One of the hosts of the Michel de Swaen Circle bitterly remarks:
It was not such a long time ago that one could read the following words on the walls of certain schools: “Pupils are prohibited from throwing pebbles and speaking Flemish”. It was the time of the signum, a shoe that would be suspended around the neck of any child caught speaking Flemish (meaning his or her own language) on the school playground. This shoe would be transmitted by the “guilty” to any other schoolmate who they, in turn, would catch speaking Flemish. At the end of the break, the last pupil to wear the signum would be punished.
The Michel de Swaen Circle is fighting for bilingualism. It has adopted the name of the most famous Flemish author of the French language, Michel de Swaen (1654–1707), a doctor of medicine who translated El Cid into Dutch and whose major works include, alongside La botte couronnée,587 a theatre play entitled L’abdication de Charles-Quint.588
Ethnopluralism
Founded in October 1971 under strictly apolitical circumstances, the Michel de Swaen Circle has set itself the objective of defending the character and heritage of the French Netherlands, as well as that of promoting the cultural values of the Dutch language. It is headed by Jaak Fermaut, Nick Neirynck and Dominiek Hardebolle (who all stem from the federalist milieus that published the Courrier lillois589 in 1970–73). Its honorary president, Mr Nicolas Bourgeois, has authored a book entitled Hexagons and is the former chairman of the Bar Council.
The Circle is continuing the work undertaken by Abbé Gantois, who, having established the Lion de Flandre590 magazine before the war, passed away in 1968. Back in the 1950s, it was La Nouvelle Flandre,591 run by Doctor Jan Klaas and formerly known as Notre Flandre,592 that had taken charge of this endeavour.
Today, the Circle organises excursions to the Flanders region, popular song evenings, farm and old house restoration workshops, and conferences/debates. Its managerial staff offers free Dutch courses attended by approximately 200 people. Its correspondent in Belgian Flanders is Mr Wido Bourel, the co-founder of Hekkerschreeuwen.
Mr Neirynck declares:
In a world where individuals are increasingly subjected to standardisation and egalitarian trends, and human groups to assimilation, acculturation and levelling, what we propose is a new path — that of enabling our cultural values to achieve deep-rootedness through promotion.
On 25th June, 1975, a member of the Circle represented the French Netherlands during the traditional Tour de l’Yzer pilgrimage in Dicksmuide,593 where 100,000 Flemish people from all three lands meet every year to honour the memory of the Flemish soldiers who fell during World War I. On the occasion, he specified the following:
The French Flemish movement shuns any and all extremism and strives to respect the open-mindedness and “pluralism” that characterise the peoples of the North; which is why it rises up against the uniformisation and egalitarian trends that human groups are nowadays subjected to. A universal melting pot would only serve to impoverish humanity, for it is indeed true that the existence of a just society does not entail a disappearance of differences. It is only by remaining rooted into their own culture that the men and women of our land will regain confidence in the future.
In 1976, the Michel de Swaen Circle published a file on regionalism. In it, it declares its hostility to both Marxism and the values of the mercantile bourgeoisie, while simultaneously proclaiming its support for ethnopluralism. Furthermore, it also rejects separatism, which it contrasts with autonomism:
Just like any other movement, regionalism has its limits, and it must strive, above all, to avoid contributing to Europe’s weakening; for dividing Europe could only serve American or Russian interests.
Ever since October 1976, the Tÿl monthly bulletin run by Mr Nick Neirynck has been added to the notebooks and documentation published by the Circle.
There are also other organisations, such as the Komitee voor Frans-Vlaanderen594 (KFV) headed by Mr Luc Verbeke in Belgium, and the Comité flamand de France,595 whose creation in 1853 was actually a response to a decree issued by the Academic Council prohibiting the teaching of the Flemish language in all schools located in the Nord department of France (one of the founders of this committee was musicologist Edmond de Coussemaker, whose Popular Flemish Songs of France, collected in 1856, are part of the repertoire of our contemporary French Flemish singers).
In 1972, the Ons Erfdeel Foundation launched its Septentrion trimonthly, a magazine of Dutch culture published in French and edited by Mr Jozef Deleu and André Demedts. Since 1976, it has also been publishing a Yearbook of the French Netherlands.
Barrès596 once wrote:
Each day, we destroy what is undoubtedly the best in us — our smallholder farmers. One carelessly commits to loosening or breaking all the bonds which tie today’s children and tomorrow’s men to their soil. They can no longer speak their own maternal language and are taught to despise it. While behaving this way, one fails to notice that what one destroys are not actually the words, but the vivacious attachments and profound ways of feeling things.
As for Gromaire, the painter who was born by the Sambre river, he stated the following:
Individuality is as important to countries as it is to men. The more one is themselves, the more one experiences the inner continuity of a civilisation, and the more one finds themselves capable of perceiving the values of eternity beyond the fleeting fantasies of the picturesque and the imitative.
*
Les Flamands de France, an essay by Louis de Baecker. Ed. Gérard Monfort (Le Portulan, Manoir de Saint-Pierre de Salerne, 27 Brionne), 408 pages.
De la religion du Nord avant le christianisme,597 an essay by Louis de Baecker. Ed. Gérard Monfort, 354 pages.
Histoire des Pays-Bas français,598 a collection of essays edited by Louis Trénard. Privat, Toulouse, 582 pages.
***
The former editor-in-chief of Courrier Lillois, Mr Alain Walenne (Marc Wattiez), is currently in charge of a Nordic Cultural Institute (ICN, Maison de l’Europe, 219 bis boulevard de la Liberté, 59000 Lille), which has organised several public events during the past months: a Viking workshop, a visit to the outdoor museum of Bokrijk (near Gand), a conference by Mr Henri Fromage on the mythology of the Artois region, a sculpture exhibition (Maurits de Maertelaere), an exhibition of popular craftsmanship (Frank Seydlitz), etc.
The Flemish Committee of France, long headed by Monsignor Dupont and then taken over in 1973 by the curator of the Hospice Comtesse de Lille museum, Mr Philippe Jessu, seems to be slumbering these days. On its part, the KFV publishes some ‘Mededelingen’ (communications) in the shape of a trimonthly magazine (Vanderhaeghenstraat 46, 8790 Weregem, Belgium).
The twenty-ninth Frans-Vlaamse Kultuurdag was held in Waregem on 19th September, 1976, and the ninth Frans-Vlaamse Dag in Hulst, Zeeland on 2nd April, 1977. As for the fiftieth Yser pilgrimage, it took place on 3rd July, 1977.
Michel de Swaen Circle, P.O. Box 5, 290, 59379 Dunkerque Cedex — ‘Tÿl’, P.O. Box 5, 266, 59379 Dunkerque Cedex — ‘Ons Erfdeel’ /Jozef Deleu, Murissonstraat 160, 8530 Rekkem, Belgium.
*
The Bretons
During the month of April 1973, the Breton Strollad ar Vro party (SAV) banned the television airing of a film entitled Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise.599 Released in 1936 and starring Noël-Noël, the film focuses on a Breton servant who ‘journeys northwards’ to Paris, where his foolish and naïve actions accumulate — which is why it is ‘an insult to the Breton people’.
Back then, the SAV party was one of the emanations of a polymorphous entity, the Emsav (pronounced ‘emsao’), a term that can be likened to the Italian Risorgimento600 and is used to designate the Breton Movement.
The Parisian public opinion seems to have never clearly grasped the movement’s purpose — for although its history reaches back into the 19th century, it still evades traditional political labelling. In his book entitled Breiz Atao, Mr Olier Mordrel601 writes:
Historically, the issue relates to several important dates.
‘The Ancient Land of My Fathers’
In 1499, the matrimonial contract of Duchess Anne and Louis XII guarantees Brittany a certain level of autonomy. Governance of the duchy is meant to fall to the king’s second son, with the duke being crowned in Rennes. In 1515, however, François d’Angoulême, who had married Claude, Anne of Brittany’s daughter, is crowned as François I and seems to put Breton rights at risk.
In August 1532, the Breton states gather in Vannes and deliver a petition to the king. A month later, the famous Franco-Breton treaty known as the Plessis-Macé Edict is signed, guaranteeing Brittany’s autonomy within the kingdom of France and promising to preserve its Parliament and local customs, while exempting its inhabitants from all military and fiscal obligation. Although the treaty would never be abolished, it would never be respected either, a fact that is mentioned by Breton autonomists when justifying their own actions.
The first Breton Association, founded by a group of Breton liberals, dates back to 1829. A second one bearing the same name surfaces in 1834. Napoleon III, however, abolishes it by means of a decree.
In 1898, writers such as François Botrel and Anatole Le Braz launch a Regionalist Breton Union (URB) strongly inspired by the Gaelic League. Two years later, future grammarian François Vallée creates, with the help of poet François Jaffrenou, the Bardic College or Gorsedd of Little Brittany.
That is when Taldir-Jaffrenou proceeds to compose a Breton national anthem entitled Bro goz ma Zadou (‘The Ancient Land of My Fathers’), all to the tune of the Welsh anthem Hen Wlad vy Nhada.
In 1905, Abbé Yann-Vari (Jean-Marie) Perrot, a small yet well-built man with the large head of a stubborn bloke, undertakes to regroup ‘Bretonising’ Catholics. He founds the Bleun-Brug (‘Heather Flower’) Association, whose name, he says, ‘symbolises the tenacity of the Breton race’. He also launches the Feiz ha Breiz magazine and proclaims: Ar Brezoneg hag ar feiz a zo breur ha c’hoar e Breiz (‘In Brittany, the Breton and his faith are brother and sister’).
Later on, communist teacher Yann Sohier would engage in an analogous effort targeting non-religious people. In 1933, he would establish the Ar Falz (‘The Sickle’) newspaper and strive to free the teaching of the Breton language from the influence of clericalism. In passing, he would state that to the Bretons, ‘the example set by the Soviets is of immense value’ (Ar Falz, April 1933). Upon Mr Sohier’s passing in 1935 (at the age of thirty-four), Abbé Perrot would attend his funeral alongside Marcel Cachin.602 As for his work, it would be continued by a linguist called Kerlann.
The ‘real’ policy commences in 1911, when a monument celebrating the Franco-Breton Treaty of 1532 and depicting Duchess Anne kneeling at the feet of her lord and master, French King Charles VIII, is inaugurated in Rennes. During the ceremony, a prolonged whistling is heard, causing a scandal. The whistler is none other than author and poet Camille Le Mercier d’Erm, who would go on to write an Anthology of the National Bards and Poets of Armorican Brittany (1922). He makes no secret of his ‘pro-independence’ sentiments.
A few weeks later, during the Saint-Renan congress, the most active elements of the Breton Regionalist Union split off from it and, led by Jean Choleau, found the Regionalist Breton Federation, which would soon morph into the Breton Nationalist Party (PNB).
A year later, Yves Le Diberder launches Brittia magazine, whose purpose is to turn Celtic culture into the very foundation of Breton rebirth. Then, in October 1912, Le Mercier d’Erm publishes a separatist manifesto and releases the Breiz Dishual (‘Liberated Brittany’) journal. In his eyes, just like those of Marie de France,603 ‘Brittany is poetry’. Among other things, what he suggests is that the date of Brittany’s national day be moved from the 14th of July to the 19th of September, which marks the anniversary of the crowning of the first Breton king, Nominoë. On his part, Emile Masson604 (Ewan Gouesnou Brenn) creates the Brug journal, which advocates a socialist-revolutionary sort of syndicalism (and whose texts would be reedited in 1972 through Maspéro). World War I, however, puts an end to these endeavours.
To Re-Establish a Spiritual Family
The first to leave for the front, the Bretons fight with exceptional tenacity. They leave 240,000 casualties on the battlefields, totalling an average of one inhabitant out of fourteen (compared to one inhabitant out of twenty-eight for the rest of France).
When the armistice is signed, the 240,000 dead men weigh heavily on the public opinion. Many Bretons are under the impression that Paris only shows interest in them when spilling their blood. Bécassine605 and her blunders, the ‘yokels’ and the ‘Mahauts’. ‘The potatoes go to the pigs, the peels to the Bretons’. ‘Alcoholism and round hats’. All the old clichés are now outdated.
The foremost event of the year 1919 is the emergence of the Breiz Atao (‘Brittany Forever’) journal, a title that would soon become a war cry and even a label: ‘Now that bloke is a real Breiz Atao!’.
This is what the people running Breiz Atao, namely Job de Roincé (who would later drift towards Maurrassian reformism), Olier Mordrel and Morvan Marchal, declare in a most straightforward manner:
The three ailments which Brittany suffers from are tuberculosis, alcoholism and French domination.
Swotting up on the books of bards, heroic tales and the writings of Arthur Griffith (the man who created the Irish Sinn Fein), they proclaim the right of peoples to draw from their own heritage the necessary inspiration for self-governance.
Soon, the journal becomes famous for its original standpoints. Through Morvan Marchal, it considers the francophone ‘Gallos’ inhabiting Eastern Brittany (the High Bretons) to be fully-fledged Bretons, despite the fact that they reside ‘beyond Vannes and Guingamp’. It also rejects the stereotyped image of a touristic and ‘bagpipe-bearing’ Brittany. And above all, what it imposes is the following formula — Na ruz, na gwenn, Breizhad hepken (‘Not red, not white, only Breton!’).
Mr Olier Mordrel says:
We maintained that one could indeed be a free-thinker or a Protestant, a proponent of Druidism or materialism, a Free-Mason or a Capuchin, while simultaneously remaining an outstanding Breton.
He then adds
Our primordial concern lay in not allowing ourselves to be confined to the capitalism-Marxism dilemma, since the essential purpose of Breton nationalism was to re-establish a spiritual family.
On the linguistic level, the situation has never ceased to deteriorate ever since that day in 1845 when, addressing teachers, a deputy prefect declared:
Above all else, gentlemen, remember that your only role in this establishment is to kill the Breton language.
Mr Mordrel recounts:
I remember a farm in Plouguerneau where the grandparents, unable to speak a single word of French but prohibited from using the Breton language to communicate with their grandchildren, who had come to spend their school holidays with them, addressed the children using gestures punctuated with “erm, erm” sounds, as if they were both deaf and dumb. The children responded to this behaviour by treating them harshly, as if the grandparents were simple-minded beasts.
At the start of the 1920s, the Breiz Atao team proceeds to create the Unvaniez Yaouankiz Vreiz (‘Union of Breton Youth’), which, in 1927, turns into the Breton Autonomist Party (PAB).
Its first congress is held on 11th September, 1927 in Rosporden, under the fluttering Gwenn ha Du (‘The White and the Black’), the new flag of the Breton people drawn by Morvan Marchal. Whereas its five black bands represent the ‘Gallo’ dioceses (Dol, Nantes, Rennes, Saint-Malo and Saint-Brieuc), the four white ones symbolise the Breton language dioceses — Trégor, Léon, Cornouaille and Vannes. As for its ermine canton, it is taken from the coat of arms of the historical duchy of Brittany.
> Gathered in Châteaulin in 1928, the PAB elects a triumvirate comprising Olier Mordrel as the CEO of propaganda, Maurice Duhamel as the editor-in-chief of Breiz Atao, and Fransez Debauvais as its Secretary General. Yann Brickler is appointed as its treasurer. In contrast to the old Nationalist Party, the PAB, which chose the four-spiral hevoud606 as its emblem (a symbol later replaced by a triskelion), is not essentially separatist. The following is stated in its programme:
We believe that, account taken of the current state of both Europe and the world, the severing of all ties between Brittany and France would only be a source of incomplete solutions to the problems faced by our land. We do, however, reject any harmful assimilation of our material and moral interests.
It is not nostalgic either:
The old Brittany of our kings and dukes has vanished, never to return. We respectfully hail its memory but do not seek to reconstitute it as such. A people cannot go back to its origins any more than a river can return to its source. We are modern Bretons.
Contact is made with the other regionalist organisations. On 12th September, 1927, a Central Committee of French National Minorities is created. There would also be a journal, Peuples et frontières,607 including Breton, Alsatian, Flemish, Occitan, Catalan and Basque columns.
On the linguistic level, the Breiz Atao team launches the Gwalarn journal; Roparz Hémon is entrusted with its management. Here is what he declares:
We have always been Nordics. As soon as we detached ourselves from France, it was towards the north that we directed our gaze, just as a compass needle immediately determines the right direction once it has been cleaned of rust.
Controversies and Viewpoints Page 24
