Merolle imp 1-05 - vincenzo merolle

Year/Année VI, no. 1, June 2005
2000
The European Journal/ Die Europäische Zeitschrift/ La Revue Européenne/ Revista Europea/ Rivista Europea
Dear Colleagues,
as you know, our journal is an act of independence and, we admit, of rebellion.
Nevertheless, we have to confess, the
happiness of editing it and of being in
touch with all of you is severely impaired by bureaucracy, our real bane.
In the last issue we told you the problems we suffered, five years ago, when
we had to register the journal at the Tribunal of Rome: that was not to mention
the additional problems we had in order
to record it in a special Register of the
Press, which is kept in Naples.
Last year we decided to apply for the socalled abbonamento postale, which consists of a substantial reduction of the
cost of mailing. We spent no less than a
dozen mornings in the Tribunal of
Rome, in the Chamber of Commerce
and in the Central Offices of the Post,
to request and, after days, obtain, the
necessary documentation. In the meantime Government had the genial idea of
substantially cancelling this benefit for
little journals, in the name of a so-called
reorganization, with highly ridiculous
motivations, which I need not tell you.
Obviously, we are unclear why the benefit was not cancelled for semi-porno
magazines, which mail tens of thousands of copies.
Therefore, we decided to continue mailing our copies as ‘printed matter’ or ‘ordinary mail’, which was more expensive
but, in the main, more convenient for
our little journal.
We were unaware of the foudre de guerre
which the Brussels bureaucrats -or Eurocrats, as they call themselves- were
then preparing. Suddenly, at our expense, and to the dismay of everybody since, until now, no one has found any
reason for it-, we learned that the tariff
‘printed matter’ or ‘second class mail’, costing 0,77, had been abolished for Europe,
to be replaced by a single, compulsory tariff ‘first class’, costing 1,70.
The question is: why does sending a journal as a printed matter, or second class
mail, to America, or to Japan and Aus-
tralia, cost 1,30 and 1,40 respectively,
while to nearby France or Austria it must
be sent compulsorily first class, at the cost
of 1,70? The Brussels bureaucrats, who
‘ordered’ this, in the name of ‘unification’, as we have been told, will never be
able to give an answer. Must we conclude that Europe is something different
from America, and from the rest of the
world?
Since we print at least 1,000 copies of
our little journal, and of these send
about 600 to European colleagues -unfortunately not all of them subscribers!imagine the difference of cost! The fact
is that the post, which is government
property, has levied a new, heavy tax, on
cultural, technical and scientific journals, which mail a few hundreds of
copies, thus severely damaging them,
while politicos, at least in Italy, are
flaunting a ‘reduction of taxation’ whose
benefits, until now, no one has felt.
The truth is that, when you descend into the arena, even in order to establish
just a little journal, you soon realize that
bureaucrats, the plague of our century,
play a game in which you are inevitably
the loser: you have to play your own
cards, which they know in advance, because they have decided them for you,
but they have the right of changing their
cards at their own will.
Do not change the horse in the middle
of the ford, says an old proverb: but they
have the right of changing your horse,
when you are in the middle of the ford.
You have to deal with an opponent who
has no rules, no limits. The bureaucrats
are the longa manus of the politicos,
mostly vulgar people, who affect to
speak in the name of popular sovereignty. Perfectly useless telling them about
Adam Smith and the ‘absurd and oppressive monopolies’, supported by laws
which, ‘like the laws of Draco ...... may
be said to be all written in blood’.
Laissez nous faire, laissez passer, said Le
Gendre to Colbert. Malheureusement,
ils ne laissent pas nous faire.
V. M.
Voltaire’s Europe
Lessons for today
SUMMARY
Voltaire, even from his early days,
thought in European terms. Visits
to the Netherlands and, more importantly, to England, confirmed
this outlook. His Lettres
Philosophiques sees England, despite its faults, as the blueprint for
a European civilisation, because
of its modern support for free
speech, scientific enquiry and religious tolerance. For Voltaire, Europe did not represent some sort of
European Union (in his day that
would have been quite unrealistic) but, essentially, a confrérie of
enlightened minds, following on
the examples of Erasmus, Newton, Locke. Much was still badly
wrong in Europe (see Candide),
but European philosophie,
nonetheless, represented the best
way forward.
The nation-states
It comes as little surprise to find
that the Europaeum Group’s
Mission Statement ends with a
text by Voltaire, “our unofficial
patron”, in the words of its Director, Dr. Paul Flather. But
what, one wonders, would this
man, born in 1694, have made
of the European Commission in
Brussels? or the Euro? or, even
more crucially, the progressive
movement towards an ever-larger community?
Such questions are, of course, in
one sense otiose. As well expect
the awakened Rip Van Winkle
to make head or tail of a
changed world. A unified
Europe, in whatever form,
would have been unimaginable to an 18th-century
Frenchman. The buildingblocks in an age of dynastic politics were the nation-states; they were the
necessary point of departure.
Like
Gibbon,
amongst many contemporaries, Voltaire saw that a
balance of power was essential, precarious though
it might be. Indeed, modern Europe was better off
with the heterogeneity of
its 20 states than had been
the unitary world of ancient Rome. Diversity was
a bonus: “la jalousie même
qui règne entre les peuples
modernes, qui excite leur
génie et anime leurs travaux,
sert encore à élever l’Europe audessus de ce qu’elle admirait
stérilement dans l’ancien
monde” (M.xxiii.252). Enlightened rulers were now on the
thrones of Berlin, Sweden,
Poland and Russia. The discoveries of “notre grand Newton”
had become “le catéchisme de la
noblesse de Moscou et de
Pétersbourg”(M.xxvii.352). The
term “holocaust”, now so reverberant for us, was reserved only
for past horrors, never to be repeated. In the coming centuries,
much would have to happen,
before the urgency of a union to
prevent definitively another Eu-
VOLTAIRE by Largillière
ropean civil war could become
paramount.
Voltaire and Europe
From his early days, Voltaire
thought in European terms.
One of his Jesuit school teachers
recalled that already “il pesait
dans ses petites balances les
grands intérêts de l’Europe”.
Before the age of thirty he had
made two lengthy visits to the
Netherlands. On the second, in
1722, he noted a whole new
way of life in Amsterdam, “un
paradis terrestre”, opulent, industrious and highly civilised.
Voltaire was also forging links
with England; these would
come to fruition with his
arrival in London in
1726, inaugurating a stay
of 2 1/2 years. But he had
also been making overtures to the French government so as to get sent
to Vienna. He did not in
fact succeed in this venture, and he was never to
see the Imperial city. But
all these initiatives testify
to a constant urge, while
still young, to discover
other countries and how
they lived. Typically, a letter from Amsterdam announces that “je vis...à la
hollandaise et à la
française” (D128). This
Protean capacity will remain with him throughout his life. In later years
he would write that
thanks to his “peau de
caméléon”, “j’étais devenu
anglais à Londres, je suis allemand en Allemagne” (D5786).
However, it is something of a
paradox that, Voltaire did not,
in fact, travel as widely as this
might suggest. He never crossed
into Italy (despite wanting to
see Rome) or indeed any part of
southern Europe; Lyon and
Geneva were the furthest points
he reached in that direction.
But those lands which he did
visit, he knew in some depth:
not only the Low Countries and
England, but also Prussia and
Switzerland. Over 20 years of
his life were spent in or near
Geneva. On top of this, his correspondents and contacts
ranged all over Europe, and he
was a member of many foreign
Academies, from the Royal Society and Edinburgh as far as St
Petersburg and a whole clutch
of Italian institutions, including
the Accademia di Bologna.
Voltaire and England
Of all these links, the one with
England was the most important and long-lived. His sojourn
there occurred when he was yet
in his early thirties and at a crucial stage in his intellectual development. He met a wide variety of Britons: “lords, players,
merchants, priests, whores, poets”, to quote his whimsical
summary (D488). One aspect
INDEX
H. Mason
Voltaire’s Europe, p. 1
L. Alocco
Autour de la magie, p. 2
L. Katritzky
Influences of Dante, p. 4
D. Téllez Alarcia
Ricardo Wall vs
George Anson, p. 6
1
(continued from page 1)
of his stay deserves particular
mention. In the rest of Europe
he could converse with ease,
since French was the language
used by all educated people. But
today’s universal tongue, English, was another matter; and
yet it had to be learned if
Voltaire were to penetrate into
English society and culture as
he wished. Not only did he
master it so well that he would
write countless letters in English
in subsequent decades. He came
to see the English language as in
itself an embodiment of liberty,
and a weapon in the defence of
philosophical values.
As his Lettres philosophiques
show, England provided the
blueprint for a European civilisation. It was a modern land in
its practice of scientific enquiry
free of religious oppression, its
support for men of letters and
thinkers, its promotion of trade,
above all in its spirit of tolerance
and freedom. The cosmopolitanism which characterises
Voltaire’s entire outlook on the
world derived its basis from the
discovery of England. By no
means a Utopia, it was nonetheless a working example of how
things might be better ordered.
The same interest in a world
outside France shows up in
Voltaire’s historical work: it includes a large biography, while
still quite young, of Charles XII
of Sweden, and an even more
substantial one in later years of
Peter the Great, setting these
two great figures in counterpoint to each other. So too his
world-history Essai sur les
moeurs (1756) is focussed upon
the progress of European culture, which has continued,
however fitfully, despite the unremitting background of horrors and follies of every kind
throughout the centuries.
Advocate of Europe
This story of Voltaire as advocate of Europe could easily turn
into a catalogue. More pertinent is it to ask: What did Europe mean to him? The
philosophe’s view is coherent,
and consistently maintained.
For him, Europe was above all a
great confrérie of enlightened
minds. But also, this was a phenomenon of only recent occurrence. After the Fall of Rome,
the continent had languished
for long in a barbaric state, until
at last, in the sixteenth century,
“l’Europe voyait naître de beaux
jours”. Even so, the internecine
rivalry between the Emperor
Charles-Quint and the French
King François I cast a deep
shadow, and after them, the religious wars “souillèrent la fin de
ce siècle” (M.xii.219).
Only in Louis XIV’s reign did
things clearly change for the better. For the Sun King’s Court
had inaugurated a civility of
manners which spread first to
England and later everywhere,
from St Petersburg to Madrid.
So Europe had become, by
Voltaire’s day, “une espèce de
grande république partagée en
plusieurs Etats, les uns monarchiques, les autres mixtes, ceuxci aristocratiques, ceux-là populaires, mais tous correspondant
les uns avec les autres”. Christian
morality had established certain
2
Autour de la magie
dans l’Encyclopédie
SUMMARY
In the Encyclopédie, “magie surnaturelle” or “magie noire” is
condemned outright as the product of pride and ignorance. To it
are opposed the knowledge, wisdom and strength of those men
“éclairés par le flambeau de la
Philosophie”, whose discoveries
are useful to mankind and whose
experiments cannot be considered
“magic”, because “natural magic”
is science itself.
From this bewildering maze of
terminology, in which “magic”
and “divining” chase each other’s
tail in an endless succession of
anecdotes and erudite sources,
what emerges is, on the one hand,
the irreconcilable opposition between light and darkness, knowledge and superstition, and on the
other, the idea of the superiority of
Western civilization over Eastern.
Magie naturelle vs magie noire
Au croisement de la science et
de la religion, de la raison et de
la superstition, de la nature et
du merveilleux, de la culture savante et de la culture populaire,
phénomène “commun ”1 aux
civilisations les plus diverses, la
magie a occupé une place importante à l’intérieur des
principles common to all: “les
nations européennes ne font
point esclaves leurs prisonniers...
respectent les ambassadeurs de
leurs ennemis... s’accordent
surtout dans la sage politique de
tenir entre elles, autant qu’elles
peuvent, une balance égale de
pouvoir”. Therefore, even when
at war with each other, nations
should continue to trade and
negotiate, to circumvent the imperialistic aims of any single
power, and to protect the weaker
from depredations by the
stronger (M.xiv.159).
Europe, a cultural élite
It was through the efforts of enlightened sages across the continent, few though they had been
in number, that Europe had advanced beyond the Roman
world in scientific knowledge,
promotion of the arts, thriving
trade and affluence. No longer
was Paris an uncivilised small
town, or Amsterdam a marshland, or Madrid a desert; no
longer did savagery hold sway
from the right bank of the
Rhine up to the Gulf of Bothnia
(M.xxvii.351). Europe was
above all a cultural élite, bound
together by the rule of Reason.
Its moral base may have been
Christian, but it was now far removed from medieval Christendom. The new norm, in
Voltaire’s eyes, was unambiguously secular.
Who are these sages? Pre-eminent among them figured Locke
and Newton. There too was
Erasmus, the Renaissance humanist, who had travelled widely in most of the cultural centres
groupes sociaux depuis l’Antiquité.
Entre persécution et diffamation systématiques de la part de
l’Église, entre abandon et reprise de la part du milieu cultivé,
c’est au XIIe siècle que la magie
retrouve sa vitalité et un essor
considérable, se rattachant au
renouvellement des savoirs de la
médecine, de l’astronomie et de
la chimie2, alors que du XIIIe au
XVIe siècle on cherche à séparer
le côté naturel, du côté diabolique de la magie.
Mais où finit la magie ? Où
commence la science ?
Au XVIIe siècle, malgré la fragmentation du domaine de la
magie et le flou de ses frontières,
les définitions des lexicographes
(Richelet, 16803; Furetière,
16904; Dictionnaire de l’Académie, 16945) témoignent d’une
identification entre magie naturelle et science, alors que la coexistence et la coprésence de la
magie noire forment un patrimoine problématique dont le
XVIIIe siècle hérite. Comment
est-il abordé par les encyclopédistes? C’est ce que nous essaierons de mettre en lumière, en
partant de l’article “magie”:
MAGIE, science ou art occulte
qui apprend à faire des choses
of Europe and who, greatly daring in a time when heretics were
burnt at the stake, made fun of
preposterous
superstitions
(M.xxv.339-44). The list of past
heroes could be extended indefinitely. Amongst his contemporaries, Voltaire sought out
Alexander Pope in London, and
in Leiden two great men of science: the physician Boerhaave
and
the
philosopher’sGravesande, whose classes
Voltaire attended at the University of Leiden in 1737.
But alas! it scarcely needs stressing how far reality derogated
from the European ideal in
Voltaire’s eyes. Even the most
cursory reading of Candide
makes that abundantly clear.
The Seven Years War affected
VOLTAIRE by Joseph Rosset
qui paroissent au-dessus du
pouvoir humain6.
L’auteur de l’article non signé,
mais attribué à Polier de Bottens par R. Naves, comme l’indiquent Schwab-Rex7, présente
un historique très ample et
riche, rendant compte des changements inquiétants pesant sur
la magie. À l’origine “science
des premiers mages”, et donc “
étude de la sagesse ”, elle se
transforme en instrument de
pouvoir aux mains d’ “un petit
nombre de gens instruits, dans
un siecle & dans un pays en
proie à une crasse ignorance”,
succombant “à la tentation de
passer pour extraordinaires &
plus qu’humains” :
[…] & bientôt le terme de magie devint odieux, & ne servit
plus dans la suite qu’à désigner
une science également illusoire
& méprisable : fille de l’ignorance et de l’orgueil […]
Le “flambeau de la philosophie”
Les mages de l’Orient sont coupables dans les idées et dans les
faits d’avoir forgé une science
ténébreuse, qui ne peut être que
le lot de pays barbares et grossiers et des peuples sauvages.
him deeply, not least because it
left France humiliated before
the victorious British; cosmopolitan attitudes did not exclude an enlightened patriotism. Nor were his views on the
international plane always error-free. He thought, for instance, that Catherine’s aggressive policies towards Poland and
Turkey were based on a desire to
import Enlightenment values
into those countries.
N’empêche. The only way forward, faltering though it might
be, was through the pursuit of
reason and emancipation from
prejudice. The late René
Pomeau, the leading Voltairean
of our time, espoused this same
belief in rational intelligence and
the unending promotion of
knowledge, tolerance and human
rights as the sole remedies to the
ravages of war, plague and natural disasters; his wide-ranging account of the Enlightenment,
L’Europe des Lumières (1991), is
itself a political programme as
well as a history, taking its basic
inspiration from Voltairean values. One can imagine Voltaire
writing today, as he had done in
1767: “Je vois avec plaisir qu’il se
forme dans l’Europe une
république immense d’esprits
cultivés” (D14363). “Le progrès
des Lumières n’est jamais définitivement acquis”, writes Pomeau
(pp.41-42); the Enlightenment
concept remains an incomplete
enterprise, as it was in the 18th
century. But the essential view of
Europe as a militant cause, dear
to Voltaire, must be ours too.
Haydn Mason
Mais “pour faire un traité complet de magie” il faut “la considérer dans le sens le plus étendu” dans le bien et dans le mal,
et faire un distinguo entre “magie divine, magie naturelle &
magie surnaturelle”.
Les remarques sur la magie divine sont empreintes de respect et
de doutes et la magie naturelle
est tissée de louanges, même si:
les bornes de cette prétendue
magie naturelle se rétrécissent
tous les jours ; parce qu’éclairés
par le flambeau de la Philosophie, nous faisons tous les jours
d’heureuses découvertes dans les
secrets de la nature, & que de
bons systèmes soutenus par une
multitude de belles expériences
annoncent à l’humanité de quoi
elle peut être capable par ellemême et sans magie. Ainsi la
boussole, les thélescopes, les microscopes, &c. & de nos jours,
les polypes, l’électricité ; dans la
Chimie, dans la Méchanique &
la Statique, les découvertes les
plus belles & les plus utiles […]
(IX :853, MAGIE).
Le tableau change complètement
quand l’encyclopédiste aborde la
magie surnaturelle, produit de
l’orgueil, de l’ignorance et du
manque de philosophie:
This is a modified version of the
article ‘Voltaire on his Europe and
Ours’, published in Europaeum,
IV, 2, Spring 2001, pp. 2-4.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary sources
Voltaire, Complete Works, ed. L.
Moland, Paris 1877-85, 52
vols.(=M); this is gradually being superseded by The Complete
Works of Voltaire, ed. N. Cronk,
being published by the Voltaire
Foundation in Oxford.
Voltaire, Correspondence, ed. T.
Besterman, Geneva & Oxford,
1968-77, 51 vols.(=D); this
forms part of The Complete
Works of Voltaire.
Secondary sources
R. Pomeau, L’Europe des Lumières, Paris 1991.
H. Mason, “Voltaire européen
naissant et l’Angleterre”, Voltaire
en Europe (Oxford 2000).
(All unattributed material is
taken from one or other of these
three above works.)
Haydn Mason, former General
Editor of the Voltaire Complete
Works (1998-2001) being published by the Voltaire Foundation, was also formerly Editor of
the review ‘Studies on Voltaire
and the eighteenth century’
(1977-95) and President of the
International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (199195). He is the author of several
books on French literature and
society of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and most
notably on Voltaire.
La magie surnaturelle est la magie proprement dite, cette magie
noire qui se prend toujours en
mauvaise part, que produisent
l’orgueil, l’ignorance & le
manque de Philosophie.
L’article se développe par la citation des sources et par des
exemples emblématiques. Pour
la reconstruction de l’histoire de
la magie noire, qui “n’a de science que le nom, & n’est autre
chose que l’amas confus de
principes obscurs, incertains &
non démontrés, de pratiques la
plûpart arbitraires, puériles, &
dont l’inefficace se prouve par la
nature des choses”, l’auteur recourt à Agrippa “aussi peu philosophe que magicien”, qui sépare la magie coelestialis de la ceremonialis.
La magie coelestialis renvoie à
“l’astrologie judiciaire qui attribue à des esprits une certaine domination sur les planetes, & aux
planetes sur les hommes, & qui
prétend que les diverses constellations influent sur les inclinations, le sort, la bonne ou mauvaise fortune des humains”. Système considéré comme ridicule,
n’osant paraître “aujourd’hui que
dans l’almanach de Liege &
autres livres semblables; tristes
dépôts des matériaux qui servent
à nourrir des préjugés & des erreurs populaires”.
La magie ceremonialis, de loin
la plus odieuse de ces “vaines
sciences”:
consiste dans l’invocation des
démons, & s’arroge ensuite
d’un pacte exprès ou tacite fait
avec les puissances infernales, le
prétendu pouvoir de nuire à
leurs ennemis, de produire des
effets mauvais & pernicieux.
Mais “le dernier effort de la Philosophie” est “d’avoir enfin
désabusé l’humanité de ces humiliantes chimeres”, et d’avoir
combattu “la superstition, &
même la Théologie qui ne fait
que trop souvent cause commune avec elle”. Dans “les pays où
l’on sait penser, réfléchir & douter, le démon fait un petit rôle,
& la magie diabolique reste sans
estime & crédit”.
Le labyrinthe lexical de la magie
La magie noire ou “ceremonialis” met en œuvre des relations
et des interactions complexes,
concernant animé et inanimé,
naturel et surnaturel, où les
hommes, les attitudes, les cérémonies, les objets, les formules
revêtent singulièrement un rôle,
touchant au bien ou au mal, à la
santé ou à la maladie, au passé,
au présent ou au futur et renvoyant aux pratiques obscures
de l’astrologie, de la divination,
de l’enchantement, du maléfice.
Tout ce qui se rapporte à la divination est -d’après Diderot- chimérique, extravagant, capricieux, ce sont des pratiques «accréditées par la superstition»,
des «sottises», quoique profondément respectées par les Grecs
et les Romains “tant qu’ils ne furent point éclairés par la culture
des Sciences” (IV: 1071, DIVINATION ). Des arguments du
philosophe se dégage une polémique, concernant tout système
d’erreurs, la “fourberie des
prêtres”, “la superstition des
peuples” et le souhait d’une philosophie à la recherche de la vertu et de la vérité, topos chez Diderot.
Les visions de Diderot et de Polier de Bottens, s’exprimant par
les stéréotypes -lumières de la
science et chimères dues à
l’ignorance, à la superstition convergent.
Si l’on passe des hyperonymes
“magie” et “divination” aux hyponymes, se rattachant aux
agents “magiciens ”, “sorciers,
sorcières”, à leurs opérations
“charme”, “enchantement”,
“sortilège”, “maléfice”, à leurs
formules “abracadabra”, à leurs
objets “amulette”, “talisman” ou
à leurs breuvages “philtre”, on
découvre la même attitude sceptique.
Dans “magicien” (IX: 850852, MAGICIEN), “assez
bon métier” “dans les
siècles de barbarie ou
d’ignorance”, ayant perdu
“son crédit & sa vogue”
grâce à la philosophie et à la
physique expérimentale,
Polier de Bottens8 propose
les mêmes accusations et les
mêmes considérations, les
mêmes oppositions entre
superstition,
crédulité,
ignorance et progrès de la
philosophie, connaissance
de la nature, que nous trouvons dans son article “magie”.
La différence fondamentale
réside dans l’ironie envers
les auteurs, qui “se sont fait une
réputation à la faveur de leur
obscurité”, la “seule magie” pratiquée “aujourd’hui avec succès”
(IX: 850, MAGICIEN).
Jaucourt à son tour réduit le
prophète, le devin et la «prophétie» à une dimension naturelle
en les présentant comme inoffensifs (XIII: 462, PROPHETIE).
Dans “enchantement” “paroles”
et “cérémonies” pour “évoquer
les démons, faire des maléfices,
ou tromper la simplicité du
peuple ” (V: 617, ENCHANTEMENT ) Mallet, auteur de l’article, cite un long passage de
l’Histoire du Ciel de Pluche, où
il est question de l’aide apportée
aux invocations et aux imprécations - “assûrément très-impuissantes” - par les succès de la médecine ou la science des poisons,
seules responsables, en réalité,
de la mise en vogue des “chimeres de la magie”.
Dans les articles AMULETE, TALISMAN, riches en renseignements
érudits et anecdotiques, et en
sources autorisées, Delrio, l’un
des démonographes les plus cités, le chevalier d’Arvieux, Mallet
rabaisse la croyance dans le pouvoir de ces objets à des superstitions, dont les chrétiens n’ont
pas été exempts, et assure que les
“amuletes ont à présent bien perdu de leur crédit” (I: 383, AMULETE). La même remarque sur
ces superstitions auxquelles
s’adonnèrent les catholiques euxmêmes (XV: 868, TALISMAN) et
le même sentiment de refus se
manifestent dans “talisman ”,
défini comme des:
figures magiques gravées en
conséquence de certaines observations superstitieuses, sur les
caracteres & configurations du
ciel ou des corps célestes, auxquelles les astrologues, les philosophes hermétiques & autres
charlatans attribuent des effets
merveilleux, & surtout le pou-
voir d’attirer les influences célestes (XV: 866).
Les formules aussi sont censées
avoir des vertus de préservation.
“Abracadabra”, sans aucun doute la plus connue, et enregistrée
dans le Supplément, est – écrit
Diderot – une “ parole magique qui étant répétée dans une
certaine forme, & un certain
nombre de fois, est supposée
avoir la vertu d’un charme pour
guérir les fièvres, & pour prevenir d’autres maladies” (I SU: 15,
ABRACADABRA).
L’article, à la double signature
de Diderot et de Mallet, confirme la distanciation des encyclopédistes et leur inébranlable
conviction de vivre dans un
siècle “trop éclairé pour qu’il
L’ALCHIMISTE ET LES MERVEILLES DE LA CRÉATION
soit nécessaire d’avertir que tout
cela est une chimère”.
Les “magiciens ou sorciers” se
servent de l’ “exorcisme magique” pour conjurer, “c’est-àdire attirer ou chasser les esprits
avec lesquels ils prétendent
avoir commerce” (VI:271,
EXORCISME). Après la longue citation des Mémoires de l’Académie des Belles-Lettres de Blanchard Mallet juge les “pratiques
superstitieuses & condamnables”.
Magie, divination, sorcellerie,
l’une renvoie à l’autre sans cesse.
La magie et ses enjeux idéologiques
La magie comme par le passé
échappe à toute tentative de clarification, elle reste un domaine
indéchiffrable que l’on explique
à travers les sources et que l’on
condamne sans rémission. La
magie englobe la divination et
vice versa, la divination englobant “le sortilège et la magie”, 6e
espèce de divination, du moins
dans l’Écriture, d’après l’article
“divination” de Diderot.
La recherche du domaine «magie» dans la version électronique
de l’Encyclopédie de l’ATILF
surprend par sa liste restreinte
d’articles, à savoir 8:1. Ananisapta; 2. Goétie; 3. Nécyomantie9; 4. Nouement; 5. Pentacle;
6. Scopélisme; 7. Sorcellerie; 8.
Sortilège. L’absence du terme
«magie» est justifiée par le
manque de «désignant»10.
Les contradictions et les incertitudes techniques concernant les
domaines ou les «désignants»
forment un labyrinthe difficile à
parcourir.
À l’intérieur de la disparité et de
la dispersion, au fil des différentes signatures, on peut isoler
un scepticisme partagé par tous
les encyclopédistes et un réseau
lexical dépréciatif à l’égard de
l’”art occulte” “ridicule”, “honteux”, “chimérique”, “odieux”,
“illusoire”, “méprisable”, traçant
un chemin inconfortable, mais
riche en enjeux idéologiques,
rendant compte des dichotomies irréductibles et topiques à
la fois, entre lumières et ténèbres, religion et philosophie,
savoir et ignorance, et cristallisant les idées de la supériorité
des “éclairés” par rapport à la
simplicité, à la crédulité du
peuple, de la supériorité de la civilisation de l’Occident sur la
barbarie de l’Orient, de la raison
sur la superstition.
Si la physique, l’astronomie, la
médecine, l’agriculture, la navigation, la mécanique et l’ “éloquence” trouvent leur place au
sein de la “magie naturelle”,
“étude un peu approfondie de la
nature”, apportant des avantages
inestimables à l’humanité;
si cette “magie”, que dans
la seconde moitié du XVIe
siècle Giovan Battista Della Porta, entre autres, avait
déjà tenté de distinguer du
pouvoir occulte et diabolique pour en dégager l’utilité en tant qu’instrument
de connaissance, s’oppose
à la “magie surnaturelle”
ou “magie noire”, engendrée par l’orgueil, l’ignorance, le manque de philosophie; il est vrai aussi que
l’on tend à gommer le terme “magie naturelle” en
faveur de découverte et de
savoir scientifique. La magie naturelle va disparaître
pour acquérir enfin son statut de
science.
Luciana Alocco
Università di Trieste
1
Cf. F. Cardini, “Introduzione”
a Magia, stregoneria, superstizioni nell’Occidente medievale, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1979, p.
1.
2 Ibidem, p. 24.
3 P. Richelet, Dictionnaire françois (Genève, Slatkine Reprints,
1994), 2 t.; t. II, p. 5, s.a. Magie; réimpression de l’édition de
Genève, 1680.
4 A. Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (Genève, Slatkine Reprints, 1970), 3 t.; t. II, s. a.
MAGIE; réimpression de l’édi-
tion La Haye-Rotterdam, 1690.
5 AA.VV, Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise (Paris, chez la
Veuve de Jean Baptiste Coignard, 1694), 2 t., t.II, p. 3, s.a.
(mage) magie. Nous avons
consulté la version électronique
in Dictionnaires d’autrefois de
l’ATILF (Analyse et traitement
informatique du lexique français) ex INALF (Institut national de la langue française).
6 Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire
raisonné des sciences, des arts et
des métiers, t. IX, p. 852. Nous
avons consulté la version électronique de l’ATILF, tout en recourant aussi à l’Inventory of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, “ SVEC ”,
LXXXIII, LXXXV, XCI, XCII,
1971, 1972, de R.N. Schwab,
W.E. Rex, J. Lough.
7 Schwab-Rex, cit., III,
“SVEC”, LXXXV, 1972, p.
612.
8 Cf. Ibidem.
9 Pour ce qui est des différents
sorts et des différents termes
pour les désigner, signalons qu’il
existe dans l’Encyclopédie deux
graphies pour l’élément final
[mãsi]: «-mantie» et «-mancie».
Le vocabulaire est donc beaucoup plus vaste et dans certains
cas nous avons une duplication
avec cependant une texture discursive différente. On peut rappeler à titre d’exemple «rhabdomantie» et «rabdomancie».
10 Cf. A. Cernuschi, Penser la
musique dans l’Encyclopédie
Elève de Luigi de Nardis, Luciana
Alocco enseigne Littérature et
Langue française à la Faculté de
Lettres et Sciences Humaines de
l’Université de Trieste. Ses intérêts
s’articulent autour de l’Encyclopédie, du langage de la révolte dans
la poésie française du XIXe siècle,
du langage du corps et du cœur, du
“français non conventionnel”, de la
thématique de la couleur et ses publications les plus récentes sont:
Dall’azzurro allo Stige. Viaggio
nel colore baudelairiano, in
Scritti in onore di Lidia Meak, a
cura di G. Benelli, Torino, L’Harmattan Italia, 2001; Corpo e
eros nel ‘600, in “Letteratura.
Tradizione”, n.2, 2002; Colori
rimbaldiani, in “Quaderni del
DLLPM”, n. 4, EUT, 2002.
6th Eurolinguistic Symposium
Migration of European languages and cultures
From the Russian rivers to the North Atlantic
September 16-18, 2005 - Arkivcentrum,
Dag Hammarskjölds väg 19 - S-75104 Uppsala - Sweden
ELAMA
Eurolinguistischer Arbeitskreis Mannheim e.V.
Philosophische Fakultät
Schloß, EO 357
D-68131 Mannheim, Germany
Tel. 0621-181-2294
Handy: 0179-1470621
URL: www.elama.de
e-mail: [email protected]
Nordeuropa Institut
Humboldt Universität
Unter den Linden 6
D-10099 Berlin, Germany
Tel. 49-(0)30-2093-9627
e-mail: [email protected]
3
INFLUENCES OF DANTE
in Bonaventura’s Nightwatches
SUMMARY
Dante's Divina Comedia is an important part of the established cultural canon and traditional guidelines from which the Nachtwachen
attempt to draw valid responses to
the questions posed by the philosophical quest for ultimate truth. The
anonymous author, possibly G. Ch.
Lichtenberg, uses the famous
episodes of Ugolino, and of
Francesca and Paolo from the last
extremities of the Inferno to epitomize the miseries caused through the
misuse of great talents and gifts. The
Inferno itself serves as metaphor of
the torments of life, from which
there is no escape as long as past mistakes are not acknowledged and
avoided. Dante associations in the
text and the pseudonym Bonaventura suggest that redemption is possible
and indicate solutions to the human
dilemma.
Perception of Dante and the
appeal of Ugolino-Preference in
Eighteenth-Century Germany
and England
The anonymous Nightwatches
(Nachtwachen Von Bonaventura)
appeared in Germany late in
1804. Its eighteenth-century
roots and its Menippean framework were not recognized and the
slim, concise volume was automatically categorized as an expression of the Romantic Movement. Among the multifaceted
aspects, which seemingly relate
the disputed text to romantic
concerns, are various references to
Dante, who was held in high esteem during Romanticism. In
Germany Dante was undeniably
rediscovered and appropriated by
Romantic writers, who found solace and refuge from their turbulent times in the assumed wholeness and unity of the Middle
Ages. Yet articles on him had appeared in German encyclopedias
since Pierre Bayle published a
Dante-entry in his epochal Dictionaire historique et criticque
(1.ed., 2 vols., Rotterdam, 1696).
Especially the Inferno had captured attention, notably the horror of Count Ugolino’s fate,
which Lessing compressed into a
single sentence in his Laocoon ( in
# 25) as example of art designed
to arouse emotions through revulsion. Ugolino is also used as illustration in the Nachtwachen’sinvestigation of human extremes
in the quest for understanding
mankind and its destiny. As these
abstractions from Dante’s Inferno
are devoid of any romantic implications, they rather reinforce the
close Nachtwachen’s-connections
to cultural trends in England,
where a remarkable surge of interest in Dante had started already in mid-eighteenth century,
and translations of his work proliferated.
In the Nachtwachen the diverse
references to Dante are integrated
in various ways, and their clarification is essential to understanding Bonaventura’s philosophic
quest for meaning in life, and for
4
deep”
(la
an appreciation of the answers he
valle
d’abisso
pleasant dreams and deceptions.
suggests, but never spells out didolorosa/che‘ntrono accoglie d’inTo express the pain of this futile
rectly. Dante is introduced quite
wakefulness Bonaventura turns to
finiti guai./Oscura e profonda era e
early during a pivotal scene in the
Ugolino’s extremity of grief, his
nebulosa, 4:8-10.) The analogy
First Night watch. A freethinker
cry from the heart: “I was so
holds good throughout the text,
is dying and a priest, “glowing
turned to stone inside I did not
but is specifically spelled out in
with anger,” makes every effort to
weep” (Io non piangëa, si dentro
the Fourth Night Watch, which
effect a death-bed conversion by
denounces those, who cannot rise
impetrai: 33:49). Throughout the
presenting “the beyond in audabeyond their miserably limited
Nachtwachen this line explains
cious pictures; not, however the
life, “as if life were the highest
the similes of petrification, startbeautiful aurora of the new day
good and not rather man, who
ing with the cryptic description
and the budding arbours and angoes further than life, which
of the wife and sons of the dying
gels, but, like a wild hellish
makes up merely the first act and
freethinker as “the group of
Breughel, the flames and abysses
the inferno in the Divine Comedy
Niobe with her children” (41).ii
and whole ghastly underworld of
through which, in order to seek
When the night watchman enDante” (33).i Critics have achis ideal, he is travelling . . .”
counters a dark, mysterious
cused Bonaventura of sloppy
(67). Progression and existence
stranger on his rounds, the scene
writing, of shirking the exertion
after death are thus postulated,
seems set for a ghostly encounter
needed to invent his own
suggestive of the Gothic
imagery and features. He
novel. Instead, the sight of
was, however, not interested
the gloomy, “tall manly figin poetic excellence, but in
ure, wrapped in a cloak”
providing food for thought
evokes a train of thoughts
and in distilling valid anon the serious and ridicuswers from the convergence
lous aspects of human ways,
of wisdom from all ages. He
ending in a reference to the
evokes great names not for
Divina Commedia within a
descriptive purposes, nor to
framework of other literary
dazzle readers with his eruallusions, beginning: “I aldition, but to introduce the
ways step before an unconclusions of great minds
known unusual human life
into his arguments. By inwith the same feelings as
serting their names he crebefore a curtain behind
ates a network of relevant
which a Shakespearian draconnections, and by comma is to be produced” (67).
bining their witness he
The seemingly simple stateshows that however diverse
ment is loaded with multithe sources, their concluple significance, for it absorbs Shakespeare’s somber,
sions ultimately reinforce
each other, and therefore, he Henry Fuseli, Dante steps towards the heads of Count Ugoli- tragicomic outlook and the
no and of Archbishop Ruggieri. Behind him, Virgil.
entire literature of stage
implies that they witness to
Zürich, Kunsthaus, 1774.
metaphors as best summavalid truth. Hence Bonavenrized in Shakespeare’s As You
tura looked particularly to
though Bonaventura never posiLike It:
those who spanned the entire
tively commits himself. His
All the world’s a stage
scale of human experience,
somewhat convoluted sentence
And all the men and women
prominently among them Dante,
exemplifies his concern with matmerely players:
to whom the influential Swiss litter and meaning, rather than with
They have their exits and their
erary critic, Johann Jacob Bodform. His paragraphs frequently
entrances;
mer, had paid glowing tribute in
end with ellipses, inviting conAnd one man in his time plays
his Neue kritische Briefe (Zürich,
1741, 29th Letter), recognizing
many parts. (Act 1, Scene 7).
templation of his statements. His
his towering stature and univerThe dark figure perceived in such
scorn is particularly poured on
sality, and praising him for his
comprehensive context is obviously
those who refuse to notice what is
mastery of all the different facets
not envisioned as specific individgoing on, who sleep and dream
of life: the tragic, comic, satirical
ual, but as the personification of
instead of dealing responsibly
and lyrical.
various human failings with which
with reality, those, for whom he
For answers to his comprehensive
Bonaventura is particularly conuses metaphors of blindness, just
search Bonaventura also turns to
cerned, because they are deplored
as Dante describes as a blind
mysticism, represented in his text
by sages of all ages, and yet persist
world the hell of those, who canby Jacob Böhme, who, like
perennially. Shades of Hamlet, who
not overcome their own sinful
Dante, had been appreciated in
is variously evoked in the narration,
ways (cieco mondo, 4:13). From
England well before the Romanthose who will not see, Bonavenhover around the mysterious
tic period rediscovered him.
tura distinguishes others who
stranger. Even the wandering Jew
B?hme’s view of life on earth as a
have seen far too much, and have
(der ewige Jude, 70-71) is projected
pilgrimage through the limited
lost their sight because they can
onto this restless, composite figure,
visibility of a dark night is intebear no more, such as “blind
who tries to commit suicide in a
grated into the fabric of the
Homer,” Oedipus, who tore out
graveyard near a cathedral (67), a
Nachtwachen by allusions and imhis own eyes, and Dante’s Ugolilocation, which provides the scene
plied connections. Likewise the
no, who turned blind from grief
with transcendental aspects.iii
darkness and imagery of Dante’s
(già cieco,33:73). Seeing and
When he finally begins to speak, it
Inferno is merged into Bonavenblindness, being awake and asleep
becomes clear that the dark figure
tura’s quite different narration.
are the similes Bonaventura aprepresents the folly of those, conHis similes of darkness and light
plies to different states of condemned to repeat their past errors
also refer to the mental states of
sciousness, and his mouthpiece,
by their own inability to repent and
ignorance and enlightenment;
the night watchman, epitomizes
learn from errors, like those in
they lack overt religious dimenthose who use their eyes, who are
Dante’s hell. Unable to free himself
sions, but the correlation with
awake in a somnolent world, who
from his past, he is doomed to reB?hme and Dante imbues them
are aware of the tragic follies takpeat his mistakes over and over
with religious and spiritual signifing place around them, of the neagain, incapable of extricating himicance. In the Nachtwachen darkglected opportunities and empty
self from “this great tragicomedy,
ness and hell turn into an extendambitions. Yet all they can do is
world history” (73). As linear narraed simile of human existence,
wail and warn, knowing that notive his story makes little sense, but
while Dante’s “abyss of endless
body will listen, because those
the context of Dante’s Inferno elewoe” is an actual place, here and
vates it to a simile for human failure
who slumber are also deaf, and do
now, “full of vapour dark and
to profit from experience.
not wish to be disturbed in their
Francesca and Paolo as Archetypes
of Tragic and Misdirected Love
Dante shows empathy and compassion for a number of those in
eternal torment, for example
when he feels so moved by the
distressing fate of Francesca and
Paolo that from pity he “swooned
as if in death,” and fell down “as a
dead body falls” (5:140-142).
Like him, the rational, enlightened night watchman cannot approve the unrepentant repetition
of misguided choices, nor can he
altogether condemn the inadequacies of those, who are so
strongly compelled by passions
that they become like Dante’s
“miserable sinners who have lost
the good of the intellect” (3:1718). So while the night watchman cannot change the stranger’s
self-destructive ways, he nevertheless applauds the consistency
of his character, his “genuine
tragic calm” and “grand classical
dignity” (71). As Bonaventura is
convinced that this tragic blend
of weakness and fortitude, of the
ridiculous with the sublime, will
endure to the end of time (73),
the Inferno takes on for him all
the features of life on earth. The
cacophony and tumult of lost
souls is captured by Dante in the
imagery of endless circling in
3:28-30: “always whirling in that
black and timeless air, as sand is
swirled in a whirlwind,” and by
Bonaventura in thematic repetitions and the cyclic structure of
his text.iv In his reflections the Inferno does not represent, as in
Dante, a dreaded destination of
punishment in afterlife, but as
the condition of mankind here
and now. John Freccero reformulated this concept, when he
wrote: “Dante’s Inferno is a vision
of the City of Man in the afterlife
. . . at the same time, it may also
be thought of as a radical representation of the world in which
we live, stripped of all temporizing and all hope.” Like the detached, satiric and reflective protagonist of the Nachtwachen, Feccero finds that Dante’s Hell can
be interpreted as “the state of the
world as seen by an exile whose
experience has taught him no
longer to trust the world’s values.”v The cyclic repetition of the
same faults and tragic wrongs is
demonstrated, for instance, when
the dark stranger explains his
dilemma through a marionette
play in the commedia dell’arte
manner. String puppets are, of
course, an age old metaphor for
dependency on forces beyond
personal control, and the essence
of the commedia dell’arte is never-ending variation of more or
less the same theme: the upheavals ensuing from star-crossed
love. From the commedia dell’arte perspective these repetitive
conflicts are comic and may be
resolved in lighthearted manner.
Invariably, all ends in laughter.
But in this particular performance the end is tragic, because
“the director has confused the
puppets and given” Columbine
to the wrong brother, in direct
contravention of the happy outcome expected of the genre (79).
The entire play-description
abounds in references and allusions to eighteenth-century
philosophical speculations, for
which the marionettes, and the
wires, by which they are manipulated, provide visual aids, especially for the true nature of reality
and perceptionvi (das Ding an
sich, 78, 79) and for the much debated existence of free will and
human autonomy (81).
Bonaventura indicates several
philosophic positions, but offers
no specific solutions. His answers
are given indirectly, such as
through incorporating the Divina
Commedia into the fabric of his
tale and thereby inviting readers
to connect to its themes and implications. Once this is recognized, the night watchman’s complex reflections reveal depth and
significance, and his virtuoso
technique of interconnecting
epochal thoughts and gleaning
wisdom from all ages becomes
apparent. After the dark stranger
comes to the end of his history,
offered as a “poetically mad” tale
of marionettes, the night watchman translates everything “into
clear boring prose” (85), thus
transforming the abstract play into an actual story with real characters. What was presented as a
mere farce when acted out by
wooden puppets turns into appalling tragedy when experienced
by feeling people, though these,
too, are prototypes, rather than
actual individuals. Again the account relies on allusions to important extra-textual sources,
most notably echoes of Dante’s
harrowing tale of Francesca and
Paolo (5:88-142). Next to the
gruesome episode of Ugolino,
this heartrending love affair was
the best known part of the Divina
Commedia at the end of the eighteenth century, and its popularity
increased even further during the
nineteenth century, resulting in a
“fantastic profusion of paintings
and sculpture,” and transforming
it into “the theme for illustrations, art, and music far more
than any other Dantean motif.”vii
In Bonaventura’s prose-account of
the love triangle the rivals are
brothers, as in Dante, a connection
which intensifies the tragic tension. Further affinities become apparent as the final catastrophe unfolds. In Dante the catalyst of illicit love is the Old French romance,
Lancelot of the Lake, which
Francesca and Paolo were reading
together. Instead of recognizing in
the experience of Lancelot and
Guinevere a warning, and seeing in
that hopeless romance their own
doom clearly foreshadowed, the
rash young couple allows passion
to overwhelm them. Dante implies
this, offers explanations, invites
comparisons and evokes a multitude of thoughts and emotions,
merely by relating that they read
Lancelot of the Lake. Allowing significant names to speak for themselves and adding a wealth of information by their mere associative
power, is a technique in which
Dante excels and which Bonaventura also uses frequently to enlarge
action and background, and to
demonstrate how the cycle of folly
and misjudgment has basically not
changed since Ecclesiastes deplored that “what has been, will be
again, what has been done will be
done again; there is nothing new
under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9). Only
surface and setting change.
Bonaventura’s lovers, therefore, differ in various details from those of
Dante, whose Paolo hardly
emerges from the shadows and is
not even given a name in the Divina
Commedia.
In
the
Nachtwachen the accent is on the
two men. Interest centers not so
much on love, as on the irrationality of passions and the apparent
impossibility of fulfilling the
Socratian demand and prime goal
of the enlightenment: “Know thy
self,” because the two brothers almost change characters. The harsh
and haughty one softens, the mild
mannered, obliging brother largely
loses interest in other people. Now
it is the woman, Ines, who never
speaks. It is only when she finds
herself at long last unexpectedly
alone with her husband’s brother
that she becomes suddenly aware
of his consuming love, and her
own response causes her to tremble. He is the indestructible, ever
living dark stranger from the previous night, now called Don Juan.
Though he is passionately fixated
on one single woman, and thus a
very different character from
Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the association is fully intended, for the
opera is particularly mentioned in
the Third Night Watch (49), again
in the context of failures to profit
from
previous
experience.
Bonaventura highlights not similar
incidents, but similar mistakes,
misdirected love and destructive
passions, which, in different ways,
result in the same catastrophes.
When Don Juan’s sister-in-law
suddenly becomes aware of her
own feelings, “she grasped the
harp, and as Juan, on the flute,
accompanied her playing, the forbidden conversation commenced
without words, and the notes
confessed and rejoined love. So
things stood, till Juan became
bolder, disdained the mystic hieroglyph, and revealed the beautiful secret sin in clear speech.”
They stopped the music, just at
the point when Francesca and
Paolo ended their reading. For
Dante’s lovers literature was the
catalyst, represented by the names
of Lancelot and also of Galeotto,
the page and go-between, who
brought the lovers together
(5:137). Bonaventura uses music
for the same purpose, a dimension beyond words and therefore
a bridge to regions, which rational calculations cannot reach. If
literature supplied the words
Dante’s lovers dared not formulate, Bonaventura turns to music,
as the “mystic hieroglyph,” which
points to a better life and salvation, at least for Ines. This follows
from the declaration at the end of
the First Night Watch that the
“the muse of song is the mystical
sister who points the way to heaven”(35-37). Though by now fully
aware of her own burning love,
Ines retreats into herself and
leaves. Juan, too, “withdrew without speaking a word” (93). But
while she ruled her emotions, he
could not bear the inner tension,
and in a Jagoesque plot enticed
his brother, who had so far taken
his wife for granted, to suspect
her of infidelity with her innocent page and kill her. The Galeotto theme is thereby taken up
and transformed into a variation
with Shakespearean undertones.
Dying Ines fixes her look on
Juan, “but her pallid lips remained closed and revealed noth-
ing; then deep sleep descended
softly over her eyes.” Only then,
“because he had lost love,” does
her husband fully realize for the
first time that he, too, loves her,
and in despair he kills himself.
“Don Juan stood mute and insane among the dead” (97), paralleling Dante’s inexpressible grief,
when Francesco and Paolo are
whirled away. If Bonaventura
adds no further commentary, his
apparent lack of sympathy must
be judged by Dante’s speechless
fainting, reinforced by a rule taken from the Greek painter
Timanthes and inserted in different context; “to let the supreme
pain only be divined” (197).
Bonaventura keeps to this precept
throughout his text to stimulate
reader participation, intending,
like Dante, to let everybody
imagine for themselves what they
would feel in a similar situation.
Dante elevates his lovers into the
ranks of enduring archetypes,
taking a scantily documented incident from history and transforming it into a universally recognizable event. Bonaventura
starts with the prototype and amplifies it by infusing connotations
from Dante and a variety of other
tested witnesses to human nature.
Whereas Dante is guided through
the terrors of the underworld by
one acknowledged master, Virgil,
the night watchman chooses as
companions on his rounds a
whole array of distinguished voices from the past. Their wisdom
and experience fortify him, and
he projects it into his text to provide depth and multi-layered perspectives for those taking the
trouble to decode his signifiers.
He identifies these implied partners of his diverse reflections
sometimes by inserting a modified quote or allusion, or by introducing their names into the
text not in an orderly way—that
would be dry and undisguisedly
didactic—but by mentioning
them here and there in seemingly
haphazard mode. Literature is
represented from Homer to
Schlegel, art from the Greek
painter Timanthes—brought to
eighteenth-century notice notably by Jonathan Richardson,
Winckelmann and Lessing—philosophy from Plato to Kant.
When these extra-textual associations are taken into consideration, a network of further correlations begins to emerge, but only
if readers follow the clues, which
Bonaventura inserts with more or
less light touches.
Dante as Foil to a Menippean
Text, signifying Redemption and
Salvation
Dante uses music to indicate states
of mind and soul. Music is therefore absent in the Inferno, that
“dismal hole,” for which it is not
possible to find “verses harsh
enough and rasping” (32:1-2),
where disharmony reigns and only
“sighs, loud wailing, lamentation/resounded through the starless air” (3:22-23). It is only in
Purgatorio that souls can begin to
sing. Bonaventura inserts music
similarly to express various states
of mind and development. His
“musical analogies indicate a certain disunion, discord, and dissonance.” Music serves him “to increase the feeling of dissention and
discord” and he introduces “similes and metaphors conveying the
sense of disharmony within Man
in musical terms.” Altogether, “his
basic mood remains ... the sound
of dissonance.”viii While this gives
expression to the dark confusion
of life, soft and enchanting music
provides a foretaste of a new world
beyond this life, bypassing reason
and intellect as during the death of
Jakob B?hme and of the freethinker of the First Night Watch
((35-37). Present life itself can only offer fractured visions, resembling “a Mozart symphony executed by unskilled village musicians”
(75). The comparison expresses in
a nutshell the discrepancy—both
tragic and ludicrous—between
what could and should be and
what really happens, implying at
the same time that improvements
are possible and progress could be
achieved. To emphasize the importance of this simile, Bonaventura
repeats it once more and “Mozart
again speaks through the village
musicians” (75). The only composer mentioned in the text is
Mozart, the outstanding and still
unchallenged musical genius of
both tragedy and comedy, and of
mingling both, like Dante and
Shakespeare. To Bonaventura this
fusion represents the essence of
human life, equally heartbreaking,
ridiculous and incomprehensible.
In this sense the famous episode of
Ugolino gives direction to a “letter
of Refusal to Life,” which is found
after the suicide of an idealistic
and rejected poet in the Eighth
Nightwatch. Starting with the despondent observation: “Man is
good for nothing,” the poet
protests: “they are letting me starve
like Ugolino in the greatest hunger
tower, the world” (133), whereby
a single tragic incident is extended
to a parable for conditions on
earth. The poor poet escaped his
misery by ending his own life,
“whereas old Ugolino, turned
blind from hunger, groped about
in his tower and was conscious of
his blindness, and life still struggled powerfully in him so that he
could not go under.” Like Ugolino
in his dungeon, the poet, too, had
felt himself surrounded by his
children. In his case, these youthful companions were the visions of
his imagination, which he “produced alone in the night” and
who, he fancied, played about him
“as blossoming youth in golden
bright dreams.” Bonaventura introduces the child as symbol of
hope and renewal in various guises, but here he draws heavily on
the Ugolino precedent, and it denotes hope destroyed: “The door
is slammed firmer behind me, and
the last time they opened it was
just to bring in the coffin of my
last child;—I leave behind nothing now and go to meet you defiant, God, or Nothing!” (133-35).
From beginning to end, the “Refusal to Life” is dominated by the
concept “nothing,” which provides a Leitmotif throughout the
Nachtwachen, and the final word
of the text, because the sixteenth
and last Night Watch ends in a
cemetery, when “the echo in the
charnel-house cries for the last
time NOTHING!” (247). For
this reason the Nachtwachen have
been widely interpreted as a nihilistic text, ensuring a surge of
interest and scholarly publications during the despondent
decades after the Second World
War. Though Bonaventura’s
equivocal statements and his reluctance to defend definite positions were readily recognized,
nobody ever commented on the
ambiguity of the echo being used
as the voice crying “for the last
time NOTHING!” A mocking
echo carries no authority, and the
expression “for the last time” may
well denote a definite end to deception. If for B?hme the darkest
hour of the night is also the beginning of a new morning, and
Dante placed Ugolino into the
very last stages of the Inferno,
from whence the path winds on
to lead through purgatory to paradise, then we may assume that
Bonaventura, in his extended
similes and analogues also points
out a new beginning in the beyond, because life “makes up
merely the first act and the inferno in the Divine Comedy” (67).
Dante is steeped in the theology of
the Middle Ages. His belief is firm
and unshakeable, if not always
strictly dogmatic. Bonaventura is a
rationalist with scant respect for
organized religion. He tests inherited beliefs and finds wanting the
very people who proclaim them.
Hence panic breaks out among
the political and professional
guardians of a misled society,
when the night watchman decides
“in the final hour of the century to
portend the Last Judgement and
to cry out eternity instead of time”
(97). The whole chapter turns into
biting social satire on the leaders
of society, and it attacks those theologians, who, “while ogling and
fawning upon the Almighty have
instituted a miserable den of assassins here below and, instead of
uniting men, have churned them
apart in sects” (103). Just so is
Dante condemning the hypocrisy
and insincerity of many clerics
whom he encounters in various
stages of eternal misery in hell. But
in contrast to the brief and tense
Nachtwachen, where compact and
generalized indictments have to
suffice, Dante expands on human
failings in a vast panorama of individual, deeply disturbing case-histories The night watchman demands honesty and integrity from
everybody, and justice for all, but
his proposals are unanimously rejected and he is declared “out of
highest mercy only as a fool” and
forbidden to blow his horn in future, in other words, he is condemned to silence (109). This incident perfectly symbolizes
Bonaventura’s attitude towards organized religion and institutionalized professions, and their injunctions against doubts and inquiring
thought, which forever result in
the persecution Dante suffered in
reality, and the night watchman in
satiric empathy with his fate and
that of other innovative and independent thinkers, such as the
homeless “blind Homer, who also
had to go about as a ballad singer”
(119). Homer, the “sovereign poet, . . . the lord of loftiest song”
(poeta sovrano . . .segnor de
l’altissimo canto, 4:88, 95) is
evoked by both Dante and
Bonaventura as cornerstone of literary tradition, and in the
Nachtwachen also of a culture rich
in art and wisdom, yet deaf to the
voices of reason.
Bonaventura remained a freethinker, while Dante construed a
supreme vision of medieval Christianity. His journey, therefore,
leads through purgatory to paradise, stages in the pilgrimage of
the soul, which Bonaventura only
indicates with fleeting hints and
half hidden indications. One of
these is the acknowledgment that
life itself is “merely the first act and
the inferno in the Divine Comedy”
5
RICARDO WALL VS GEORGE ANSON
El final del “Lago Español” y el enfrentamiento
colonial hispano-británico (1740-1762)*
SUMMARY
During the whole eighteenth century the colonial struggle between
Spain and England is evident.
The role of the Pacific Ocean is
crucial, until the appearance of
the Commodore Gerge Anson and
his expedition, in 1742-43. The
Spanish general lieutenant Richard Wall, first as ambassador in
England, and afterwards as state
minister, attempted to neutralise
these changes in the British strategy.
The aim of this article is to analyze this confrontation.
Introducción
“Pero jamás considero aquella
vasta extensión de país sin temblar por la imposibilidad de
acudir por todas partes a su defensa y pensar al mismo tiempo
que el pellizcarnos el más mínimo palmo de terreno puede
causar daños infinitos”i. El desastre de Vernon en el Caribe
–un triste remedo de la Armada
Invencible- no había impedido
que Gran Bretaña convirtiese
una expedición menor y de escasa repercusión geoestratégica
en el estandarte al que aferrarse
al final de una onerosa guerra
como la del Asiento –de la Orethrough which the pilgrimage
leads onward. Another, likewise associated with Dante, is the pseudonym Bonaventura. This is the
name of the presumed author, yet
not that of the night watchman, of
whose reflections and relations the
entire text consists. Why, therefore
Bonaventura, a name mentioned
only once, and that in the title?
Placed into context with other
Dante associations, the name recalls St. Bonaventura, his mystical
and spiritual attainments and the
essence of his most renowned
work, the Itinerarium Mentis in
Deum, in which he represents life
as a pathway to the love of God,
and of his wisdom and reconciliation of opposing views, which
earned him a prominent place in
Dante’s Paradisoi.
The split between supposed author
and the narrator also parallels
Dante’s distinction between his
own true persona and the narrator
of his Commedia, who bears his
name. The Nachtwachen author
fictionalizes both these personalities and remains hidden himself,
thus adding a further enigma to
the open ended, testing and ambiguous challenges through which
he wants to generate intellectual
curiosity concerning the ultimate
questions of life and death, and the
right path towards the ideal, which
during the dark gloom of his night
can be but imperfectly discerned
and attained, and therefore is indicated by him only through literary
allusions and associations, which
readers are invited to follow by
themselves.
Linde Katritzsky
University of Florida
6
ja de Jenkins para los británicos. Se trataba del viaje del comodoro George Anson, que había
alcanzado el “lago español” y
había capturado el galeón de
Acapulco, “el mejor botín de todos los océanos”, regresando
con él a Inglaterraii.
En lo concerniente a las palabras de apertura, las suscribe
D. Ricardo Wall, representante
diplomático español en Londres entre 1747 y 1754. Natural de la ciudad francesa de
Nantes, nació allí por casualidad, estando sus padres “de paso”iii, dos refugiados jacobitas
irlandeses que tras las derrotas
del rey Jacobo II Estuardo le
habían seguido en su exilio a
Francia. Con todo, tras servir
como paje a la duquesa de
Vendôme, su destino definitivo
sería el servicio a los Borbones
españoles.
Anson y Wall son los representantes paradigmáticos de dos
polos enfrentados durante una
década y media tras el final de la
guerra. Un periodo de tregua
más en el marco general del
conflicto colonial hispano-británico durante el s. XVIIIiv, en
el que la novedad con respecto a
otras treguas anteriores será un
tema de discusión: el rol del Pa1
Die Nachtwachen des Bonaventura, ed. G. Gillespie, Edinburgh Bilingual Library No. 6 (EUP,
1972). Page numbers of this edition will be inserted in brackets in
the text. Bonaventura. Nachtwachen (Stuttgart, 1985).
2 According to Greek Mythology
Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, had
six sons and six daughters, and
taunted the Titaness Leto, who
only had given birth to Diana
and Apollo. When Leto ordered
these to destroy Niobe’s entire
offspring, Niobe turned into stone for grief. A group, representing
her with her youngest daughters,
was found in Rome in 1583, and
much admired in the eighteenth
century, especially after Winckelmann praised it as one of the most beautiful works of ancient art
in his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (Dresden, 1764), 248.
3 Linde Katritzky, “Ort und Zeit
in den Nachtwachen von Bonaventura,” in E.T.A. Hoffmann
Jahrbuch, 5, 1997, 57.
4 Quotations taken from The Inferno of Dante are from Robert Pinsky, tr. and intr. John Freccero
(New York, 1994); Jeffrey Sammons, The Nachtwachen of Bonaventura. A Structural Interpretation
(The Hague 1965), 38.
5 The Inferno of Dante, xi.
6 Cmp., for instance, George
Berkely, A Treatise Concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge
(1710), defining in # 3 the essence
of inanimate objects (“unthinking
things”) as being merely perceived,
and having no intrinsic existence
otherwise.
7 Eugene Paul Nassar, Illustrations
to Dante’s Inferno (London: Asso-
cífico como nuevo escenario de
enfrentamiento entre los intereses de ambas potencias.
La posguerra: nuevas tentativas
de descubrimiento en el Mar
del Sur
El final del conflicto convierte a
nuestros dos personajes en protagonistas del enfrentamiento
RICARDO WALL
larvado. Tras años sirviendo las
armas de Felipe V, el mariscal
D. Ricardo Wall había sido enviado a Londres para allanar el
camino hacia la paz y obtenía
pronto los nombramientos cociated University Presses, 1994),
19, 87; Francesca Bugliani-Knox,
“Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse:
Ninetheenth-Century English
Translations, Interpretations and
Reworkings of Dante’s Paolo and
Francesca,” in Dante Studies,
CXV, 1997, 221-250.
8 Paul Davies, “Musical Analogies
and Their Contexts in Bonaventura’s Nachtwachen, in Orbis Litterarum, 1990, 45, 80, 73.
9 Linde Katritzky, “Warum Bonaventura? Ein Beitrag zur Assoziationstechnik in den Nachtwachen,” in Euphorion, 1990, 84/4,
420-421.
Linde Katritzky, Adjunct Professor at the University of Florida,
graduated from the University of
Muenchen, Germany and holds
an M.A. in German and a Ph.D.
in English from the University of
Florida, Gainesville. She lived for
many years in England and has
published articles on literature,
the Enlightenment, and English/German cultural relations in
international journals, with special focus on Georg Christoph
Lichtenberg, as well as on the
Nachtwachen.Von Bonaventura. Her monograph, Lichtenbergs Gedankensystem, is volume six in the series The Enlightenment: German and Interdisciplinary Studies (Peter Lang,
1995), and Johnson and The
Letters of Junius. New Perspectives on an Old Enigma (1996),
is volume five, and A Guide to
Bonaventura’s Nightwatches
(1999) is volume nine in the Peter Lang series ‘Ars Interpretandi/The Art of Interpretation’.
mo embajador y como teniente
coronel del ejércitov. Anson, por
su parte, tras derrotar, además, a
la escuadra francesa en la Batalla
del Cabo Finisterre (1747), era
el único icono victorioso de la
guerra pasada. También su ascenso era, pues, seguro: “Al firmarse la paz Anson fue ascendido a almirante de la Bandera
Azul y, en 1751, lo nombraron
primer lord del Almirantazgo,
cargo que ostentó (con un breve
intermedio) hasta su muerte en
1762”vi.
La llegada al trono español de
Fernando VI había marcado un
radical cambio de estrategia política en la corte de Madrid. La
recurrencia habitual de los Pactos de Familia borbónicos había
dejado paso a una neutralidad
vigilante y armada que abría, en
teoría, nuevos e inexplorados
canales de entendimiento entre
unos alejados Londres y Madrid. Fruto del trabajo de hombres como Carvajal (secretario
de Estado español), Newcastle
(secretario de Estado inglés),
Keene y Wall (embajadores respectivos), se lograron avances
sorprendentes como la liquidación del Asiento de Negros, una
de las lacras que soportaba España desde los tiempos de
Utrechtvii. Esta primavera en las
relaciones internacionales hispano-británicas pendía, con todo,
de un hilo. En ambos países
existían magnates y facciones
proclives al distanciamiento o a
la desconfianza abierta.
No es de extrañar que, desde el
primer momento, se solicitasen
de Wall los oficios adecuados para informarse sobre puntos concretos de la política colonial inglesa y que éste respondiese en
los términos en que lo hizo. En
primer lugar rememorando el
episodio de Cartagena “bien memorable entre esta nación por la
pérdida de gente y dinero que le
causó (...) pues desde que estoy
en este país conozco con más evidencia la importancia de aquella
plaza”, pero poniendo prontamente el acento sobre el riesgo
en que estaba el “Lago español”:
“Igualmente pensaron siempre
en las Filipinas por la debilidad
de fuerzas que suponen tenemos
allí (...) las dos fragatas consabidas que se preparaban en este río,
que a mi parecer llevaban su destino a descubrir cual de las dos
islas de Pepey o Falkland era más
a propósito tanto por la calidad
de sus puertos como por el terreno para establecerse en la más
conveniente y obrar desde ella
contra nosotros en caso de un
rompimiento”viii.
Estas dos fragatas a las que se refiere Wall fueron parte de un
proyecto personal de Anson y,
por ende, del primer incidente
diplomático serio entre España
e Inglaterra en el periodo de entreguerras. La expedición fue
descubierta por Jorge Juan, el
famoso marino español que actuaba como espía por aquellas
fechas en Londresix. Wall denunció el proyecto a los ministros e incluso llegó a entrevistarse “con el almirante Anson
quien afirmó no verse sorprendido por la alarma hispana ante
el proyectado viaje (...) así como
que él era el inspirador”x.
En Madrid, el embajador inglés,
Keene, estaba preocupado por el
impacto que pudiera tener en
las negociaciones futuras con
España el proyecto de Anson.
En carta a Castres se expresa en
estos términos:
“We are talking in England
of making new discoveries
in consequence of Mr. Anson’s voyage. Wall has made
representantions against it.
You who can judge of the
denderness of this subject
can judge it does not forward my affairs here at all.
One coup of this nature
sets aside or retards at least
all my endeavours to make
us as one people, to do good to our selves recoprocally, and to do good to the
rest of the world by preserving peace and being of terror at the same time to
those who break it”xi.
Wall por su parte hacía su trabajo. Tras varias entrevistas con los
principales ministros se conseguía la paralización del proyectoxii.
La situación internacional y las
inclinaciones políticas de los gobiernos en Londres y Madrid
maniatarían a Anson durante
años. La exploración de las Malvinas se sacrificó en aras del entendimiento con España y, posteriormente, como compensación por su neutralidad. Era
uno de los peajes a pagar porque
España no reeditara su alianza
con Francia, en un clima que
pronto comenzó a encresparse a
ambas orillas del canal de la
Mancha, como preludio del inicio de la Guerra de los Siete
Años.
Aunque los proyectos se pospusieron, la publicación del Voyage
de Anson, pronto dio a conocer
las debilidades del sistema colonial hispano y las escalas básicas
de cualquier nueva tentativa de
invasión del “Lago español”:
“V. E. habrá leído, como
yo, el viaje de Lord Anson,
en que descubre nuestro
débil de la América, sobre
todo el de la meridional, el
descuido en que teníamos
los puertos útiles desde el
Río de la Plata hasta el cabo
de Hornos, y continuando
el mar del Sur hasta la California, hasta tenerlos deshabitados, y una isla como
la de Juan Fernández, dominante toda la costa del
Perú y Chile, fértil y templada, en igual abandono.
¿Qué hemos remediado de
todo lo que nuestros ene-
migos por bondad de Dios
y mala política suya nos
han manifestado con evidencia y a costa bien grande nuestra? (...) Lo que
conviene (...) es que envíe
muchas al otro mundo, que
rueguen por él con rosarios
de plomo. Muchos de semejantes intercesores yo
aseguro que harán milagros
y resistirán al ingreso de la
herética gravedad: y puestos en Santo Domingo y en
Santiago encubados, con
tan altos nombres, harían
temblar la primogenitura
de Veraguas y estarían a
mano
para
muchas
cosas”xiii.
No obstante, los deseos de
Aranda no eran tan sencillos de
cumplir:
“Il m’a dit (Wall) que M. de
Masones ecrivait sans cesse
qu’on fu passer des troupes
en Amerique, qu’elles
étaient inutiles en Espagne,
mais il a ajouté que ces troupes lorsqu’elles seraient làbas où periraient par les maladies ou le fendraient par la
desertion et que d’ailleurs
chaque soldat y couterait
dix piastres par mois”xiv.
La guerra de 1762: el último
intento de Anson
Wall había dejado Londres para
ocuparse de la vacante secretaría
de Estado, tras la muerte de
Carvajal (1754). Su política de
neutralidad perpetuaba la dirigida por el anterior ministro, no
sólo por convencimiento personal, sino, sobre todo, por imperativo regioxv. La estabilidad
emocional de Fernando VI, vértice y eje final de toda la monarquía, era el objetivo final imprescindible de toda la corte, a
sabiendas de su propensión a la
melancolía. Sin embargo tanto
los cambios ministeriales en
Londres (hegemonía de Pitt, decadencia de Newcastle) como la
muerte de Fernando VI, dinamitaron el escenario diplomático creado por Wallxvi.
La llegada del nuevo monarca,
Carlos III, desde Nápoles, la negociación de la alianza francesa
(Tercer Pacto de Familia) y la
preparación de la marina y el
ejército llevaría tanto tiempo que
encontraría la guerra absolutamente decidida y prácticamente
terminada. Por precipitada y tardía, la intervención acabaría en
desastrexvii, ofreciendo a Anson
la última oportunidad para ver
cumplidos sus proyectos con respecto al “Lago español”:
“Mientras la Guerra de los
Siete Años azotaba las naciones europeas y sus imperios
ultramarinos, la máxima
aproximación inglesa al Pacífico fue un plan para la toma de Manila, aprobado por
Anson como primer lord del
Almirantazgo poco antes de
su muerte. Anson había percibido en los tres días de reuniones de enero de 1762
ecos de las discusiones del
otoño de 1739 al oír hablar
de las ventajas que proporcionaría la toma de Manila y
el establecimiento de una
base británica en Mindanao,
desde donde ‘las provincias
españolas del Mar del Sur,
tanto de América del Norte
como de América del Sur,
pueden ser atacadas y saqueadas con gran éxito por parte
de la Gran Bretaña’. En realidad tuvo que haber otros
ecos del viaje de Anson en
esta operación, pues en octubre de 1762 barcos de guerra
británicos capturaron el Santísima Trinidad, uno de los
últimos galeones de Manila
y uno de los mayores”xviii.
Anson, sin embargo, había
muerto en junio de 1762, un
mes antes de que se consumase
su plan de ataque a La Habana:
ga, lograrán el desalojo de los
ingleses de las islas. Este incidente desató intensas negociaciones diplomáticas que acabaron en la restitución a Inglaterra
del territorio en 1771. Con todo, Inglaterra acabaría abandonando voluntariamente Puerto
Egmont en 1774. Solo en 1776
parece finalizar la polémica con
la inclusión de las islas en el recién creado Virreinato de la Plata, aunque es bien sabido que
este cierre fue en falso, a la vista
“Los informes de Knowles
fueron la base de este plan
de ataque trazado por Lord
Anson, pues proporcionaron un detallado análisis de
la situación de la plaza y del
emplazamiento de todas
sus defensas, especialmente
de las del puerto, que era,
como es sabido, la pieza
clave de la estructura defensiva de la plaza”xix.
También moría meses antes de
la toma de Manila, “lamentando no haber impulsado con más
fuerza el proyecto anterior”xx.
A modo de epílogo: el final del
Lago Español
La firma del Tratado de París
frustró, paradójicamente, el trabajo de nuestros dos protagonistas. La Habana fue devuelta a
España a cambio de la Florida,
un territorio inhóspito en el que
tan sólo cedía un par de enclaves de importancia (compensada además con la entrega de la
Luisiana por los franceses). En
cuanto a Manila, su toma era
posterior a la firma de los preliminares y, por tanto, debía ser
devuelta de oficio, sin compensación.
En cuanto a D. Ricardo Wall, la
firma del tratado preludiaba su
salida del ministerio y su retiro
en el Soto de Roma, una pequeña finca real situada en las cercanías de Granada. Su política de
acercamiento a Inglaterra había
sido un fracaso y se había visto
cercenada definitivamente por
la firma del Tercer Pacto de Familia, tratado que regiría los
destinos de las relaciones internacionales españolas durante
más de dos décadas.
El enfrentamiento por el “Lago
español”, sin embargo, se mantenía vivo. En 1765, Lord Byron (abuelo del poeta romántico) dirigiría una nueva expedición a las Malvinas. El conde de
Egmont, primer lord del Almirantazgo, explicaba a sus colegas
que las islas eran “la llave de todo el Océano Pacífico”. Su posesión, continuaba, “hará que
todas nuestras expediciones a
esas regiones sean mucho más
lucrativas para nosotros y más
fatales para España”xxi. El conflicto por las Malvinas solo había comenzado. La fundación
del puerto de San Luis por los
franceses (expedición de Bougainville, 1764) y de Puerto Egmont por los ingleses (expedición de McBride, 1766) obligará a España a reaccionar diplomáticamente exigiendo el reconocimiento de sus derechos y
obteniendo la devolución por
parte de Francia.
En 1770 las fuerzas españolas de
la Escuadra de la Plata, al mando de Juan Ignacio de Madaria-
GEORGE ANSON
de la guerra protagonizada en la
segunda mitad del XX entre Argentina e Inglaterra.
Esto por lo que refiere a la “llave” del Pacífico. En cuanto a los
propios “Mares del Sur” –denominación que sustituiría a la de
“Lago español”- pronto la superioridad marítima inglesa se dejaría notar en aquellas latitudes,
gracias a las expediciones de Cookxxii, superioridad a la que no
era ajena la mano de Anson:
“Es indudable que durante
los años que Anson estuvo
en el consejo del Almirantazgo agudizó su celo reformista el recuerdo de las
experiencias mortificantes
que habían retrasado y
obstaculizado su expedición” xxiii.
Diego Téllez Alarciaxxiv
Universidad de La Rioja
Diego Téllez Alarcia es actualmente profesor de Historia Moderna en la Universidad de La
Rioja (España).Desarrolla su actividad investigadora en el ámbito del dieciochismo, en el que ya
tiene algunas publicaciones de interés en revistas de impacto como
las españolas “Hispania” o “Anales de la Universidad de Alicante”
y en las internacionales “Dieciocho. Hispanic Enlightenment”,
“Irish Studies Review”, “Annales
de la Bretagne”, “Studies on Voltaire”. Ha participado en numerosas reuniones internacionales,
entre las que destacan la de la International Society for Eighteenth
Century Studies, celebrada en Los
Ángeles en 2003 o la de la Association for Contemporary Iberian
Studies, celebrada en Limerick en
2004. Así mismo es miembro
fundador de la revista electrónica
“Tiempos Modernos” y del weblog
“Portal Mundos Modernos”, primeras iniciativas dedicadas al estudio exclusivo de la Edad Moderna en la red.
*
Este artículo es el resumen de
una comunicación presentada
durante XI Quadrennial Congress de la International Society
for Eighteenth Century Studies
(ISECS), celebrado en la Universidad de California-Los Ángeles entre el 3 y el 10 de agosto
de 2003. La versión completa
en Tiempos Modernos, Revista
Electrónica de Historia Moderna
10 (2004) (http://www.mundosmodernos.org/tiemposmodernos).
i Wall a Ensenada, 8 de septiembre de 1749, Archivo Histórico
Nacional (en adelante A.H.N.),
Estado, 4.277-2.
ii El mito del “Lago español” se
forjó a lo largo del s. XVI. Tras
la primera circunnavegación de
Magallanes y Elcano, y la fallida
expedición de conquista de Loaysa sería Legazpi con la fundación de Manila (1571) y Urdaneta con el hallazgo de la ruta
de retorno hacia Acapulco lo
que convertiría el Pacífico en un
pequeño “mare nostrum” español. Algunos datos relevantes
sobre el origen en: LUCENA,
M., Juan Sebastián Elcano, Barcelona, 2003.
iii Como reconoce su partida de
bautismo: Archives Departamentales de la Loire-Atlantique,
Registres paroissiaux, Nantes,
Saint Nicolas, BMS, 16911697.
iv La visión de los conflictos coloniales hispano-británicos del
XVIII como una serie de episodios de un conflicto global se
ofrece en Téllez Alarcia, D., “La
Independencia de los EE.UU.
en el marco de la Guerra Colonial del s. XVIII (1739-1783)”
en Tiempos Modernos, 5 (octubre de 2001), pp. 1-35.
v Wall no era huérfano en experiencia marinera: había combatido a bordo del San Felipe, buque insignia del almirante Gaztañeta, en la Batalla del Cabo
Passaro (1718) contra la flota
inglesa del almirante Byng. Dejó la marina por motivos de salud. Más datos en: Téllez Alarcia, D., “Richard Wall: light
and shade of an Irish minister
in Spain (1694-1777)” en Irish
Studies Review (11.2, August
2003), pp. 123-136.
vi Williams, G., El mejor botín
de todos los océanos (Madrid,
2002), p. 327.
vii La influencia de las Indias en
la diplomacia española se puede
observar en Hilton, S. L., Las
Indias en la diplomacia española,
1739-59 (Madrid, 1980).
viii Wall a Ensenada, 8 de septiembre de 1749, A.H.N., Estado, 4.277-2.
ix Ver Gómez Urdáñez, J. L., El
proyecto reformista de Ensenada
(Lérida, 1996).
x Wall a Carvajal, 17 de abril de
1749, Archivo General de Simancas (en adelante A.G.S.),
Estado, 6.915, cit. en Molina
Cortó, J., Reformismo y neutralidad, p. 245.
xi Keene to Castres, 29 de mayo
de 1749, Lodge, R. (ed.), The
private Correspondence of Sir
Benjamin Keene (Cambridge,
1933), p. 128.
xii Wall a Carvajal, 24 de abril de
1749, A.G.S., Estado, 6.915.
xiii Aranda a Wall, 5 de diciembre de 1761, A.G.S., Estado, libro 154.
xiv Ossun a Choiseul, 2 de junio
de 1760, Archives du Ministère
des Affaires Étrangères, París,
Correspondance politique, Espagne, Tomo 528.
xv La construcción de la imagen
de Fernando VI como “rey pacífico” restaurador de las glorias
de España, lejos de estereotipos
más bélicos se explica perfectamente en Gómez Urdañez, J.
L., Fernando VI (Madrid,
2001).
xvi Más datos en Téllez Alarcia,
D., “Guerra y regalismo a comienzos del reinado de Carlos
III. El final del ministerio Wall”
en Hispania (209, 2001), pp.
1051-1090.
xvii Stein habla de una “segunda
crisis de los Borbones españoles” refiriéndose a sus colonias:
Stein, S. J. y Stain, B. H., Silver
Trade and War. Spain and America in the making of Early Modern Europe (London, 2000),
pp. 256-259.
xviii Williams, G., El mejor botín..., p. 335. Pitt dirá de Anson: “A su sabiduría, experiencia
y celo debe la nación los gloriosos triunfos de la última guerra”,
ibid., p. 329.
xix Parcero Torre, C. M., La pérdida de La Habana y las reformas
ilustradas en Cuba, 1760-1773,
Tesis doctoral de la Universidad
de Valladolid, 1997, p. 190. Según Thomas, H., Cuba, la lucha
por la libertad (Barcelona,
1973), p. 23, Anson planeó,
además, la navegación por el canal de las Bahamas, utilizando
un plano antiguo
xx Williams, G., El mejor botín,
p. 336.
xxi Williams, G., El mejor botín,
p. 336.
xxii Véase Lincoln, M. (ed.),
Science and exploration in the
Pacific. European voyages to the
southern oceans in the 18th century (Suffolk, 1988).
xxiii Williams, G., El mejor botín,
p. 327. A él se debieron algunas
reformas como el sistema de inspecciones anuales, la promoción
en base a la aptitud, dándose
preferencia a quienes hubieran
combatido “en condiciones de
igualdad con el enemigo” o la
creación de un cuerpo permanente de infantería de marina.
xxiv Trabajo inscrito en el proyecto de investigación “Reconstrucción prosopográfica de
clientelas políticas en la España
de mediados del XVIII (17431763)” (BHA2003-07360), financiado por el MCyT.
Elizabeth Durot-Boucé
Le lierre et la chauve-souris
Réveils gothiques
Émergence du roman noir anglais
1764-1824
Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle
8 rue de la Sorbonne- 75230 PARIS cedex 05
Tel: 01 40 46 48 02 - Fax: 01 40 46 48 04
Courriel: [email protected]
7
Colloque International Paul-Gabriel Boucé
PAUL-GABRIEL BOUCÉ
À l’occasion du Colloque International annuel (désormais
“Colloque International PaulGabriel Boucé”) du Centre de
Recherches et d’Études sur
l’Angleterre du XVIIIe Siècle
(CREA XVIII) de l’Institut du
Monde Anglophone de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, le samedi 11
décembre 2004 au matin s’est
tenue à l’École Normale Supérieure, boulevard Jourdan, à Paris
une cérémonie solennelle à la mémoire de
feu le professeur PaulGabriel Boucé, décédé le 12 juillet 2004.
Ont participé à cet
hommage rendu au
plus éminent de nos
collègues, au dix-huitiémiste le plus respecté et le plus admiré
de sa génération, par
des discours très
émouvants:
Hermann Josef Real de
l’Université de Münster (en qualité de président);
Allan Ingram de l’Université de
Northumbria,
Newcastle;
George Rousseau, de l’Université d’Oxford; Vincenzo Merolle de l’Université La Sapienza
de Rome; Françoise Deconinck-Brossard de l’Université
de Paris X- Nanterre; Jean-Michel Lacroix de l’Université de
la Sorbonne Nouvelle, recteur
de l’Académie d’Orléans; Suzy
Halimi de l’Université de la
Sorbonne Nouvelle, coresponsable du CREA XVIII; André
Topia de l’Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, directeur de
l’Institut du Monde Anglophone; Serge Soupel de l’Université
de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, coresponsable du CREA XVIII
qui a lu un message de Gerald
Butler de l’Université de Californie du Sud et un autre de
Habib Ajroud en son nom
propre et au nom des autorités
de la faculté des Lettres de La
Manouba en Tunisie. Se sont
également exprimés Patricia
Wright de Cambridge; Damian Grant des Universités de
Manchester et de Lille III, qui
a lu un poème de sa composition, où revivait la personnalité si chaleureuse de notre défunt ami; Jacques Surel, ancien collègue de Paul-Gabriel
Boucé lors de ses débuts à la
Sorbonne Nouvelle; Marie-
Jeanne Colombani, ancienne
élève puis thésarde de Paul-Gabriel Boucé; Élizabeth Boucé
enfin, qui a évoqué de la façon
la plus poignante le souvenir de
son époux — non sans faire
mention de messages en provenance de Cambridge (de Janet
West et de Martin Evans) où
Paul-Gabriel Boucé ne manquait pas de se rendre annuellement pour ses recherches. Cette cérémonie, empreinte d’une
gravité rare, la seule que l’Université ait organisée en hommage au grand maître disparu,
eût sans doute été conforme à
ses vœux. Elle a offert, dans le
cadre privilégié du Centre de
Recherches qu’il a longtemps
animé avec passion, à ses amis
de France et de l’étranger très
éprouvés par sa perte l’occasion de se retrouver nombreux
et de partager dans leur deuil
des moments
précieux,
uniques, de recueillement.
Serge Soupel
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