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The Lexicon of Les Caves du Vatican

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

John McClelland
John McClelland*
Affiliation:
Victoria College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
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Abstract

Numerous entries in Gide's Journal attest that for him Les Caves du Vatican was to represent a break with the tradition of La Porte étroite. He is especially concerned that the novel's language be liberated from the orthodoxy imposed by current usage. Hence, in Les Caves there is what appears to be an unusually high incidence of extravagant names, exotic nouns, foreign words and phrases, argot, rare words, and lexical and semantic neologisms. This phenomenon has been either neglected or misunderstood, and can be explained only in correlation with Gide's systematic overturning in Les Caves of the standard narrative conventions of the Realist-Naturalist tradition. Gide realized that the revolution in thinking about language which was occurring around him could play a role in freeing the novel from the existing restrictions of the public's expectations. By his esoteric vocabulary he forces the reader to remember that the novel's “story” is the author's invention and the characters his playthings. That fact, forgotten since Balzac but now reestablished, restores to the novelist the creative freedom he needs. It is on that level that the significance of Les Caves du Vatican is to be found.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 2 , March 1974 , pp. 256 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 265 Research for this article was partially subsidized by a grant from the Canada Council. Quotations are taken from the Journal 1889-/939, Pléiade ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), hereafter referred to as J. ; and from Romans, récits et soties, œuvres lyriques, Pléiade ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1958). This latter text is as uncritical and unreliable as the one it apparently reproduces from vol. 7 of the Œuvres complètes, 15 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1932–39). I have retained it because it is generally ready to hand, but I depart from it once in preferring “méconsidérée” to “inconsidérée” (p. 758); the former is found in all editions of Les Caves except the two cited.

Note 2 in page 265 Not surprisingly, Philip Toynbee once referred to “the curious word ‘rejointoiement’ which Gide has coined” (“The Early Gide,” The New Statesman and Nation, 16 Oct. 1948, p. 331). In the following issue, 23 Oct. 1948, p. 350, “O.S.S.” corrects Toynbee's misapprehension.

Note 3 in page 265 Le Français Moderne, 20 (1952), 31–40.

Note 4 in page 265 Robert Faurisson, “‘Les Caves du Vatican’: Essai d'explication à l'usage des élèves et des étudiants,” L'Information Littéraire, 18 (1966), 129.

Note 5 in page 265 The source for many of the ideas expressed here—though not their development or formulation—is Roland

Barthes, Le Degré zéro de l'écriture, Médiations, No. 40 (Paris: Gonthier, 1968).

Note 6 in page 265 Ireland, Gide, Writers and Critics (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1963), pp. 45–46; Atkinson, “te Caves du Vatican and Bergson's Le Rire,” P ML A, 84 (1969), 328–35.

Note 7 in page 265 Gautier, p. 40, n. 12, has noted how “Gide est sensible à la sonorité des noms propres.”

Note 8 in page 265 Made even more ludicrous by the narrator's intervention, p. 760, explaining that however odd the name, it is really very common, and by his going on to mention some other, specifically unrelated, Blaphaphas, Blafafaz, and Blaphaface whom he has met.

Note 9 in page 265 Whatever effect this may have had on Gide's ears, to English ears it rings as false as John Clayton, Lord Grey-stoke, the real name of Tarzan.

Note 10 in page 265 Atkinson to the contrary, the name is composed of two parts, “venite” and “qua”; see Atkinson, p. 334.

Note 11 in page 265 W. M. Frohock, Style and Temper: Studies in French Fiction 1925–1960, Language and Style Series, No. 4 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), p. 6. By “reader” I mean the novel's ostensible public, those members of the “circuit lettré” having the same “culture secondaire classique” as Gide; see R. Escarpit, Sociologie de la littérature, 4th ed.,“Que sais-je?” No. 777 (Paris: P.U.F., 1968), pp. 98–108.

Note 12 in page 266 No major dictionary or encyclopedia knows of the existence of such a hat, but one was displayed in an exhibition of headwear—Chapeaux d'hier el d'aujourd'hui —held at the Musée Carnavalet in June-July 1949: “123. Chapeau d'homme ‘Cronstadt,‘ noir, feutre . . . 1895” (Catalogue de l'exposition). For Giraudoux it may possibly be a sporting hat: “LA FOLLE. Je vous ai montré son portrait, en cycliste, avec le Cronstadt” (La Folle de Chaillot, Paris: Grasset, 1946, p. 60), but Julius wears one made of black straw for his audience with the Pope (p. 811). He also wears one on two other occasions (pp. 690, 712) and both times the context suggests that a “Cronstadt” is very sober, almost formal.

Note 13 in page 266 From the context (p. 801), a kind of melon, but not found in any standard reference work.

Note 14 in page 266 Actually a slight distortion of the street's real name: Via Vecchiarelli.

Note 15 in page 266 Two minor uses of English, “50 kilom. on horseback, sans arrêt” (p. 717) and “un stripling plein de convoitise” (p. 824), may be ascribed to the influence of Faby during the period in question.

Note 16 in page 266 (have not identified the source. Gide may be confessing that he has forgotten it when he has Protos say “Nous avions lu cela quelque part.”

Note 17 in page 266 Correct version: “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense. …” Gide was particularly fond of Keats, as the numerous Journal entries attest; see esp. 24 June 1913, the very entry where the completion of Les Caves is announced (J ., pp. 387–88).

Note 18 in page 266 In passing, how are we to interpret the minor grammatical errors in “A mon loyal compagnon, son vieux oncle” (p. 716), and “s'accompagnant sur la guzla” (p. 740)? As a means of characterizing the speakers—Faby and Lafcadio —as non-Francophones? Or as examples of Gide's carelessness ?

Note 19 in page 266 All words used to illustrate Sects, iii and IV are given alphabetically in the Appendix, in context and with page references. I have relied on Littré, Hatzfeld-Darmesteter-Thomas (HDT), and the Larousse du XXe siècle (Lar. xx) as guides to the status and definition of any given word—at least as far as Gide's readership was concerned—at the time of Les Caces's publication.

Note 20 in page 266 According to Lar. xx and Robert, tapir is students' argot, meaning variously “professeur du cours de topographie” (at St-Cyr) and “élève qui prend (ou à qui on donne) des leçons particulières.” In Les Caves the word is applied twice to Amédée by Lafcadio.

Note 21 in page 266 Construed incorrectly, according to Gaston Esnault, Dictionnaire historique des argots français (Paris : Larousse, 1965). who claims the word is exclusively singular and used only in negative constructions.

Note 22 in page 266 Apparently a Gidian coinage in which the argot synonym bloc has been substituted in the expression faire de la prison.

Note 23 in page 266 Difficult to interpret. It could mean both “Je t'ai rendu un grand service” and “Tu ne m'as pas payé le service.”

Note 24 in page 266 This would seem to mean “ne pas perdre son temps,” but the context is not clear.

Note 25 in page 266 Definition according to Esnault, who dates the word from 1914, the year of Les Caves. Despite its frequent use with this meaning in “série noire” type fiction, Faurisson, p. 126, is the only other writer to suggest its application here. No work 1 have been able to consult gives the meaning proposed by Atkinson, p. 334, n. 20, “prejudiced and scrupulous person, bourgeois.” In any case, that meaning would not seem to have much relevance.

Note 26 in page 266 According to Littré, Supplément, in Normandy claironner means reluire, étinceler, and this is clearly the meaning intended in the context (p. 810).

Note 27 in page 266 A play on the French and Latin meanings of trivial1 .

Note 28 in page 266 Although suspecter and suspicion are perfectly valid jurisprudential terms, it is even more likely that for Gide they are anglicisms rather than legalisms.

Note 29 in page 266 In A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur (1919), conjonction occurs twice with the meaning of “rencontre.” The first time, Odette is criticized for parroting the snobbish speech of the “milieu Guermantes,” but the narrator later uses it without there being any visible ironic overtones (Á la recherche du temps perdu, 15 vols., Paris: Gallimard, 1966,ni, 125,and v, 141).

Note 30 in page 266 This may be considered a syntactic rather than a lexical irregularity; see reculèrent in the Appendix.

Note 31 in page 266 An anglicism from pop. Eng. brass = money ? The word is used in connection with Faby, the English “uncle.”

Note 32 in page 266 A very peculiar word spelled thus in the original publication of Les Caves (Nouvelle Revue Française, 11, mars 1914, p. 461), in the 1922 Gallimard edition (p. 204), in the Œuvres complètes (vu, 309), in the 1958 Pléiade edition (p. 811), and in the Livre de Poche (p. 176). However, the 1950 Gallimard edition spells it “bucolique” (p. 182), and this spelling persists in the “Collection Soleil” edition of 1967. “Buciloque” is not found in any dictionary, nor does a hypothetical Latin etymology give any clue to its meaning. And none of the definitions of “bucolique”—not even “sorte de jeu” tentatively suggested by Huguet, Diet, de la langue franc, au xvi“e siècle —is any help. Gautier, p. 36, classes it among the ”nouveaux adjectifs,“ incorrectly since the text reads ”Amédée devant lui aurait pu faire la buciloque sans qu'il le vît“ (my italics). Dorothy Bussy has translated the sentence to read ”Amédée might have turned a somersault in front of him“ (Lafcadio's Adventures, New York: Vintage, 1953, p. 165), which is at least acceptable since some kind of violent movement is implied. The Italian translation, I sotterranei del Valicano (Milan: Mondadori, 1933), p. 195, renders buciloque as ”qualsiasi smorfia,“ i.e., ”grimace or affectation“; and the Spanish version, Las cuevas del Valicano (Madrid: Dédalo, 1932), p. 189, gives ”gritar,“ i.e., ”shout.“

Note 33 in page 266 Only Lar. xx lists the word at all, in the form of the reflexive infinitive s'embrouillarder. “se charger de brouillard” or “sentir les premiers effets de l'ivresse.” Gide uses it to describe the odd opacity of the agate in Carola's boutons de manchette.

Note 34 in page 266 The initial decision that any given word or phrase was sufficiently “exotic” or “esoteric” to be included in Sects, ii, iii, or iv was obviously subjective. As much as possible this subjectivity has been refined by: consultation with colleagues; attentive reading of Gide's contemporaries; careful searching through Littré; HDT; Lar. xx; Robert; Bailly's Dictionnaire des synonymes (Paru: Larousse, 1947);Gougenheim's Dictionnaire fondamental de la langue française (Paris: Didier, 1958); Matoré's Dictionnaire du vocabulaire essentiel (Paris: Larousse, 1963); the Dictionnaire français-français des mots rares et précieux (Paris: Seghers, 1965); Rheims's Dictionnaire des mots sauvages (Paris: Larousse, 1969); Vander Beke's French Word Book (New York: Macmillan, 1929); and the 1908 edition of the Petit Larousse.

Note 35 in page 267 “L'ironie n'est pas assez apparente. J'ai l'air de parler sérieusement, malgré la pompe et la grandiloquence,” wrote Gide in the margin of one of the drafts of Les Caves (quoted in the “Notice” to the Pléiade edition, p. 1571).

Note 36 in page 267 A character of Gide's creation or Gide's own voice?

Note 37 in page 267 Is the recurrence of Anthime's rheumatism (p. 864) cause, effect, or symbol of his change of heart?

Note 38 in page 267 Not 1890 (Faurisson, p. 124), but three years later, “à l'époque du jubilé” (pp. 680, 681, 684).

Note 39 in page 267 All minor Italian characters, except Beppo, can also speak French ; see pp. 682–83, 778, 783, and 801.

Note 40 in page 267 In specific passages, e.g., to render the multiform beauty of the water lilies on the Vivonne or the intricacies of Odette's costume, Proust will resort to highly specialized, often technical, vocabulary, but these passages remain isolated set pieces, and in any case the words mean what the reader expects them to mean.

Note 41 in page 267 His position is best defined by the following quotation from the Journal: “… que jamais le mot ne precede I'idée. Ou bien: que le mot soit toujours nécessité par elle; il faut qu'il soit irrésistible, insupprimable” (quoted without reference by Gautier, p. 31).

Note 42 in page 267 There are also significant allusions to Lafcadio's interest in chess on pp. 715, 717, 740, 829, and 866.

Note 43 in page 267 Depending on how one chooses to read Les Liaisons dangereuses the terminus a quo could even be pushed back 30 years to Candide.

Note 44 in page 267 Sometime after the completion of this article and its acceptance for publication two monographs appeared, devoted to Les Caves: Christopher D. Bettinson, Gide: Les Caves du Vatican, Studies in French Literature, No. 20 (London: Arnold, 1972); and Alain Goulet, Les Caves du Vatican d'André Gide, étude méthodologique, Thèmes et Textes (Paris: Larousse, 1972). The latter is a much more extensive study and has a particularly welcome “Bibliographie critique” as its next-to-last chapter. Although both books reach conclusions similar to my own, neither really delves deeply into the question of language.