The Collector in Nineteenth-Century French Literature

Transcription

1 French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 32 The Collector in Nineteenth-Century French Literature Representation, Identity, Knowledge Bearbeitet von Emma Bielecki 1. Auflage Taschenbuch. 236 S. Paperback ISBN Format (B x L): 15 x 22,5 cm Gewicht: 370 g Weitere Fachgebiete > Literatur, Sprache > Romanische, französische Literaturen > Französische Literatur schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei Die Online-Fachbuchhandlung beck-shop.de ist spezialisiert auf Fachbücher, insbesondere Recht, Steuern und Wirtschaft. Im Sortiment finden Sie alle Medien (Bücher, Zeitschriften, CDs, ebooks, etc.) aller Verlage. Ergänzt wird das Programm durch Services wie Neuerscheinungsdienst oder Zusammenstellungen von Büchern zu Sonderpreisen. Der Shop führt mehr als 8 Millionen Produkte.

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3 Introduction La collection, according to the 1869 article on the collectionneur in the Larousse Grand Dictionnaire, est un des goûts qui sont appelés à caractériser plus spécialement ce siècle.1 Certainly nineteenth-century French literature is crammed with collectors: from the sketch-writing of the 1830s to the late-nineteenth-century decadent fictions of Jean Lorrain, from Balzac s Cousin Pons to Proust s Charles Swann, from Captain Nemo to Arsène Lupin, via Bouvard, Pécuchet and Des Esseintes, from matchbox enthusiasts to mineralogists, bell collectors to bibliophiles, the literature of the period abounds in examples of men (and occasionally women) af f licted with what the Grand Dictionnaire termed collectionnomanie.2 This profusion of fictional collectors ref lects the growing number of real collectors in nineteenth-century France, as a new culture of collecting emerged during the July Monarchy, and continued to develop over the course of the century. 1 Collectionneur, in Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIX e siècle français, historique, géographique, bibliographique, littéraire, artistique, scientifique etc., ed. by Pierre Larousse, 17 vols (Paris: Librairie classique Larousse et Boyer, ), IV (1869), (p. 601). 2 Collectionneur, Grand Dictionnaire, p Anatole France s first novel, Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard [in Œuvres, ed. by Marie-Claire Bancquart, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 4 vols (Paris: Gallimard, ), I, ] features a Russian prince who travels the world in search of matchboxes. A character in his 1894 novel Le Lys Rouge [also in Œuvres, II (1987), ] has an equally eccentric passion for bells. For perhaps the most famous nineteenth-century fictional mineralogist, Professor Lidenbrock, see Jules Verne, Voyage au centre de la terre (Paris: Hetzel, 1864).

4 2 Introduction From the Curieux to the Collectionneur The emergence of a new culture of collecting is signalled by the invention of a new word, collectionneur. The Grand Larousse de la langue française identifies the first recorded use of this word as occurring in 1839, in a Balzac sketch, Monographie du rentier, in which he identifies the collectionneur as a distinct sub-species of rentier.3 The first use of the verb collectionner is identified as occurring a year later, in Horace de Viel-Castel s sketch of the collector for Les Français peints par eux-mêmes.4 The introduction of these new words signals a break with the pre-revolutionary culture of curiosity. In particular, there are four important dif ferences between the old culture of curiosity and the modern culture of collecting. The first obvious distinction between the two is that curiosity is a broader concept than collecting. Furetière s dictionary (1690) attaches to the word curieux several inter-related meanings. The first meaning is Celuy qui veut tout sçavoir, et tout apprendre. 5 This is followed by the secondary meaning: celuy qui a desir [sic] d apprendre, de voir les bonnes choses, les merveilles de l art et de la nature. The third meaning is celuy qui a ramassé les choses les plus rares, les plus belles et les plus extraordinaires qu il a pu trouver tant dans les arts que dans la nature. Thus the word curieux could be applied to a collector, but it could equally apply 3 See Honoré de Balzac, Monographie du rentier, in Les Français peints par euxmêmes, 8 vols (Paris: Curmer, ), III (1841), 1 16 (p. 14). In Charles de Lovenjoul s 1888 bibliography of Balzac, it is stated that this article first appeared in See Charles de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire des œuvres de Honoré de Balzac: troisième édition entièrement revue et corrigée à nouveau (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968), p Horace de Viel-Castel, Les Collectionneurs in Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, 8 vols (Paris: Curmer, ), I, The definition from Furetière s dictionary, and that from the dictionary of the Académie, are cited in Krzysztof Pomian, Collectionneurs, Amateurs et Curieux: Paris, Venise: XVI e XVIII e siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), pp. 71 and 72. Pomian has researched the early modern culture of curiosity extensively, and it is his analysis of that culture that I follow here. See Pomian, Collectionneurs, pp

5 Introduction 3 to someone who simply wanted to tout sçavoir, et tout apprendre. In the entry for curieux in the dictionary of the Académie française (1694), this idea is stated even more strongly. As an adjective, curieux is defined as meaning: Qui a beaucoup d envie et de soin d apprendre, de voir, de posséder des choses nouvelles, rares, excellentes etc.. The entry further notes that the word s emploie aussi quelquefois dans le subst. et alors il signifie, Celuy qui prend plaisir à faire amas des choses curieuses et rares ou celuy qui a une grande connoissance de ces sortes des choses. Thus it is possible to be a curieux without having a cabinet de curiosité, a collection of rare, strange or skilfully wrought things. Indeed, the entry for curieux of fered in the Grand Dictionnaire picks up on this, as the author suggests that the curieux peut n avoir ni cabinet ni collection d aucune sorte.6 This is one of the ways in which the curieux is distinguished from the collectionneur, for the notion of material possession is absolutely central to the culture of collecting. Writing in 1867, Champf leury, himself a keen collector, described the collectionneur as motivated by une des passions les plus tyranniques, celle de la possession.7 The importance of the concept of material possession in the discourse around collecting meant that throughout the nineteenth century the collector was perceived, as we shall see throughout this book, as having a privileged relationship with material culture. The increased importance of the fact of material possession in the discourse of collecting in the nineteenth century is a function of a broader shift away from the culture of curiosity. It is clear from the dictionary definitions cited above that the culture of curiosity was a culture of knowledge. Indeed, as the art historian Krzysztof Pomian shows, in his authoritative work on early modern collecting, the notion of curiosity was tied up in 6 Curieux, in Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIX e siècle français, historique, géographique, bibliographique, littéraire, artistique, scientifique etc., ed. by Pierre Larousse, 17 vols (Paris: Librairie classique Larousse et Boyer, ), V (1869), (p. 680). 7 Champf leury, L Hôtel des commissaires-priseurs (Paris: Dentu, 1867), p. xii.

6 4 Introduction a problematic of licit and illicit knowledge, the Faustian theme.8 The curieux was thus potentially a dangerous figure. The collector, too, was a dangerous figure, but for rather dif ferent reasons. Nineteenth-century collecting was conceived of much less as a heuristic device, and much more as a fundamentally irrational urge. Certainly, much of the discourse around collecting generated by the practice of collecting itself in guides, handbooks, and specialist periodicals claimed an intellectual justification for collecting. Thus in Collections et collectionneurs, an 1885 collection of essays dealing with dif ferent branches of collecting by the journalist Paul Eudel, a man very much immersed in the collecting world, stampcollecting is praised as a knowledge-producing exercise: La timbromanie touche à l art, à l histoire, à la diplomatie et à beaucoup d autres sciences très longues à énumérer.9 For this reason it is presented as particularly useful for boys; it produces des géographes précoces, as well as acting as un cours d histoire.10 Eudel stresses the pedagogic value of stamp-collecting precisely to defend it against the charge of being a manie frivole.11 For if collectors claimed an intellectual justification for their activities, the uninitiated who looked in on the world of collecting from the outside tended to treat such claims with extreme skepticism (as indicated by the frequent use of the suf fix -manie throughout the nineteenth century to describe dif ferent kinds of collecting: timbromanie, tableaumanie, bricabracomanie, bibliomanie etc.). By the time Eudel was writing there was a well-established tradition of treating stamp-collecting with ridicule (a tradition which continues to this day). Thus the Grand Dictionnaire article on the collectionneur mocked the specialist periodical, Collectionneur de timbres-poste, in the following terms: 8 Pomian, Collectionneurs, pp Pomian suggests that disapproval of curiosity, grounded in a religious morality, was on the wane throughout the eighteenth century. 9 Paul Eudel, Collections et collectionneurs (Paris: Charpentier, 1885), p Eudel, Collections et collectionneurs, p Eudel, Collections et collectionneurs, p. 165.

7 Introduction 5 Ce singulier moniteur de la plus singulière des collectionnomanies, parfois satirique sans le savoir, donnait un jour ce curieux spécimen de sa rédaction timbrée: Moldovalachie. Le prince Couza vient d être déposé. A bientôt une nouvelle série de timbres! Ainsi une révolution se fait, un peuple chasse son souverain, le collectionneur se frotte les mains: A bientôt une nouvelle série de timbres.12 If for Eudel stamp-collecting provides a course in geo-politics, the article in the Grand Dictionnaire presents the stamp-collector as so obsessed with the new set of stamps that he brackets of f all the events surrounding their issue. Stamp-collecting, rather than expanding his intellectual horizons, shrinks them. The collector is here presented as a species of monomaniac, in the grip of an implacable idée fixe. Elsewhere too the idea that collecting can be motivated by intellectual curiosity is presented as a specious justification for an irrational impulse. In Alphonse Daudet s 1880 novel, L Immortel, the central character, Léonard Astier, is an Academician, historian, and autograph collector, who has nearly bankrupted himself indulging his particular brand of collectomania. When his wife suggests that he sell some of his collection to ease their straitened financial circumstances: Le bonhomme éclata comme un coup de mine. [ ] Il frappait sur la table, très pale, la bouche en avant, maniaque et féroce; un Astier-Réhu extraordinaire que sa femme ne connaissait pas. [ ] Presque aussitôt, redevenu très calme, l académicien s expliqua, un peu honteux; ces documents lui étaient indispensables pour la confection de ses livres.13 Here the justification of fered by Astier to explain his violent opposition to his wife s suggestion is presented as an afterthought and an alibi, an attempt to rationalize something fundamentally irrational. The text later confirms this, when the narrator notes of Léonard: Au fond, quoi qu il se dît pour endormir sa conscience, dans ces prodigalités que personne ne soupçonnait encore autour de lui, l historien avait moins de part que 12 Collectionneur, in Grand Dictionnaire, p Alphonse Daudet, L Immortel, in Œuvres, ed. by Roger Ripoll, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 3 vols (Paris: Gallimard, ), III, (p. 700).