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Ajouter un commentaire L’allemand comme langue imaginaire chez Victor Hugo et Balzac
Résumé
Pour des écrivains comme Victor Hugo et Balzac, l’allemand n’est pas seulement « l’autre langue » par excellence. Au contact du français, l’allemand produit cette outre-langue que tout poète rêve d’approcher. Le premier texte étudié est extrait du Rhin. Dans la XXXVIIe lettre, un amusant dialogue en français s’établit entre le voyageur et le garçon de restaurant, à Schaffhouse. Dans ce dialogue, une langue allemande imaginaire tapie à l’arrière-plan du texte permet à Hugo de défigurer le français, confrontant le lecteur avec une langue maternelle soudain énigmatique et méconnaissable, mais créatrice. L’écrivain s’est aussi servi du principe de non-coïncidence entre oralité et écriture. Une transgression encore plus marquée se rencontre dans le travail de Balzac, quand il met en scène un personnage qui apparaît dans plusieurs des romans de La Comédie humaine : le banquier Nucingen. Ce personnage à l’identité indécise (est-il Alsacien, Allemand, Polonais, Juif ?) existe uniquement par sa parole. Or dans un roman, la parole ne peut qu’être écrite. La parole de Nucingen est écrite, mais elle est à peine lisible. C’est justement en écrivant que Balzac a pu inventer l’impossible langue de Nucingen. Et il est intéressant de noter qu’il l’a inventée à un stade tardif, sur les épreuves d’imprimerie.
Writers such as Victor Hugo and Balzac not only considered the German language as typical of « otherness », but by intertwining German and French, they were able to produce a language beyond limits. To attain this outre-langue is the dream of any poet. The first literary example analyzed in this article is an excerpt from Hugo’s Le Rhin. In letter XXXVII, a ludicrous dialog occurs in French between the traveler and the waiter in a restaurant in Schaffhouse. In this dialog, some kind of fancy German language lurking in the textual background helps Hugo to distort the French language, thus confronting the reader with a puzzling yet creative mother tongue. The writer has made use of another linguistic discrepancy, which is that the oral stuff never coincides with the written stuff. This transgression is even more visible in Balzac’s work. The article focuses on one of his characters who appears in several novels of his Comédie humaine: the banker Nucingen. Nucingen’s identity itself is questionable. Is he an Alsatian, a German, a Pole, a Jew? We can rely on one thing only: his existence is based entirely upon his speech. In a novel however, speech can only be written. Nucingen’s speech is written but hardly readable. Only through writing could Balzac achieve such a creation. And interestingly enough, he invented Nucingen’s impossible language at a late stage, in the process of checking the proofs for press.
Writers such as Victor Hugo and Balzac not only considered the German language as typical of « otherness », but by intertwining German and French, they were able to produce a language beyond limits. To attain this outre-langue is the dream of any poet. The first literary example analyzed in this article is an excerpt from Hugo’s Le Rhin. In letter XXXVII, a ludicrous dialog occurs in French between the traveler and the waiter in a restaurant in Schaffhouse. In this dialog, some kind of fancy German language lurking in the textual background helps Hugo to distort the French language, thus confronting the reader with a puzzling yet creative mother tongue. The writer has made use of another linguistic discrepancy, which is that the oral stuff never coincides with the written stuff. This transgression is even more visible in Balzac’s work. The article focuses on one of his characters who appears in several novels of his Comédie humaine: the banker Nucingen. Nucingen’s identity itself is questionable. Is he an Alsatian, a German, a Pole, a Jew? We can rely on one thing only: his existence is based entirely upon his speech. In a novel however, speech can only be written. Nucingen’s speech is written but hardly readable. Only through writing could Balzac achieve such a creation. And interestingly enough, he invented Nucingen’s impossible language at a late stage, in the process of checking the proofs for press.
