landed here from Michigan with his loot
of stories, chapters of his invention
that he told to Cal and Lucie with gumption.

American red buds are in bloom,
After thunderstorm and rain, no gloom.
Gardeners are busy on Sunset, and yet
Seventy-one years have set.

Time we know or believe so,
It has a beginning, no end in tow,
Just a hidden horizon
Of expectation and jubilation.

Miriam Ellis

Miriam Ellis, Lecturer emerita of French at UCSC from 1979 to 2004, died at home on the 14th of March 2022, a few hours before the seventh anniversary of the death of Paul, her dear husband. Her whole life, she and her children shared a very close relationship: her daughters Debra and Vicki, her son Jonathan and his wife Susanne.

She was born in New York City in 1927 to Jewish immigrants from central Europe. Early on she developed an infectious love for languages, music, and theater. Her love for French took shape during WWII when the French government in exile did all it could to maintain its language and culture. In 1948 Miriam seized the opportunity to volunteer in a refugee camp in France that served refugees from North Africa and the Middle East. After that experience, she married, had children, and left for Southern California in 1955.

Miriam had finished her high school and done some college work before she went to France. She was thirty when she started taking night classes as a re-entry mother caring for her three children. As her 2020 autobiography says, “She then spent the next twenty-two years gradually and steadfastly working through a series of degrees.” She received highest honors in a BA from CSU Northridge and completed a Master’s at the same school. Given her great interest in and experience with international students, she became the university’s Director of the Office of International Programs. During those years, she fullfilled her passion for theater by acting in local productions.

In 1971, she came to UCSC where she left an indelible mark on students and colleagues in French, theater, music (especially opera), and administration. Her initial project was to pursue a PhD in French and Spanish literature at UCSC, a most recent and experimental campus that had started six years before, in 1965. Two of her children also studied at UCSC. She worked very closely with Joe Silverman, an authority on Spanish Golden Age literature, especially Sephardic literature. In 1979, she completed her critical edition and translation of Lope de Vega’s La Francesilla. She began teaching French and literature as a graduate student in 1971, while doing her doctoral research and pursuing her interests in theater and music. Upon completing her PhD, she became a full-time Lecturer in French, and continued to teach and support French, theater, and opera well past her retirement in 2004. Her role in those three areas was astonishing.

Miriam Ellis brought together her teaching of French, work for the theater, and passion for the opera, in such a way that we can speak of a remarkable legacy calling to be continued and furthered. We may start with her admirable teaching of French and the way she directly contributed to the creation of many new language courses. She had the unusual broad vision of language, trust of colleagues, capacity for hard work, and practical experience in grant application that led the Division of Humanities and the Department of Languages (then the Language Committee) to follow her aegis and support her grant applications to the Language Across the Curriculum program. This was a federal program that provided support for the creation of new language courses in which the content would be interdisciplinary (sociological, biological, etc), to the tune of $250,000. About 30 courses that drew on an exceptional cadre of instructors were created in this manner, thanks to Miriam’s philosophy of culture and administrative savvy. The French government recognized her teaching and contributions to French culture in 1999 by knighting her in the order of the Palmes académiques.

As an actor and stage director, she helped build theater at UCSC. She saw it as an integral part of the teaching of languages and created the International Playhouse, now named the Miriam Ellis International Playhouse (MEIP) and funded thanks to the generosity of donors. This brilliant idea, as thrilling as that of the Language Across the Curriculum program mentioned above, is to have students learn and publicly perform scenes in the original languages from traditional or modern plays. The students thereby have a new and different experience of the languages they are studying in their language classes and by presenting them to the public with super-titles, the audience can also participate. Plays in four to six languages have been presented each spring since 2001. So far, the languages have included Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese. Latin, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian and Spanish. This year, watch for announcements regarding season XXII of the Miriam Ellis International Playhouse, which will happen on May 20, 21, and 22, 2022 at 8:00 PM in the Stevenson Event Center at UCSC.

Miriam worked as a stage director for the Opera Workshop in the seventies and co-founded the Santa Cruz Opera Society, Inc. (SCOSI), starting productions, organizing conferences, bringing important artists to the audience. She taught numerous classes on opera, sometimes in cooperation with John Dizikes and Tom Lehrer, either in the Humanities curriculum or for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) where she was a lifetime member. Notably, she was a co-editor and translator of two important works. She helped with the American premiere of the lost manuscript of Les visitandines by François Devienne (1759-1803) that Sherwood Dudley, a professor of music and conductor at UCSC, had discovered in Lille. It was performed in 1997 at UCSC as part of the inaugural festivities for Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood. In 2016, again in collaboration with Sherwood Dudley, her translation of the libretto of Le nozze di Figaro, a major work of Mozart, was published by Passaggio Press as The Flexible Figaro. This was a huge accomplishment and a labor of love that took twenty years of meticulous translating and editing work. A version of Le nozze di Figaro had been performed at UCSC in 1989 for a celebration of the bicentenary of the French Revolution. It was marked by the presence of Danièle Mitterrand, wife of François Mitterrand, the French president at the time. Miriam also translated arias from French, Italian, German, and Russian that are available on Arias in original & translation, her own UCSC website.

Miriam Ellis’ generosity of spirit, perseverance, and love of family, students, and colleagues have enriched and transformed those who have known her. Her life inspires us to sustain her passion for languages, cultures, theater, and music.

War business

The US and Europe have decided to inflict preliminary sanctions on Russia while still leaving some room for diplomacy. According to the papers, 190 000 Russian troops surround Ukraine. The Russian claim is that the US started the belligerency by giving NATO status to ex-USSR nations soon after the collapse of the Soviets in December 1991 and siting missiles on the borders of Russia. The Russian leadership is right to feel that the Cold War has never been over and has taken new forms. The real fear of Putin and acolytes, however, is to see Ukraine and ex-USSR nations become part of Europe and leave their sphere of influence, perhaps even increase the political danger inside Russia in turn. The NATO conference of 2008 in Bucarest decided to extend NATO to Georgia and Ukraine. This was seen by Russia as tantamount to war. And another reason for the war-mongering is that Putin’s strident nationalism is tolerated by the Russian people and hides its government’s massive thievery, injustices, and crimes of the past thirty years.

There is a more hidden reason to the war. It is strange and sad to see videos of enormous columns of sophisticated war machinery being set in place. The NYT doesn’t hesitate to show maps and photos of the Russian moves. Nothing however, or very little, is shown of the war capabilities of NATO. This organization saw its raison d’être disappear in 1989–1990 with the collapse of the USSR. But as a large irreplaceable market for US-made or -designed weaponry, its existence continued to be justified by the likes of the US Senate for other reasons, such as countering terrorism or perceived Iran’s threat (missiles in Poland are supposedly for defense against Iran’s missiles). Now that Russia has provided a bona fide reason for using NATO’s capabilities, we learn that Ukraine will never be part of it and will be left to its own devices, except for the supply of certain weapons. It seems that armament industries can continue to be great investments both in the US and the USSR.

According to the wikipedia’s list of countries by military expenditures, the USA spends more than ten times on war (“defense”) what Russia does.

US: 778 billion$ = 3.7% of GDP;

Russia: 61.7 billion$ = 4.3% of GDP;

China: 252 billion$ = 1.7% of GDP;

Gildas Hamel