Version  provisoire consolidée après relecture, màj#1′, 2018-03-30

Voici notre proposition de version anglaise pour notre article “Etre et ne pas être à Flêtre” paru in Le Bulletin du Comité Flamand de France, n°103, octobre 2014, pp. 23-26 < HAL-01592388 >.

Initium omnis peccati est superbia (Ps 13). Those sententious words from the Book of Psalms may provide the key to understanding the sudden excessive nationalism in which Guido Gezelle seems to have guiltily indulged with his poem “Tot Vleteren”, or so I believe despite the harsh criticism I might receive for such a cautious suggestion.

The poem, which consists of ten quatrains, was written in October 1895 and was first published in an issue of Le Bulletin du Comité Flamand de France the same year. It is one of the few poems the famous priest-poet has dedicated to French Flanders, along with Fransch Vlaanderen (ca 1883), Casselkoeien (1896) and O Zerkel, nooit en zag (1898). And still it differs from these last two – and probably from most of his works – in that it does not celebrate Nature and the people of Flanders in the otherwise contemplative way that makes Gezelle’s style so distinctive.

Ranked by critic Jozef Boets with the works on “all sorts of festivals”, it is as well a tribute to Jacob De Meyere as a compliment for François Van Costenoble.

The former, a Fletre-born historian of Flanders from the 16^th century, had fallen into collective oblivion in his own land. The latter, the parish priest of the very village, revived the memory of the native son by seeing to it that the local notables would have a monument erected to honour the vir illustratus. The inauguration of the monument on September 24th, 1895 was the only item on the agenda of the meeting of Comité Flamand de France, of which every single detail was reported in the Bulletin – in appearance, though.

In the minutes the name of “one of the best poets in Flanders” can indeed be found among those of the “notable people” attending the event, while there is not a single allusion to what ought to be considered as a “diplomatic incident”: At no time was the Belgian friend of the champion of De Meyere invited to address the audience. Gezelle was in persona in Fletre, though not in voce. The text released in the Bulletin under the title “Tot Vleteren” is thus not a transcription, but an ad hoc and ex post creation.

One need not be gifted with clairvoyance to discern some kind of vindictive bitterness caused by the protocolary affront in the first strophe where the poet disqualifies the event for lacking in Flemishness. In Gezelle’s view, the absence of any speech in Flemish nullifies the Flemish cultural value of the event: Flemish-speaking De Meyere should have deserved a few words spoken in Flemish. Did the French-speaking attendants fail to display love towards Flanders, their fatherland? Or did they rather fail to overplay Father Gezelle’s self-love?

As he was at the top of his art, some four years before passing away, Gezelle was surely worthy of something better than instrumental sociological action. For, in Fletre, his person was not misvalued, yet the meaning of his presence was misunderstood. His prestige, that is: his being a notable, is the explanation for the invitation to “grace the ceremony with this presence”, that is: to contribute to the confirmation of the attendants’ notability.

No words of his would have further enhanced the cultural and social domination exerted by the notables present in Fletre, for his only presence sufficed to corroborate it. What is worse, a speech of his might even have done more harm than good to the local elite. On the one hand, Gezelle’s poetic language was hardly intelligible to the native French speakers among the notables and, on the other hand, his (West Flemish) vernacular language would have been intelligible to the hoi polloi upon whom the notables’ cultural and social domination was exerted. Should the attendance happen to not understand the speech on the whole or partly on such an occasion, the auditors would have jeopardised their status of well-read notables who were deeply acquainted with the complex codes of public speaking they would comply with in times and places from which the boorish, uneducated masses of Flanders were excluded. Their belonging to the local elite could have been questioned and their ranking could have been negatively affected. Should the whole speech or only parts of it happen to be intelligible to the boorish, masses of Flanders, the auditors would have jeopardised their status of enlightened elite who are required to conduct the ordinary people. They would have lost some of their credit, they would have diminished their ascendency. The event would have thereby resulted in the opposite effect to that intended, from a sociological perspective at least.

As such risks prevailed against that of offending the excellent poet, some expedient was shrewdly found : “a Flemish note (…) in the concert of tributes to the great historian” was to be published a posteriori. However, in the issue of Bulletin containing “Tot Vleteren”, there is not a single mention of the incident that instigated the writing of the poem, let alone a hint about the related sociological stake. The introduction to the poem is rather vague: “Meyere’s tribute in Fletre has inspired one of the best poets in Flanders, doctor Guido Gezelle, who dedicated verses to Father Van Costenoble”. The readers who are now in the know will surely relish the sapid irony which paradoxically prompted both the editor’s initiative and the writer’s creation.

As a matter of fact no trace of the likely debates over the appropriateness of the publication can be documented, neither in the prints nor in the archives in my possession. The uncertain reactions to and the sure rancour at the publication have no better been evidenced so far. But who could in that time read the text in its original version? And who could read between the lines in the bargain? In a nutshell, who would actually benefit from another interpretation of what is supposed to wonderfully exemplify the art of poetry, unless they should take the risk of undermining some strong beliefs about the pundits’ design for, and loyalty towards, the French society?

Christian-Pierre Ghillebaert

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