BIRTH REMAINS SHROUDED IN MYSTERY : FRENCH ACADEMY MARKS 350TH YEAR

PARIS — The Academie Francaise, a mystery-shrouded inner circle of 39 wise men and one woman, is celebrating 350 years as custodian of the language of Voltaire.

While most French citizens see the academie as a temple to the country’s erudition, there are few who know what goes on behind its closed doors and ceremonial trappings.

Generally discreet, the institution tends to emerge from its ink and paper world only on the death of one of its aged members, known as the Immortals.

It is then that they must choose who will sit in the vacant seat and don the uniform of embroidered frock-coat, sword and cocked hat, often stirring controversy in the process.

In a daring move in 1980, the academie broke more than three centuries of tradition by accepting a woman, novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, into its privileged ranks.

But popular crooner and songwriter Charles Trenet failed to make the grade three years later, raising a hail of protest from intellectuals, who qualified the institution as “a cramped dinosaur.”

“Its arthritic, ossified rules make it a place of repression of the true, living values of our language when it should be their springboard, their strength,” a group of intellectuals said in a statement at the time.

To celebrate its recent anniversary, President Francois Mitterrand went to the sprawling, domed hall on the banks of the river Seine where the Immortals meet.

“The Academie was set up to end feudalism (and) to marry the present time,” Mitterrand said.

The exact circumstances that led to the birth of the academie have, however, remained somewhat of a mystery.

According to one of the present members, the Duc de Castries, it was Cardinal Richelieu, then a minister of King Louis XIII, who decided to found the institute after learning that an eminent group of grammarians and intellectuals was meeting in secret to exchange literary and linguistic views.

Keen to keep a royal eye on cultural activity, Richelieu approached the group and leaned on them to found the academie under statutes that have remained unchanged to this day.

Elected for life, the Immortals were to convene weekly to establish the first dictionary of the French language.

The first edition of the academie’s bible of French was to appear only 60 years later, with 18th-Century members producing four updated editions, the 19th-Century two, and a single 300th anniversary edition appearing in 1935.

Since then, things have become a little bogged down.

Members of the esoteric circle have so far have worked their way from the letter A to I for the latest update. The second half of the dictionary may see the light of day late next century, the Duc de Castries said.

For their labor on Thursday afternoons, the Immortals earn $2,600 a year, a minor payment compensated several times over by the prestige of membership.

As in the case of Yourcenar and Trenet, elections to the institute have provoked public controversy, political scandal and literary outrage throughout its history.

Access is open to the common man, but the path to election is studded with pitfalls.

After writing their letters of request, candidates traditionally pay courtesy visits on members to obtain their vote. But each sitting Immortal expects the visitor to have read his own works, making the calls an exhausting matter.

The Duc de Castries, who applied four times for election, said he had paid 74 courtesy visits before gaining admission.

The list of those who never made it is as impressive as those who did. Literary giants such as Diderot, Balzac, Dumas, Baudelaire, Gide and Malraux all failed to gain entry.

Emile Zola died before beginning his 25th attempt, and Victor Hugo was accepted only on his fourth try.

The 19th Century was possibly the academie’s most flourishing epoch, but it was the 20th that probably provided its greatest political furor.

Marshal Philippe Petain, the World War I hero whose life ended in disgrace and life imprisonment after he headed France’s collaborationist government under the Nazis in World War II, was a member and remained so for the rest of his days.

Under the rules, he could not be expelled.