In an earlier post here I briefly mentioned the medical issues that put me in hospital for three weeks in July. The operation was a success and I am making a good, though slow, recovery. I have been at home for a while now, but am signed off work for several more weeks. Although I’m not yet returning to my own research, over the past few weeks I’ve been sharing quite a lot of links on this blog and on social media, almost all about other people’s work. I have also been slowly thinking about a return to research. Most of this update on this project was written before everything changed for me. I didn’t post an update at the end of June, when the medical problems began. This post therefore reports mainly on the work up to that point.

Since the last update at the end of May, I spent most of June working on Émile Benveniste. I think I’ve completed the work – at least for now – on Benveniste’s very early studies in the Sogdian language, and his work on Persian religion and languages. This is the second part of one of the initial chapters, at least on the current plan. At the moment I think his co-authored book with Louis Renou, Vrtra et Vrθragna: Étude de mythologie indo-iranienne will be discussed in the second Benveniste chapter, though it’s possible that it fits thematically better in this earlier chapter. 

Benveniste’s work connects to some other interesting figures, and this work is already showing the challenges of keeping this project to a focus on France alone. While I have to set some limits, I do want to indicate some of the connections to a wider European network of ideas, and one of the things I’m interested in is the movement of various people because of the international situation in the 1930s and 1940s – the build-up to the war, the Second World War itself and its aftermath. As I mentioned in the last update, Benveniste spent much of the war in Switzerland. Others moved before the war, either because they were Jewish or were otherwise fleeing persecution. Later in the story I want to tell, Mircea Eliade was unable to return to Romania after the war, and spent a decade in Paris before moving to Chicago.

As part of the research into this question of academic movement, I had a very interesting day in Oxford, mainly working with the Bodleian special collections in the Weston library. Although I was also interested in a lecture series given in Oxford, I was mainly looking at the records of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL). This organisation, now known as the Council for At-Risk Academics, supported one of the people whose work connects to some of Benveniste’s early work, Walter Bruno Henning. Henning was German, and was engaged to a Jewish woman, the daughter of Russian parents who had moved to Berlin after the Revolution. He moved to England and taught at the School of Oriental Studies, which later became the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). There is a lot of information in the Henning file of the SPSL. The story was even more interesting than I expected, and following up on the question led to the work of David Zimmerman, particularly this article, and this issue of the Proceedings of the British Academy. There was also a SPSL file on Ernst Kantorowicz, though they did not support him in the same way.

I planned to use the library and special collections of SOAS in London, but had to postpone that visit when I became unwell. I hope to get there when I’m back at work. SOAS has files on Henning and Harold Bailey, whose main archive is in Cambridge and which has an extensive correspondence with Benveniste. I visited that Cambridge archive in May (discussed in a previous update). Bailey taught at SOAS at the beginning of his career, and was succeeded by Henning, who taught there from 1936-61, apart from a period when he was interned as an enemy alien in 1940. (The SPSL archive at Oxford has a lot on this.) 

I did some work on Saussure’s notes on German legends, on which he published almost nothing in his lifetime, but which have been the focus of some posthumous publications. There is a lot of overlap between these, they are not organised in a very reader-friendly way, and it wasn’t always obvious how they related to each other. The most comprehensive collection is Le Leggende Germaniche, but it’s not easy to find, and challenging to use. A more manageable and clearly presented collection is “Légendes et récits d’Europe du Nord: de Sigfrid à Tristan”, ed. Béatrice Turpin, in Le Cahier de l’Herne: Saussure, 2003, 351-429. The detailed comparison of these and other collections is here. I hope others find this useful.

I also made a return trip to UCL to look again at the 1955 Italian collection of Dumézil’s Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus. I say a bit about the French texts it includes here – it’s not a translation of a single French book, but parts of four. There are some interesting inclusions and omissions. I also updated the list of Georges Bataille – Oeuvres complètes and other French collections; English translations with details of two recent collections of his texts.

I spoke about this Indo-European research to the Warwick Seminar for Interdisciplinary French Studies on 31 May. It was an online event, and the recording of the talk (though not the discussion) is available here. The focus was on the period immediately after the war, although I begin with two stories – one from the early twentieth century and one from shortly after its end – to frame the project. Having this date to speak was useful for working out how to present some of the key themes of the work. I also spoke more briefly about the editing work on Mitra-Varuna to a department conference in late June – though I was too unwell to attend so sent a pre-recorded talk. That was the last day before I was admitted to hospital.

I won’t return to work until the start of term in October, and even then it may well be part-time. Being on a research fellowship should help with a gradual transition back to things. There is a lot I can do at home, as the recovery allows. I will lose about three months of time, but hopefully can find a way to recover momentum, but without working too much. UK libraries and archival visits can hopefully come in the autumn. In particular I want to do the postponed trip to SOAS, make a return trip to Cambridge and possibly Oxford. Getting back to Paris is probably a bit further off. I had a trip to the Paris archives booked for July, but I was in hospital for most of that time and so the trip was cancelled. When I can get back to Paris I plan to do some work at the Archives Nationales as well as continuing work at the Collège de France and the Bibliothèque Nationale.

The US fellowship I had in place for the beginning of 2024 has been postponed until late 2024 or early 2025. That’s a great shame, but the only possible option in the circumstances. There are a lot of things I wanted to do in the US, but I have to keep telling myself the archives will wait. For the moment I need to prioritise recovery, though I am keen to return to this work as soon as I can. It will be probably be a couple of months before the next research update. Thank you to all who have shown an interest in this project, and for the best wishes for my health. 

Previous updates on this project can be found here, along with links to some research resources and forthcoming publications, including the delayed re-edition of Dumézil’s Mitra-Varuna. There is a lot more about the earlier Foucault work here. The final volume of the series, The Archaeology of Foucault, is now out worldwide. The special issue of Theory, Culture & Society I co-edited on “Foucault before the Collège de France” is also now published.