Paul et Virginie, présentation, notes et variantes par Jean-Michel Racault, nouvelle édition mise à jour by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

Abstract

Reviewed by: Paul et Virginie, présentation, notes et variantes par Jean-Michel Racault, nouvelle édition mise à jour by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre Vladimir Kapor Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, présentation, notes et variantes par Jean-Michel Racault, nouvelle édition mise à jour ( Paris: Librairie Générale Française, Livre de Poche « Classiques », 2019). Pp. 480. €5.20 paper. To students of Paul et Virginie, Jean-Michel Racault's "Livre de Poche" edition (1999) of the text needs little introduction. When it appeared in 1999, it garnered praise from some of the leading authorities on Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: Yves Bénot hailed it as "un modèle du genre" [a model of its kind],1 while Malcolm Cook praised its "sound, scholarly approach to the novel," offering "excellent value for a modest cost."2 In Réal Ouellet's view, one of the edition's principal merits is to have removed Paul et Virginie from the pedestal of a timeless, self-contained classic anchored in scholarly tradition, by situating it in the context of its time and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's entire opus.3 The chosen editorial approach formed part of a broader trend in recent scholarship which has sought to re-evaluate and rehabilitate Bernardin de Saint-Pierre as a thinker. It was spearheaded by Racault himself, along with Colas Duflo, who boldly claimed in 1996 that "une analyse de Paul et Virginie qui ne s'appuie pas sur les Études de la Nature est aussi incomplete et aveugle qu'une analyse des rapports humains dans Huis Clos qui ignorerait tout de la troisième partie d'Être et néant" [an analysis of Paul et Virginie that does not draw on the Études de la Nature is as incomplete and blind as an analysis of human relationship in Sartre's No Exit that ignores the third part of Being and Nothingness entirely].4 The mere parallel between Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Jean-Paul Sartre was a testament to the eighteenth-century author's fast-changing reputation: from a one-hit-wonder and Rousseau's faithful disciple, to a prolific author and an original thinker in his own right. Racault's 1999 "Livre de Poche" edition, which has imposed itself as the most authoritative affordable edition of Paul et Virginie and one of the most frequently cited ones over the past two decades, has played no small part in this repositioning. In 2019, "Livre de Poche" brought out a new, updated version of it, in what appears to be a significantly expanded 476-page volume of the same format (the text of the 1999 edition was 348 pages long). The added length is mainly due to an increased line spacing used throughout and the reorganization of the volume's critical apparatus. The glossary of lesser-known terms that followed the critical introduction in the 1999 edition (60–74)5 has found its place after the main text and the appendices (annexes) in the new one (361–80); the "chronologie synoptique" that originally followed it (75–86), is now wedged between the lengthy 1806 Préambule and the appendices (315–31), whilst the two series of footnotes running through the main text—textual variants and scholarly annotations—have been merged into one and reproduced as end-notes situated at the very end of the volume (399–476). These features of the new layout all combine to effectively foreground the main text (81–232) and enhance its legibility. There are no revisions to the choice of textual variants and only one slight amendment to the glossary, in the entry "créole" (368). The first of the excerpts from published and unpublished works by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre reproduced in the "appendices" (annexes) of the 1999 edition—the multiple drafts of the tableau of Paul and Virginia enveloped in Virginia's "swelling petticoat"—has been replaced with Racault's transcription of a manuscript fragment "Géographie. Air, vents et tempêtes" [Geography. Air, winds and storms] (333–37), which served as a blueprint for the two descriptions [End Page 745] of the hurricane found in the novel and the reflections on the benevolence of nature that...