His name seemed to have sunk into oblivion, the last people who had been around him had often died, so the man did not seem to have left a lasting memory. And now, without it even being a birthday, Philippe Rossillon is in quick succession the subject of a biography and a conference at Sciences Po in Paris.
What fly has stung the organizers? At a time when the Francophonie seems on the verge of sinking into oblivion, “it was important to remember that it was not always like this and that there are not many men like that left to defend the French language ! » says the 88-year-old former ambassador Albert Salon, an old friend of Quebec, who has chaired the Avenir de la langue française association for twenty years.
Could the memory of this pioneer in the defense of the French language throughout the world bring the Francophonie out of its lethargy? This is what Philippe Rossillon’s son, the engineer Kléber Rossillon, hopes for, according to whom “France has for too long abandoned any policy of the French language and the Francophonie”. And this, despite the inauguration with great fanfare next month in Villers-Cotterêts of an international city of the French language, which he describes as nothing more and nothing less than a “poetic tomb”.
A militant Francophonie
Kléber Rossillon remembers this time when Quebecers and Acadians sometimes occupied the guest room of the family home for months. A time when his father and mother, Véronique Seydoux Fornier de Clausonne, welcomed all those anywhere in the world who were campaigning in favor of the French language.
“We would probably no longer be talking about Francophonie if he had not been its founder and pioneer,” says his biographer, Bernard Lecherbonnier. The two men met for the first time in 1969. As a student, Lecherbonnier was preparing a thesis on African languages. He left the interview disappointed, as his interlocutor had shattered all his hypotheses. “We left each other angry. We didn’t agree on anything. I thought we were never going to see each other again. » However, they will work side by side for three decades.
“Philippe Rossillon was like that. He couldn’t agree with you at first. He forced you to go beyond yourself,” says the one who publishes these days Philippe Rossillon, the inventor of the Francophonie (Descartes & Co).
If the name of Philippe Rossillon is essential, it is because we owe him some of the most important achievements of the Francophonie. Starting with the creation of the Cultural and Technical Cooperation Agency (ACCT), which in 2005 would become the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF).
“If he was not at the origin of the project, it is certain, however, that it would never have seen the light of day without his determination to remove all the obstacles that stood in his way,” writes Lecherbonnier.
On all fronts
Rossillon had the confidence of De Gaulle and the full support of Pompidou, who then entrusted him with the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of the French Language. On this committee, we find people as prestigious as the historian Fernand Braudel, the publisher Jérôme Lindon and the writers Henri Queffelec, Maurice Genevoix and, later, Julien Gracq.
During all these years, Philippe Rossillon never stopped creating terminology commissions in France in order to adapt French to emerging technologies. “He is a modern enthusiast of IT and machine translation who is also interested in consumer protection and media language,” says Lecherbonnier.
He then surveyed all the French-speaking territories in the world, from Wallonia to Acadia, from Quebec to Polynesia. The first to knock on his door will be Quebecers, like the historian Denis Vaugeois, then director general of International Relations of Quebec, and the former journalist of Duty Jean-Marc Léger, who at that time headed the Association of Universities partially or entirely French-speaking (AUPELF), and soon the ACCT. It must be said that Rossillon had caught the Quebec bug during a first trip in 1955, where he met Jacques Parizeau at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Montreal.
“The very first activists of the Francophonie were the Quebecers,” says Lecherbonnier. They wanted to engage with the world and break out of their isolation. At the same time, the Senegalese Léopold Senghor and the Nigerien Hamani Diori wondered how Africans were going to maintain links and communicate with each other. »
While in June 1966 Diori launched the idea of a “spiritual community of nations which use French”, in January 1968, in a diplomatic note, Rossillon proposed the project to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, Michel Jobert. of the Francophonie. A year later, the ACCT would be created where, thanks to Rossillon and the Quebec lobby in Paris, Quebec would have the rank of “participating government”.
In 1967, Rossillon was one of the organizers, with his lifelong friend Bernard Dorin, of General de Gaulle’s visit to Quebec. It was during one of his multiple trips to French-speaking lands that this Périgourdin, who did not appreciate diplomatic complications any more than he should, accepted the invitation to go to the Manitoba Cultural Society without notifying Ottawa.
On September 10, 1968, the man whom the RCMP reports considered to be a “foreign agitator” was treated by a very lively Pierre Elliott Trudeau as a “more or less secret agent of France”. Michel Jobert defended the private nature of the invitation, as Trudeau ultimately admitted, without giving up ironically about this “non-secret agent”.
“It is time to let Mr. Trudeau know that his Francophobic attitude is likely to definitely compromise all relations between Paris and Ottawa,” de Gaulle wrote in a diplomatic note. “They say a lot of bad things about you abroad. I think very highly of it,” the general confirmed publicly in the presence of the main person concerned.
Awaken a sleeping conscience?
All his life, Rossillon will be ulcerated by the cultural conformism imposed on the world by the domination of the English language even within the European Union. This is why, after the Francophonie, it will invest in the Latin Union, which brought together 36 member states whose languages are Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan. He was also the founder of the Amitiés acadiennes, which he chaired for several years. As he was passionate about teaching regional languages in France.
It was he who organized the famous visit of four Acadian representatives to the Élysée in January 1968, where they were received by the president. Long before we were talking about cultural diversity, Philippe Rossillon set himself up as a defender of endangered languages.
From 1965, in De Gaulle and the homelands, he wrote: “We dream of a world where the feeling and the organization of a common destiny for all peoples would not exclude the cozy lukewarmness of particularisms, as long as men still hold on to their clan, to their country as a home. We dream of a world where the multiple patriotisms of a sensitive man can add up and not collide. » Three weeks after his death, on 1er October 1997 at the Hôtel des Invalides, Minister Louise Beaudoin will pay tribute to “a model of pugnacity and perseverance” who knew “that Quebec’s fight for sovereignty is a matter of continuity and duration.”
Today, a General Delegation for the language of France and French languages still exists in Paris. But, returned to the Ministry of Culture, it is only a shadow of what it was under Rossillon.
In 1997, didn’t Minister Claude Allègre say that we should “no longer count English as a foreign language”? Could Rossillon’s example awaken a sleeping conscience? There is no doubt that this is the secret desire of his biographer.