IMAGES MEMORIALES DE LA VIE D'UN POÈTE Joseph-François Jean-Denys D'ERM LE MERCIER Armateur à Morlaix Chef de Chouans Brest 1702 Armée Rouge Landivisiau 1775 Quiberon-Josselin 1795 C. LE MERCIER- D'ERM vacances à Port-Blanc (1896) Jeune étudiant à Paris Quimper,1 costume à 15breton ans 1906 Au Yaudet, où le Poète aimait rêver devant la nostalgique étendue de grève Croquis de Florian PARMENTIER (1910) Moullérez Ar Bobl Dessin de Jac. POHIER M. Camille Lemercier d'Erm Descendant des Preux de Toscane (1055) Poète talentueux des Exils — à Paris — Et Chef du " Parti Séparatiste Breton " La célèbre Poétesse Renée VIVIEN (1904) LÉDA (1919) Jane CATULLE-MENDÈS (1841-1909) Portrait 1911. 1924, Création du Journal « La Côte d'Emeraude » Inauguration du premier Pardon de la Mer à Dinard (1933) L. BEAUFRÈRE, Dr de La Bretagne à Paris, Taldir JAFFRENOU, M. LE SAGE, Dr Hôtel Beauséjour, La Vicomté, C. LE MERCIER D'ERM, M. LE CUEFF. Ouvrant le cortège Deuxième Pardon avec la duchesse des Bretons de la Mer de Paris Prononçant un discours au Pardon de la Mer (Dinard) Au 1 plan : C. LE MERCIER D'ERM, le marquis de L'ESTOURBEILLON Léon LE BERRE et le barde Taldir JAFFRENOU Devant le Bas-relief commémoratif du débarquement de Jean IV à Dinard en 1379 (Œuvre du sculpteur Armel Beaufils, 1937) C. LE MERCIER D'ERM adressant une allocution lors de l'inauguration du monument élevé à Saint-Briac en hommage à la Grande Duchesse VICTORIA Après l'inauguration du Musée de la Mer ( 1935) De gauche à droite : Paul CROLARD, maire honoraire de Dinard, Sir Robert MOND, Camille LE MERCIER D'ERM Portrait de Cam. LE MERCIER D'ERM (peinture à l'huile) par Christian-Edward RIOU (vers 1930) L'ÉTRANGE AVENTURE DE L'ARMÉE DE BRETAGNE Le « criminel sacrifice » de l'Armée proscrite UNE ARMÉE DE CHOUANS Le drame politique de l'Armée de Bretagne En pèlerinage à La Hunaudaye puis à Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier Son grand bonheur, le tour de Bretagne en caravane A Kerléano visite au Mausolée de Georges CADOUDAL Entretien avec Jean-François CHIAPPE. (1970) Avec son ami Ronan CAERLEON En présence de l'écrivain SAINT-LOUP En compagnie Photo costume Auray d'un ami Britannique Madik D'ERM le Dr Ronald DELANEY Photo prise devant un décor du « Foyer Breton » En famille, 1938 Le Poète et sa femme Denik, suprême soutien de ses dernières années Le Poète O. GESLIN et son ami G. MORE, hissant le pavillon « Gwen-ha-Du » sur le Musée Breton Le Musée Breton de Dinard créé par C. LE MERCIER D'ERM (1930) Le Foyer Breton (1957) 1974, au Château de Saint-Malo Jubilé de Camille LE MERCIER D'ERM à gauche : le Cr. Gl VALLERIE, à droite : le Comte Léonar DE HOHAN-CHABOT Menhir sur le Tombeau où repose le Poète CAMILLE LE MERCIER D'ERM ÉTERNITÉS L'Œuvre Lyrique Intégrale et Complète du Poète KAMMERMOR « EDITIONS DE L'HERMINE » RUE DU CASINO DINARD (BRETAGNE) ÉTERNITÉS I. — DANS LA NUIT DES EXILS II. — NOSTALGIE DE L'AMOUR III. — LA MUSE-AUX-VIOLETTES IV. — OMBRE DE LÉDA V. — PARIS NOCTURNE VI. — LA GUERRE DES HOMMES VII. — PAQUES D'EIRE-INN VIII. — OUTRE-OCCIDENT IX. — MÉMORIAL DES DERNIERS BRETONS X. — PATRIE PERDUE XI. — AD AETERNA Qu'est-ce que tout cela qui n'est pas éternel ?... LECONTE DE LISLE (L'Illusion Suprême) Tel qu'en lui-même enfin l'éternité le change... STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ (Le Tombeau du Poète) A Thing of Beauty is a Joy for ever... (Un Concept de Beauté est une Joie éternelle.) JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) Présentation du Poète KAMMERMOR (Camille LE MERCIER d'ERM) et de son œuvre lyrique par M. le Professeur Dr Ronald DELANEY des Universités Britannique et Bretonne de Leeds et de Rennes Le Dr (Ph. D.) Ronald DELANEY Auteur de la Préface du Recueil « ETERNITES » Le Dr Ronald DELANEY a été professeur de langue et littérature françaises dans diverses écoles secondaires britanniques et à l'Uni- versité de LEEDS. Après quelques années d'études à la Faculté des Lettres de RENNES, il a présenté une thèse sur Louis TIERCELIN et La Renaissance Bretonne de 1890, pour laquelle l'Université de LEEDS lui a décerné en 1936, le grade de Docteur en Philosophie (PH. D.). La Dr Ronald DELANEY a publié les études suivantes : (1) Louis TIERCELIN et l'Ecole de « L'Hermine » (Les Presses Modernes, Paris, 1937). (2) Les Tables de l'Hermine (Les Presses Modernes, Paris, 1937). (3) Camille LE MERCIER D'ERM, Poète, Ecrivain Breton (JOUVE, éd., Paris, 1938). (4) Edouard BEAUFILS, Parnassien Breton (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1939). (5) KAMMERMOR, Twentieth Century Breton Poet (« Cornish Nation », St AUSTELL, 1974). (6) Camille LE MERCIER D'ERM, Historian of Brittany (« Cornish Banner », Truro 1975). KAMMERMOR Poet and Historian of Brittany The greatest Breton Poet of this century is without doubt Camille Le MERCIER d'ERM, more often known these days by his abbreviated name of Kammermor. In his latest epic poem, Patrie Perdue, he defines his philosophy and expounds in the form of a testament in verse the hopes and thoughts which have motivated him throughout a life devoted to a single cause — the greater glory of his native land, Brittany. He has been described as a « chevalier d'honneur » and « desperado » at one and the same time (1), and the reason for this contradiction in terms becomes clear when one reads and studies his works. He is first and foremost a lyrical poet of the highest order, and Patrie Perdue in itself would justify his title of Master and Dean of Breton Poets. Although he is now 90 years of age, the intensity of feeling vibrating throughout this poem is as strong as in any of the innumerable pieces he has been writing since the appearance of his first verses in the monthly review he founded in Paris in 1909, called Les Argo- nautes. Camille Le MERCIER d'ERM was born on 13th December, 1888, and belongs to an old Breton-speaking Morbihan family. On his father's side we find ancestors who had courageously fought for the freedom of Brittany with the Chouans, and on his mother's side men of letters who had no less faithfully served Brittany by their writings about her in verse in nume- rous gwerziou. These two elements were combined in the young Kammermor, who was to fight for his country with his pen, extolling her in resounding stanzas and compiling the learned chronicles which have earned him a high reputation as a his- torian. (1) Jacques Vier, professor at the University of High-Brittany, Rennes. His work was influenced from the outset by Louis Tiercelin who started the poetic movement known as the Parnasse Bre- ton towards the end of the nineteenth century, and it was Tiercelin's poems which he chose as models for his first attempts at versification. Like Stendhal, the prodigy in prose, the direction in which his art was to lead him was manifest in his first youthful poems, and it was clear that the entity of Brittany and its people would be the motive force which would drive him to express his views without compromise as its pre- eminent champion in the twentieth century. When the first issues of Les Argonautes appeared on the Paris bookstalls the young Poet was a remarkable figure on the boulevards of the Left Bank ; this stocky upright twenty- year-old was beginning to make his mark in literary circles. He cared more however for the approval of the senior Poets such as Anatole Le Braz and Charles Le Goffic. His articles, essays and poems were becoming more widely read, but after what he calls two years of exile in the capital he could resist no longer the call to return to his dear Brittany. In his first collection published in 1909, Les Exils, we read how his destiny had already been made clear to him and how much this separation from his homeland had made him suffer. It was inevitable that on his return he should be chosen to lead the new movement whose aim was the intellectual, cul- tural and political independence of Brittany which he set himself to promote by means of innumerable articles in news- papers and reviews such as Ar Bobl and Breiz Dishual. Belie- ving as he did that the Breton language has a poetic and national function, he began about this time collecting the poems of Breton writers which he was to publish as his first major work in 1919 under the title Les Bardes et Poètes Nationaux de la Bretagne Armoricaine, and the first copy of this now famous bilingual (Breton and French) anthology was presented by the Celtic Circle of Paris to President Woodrow Wilson, who had been the first to proclaim the right of all peoples to self-determination. The idea of the unity of the language and the history of the Breton people was the mainspring of Kammermor's work, and in 1920 he published Les Hymnes Nationaux des Peuples Celti- ques. Was it practicable to think of a grand union of all Celtic peoples ? Indeed the national anthem of Brittany, Bro Goz, has the same tune as the Welsh Land of My Fathers. From the geographical and geological points of view, the Breton penin- sula forms a complete entity as distinct and separate from France as the Celtic tongue is from the Romance. With a his- tory and culture so disparate, what more natural than to think of it in terms of a separate nation ? Such were the aspirations of Camille Le MERCIER d'ERM and his group of ardent patriots.