The Priest of Cucugnan

"The Priest of Cucugnan"
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Author	Alphonse Daudet
Original title	"Le Curé de Cucugnan"
Country	France
Language	French
Genre(s)	Short story
Published in	L'Événement
Media type	Print (Periodical)
Publication date	October 28, 1866

The Priest of Cucugnan (French: Le Curé de Cucugnan) is a sermon collected by Auguste Blanchot de Brenas in 1858, which Alphonse Daudet made popular in the form of a short story published in L'Événement on 28 October 1866, then in Letters from My Windmill in 1869. Daudet adapted his tale from Roumanille's Lou curat de Cucugnan.

Publication history

In 1858 a young traveller, Blanchot de Brenas, heard the sermon in a village in the Corbières. He wrote about his trip in a serial published under the title "With My Friend Félix" in the weekly La France littéraire, artistique et scientifique. The sermon by the priest of Cucugnan appeared in the issue of 30 July 1859. In it, Blanchot states that the scene takes place in a hamlet where fervour was waning, which he calls Cucugnan. He notes that "the anecdote did not take place in Cucugnan: the name was chosen at random so as not to offend any sensitivities".

In 1866, the félibrige Joseph Roumanille wrote a Provençal version of Blanchot de Brenas's text, which he published in the Armana prouvençau under the title Lou curat de Cucugnan.

Alphonse Daudet adapted Roumanille's text, which he published the same year, accompanied by the following incipit: "Every year at Candlemas the Provensal poets publish at Avignon a jovial little book full to the brim of merry tales and pretty verses. That of this year has just reached me, and in it I find an adorable fabliau which I shall try to translate for you, slightly abridging it". He added explicitly: "Now there's the tale of the curé of Cucugnan, such as that great rascal Roumanille ordered me to tell it to you; he himself having got it from some other good fellow.". Daudet has shortened Roumanille's text, omitting a passage in which he describes the stratagem used by the priest to get the whole village to come and listen to his sermon (the discovery of a treasure).

Daudet's version immediately became famous. Blanchot de Brenas therefore claimed authorship of the text from Daudet and Roumanille. Without any response from them, he threatened Roumanille with a plagiarism trial. Roumanille managed to drag things out and escaped the trial thanks to Blanchot's death in 1877.

Since then, many versions have appeared, almost all inspired by Daudet's text, notably that of Achille Mir, from Aude, in volume 3 of his complete works, Countes en proso e en vèrs (1884), under the title "Lou sermou dal Curat de Cucugna", and that of Frédéric Estre, under the title "Lou curat de Cucugnan en prouvençau" in 1878. As for Blanchot de Brenas, he remains forgotten and his authorship of the text is often wrongly disputed. Blanchot de Brenas did not invent the sermon, as he had collected it from an inhabitant of the Corbières. But he wrote it in his own way and gave it an amusing title that contributed to the story's success.

For this sermon is an exemplary account that the parish priests of the Corbières recounted in various variants. Charles Pélissier claims that Abbé Ruffié, parish priest of Cucugnan in the mid-nineteenth century, delivered a sermon in the same vein from the pulpit. A lesser-known version of the sermon, entitled "Le Sermon du père Bourras de Ginestas", was collected in the 1850s by Hercule Birat from Narbonne, who adapted it and published it in 1860. In the first volume of his Poésies narbonnaises, in the "Cinquième entretien" ("Fifth Interview"), the author tells Aristarch, referring to the commune of Ginestas: "I'm going to work on a sermon that I'll get Father Bourras to deliver", and he invokes the "patois tradition" that described the arrival of the parish priest at the gates of Paradise, and then of Purgatory:

— Pam, pam, pam ! — Qui tusto dè bas ?
— Lou pèro Bourras — Cal demandats ?

— Dé géns dé Ginestas — Aïcis y gna pas, anats pus bas

And finally to Hell:

— Pam, pam, pam ! — Qui tusto dè bas ?
— Lou pèro Bourras — Cal demandats ?

— Dé géns dé Ginestas — Dintrats, dintrats ! y’n manco pas

This theme is also found in Daudet: "Pan! pan! Who knocks?' said a hoarse and dismal voice. 'The curé of Cucugnan.'"

In the second volume of Poésies narbonnaises, in the "Sixième entretien", the author says to his friend the reader: "You can take whatever you like from our chatter; but don't refrain from at least having a look at the sermon, so pathetic and orthodox, by the Reverend Father Bourras, which is part of it, because it contains some very profitable things; The survivors of the old flock of Ginestas who, no doubt through the negligence of their previous shepherds, abion toutos saoutat lou parré, had all escaped from the fold and were brought back, without a single one missing, by his salutary exhortations, can bear witness to this." A few pages later follows "Le Sermon du père Bourras", in octosyllables (and in French).

Plot summary

In Cucugnan, in the Aude department, faith is no longer present. The parish curé recounted in a sermon that he dreamt he was going to Heaven and then to Purgatory, but he couldn't find the deceased inhabitants of Cucugnan; he found them in Hell. He then set about confessing the whole village and restoring the faith of all the inhabitants.

Adaptations

Following Marcel Pagnol's 1954 film adaptation of three Letters from My Windmill, the Priest of Cucugnan was adapted again by the Provençal writer and film-maker in 1968, in the form of a medium-length TV film starring Fernand Sardou in the role of the priest.

Fernandel also recorded The Priest of Cucugnan.

See also

• List of fictional clergy and religious figures

Translations into English

• "The Curate of Cucugnan" (1880; translated by Mrs. H. M. Hitchcock)
• "The Curé of Cucugnan" (1886; translated by S. L. Lee)
• "The Curé of Cucugnan" (1887; translator unknown)
• "The Curate's Dream" (1891; translated by Mrs. E. C. Waggener)
• "The Curé of Cucugnan" (1900; translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley)
• "The Curé of Cucugnan" (1903; translated by George Burnham Ives)
• "The Vicar of Cucugnan" (1978; translated by Frederick Davies)
• "The Cucugnanian Priest" (2009; translated by Mireille Harmelin & Keith Adams)

References

• Langlois, Gauthier (2015). "Blanchot de Brenas, l’inventeur du « Curé de Cucugnan », son voyage à Carcassonne et dans les Corbières en 1858," Bulletin de la Société d'études scientifiques de l'Aude, No. 115, pp. 91–106.
• Van El, Gabriel (1910). "Une Restitution littéraire: Le Curé de Cucugnan et son véritable auteur," Mémoires de l'Académie nationale des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Caen, pp. 1–22.

External links

• Le Curé de Cucugnan at Wikisource
• The Priest of Cucugnan title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database