By JEANNE SMITH
A stroll through 1,200 years of Gallic history will await visitors to the Library of Congress when a new major exhibition, "Creating French Culture: Treasures from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France," opens to the public on Friday, Sept. 8.
This will be the second in a series of Library exhibitions of treasures from great libraries of the world. However, while the first, "Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture," which attracted an estimated 230,000 visitors in 1993, focused on a single period of history, the 1995 offering covers 12 centuries in a nation where culture and power are inextricably intertwined.
The exhibition is divided into four chronological segments, extending from the time of Charlemagne (742- 814) to the present. It also covers the history of the French national library from the time of King Charles V, who in 1368 brought together more than a thousand manuscripts in a tower of the Louvre in Paris. The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) still has 60 of these manuscripts, although none is included in the exhibition.
However, visitors will find 240 other treasures from France on display in the recently renovated Southwest Gallery and Pavilion of the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building at 10 First St. S.E. through December.
Many of the rare books, manuscripts, maps, prints, drawings and other objects have never been on exhibit outside of France. Each is described and its provenance given in a handsomely illustrated catalog published by Yale University Press in association with the Library of Congress and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
In a foreword to the catalog, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington notes that the exhibition's theme "reveals the relationship between culture and power in France, developing the concept of culture as both an instrumentality and a symbol of central authority, whether religious or secular.
"Very early in the gathering of France into a unified entity, the significance of language ... becomes both a source and a mark of power, of royal authority and ultimately of the state." According to Dr. Billington, the marriage of culture and power as it exists in France "is difficult for Americans to understand, born as we are under written documents that set ... bounds upon central authority [and] that are skeptical and separatist with respect to power.
"To follow the essays and study the objects in this catalog is to realize that the French tradition is different," he continued. "Louis XIII, Richelieu, Louis XIV and Napoleon were only the most successful in the deliberate ... use of cultural artifacts and symbols to enhance and amplify state power.
"This catalog is itself an example of cultural interpretation. All the object descriptions are written by specialists and curators at the BnF, as are the four French essays discussing the growth of the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and its precursors. The four American essayists, on the other hand, stand back from the collections to inquire how some of these objects reveal the relationships between culture and power in France across the 12 centuries represented in the exhibition.
"We are most grateful that these French national treasures, products often of crucial political and intellectual moments in French history, can be shared with the American public in a way that makes their beauty and their significance palpable," Dr. Billington concluded.
In another foreword, BnF President Jean Favier describes the history of the library: "To say that a national library derives from national power is self- evident to the French. An ancient tradition which makes the state responsible for all sectors of national activity leads to this contemporary political reality: that the state is responsible for the support of culture, if not for culture itself. Whoever denies this premise by asserting the independence of cultural creativity would soon revert to it by insisting that the state was neglecting its duties by not providing support. Other arrangements are conceivable, but they would upset the historical relationship between French society and the state. A millennium of custom and thought is not readily changed."
According to Mr. Favier, "The Bibliothèque Nationale ... was created by the kings following in the footsteps of Charles V, who in the 14th century surrounded himself with jurists and philosophers in order to give the monarchy an ideological framework and to uphold its position in the spiritual realm that was part of the City of God.
"Meanwhile, in Avignon, the pope was forming a library through which he sought to demonstrate his temporal prestige and intellectual influence. The books of Avignon were dispersed, and the library of the Louvre barely outlived Charles V, but the princes took over the task. Charles V's brothers, the dukes of Burgundy, Berry and Anjou, were the first collectors of valuable manuscripts in their day.
Because the king was ailing, the dukes assumed the role of providing royal artistic and intellectual patronage as well as of being tastemakers. "The dukes of Orl‚ans of the Valois line made their library at Blois one of the gems of their court," wrote Mr. Favier. "The last of that line, on becoming Louis XII, brought this treasured library to the monarchy.
"It was still a library of manuscripts. The work of the printer, considered then a poor substitute for the handwork of calligraphers, appeared belatedly among the treasures. But the Bibliothèque ... went on to diversify its collections and to transform itself from what had been merely a collection of curiosities much like a painting gallery into a center for literary and artistic endeavors.
Coins and medals were added from the great collection of Gaston d'Orléans, the uncle of Louis XIV. Thanks to far-seeing collectors, maps and prints augment the book collection starting in the 17th century. The modern era would add the tools to bolster all aspects of creativity, as well as different means for diffusing knowledge. Audiovisual and other electronic technologies are only the most recent of these advances.
"The 'librairie' of the Middle Ages had contributed to connoisseurs' pleasure with both texts and illuminations. The 'Bibliothèque' of the Renaissance had been the laboratory of the humanists. The library of today is both a lode to be mined by scholars, whether teachers or students, and a fabulous cultural resource from which we all benefit in one way or another," said Mr. Favier.
"To open the doors is not enough. One also must apply the same care and concern in the formation of new collections as Charles V once did when acquiring the texts of Aristotle. What makes our libraries live is an ever-changing public which finds its curiosity constantly renewed through them."
Many of the earliest objects in the exhibition are of a religious nature. Among them is the Bible of Count Rorico (d. 840), duke of Maine and son-in-law of Charlemagne. It was written for the count about 835 in the scriptorium of St. Martin de Tours and entrusted by him to the abbey of St. Maur de Glanfeuil, then transferred to St. Maur des Fossés about 868 because of the threat of a Viking invasion. It became part of the collection of the bishop of Chartres at the turn of the 17th century and reached the Bibliothèque Royale, a BnF predecessor, in 1622.
Many of the documents to be displayed are lavishly illustrated and provide interesting glimpses into the culture-power connection.
In 849, Lothar and Charles, the warring sons of Louis the Pious and grandsons of Charlemagne, patched up their differences. To commemorate the new era of concord, Lothar strategically commissioned a copy of the Gospels from the monks of St. Martin in Tours, an abbey located in his brother's kingdom. The copy exemplifies the lavish production of Gospels stimulated in the 9th century by the patronage of the royal court.
The Lothar Gospels manuscript is a particularly splendid example of this kind of deluxe production. Bound in red Moroccan leather during the 17th or 18th century, it contains nine bordered pages, five large decorated letters and six illustrations.
One hundred illustrations by two artists from Reims, which infuse even minor scenes with drama, decorate a parchment manuscript of the Commoediae of the Latin comic poet Terence (ca. 185-159 B.C.), who in each play posed a psychological or moral problem, which was well received in the Christian era.
Charles VIII's copy of Lancelot of the Lake, the masterpiece of medieval prose romance, is also included in the exhibition. One of two paintings in the king's edition shows the Knights of the Round Table grouped around King Arthur. The paintings were executed by Jacques de Besançon, the most sought-after French illustrator of the 15th century.
A selection of 11 coins documents the principal stages of French coinage between the late eighth and early 16th centuries.
Among objects in the Renaissance section of the exhibition will be a parchment manuscript, with 11 dramatic, full-page color illustrations, describing Louis XII's rapid conquest of Genoa in April 1507. The text is the work of Jean Marot, the king's official poet. Tribute to another French king, Francis I, is paid in a 1545 painting, Fran‡ois Ier en d‚it‚, showing the monarch as a superman with the attributes of the Olympian gods.
In the Renaissance, maps of the world prepared by French geographers were rare. The exhibition includes a surviving example made in Paris between 1534 and 1536 by Oronce Fine, an astronomer and cartographer in the great European geographical revival that followed the rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geography. Fine's work gave expression to a world perception that combined reality with hypothesis.
Among treasures scheduled for display in the section of the exhibition dealing with the 17th and 18th centuries is a 1695 handwritten copy by François Fossard of the general score of the opera Xerxes, composed by Francesco Cavalli and performed for the first time in 1660 in the Gallery of Paintings in the Louvre for the wedding celebration of King Louis XIV and Marie-Thérese of Austria. The same king's projection of the image of magnificence of France is shown in a 1664 etching, "The pleasures of the Enchanted Isle, or the entertainments and divertissements of the king at Versailles. ...," featuring fireworks.
The exhibition will include a book of Chinese drawings, with three pages of text and 54 plates, acquired in 1735 by Louis-Henri de Bourbon-Cond‚, who collected a remarkable number of objects from the Far East for his castle at Chantilly. The Cond‚ collections at Chantilly were confiscated during the French Revolution. Visitors may see an early 18th century view of North America in a vellum, hand-drawn map highlighted with washes and gold, Carte de la Nouvelle France, created between 1702 and 1711 and sold to Louis XVI in 1782.
"This map of North America shows a much enlarged New France whose predominant role is highlighted by the view of Québec delicately drawn in the cartouche," Monique Pelletier writes in the exhibition catalog. "The mapmaker favored extending Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico, in opposition to the views of Lemoyne d'Iberville, who aspired to the governorship of a distinct Mississippi region."
Included in the exhibition are 12 volumes of L'Ami de peuple, a newspaper published between 1789 and 1794, with annotations by Jean-Paul Marat, who published the paper opposing the French government until his death in 1793.
The modern portion of the exhibition will open with Napoleon's own copy of the Code Napol‚on. This 610-page folio edition was printed on vellum in 1807. The French Revolution had swept away the nation's judicial structure, inherited from the Middle Ages, that had remained intact until 1789. Replacing it was a high priority with Napol‚on when he came to power.
Visitors also will be able to see Victor Hugo's autograph manuscript of Les Mis‚rables, with white parchment bindings restored in the style of those Hugo had made on Guernsey skin by his binder in 1869. This was a bequeathed to the Bibliothèque Nationale, with the ensemble of Hugo's work, by the author, who said of the gift, "I give all my manuscripts and all that I may have written or drawn to the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, which will some day be the Library of the United States of Europe."
Other documents to be on display include Claude Debussy's autograph manuscript of the third act of Pélleas et Mélisande, used for the printed orchestra score; a proof copy of Andr‚ Gide's Corydon, corrected and expanded; and a school notebook labeled in the hand of Marcel Proust, purchased in 1962 along with the entire Proust collection.
As with other major exhibitions at the Library of Congress, an electronic version of "Creating French Culture" will be available on the Internet when the exhibition opens (Uniform Resource Locator: http://www.loc.gov).
The Library's Thomas Jefferson Building is still undergoing renovation in preparation for its gala reopening in spring 1997 with the installation of a rotating exhibition of treasures from the Library of Congress. However, during exhibition hours for "Creating French Culture," the building's west front doors will be open to visitors who will also be able to see the Great Hall and go to the Visitors' Gallery above the Main Reading Room.
"Creating French Culture" will be open to the public Sept. 8 through Dec. 30 from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It will also be open on Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m.; the rest of the Library will remain closed on Sundays. The exhibition will also be closed on federal holidays.
Jeanne Smith is a public affairs specialist in the Public Affairs Office.