Lighting
A specialist in Antiquity and the Renaissance, he is responsible for major translations (Thomas More's Utopia, Euripides' tragedies, Erasmus' correspondence, etc.), biographies (Aeschylus, Erasmus, etc.) and works on Greek religion and myths (Oedipus, Hermaphrodite, Hephaestus, etc.).
Highlighting a publication by Marie Delcourt is a challenge that, from the outset, we know we'll never meet. Firstly, because of the sheer number of her publications - several hundred - never before exhaustively listed. Then, because of the diversity of her interests: she was a historian as well as a classical philologist, a specialist in Greek religion and myths as well as humanism, a newspaper columnist as well as a writer of short stories and poems... and even a cookery book! however, " points out Vinciane Pirenne, Professor at the Collège de France and the Université de Liège, " we can say that Marie Delcourt excelled in three genres: biography and translation, for both Antiquity and the 16th century, and studies on religious representations of the Greeks
Rereading Greek myths
Although she forced her way into university by teaching the history of humanism, Marie Delcourt is first and foremost a classical philologist. This was her primary training, which she completed in Paris, then by traveling to Italy and Greece; it was Greek that she taught her students at the "Institut supérieur des Demoiselles" in Liège. If we want to summarize her contribution to this field, we can undoubtedly highlight two main areas of research: Greek literature, of course (she is a philologist, after all), but also Greek religion and myths.
if we look first of all at her studies on myths," explains Vinciane Pirenne, "it's fair to say that she was a pioneer in bringing a certain psychoanalytical approach to her studies, albeit a moderate, critical one. This earned her a great deal of sarcasm in the milieu of classical philology at the time
His work on Oedipus (1) is quite emblematic of this approach. The story of Oedipus is made up of six episodes, each set within a different legend and based on the work of Sophocles or other poets through whom the myth has been handed down to us. In her book, Marie Delcourt examines the six themes that make up the Oedipus legend (the exposed child, the murder of the father, the victory over the sphinx, the enigma, the marriage of the princess, the union with the mother), presenting each as illustrating the transfer of power from father to son. These are ancient rites of succession brought together into a single story by the talent of the poets. What the layman probably remembers most about the ancient myth is incest, and Freud's interpretation of it. Marie Delcourt doesn't shirk this moment, but she does challenge Freud's interpretation. "We know what fortune psychoanalysis has made of these verses," she writes in her book (2). "In Freud's view, 'the myth of King Oedipus who kills his father and takes his mother as his wife is a slightly modified manifestation of infantile desire, against which the barrier of incest is later erected to repel it'. What's more, Jocasta's strange assertion is well suited to interest a doctor who sees in dreams the refuge where censored feelings can finally blossom at ease. (...) But this line does not have the meaning we wanted to give it. Rather, it alludes to something other than the nocturnal explosion of tendencies frightened by the open day. (...) Union with the mother may sometimes be an object of desire. But what is certain is that, whether realized, dreamt of or simply declared, it is equivalent to a hierogamy that symbolizes the taking of possession of the soil."
Marie Delcourt analyzes myths with all the tools at her disposal, from rigorous philology to the study of diverse sources and social contexts. in a way, she anticipates certain aspects of Claude Lévi-Strauss's structural approach," explains Vinciane Pirenne. Marie Delcourt was already keen to discover what Lévi-Strauss would later call mythèmes, i.e. motifs that are relatively recurrent in stories. At the time, this was a remarkable approach. It's a work that retains all its relevance, even if, like all works from the 1940s, it needs to be approached with the necessary distance, and using more recent analytical tools. "
Gods are not interchangeable
For Vinciane Pirenne, Marie Delcourt's knowledge of Greek religious representations was exceptional. what remains relevant and continues to speak to us," she adds, " is her intuition that the gods are not interchangeable. For a long time, modernists considered Greek religion as a simple, abundant polytheism, somewhat discredited because the filter of analysis remained very Christian-centric. It was hard to understand why the Greeks, who had invented philosophy, history, mathematics and astronomy, were still 'so unsophisticated' in their approach to the world of the gods, when monotheism was supposed to satisfy all the demands of modernity and progress. But not Marie Delcourt, who took the Greek gods very seriously! She spoke of the profound being of a god, which was its specificity. I wouldn't use those terms today, because they're a form of essentialization that's not very effective as a working tool. But she had already sensed that the Greeks had to be taken seriously when they honored a plurality of gods, and that these gods were not interchangeable. " Such a conception, such a "seriousness" as Vinciane Pirenne calls it, is certainly not unanimous in the philological schools of the time. But Marie Delcourt held fast to her method, as she reminded André Motte, Professor Emeritus of the History of Philosophy of Antiquity at the University of Liège, in a letter she wrote to him in 1973: "Something new began when reason considered the products of the imagination as objects worthy of it, no longer taking them for gratuitous whims, but for significant facts, which deserved to have its rigorous methods applied to them" (3).
L'oracle de Delphes (4) clearly shows how Marie Delcourt intends to break down the barriers of religious phenomena and explore their diverse components. The author begins by analyzing the site in its most material aspects: the environment, the objects of worship, the various participants, the form of the messages, etc., noting that we don't know how the question was put to the pythia or the exact form of the pythia's reply! What Herodotus and Plutarch have handed down to us is undoubtedly far from reality. In the second part of her book, Marie Delcourt shows that the Pythia did not seem to be prophesying, but rather advising, usually in the form of riddles. Through her voice, Apollo tells which divinity has been offended and how to make amends. In the third part of his book, the author takes the opportunity to question the 'divine' role of Delphi: isn't the crack in the rock known as the 'Mouth of the Earth', from which the oracle emerges, the place and symbol of communication with the beyond, with God: "The Mouth of the Earth was just an unimportant crevasse: what counts is the idea people had of it. The substance of the Pythia's answers was most often provided by the consultants themselves. But, in the imagination of an entire people, this conversation between a god and men took on a precise and complex meaning that subsequently influenced beliefs." (5)
Translating for understanding
As for the translator, she reveals herself in Marie Delcourt's version of Euripides' tragedies (6), published in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade: " her translation remains magnificent," exclaims Vinciane Pirenne, " relatively free in the rendering of the texts, but very beautiful ". But also, of course, in the translation of Erasmus' correspondence (7). In both cases, the philologist is at the height of her powers. But she puts her knowledge at the service of the reader. she translates so that everyone can understand," points out Franz Bierlaire, Professor Emeritus of the History of Humanism at the University of Liège. Her concern for popularization is constant: to make it easy to read and easy to understand " How does she achieve this? No doubt because she has a detailed knowledge of the society in which the works were produced, but also of the society in which she lives. Words cannot be taken out of the context in which they were produced or received, and she often ponders their meaning at length: does 'atrium' mean the same thing to the Latin author as it does to the person reading the word today? Choosing the right word: a problem she returns to frequently in the fabulous correspondence she maintains when editing Erasmus's correspondence.
" The translation and editing of Erasmus' correspondence remains a monument for me ," explains Franz Bierlaire. She didn't translate everything herself (essentially volume 1, 3, 10 and the last, 11), but she did proofread and annotate everything, as did Alois Gerlo, the director of the edition. From the outset of the project in 1964, an extraordinary correspondence developed between Gerlo and Marie Delcourt - they exchanged 234 letters and documents - which was not to end until his death in 1979 (8). In it, she shares her difficulties in translating this or that expression, her doubts often resolved by a Ut dicunt (as they say!)... which Erasmus himself was not averse to.
Translating Euripides' texts poses another problem: how do you translate poetic texts? Can we afford not to recreate a rhythm? Or try a rhyming verse translation? Marie Delcourt is careful not to do so, opting instead for prose arranged according to the original text, while taking care to create rhythm through skilful repetition of words. "She finds (the beauty of style) by squeezing the thought, transposing it with maximum economy and rigor, dreading above all that a sentence clear in Greek is not, from the first reading, clear in French." (9)
Erasmus, Aeschylus, Euripides and others..
A specialist in Greek religion and myths, and a philologist-translator, Marie Delcourt was also a talented biographer, even if this talent is most evident in her work on Antiquity. it's true that only one biography emerges from her research on humanism, that of Erasmus (10)," explains Franz Bierlaire. And it's more a collection of studies on Erasmus and Thomas More, since the two friends are inseparable for her, than a biography in the classical sense of the term. But she excels in painting a psychological portrait of her characters based on their writings. I particularly remember her passages on Erasmus's cheerfulness, which, incidentally, she found unbearable at the end of his life!
This clarity of purpose and concern for pedagogy are evident in the biographies of Pericles or Euripides, for example... which did not fail to annoy some people in her day: almost no scholarly footnotes, references reserved for specialists, parentheses interspersed throughout the text. "These are not books to consult, but books to read", in the words of Professor Jules Labarbe (11). She has no hesitation, for example, in imagining (and, of course, indicating) fictitious dialogues, bringing Euripides and an old Athenian into dialogue; nor does she hesitate to imagine scenes of life, to set the scene. You can feel that she has had fun writing these lives, and that she takes pleasure in resurrecting them for us.
Scientific references
(1) Œdipe ou la légende du conquérant, Paris-Liège, Droz-Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège, 1944.
(2)Ibidem, p 192-193.
The lines to which Marie Delcourt alludes are those Sophocles puts into the mouth of Jocasta, addressing her son Œdipus: "Ah, let no fear come to you from the nuptials with your mother. Many a man has dreamt of being united with his mother. He who regards this as unimportant is also the one who bears life most easily."(Œdipe Roi, 977 sq.)
(3) Speech by Professor André Motte on March 17, 1989, at a symposium marking the tenth anniversary of Marie Delcourt's death.
(4) L'oracle de Delphes, Paris, Payot,1955.
(5) Ibidem, p 230
(6) Euripides, complete theater, Paris, NRF, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1962.
(7) Correspondance d'Erasme, Tomes 1 à 11, edited by A. Gerlo; Bruxelles, Presses Académiques Européennes and University Press, 1967 to 1982.
(8) D'une correspondance, l'autre. Lettres de Marie Delcourt et d'Aloïs Gerlo traducteurs de l'Opus epistolarum d'Erasme (1964-1979), edited by Marie Theunissen-Faider, Paris, Droz, 2012.
(9) Marie Delcourt et l'Antiquité, by Jules Labarbe, in Hommage à Marie Delcourt, Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège, 1983, p 12.
(10) Erasmus, Brussels, Libris, 1944.
(11) Marie Delcourt et l'Antiquité, by Jules Labarbe, in Hommage à Marie Delcourt, Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège, 1983, p 8.
Although a complete review of Marie Delcourt's writings has yet to be published, the following works are well worth reading: L. GRAAS-HOISNARD, Marie Delcourt. "Un esprit libre dans un corps entravé", separate issue of the Revue culturelle "Galerie", 2003, p. 26-36.
Read Marie Delcourt's biography
Consult Marie Delcourt's scientific publications
Franz Bierlaire
A historian of the modern era, Franz Bierlaire has been Professor Emeritus at the Université de Liège and Honorary Lecturer at the Université Libre de Bruxelles since 2009. His work focuses on the history of humanism (Erasmus and Erasmism), books (school colloquia, puerile civility) and childhood in the Renaissance period. For over thirty years, he taught the course created in 1929 by Marie Delcourt.
Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge
Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge is a historian with a doctorate in philosophy and literature and an agrégation in higher education. Her main fields of research are ancient Greek religion and the functioning of polytheistic systems, as well as the historiography of religions. She is the author of numerous articles on Greek cults and myths. She is the scientific editor of Kernos, the only international scientific journal on these themes. In November 2016, Vinciane Pirenne was elected to the new chair at the Collège de France entitled "Religion, History and Society in the Ancient Greek World". A true consecration in a career led at the FNRS and the University of Liège.
Consult the list of Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge's scientific publications
