Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw. Jaargang 1992
(1992)– [tijdschrift] Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw–
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Aubrey Rosenberg
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The reference to the first of Tyssot's works, ‘Arcan & Bélize’, has only recently been identified as another anonymous novel, not an imaginary voyage this time, entitled Les Amours et les avantures d'Arcan et de Bélize, histoire véritable, traduite du latin en françois par le Chevalier de P, Leyde, 1714.Ga naar voetnoot2. The ‘Amours pastorales de Daphnis & de Chloé’ were destined to take up over half the second volume of Tyssot's three-volume (Euvres poétiques (1727), and the ‘recueil de mes Lettres’ appeared as the two-volume Lettres choisies in the same year. The authorship of none of these works is contested. Vermij misinterprets and thus attaches undue importance to a letter, written probably at the end of 1714 (see below), in which Tyssot disclaims authorship of the novel: Je suis bien aise de ce que vous êtes de mon sentiment par raport à la beauté du voyage de Mr. Massé: il est en effet instructif, il est agréable, bien diversifié, rempli d'incidens rares et curieux; et son Auteur y fait suffisamment connoître qu'il avoit de l'érudition, du savoir, du génie, & qu'il pouvoit, pour ainsi dire, passer pour universel dans les sciences. Mais je suis surpris de ce que vous doutez d'une rélation si bien circonstanciée: [...] & ce qui m'étonne le plus, que vous me soupçonnez d'en avoir été l'inviteur. [...] Enfin, j'en viens à moi-même, & je dis que m'atribuer ce livre est me faire bien d'honneur: il est vrai pourtant qu'il ne contient rien, sans vanité, qui soit au dessus de ma portée, et qu'encore qu'un esprit tourné aux Mathématiques, s'applique rarement à la Mythologie & aux Romans, il s'en est vû néanmoins, qui y ont fort bien réussi. How seriously are we to take this disclaimer? Ayone who has studied Tyssot's life, personality and writings, will recognize immediately in this letter his characteristic fondness for badinage, allied with his self-styled reputation as a man of many parts, scientist, poet, raconteur, wit, in short, a latterday honnête homme, but not of the kind ‘qui ne se pique de rien’. The excessively lavish, and what Vermij regards as shameless, praise he heaps on this novel and its author is all addressed to himself, a man not overly afflicted with false modesty, a concept largely unknown in his day. | |
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Why then did he not openly avow his authorship? For two main reasons. First, it was a convention throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, when the novel was considered an inferior genre, to dissociate oneself from such publications. Voltaire, for example, in his long life, owned up to almost none of his writings other than those for the theatre. Second, parts of the novel were heretical and could jeopardize an author's reputation and career if his identity were discovered. By 1720 Tyssot was less concerned about these consequences but, in 1714, he was still on his guard. This is why, in the same letter, anticipating the practice of Voltaire, he emphatically denies responsibility for the most heretical section of his novel, the ‘Fable of the Bees’: [...] si dans toute cette rélation il y a quelque chose capable de choquer une oreille chatouilleuse, c'est cette fable des abeilles du chapitre 15, que je desaprouve entierement, & qui en effet, s'il faut que je le dise, n'est nullement de l'Auteur. For someone who is not supposted to have written the novel, Tyssot shows an extraordinary familiarity with its translation from manuscript to printed text. This leads to the suggestion that it was the production of a group of writers. But we know from Tyssot's other publications that, even if he were not a great writer, he was perfectly capable of adopting a wide variety of styles for many different topics and purposes, with the result that nothing that appears in Jaques Massé is in any way inconsonant with what is found elsewhere in his works. The internal evidence of Tyssot's authorship of this novel that contains so many autobiographical references and private jokes (though not nearly the quantity found in the Voyage de Groenland) is equally compelling. It is through this internal evidence that it has been possible to establish incontrovertibly that the novel was not published in 1710 but in November/December 1714 at the very earliest. On July 30 1713, Tyssot's youngest son, Pierre Corneille, killed a fellow ensign in a duel and went off to Ceylon, in November 1714, to seek a new life, without taking with him a copy of Jaques Massé that, as we have seen, Tyssot sent on to him later. Towards the end of the novel, one of the characters recounts that, ‘ayant eu le malheur de tuër en duel un Enseigne du Régiment des Gardes du Prince d'Orange, qui apartenoit à des Personnes de très grand crédit, j'avois été obligé d'abandonner mon Païs, de peur des conséquences’ | |
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(499). Why on earth would some other author choose to include this detail of Tyssot's family life and how could he have done so in 1710? It is also no coincidence, as I have previously pointed out, that Mandeville's Fable of the Bees appeared in 1714. So much for the date of publication. In Chapter XIV, there is a reference to ‘Mr. le Chevalier Tyssot, Gouverneur de Surinam’ (p. 400) whom Tyssot claimed as a relative (OEuvres poétiques, II, 204-205). What would possess another author to drag in this trivial detail of Tyssot's parentage? And why would someone else reproduce in his (her?) novel the identical treatises on astronomy, eclipses, calendars, the seasons, etc., that occur in Tyssot's private correspondence? There is much more of this kind of evidence but I do not wish to belabour the point since it is all available in the monograph referred to above. What are we to make, then of the observation that gave rise to this discussion? The objection that immediately springs to mind is that there is no necessary connection between the ‘Voiage’ referred to and Jaques Massé. It could well be that the writer asked Marchand about some other work attributed to Tyssot or that he himself thought Tyssot had written. This would amply explain why Marchand disabused him of the idea. In short, in the absence of the actual letter from Marchand, in which he apparently omitted to provide the author's name, or the correspondent found it unnecessary to repeat it, there is no real or even strongly circumstantial evidence to justify the contention that the ‘Voiage’ referred to is Jaques Massé. It is all very mysterious, but there is no mystery about the author of Jaques Massé (1714?). It was Tyssot de Patot. |
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