7. ERNEST RENAN 



I am writing in Ogunquit, one of the loveliest towns on the shores 

 of Maine, but my imagination takes me back to the other side of 

 the Atlantic, to the rude coast of Brittany, somewhere between 

 Saint Brieux and Roscoff. There are of course many points of 

 comparison between the shores of Maine and the Cotes du Nord, 

 but they are more generally a matter of contrast than of resem- 

 blance. This side of the Atlantic is very gentle as compared with 

 the Emerald Coast, the rugged, the fantastic, the awful defences 

 of Brittany against a turbulent sea. Why then does my mind 

 carry me thither? Reminiscences of a sentimental journey which 

 I accomplished years ago might account for it, but the true reason 

 is that having been imprisoned in my study for many days by the 

 inclemency of the weather, I read or reread books of Renan's. Oh, 

 the magic of this beautiful language, so melodious yet so simple 

 and so direct that it reminds me — as no other ever did — of the 

 best Greek prose, of the winged words of a Plato or a Xenophon! 

 While I was reading I heard the song of the birds, the chirping of 

 the crickets, the buzzing of other insects, and farther off the deep 

 voice of the sea; and all of that intensified the music of his language 

 and the rhythm of my joy. Thus when my eyes gaze over the 

 blue water, when I smell at ebb-tide the acrid odor of seaweed, 

 my mind flies back to that place across the mighty ocean, where 

 Renan was born and spent his boyhood — Treguier — and to that 

 old manor of Rosmapamon and the little fishermen's village, Per- 

 ros-Guirec, where he lived his last summer and dreamed his last 

 dreams. 



Ernest Renan was born on the 27th of February, 1823, in the 

 old town of Treguier, one of those dead cities of Brittany, where 

 there is so little bustle that one can almost hear the people muse 

 and pray in the empty streets. He was a seven-month baby, ex- 



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