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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Our [documentary editors'] duty is to present the record, the documents, with a disinterested devotion solely to the document. We search for these documents in order to create an historical record….Our duty…is to present the record, whether we approve of it or not.
Il me restait à décrypter ces pages, écrites en lignes serrées par crainte de manquer de papier, très fréquemment raturées, surchargées au point de devenir presque illisibles, et à en faire une édition critique avec les notes et commentaires nécessaires…
Claude-Hélène Perrot and Albert Van Dantzig have remarkably little to say about their modus operandi in this long-awaited edition of Marie-Joseph Bonnat's account of his at times enforced stay at and around the court of Asante from 1869 to 1874. Scattered comments stimulate us to infer that the former was largely responsible for the text and the latter for the apparatus. Beyond that, they devote only a few sentences to discussing the ways they went about their business of producing the text published here and, it must be said, what they say there is by no means particularly encouraging for those who might have been expecting a diplomatic text edition:
Dans le travail éditorial, dont résulte l'ouvrage présenté ici, si aucune coupure n'a été pratiquée, nous avons effectué quelques aménagements: la ponctuation a été revue, les incorrections grammaticales éliminées, de trop longues phrases ont été portagés, des prépositions supprimées. Le parti que nous avons pris est sans doute discutable.
1. Leffler, Richard, “Documentary Editing: Some Essential Elements,” Documentary Editing, 18/1 (March 1996), 2–3, with emphasis added.Google Scholar
2. Perrot, Claude-Hélène in Marie-Joseph Bonnat et les Ashanti: journal (1869-1874), ed. Perrot, Claude-Hélène and Van Dantzig, Albert (Paris, 1994), 39.Google Scholar
3. For Bonnat's activities in west Africa, and the circumstances behind the production of his journal, see Perrot, /Van Dantzig, , Bonnat, 17–35Google Scholar; Gros, Jules, Voyages, aventures et captivité de J. Bonnat chez les Achantis (Paris, 1884)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Marion, “M. Bonnat on the Volta,” Ghana Notes and Queries, no. 10 (December 1968), 4–17Google Scholar; and Wilks, Ivor, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), 600–13 passim.Google Scholar
4. For Perrot's account of her activities in tracing Bonnat's manuscript see Perrott, /Van Dantzig, , Bonnat, 38–39.Google Scholar
5. Ibid., 22, with emphasis added.
6. The pros and cons of emending, silently and otherwise, has naturally attracted much attention. Recent discussions include: Becker, Robert S., “Challenges in Editing Modern Literary Correspondence: Transcription,” Text, 1 (1981), 257–70Google Scholar; Reid, T.B.W., “The Right to Emend” in Medieval French Textual Studies in Memory of T.B.W. Reid, ed. Short, Ian (London, 1984), 1–35Google Scholar; Burkhardt, Frederick, “Editing Darwin,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 130 (1986), 367–73Google ScholarPubMed; Feller, Daniel, “Compromising Clay,” Documentary Editing, 8/3 (September 1986), 1–6Google Scholar; Hoemann, George E., “The Perils of the Full-Court Press,” Documentary Editing, 9/2 (June 1987), 9–12Google Scholar; Dillon, John, “Tampering with the Timaeus: Ideological Emendations in Plato, with Special Reference to the Timaeus,” American Journal of Philology, 110 (1989), 50–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moorman, Charles, “One Hundred Years of Editing The Canterbury Tales,” Chaucer Review, 24 (1989), 99–114Google Scholar; Clements, William M., “Schoolcraft as Textmaker,” Journal of American Folklore, 103 (1990), 177–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jessee, Dean C., “Priceless Words and Fallible Memories: Joseph Smith as Seen in the Effort to Preserve His Discourses,” Brigham Young University Studies, 31 (1991), 19–40Google Scholar; Waddle, Keith A., “Reader-Response as a Method of Editing Letters,” Journal of Scholarly Publishing, (April 1994), 157–70.Google Scholar An especially minatory case of a similar source is treated in Pearson, W.H., “Hawkesworth's Emendations,” Journal of Pacific History, 7 (1972), 45–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. On the benefits of misspelling see, e.g., Graybill, Ronald D., “The Meaning of Misspelled Words: Scholars, Churchmen, and the Writings of Ellen G. White,” Documentary Editing, 13/4 (December 1991), 85–89.Google Scholar
8. The notebooks are apparently housed in the mayoral library in the small town (population, ca. 1000) of Griéges, near Mâcon.
9. The editors fail to cite the location of this passage, so I was unable to compare this transcription with that in the main text.
10. Perrot, /Van Dantzig, , Bonnat, 302–04.Google Scholar
11. This and the next paragraph were written before I had the chance to have the conversation discussed below. It seems advisable though to retain them because their fallacious argument demonstrates all too well one of the points of this paper, viz., the confusion created by lack of information.
12. In partial answer to this question we might note that toward the end of the entry for 11/12 January 1871, Bonnat used the word “reellement” (see Figure 2), which the editors change to “vraiment.” Gros, , Voyages, 222Google Scholar, writing only a few years after the events, happened to quote the same passage and was quite content to use “réellement.”
13. Recent discussions of the controversy over the “clear text” approach, with extensive bibliographies, are Shillingsburg, Peter L., “Nineteenth-Century British Fiction” in Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research, ed. Greetham, D.C. (New York, 1995), 331–50Google Scholar, and Joel Myerson, “Colonial and Nineteenth-Century American Literature” in ibid., 351-64. Numerous other papers in this compilation contribute to the debate.
14. This might explain why the editors have not brought Twi orthography up to date; as they note (Perrot, /Van Dantzig, , Bonnat, 32Google Scholar), Bonnat's “Adé” is “Adae…according to current orthography,” but “Adé” it remains in this edition.
15. For François Villon, 450 years after his death, see Speer, Mary B., “The Editorial Tradition of Villon's Testament: From Marot to Rychner and Henry,” Romance Philology, 31 (1977), 344–61.Google Scholar
16. Not that there is a plethora. As late as 1968 Theodore Besterman felt obliged to point out that “Voltaire's correspondence (with the exception of a few small collections) has never yet been edited at all in the true sense of the word.” He went on to note that, in even the best of the editions to that time, “many of Voltaire's letters were printed…with a somewhat modified regard for what he actually wrote,” Finally, he observed that the “standard Moland text of 1880-1882 does not contain a single letter [of many thousands] printed quite accurately, while half of it contains substantial defects.” For his part Besterman went on to claim that “[t]he texts have of course, for the first time, been presented without suppression, mutilation or addition.” It seems though that his terms of engagement were slack, since he concluded by noting that he was doing some “normalis[ing]” of his own—introducing apostrophes, which “Voltaire hardly ever used,” and adding many capital letters, since Voltaire “seldom wrote one even after a full stop.” Voltaire, , Correspondence and related documents (=Les oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, 85) (Toronto, 1968), 1:xvi–xviii.Google Scholar
17. And perhaps in more substantive areas as well, since it is unclear from the samples whether Bonnat's editors have also stealthily ‘corrected’ errors of fact he might have made, or otherwise sanitized it to conform to their own standards.
18. That is, if Bonnat's testimony conflicts with that of, say, his fellow detainee, Fritz Ramseyer, and no other sources touch on the matter, who is to say which of the two is correct, if either? Should Ramseyer be awarded credibility points for having been in print longer or for being a better writer? In short, attributing error, like attributing truth, is a delicate operation. For Ramseyer's account/s see Jones, Adam, “Four Years in Asante: One Source or Several?” HA, 18 (1991), 173–203.Google Scholar
19. Writing dealing with these issues is very extensive. For a recent study, with an excellent bibliography, see Greetham, D.C., “Textual Forensics,” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 111 (1996), 32–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20. But I might mention that McCaskie, T.C., State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar, 424n279, 425n284, 427n310 (especially), and 428n334, quotes several brief passages that differ from the same passages as featured in the present edition.
21. It would seem odd, for instance, if the editors had chosen a page where the crossouts were so great as to create a particularly dramatic effect.
22. The idea of making a text ‘better’ by making it different goes well back into the history of text editing. A classic example is Jared Sparks' remark about how he saw his duties as editor of the works of George Washington. “It would be an act of unpardonable injustice to any author, after his death, to bring forth compositions…and commit them to the press without previously subjecting them to careful revision…I have of course considered it a duty, appertaining to the function of a faithful editor, to hazard such corrections as the construction of a sentence manifestly warranted, or a cool judgment dictated.” The Writings of George Washington (12 vols.: Boston, 1838–1839), 2:xvGoogle Scholar, with emphasis added. Although expressed over a century and half ago, Sparks' remarks could easily fit into this edition of Bonnat without modification. Some of Sparks' predecessors were more punctilious; see Cappon, Lester J., “American Historical Editors Before Jared Sparks: ‘they will plant a forest…’,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3/30 (1973), 375–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23. Contrast this with the index in Wilks, Asante, a work of similar length and subject matter. There Wilks explained the importance of a thorough index and went on to provide one (ibid., xvi, 745-800).
24. Gros, , Voyages, 185–87.Google Scholar
25. Perrot, /Van Dantzig, , Bonnat, 302–05.Google Scholar
26. E.g., Gros, , Voyages, 222–30 passim.Google Scholar
27. Perrot, /Van Dantzig, , Bonnat, 19, 21.Google Scholar
28. Replies to this essay would be welcome; if substantial and provocative enough to advance the colloquy, these could appear in HA 97. My thanks to Yvonne Schofer for providing me with a thought-provoking perspective I could hardly have reached on my own.
