Listening to the Languages of the People

by Natalie Zemon Davis

This tale of great achievements and great disappointments offers a fresh perspective on the interplay between scholarship and political sentiment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lazăr Șăineanu (1859-1934), linguist and folklorist, was a pioneer in his native Romania, seeking out the popular elements in culture along with high literary ones. He was among the first to publish a study of Yiddish as a genuine language, and he uncovered Turkish features in Romanian language and customs. He also made an index of hundreds of Romanian folktales. Yet when he sought Romanian citizenship and a professorship, he was blocked by powerful figures who thought Jews could not be Romanians and who fancied the origins of Romanian culture to be wholly Latin. Faced with anti-Semitism, some of his friends turned to Zionism. Instead he tried baptism, which brought him only mockery and shame. Hoping to find a polity to which he could belong, Șăineanu moved with his family to Paris in 1900 and became Lazare Sainéan. There he made innovative studies of French popular speech and slang, culminating in his great work on the language of Rabelais. Once again, he was contributing to the development of a national tongue. Even then, while welcomed by literary scholars, Sainéan was unable to get a permanent university post. Though a naturalized citizen of France, he felt himself a foreigner, an "intruder," into his old age.

200 pages, Hardcover

Published October 15, 2022

About the author

Natalie Zemon Davis was an American-Canadian historian of the early-modern period.

Reviews

[Mihai · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual, e great book by NZD. I stumbled upon Lazare Sainean in Panait Istrati's Zografi stories, where I was surprised by the huge respect Istrati had on Sainean and his work.
Paradoxically, Saineanu is almost unknow (and now I know why), in the Romanian academic circles, maybe because of a damnatio memoria, maybe because our national/literary heroes also hurt this linguistic genius and it is hard to have a reckoning with our past.

What I found most incredible is how Zemon Davis shows time and again the undisputed patriotism of such a great figure and how time and again his request at naturalization was rejected. How France gained and Romania lost. And how we still make heroes here from the banal mediocrities who hurt Saineanu.

A great book. Almost unknown in Romania.