The Ranums' Panat Times
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The Ranums' Panat Times |
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Return
to opening page of Ranums' Panat Times Le Manuscrit de Pierre Prion,
ėcrivain copiste Giving thanks on Pierre Prion’s behalf What is more truly important than being charitable about giving thanks? Pierre Prion is not present to acknowledge those who have helped his voice and his thought survive into the twenty-first century. It would seem to be a fair inference that he would have mixed feelings about the survival of his writings. We need to reflect on his unique synthesis of pride and humility. At the same time, as the following paragraphs show, no one individual or generation of Prion readers can claim the right to thank all who have gone before. From what seems quite easily known, the first person to be thanked is Charles Bourguet, who gave the Manuscrit to the Société des Lettres, Sciences et Arts de l’Aveyron in 1866. Emile G. Léonard presented Prion’s other autobiographical writing, La Chronologiette, in the Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes in 1922. The manuscript of the memoirs seems to have quietly rested on a shelf until Canon J.-L. Rigal began research on Prion’s life and writings, all of which culminated in his article, "L’Autobiographie de Pierre Prion," in Formen der Selbstdarstellung, Festgabe für Fritz Neubert (Dunker and Humblot, Berlin, 1956). Sound, sympathetic, and well-researched, Canon Rigal’s article (which we hope to obtain permission to reproduce here) brought some of Prion’s autobiographical writing into the general study of autobiography. At that point, there seemed to be little impetus to transcribe the text or make it available for publication. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Orest Ranum had long been admirers of Léonard’s pioneering Mon Village sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris, PUF, 1941). A first among village studies, so personal and sensitive, this work uses, as its principal source, Prion’s Chronologiette. It is not our task here to sum up the story of the Rodez Manuscrit. But suffice it to say, when Louis Balsan was asked whether the Société des Lettres would accept having a transcription and edition made, in his usual bold voice he replied "Pourquoi pas." When Pierre Nora, at Gallimard, was approached about an edition, he thought of the Archives Collection and accepted it, on condition that it be abridged and modernized to conform with the series. The results were the Gallimard publication of 1985, for which Balsan, the Société des Lettres, and Nora must be thanked. Elizabeth Litzinger, a retired Baltimore French teacher, made a first, more "modernized" typescript of the Manuscrit, from which the Gallimard edition was made. Kristin Ranum Franceschi eventually retyped much of the typescript on computer, and Patricia Ranum completed the task circa 1996. Convinced that this "modernized" version of Prion gave a false impression of the autodidact’s actual manuscript, with its erratic accentuation and punctuation, during the terrible heat wave of 2003 Patricia Ranum de-modernized the earlier transcription and verified the results with the original, to reestablish Prion’s exact spelling, punctuation, and abbreviations. Soon afterwards, Roger Béteille, president, Pierre Lançon, librarian of the Société des Lettres kindly granted us permission to put the revised transcription on our web site. It is true that the revised transcription is not always easy to read. An edition with punctuation and spelling clarifications, and an expansion of Prion’s abbreviations, would therefore be most welcome. A hearty expression of thanks goes to President Béteille and Monsieur Lançon for their support. And certainly all who were involved with the Prion Manuscrit – particularly Sylvie Mouysset and Danielle Rives, who volunteered to go over the manuscript and make it more accessible to readers – must also be thanked, although we opted for the original, integral transcription despite the fact that many potential readers will find it too tiring to decipher the awkwardnesses of Prion’s prose. For readers of French who were raised to have literary sensibilities, Prion’s manuscript, like Ménétra’s writing, almost not consciously creates esthetic difficulties. It is to be hoped that Mouysset and Rives will undertake an edition that will eliminate any remaining errors of transcription, and make Prion’s prose more accessible to a general reading public. The Manuscrit may not have literary quality, but Prion’s thought has its own ironic integrity sustained by a sensitive, ethnographic eye. Nota: Dans cette transcription, la marginalia de Prion — souvent assez sprituelle — est représentée au-dessus du paragraphe et non pas dans les marges, comme dans l'original. Pour faciliter la consultation on-line, nous avons subdivisé le Manuscrit: en 31 parties:
1: Prion et les sages d'Aubais raisonnent sur le
"système du monde" (fols 1-9v) |