André Bonnard

André Bonnard (born August 16, 1888 in Lausanne ; † October 18, 1959 ibid) was a Swiss Graecist and professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Lausanne .

Life

Bonnard came from a family of the Protestant bourgeoisie in his hometown Lausanne, his father Jean was a teacher. He studied at the Faculté des Lettres of the local university and at the Sorbonne in Paris . After the License ès lettres he taught at a school in Mulhouse from 1910 to 1915 , then in Rolle and from 1915 to 1928 at the Collège and the Gymnase classique in Lausanne. In 1928 he was appointed professor of Greek language and literature at the Faculté des Lettres of the University of Lausanne without a doctorate, a position he held until 1957. From 1932 to 1934 and from 1942 to 1944 he was also doyen of the Faculté des Lettres.

Under the impression of the horrors of the First World War , Bonnard became a pacifist and at the end of the Second World War he admired the successes of the Red Army , which led him to see the realization of his humanist and pacifist ideals in Stalinist Russia . His praise for Soviet literature (1948) made him suspicious of the Swiss authorities, so that he was monitored for years. In 1949 he was elected chairman of the pro-Soviet Mouvement suisse des partisans de la paix and a member of the Conseil mondial de la paix . In 1952 he was arrested while attending the Berlin Congress and charged with treason in favor of the USSR . In 1954 the trial took place, which ended with a light sentence: fifteen days probation. After all, he had to give up his chair before the end of its term without receiving the usual fee (honorary professorship). Today a small square near the Ancienne Académie is named after him (since 1992), as is an auditorium at the Université de Lausanne in Dorigny (since 2004).

Bonnard had been married to Alice Wütherich since 1912; the marriage remained childless.

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Monographs

Bonnard's main works are Les dieux de la Grèce (1944), La tragédie et l'homme (1950) and Civilization grecque in three volumes (1954–1959). Les dieux de la Grèce are a mythographic representation of the essential gods of Greece in their relationship with humans, based exclusively on ancient texts.

La tragédie et l'homme analyzes the Antigone of Sophocles , the Prometheus of Aeschylus and the Hippolytus of Euripides from a humanistic perspective: Bonnard explores the current meaning of the tragedy, “which is full of seeds that its first author did not yet know”. In the case of the poets he wants to “seek what their word has become for us”; this gives him a subtle analysis of the "tragic pleasure", courage and hope that the Greek tragedies present to our reflection.

Civilization grecque , Bonnard's magnum opus, is a work for the general public. It represents the synthesis of his thinking about man, culture and art. Bonnard saw in Greece from Homer to Epicurus an outstanding moment in which mankind, to their deep joy, reaches a rare perfection. Bonnard addresses slavery , the condition of women, technical inventions, Alexandrian science, even if the literary subjects (epic poetry, tragedy and comedy, historiography, philosophy, archaic and Alexandrian poetry) constitute the main subject of each chapter. The work has been reprinted many times (including two paperback editions) and translated into twelve languages.

Translations

Bonnard is also known for his translations of Greek tragedies. These were not intended for specialist colleagues, but for the general reader and the dramaturge. They are based on Racine and Giraudoux . They were staged many times, in Lausanne itself, but also in the ancient theater of Orange (1938, 1959), at the Comédie-Française (1947–1953) and at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris (1942–43, 1973– 74). Bonnard has also translated the poems of Sappho , including a study (1948), and those of Archilochus (1958) as well as excerpts from prose writers: Socrate selon Platon (1945) and Découverte du monde d'Hérodote (1951).

Award

In 1955 he was awarded the International Stalin Prize in Vienna for strengthening peace between peoples .

Fonts (selection)

• Les dieux de la Grèce. Mythology classique illustrée . Éditions Mermod, 1944.
• Socrate selon Plato . 1945; Reprinted by Éditions de l'Aire, Vevey 1996.
• La poésie de Sapho , 1948; Reprinted by Éditions de l'Aire, Vevey 1996.
• La tragédie et l'homme. Etudes sur le drame antique . Baconnière, 1950.
• Découverte du monde d'Hérodote. 1951.
• Archiloque, Fragments. Texts établi by François Lasserre , traduit et commenté by André Bonnard (Collection des Universités de France). Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1958.
• Civilization grecque . 3 vols. 1954-1959. Reprint Ed. Complexe, Bruxelles, Paris 1991; Preface by Marcel Detienne ; Editions de l'Aire, Vevey 2011.
• Translations of Aeschylus ( Prométhée enchaîné , 1928; Agamemnon , 1952), Sophocles ( Antigone , 1938; Œdipe Roi , 1946) and Euripides ( Iphigénie à Aulis , 1942; Alceste , 1948).
• J'ai pris l'humanisme au sérieux. Reprinted by Éditions de l'Aire, Vevey 1991 (collection of articles)

literature

• Hommages à André Bonnard in: Études de Lettres , 1970, série III, tome 3, no 1, pp. 1-44, and 1960, série II, tome 3, pp. 1-35.
• Les cahiers de l'Histoire , supplément de L'Hebdo , December 5, 1985: 1948–1954: La Guerre froide en Suisse .
• Hadrien Buclin: Les intellectuels de gauche dans la Suisse de l'après-guerre . Thèse de doctorat, Université de Lausanne 2015.
• Françoise Fornerod: Lausanne, le temps des audaces. Editions Payot, Lausanne, 1993, pp. 65-80.
• Yves Gerhard: André Bonnard et l'hellénisme à Lausanne au XXe siècle . Editions de l'Aire, Vevey 2011.

Web links

• Literature by and about André Bonnard in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Jean-Luc Seylaz: André Bonnard. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . 21/11/2002 , accessed August 25, 2018 . (The indication of a doctorate in Grenoble is incorrect.)