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Note: The title takes off from a well-known essay by German-Jewish
philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin. Following the abstract are
excerpts from the full text of the article. The archive in question is
now to be found at the Lilly Library, Indiana University. It would be
nice to locate, if possible, Aubanel's "Venus d'Arles" in
Esperanto translation.<br><br>
* * *<br><br>
Lloyd, Rosemary. "Unpacking a provencal library. "
<i>Nineteenth-Century French Studies</i>. 32.3-4 (Spring-Summer
2004): 332(14). <br><br>
<b>Abstract:</b> <br><br>
The recent acquisition of the library of the Aubanel family, whose
best-known member was the poet, Theodore Aubanel, allows a study of the
Felibrige movement, its friends, and its critics, through an analysis of
the manuscript inscriptions. Of the library's 1,300 books and ten boxes
of pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, and academic bulletins, there are
some six hundred inscriptions and manuscript insertions written in
French, Provencal, Catalan, Italian, English, and Esperanto. Ranging form
brief definitions to sonnets, from praise to provocation, they shed an
unaccustomed light on the writers, presses, and preoccupations of
nineteenth-century Provence. (RL)<br><br>
* * *<br><br>
"The Provencal library in question is that of the Aubanel family,
and especially of Theodore Aubanel, whom Paul Valery once termed the only
true Provencal poet, and who had been such a supportive companion of
Stephane Mallarme during the grim time he spent as a teacher in the
provinces, the dear friend to whom Mallarme would write sending kisses
from his daughter Genevieve, then a toddler, to Aubanel's infant son
Jean-de-la-Croix. (2) Aubanel was a member of the Felibrige, (3) the band
of Provencal writers who in the second half of the nineteenth century, at
a time when Paris was rapidly extending its linguistic and cultural
hegemony, were struggling to preserve at least some aspects of their
culture, in a bid whose most concrete trace can be round in the Museon
Arletan in Arles, to which Frederic Mistral devoted the money he earned
from his Nobel Prize. (4) But the members of the Felibrige were also
attempting not just to preserve the Provencal language, but also to
transform into a written language what until then had been largely a
spoken language (at least since the middle ages). In 1855 they founded an
almanac, L'Armana prouvencau, which is still published today and which
reflects this intellectual, artistic, and political conviction of the
importance of those non-French languages and cultures practiced within
the hexagon."<br><br>
* * *<br><br>
"Approximately six hundred of the books and pamphlets, moreover,
include manuscript additions, either in the form of inscriptions written
directly on the volume, or in that of inserted letters or poems. (7)
There are also, lamentably, several traces of authors or presses who
simply resorted to a stamp--Hommage de l'auteur--truly the work of art in
the age of mechanical reproduction. These envois and dedications suggest
something of the writer's aspirations for his work (rarely, in this
particularly masculine culture, her work--Marie Jenna and Adele Souchier
are among the few exceptions). (8) Insofar as they indicate the level of
attachment to the movement and its purposes, the inscriptions furnish a
sense of an effervescent if somewhat heterogeneous fellowship, with links
to many other groups who were trying to give prominence to what we now
term less-studied languages, languages like Catalan and Welsh, Esperanto
and Gaelic. The network of relationships such dedications sketch allows
us, not just, as Robert Darnton has argued, to "inspect the
furnishings" of a library-owner's mind (134), but more importantly
to see the Felibrige movement, and indeed the clusters of such movements,
from a perspective quite different from that provided by more
conventional historical approaches."<br><br>
* * *<br><br>
"Written in French and Provencal, Catalan, Italian, English, and
Esperanto, these manuscript insertions run the gamut of the genre of the
inscription"<br><br>
* * *<br><br>
"And although there are no books inscribed by Mistral, there is a
card from him, in his beautiful handwriting, and his 1909 Mirejo has an
insert, a translation of Aubanel's "Venus d'Arles" into
Esperanto. (27) Aubanel's poem, which is part of his collection Li Fiho
d'Avignoun (The Girls of Avignon), is there in his handwriting with his
translation into French."<br><br>
* * *<br><br>
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