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AT THE 1998 MLA convention session "Cultivating the French Garden" I saw Jean Perkins for the first time since graduating from Swarthmore College ten years ago, and thus the session constituted for me a double reconnaissance--both a rediscovery of one of my most important teachers long after leaving her classroom and an expression of gratitude for the many ways she has contributed to my life.1 This dual significance of reconnaissance--recognition and thankfulness--underlies my comments. Using my own experience of studying with Jean Perkins, I would like to suggest that we understand our indebtedness to our French teachers at times of unexpected recognition. In these spontaneous, unforeseen moments, the pleasure of French reaffirms itself at the same time that we find new insight on ourselves. Cultivating the French garden thereby bears the fruit of individuality and self-awareness--benefits irreducible to economic or functional terms.
"Il faut cultiver notre jardin" 'We must cultivate our garden' (Voltaire 204-05). Spoken by Candide after surviving war, Inquisition, storm, shipwreck, earthquake, robbery, and other reversals in fortune, these words symbolize the need to concentrate on the here-and-now rather than engage in lofty theories, to work harmoniously with others to achieve a common good, and to take satisfaction in the humble tasks of daily life. For college and university French professors, who have endured nearly as many calamities in recent years as those suffered by Candide, the novel's closing statement bears a certain wisdom. In the environment of downsized departments, diminished enrollments, graduate student anxiety--and no El Dorado in sight--we, too, are called to focus on the essential work we do as teachers, the basic foreign language instruction and literary training that inform all our theoretical speculations. We are asked not to count on a best-of-all-possible worlds but instead to make the most of the world we are in--one in which resources are limited, student interests are fickle, and compromises are necessary. In short, we must cultivate our garden as Candide cultivates his, with humility and pragmatism.
But Candide teaches us another lesson, as well. For the pleasure of Voltaire's novel comes as much from whimsy as from its sober-minded conclusion, and in particular, from its shamelessly invraisemblable scenes of unexpected recognition. After being convinced of Cunégonde's death at the hands of marauding Bulgars, Candide follows an old woman into a gilded room, where he finds Cunégonde bedecked in jewels:
La vieille reparut bientôt; elle soutenait avec peine une femme tremblante, d'une taille majestueuse, brillante de pierreries, et couverte d'un voile . . . "Otez ce voile," dit la vielle à Candide. Le jeune homme approche; il lève le voile d'une main timide. Quel moment! quelle surprise! il croit voir Mlle Cunégonde; il la voyait en effet, c'était elle-même. La force lui manque, il ne peut proférer une parole, il tombe à ses pieds. (34)The old woman soon returned. She was supporting with difficulty a trembling woman with a majestic figure, glittering with precious stones and covered by a veil.
"Lift her veil," the old woman said to Candide.
The young man stepped forward and timidly lifted the veil. What a moment! What a surprise! He thought he saw Lady Cunegonde--he actually did see her, it was she herself! His strength failed him, he was unable to say a word; he fell at her feet. (35)
Later, again separated from his beloved Cunégonde, Candide sets sail for Constantinople, only to discover his tutor, Dr. Pangloss, and Cunégonde's brother rowing among the galley slaves:
--Quoi! c'est Candide? disait l'un des forçats.
--Quoi! c'est Candide? disait l'autre.
--Est-ce un songe? dit Candide; veillé-je? Suis-je dans cette galère? Est-ce là monsieur le baron que j'ai tué? Est-ce là maître Pangloss que j'ai vu pendre?
--C'est nous-mêmes, c'est nous-mêmes, répondaient-ils.
(184)"What! It's Candide!" said one of the galley slaves.
"What! It's Candide!" said the other.
"Is this a dream?" said Candide. "Am I awake? Am I really in this galley? Is this the baron that I killed? Is this the Dr. Pangloss I saw hanged?"
"Yes, it is, it is!" they replied. (185)
Candide always finds his long-lost friends in the most improbable circumstances when he least anticipates seeing them. Hence the various recognitions seem to evoke a somewhat different lesson from the one that closes the novel: Candide rediscovers Cunégonde, Pangloss, and so on not by a premeditated design but by a chance discovery. In other words, knowledge and happiness derive not just from a rational plan wrought by pragmatism but also from an undetermined course guided by curiosity.
So, too, the study of French gives meaning to our lives in highly unexpected ways far different from the benefits that initially attracted us to the language, and far beyond the programmatic uses that we create for it in the classroom. Indeed, it is perhaps during chance moments, when we allow our thoughts to divagate or when we indulge an imaginative impulse that we suddenly recognize the impact of our French teachers--find them accompanying us, wondrously, unbelievably, on our individual paths of self-discovery.
Since graduating from Swarthmore College, I have continually come back to Jean Perkins, rediscovering the seminar that she led on eighteenth-century literature in a small, basement classroom in Trotter Hall. One unforeseen event, in particular, revealed the importance of that seminar to me in a palpable way. It occurred when I entered graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, several years after leaving Swarthmore. When I asked the graduate secretary for the reading list of the exam for the master's degree in French, I anxiously anticipated seeing a long list of titles of unknown books that I would spend months trying to familiarize myself with. To my relief, I was already acquainted with many of the books. Indeed, when I examined the eighteenth-century works on the list, I realized that I had read every one of them in Jean Perkins's course at Swarthmore. Recognizing each title was like stumbling across an old friend: I suddenly recalled the circumstances in which I read the book and the pleasure it had given me in the past.
Two titles were particularly evocative in this regard: Les liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons), by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du contrat social (The Social Contract). When it came time to read Les liaisons dangereuses in Jean Perkins's course, I checked the book out of the library rather than purchase a new copy. The edition I used--an old Livre de Poche with a preface by André Malraux--had a jet-black cover featuring the silhouettes of a man and a woman outlined in white: the man stands at the foot of a bed, where the woman sits looking at him. Something about that cover, with its simple but suggestive drawing, appearing just below the words "les liaisons dangereuses," made me think that French was the most erotically charged language invented by the human race.
This judgment was confirmed, erroneously, by an experience I had while studying in France with Swarthmore's program in Grenoble. I was sitting at my host family's dinner table when the family's literary uncle, Arnauld, launched into a speech about "le goût de la madeleine" in Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). Having never read Proust and knowing "Madeleine" only as a proper name, I was stunned by the analytic detail with which Arnauld expounded on what sounded like an obscene episode. "The taste of Madeleine"??!! . . . my God, these French were brazen! So, for me, France, French literature, and the French language all contained a voluptuousness that no other field of study could possibly offer. I suddenly remembered that feeling when I saw Laclos's novel listed on the master's exam reading list in Wisconsin.
Du contrat social evoked a different emotion. When I saw that title on the reading list, I remembered the line that opens the first chapter of the essay: "L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers" (Rousseau 518) ("Man is born free, and everywhere he is in shackles") (my trans.). When I was in college, I considered myself something of a political activist, protesting Swarthmore's investments in businesses related to the South African apartheid regime, attending rallies against United States support for the Nicaraguan contras, registering voters in poor neighborhoods outside Philadelphia. But reading Rousseau in Jean Perkins's course crystallized my politico-moral aspirations in a single figure and a single, incendiary phrase: "L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers." If Laclos taught me that French held sensual delight in every vowel, then Rousseau convinced me that French was the language of revolution.
Another experience during my time in Grenoble supported French's hold on my political imagination. Once again, I was sitting around the host family's dinner table, but this time we were watching television. The show we watched was L'heure de vérité, a French equivalent to Meet the Press, in which a prominent politician answers questions posed by a series of journalists. The guest on that night's show was Georges Marchais, leader of the French Communist Party. I tried to imagine a Communist being interviewed by a reporter on an American television news show--somehow it just didn't seem possible. I thought to myself that if France could put a Communist on prime-time television, it must surely be a country of unrestricted political expression.
Thus, seeing the eighteenth-century master's exam list was a moment of recognition, reminding me of the significant ways that French had imbued my understanding of the world and of myself. Yet it was also a moment that clarified how that understanding had changed. For when I reread the eighteenth-century works for the first time since Jean Perkins's course, new things caught my attention. Les liaisons dangereuses, this time, gave me more pleasure for its sardonic humor than for its sexual escapades--the way it parodies the cloying sentimentalism of Rousseau by putting his most pious statements in the mouths of the marquise de Merteuil and the vicomte de Valmont. Du contrat social now seemed less interesting than another text by Rousseau, the Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (Reveries of a Solitary Walker): the author's "romantic" voice spoke louder to me than his solemn, political voice. Hence the meanings I had once found in these French books--and, by extension, in all French culture--gave way to different meanings, perhaps reflecting my change of perspective since college. If discovering the eighteenth century with Jean Perkins led to a kind of self-discovery, then rediscovering it, years later, revealed new aspects of my life that I did not fully recognize until I came back to French.
I would like to mention one other event that occurred during the time that I studied with Jean Perkins and whose significance I recognized much later. The French department at Swarthmore put on a play, Molière's L'avare (The Miser), and Jean Perkins encouraged all her students to try out for it. I followed her advice and was cast in the part of Maître Jacques--a secondary role but one that always got laughs from the audience, in part because my costume included an enormous toque, or chef's hat. That production of L'avare confirmed my love of theater, and since then I have acted in many plays in French. But no matter what my role is, whenever I walk on stage I always remember the delight of appearing as Maître Jacques with an oversized toque. This sums up how I feel about French: it has given me many roles and has allowed me to assume different voices, yet all these roles pay homage to the pleasure of the first one. They all give recognition to the teacher who originally encouraged me to try out for the French play.
What does this have to do with cultivating the French garden? As I mentioned earlier, Candide's words could be interpreted to mean that French teachers must be pragmatic, concentrating on the values of language study that attract and retain students. But within the French garden grow more than just utilitarian goods--more than just "linguistic competence" or "proficiency" or "cultural awareness." In my opinion, within the French garden grow curiosity, passion, imagination, creativity, and, ultimately, the self. Admittedly, these are inexact assets with which to justify French programs to state governments, boards of regents, and other hard-nosed, fiscal decision-making entities. But they are the sweetest fruits of the French garden, and it is in recognition of them that I give thanks to Jean Perkins.
The author is Instructor of French at Grinnell College. This article is based on his presentation at a session honoring Jean Perkins at the 1998 MLA Convention in San Francisco, CA.
1I would like to thank Elizabeth Welles, the ADFL, and Richard Williamson, who graciously allowed me to contribute to Jean Perkins's nomination for the ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession.
Voltaire. Candide; or, Optimism. Trans. Lowell Bair. Bilingual ed. New York: Bantam, 1962.
© 2000 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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