Georges Dumézil
Georges Dumézil
Georges Dumézil | |
|---|---|
| Born | 4 March 1898 Paris |
| Died | 11 October 1986(aged 88) Paris |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure |
| Institutions | École pratique des hautes études, Collège de France |
Main interests | Proto-Indo-European society |
Notable ideas | trifunctional hypothesis |
Influences
| |
Influenced
| |
Georges Dumézil (French: [ʒɔʁʒ dymezil]; 4 March 1898 – 11 October 1986, Paris) was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Proto-Indo-European religion and society. He is considered one of the major contributors to mythography, in particular for his formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis of social class in ancient societies.
Georges Dumézil | |
|---|---|
| Born | 4 March 1898 Paris |
| Died | 11 October 1986(aged 88) Paris |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure |
| Institutions | École pratique des hautes études, Collège de France |
Main interests | Proto-Indo-European society |
Notable ideas | trifunctional hypothesis |
Influences
| |
Influenced
| |
Biography
Book signed by Georges Dumézil and offered to Maurice Halbwachs.Maurice Halbwachs Collection of Human and Social Sciences Library Paris Descartes-CNRS
Dumézil's father was a classicist and Georges became interested in ancient languages at a young age (it has been said that he could read the Aeneid in Latin at the age of nine) and, by the end of his life, he is said to have spoken many languages fluently. During his time in secondary school, he was also influenced by Michel Bréal, a leading French philologist who was the grandfather of one of his classmates. By the time that he entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1916, he was already on the road to studying linguistics and the classics.
Dumézil's studies were delayed by World War I, when he was drafted and served as an artillery officer. After the war, he resumed them and was particularly influenced by Antoine Meillet. He aggregated in 1919 in Classics and received his doctorate in 1924 after writing a thesis comparing the common origins of the Greek ambrosia and a similarly named Indian drink Amrita, which was said to make its imbiber immortal. The dissertation was controversial because some of the examiners, such as Henri Hubert, thought that Dumézil took liberty with the facts to generate a more beautiful interpretation (that was a common criticism of Dumézil's work).
Feeling that he had little place in the French academy, Dumézil moved to Turkey in 1925 to teach at the University of Istanbul, created as part of Kemal Atatürk's attempt to create a modern, secular nation. He learned Turkish and developed an interest in the Ubykh language and travelled widely in Russia, Turkey and the Caucasus. As a result, he became one of the premier experts of Caucasian languages to work in French. He compared the Etruscan language with the Caucasian languages. In 1931, he took another position, in Uppsala, Sweden, which allowed him to improve his skills in the Germanic stock of Indo-European.
In 1929, he published Flamen-Brahman, the first full statement of his trifunctional hypothesis; the idea was repeated in Mitra-Varuna, perhaps his most accessible work.
Dumézil's influence rose in the mid-1930s. In 1935 he left Uppsala to take up a chair of Comparative Religion of Indo-European Peoples at the prestigious École Pratique des Hautes Études. He was named a professor at the Collège de France in 1949, and was finally elected to the Académie française in 1978 thanks to the patronage of his colleague and fellow student of myth, Claude Lévi-Strauss. In 1984 he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.
Dumézil is also well known for mentoring many younger French scholars. Michel Foucault, for instance, benefitted from his patronage when Dumézil arranged for him to teach temporarily in Uppsala early on in his career. Georges Charachidzé, a historian and linguist of Georgian origin under Dumézil's tutelage, became a noted specialist of the Caucasian cultures and aided Dumézil in the reconstruction of the Ubykh language.[1]
Many themes of Dumézil's work have continued influence in ancient religious studies: his impulse to comparative study, and his basic insight that polytheistic gods must be studied not simply by themselves but in the pairs and the ensembles in which their worshippers grouped them.
Criticism
Dumézil's politics are criticised much more often than is his monolithic scholarly work. Bruce Lincoln has leveled accusations of fascism against Dumézil.[2] The scholars Arnaldo Momigliano,[3][4] Carlo Ginzburg,[5] and Lincoln[6] argue that Dumézil was in favor of a traditional hierarchical order in Europe (e.g. three estates), that his Indo-European dualism and tripartite ideology may be also related to Italian and French fascist ideas and that he was in favor of French fascism (e.g. integralism); none of them thought that he was a supporter of German Nazism.[7] Lincoln states:
"[T]hose on the New Right, like Alain de Benoist, Jean Haudry, or Roger Pearson, cite Dumézil's writings in support of their positions—their fondness for hierarchy and authority, for example, their antipathy toward egalitarianism and the ideals of the Enlightenment, or their triumphal view of ‘Indo-Europeans’ as superior to all other peoples—we may suspect them of appropriating nothing other than positions of the Old Right that have been brilliantly recoded and misrepresented first as ancient wisdom, and second as scholarly discourse."[8]
In the 1930s, Dumézil supported the far-right, anti-democratic Action française and held Benito Mussolini in high regard.[9] Dumézil's relations with De Benoist and Haudry were ambiguous,[10] but among his "closest colleagues" were Otto Höfler (who was in the SS-Ahnenerbe), Jan de Vries (a Nazi collaborator) and Stig Wikander (who had an ambiguous relation to Nazism).[11] Dumézil, in response to a text written by Momigliano indicating that Dumézil might have been keen on Nazi ideology, wrote "fascist and Nazi conceptions of a hierarchical society have never been part of my intuition nor of my conduct".[12]
Such criticism of Dumézil has been emphatically disputed by Didier Eribon in his 1992 book Faut-il brûler Dumézil ? Mythologie, science et politique [Should Dumézil Be Burned? Mythology, Science and Politics].[13][14] In a survey article on Dumézil's work Dean A. Miller devoted two pages on the case and concluded that "at its worst, the effort tries to remove the importance of whole theoretical constructions on the basis of some adduced or invented political flaw found in the past, often the remote past, of their creator. This derogation is not simple-minded 'political correctness'. It is, [again] in my opinion, the blindest intellectual self-mutilation".[15]
Works in English
Archaic Roman Religion. Trans. Philip Krapp. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Camillus: A Study of Indo-European Religion as Roman History. Ed., Udo Strutynski, tr. Annette Aronowicz and Josette Bryson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980 [selections from Mythe et épopéeIII and Fêtes romaines d'été et d'automne]
The Destiny of a King. Trans. Alf Hiltebeitel. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1973 [Mythe et épopée II.3]
The Fate of the Warrior. Trans. Alf Hiltebeitel. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970
From Myth to Fiction: The Saga of Hadingus. Trans. Derek Coltman. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1973.
Gods of the Ancient Northmen. Ed. and Trans. Einar Haugen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. [English and French].
*Mitra-Varuna (engl.) [19] *. Transl. Derek Coltman. New York: Zone Books, 1988 ISBN 0-942299-12-4
The Stakes of the Warrior. Ed. Jaan Puhvel and David Weeks. Berkeley and Los Angeles, UC Press, 1983. [Mythe et épopée II.1]
The Plight of the Sorcerer. Trans. David Weeks. Berkeley and Los Angeles, UC Press, 1986. [Mythe et épopée II.2]
The Riddle of Nostradamus: A Critical Dialogue. The Johns Hopkins University Press (9 Mar. 1999)
Works
Le Festin d'immortalité – Étude de mythologie comparée indo-européenne, 1924, published in Annales du Musée Guimet
Le Crime des Lemniennes – Rites et Légendes du monde égéen, 1924
Le Problème des Centaures – Étude de mythologie comparée indo-européenne, 1929, published in Annales du Musée Guimet
Ouranos-Varuna – Essai de mythologie comparée indo-européenne, 1932, éditions Maisonneuve
Légendes sur les Nartes, suivies de cinq notes mythologiques, 1930, Institut d'études slaves
Flamen-Brahman, 1935
Mythes et dieux des Germains – Essai d'interprétation comparative (1939), Presses Universitaires de France
Mitra-Varuna – Essai sur deux représentations indo-européennes de la Souveraineté, 1940, Presses universitaires de France
Jupiter Mars Quirinus, composed of : Essai sur la conception indo-européenne de la société et sur les origines de Rome, 1941 Naissance de Rome, 1944 Naissance d'archanges-Essai sur la formation de la religion zoroastrienne, 1945 Explication de textes indiens et latins, 1948, Gallimard
Les Mythes romains, composé de quatre volumes : Horace et les Curiaces, 1942 Servius Tullius|Servius et la Fortune – Essai sur la fonction sociale de louange et de blâme et sur les éléments indo-européens du cens romain, 1943 Tarpeia – Cinq essais de philologie comparée indo-européenne, 1947, éditions Gallimard
Loki, 1948, GP Maisonneuve
L'Héritage indo-européen à Rome, 1949, Gallimard
Le Troisième Souverain – Essai sur le dieu indo-iranien Aryaman et sur la formation de l'histoire mythique de l'Irlande, 1949, GP Maisonneuve
Les Dieux indo-européens, 1952, Presses Universitaires de France
Rituels indo-européens à Rome, 1954, Klincksieck
Déesses latines et mythes védiques, 1956, Latomus
Aspects de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens, 1956
Contes et légendes des Oubykhs, 1957, Institut d'Ethnologie
Contes lazes, 1957, Institut d'Ethnologie
L'Idéologie tripartite des Indo-Européens, 1958, Latomus
Études oubykhs, 1959, publié aux éditions Maisonneuve
Les Dieux des Germains, essai sur la formation de la religion scandinave, 1959, Presses Universitaires de France
Documents anatoliens sur les langues et les traditions du Caucase, 1960–1967, Maisonneuve
Le Livre des héros, légendes ossètes sur les Nartes, 1965, Gallimard
La Religion romaine archaïque, avec un appendice sur la religion des Étrusques, 1966,Payot
Mythe et Épopée L'Idéologie des trois fonctions dans les épopées des peuples indo-européens 1968 Types épiques indo-européens : un héros, un sorcier, un roi 1971 Histoires romaines, 1973, Gallimard
Idées romaines, 1969, Gallimard
Heur et Malheur du guerrier, aspects de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens, 1969, Presses Universitaires de France
Du mythe au roman, la Saga de Hadingus et autres essais, 1970, Presses Universitaires de France
Fêtes romaines d'été et d'automne, suivi de Dix Questions romaines, 1975, Gallimard
Le Verbe oubykh, études descriptives et comparatives, 1975, Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres
Les Dieux souverains des Indo-Européens, 1977, Gallimard
Romans de Scythie et d'alentour, 1978, Payot
Mariages indo-européens, suivi de Quinze Questions romaines, 1979, Payot
Apollon sonore et autres essais, 1982, Gallimard
La Courtisane et les Seigneurs colorés, et autres essais – 25 esquisses de mythologie, 1983, Gallimard.
Le Moyne noir en gris dedans Varenne – Sotie Nostradamus|nostradamique, 1984, Gallimard
L'Oubli de l'homme et l'honneur des dieux, 1985, Gallimard
Entretiens avec Didier Eribon, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1987
Le Roman des jumeaux – Esquisses de mythologie, Joël Grisward, 1995, Gallimard.