expressions, he cleaned them,
polished them, and out of them made that splendid language spoken so handsomely
in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. "
"Ah!"
said Michel, pointing to a single volume proudly and simply bound, "now
there's a great captain. "
"Yes,
my boy, like Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon: indeed Bonaparte would have made
Corneille a prince!
The
old warrior has astonishingly multiplied, for his classical editions are
countless; this is the fifty-first and last of his complete works, dating from
1873; since then, Corneille has never been reprinted. "
"You
must have gone to a great deal of trouble, Uncle, to have obtained all these
works!"
"On
the contrary—everyone was getting rid of them! Look, here's the forty-ninth
edition of the complete works of Racine, the hundred fiftieth of Moli é re,
the fortieth of Pascal, the two hundred third of La Fontaine, the last
actually, and they date from over a hundred years ago and already constitute
the delight of bibliophiles! These geniuses have served their time, and now
they're relegated to the rank of archaeological specimens. "
"And
in fact, " replied the young man, "they speak a language no longer
understood in this day and age. "
"That's
quite true, my boy! The fine French tongue has been lost; the language
illustrious foreigners like Leibniz, Frederick the Great, Ancillon [32] ,
Humboldt, and Heine chose as the interpreter of their ideas—that wonderful
language Goethe regretted never having written, that elegant idiom which
nearly became Greek or Latin in the fifteenth century, Italian with Catherine
de M é dicis,
and Gascon under Henri IV—is now a horrible argot. Each specialist, forgetting
that a language is finer in its action than in its accumulation, has created
his own word to name his own thing. Botanists, natural historians, physicists,
chemists, mathematicians have coined dreadful hybrids, inventors have ransacked
the English vocabulary for their most disagreeable appellations; horse traders
for their horses, jockeys for their races, carriage dealers for their vehicles,
philosophers for their philosophy—all of them have found the French language
too poor and have resorted to foreigners! Well, let them! Let them forget all
about it! French is even lovelier in its poverty and hasn't tried to grow rich
by prostituting herself! Our own language, my boy, the language of Malherbe,
and Moli é re, of
Bossuet and Voltaire, of Nodier [33] and Victor Hugo, is a well-brought-up young lady, and you need have no fear
when you fall in love with her, for the barbarians of the twentieth century
have failed to turn her into a courtesan!"
"How
eloquent you are, Uncle—now I understand the delightful mania of old Professor
Richelot, whose scorn for modern slang made him speak nothing but a sort of
Frenchified Latin! People make fun of him, but he's quite right.... All the
same, Uncle, hasn't French become the language of diplomacy?"
"Yes!
as a punishment! At the Congress of Nijmegen in 1678! Its virtues of directness
and clarity caused it to be chosen by diplomacy, which is the science of
duplicity, of equivocation and of mendacity, so that our honest language has
gradually been diluted and lost! You'll see—people will have to change it
someday. "
"Poor
French!" Michel sighed. "I see Bossuet over there, and F é nelon,
and Saint-Simon, who wouldn't recognize it now!"
"Yes,
their child has turned out poorly! That's what comes of frequenting scientists,
industrialists, diplomats, and other bad company. Dissipation! Debauchery! A
1960 dictionary that wants to include all terms in use is twice the size of an
1800 dictionary! As for what is to be found there, I leave that to your imagination.
But let's return to our review—soldiers shouldn't be kept under arms too long.
"
"I
see a long row of fine volumes over there. "
"Fine
and sometimes good, " Uncle Huguenin answered. "That's the four
hundred twenty-eighth edition of the individual
polished them, and out of them made that splendid language spoken so handsomely
in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. "
"Ah!"
said Michel, pointing to a single volume proudly and simply bound, "now
there's a great captain. "
"Yes,
my boy, like Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon: indeed Bonaparte would have made
Corneille a prince!
The
old warrior has astonishingly multiplied, for his classical editions are
countless; this is the fifty-first and last of his complete works, dating from
1873; since then, Corneille has never been reprinted. "
"You
must have gone to a great deal of trouble, Uncle, to have obtained all these
works!"
"On
the contrary—everyone was getting rid of them! Look, here's the forty-ninth
edition of the complete works of Racine, the hundred fiftieth of Moli é re,
the fortieth of Pascal, the two hundred third of La Fontaine, the last
actually, and they date from over a hundred years ago and already constitute
the delight of bibliophiles! These geniuses have served their time, and now
they're relegated to the rank of archaeological specimens. "
"And
in fact, " replied the young man, "they speak a language no longer
understood in this day and age. "
"That's
quite true, my boy! The fine French tongue has been lost; the language
illustrious foreigners like Leibniz, Frederick the Great, Ancillon [32] ,
Humboldt, and Heine chose as the interpreter of their ideas—that wonderful
language Goethe regretted never having written, that elegant idiom which
nearly became Greek or Latin in the fifteenth century, Italian with Catherine
de M é dicis,
and Gascon under Henri IV—is now a horrible argot. Each specialist, forgetting
that a language is finer in its action than in its accumulation, has created
his own word to name his own thing. Botanists, natural historians, physicists,
chemists, mathematicians have coined dreadful hybrids, inventors have ransacked
the English vocabulary for their most disagreeable appellations; horse traders
for their horses, jockeys for their races, carriage dealers for their vehicles,
philosophers for their philosophy—all of them have found the French language
too poor and have resorted to foreigners! Well, let them! Let them forget all
about it! French is even lovelier in its poverty and hasn't tried to grow rich
by prostituting herself! Our own language, my boy, the language of Malherbe,
and Moli é re, of
Bossuet and Voltaire, of Nodier [33] and Victor Hugo, is a well-brought-up young lady, and you need have no fear
when you fall in love with her, for the barbarians of the twentieth century
have failed to turn her into a courtesan!"
"How
eloquent you are, Uncle—now I understand the delightful mania of old Professor
Richelot, whose scorn for modern slang made him speak nothing but a sort of
Frenchified Latin! People make fun of him, but he's quite right.... All the
same, Uncle, hasn't French become the language of diplomacy?"
"Yes!
as a punishment! At the Congress of Nijmegen in 1678! Its virtues of directness
and clarity caused it to be chosen by diplomacy, which is the science of
duplicity, of equivocation and of mendacity, so that our honest language has
gradually been diluted and lost! You'll see—people will have to change it
someday. "
"Poor
French!" Michel sighed. "I see Bossuet over there, and F é nelon,
and Saint-Simon, who wouldn't recognize it now!"
"Yes,
their child has turned out poorly! That's what comes of frequenting scientists,
industrialists, diplomats, and other bad company. Dissipation! Debauchery! A
1960 dictionary that wants to include all terms in use is twice the size of an
1800 dictionary! As for what is to be found there, I leave that to your imagination.
But let's return to our review—soldiers shouldn't be kept under arms too long.
"
"I
see a long row of fine volumes over there. "
"Fine
and sometimes good, " Uncle Huguenin answered. "That's the four
hundred twenty-eighth edition of the individual
Similar Books
