Burns and France An « immortal memory » given on the occasion of the European Movement’s Burns’ Supper by the Consul general of France, Pierre-Alain Coffinier – Glasgow, January 24, 2012

As a Frenchman, steeped in arrogance, I thought all those celebrations about Burns were no more than expressions of Scottish jingoism, alongside bagpipes, shortbread and tartans, and that Burns, with all the talent he may have had , was most probably far from equating our national poets, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Eluard, Ronsard…

Having been invited to several Burns suppers last year, I decided I had no other choice than to start reading Burns. After all, having been posted to Scotland, it was every bit my duty as having a basic knowledge of whiskies, Mary Queen of Scots or golf. And so I did.

I discovered two things link Burns and France:

Romanticism: Burns lived in the romantic era, an era which loved dramatic and picturesque countries; he was a love poet;

1 The French revolution: Burns was a contemporary of our revolution. He was interested in politics and followed very closely what happened in our country. Actually, he even sympathised with our révolutionnaires.

I. Burns and romanticism :

a. Romanticism and irrationalism :

As a reaction to our « Lumières », where « la raison » was put at the pinnacle, romanticism got interested in Scotland for her picturesque and dramatic character. The painter Francois-Alexandre Pernot (1793-1865), in his 1827 Vues pittoresques de l’Écosse , described how the interest of French readers towards Scotland was growing at the time.

In this context, Burns was the ideal introduction to this dramatic and irrational Scotland: A French aristocrat who followed Charles X (the brother of Louis XVI) in exile in Scotland after 1830, Léon de Buzonnière, advised French travellers to Scotland to first read the works of Walter Scott and Burns, if they wished to fully understand the country.

But, with a passion for picturesque, the French were all the more interested in Scotland for its irrational side: the myth of Ossian was received with huge success and became a great source of inspiration in France. Napoléon himself was a great fan of Ossian. We loved ghosts and witches in Scotland. Not surprisingly, the very theme that our most romantic – and incidentally greatest – painter in the XIXth century, Eugène Delacroix, chose in Scotland was Tam o’Shanter : he painted a magnificent « Tam o’Shanter poursuivi par les sorcières », which is now on display in the Delacroix museum in Basel.

b. Romanticism and nationalities:

But the romantics also got interested in the peoples, as opposed to monarchies and kingdoms, and in « nationalities ». Scotland also fitted into this framework. A theory of « national poets » developed, of which Burns was a perfect example.

2 The XIXth century was the century of nationalisms and of great nationalist/regionalist poets/writers. Burns was what we called « a national poet ». In the XIXth century, the concept of a ‘national poet’ was linked to the idea of national genius ( ‘génie national’ ), developed in 1810 by Madame de Staël for Germany in her book « De l’Allemagne », and later by Chateaubriand, who used this notion for his study of British literature, published in 1836 under the title Essai sur la littérature anglaise . Chateaubriand stated that a ‘national revolution’ could be observed in Cowper’s and Burns’ works.

Burns epitomised these « national poets ». Victor Hugo saw Burns as “a self-taught poet who captured in his verses the true nature of rural Scotland ”. A journalist, Amédée Pichot, wrote in 1825 that: « Scotland is prouder of Burns than of any of her poets. Scotland is right; the poetry of Burns belongs only to her, it is the fruit of her earth, her climate, her customs… Everything [in Burns’s poems] is direct and original ».

In this respect, Burns was perceived as the father / precursor of many poets and writers who made a point of returning to rural roots and depicting local mores and folklore steeped in peasant life, regionalism, and the picturesque. In this way, Burns can be seen as a predecessor of Charles Nodier, Prosper Mérimée, Frédéric Mistral or Alphonse Daudet.

But for his contemporary writers, being so « local », almost « folkloric », he was probably worth less than them. Victor Hugo saw two kinds of poets: the universal poet and the local poet, Homer being the first, and Burns the second. For Chateaubriand: ‘The lyrical Burns was a child of the British soil; he could not live, in his full energy and grace, under another sun.’ By this, Chateaubriand also implied that, being so ‘British’, he could not be translated properly into French .

For all this – picturesque, Scottish fashion, irrationalism and localism, Burns, who, incidentally, was not translated into French before 1825, was not given the recognition he deserved in France, that of a poet with a universal message – with one exception:

Our greatest painter of rural life, Jean-Francois Millet, wrote in 1863, after receiving two books, one by Theocritus, the other one by Burns:

3 “Burns pleases me infinitely. He has his own special flavour; he smacks of the soil. (…) Theocritus shows me every day more and more that we are never so truly Greek as when we are simply painting our own impressions, no matter where we have received them; and Burns teaches me the same.” In other words, Burns was depicting the universal feelings and impression of the soul.

To me, Burns is also a universal poet for the very powerful way he wrote about love.

c. Burns and love :

But during my readings of Burns, I also discovered that besides being this “local” poet, he was also one of the greatest love poets.

Deprived of all “localisms”, his imagery meets some images which definitely reconcile Burns with universality.

It may be possible, as a French reader to see some connections with our Love poets of Renaissance, even though he had not read them:

Like Ronsard he compares his love to a rose: My luve is like a red, red rose, That sprung in June, Mignonne allons voir si la rose, Qui ce matin était déclose (…)

Even though the image is not the exactly same (in Burns the rose is passion, in Ronsard, transience of beauty/ youth).

Like Du Bellay he uses metaphors full of flowers and birds, which remind one of Renaissance paintings (Boticelli) or the tapestries that adorned the châteaux of the Loire valley. And roses in the Renaissance, as everywhere else, also have thorns:

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, Frae aff its thorny tree:

4 And my fause luver staw the rose, But left the thorn wi' me.

Even though he couldn’t be translated into French, I found a good translation:

Le cœur léger, je cueillis une rose Sur son buisson épineux; Et mon faux ami m'a dérobé la rose Et ne m'a laissé que l'épine!

He also uses « surréaliste » images which use the purest elements of nature, and oppose – in a rather erotic metaphor – a hard element melting away, with love, in infiniteness:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi the sun...

Eluard : Elle s'engloutit dans mon ombre Comme une pierre sur le ciel. (… ) Ses rêves en pleine lumière Font s'évaporer les soleils, (...)

Quite unlike my XIX th century fellow countrymen, I tend to consider therefore that he did have a message for the whole of humanity.

II. Burns and politics :

Burns and the French revolution were contemporaries. Burns never travelled to France, but as a man who was very much involved in local life and politics, he followed all the turmoil and upheavals that took place in France through the newspapers he could find in Dumfries.

He also had a personal interest:

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a. Due to his upbringing as the son of a poor farmer, Burns was a passionate fighter against inequalities :

Burns had a real grudge against the nobles and rich by birth and used tremendous hardiesse (boldness) in much a similar way as our Beaumarchais: In the Twa dogs, he pits a rich dog, Ceasar against Luath, a ploughman’s collie:

Our laird gets in his racked rents, His coals, his kain, an' a' his stents: He rises when he likes himsel; His flunkies answer at the bell; He ca's his coach; he ca's his horse; He draws a bonie silken purse, As lang's my tail ,

The foundation of his philosophy being found in the famous A man is a man for a’ that , which is a real “Marseillaise” of the abolition of privileges. Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord Wha struts an' stares an' a' that Tho' hundreds worship at his word He's but a coof for a' that (…)

Because : The rank is but the guinea's stamp The man's the gowd for a' that. (…)

He identified with the Revolution because he himself was one of the downtrodden and oppressed. His identification was personal and total. It came from the bottom of his heart. When Burke (an Irishman by birth, though a defender of the English oligarchy and crown) attacked our revolution in his notorious Reflections on the French Revolution , he wrote the following scathing denunciation: "Oft have I wonder'd that on Irish ground No poisonous Reptile has ever been found; Revealed stands the secret of great Nature's work; She preserved her poison to create a Burke!"

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His works are full of such quotations, and he would certainly have been agreeable to Beaumarchais, who has a knave retort to his master: « Aux vertus qu’on exige d’un domestique, Votre Excellence connaît-elle beaucoup de maîtres qui fussent dignes d’être valets? » (With all the virtues which a servant is being required, would your Excellency know a lot of masters who would be worthy of being valets?)

b. Burns thus greeted the French revolution with all his might. His enthusiasm for the revolutionary cause led him to abandon all caution :

In his poem, Why Should we idly waste our Prime? we find the following explosive lines: The guillotine on Peers shall wait; And Knights shall hang in garters. Those Despots long have trod us down, And judges are their engines; Such wretched minions of a Crown Demand the People's vengeance! Today tis theirs. Tomorrow we Shall don the Cap of Libertie!" (…) Burns was drawn to the Revolution with every fibre of his being. Still, having bought canons with his own money to be sent to the revolutionaries in France, he may have realised he went too far. He belonged to “the Scottish society of the friends of the people” which debated the “democratic principles”. But as you know, the French revolution was quickly becoming the arch enemy of all standing orders in Europe, especially to our most conservative British neighbours. The “friends of the people” became suspects. Some were sent to Australia or executed. Burns himself, a father and a husband, understood he had to be cautious: even after his death his children could have been prosecuted for his alleged sympathies or actions. For this reason, his poem “The Tree of France” was not signed nor mentioned among his works to this day. But all experts know, it could never have been written by anyone else:

7 The tree of Liberty :

Heard ye o' the Tree o' France, Around it a' the patriots dance -- Weel Europe kens the fame o't! It stands where ance the Bastille stood -- A prison built by kings, man, When Superstition's hellish brood Kept France in leading-strings, man. (…) It raises man aboon the brute, It mak's him ken himsel', man! Gif ance the peasant taste a bit, He's greater than a lord, man,

King Louis thought to cut it down, When it was unco sma', man; For this the watchman crack'd his crown, Cut aff his head and a', man. (…)

With again interesting verses: Let Britain boast her hardy oak, Her poplar, and her pine, man! Auld Britain ance could crack her joke, And o'er her neighbours shine, man! But seek the forest round and round, And soon 'twill be agreed, man, That sic a tree can not be found 'Twixt London and the Tweed, man. (…) Syne let us pray, Auld England may Sure plant this far-famed tree, man; And blythe we'll sing, and herald the day That gives us liberty, man.

8 c. But was he, for a’ that, a “révolutionnaire” at the bottom of his heart?

To be a true « révolutionnaire », you needed not just to have a grudge against the aristrocrats. You also had to have a broader conception of equality and a will to change society. Auguste Angellier, a professor at the University of Lille, wrote an extremely interesting and most thoroughly documented book about Burns. He maintains that: unlike Coleridge and Cowper who sympathised with the French revolution for its principles, for a philosophical approach to human rights, Burns’sympathy for it was not the product of abstract philosophical considerations.

But being less philosophical, more realistic and down to earth (in which we recognise the essence of Scottish soul), he changed his mind swiftly when La Terreur arrived. Coleridge and Cowpers had real difficulty in understanding Robespierre and thought the revolution would quickly return to its righteous way. Quite unlike them, Burns was immediately ready to fight for Britain as the révolutionnaires threatened to invade the UK to export their ideals. In other words, as a Scot, he was faster to rise and defend your common Isle than his English fellow poets: Does haughty Gaul invasion threat, Then let the loons beware, Sir, There's wooden walls upon our seas, And volunteers on shore, Sir.

O let us not, like snarling tykes, In wrangling be divided; (…) Be Britain still to Britain true, Amang oursels united; For never but by British hands Maun British wrangs be righted!

Conclusion:

It has been quite an interesting journey for me to discover such a complex and rich character as Burns. From the parochial Pict I expected to the inspirational genius who

9 was just as able as our national glories to express in full subtleness the universal passions and revolts of human soul, I certainly do not regret having been dragged into the epicenter of Scottishness, the Hogmanay of the Scottish calendar year, aka the Burns’ suppers.

Though steeped in Scottishness, collecting tales all over the highlands and islands, the Bard was the first one to stand in defence of Britain, as if an « Auld Alliance » of crowns or parliaments, a Union of kingdoms or a monetary union abolished the Hadrian walls some may like to see or set in the minds of the inhabitants of these islands. Though an enthusiastic supporter of the « prise de la Bastille » and of the “déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen”, he lambasted Haughty Gaul and supported the militarisation of the north Atlantic, probably to protect the mineral resources of this archipelago from the worse predation in the history of humanity since the Incas’gold was stolen by the Spaniards.

Was he « inclassable » as we would say?

As a man of independent mind, rather than being faithful to a party, he preferred to be faithful to man:

But while we sing, "God save the King," We'll ne'er forget the people.

Being such a humanist, he would certainly have deserved to be an honorary Frenchman. (Thank you very much).

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