The Life and Travels of Xavier Marmier (1808–1892): Bringing World Literature to France (review)

Xavier Marmier, a hitherto marginalized figure of French nineteenth-century letters, is brought vividly to life in Wendy Mercer's meticulously researched biography. The son of impoverished gentlefolk, whose early career reads like that of a Balzacian hero, Marmier left his native Franche-Comté for the Paris of the July Monarchy starting out as a journalist. Soon, he made his mark as a poet, novelist, lecturer and literary critic before finding true fame as an exceptionally talented travel writer, linguist, translator, ethnologist and social historian. Mercer identifies Marmier's greatest achievement as an initiator who brought an awareness of foreign literatures and cultures to a France which, prior to the nineteenth century, had been convinced of her own cultural supremacy. Marmier's travels took him to Germany, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Russia, Poland, Holland, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldavia and several Balkan states, Turkey, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, the USA, Canada, Argentina, and Uruguay. He learned English, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Sami, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Serbo-Croat, and Italian. He also taught himself Anglo-Saxon and could converse in Latin if all else failed. Colonial expansion and the birth of the tourist industry provided Marmier with a ready audience for his work but what made him unique among travel writers of the period was his insistence on experiencing life as it was lived in the countries he visited through learning the language and actually sharing the day-to-day lives of the people he met. While not blind to his flaws as a man, such as his disingenuous attitude towards certain friends and fellow writers, his mixture of reactionary and humanist views, and his paradoxical ideological and political stance as an Orleanist and supporter of French colonialism on the one hand and a despiser of capitalism on the other, Mercer's portrait is essentially a celebratory and sympathetic one. She focuses especially on demonstrating that part of his special appeal was that he visited countries that had not been much documented at the time. Similarly, for the modern reader, Marmier's writings constitute valuable social documents on the countries he visited. Mercer is particularly good on Marmier's journeys across northern Europe and the Americas. Scholars keen to discover Marmier's travels and opinions on North Africa, the Middle East and Turkey, however, may be a little disappointed, however, as Mercer dismisses these as the least interesting aspects of his writing. This is a pity as Marmier's sometimes contradictory colonialist, nationalistic and racist views towards the Islamic world, while perhaps not seeming to provide any new information on the people or locations visited, are nevertheless still worthy of exploration within the context of nineteenth-century France's foreign policy and her wider colonial ambitions as well as her relationship with the Ottoman Empire, and the other world powers, Britain, Prussia, and Russia. It is hoped that Mercer's thought provoking book will encourage other scholars to rediscover Marmier for themselves now that the critical debate surrounding his works has been so deftly opened up.