Vol. 18 No. 1 · 4 January 1996
page 23 | 2636 words
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John Sturrock
- L’Accent du souvenir by Bernard Cerquiglini
Minuit, 165 pp, frs 99.00, September 1995, ISBN 2 7073 1536 2
Gustave Flaubert, in a letter to his publisher of October 1862, and after two other grumbles about the typesetting on the page-proofs of his new book: ‘3° The circumflex accent on Salammbô has no profile. Nothing could be less Punic. I demand a more open one.’ To demand with Flaubert was to get: within a few days he had an accent that straddled its underlying vowel in the comprehensive way that he wanted, and gave the name of the heroine of his Carthaginian novel a suitably Punic appearance on the title-page. Or it would be truer to say that it gave her a suitably alien appearance, because to a French reader Salammbô’s terminal chapeau comes as a shock, occurring as it does in a position where no circumflex has any business being.
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Letters
Vol. 18 No. 5 · 7 March 1996
From Robin Hope
The review by John Sturrock of L’Accent du souvenir by Bernard Cerquiglini (LRB, 4 January) reminds me that the proposed dropping of this adornment to the French language, vetoed by Mitterrand, would have deprived French speakers of a useful little offensive weapon. My late brother Francis, staying with a French family to improve his knowledge of the language, was helping himself to cheese at dinner. The plateau included a wedge of brie, and the inexperienced Englishman, instead of slicing along the side, cut off the point, or nose. His hostess, exercising that special French skill in making foreign visitors feel at ease, remarked: ‘Je n’ ai jamais vu personne qui découpât comme ça le nez d’un brie.’ Francis said that he distinctly heard, in the air above the family dining-table, the sharp hiss of the circumflex over the third person singular of the past subjunctive.
Robin Hope
Todi, Italy
Vol. 18 No. 6 · 21 March 1996
From Ormond Uren
As an examiner some years ago for the London University BA Honours in French we had a marking scheme: three marks off for a serious grammatical mistake, two for something less heinous and one – or was it a mere half-mark? – for the omission of an accent. My co-examiner, overriding my objections, was adamant that one exception be made to this rule. Omission of the circumflex (Letters, 7 March) on the past subjunctive (il mît) which distinguishes it from the simple past (il mit) must entail the forfeit of the full three marks.
Ormond Uren
London NW5
