Theodore Hersart of Villemarqué

Theodore Hersart, Viscount of Villemarqué (July 7th 1815 with Quimperlé - December 8th 1895 with Quimperlé) is a French linguist specialist in the Breton culture.

Origin

He passed his childhood to the manor of Plessis located in the parish of Nizon, in the neighborhoods of Bridge-Swallow-hole.

His/her mother, the countess Marie-Ursule Feydeau de Vaugien, seems to have had a sufficient knowledge of the Breton oral and writing to allow him to start to collect Breton songs. Studying with the college Jesuit of Valves and non-registered student with the School of the charters of Paris, it spends its holidays to the manor to transcribe songs into Breton and their music on notebooks of collection, which will be kept by the family then entrusted 150 years later to the researcher Donatien Laurent. Many the people who sing for him are the familiar ones of her family, owner of farms: peasants, farm laborers, servants and maidservants, coalmen, etc

Neo-druidism

In 1838, it leaves to the Wales and ties contacts with the well-read men galloisants. He is established like “ Barz Nizon ” within the college neo-druidic Welsh, the “Gorsedd of the Druids, Bardes and Ovates of Great Britain”. He establishes with the Welsh the bases of the Celtic Congrès International. He had created a company of thought tending to constitute in Brittany the equivalent of a Gorsedd , a rear Breuriez Varzed , to which the Archidruide of Wales had given its approval. But association did not have a very long life and the death of Villemarqué, in 1895, put an end to it.

Brittany

In 1839, it publishes the Barzaz Breiz, popular songs of Brittany which gives him at 24 years an extraordinary success society man and arts person. George Sand then says her admiration for “diamonds of Barzaz Breiz” and invents on this subject the concept of oral Littérature. The melodies, which it took the trouble to collect, are gathered at the end of the collection. An increased 2nd edition appears in 1845. It is not satisfied to publish the texts written in a Breton free from French words, but the fact of preceding by a note where borer according to certain sound Royalisme and the exaltation of Brittany of before the annexation. Yves Berre rejects this interpretation. He notes that Villemarqué was presented to the elections under the republican label and forever be separatist.

He then becomes the figurehead of a literary and cultural movement which one regards as the rebirth of the old spirit Autonomiste incarnated by the historians Pierre the Baud and Bertrand d' Argentré at the time of the dukes and the beginning of the annexation and by the marquis de Pontcallec, carried out for conspiracy in 1720, of which Villemarqué héroïse life in one of the songs of the Barzaz Breiz with words explicitly antifrançaises.

Resulting from a noble medium where the oral traditions were prégnantes, it does little doubt that Villemarqué was influenced by the echo still close to the polemics, revolts and conspiracies caused by the introduction and the reinforcement of the royal capacity, then republican.

He collaborates in the work of Jean-François-Marie Gonidec, translator of the Bible into Breton, of which he publishes the French-Breton Dictionnaire in 1857 on a purely posthumous basis by making it precede by a Essai on the future of the Breton language . Both are the promoters of a new orthography removed from French conventions and seek to replace the French terms by words resulting from Breton or Welsh roots.

Cumulating the honors, it became in 1858 member of the Académie of the inscriptions and the humanities. Regarded as one of the European scientists most eminent as regards popular traditions, it corresponds with its pars, among which the Frères Grimm.

In 1867, with the congress of Breton Association to Saint-Brieuc, one of its young disciples, François-Marie Luzel, causes a polemic by attacking the Master on the ground of exactitude in the collection of the texts, because its collections in Trégor did not enable him to find the songs as retranscribed by Villemarqué. This one does not answer, but will imply into private that it could only conform to the uses of its time and modify or improve the texts.

The two adversaries will be found later with Quimper where Luzel becomes treasurer of the archaeological Société of Finistere, whereas Villemarqué is the irremovable president since 1876.

Villemarqué dies in December 1895, 10 months after Luzel.

Epilog

The setting at the day of the notebooks of collection showed that Villemarqué based its work of reconstitution and repair on a broad existing corpus. On the other hand, the study of the notebooks of Luzel showed that it took brief notes in French or Breton before writing the texts later.

The notes preceding the songs, on the other hand, appear whimsical: they place in a deep past of the texts generally composed at the 18th siècle.

Its contemporary and posthumous influence was considerable in Brittany and abroad. It is not exaggerated to say that it is in the beginning many political and literary vocations. Many works, including contemporary, were inspired by the Barzaz Breiz in the field of poetry, the theater, the music and painting. The Breton translation of its name, Kervarker , is used for an Internet site devoted to the Breton.

External bond

Kervarker, literal translation into Breton of " Villemarqué" , is a site dedicated to the Breton language

See too

List of the Breton authors

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