Le Joujou patriotisme

One should not trifle with the defeat of 1870 or the loss of Alsace-Lorraine: Remy de Gourmont learned this the hard way when he published Le Joujou patriotisme, a pamphlet in the form of an article (Mercure de France, no. 16, April 1891) that cost him his position at the Bibliothèque nationale, where he had worked in the cataloguing department for ten years. There was no need, he argued, to shed rivers of blood to recover Alsace and Lorraine, “provinces which Germany had taken from France, which had itself previously pilfered them.” By that logic, Gourmont added, France should instead conquer Wallonia, French-speaking Switzerland, the Channel Islands and Canada, countries where our language is spoken and which are of our blood. On 7 November, he received his dismissal: “The Administrator General regrets to inform M. de Gourmont that it would be impossible to submit for ministerial approval any documents bearing the signature of the author of an article published in the latest issue of the Mercure de France. M. de Gourmont is requested to return without delay any volumes he may have borrowed from the Bibliothèque nationale.” It should be noted that the manuscript of this article is today held in the manuscripts department of the BnF.

This text was never reprinted in book form by Remy de Gourmont, and this edition is the first to be published, with “supplementary documents” and a frontispiece by Laboureur. The print run was limited to 340 copies.

No mention is made of this suite in two states, which also does not appear to be included in the deluxe copies.

From the library of Dr. Germain (bookplate).