DOCSLIB.ORG

A Celtic Poet Author(S): Frances M

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Celtic Poet Author(S): Frances M A Celtic Poet Author(s): Frances M. Gostling Source: The Celtic Review, Vol. 5, No. 19 (Jan., 1909), pp. 202-224 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30070007 Accessed: 19-06-2016 18:47 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Celtic Review This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:47:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 202 THE CELTIC REVIEW lished, sold furiously at first; but the Gael is going back to his fancy of cheap coloured English comic cards again now. The author was asked when he thought the dictionary would be finished if he continued single-handed. Although nearly one-third of the type still remains to be set up, he says he hopes he is within sight of the goal at last, although he is at times nearly collapsing with the strain on eyes and head. When completed, the Faclair will run into about 900 pages, demy 8vo. The greatest difficulty he has encountered since commenc- ing this arduous undertaking is to obtain sufficient subscribers to keep the ball rolling, and we regret to hear that the deficiency due to this is now compelling him to offer for sale his library of Gaelic books which he has been collecting for about thirty years. This should not be necessary, and is not creditable to the many persons now professing an interest in Gaelic study, nor to the many Highland societies among whose 'objects' the 'promotion of the Gaelic language' occupies a foremost place. The 'Kent' Dictionary, as it is often called, deserves, and we trust will forthwith get, the hearty support of all such persons and societies. Six or seven pence a number is surely within the means of all such. QUOD ERAT INVENIENDUM. A CELTIC POET FRANCES M. GOSTLING AcRoss the grey waters of the English Channel, guarded by rocks and shoals, lies the twilight land of Armorica, or, as it is usually called, Brittany, birthplace and home of one of the great modern Celtic writers, Anatole le Braz. No doubt many travellers have, like the present writer, discovered the works of this author on the bookstall of some Breton station, and learned to love them as they transformed what would have been a monotonous railway journey into a romantic pil- grimage. Yet it is also certain that his writings are not This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:47:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A CELTIC POET 203 known as they should be in our very insular island, and there- fore for our own sakes, as well as for his, it seems but fitting that some one should attempt to introduce this author to the British public. Among the mountains of Ar6, very far from any town, is the village of Saint Servais, where, in 1859, Anatole le Braz was born. No surroundings could have accorded better with the future mapped out by fate for this Breton poet. The tiny village lies slumbering in the lap of the grey, mysteri- ous, mountain region, dreaming of superstitions and traditions long since forgotton in more accessible communes. Poor little village I mere handful of cottages, clustering round an ancient, moss-grown chapel! How many such do we not come across during a summer tour through Brittany. It is but a week or two since the writer of this article visited Saint Servais in company with Anatole le Braz, and heard the story of his childhood in the shade of the ancient chapel where once he worshipped. It was in the schoolhouse adjoining the graveyard that the boy's first years were passed, for his father was schoolmaster, with a very small income and a very large family. Of the chapel itself we hear in the introduction to Au Pays des Pardons, where the author tells of the yearly struggle for the little wooden statue of Saint Servais, the possession of which was supposed to insure a good harvest. Indeed the whole district teems with legends which early exercised an influence on the imaginative mind of the young Celt. There were the Death Legends, such as that ex- traordinary story of Glaoud-ar-Skanv recorded in the Legend de la Mort, Glaoud-ar-Skanv the drunkard who was carried off to hell by the devil, Old Polic, and delivered by his mother, who gave her only cow to Notre Dame of Loqu6tou to ransom him. And there is the history of the three tipsy young men of Duault, who barred the road with a dead tree, and were fetched from their beds by Ankou or Death, because his cart could not pass the barrier. This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:47:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 204 THE CELTIC REVIEW It was among stories such as these that the boy was born and bred. In civilised England, such legends seem absurd and incredible, but in central Brittany, sitting round the fire on a stormy night, with the wind howling in the chimney, their improbability is not so obvious. ' Is your house haunted ?' I asked a farmer the other day, as I sat over a glass of cider with him and his wife. 'No,' he answered. 'Except,' corrected his wife, 'by Monsieur Rouge.' ' Oh yes,' assented the man,' of course there's Monsieur Rouge.' And it appeared that Monsieur Rouge was a phantom who had a rather distracting habit of rolling cannon balls up and down the room overhead. .. Saint Servais is one of the pilgrimage shrines that all Bretons must visit at least once during life. If they fail to do so they will have to accomplish the journey after death. In that case you take your coffin on your shoulder, and only proceed each day as far as the length of that coffin. In the wall of the chapel, close to the door of the le Braz's home, was the hole in the wall down which the dead men, having at length finished their involuntary pilgrimages, passed to their graves. Seated there at night, we are told, one could hear the dead rustling and stirring in their coffins. In this home the boy grew up, surrounded by the strange, mystical peasant life which clung round the old shrine. His father was himself a storehouse of legend, and so were the pilgrims and beggars who came thither from all parts of the C6tes-du-Nord. Such early impressions are ineffaceable; and from that time to this the mind of Anatole le Braz has been steeped in the traditions of his race. When he was about ten years old, the boy lost his mother, and soon after his father sent him to school at Saint- Brieuc, from whence in a few years he proceeded to Paris, where he studied at the university. There was no money to pay for his college course, and he had to teach to provide for himself. Happily he found a useful pupil, a wealthy young This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:47:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A CELTIC POET 205 lad who needed amusing as well as coaching, and it was with him that Monsieur le Braz went to Algeria, and became ac- quainted with the life of the desert, of which he has spoken in La Terre du Passd. On his return to Paris he continued teaching, and was so successful, that after passing all examinations, he found he had saved a considerable sum of money. But, like Chateaubriand, Souvestre, Renan, and all other Bretons of whom I have ever heard, he was homesick for his native land. In the Chansons de la Bretagne, there are many songs that tell of his exile, and as soon as he was ready to do so, he returned to Brittany, settling at Quimper, where for many years he taught and lectured, still working at folk- lore in conjunction with the Celtic scholar Frangois Marie Luzel. At length, in the year 1900, on the death of Arthur le Moine de la Borderie, Anatole le Braz was appointed Professor of Celtic Literature at the University of Rennes, where he now lectures and carries on his literary work. But during the long summer months he still lives as far as possible the peasant life of his childhood, idealised, modi- fied, enriched, it is true, but as simple, as homely, as pastoral, as that of the little schoolhouse at Saint Servais. I usually pass a few weeks every summer at this cottage home of M. le Braz, and I think my readers will better appreciate the work of the great artist if they also know it. In one of the sections of Pdques d'Islande, the author has thus described his home:- 'We had been fishing in the offing, and were returning with the rising tide. It was a calm August evening, the dis- tance clothed in soft radiance, that hung in the air like gold dust.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Dossierprofsculpture Version
    La sculpture Amédée-René Ménard (1806-1879) Maquette originale du fronton du musée , 1870 Plâtre, 130 x 65 x 35 cm Dossier pour les enseignants Service éducatif du musée des beaux-arts de Quimper La sculpture Sommaire Hall René Quillivic— L’Appel aux marins 3 René Quillivic—La Pointe du Raz 4 René Quillivic— La penn Sardin 4 Jean Armel-Beaufils—Quimper 5 Salle 2—La Bretagne du XIXe siècle Amédée-René Ménard—Le Roi Gradlon 6 Salle 3—Max Jacob et ses amis Charles Million—Buste de Max Jacob 7 Augustin Tuset— Portrait de Jean Moulin 7 Henri Laurens—L’Archange foudroyé 8 Giovanni Leonardi—Vénus et Adonis 9 Giovanni Leonardi— Le Roi Gradlon 10 Salle 14—L’art français fin XVIIIe—début XIXe siècle Anonyme—L’Esclave scythe aiguisant un couteau 11 Anonyme— Les Lutteurs 11 Salle 17—L’art français du XIXe siècle Eugène-Antoine Aizelin—Psyché 12 Léon-Charles Fourquet—Cupidon 13 James Pradier—Jeune Chasseresse au repos 14 Salle 21—L’Ecole de Pont-Aven Georges Lacombe—Buste de Paul Sérusier 15 Paul Gauguin—Tonnelet décoré 16 Paul Gauguin—Gourde de pèlerinage 17 Salle 23—L’art en Bretagne après l’Ecole de Pont-Aven René Quillivic—Brodeuse de Pont-l’Abbé 18 René Quillivic—Petite Bretonne ou La Timide 19 René Quillivic—Aphrodite 19 Salle 22— Sèvres Denys Puech—La Nuit 20 Salle 24—les arts décoratifs Simon Foucault—La Ramasseuse de goémon 20 Francis Renaud—Jeune Bretonne 21 Georges Lacombe—Médaillon de Paul Ranson 15 Les techniques de la sculpture Le modelage / le moulage 22 La fonte 23 La taille 24 Suggestions de parcours à travers les collections Quillivic et la Bretagne 25 La sculpture académique 25 La sculpture commémorative 26 La sculpture ornementale 26 Le corps 27 Le portrait 27 La sculpture dans le patrimoine quimpérois 28 René Quillivic (1879-1969) L’artiste Quillivic naît à Plouhinec, près de la baie d’Audierne, dans une famille de pêcheurs.
    [Show full text]
  • La Complainte Et La Plainte‎ : Chansons De Tradition Orale Et
    La complainte et la plainte : chansons de tradition orale et archives criminelles : deux regards crois´essur la Bretagne d'Ancien R´egime(16e-18e si`ecles) Eva Guillorel To cite this version: Eva Guillorel. La complainte et la plainte : chansons de tradition orale et archives criminelles : deux regards crois´essur la Bretagne d'Ancien R´egime(16e-18e si`ecles).Linguistique. Universit´e Rennes 2, 2008. Fran¸cais. <tel-00354696> HAL Id: tel-00354696 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00354696 Submitted on 20 Jan 2009 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destin´eeau d´ep^otet `ala diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publi´esou non, lished or not. The documents may come from ´emanant des ´etablissements d'enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche fran¸caisou ´etrangers,des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou priv´es. Université européenne de Bretagne Éva Guillorel Université Rennes 2 CERHIO La complainte et la plainte Chansons de tradition orale et archives criminelles : deux regards croisés sur la Bretagne d´Ancien Régime (16e-18e siècles) Volume 1 Thèse de doctorat Département d’histoire 2008 Directeur de recherche : Philippe Hamon Présentée et soutenue publiquement devant un jury composé de MM. Peter Burke, Joël Cornette, Philippe Hamon, Philippe Jarnoux, Donatien Laurent et Michel Nassiet Guillorel, Eva. La complainte et la plainte : chansons de tradition orale et archives criminelles - 2008 De nombreuses personnes m’ont encouragée et aidée au cours de ces trois années de thèse de doctorat d’histoire, ainsi que pendant les années de maîtrise et de DEA qui ont précédé et qui ont permis le mûrissement du sujet de recherche finalement retenu.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 a Succession of Dialogues: François-Marie Luzel and His
    A Succession of Dialogues: François-Marie Luzel and his contribution to the Breton Folktale Abstract François-Marie Luzel (1821-1895) was one of the most significant French folklorists of his day and champion of Breton culture. He mainly collected folktales in his native Lower Brittany and published prolifically, including three volumes in the monumental Contes populaires series, published by Maisonneuve and Charles Leclerc in 1887. On the one hand, Luzel was a man of his time, adopting the philosophies and approaches of his fellow folklorists and antiquarians. However, many of his methods, in particular his insistence on authenticity and fidelity to the spoken word, and his realization that traditional cultures are enriched and preserved not through cultural isolation, but by interaction with other cultures, seem out of step with the attitudes of many of his contemporaries and rather seem to anticipate twentieth century developments in folktale collecting practice. Furthermore, Luzel often courted controversy and regularly came into conflict with many of his colleagues in the Breton cultural and political establishment around his insistence on publishing in French and his attitude towards the literary ‘Unified Breton’ and the associated debates around what constituted an authentic Breton culture. 1 This article will place Luzel in his historical context and explore his approach to collecting and publishing his folktales and the controversies he courted. It is followed by a companion piece – a new translation of one of Luzel’s tales – ‘Jannic aux deux sous’ (‘Tuppenny Jack’*) – a Breton variant of ‘The Frog Prince’. Keywords François-Marie Luzel Breton Folk tales Translation Collecting François-Marie Luzel1(1821-1895) was arguably one of the most significant French folklorists of his day and champion of Breton culture, where his influence was substantial in laying the groundwork for the following generation of Breton folklorists, such as Paul Sébillot and Anatole le Braz.
    [Show full text]
  • The Spectacle of Piety on the Brittany Coast
    Event Management, Vol. 14, pp. 000–000 1525-9951/10 $60.00 + .00 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.3727/152599510X12901814777989 Copyright 2010 Cognizant Comm. Corp. www.cognizantcommunication.com THE SPECTACLE OF PIETY ON THE BRITTANY COAST MAURA COUGHLIN Visual Studies, Bryant University, Smithfield, RI, USA Writing in the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber found the modern world increasingly “disenchanted”: belief in the magical and sacred had receded to its uncolonized margins. In France, these margins on the Brittany coast drew a seasonal crowd of cultural tourists throughout the 19th century. Artists and writers who journeyed to the coast of Western Brittany were fascinated by the spectacle of local festive displays such as the yearly religious pardons at St. Anne de Palud. But instead of understanding ritual festivities on the Brittany coast as simply the encounter of an outsider and his or her rural other, we can read these events as collective experiences that provided many ways to be both spectacle and spectator. This article departs from previous studies of art in Brittany in two significant ways: it considers the experience of local travel to coastal festivities (such as pardons) rather than taking tourism only to mean travel on a wider national or interna- tional scale. It also widens the focus of previous critical considerations of pardons in paintings to an expanded archive of visual and material culture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rather than equating rural life and representations of it with an outsider’s longings for an imagi- nary past, I employ methodologies drawn from feminist cultural criticism and the anthropology of material culture to view Breton pardons and their forms of visual culture as vibrant and ever changing performances and mediations of place and cultural identity.
    [Show full text]
  • Separatism in Brittany
    Durham E-Theses Separatism in Brittany O'Callaghan, Michael John Christopher How to cite: O'Callaghan, Michael John Christopher (1982) Separatism in Brittany, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7513/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 1 ABSTRACT Michael John Christopher O'Callaghan SEPARATISM IN BRITTANY The introduction to the thesis attempts to place the separatist movement in Brittany into perspective as one of the various separatist movements with• in France. It contains speculation on some possible reasons for the growth of separatist feeling, and defines terms that are frequently used in the thesis. Chapter One gives an account of Breton history, tracing Brittany's evolution as an independent state, its absorption by France, the disappearartee of its remaining traces of independence, and the last spasms of action to regain this independence after having become merely part of a centralised state.
    [Show full text]
  • Womenâ•Žs Material Culture of Mourning on the Brittany Coast
    Bryant University Bryant Digital Repository English and Cultural Studies Faculty English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles Publications and Research 2009 Crosses, Cloaks and Globes: Women’s Material Culture of Mourning on the Brittany Coast Maura Coughlin Bryant University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/eng_jou Recommended Citation Coughlin, Maura, "Crosses, Cloaks and Globes: Women’s Material Culture of Mourning on the Brittany Coast" (2009). English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles. Paper 42. https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/eng_jou/42 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications and Research at Bryant Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Bryant Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 15 © Copyrighted Material Crosses, Cloaks, and Globes: Women’s Material Culture of Mourning on the Brittany Coast Maura Coughlin www.ashgate.com www.ashgate.com www.ashgate.com Rural women living on the coast of Brittany, from the mid-nineteenth to mid- twentieth centuries, countered loss of life and social change with mourning rituals and objects that had local and temporal meanings. Three things, the funerary proëlla cross, the widow’s cloak, and the marriage globe, marked rites of passage and served as repositories of individual memory, whether interred, www.ashgate.com worn, or displayed in the home. The material significance of these objects is place-specific: they come from a relatively austere culture, a maritime peasant world of thrift, poverty, and self-reliance.
    [Show full text]
  • Are the Bretons French?
    ARE THE BRETONS FRENCH? THE CASE OF FRANÇOIS JAFFRENOU/TALDIR AB HERNIN François Jaffrennou reached adulthood in 1900, in the heyday of both regionalism and pan- Celticism, at the end of a century of nation building. French by birth and by education, he spoke French and published in French. However he also wrote in and lived through other languages: Breton and Welsh, and preferred to go by a Breton name conferred on him by a Welsh Archdruid: Taldir ab Hernin.1 Today he has no biography, and is out of print, but his hybrid œuvre, when approached multilingually, can reveal to us the tensions inherent in Breton identity. One reason why the literatures of Brittany receive very little attention from scholars within French and francophone studies is that ‘regional’ literature has been dismissed as little more than a historical curiosity by scholars whose focus has remained firmly on the avant- garde, and on those writers sanctioned by the Parisian literary scene. Work on regionalism in literature from France has mostly relied on a centre-periphery model, concentrating on the peripheral author’s position vis-à-vis Paris, centre of publishing and maker of literary reputations.2 If attention has shifted away from Paris out onto the whole of la francophonie in recent decades, thanks to postcolonialism, both the regionalist and postcolonial approaches have limitations for understanding a writer such as Taldir. Postcolonialism has usefully taught us to consider all kinds of power relations and their imprint on literary texts, and it has brought some visibility to minority cultures, including Brittany.3 However, early postcolonial criticism tended towards the monolingual, and ‘even the linguistically mute’.4 Also its focus on the cause of minor status frames the cultural battle ‘vertically’, causing us to overlook the ‘lateral networks’ between minority cultures.5 Inter-Celtic relations have fallen outside the scope of both regionalism and postcolonialism, because of the centre-periphery model that is 1 the legacy of nineteenth-century nationalism.
    [Show full text]
  • 4969987-5449F5-5060113443267.Pdf
    GUY ROPARTZ, FRENCH MASTER WITH BRETON ROOTS by Peter McCallum Composer, poet, conductor, novelist and administrator of remarkable energy, Joseph Guy Marie Ropartz (1864–1955) was born – in Guingamp, Côtes-du-Nord, more or less equidistant between Brest and St Malo – into a family of intellectual and artistic breadth and strong civic commitment to the culture and history of his native Brittany. These virtues shaped his music over a long, industrious and productive career, and each of them can be found in part in music included in this recording, which consists of two large-scale suites and a number of shorter pieces. Literary and narrative affinities pervade the two suites, particularly Dans l’ombre de la montagne, which also evokes folk-styles in some of its movements. His father, Sigismond Ropartz, was a lawyer, poet and enthusiastic chronicler of Breton history. After Sigismond’s death in 1879, Joseph studied in a Jesuit college at Vannes, where he learnt the bugle, French horn, double-bass and percussion and consolidated a profound Catholic faith. In deference to his mother’s wishes, he pursued training in law at Rennes, where he met Breton writer Louis Tiercelin and other artists interested in the Breton cultural revival. Ropartz joined the Breton Regionalist Union, a cultural organisation founded in 1898 and dedicated to preserving Breton culture and regional independence. He used the words of several Breton writers in musical settings, including Anatole Le Braz and Charles le Goffic. Although admitted to the bar in 1885, he does not seem to have ever practised law as a profession.
    [Show full text]
  • Representing Heritage and Loss on the Brittany Coast: Sites, Things and Absence
    Bryant University Bryant Digital Repository English and Cultural Studies Faculty English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles Publications and Research 7-2012 Representing Heritage and Loss on the Brittany Coast: Sites, Things and Absence Maura Coughlin Bryant University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/eng_jou Recommended Citation Coughlin, Maura, "Representing Heritage and Loss on the Brittany Coast: Sites, Things and Absence" (2012). English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles. Paper 39. https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/eng_jou/39 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications and Research at Bryant Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Bryant Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Representing Heritage and Loss on the Brittany Coast: Sites, Things and Absence Maura Coughlin Department of Literary and Cultural Studies, Bryant University, Smithfield, RI, USA Correspondence: [email protected] This is an essay about the interplay of objects, art and visual culture in several community museums and historical sites dedicated to local social history in coastal Brittany. There, in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Breton maritime culture invented a range of compensatory ritual objects, sites and practices to account for loss of life at sea. The presentation of this material culture of mourning in small museums, regional museums and ecomuseums on the Breton North Coast and the islands of Sein and Ouessant are examined in this essay. These material objects once bore material witness to crucial moments in the life of the family and today serve to represent the community’s collective memories and to narrate the community’s heritage to the outside world.
    [Show full text]
  • François Cadic (1864-1929) Du Pays Vannetais À Paris Breton Oral
    © SPIN and the author www.spinnet.eu Do not quote without François Cadic (1864-1929) Du pays vannetais à Paris Breton oral literature as evangelization Fañch Postic I first owe you an apology for not delivering this paper directly to you in English, it’s a language that I do not speak well enough. I therefore thank my colleague and friend David Hopkin for not only translating my contribution, but also for being my spokesman today. I also thank him, along with the other organizers of this event, for having invited me, despite my linguistic handicap, to participate in this workshop. I am particularly pleased because the theme, ‘European clerics and vernacular culture’, relates directly to a project led by my research laboratory, the Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique [The Centre for Breton and Celtic Research] at the University of Brest, in collaboration with research institutions in francophone Canada, on the theme of priest-collectors (acronym PRECOL, for prêtres collecteurs). Workshops were held in Brest in 2007 and 2009, and the next will be held at Sudbury in Canada at the end of August. The starting point for our investigations was recognizing that on both sides of the Atlantic clerics (including nuns, indeed particularly nuns as far as Canada is concerned), played a significant part in the movement to collect popular traditions. Before asking ourselves about the reasons for this fact, the first stage of our project, which we planned would be become a permanent and collaborative worksite, consisted of making an inventory, designed to become a database. This inventory allows me to observe that at the end of the nineteenth century in what is known as the Vannetais, that is the county of Vannes, from the name of the town which is the seat of the bishopric, and which corresponds to the western (and Breton-speaking) half of the department of the Morbihan (southern Brittany), clerics were much more involved in the movement to collect oral traditions than elsewhere in the province.
    [Show full text]
  • Breton Identity in the Poetry Anthology, 1830–2000 David
    MYTHS OF AUTHENTICITY AND CULTURAL PERFORMANCE: BRETON IDENTITY IN THE POETRY ANTHOLOGY, 1830–2000 DAVID EVANS In the preface to his anthology Poètes de Bretagne of 1979, Charles Le Quintrec wrings his hands at the state of contemporary French poetry. He is especially scornful of Parisian cliques, with ‘leurs petits cocktails, leurs petits plaisirs, leurs tables rondes radiophoniques et leurs dîners-débats’, petty concerns which have reduced the art form to mere word games.1 The poets of Brittany, he argues, are fundamentally different people: Les poètes armoricains ont toujours cherché le contact des hommes. Ils n’ont pas écrit pour leur propre satisfaction, pour leurs plaisirs piégés, mais pour les autres, pour essayer d’aller voir ensemble ce qu’il y a dans la lumière et encore derrière la lumière du menhir et de la fontaine. C’est en cela, essentiellement, que les poètes d’Armor sont différents des poètes français et surtout des poètes parisiens qui aiment tellement se transformer en parfumeurs. Sur nos landes, on se moque pas mal de sentir bon! […] Il n’y a pas de parfumeurs, ni de joyeux drilles, ni de divins bouffons chez les poètes de la lande. La grande majorité d’entre eux est incapable de vous ficeler quelques acrostiches et ne savent pas les lais pour les reines. De leur ignorance monte un chant plus âpre, plus instinctif, et, je serais tenté de dire, plus authentique. (pp. 16– 17) Le Quintrec mobilizes all the clichés which have accumulated in literary representations of Breton authenticity: rootedness in place, an intense affective relationship with the environment, a sense of community and solidarity, singularity of purpose, an essential difference.
    [Show full text]
  • Livret De Présentation De La Réalisation De La Statue Veuves D' Islandais
    Présentation du projet de réalisation de la statue VEUVES D’ISLANDAIS d’après FRANCIS RENAUD 1887-1973 « à Pierre Loti » Association Pierre Loti à Paimpol [email protected] Création ou restauration ? Ce projet de réalisation de la statue que Francis Renaud a créée en hommage à Loti, est à la fois création et restauration d’un patrimoine artistique. D’où une ambiguïté qui rend complexe son orientation et sa désignation. Un artiste sculpteur va réaliser le monument à l’identique et ranimer la mémoire d’un autre artiste costarmoricain de talent. Au regard de l’ Association Pierre Loti à Paimpol initiatrice du projet, il s’agit bien de réveiller un patrimoine existant, puis oublié, qui permettrait aux paimpolais de se réapproprier un morceau de leur histoire afin de la transmettre et, de pérenniser l’image de l’écrivain voyageur, objectif commun aux deux associations. Patrimoine historique, économique, humain Rappel évident de la période de la Grande Pêche, la statue est un hommage aux femmes qui ont payé elles aussi, un lourd tribut à la mer qui les aidait à vivre. Elle est hommage à Loti, à qui Paimpol doit une grande partie de sa notoriété et l’âme des lieux. Représentation symbolique, perpétuant pour la jeune génération paimpolaise un épisode de l’histoire de leur pays que leurs grands-parents et parents ont eu tendance à vouloir occulter, tant le souvenir en était douloureux. Représentation symbolique aussi pour les visiteurs de passage qui, lorsqu’ils viennent à Paimpol, s’attendent à trouver quelque témoignage de cette époque. Patrimoine artistique auquel est rattaché le nom de grandes figures des Côtes d’Armor Hommage à Francis Renaud, sculpteur briochin de grand talent et de renommée nationale, mais aussi à Armand Dayot enfant de Paimpol qui, devenu Inspecteur général des Beaux-Arts, a soutenu l’artiste, à Monseigneur Kerleveo, qui aurait aimé voir le projet réalisé et avait confié ce souhait à des intimes.
    [Show full text]