Le vieux troubadour, ou, Les amours; poëme en cinq chants de Hugues de Xentralès; traduit de la langue romane sur un manuscrit du onzième siècle trouvé dans la bibliothèque des Bénédictins d'Avignon par M. de... [bound with]L'ingénue, ou, L'encensoir des dames; par la niece a mon oncle

by François Fournier-Pescay

Paris: Jean-Baptiste-Étienne-Élie Lenormand, 1812 | Paris: Antoine Desventes de La Doué, 1770

138, [2]; 174 p. | 12mo | [1]^12 2-5^12 6^10; A-G^12 H^4(-H4) | 170 x 101 mm

First and only edition of what must be the first literary forgery perpetrated by a person of color in Europe—and by one of the most tragically underappreciated individuals in western history, the first Black physician to practice and publish in Europe, and clearly a talented polymath. "Some people have believed that this work was really a translation," remarks Fournier-Pescay's entry in Michaud's Biographie des hommes vivants. "We know today that it is a poem by M. Fournier." ¶ Scrutiny would seem to weaken the pretense. To start, honestly, who's ever heard of Hugues de Xentralès? Then there's the dedication, suspiciously addressed to an anonymous count, containing a no less suspicious wink: "I know it, you will recognize the author of this writing, and you will easily guess that it is addressed to you." And Fournier-Pescay's lengthy introduction describes a source that sounds just a little too convenient: an 11th-century manuscript in his personal possession, the only copy known, not only penned by de Xentralès himself, but to which "notes are often attached in which the author gives details about himself" (p. 7). He lived for some time in Constantinople, for example, where he studied Greek and Latin; he was a gentleman of Embrun; and he learned his sword skills from an old troubadour by the name of Edmond de Lavalette, whom he chose to immortalize in this poem. The only outside source Fournier-Pescay cites is an anonymous M. de T....., who assured him de Xentralès was indeed a remarkable poet, de Lavalette a great troubadour, and that the poem was certainly written during the reign of Hugh Capet. ¶ Nonetheless, Fournier-Pescay anticipates we doubting Thomases. "I can imagine the ridicule that will be hurled at me by the incredulous," he writes, "who will dismiss the age and even the reality of de Xentralès's manuscript. What to do?" He admits he could have left de Xentralès's name off the title, and simply let readers believe he was the author himself. Sure, that would have forestalled questions about its authenticity. But he reasoned that his manuscript might not be the only one out there, "that one day the truth would be discovered, and that then, with a timorous conscience, people would cry plagiarism...And you will see they still do not believe me! And that, furious at not being able to prove plagiarism, they will accuse me of being a shameless liar." In his defense, he transcribes a nearly 20-page conversation he (allegedly) had with his publisher—itself a remarkable fabrication. After praising French literature at the expense of the English, he provides some additional details on the manuscript's provenance. It was the previous winter, when he was tidying up his papers, that it fell into his hands, having been given to him by a fellow officer. It came from a convent in Avignon, rescued from the flames during the orages politiques (presumably the French Revolution and its closure of religious houses; see p. 16-19). ¶ We're struck by this invented dialogue in light of Earle Havens's comments on classical texts fabricated three centuries earlier. "It must be recalled that this culpability extended just as much to the printers, who will have been complicit at some level as well—whether intellectually, out of purely commercial interests, or both—in feeding the appetite of humanists for new texts fixed to the names of old authors of the greatest antiquity.” Fournier-Pescay's subterfuge belongs to a different period, to the early days of a burgeoning revival of all things medieval. It was a Romantic age that had fallen hard for Ossian, a collection of allegedly ancient Gaelic poetry that was actually created by James Macpherson in the 1760s. While the Renaissance and its unifying classicism was in the distant past, Romanticism came with a generous dose of nationalism. What could be more romantic than a Frenchman inventing a lost medieval French poem? ¶ Even as a forgery, the production underscores Fournier-Pescay's talent and scholarship. Born into a prosperous plantation-owning family of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), he had access to a robust liberal arts education and immersed himself in fields of diverse inquiry, ranging from the biomedical sciences—his primary field—to medieval poetry. One might even say his defense here anticipates the struggle of early Black classicists, who “were often not understood; their presence was unsettling to many; they were marginalized, closely scrutinized, and even pronounced fraudulent; and their claims to learning were not fully regarded” (Haywood). Efforts have been made by contemporary scholarship to unveil the work of Black classicists within the nineteenth century (e.g. the Huffington Post article Hidden figures: the importance of remembering black classicists and Boston University’s ongoing lecture series Black Classicism–Moving Forward). Subterfuge aside, Fournier-Pescay here demonstrates that early Black academics were paying scholarly attention to ancient and medieval work. ¶ Here bound with likely the second edition of the anonymously published L'ingenue, following its publication in Geneva the same year. It is not to be confused with Voltaire's Ingenu (1767), though we'd hardly be surprised if the author was trying to hitch a cart to a lucrative Voltaire horse. The book is a little studied participant in the ongoing querelle des femmes (and rare in the trade). We're skeptical that it's actually the work of a niece addressing her uncle, but who's to say? It certainly comes down on the side of women's equality, if not women's superiority. ¶ The Fournier-Pescay work is rare. We find no copies at auction and WorldCat records just two copies (Duke and BnF).

PROVENANCE: Contemporary quote from Horace penned on the Ingenue title in an early hand: non semper areum tendit Apollo. Hor... Bookseller's notes penciled on the front fly-leaf.

CONDITION: Early quarter stained parchment and marbled boards. ¶ Some light foxing and the extremities gently worn; parchment at top of rear joint only just starting to split. Really a nice little book.

REFERENCES: Fournier-Pescay: Quérard, Supercheries littéraires, v. 3, column 1007 (indexed under Xentralès, but labeled aut. supposé); Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes (2nd ed.), v. 3, p. 425, #19156 ¶ L'ingenue: Gay and Lemonnyer, Bibliographie des ouvrages relatifs a l'amour, aux femmes et au mariage (1897), v. 2, col. 659 ¶ Biographie des hommes vivants (Paris: Michaud, 1817), v. 3, p. 144 (cited above); Robert Fikes, Jr., "François Fournier de Pescay: The Unheralded Precursor of the Modern Black Physician," Journal of the National Medical Association 77.9 (1985), p. 683-686; Earle Havens, "Bibliotheca Fictiva: Species and Genres of Literary and Historical Forgery," Fakes, Lies and Forgeries (Johns Hopkins, 2016), p. 10; Cyerra Haywood, “A Brief History of Black Classicism,” The Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, 13 Sept. 2020 <chs.harvard.edu/a-brief-history-of-black-classicism/>

Item #643