PFSCL XXXV, 69 (2008) Ana and Commemorative “Truth” JENNIFER R. PERLMUTTER The frontispiece of Scaligerana 1 (1666) shows the philologist Joseph Scaliger seated in front of a grand residence. Four attentive men stand around him while two others, also standing, are engaged in their own conversation behind his chair. Scaliger seems to be holding court, a middleaged bearded man transmitting his knowledge to his notably younger disciples. He gestures grandly while in the foreground, a fifth male figure stands in the shadows, apparently transcribing his words. The scene appears intimate despite the outdoor setting and the conversation spontaneous, qualities reproduced in Scaligerana itself. What Scaliger’s disciples valued were his anecdotes and witticisms, golden moments of conversational practices that were particular to the salon culture of seventeenth-century France. Their self-prescribed task was to gather and publish these disparate remarks in order to commemorate their mentor. Not only did they aim to preserve Scaliger’s memory as the commemorative task most immediately implies, but as friends they also aimed to honor and celebrate it. By compiling a work of memorable moments, Scaliger’s disciples painted a portrait of their subject as he shone in conversation which complemented the scholarly self-portrait he himself had created through his more writerly corpus. The resulting work, Scaligerana, is representative of the commemorative genre of seventeenth-century France known as the ana which developed at a time when the oral and the written served as models for one another and were thus inextricably linked. 2 Allegedly transcribed from discussions such 1 This frontispiece is reproduced in A.-F. Aude’s Bibliographie critique et raisonnée des ana français et étrangers. Published in Paris in 1910 and including works that appear up until this date, this very useful bibliography nonetheless stretches the definition of the ana to include any work whose title ends in “-ana”, thereby trivializing the genre’s defining feature, that of orality. 2 The salon was the most notable place in which the written and the oral came together. Much has been written on it, of course, as a space for conversation as 708 Jennifer R. Perlmutter as the one described above between learned men and their disciples and published for an equally erudite audience, the ana’s content and form reflected its oral source in that it engaged a particular and determinant participant group, was fragmented, lacked an overarching narrative, and drew on a disparate array of topics. Such qualities of spontaneity created a certain intimacy with the honored subject, as though the reader, like the shadowy transcriber, were eavesdropping. However, this element of natural spontaneity was at odds with the goal of commemoration as celebration, which typically requires an idealized, “artful” portrayal of the honoree. Allegedly copying the words as they were spoken, compilers risked revealing compromising thoughts expressed by their subject who did not anticipate the publication of his private exchanges and might have otherwise spoken more carefully. Therein lay a challenge for compilers: how could one manage the tension between effectively commemorating and remaining faithful to the oral quality that defined the ana? In other words, how could one honor the dead without doing away with a genre? Only four ana appeared between 1666 and 1669 3 while approximately twenty-five appeared between 1691and 1701. I posit that this twenty-two year gap between the early or first-generation ana and the secondgeneration ones 4 is in large part due to the tensions that resulted from the oral qualities that compilers eventually rendered more literate. The present study compares two first-generation ana published in 1666 and 1667 with two second-generation ones published in 1693 and 1697. This comparison ultimately reveals the development of a more crafted and literate form suggesting that compilers eventually reevaluated the markers of orality that had defined the genre. While during the earlier period compilers played a primarily stenographic role in the compilation of an ana, they later became editors, shaping the texts they published. They did so to achieve their apparently contradictory goals of truthful transcription and artful imitation well as for the evaluation and modification of manuscripts for possible future publication. See in particular Faith E. Beasley’s Salons, History, and the Creation of 17th-Century France: Mastering Memory, Elizabeth C. Goldsmith’s Exclusive Conversations: the Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-Century France, her edited volume Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France and Carolyn C. Lougee’s Le paradis des femmes: Women, Salons and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France. 3 These include Prima Scaligerana (1669), Scaligerana (1666), Perroniana (1667) and Thuana (1667). 4 The distinction between first-generation and second-generation ana is first and foremost temporal. Ana and Commemorative “Truth” 709 of their subjects, an imitation that went beyond merely a copy to an idealized portrait of the honoree. This contradiction between truthful transcription and artful imitation stemmed from the ana’s dual role as historical document and memorializing medium. As a historian, the compiler was primarily a stenographer; he aimed for a natural, direct presentation of the subject. Yet as a commemorator, the compiler was an editor, responsible for carefully crafting a favorable image of his subject for posterity. Among the handful of studies devoted to the ana, 5 Francine Wild’s impressive book Naissance du genre des Ana (1574-1712) is the most comprehensive and provides a solid foundation for the present inquiry. She approaches the genre historically, explaining that, “Mon premier objectif a été d’établir et de retracer l’histoire des recueils, afin de les situer avec précision dans la génération et dans le milieu qui leur ont donné naissance” (80-1). Based on her doctoral thesis, this book defines the ana, discusses the content and reception of individual works, and suggests some theoretical questions that arise with the genre. 6 The present article builds on Wild’s work and suggests broader social implications of the ana’s development from a transcribed genre to an edited one. Wild and the other scholars who have studied the ana generally agree on its defining features. Compilers formed the title of an individual ana by adding the Latinized suffix “-ana” to their subject’s last name while they themselves usually remained anonymous. The first ana published in 1666 honored Joseph Scaliger, for example, and was thus entitled Scaligerana. 7 5 Literary scholars Richard Maber, Alain Montadon and Malina Stefanovska have written brief studies of the ana as anecdote, focusing on its anecdotal content and fragmentary form. Mohamed Abdel-Halim considers Antoine Galland’s role in the compilation of these texts and suggests reasons why second-generation ones were enthusiastically received. Bernard Beugnot paves the way towards further inquiry into this intriguing genre in “Forme et histoire: Le statut des ana” by providing a handy reference chart and suggesting the possibility that this commemorative genre really did its subjects a disservice. 6 In her convincing article entitled “Les Ana et la divulgation de l’intimité,” Wild begins to problematize the act of writing and publishing ana. She argues that the publication of the ana forced the erudite men they honored to reconsider their previously-established boundaries of privacy. 7 A first volume of this work entitled Prima Scaligerana was finally published in 1669. Like the second volume entitled Scaligerana, it had circulated in manuscript form for years before its publication. Written almost entirely in Latin, Prima Scaligerana stands apart from most other ana which are almost exclusively in French. That Joseph Scaliger was a philologist interested in linguistic parentage most likely explains the compiler’s choice of language. 710 Jennifer R. Perlmutter The honoree was almost always a learned man 8 - a doctor, a linguist, a grammarian, and so forth - and was considered both the subject and the author of the work. Although his was the only name to appeaar in the published text, he usually remained unaware of the compilation or publication of an ana in his honor. Compilers transcribed in private and traditionally published their work following the death of their subject. Roger Zuber has observed that, “une des grandes innovations de la Renaissance, et dont le XVII e siècle bénéficie directement et pleinement, c’est d’avoir assigné au livre imprimé le rôle d’amplificateur de mémoire” (20). Aware of a book’s potential value as memory enhancer (“amplificateur”), members of the French intellectual elite of the seventeenth century chose this medium to preserve the memory of select peers. While writers of biographies and eulogies often adhere to principles of verisimilitude in their idealization of an honoree and use their own voice as a tool for doing so, compilers of ana hide behind their subjects, effacing themselves to allow the subject to appear in his own words. In this way, they furnish details gleaned from their subject’s conversations, enhancing or “amplifying” readers’ memory of him, but do not edit them. They strive for a realistic rather than idealized depiction. * * * * By definition, the works of the ana genre together form a disparate and disjointed collection. Each ana reflects the particularity of the person whom it honors and necessarily echoes that of the compiler who puts it together. The four I discuss below are no exception. Selected as most representative of the period in which they were published, these works are similar primarily in that they are fragmented collections of an honoree’s thoughts. Rather than comparing works within the same period, I will therefore instead highlight the genre’s trajectory from transcribed texts to more literate ones, comparing representative first-generation with representative second-generation ones. The first ana published was Scaligerana which commemorated the life and preserved the knowledge of Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609). Published in 1666, this ana contains articles alphabetically arranged on topics from “Abbayes” to “Zurich” and exemplifies how a compiler’s stenographic goal can result in a work notable for its range rather than its cohesiveness. For instance, the article entitled “Bearn” contains a series of unrelated com- 8 The two comical exceptions are the Arliquiniana, ostensibly in honor of Harlequin, published in 1701, and the Anonimiana, published in 1700 in honor of no one. Ana and Commemorative “Truth” 711 ments on this region, beginning with its inhabitants’ linguistic capacity and ending with a note on how they give birth. Scaliger’s ‘bon mot’ was: En Bearn ils parlent Gascon, & n’entendent point les Espagnols. Le Bearn ne sera jamais annexé à la Couronne. Ils battent monoye en Bearn, & la font ronde au moulinet. [...] En Bearn lors que la femme est accouchée, elle va tirer la charruë, & le mary se met au lict comme la commere. Je croy que cela ne se fait plus (27). Several pages later, the reader learns that “Les Esseens ne chioient point le jour du Sabbat” (76). And in a seemingly uncharacteristic philosophical spirit, Scaliger observes this: “Melancholiques. Tous ceux qui ont estudié le sont” (154). These passages are quotidian in form and content and are typical of this and other first-generation ana. They amount to an unedited transcription of a private exchange during which the speaker felt himself at ease to speak his mind. A certain betrayal of intimacy was essential to the traditional structure of the ana as a written transcription of a casual conversation between a mentor and his disciple. Rather than erase their subject’s vulgarities, biases and physical deformities, compilers effaced themselves so as to allow him to portray himself more exactly through his own word. The uncrafted image of their subject that resulted offended many and did nothing to promote the reputation that the honoree had established during his lifetime. 9 Referring to Scaligerana, one of the compilers of the Menagiana (1693) expresses his concern that this work is not worthy of Scaliger: Bien des gens croyent que le Scaligérana fait tort à la grande réputation que Scaliger s’étoit acquise. Il sembleroit que ceux qui l’ont recueilly l’auroient fait pour le diminuer, si on ne savoit qu’ils étoient tellement prévenus en sa faveur, que, prenant tout ce qu’il disoit pour des oracles, ils ont cru (sans parler des vetilles, des bagatelles, des faussetez ausquelles ils se sont arrestez) qu’il ne falloit pas même obmettre les injures indignes d’un honnête homme & les obscénitez qui luy échapoient (unpaginated preface). Although the less-than-flattering presentation of Scaliger was not likely to undermine his reputation among sympathetic readers such as the compilers of the Menagiana (1693), it is apparent from this comment that it could harm his image among others. As the ana found an increasing number of readers among those who did not necessarily know the subject personally or 9 In referring to these early works, Abdel-Halim remarks that, “L’opinion quasi unanime était que les ana publiés nuisaient à la réputation des grands hommes auxquels on les attribuait” (398). 712 Jennifer R. Perlmutter have a firm idea of his value to society, 10 the savants became understandably concerned that the ana might not be portraying them at their best. Like several others, the compiler of the Scaligerana got too “close” to his subject, crossing the line between verisimilitude, a polished version of the truth, and raw truth itself. The second first-generation ana published was entitled Perroniana (1667) 11 and its appearance posed a similar risk to the reputation of its subject, the Cardinal Du Perron (1556-1618). This work contains random observations similar to those in Scaligerana and yet few extended discourses on religion which readers might instead expect from a person of Du Perron’s standing. It retains the spontaneous, unedited quality apparent in its predecessor. Under the heading “Monsieur de BOURBONNE,” we learn of the Cardinal’s displeasure with his host: “Mon Dieu quel mauvais dîner j’ay fait chez luy! mal apprêté, mal ordonné & de mauvaise viande” (116). This exclamatory declaration on the quality of a past dinner retains qualities of spontaneity and is a detail, a memory amplifier, atypical of those usually preserved in print. (It is also extremely unseemly and unflattering for a religious leader to be so concerned with food as it evokes the image of fat priests and starving peasants.) Similarly, the sentiments expressed in the following passage do not do much to further the Cardinal’s reputation. Having settled in Switzerland after facing religious persecution for his Calvinist heritage, the French-born Du Perron allows himself the following vague yet strongly critical remark: “Les FRANÇOIS sont fort insolens, indiscrets, déloyaux; de cela nous avons l’exemple des choses que les François firent en Italie” (255-6). He goes further in criticizing French writers: “LANGUES [...] Je crois que la Langue Françoise est parvenue à sa perfection, parce qu’elle commence à decliner, & tous ceux qui écrivent aujourd’hui ne font rien qui vaille [...]” (310). The publication of such remarks disparaging the French and their language underscores the incongruity of publishing them for posterity. It also distinguishes the ana, a genre 10 Wild attests to the broad appeal of both the first and the second Scaligerana: “Les Scaligerana intéressaient à la fois par leur contenu savant et par la nouveauté du genre, par ce témoignage vécu qu’ils apportaient sur un savant dont le prestige était très grand. Ils furent donc lus non seulement par le milieu lettré, mais aussi, le succès de la vente l’implique, par des ‘curieux’ qui y trouvaient une vision plus moderne, plus centrée sur la personne des écrivains, de la vie littéraire et intellectuelle” (Naissance 121). 11 Perroniana and Thuana almost always appeared bound together. At 62 pages, the latter was probably considered unmarketable on its own. Most ana were between 300 and 450 pages. Ana and Commemorative “Truth” 713 transcribed from an oral source, from more writerly and artificial renderings such as biographies or memoirs. Compiled by and presented to an elite or savant audience, Scaligerana and Perroniana tread a fine line in their representations of reality. In their quest for accuracy, the compilers of these two ana 12 often went too far and violated privacy, incorporating comments that might indeed have originated with the subject, but that did not necessarily present him in the best light. Truthful representation, the result of compilers’ purely stenographic task, could therefore compromise the celebratory aspect of the commemorative project. * * * * By the end of the seventeenth century, the ana genre as a whole had fallen into disfavor with its intended savant readership. An anonymous manuscript of 1697 clearly conveys distrust of the genre: “En vérité, si j’étais habile homme, je mettrais dans mon testament que je renie tous les ana que l’on ferait sous mon nom, car je crois que tous ces recueils n’ont point fait honneur aux personnes que l’on a voulu honorer” (Beugnot 69). The writers of the 1721 edition of the Dictionnaire de Trévoux also do not hide their suspicions about the genre. They define “ana” in the following way: A n a , s.m. Les livres en ana. Ce mot ne signifie rien et n’est qu’une terminaison latine de noms adjectifs neutres pluriels ; mais parce que depuis quelques temps on a formé de ces sortes d’adjectifs latins, des titres à des livres, même français, qui sont des recueils de mots ou sentiments mémorables de quelques savants ou gens d’esprit : on appelle ces livres, des livres en ana, ou simplement des ana ; ainsi l’on dit : Tous ces livres en ana, ou tous ces ana me déplaisent fort. Members of the intellectual elite were understandably concerned for their reputations. They had to protect their image; it seems almost inevitable that the genre would have to shift and become less stenographic. It was one thing to converse casually with one’s peers and disciples, but quite another to have the resulting unpolished judgments publicized to an ever-broadening readership that later included the worldly mondains. As the savants 12 The content of Prima Scaligerana (1669) is similar to that of its predecessor and contains the same qualities of natural spontaneity. It differs most significantly in that it is mostly in Latin. Wild suggests that the alternance between French and Latin mimics Scaliger’s speech: “Est-ce Scaliger qui a changé de langue, ou le rédacteur? La qualité du style, en français et en latin, permet de penser que c’est l’auteur [...]” (Naissance 103). 714 Jennifer R. Perlmutter took notice of the possible enduring and far-reaching mark of their words, a process of self-censorship began. At the same time, the mondains who valued conversation and its written representation gained appreciation for this once exclusive genre. They thirsted for knowledge of cultural celebrities and consequently, the ana genre showed no signs of fading away. The number of editions published, the proliferation of counterfeit ones as well as the reviews that appeared in the widely-read newspaper Le Mercure galant attest to the ana’s appeal to these seventeenth-century socialites. 13 This popularity contributed to the anxiety experienced by members of the intellectual elite who recognized that the ana was a historical document that perpetuated their reputations (and that of France) as well as a commemorative work. This led to their reconsideration of the original goal of truthful transcription, for it was precisely the unedited qualities of orality that had largely defined the genre that threatened the reputations of those honored. 14 Casualness had given way to carelessness. If the impact of such laxity were merely stylistic, this negligence could be overlooked. However with the construction and preservation of an individual’s memory, of a learned man’s memory in particular, the implications of such negligence were graver. In commemorating an individual, compilers of ana also memorialized a facet of elite society, a society they themselves belonged to. If they inadvertently tarnished the subject’s image in the readers’ eyes, they also tarnished that of their social group. In How Societies Remember, historian Paul Connerton observes that “control of a society’s memory largely conditions the hierarchy of power” (1). Just as the public aspect of the execution of Louis XVI would deny “his status as king” among witnesses (8), the public discrediting of a savant through an ana challenged his and his class’s status as elite among readers. How then did the savants involved in the production of ana retain the unique stylistic aspects of this new genre while maintaining their subjects’ honorable reputations among their everbroadening readership? 13 Aude notes that both pricey, beautifully bound volumes and ones printed on cheaper paper were available, which suggests the ana’s broad readership (VII). Stefanovska, for her part, likens the ana’s appeal to that of the cabinets de curiosité in vogue at the time in that they both held hidden treasures for the curious to discover (114). 14 Aude blames the ana’s fall into disfavor on both the compilers’ lack of talent and the remoteness of the written word. He writes, “Ce qui pouvait être présenté d’une manière très piquante par l’auteur, ce qui était excellent dans sa bouche et animé par son geste et sa physionomie paraît bien froid sur le papier” (IIX). Ana and Commemorative “Truth” 715 * * * * Ironically, an article in Perroniana itself offers a solution. Under the heading “IMITATION,” we read, “La transcription & la traduction sont deux des meilleurs moyens de l’imitation” (291). Compilers of first-generation ana transcribed their subjects’ words, producing early-modern versions of unauthorized biographies albeit in the first person. Some readers may have been intrigued, but potential subjects feared for their reputations. “La traduction” instead implies an editorial hand, one whose goal is not merely stenographic. Rather than copying the words of a learned man, a compiler would do better to translate them, to render his speech literate. The resulting ana would still have a spontaneous oral quality, but would respect the classical ideal of verisimilitude, an artful imitation of the truth. A variation on this editorial hand is in fact omnipresent in a later edition of the Perroniana, published in 1740. It contains a lengthy foreword that names the many compilers who have shaped the manuscript, writing notes in the margins and changing content with the goal of correcting errors. 15 It thereby credits them in part for the book’s contents. There were then multiple authors of this edition: the subject who spoke the words and the compilers who commented on them. The self-effacement that had originally defined the role of ana compilers is absent; these compilers now call attention to their role as editors. Subjects of second-generation ana published between 1691 and 1701 and their family members paved the way for this expression of editorial presence. Many members of the elite who anticipated the publication of such a work in their family name began to take matters into their own hands. Charles de Valois, for instance, son of historiographer and government official Adrien de Valois (1607-1692), compiled an ana in homage to his father thereby ensuring control over the final product. 16 Culling not only from his father’s own writings, but also from their lengthy conversations, 15 Most of these compilers were not contemporaries of Cardinal du Perron - the foreword is dated 1736 - and would have only had a written text to work from. 16 In reference to these later ana, Wild notes that “Les autres, comme le Menagiana ou le Valesiana, sont présentés comme un hommage filial ou amical. Les déclarations des avant-propos montrent bien qu’il n’y a plus aucune naïveté dans les recueils. Ils ne contiennent aucune révélation involontaire, et on a retranché tout ce qui, même anodin, risquait de nuire à l’image de l’auteur. ” (“Les ana et . . . ” 40) 716 Jennifer R. Perlmutter Charles de Valois published Valesiana (1694) 17 very shortly after his father’s death. Valesiana reflects the compiler’s awareness of his important role beyond that of stenographer. 18 As the son mentions in the foreword, a compiler must use his judgment to determine what to include. The son writes, “Ceux qui sont d’un caractère plus raisonnable, c’est-à-dire, qui ont un vrai mérite, estiment ce qui vient des grands hommes, quoi que la vénération qu’ils ont pour eux ne détruise pas leur discernement” (unpaginated). A compiler’s own merit therefore depends on his discernment much in the same way as his subject’s does. Rather than copying what he hears, a compiler should instead evaluate the conversation’s content and select what readers would consider worthy of print. The stenographer has become an editor whose reputation is also at stake, 19 not merely a transcriber but a shaper of material. A result of this editorial hand is an ana decidedly more literate in form. Although qualities of oral spontaneity such as fragmentation and highly diverse subject matter still characterize Valesiana, several articles are of significant length, which suggests a writerly project rather than the mere transcribing of hear-say. One such article aims to provide a more coherent explanation of the history of France’s first kings. Valois begins, “Rien n’est plus mal écrit que les fragmens qui nous restent de l’histoire de nos premiers Rois de la troisiéme Race et des petits Souverains qui vivoient de leurs temps. Ce que nous en lisons ne nous fait voir que les écrivains peu exacts” (142). The twenty-one pages that follow provide Valois’s version of the history of empires and kingdoms, an apparent attempt to improve on what has already been written on the subject. A historiographer, Adrien de Valois was an officially-appointed writer. It is very likely that his son found this article among his papers and included it within this work dedicated to his 17 Valesiana in fact appeared in September 1693, but bears the date 1694. 18 It is important to note that the compiler’s name appears on the title page. Monsieur de Valois, fils, does not hide behind his subject, his father, but rather acknowledges the presence of two voices in this work. 19 Later in the text, Valois, père, expresses a similar idea. “M. Catherinot Avocat du Roy à Bourges, devroit avoir de beaux recueils de conversations à donner. Toutes les fois qu’il venoit à Paris, il alloit assidûment aux Mercuriales de M. Ménage, & dés qu’il lui entendoit dire quelque chose de remarquable, il l’écrivoit sur ses tablettes. Il fesoit la même chose quand il me venoit voir. C’étoit un honnête homme & qui aimoit fort les Savans. Pour lui, Doctos erat sed minimi moduli. Dans toutes les paperasses qu’il a mises au jour, il y a à la verité quelques bons endroits, mais en petit nombre, & le reste n’est que du fatras. Il n’avoit pas un genie des plus sublimes” (122). Ana and Commemorative “Truth” 717 memory. 20 Similarly, twenty-six pages contain an article entitled “Remarques sur quelques endroits du premier Tome du Glossaire latin de M. du Gange” (208). Following the alphabetical order of the original, Valois provides specific references and commentary. The work involved in composing these remarks was editorial, not secretarial, and the lengthy remarks themselves are detailed and carefully crafted rather than off-the-cuff and spontaneous. At least once in the 1695 edition, Charles de Valois exercises his own writerly hand. In the final few pages of Valesiana, he lists the books owned by his father, carefully noting their mostly Latin titles, size and edition. In a more significant move, Urbain Chevreau (1613-1701), a familiar figure among the aristocracy, known in particular for his eight-volume L’Histoire du monde, left nothing to chance in the compilation of Chevrœana (1697, second volume 1700). He was the unabashed author of his own ana which originated exclusively in writing and thereby represents a fully literate variation on the traditional oral form of the genre. Unlike the compilers of earlier ana, Chevreau recognizes the futility of trying to provide something for all readers. He aims instead to include only that which would be useful to some. In his foreword he writes, Ceux qui ne cherchent que les mots des Halles, ou des Corps-de-Gardes, ne trouveront pas ici leur compte ; parce que je me suis proposé de ne rien mettre dans ce Recueil qui ne pût instruire. On y verra quelques traits d’Histoire, de Critique, d’Erudition & de Morale : & les Gens de Lettres s’en accommoderont peut-être mieux que les Gens du Monde. Comme leur goût est fort different, il est impossible de leur plaire à tous dans un même Ouvrage : & je m’estimerois assez heureuse, s’il m’étoit arrivé dans celui-ci, d’avoir contenté les uns, ou les autres (unpaginated). In appealing to the savants exclusively, Chevreau distances himself from the mondains for whom conversation holds as much value or more than the written. His self-conscious task is writerly rather than stenographic or even editorial. The resulting ana promises to be lively, containing articles on a variety of topics, but also more focused and literate than its predecessors. While earlier ana preserved transcriptions of the off-the-cuff remarks of their subjects, this one preserved Chevreau’s writings in their polished form. In presenting four pages of verse he had written earlier, Chevreau remarks, “Voici une paragraphe que j’ai faite il y a vingt-cinq ou trente ans, & qui 20 There is also an 86-page supplement at the end of the 1694 edition attributed to “Hadriani Valesii, Historiographi Regii” and entitled “Poemata.” It is unclear whether this was considered part of the ana or whether it was bound together with it because of its unmarketably short length. 718 Jennifer R. Perlmutter n’est ici que pour en faire voir la version qui merite bien d’être conservée” (111). The author shows concern that his writing and therefore he himself appear polished in this work. Chevrœana is in part a repository for its author’s best writings that, perhaps due to their brevity, were not published in a more cohesive volume. According to Chevreau, a true man of wisdom is one who edits himself as he speaks, tailoring his discourse to his listeners. He writes, Les veritables Savans ne sont pas ordinairement de grands parleurs, parce qu’ils ne se prostituent pas indifferemment à tout le monde ; qu’ils se ménagent en faveur de ceux qui sont capables de profiter de ce qu’ils disent. Il n’y auroit pas même un grand mal, qu’en parlant bien, ils parlassent quelquefois longtems, puisque ceux qui disent de belles choses, ne sçauroient jamais trop long-temps parler (140). As each author or compiler of ana was acutely aware of publishing within an established genre, we can read within this comment a criticism of both authors and compilers of first-generation ana. The cabinet of curiosities approach they take in order to appeal to the broadest number of readers is equivalent to the prostitution of knowledge. Any erudite man or potential subject of an ana should use his judgment in speaking. Lest he happen to go on too long or misspeak, the compiler should edit the ideas transmitted to present his subject in the best light. The compiler of Perroniana, for instance, showed an utter lack of judgment in his task. Chevreau writes, Il seroit à souhaiter, pour la réputation de M. le Cardinal du Perron que l’on n’eût point fourré dans les Perroniana beaucoup de choses qui ne peuvent estre de lui, & que l’on y a mises, ou par malice, ou par impudence. On lui a fait dire ce qu’il n’a peut-être jamais dit, & à quoi il ne peut avoir pensé, parce qu’il étoit trop délicat & trop savant, pour entretenir ses amis, ou de faussetez, ou de bagatelles (158). Both Charles de Valois and Urbain Chevreau understood the importance of an editorial hand in preserving the hard-earned reputation of a beloved, in the first instance, or of oneself, as in the second. In their mind, compilers should not sacrifice judgment in order to preserve the feel of the spoken word. Instead of a true, artless copy of the subject, they advocated for an artful imitation of him, one that portrays him at his best and achieves the commemorative goal. Their ana therefore appear as translations of their ideas rather than as transcriptions. The Valesiana and Chevrœana are more writerly than the conversational Scaligerana and Perroniana but they do retain qualities of oral spontaneity such as fragmentation that align them with the ana genre as a whole. * * * * Ana and Commemorative “Truth” 719 The Chevrœana in particular was universally well received by the intellectual elite as evidenced by its review in the Journal des savants. 21 This was indicative of a broader movement: over the allegedly direct recording of conversations that had defined the ana genre, the savants began to value heavily-edited transcriptions, even the inclusion of written excerpts that the subject had collected or composed. Beginning in the 1690s, considered by many to mark the end of classicism’s aesthetic hegemony, these compilers began to reject their original “artless” representation of truth in favor of the classical ideal, verisimilitude. As the bourgeoisie rose to power and the elite felt their social standing threatened, they did what they could to maintain their status. The original goal of transparent truth in the ana conflicted with the intellectual elite’s greater need to favorably portray, and thereby reinforce, their privileged position in society. When the genre became fashionable, even profitable, compilers took advantage of the situation. They continued to produce ana as commemorative works, but they became editors rather than stenographers. Compilers understood, as Zuber has written, that “[l]’érudition est un magasin de trésors, et presque une poudrière, qu’une étincelle suffit à embraser. Et cette étincelle n’est autre que la mémoire” (20). The compiler’s desire to commit an intellectual to public memory, to choose within his storehouse of knowledge to present him as he should be seen, resulted in a more writerly text. Compilers of second-generation ana understood that “[m]émoire et lecture se confondent” (Zuber 24). By publishing their memories in book form, they were responsible for preserving and perpetuating their subjects’ reputations. This understanding led them to reconsider the “warts-and-all” approach that had guided their peers. How, then, does one honor the dead without doing away with a genre? At a time when classicism was said to be in steep decline, compilers of this unique genre made a deliberate return to one of its most significant tenets, verisimilitude. Without eliminating the spontaneous oral quality of the written word, compilers polished it up. In some genres, the rise of a cultivated bourgeois audience may have meant the abandonment of classicism. But for some members of the intellectual elite, classicism offered the solution to the challenges of a more inclusive society, not an outmoded impedi- 21 The 1697 issue announces the publication of the Chevrœana in the following way, “Ce ne sont pas ici des pensées & des paroles legerement imputées à un home de nom, & mis au hazard sur le papier par des gens qui se soient imaginez les avoir entenduës de sa bouche. Ce sont des faits d’Histoire, des traits d’érudition & de critique, des points de morale qu’un home veritablement savant & habile, a mis lui-même par ecrit, & sur lesquels il a fait de sages, & de judicieuses reflexions” (373). 720 Jennifer R. Perlmutter ment to it. What resulted was a storehouse of knowledge accessible to the mondains who thereby used the savants as a stepping stone to their own elite status. For their part, the intellectual elite who thought themselves likely subjects of an ana became more guarded in their spoken words, valuing the writerly rather than the stenographic. In doing so, they applied to themselves the concept of “le grand enfermement” that characterized seventeenth-century France as a whole. In closing their mouths, members of the elite rendered obsolete this once fashionable genre and the conversational values it espoused. Works Cited Abdel-Halim, Mohamed. Antoine Galland. Sa vie et son œuvre. Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1964. Aude, A.-F.. Bibliographie critique et raisonnée des ana français et étrangers. Paris: H. Daragon, 1910. Beasley, Faith E.. Salons: History, and the Creation of 17 th -Century France: Mastering Memory. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006. Beugnot, Bernard: La Mémoire du texte. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1994. Chevreau, Urbain. Chevrœana. Paris: P. Florentin et P. Delaulne, 1700. Dictionnaire de Trévoux, 1721. Genette, Gérard. Figures II: essais. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969. Goldsmith, Elizabeth C.. Exclusive Conversations: The Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-Century France. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. id. and Dena Goodman, editors. Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Lougee, Carolyn C.. Le paradis des femmes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. Maber, Richard. “L’Anecdote littéraire aux XVII e et XVIII e siècles: les ana,” in L’Anecdote. Actes du colloque de Clermont-Ferrand (1988), éd. Alain Montandon. Clermont-Ferrand : Associations des Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, 1990. Menagiana. Paris: Florentin et Pierre Delaulne, 1693. Montandon, Alain. Les formes brèves. Paris: Hachette, 1992. Perroniana et Thuana. Geneva: Frères Du Puy, 1667. Scaligerana. Paris: Florentin et Pierre Delaulne, 1667. Stefanovska, Malina. “L’Anecdote dans les ana et les mémoires du XVII e siècle”, in Le Savoir au XVII e siècle, eds. John D. Lyons and Cara Welch. Tübingen: Narr, 2003, 111-20. Valesiana. Paris: Florentin et Pierre Delaulne, 1694. Wild, Francine. Naissance du genre des Ana (1574-1712). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001. Ana and Commemorative “Truth” 721 id.. “Les ana et la divulgation de l’intimité,” in Ordre et contestation au temps des classiques. Actes du 21 e colloque du Centre Méridional de Rencontres sur le XVII e siècle jumelé avec le 23 e colloque de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, Vol. II. Edités par Roger Duchêne et Pierre Ronzeaud. Paris-Seattle-Tübingen: PFSCL, 1992 (Biblio 17, no. 73), 33- 42. Zuber, Roger. “Lieux de mémoire et Littérature,” in Lieux de mémoire et la fabrique de l’œuvre. Actes du 1 er colloque du Centre International de Rencontres sur le XVII e siècle, Kiel, 19-23 juin 1991. 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