‘Une Belle époque pas si Belle ?’ The struggle to maintain a regional identity in Normandie

Written By Lucas Pottier

Est pêché que d’quitter l’païs,
Pis c’est gabiller s’n existence
Et n’point fé d’câs de c’qu’est la France
Qu’a besoin d’nous pou n’point mouï.

J’en sais qu’ont point goûté la grâce
D’fé leu maison auprès d’leux vieux,
No l’z a vus rappliquer hargneux,
Brin écueillis et la têyt’ basse.

Man encre est bue et, d’mes daigts gourds,
J’ai semé les mots comm’des graines,
Aveuc l’espouèr euq par les plaines,
Not’ pâler fleurira toujours.” (1)

Ma Campagne, Gaston Demongé.

Gaston Demongé, a French author and poet from Normandy born in 1888, rewrote his Magnus Opus Les Terreux multiple times during his lifetime. He was famous for writing most of his works in Cauchois, a patois from the ‘pays de Caux’ in rural Normandy. Demongé was one of many provincial authors part of the French regionalist movement of the Belle Epoque of the 19 th & 20 th century aiming to expose the regional culture at the national level and combat the centralisation of the Arts in Paris. The movement tried to develop itself on the political sphere, but never managed to convince the French people of its utility and remained for most of its existence a cultural movement aiming to decentralise French literature and give a chance to provincial youths to become successful writers and artists. One man, saw an important political opportunity in the regionalist movement, which inspired him to develop his own political ideas of uprootedness and of the ‘Earth and the Dead’. Through the French provincial tale, I will show you how Barrès, thinker of modern nationalism, manipulated the regionalist movement’s thoughts to promote and maintain political and social order through Birth-Culture. Demongé’s literature will be important in illustrating how this manipulation occurred, and how regionalists like him, would end up forming one of the most loyal nationalists and Pétainist group during WWII.

A) Claiming regional identities as the Nation’s identity.

Let me take you through Barrès construction of the regional identities as being the Nation’s identity. Regionalism, as explained, was originally a cultural movement that aimed through literature to put in the spotlight the region’s capacity to be touching and as capable (if not more) than the Parisian artistic hegemony. (2) Maurice Barrès also supported this revival in his own region, Laurraine, but on more political grounds. (3) He opposed republicanism that he viewed as a Kantian universalist movement uniformising and centralising culture on the international level. For him, the Republic in its secular and centralising quest, was inviting citizens to reject their regional birth and the traditions that came with it. It ‘uproots’ Man from its soil. (4) Thus by doing so, the Republic is destroying the traditions, the culture that make France what it is, and instead impose a universalised pseudo-culture that refutes any particularity and even subjectivity. (5) By allowing people to ‘uproot’ themselves from their soil, republicanism is disturbing the political and social order of the ‘petites patries’ that the regions represent for him which together strengthen the French nation.

Demongé’s poem quoted above, ‘Ma Campagne’ appears to resonate with Barrès claim. Regional literature isn’t important because of its richness, its diversity, but because it’s been there for centuries, it represents the earth and the dead. (6) Barrès saw in regionalism an opportunity that went beyond the artistic claim: re-root the nation back in its traditional soil. Barrès made culture instinctive, and by linking culture to the Nation, nationalism became “not only a product of sentiment; it is a rational and mathematical obligation”. (7) Leaving one’s region behind, not following one’s ancestors’ steps means becoming a ‘déraciné’. Barrès wanted to use regionalism to bring back a social hierarchy that maintained order in the nation.

B) ‘The earthy ones’

But how could regionalism be useful for him? Simply through interpretation. Barrès understood that his burgeoning political ideas would fit perfectly with the regionalist literary goal to be viewed and respected again. Thanks to a certain artistic populism, regionalists proudly stereotyped themselves, used their local language to folklorise the region and combine cultural traditions through stereotypes with pride of the Nation. They walked straight into the nationalist trap of Birth-Culture. Let us analyse some passages of Demongé’s work Les Terreux. (8)

The title of this book, ‘the earthy ones’ denotes well the rootedness of culture and identity in the soil that Barrès conceptualises. Demongé seeks to show the life and the traditions of the earthy ones, by sowing his “words as if they were seeds, with hope that by the plains, our language will always bloom”. (9) Concluding with those verse, Demongé wants to re-root the uprooted that left their local countries. It simultaneously implies that only him, who stayed in near his ‘vieux’ (old ones, parents) and follows the traditions of his ‘païs’ (country), can represent the Normand’s culture, and thus the Nation. The link between regional culture, tradition and the Nation participates greatly in the nationalist claim of biological determinism: The inhabitants of the ‘petite patrie’ such as the Normands, must follow the regional traditions of their ancestors, because it’s their natural instinct, it’s in their blood. The link between tradition, culture and the soil, making the roots of one’s identity determined by nature makes the conditions of possibility for Barrès’ claim that the nation can and should only function as such.

To illustrate this further, let me take you through the 1 st Quest of Saustrine. (10) In this novel, Demongé describes Saustrine as the stereotyped Normand woman of what would be the Normand culture. She has red hair, she is strong, rural, like her ancestors the Vikings and the Gauls, and she is proud of that. But what is most important for Demongé is that Saustrine is a strong French mother thanks to her rootedness.

Demongé’s metaphor comparing her to a rooster (le Coq) that “stands in all his splendour, ready to scream his ‘cocorico’” demonstrates this. (11) Saustrine, the true Normand mother, thanks to her pride and rootedness in her traditions and in the soil of her ancestors, can proudly and splendidly scream her Frenchness to the whole nation. She is rooted in her ancestors’ soil and traditions. Furthermore, she is described as strong physically, but not socially, but that does not matter. In fact, Barrès says that she should be proud of being who she is, because like the Gauls and the Vikings before her she pertains the strength of the French Nation and its culture. The rootedness in culture, “whether you love the land or not, it is your interest that order be preserved and good roads be maintained”. (12) Kinship is used by regionalist to ensure that the regions and the nation are perceived as a family, fixed in birth-culture, and closed from the outside.

Thankfully for our readers, Demongé’s description of a ‘True Normand’ was wrong, and still is, or else I, being born in Normandy, would not be writing this article but rather I would try to invade the British Isles like my ancestors the Vikings did. What this novel shows is how regionalism did transform from an artistic exposition of the province by the youth to a fervent supporter of Nationalism and Barrès.

C) Birth-culture to maintain national order

Barrès’ birth-culture concept, is extremely important in the making of a national community. While the regionalist movement and Demongé might at first have aimed to define the national community through a multiplicity of smaller, regional ones, Barrès visions tells us otherwise.

What Barrès saw, was a disruption of the traditional political order. In a context of left republicanism, Barrès saw the regionalist movement as a dual opportunity for the re-establishment of a Birth-culture defined nation. First, socially, more and more French companies were bringing manpower from other European nations. Second, most importantly:

“Déraciner ces enfants, les détacher du sol et du groupe social où tout les relie pour les placer hors de leurs préjugés, dans la raison abstraite, comment cela le gênerait-il, lui qui n’a pas dell’ sol, ni de société”. (13) (2)

Republicanism was disrupting the social order Barrès managed to survive in. Barrès himself described the regionalist movement as federalist in Le Culte du moi. Barrès made regionality and culture ethnic. Being attached to one’s soil meant being who we were to be. The appropriation of regionalism allowed Barrès to succeed in politics, and he used regional history as an instrument of propaganda to form ethnic identities that struggled against one another just because of their different natures.

Many regionalist writers fell into the ethno-nationalist trap, thinking they would gain cultural popularity within the country. Some of them, like Demongé, became strong ‘pétainiste’ during the Vichy regime, and thought that being attached to the terroir and regional traditions was the only way to maintain national Order, making the region an ideology, rather than an open society.

Thank you to the Bibliothèque Patrimoniale Jacques-Villon, Rouen, for allowing me to read Demongé’s Les Terreux.

Notes and Bibliography

Barrès, Maurice. “La Terre et les Morts.” La Patrie Française (3e conférence). Paris, 1899.

Barrès, Maurice. “Les Déracinés.” Le roman de l’énergie nationale. 1897.

—. Scènes et Doctrines du Nationalisme. Paris: F. Juven, 1902.

Carroll, David. “The use and abuse of culture: Maurice Barrès and the Ideology of the collective subject.” French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, anti-semitism, and teh ideology of Culture. Princeton University Press, 1995. 19-41.

Demongé, Gaston. Les Terreux. L. Durand et fils, 1925.

Faure, Christian and Pascal Ory. Le projet culturel de Vichy. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2019.

Fishbane, Jonathan. “From decadence to nationalism in teh early writings of Maurice Barrès.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 13.4 (1985): 266-278.

Ford, C. “Quelle Nation? Langue, identité et politique républicaine dans la France postrévolutionnaire.” De la province à la nation: religion et identité politique ne Bretagne. Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2018.

Guerard, A.L. “Maurice Barrès and teh doctrine of nationalism.” Texas Review 1.4 (1916): 275-290.

Pasquier, Romain. “Régionalisme et construction identitaire.” Le pouvoir régional (2012): 47-82.

Pasquini, Pierre. “De la tradition à la revendication: provincialisme ou régionalisme?” Ethnologie Française 33 (2003): 417-423.

Schenker, Maud Hilaire. “Le nationalisme de Barrès: Moi, la terre et les morts.” Paroles gelées 23.1 (2007): 5-25.

Spektorowski, Alberto. “The New Right: ethno-regionalism, ethnopluralism and the emergence of a nea-fascist ‘Third Way’.” Journal of Political ideologies 8.1 (2003): 111-130.

Storm, H.J. “The birth of regionalism and teh crisis of reason: France, Germany and Spain.”

Augusteijn, J. Region and state in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Nation-Building, regional identities and separatism. Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 36-57.

Thiesse, Anne-Marie. “La littérature régionaliste: Préhistoire de l’ethnologie française?” Bulletin de l’association française des Anthropologues (1983): 36-45.

—. “Le mouvement littéraire régionaliste (1900-1945).” Ethnologie française 18 (nouvelle série).3 (1988): 220-232.

—. “L’invention du régionalisme à la Belle Epoque.” Le Mouvement Social 160 (1992): 11-32.

Wright, Julian, Clark, Christopher. “Regionalism and teh State in France and Prussia.” European review of History 15.3 (2008): 277-293.

For some Cauchois words and translations, please see:

Click to access Lexique-Cauchois-Didier-Ducastel.pdf

https://www.authenticnormandy.fr/notre-destination/experiences-de-decouverte/expressions-made-in-normandy/

(1) Translation by author:
“It is a sin to leave the country,
And it’s a waste of your existence
And it isn’t what makes France
For not to die needs us.
I know some who never tasted the Grace
Of building their house next to their old ones
No one saw them coming back angry
Hair tousled and head down.
My ink is blue and, with my numb fingers,
I sowed my words as if they were seeds,
with hope that by the plains,
our speaking (language) will always bloom.”

(2) Translation by Author:
“Unrooting children, detach them from their soil and social group where everything links them together to place them
outside their stereotypes, in abstract reason, how would that bother him, who doesn’t have a soil nor a society.”