Memoirs of the Sea

The sea is a physical reality but also a mental construction. What does literature bring to our relationship with the sea ? This reflection was born both from awareness of environmental issues and the place that literature, and more generally the humanities, can play in this awareness. The sea creates a community, and not only that which unites sailors, fishermen, underwater archaeologists, inhabitants of coastal areas. Due to the current complex context of climate change, we are all involved. It is essential to our future.

This project is set within the recent field of Blue humanities and Environmental humanities, that “critically examines the planet’s troubled seas and distressed freshwaters from various socio-cultural, literary, historical, aesthetic, ethical, and theoretical perspectives » (Serpil Oppermann, Blue Humanities, Cambridge University Press, 2023). The new discipline “Blue Humanities” is currently still absent from French laboratories. It is an opportunity to be seized now. Given the geographical position of Brest, its excellence in oceanography but also its literary tradition (Claire de Duras, Émile Souvestre, Victor Segalen, Henri Queffélec, Pierre-Jakez Hélias, Alain Robbe-Grillet… Chateaubriand, Pierre Mac Orlan, Jean Genet, Georges Perros stayed there and wrote texts about the city), it makes sense for us to gain new leadership by building an extensive and innovative maritime literature program in addition to scientific research conducted at the European Institute for Marine Studies (interdisciplinary centre with 8 laboratories and the La Pérouse Library). CECJI is the first, and to this day the only literary research centre to have opened a Sea axis. Since 2020, work has been carried out on specific points : conference “Fellini. L’intime et la mer” (June 2021. Proceedings : Roma Tre Press, 2022) ; “Mers intimes”, lecture by the poet Henri Le Bellec (December 2021); presentation of the book by the poet and historian of art Yves Peyré, Confins maritimes (Ed. Galilée), about Britany, with illustrations of Loïc Le Groumellec (December 2022) ; workshop “Writing at sea”, December 2022 (proceedings forthcoming, Brest, Cahiers du CECJI, 2024) ; publication of my study “Henri Michaux and the Sea” (University of Gdańsk, Cahiers ERTA) ; collective book Lighthouses in Literature (forthcoming, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2024) ; lecture about Ulysses by Jean-Michel Ropars (November 2023). 

The sea is a constituent element of European identity. It creates a strong sense of belonging, the feeling of being part of a community. The matrix of all Western literature is a maritime epic, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Since antiquity (Homer, then Virgil), how does literature help us to approach the sea ? The hypothesis underlying the design of this project is that Literature has the role of a witness to past times, especially when films did not yet exist, as well as of a whistleblowing in modern times. How does a collective memory of the sea emerge from Literature ? What urgent questions does it raise ? Life at sea, traditions and cultures, evolution of boats, technical developments, discovery of marine animals and water plants, maritime disasters ; but also preservation of the oceans, climate emergency, sustainable development, responsible fishing. “The Atlantic wears away our coasts. The pressure of the current from the Pole deforms our western cliffs. This wall that shields us from the sea is being undermined from Saint-Valery-sur-Somme to Ingouville ; huge blocks of rock tumble down, the sea churns clouds of boulders, our harbors are silted up with sans and shingle, the mouths of our rivers are barred.” This is not an observation taken from a recent book about climate change, but the beginning of Victor Hugo’s novel Toilers of the sea (tr. James Hogarth).

Immense, enigmatic, the sea represents maximum otherness. It is impossible to grasp it, and it is also for this reason that it has had such a lasting fascination and is so closely linked to the intimate. It is a place of contradictions, ambivalence : dreams and nightmares ; silence and noise ; movement and immobility ; calm and threats. Its mystery is linked to its infinite as well as indefinite nature.

Yet it surrounds us. It is therefore essential, since we live with it, to try to understand it. Understanding it remains a challenge. If its surface is moving and changing, its depth, inaccessible to the naked eye, contains not one but several worlds, fauna and flora, which often come into conflict, as Roberto Casati pointed out : « Lacking a human community of reference, invested by different communities with often conflicting interests ».

Interaction takes place between poetic approach and scientific approach. A reservoir of images, the sea generates numerous metaphors. Since we cannot grasp it directly, imagination takes over from reason. Faced with technological acceleration and the climate emergency, we can, like a great poet of the sea, say : “the questioning is the same on the same abyss, with only their investigative modes differing”. When Einstein “was heard to plead intuition to the rescue of reason and to proclaim that «imagination is the true field of scientific germination», even going so far as to claim for the scientist the benefit of a true «artistic vision» – is it not right to regard the poetic instrument as legitimate as the logical instrument ?” That was the question Saint-John Perse asked in his Nobel Speech. What’s more, images and terms inspired by the sea, construction of myths (for example the myth of Atlantide, or as well as the birth of Venus) and mythological creatures (Poseidon/Neptune, the Titan Oceanus, oceanids, nereids like Amphitrite and Calypso, tritons, naiads, mermaids) very present in poems, from antiquity to the Renaissance (The Lusiads, epic poem written by Luis Vaz de Camões) and baroque age : all evidence that imagination brings additional enrichment. 

This project proposes an explanation of the profound meaning of the evocative power of the sea throughout the centuries. According to Alain Corbin, we consider the sea, not only as a space for circulation and commerce or a space studied in its relationships with the earth, but as “an element in itself”. We thus follow his representations from antiquity to present time.

Literature helps to find landmarks and to understand when one type of representation prevailed over another : hostile space (Antiquity), mirror of hell (Middle Ages). Then thanks to the Age of Discovery, the sea became a little less enigmatic ; it arouses more wonder. At the end of the XVIII^th century, it is associated with the sublime. From the mid XIX^th century, the rise of travel stories, ever more distant trips, arouse the curiosity and the interest of readers. The sea becomes a historical and social space while remaining an inspiration for new images and new emotions. 

Ernest Renan compared himself to a squid. And in order to approach the mystery of life this man from Brittany borrowed another image from the seabed : “The pearl oyster seems to me the best image of the universe and of the degree of awareness that should be assumed overall. […] The general life of the universe is, like that of the oyster, vague, obscure, slow consequently.” Seabirds like pelican (Alfred de Musset), albatross (Baudelaire), sea-mew (Elizabeth Barrett Browning), petrel (Saint-John Perse) have been immortalized in poetry, as well as the oyster (Francis Ponge).

Poetry is eloquent and evocative. Baudelaire (himself an inventor of images : the hair became “ebony sea” : “I shall bury my head enamored with rapture/
In this black ocean […]”) paid tribute to Hugo : “when he describes the sea, no marine painting equals his own”. And the sea can be helpful, in a metaphysical perspective. Saint-John Perse wrote : “I wanted to exalt the drama of this human condition ; and I chose the Sea symbolically as a mirror offered to this destiny”.

For poets the sea leads to dreams of escape (Rimbaud, The drunken boat ; Henri Michaux : “One day I will pull the anchor that holds my ship away from the seas”), expresses the nostalgia of elsewhere (Pessoa ; Supervielle…), inspires amazing images (Saint-John Perse : “The moving Sea who progresses in the gliding of its great wandering, the viscous Sea gliding as a pleura, and in all its affluence the sea came upon us on its coils of a black python”). The sea can give birth of the vocation of poets : for example Yves Bonnefoy discovered when he was a child The rime of the ancient mariner by Coleridge and two verses stroke him for ever : “They were the first that ever burst / Into that silent sea.” He saw in these alliterations, this harmony imitating the rhythm of the waves, a mystery and a kind of open door to the invisible, encouraging him to live poetically his relationship with language. Many years later, he wrote : “Language is a beautiful underwater landscape”.

We will study how the sea has been represented through the centuries ; what are the changes identified from one era to another but also from one culture to another ; the evolution of maritime glossary conveyed in novels, plays and poems. We want to show that literature is not just entertainment (adventure novels) or pure art (poetry) but that it also has an educational function. Anyone not used to the sea may face great danger, and some literary texts have provided useful information, instead of just telling a story. For example, Hermann Melville (Moby-Dick, 1851) explains to us why the whale is white ; he tells us about the habits of whales but also about the fossil whale. Jules Verne did extensive scientific research to write Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869-1870). George Sand sent him a letter (25 July 1865) in which she regretted not having any other novel of his to read, after the enthousiastic reading of Five Weeks in a Balloon and Journey to the Center of the Earth.  “I hope that you will soon lead us into the depths of the sea and that you will make your characters travel in these diving devices that your science and your imagination are able to perfect.” In this novel, we learn a lot of things about ships, sailors, coral, fishes, sea monsters, aquatic fauna and flora… The novel becomes a document, at least a documentary fiction, as well-informed as a scientific book and the novelist’s aim is also pedagogical.

We want to put together archives of the Sea, through the story of expeditions, of shipwrecks, of migration, the description of tempests, lifes of sailors and fishermen, boats, islands, fishes, crustaceans, underwater plants, the evocation of high and low tides... For example, The Sea, by Michelet (1861), informs us of all these topics. The writer exercises his sense of observation and marvels at the perfection of sea creatures, 160 years before Bruno David’s book Sea urchins, messengers of evolution (CNRS Editions, 2022) : “The sea urchin has carried the genius of defence to its utmost limit. His cuirass, or, preferably, his fortress of pieces, is at once movable and resisting, yet sensitive, retractile, and capable of being repaired in case of accident ; this fortress is fast-joined and anchored to the rock, and still farther lodged within a hollow of the rock, so that the enemy has no means of attacking the citadel ; it is a system of defence so perfect that it can never be surpassed. No shell is comparable to it ; far less are any of the works of human industry. The sea urchin is the completion of the starred and circular creatures ; in him they have their highest and most triumphant development. The circle has few variations ; it is the absolute form ; in the globe of the sea urchin, at once so simple and so complicated, is the perfection and completion of the first world.” (tr. Katia Sainson). In another chapter, he stresses the need for solid constructions against the onslaught of sand, water and storms – an ongoing issue.

“Promontories, forelands, capes, headlands, breakers, and shoals are veritable constructions. The geological changes of the earth are trifling compared with the vast operations of the ocean” : Victor Hugo teaches us many things about the sea throughout his great novel Toilers of the sea written during his exile in the Channel island Guernsey and published in 1866. He describes very precisely rocks mi-ocean, grottoes etc., adding his visionary force and poetic import. In the middle of the XIX^th century, he invites us to an amazing experience of scuba-diving : “A place of shade, which yet was dazzling to the eyes […]. The water had a magical transparency. Here and there seaweeds of more than a fathom in length undulated beneath the water, like the waving of long tresses in the wind. […] Under these vegetations there showed themselves from time to time some of the rarest bijoux of the casket of the ocean. […] The glittering heap of the shells, in certain spots under the wave, gave out singular irradiations, amidst which the eye caught glimpses of confused azure and gold, and mother-of-pearl, of every tint of the water.” (tr. James Hogarth). In this novel, the relationship with the sea takes on a historical, political and social dimension. The sea reflects the harsh living conditions of sailors and fishermen. To prepare his novel, Victor Hugo took notes about the life of the islanders, their language, habits and beliefs, about storms and shipwrecks, maritime landscapes, and also the observation of an octopus, providing a reference documentation, true annals of Guernsey.

The sea can separate and swallow (Victor Hugo, Oceano nox), but also bring closer and unite, ensuring a social and cultural link. For poets (Baudelaire) it represents an elsewhere full of promises ; for migrants, from the most famous to the most anonymous the dream of a better future. Uncertainty, risk and regret are however part of the journey. Forced to flee the Revolution to America, Chateaubriand wrote : “My gaze remained fixed on Saint-Malo ; I had just left my mother there in floods of tears. […] I was departing, uncertain equally of my country’s destiny and my own : which of us would perish first, France or I ? Would I ever see France or my family again ? […] That sea, in whose lap I was born, would become the cradle of my new life. […] Here my destiny altered : ‘Again to sea!’ as Byron sang.” (Memoirs from beyond the Grave. Tr. A. S. Kline). 

Jean-Michel Racault (PR emeritus, University of the French Antilles) demonstrated in an article that from antiquity (Homer) to the end of the XVIII^th century (Bernardin de Saint-Pierre) navigation was represented in the literature as dangerous : storms, drowning, pirates, risk of becoming slaves. A famous novelist, however, Daniel Defoe, while recalling the real dangers, qualified this pessimistic view : his hero, Robinson Crusoe, does not die ; beached alone on an isolated island, struggling to survive, he had a second birth.

When we take a look at the XIX^th and XX^th centuries, maritime disaster can sometimes have a happy ending, leading us to meditate on the meaning of life and ordeal. Jules Verne’s novel In Search of the Castaways (1867-1868) is ultimately full of hope : a bottle of champagne found in the belly of a shark contains three messages. Two of them are unreadable, unlike the third. After many tribulations, the children of shipwrecked Captain Grant see again their father.

We shall integrate into the project personal documents, and especially diaries and correspondences written from boats. For example Victor Segalen’s letters which were sent to Brest during his expeditions to Polynesia and China as well as Naval officer logbooks, or the diary of Saint-John Perse, Cruise to the Aeolian Islands (written in 1967, published in 2012, 37 years after his death). We wish furthermore to collaborate with Municipal and Departmental Archives, where many of the navy officers’diaries are to be found. In addition, we will invite David Wahl, who wrote a book as a result of his own experience, The Deeper Life. An expedition to the Abyss. Since 2019, he is a writer associated with Oceanopolis. During the yearly three-week maintenance cruise aboard the R/V Pourquoi Pas ? (8-28 July 2017. Data transmitted from the seabed and the sea surface), he kept a logbook, the kind of writing that suits him well. The members of the exploration mission had to observe hydrothermal vents at a depth of 1700 metres. Ecosystem protection and sustainable development were priorities for them. David Wahl wrote : “even before being fully explored, the underwater abyss is threatened by the risk of human exploitation”. So his book is an “ode to the underwater beauty” and an “appeal to reason”.

Following the historic, original speciality of the Centre for the study of Letters and Diaries (CECJI), we will also invite Professor Renaud Morieux (University of Cambridge, Pembroke College), author of the essay The Channel : England, France and the construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 2016), who found 104 letters confiscated by Britain’s Royal Navy. These were written in 1757 and 1758 by wives and parents, and sent to French sailors but never delivered. Thus never read, these letters have for the first time finally been examined by Prof. Morieux. He published his findings in November 2023 in the journal of EHESS Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales. He has already accepted the invitation.

Over the past 25 years, essays have been published which lead us to think about with our relationship to the sea : Alain Corbin, The Lure of the Sea : The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World, 1750-1840 (Flammarion, 1988), The Sea. Terror and Fascination (dir., 2004. Catalogue of an exhibition that took place in 2004-2005 : Paris, BNF 13.10.2004-16.1.2005/Quartz of Brest, 3.5.-13.7.2005), The Sky and the Sea (Bayard, 2005) ; Philip Steinberg, The social Construction of the Ocean (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Cécile Guérard, Small Philosophy of the Sea (Equateurs, 2006), David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of Mediterranean (London, Allan Lane, 2011. Translated into 11 languages. Mountbatten Literary Award from the Maritime foundation, and the British Academy Medal), The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans (London, Allen Lane, 2019. The author was awarded the Wolfson History Prize for this book); Gunther Scholtz, Philosophy of the Sea (Mare Verlag, 2016), and recently Roberto Casati, Philosophy of the Ocean (Einaudi, 2022). There is not yet however an equivalent in literature : in France and generally in Europe, there are only anthologies, or studies devoted to this theme by a single author, except for Odile Gannier’s book, The maritime novel (Paris, PUPS, 2011. She recently co-led a collective book on the Atlantique slave trade, Places of memory and Ocean, Champion, 2022) ; hence both the interest and the need for this research project, that will begin to fill a gap. This project is a continuation of the work of Jean Balcou, eminent professor (today emeritus) at the University of Western Brittany, member of CECJI, pioneering research in several fields. This ground breaking work focuses on the sea in XVII^th, XVIII^th and XIX^th century Literature : The Sea at the age of the Encyclopédie (dir., Champion, 1987) ; Chateaubriand’s childhood and journeys : Armorica, America (dir., Champion, 2001) ; and the supervision of the doctoral thesis of Gaëlle Fourès-Legrand, ‘‘Maritime writing in the diaries and accounts of traveling in East India in 1690 and 1691 by Robert Challe, Claude-Michel Pouchot de Chantassin, P. Lenfant, Fr. Charmot, Fr. Tachard and Admiral Abraham Du Quesne-Guitton”[1].

In the United States, interesting research has started to emerge : the book of Teresa Shewry (Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara), Hope at Sea : Possible Ecologies in Oceanic Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), which explores “hope in the context of environmental change in the Pacific” ; that of Steve Mentz (Professor of English at St. John’s University in New York City), An introduction to the Blue Humanities (London, Routledge, 2023), will contribute to the enrichment of our theoretical thinking.

We will present our research findings in a variety of formats. 

-We will organize three workshops with articles available via open access : 

Migrants, migrations in European Literature (UBO)

Representations of the Ocean in European Literature (Gdańsk)

Representations of Mediterranean in European Literature (Algarve); 

a symposium : The Literary archives of the Sea (UBO) ;

and three talks. 

A Master 2 trainee will be recruited to help organize these scientific events. 

Instead of a succession of monographs, our aim is in fact to favour holistic thinking from the outset. At the symposium, we plan to invite for the keynote lecture Professor Margaret Cohen (Stanford University), author of The Novel and the Sea (Princeton University Press, 2010. This book was awarded the Louis R. Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the George and Barbara Perkins Prize from the International Society for the Study of the Narrative) and general editor of A Cultural History of the Seas (London, Bloomsbury, 2021). 

We also intend to invite to give a talk Professor Søren Frank (University of Southern Denmark), author of A poetic History of the Oceans (Amsterdam, Brill, 2022). 

We shall contribute to the management of legacy data and the development of the Digital Humanities by creating 

First of all, by a set of datasheets for a dictionary on line. This will be accessible by active links. For every word hyperlinks will be found to all pages with this word. The ranking will be done by large categories and subcategories : 

1° Authors by period

2° Literary genre (poetry, novel, theatre, correspondence, diary…)

3° Mediterranea

4° Ocean

5° Topics : Aquatic plants; Boat (from raft to cargo sailboat, yacht, liner, ship, pirogue, submarine…); Exploration; Fish (all kinds); Fishing; Island; Lighthouse; Marine travels; Migration; Navy; Pirates; Port; Sailor; Scuba diving; Sea birds; Sea shells; Shellfishes/Molluscs (from oyster to octopus through squid and cuttlefish); Underwater; Waves; Whales/Cetaceans).

In the beginning, datasheets will be in English and French. Our final aim is to have translation into all the languages of the SEA-EU partners.

The Master 2 trainee recruited will also compile the dictionary entries.

-A digital library will then be created for all copyright-free books. This stage of the project will involve a digital portal fornovels, plays and poemes in Europe. The ultimate goal is to build a dedicated multilingual website comprising numerous resources for research fellows, students and the general public (scholars and enthusiasts), in accordance with the FAIR principles : editions of texts and a large bibliography, including a critical bibliography.

We will develop a methodology for processing sources by initially defining a literary and critical corpus, copyright-free works, as well as an inventory of those copyrighted texts. The Digital Humanities will be a key resource : building a website on which the assembled documents will be uploaded will provide a portal for easy public access. A research engineer will be recruited.

In order to emphasize the European synergy of the representation of the sea, we aim to produce an interactive map showing networks of people, places and books, as well as chronological timelines.

We shall define and study the connections between keywords (terms and concepts with which they are most frequently associated). Lexicography, the study of phraseology, linguistic features, and automatic language processing are all tools which will hone our understanding of the representation of the sea and allow us to think the sea through Literature. The aim is to open up new avenues for research, interpretation, and understanding.

The website, with the dictionary, the digital library and the map will be totally innovative compared to the research already carried out. New maritime museums and renovated museums do not yet include this literary dimension, although they integrate paintings, sculptures, films and multi-media tools. So a literary digital portal could be proposed in addition to these existing tools.

© Sophie Guermès, November 2023-February 2024