Georges Dumézil

Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (; 4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French philologist, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and mythology.

He was a professor at Istanbul University, École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France, and a member of the Académie Française. Dumézil is well known for his formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis on Proto-Indo-European mythology and society. His research has had a major influence on the fields of comparative mythology and Indo-European studies. In the 1930s he was a supporter (though not a formal member) of the far-right group Action Française, leading to criticism from left-wing scholars in the 1980s and afterwards.

Early life and education

Georges Dumézil was born in Paris, France, on 4 March 1898, the son of Jean Dumézil and Marguerite Dutier. His father was a highly educated general in the French Army.

Dumézil received an elite education in Paris at the Collège de Neufchâteau, Lycée de Troyes, Lycée Louis-le-Grand and Lycée de Tarbes. He came to master Ancient Greek and Latin at an early age. Through the influence of Michel Bréal, who was a student of Franz Bopp and the grandfather of one of Dumézil's friends, Dumézil came to master Sanskrit, and developed a strong interest in Indo-European mythology and religion. He began studying at École normale supérieure (ENS) in 1916. During World War I, Dumézil served as an artillery officer in the French Army, for which he received the Croix de Guerre. His father was inspector-general of the French artillery corps during the war.

Dumézil returned to his studies at ENS in 1919. His most important teacher there was Antoine Meillet, who gave him a rigorous introduction in Iranian and Indo-European linguistics. Meillet was to have a great influence on Dumézil. Unlike other students of Meillet, Dumézil was more interested in mythology than linguistics. In the 19th century, philologists such as Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn, Max Müller and Elard Hugo Meyer (who had influenced Bréal) had conducted notable work on comparative mythology, but their theories had since been found to be mostly untenable. Dumézil became determined to restore the field of comparative mythology from its contemporary discredit.

Dumézil lectured at Lycée de Beauvais in 1920, and taught French at the University of Warsaw in 1920–1921. While lecturing at Warsaw, Dumézil was struck by striking similarities between Sanskrit literature and the works of Ovid, which suggested to him that these pieces of literature contained traces of a common Indo-European heritage.

Dumézil gained his PhD in comparative religion in 1924 with the thesis Le festin d'immortalité. Inspired by the "works of Ernst Kuhn, the thesis examined ritual drinks in Indo-Iranian, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic and Italic religion. Dumézil's early writings were also inspired by the research of James George Frazer, whose views were however becoming discredited due to advances in the field of anthropology. At ENS, Dumézil became a close friend of Pierre Gaxotte. Gaxotte was a follower of Charles Maurras, leader of the nationalist Action Française movement. Though some later accused Dumézil of being in sympathy with Action Française, Dumézil denied this, and was never a member of the organization.

Dumézil's PhD thesis was highly praised by Meillet, who requested Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert, both followers of Émile Durkheim, to assist Dumézil with further studies. For reasons unknown, the request was turned down. Mauss and Hubert were both socialists in the spirit of Jean Jaurès, who actively used their academic influence to advance their own political ideology. Hubert in particular was a fervent Dreyfusard known for his philosemitism, republicanism, anti-racism and Germanophobia. Dumézil had deliberately avoided attending Hubert's lectures, and had to be convinced by Meillet to provide Hubert with a copy of his PhD thesis, which Hubert subsequently bitterly criticized. The refusal of Mauss and Hubert to provide Dumézil with a position may have been motivated by suspicions that Dumézil did not agree with them politically. The rejection by Hubert led to Dumézil losing support from Meillet as well. Meilett informed Dumézil that it would be impossible for him to acquire a position in France, and encouraged him to move abroad.

Early career

thumb|upright=1.1|[[Scythian comb from Solokha. Dumézil was greatly interested in Scythian and Ossetian mythology, and its relationship with wider Indo-European mythology.]]

From 1925 to 1931, Dumézil was Professor of the History of Religions at Istanbul University. During his years in Istanbul, Dumézil acquired proficiency in Armenian and Ossetian, and many non-Indo-European languages of the Caucasus. This enabled him to study the Nart saga, on which he published a number of influential monographs. Dumézil developed a strong interest in the Ossetians and their mythology, which was to prove indispensable for his future research. For the rest of his life, Dumézil would make yearly visits to Istanbul to conduct field research among Ossetians in Turkey. During this time he also published his Le problème des centaures (1929), which examined similarities in Greek and Indo-Iranian. It was inspired by Elard Hugo Meyer. Together with Le festin d'immortalité (1924) and Le crime des Lemniennes (1924), Le problème des centaures would form part of the works Dumézil referred to as his "Ambrosia cycle".

Dumézil's work in Istanbul would be of enormous importance to his future research, and he would later consider his years in Istanbul as the happiest of his life. In 1930, Dumézil published his important La préhistoire indo-iranienne des castes. Drawing upon evidence from Avestan, Persian, Greek, Ossetian and Arabic sources, Dumézil suggested that ancient Indo-Iranians, including the Scythians, maintained a caste system which had been established before the Indo-Iranian migrations into South Asia. This article eventually caught the attention of French linguist Émile Benveniste, with whom Dumézil entered a fruitful correspondence.

From 1931 to 1933, Dumézil taught French at Uppsala University. Here he became acquainted with the influential professor Henrik Samuel Nyberg and the latter's favourite students, Stig Wikander and Geo Widengren. Through Wikander and Widengren, Dumézil further became acquainted with Otto Höfler. Wikander, Widengren and Höfler would remain lifelong friends and intellectual collaborators of Dumézil. Throughout their careers, these scholars would have a strong influence on each other's research. Most notably, Höfler's research on the Germanic comitatus, and Wikander's subsequent research on related warrior fraternities among early Indo-Iranians, would have enormous influence on Dumézil's later research.

Return to France

Dumézil returned to France in 1933, where he through the assistance of Sylvain Lévi, a friend of Meillet, was able to gain a position at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE). From 1935 to 1968, Dumézil was Director of Studies at the Department of Comparative Religion at EPHE. In this capacity he was responsible for teaching and research on Indo-European religions. Students of Dumézil during this time include Roger Caillois. At EPHE, through the recommendation of Lévi, Dumézil also attended lectures by sinologist Marcel Granet, whose methodology for the study of religions was to have a strong influence on Dumézil. Seeking to acquire knowledge of non-Indo-European cultures, Dumézil became proficient in Chinese and gained a deep understanding of Chinese mythology.

thumb|upright=1.1|Depiction of ancient rituals on a [[Nordic Bronze Age stone slab from The King's Grave in southern Sweden. In his trifunctional hypothesis, Dumézil suggested that Proto-Indo-European society was characterized by an ideology in which the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their deities were hierarchically divided into classes of priests, warriors and producers.]]

In his research on the social structure of ancient Indo-Iranians, Dumézil was greatly aided by Benveniste, who had earlier been critical of Dumézil's theories. During his early years at EPHE, Dumézil modified many of his theories. Most importantly, he increasingly shifted his focus from linguistic evidence to evidence from ancient social structures. Iranologists who influenced Dumézil in this approach included Arthur Christensen, James Darmesteter, Hermann Güntert and Herman Lommel. Notable works of Dumézil from this period include Ouranos-Varuna (1934) and Flamen-Brahman (1935). Ouranos-Varuna examined similarities in Greek and Vedic mythology, while Flamen-Brahman examined the existence of a distinct priestly class among the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

In the early 1930s, under the pseudonym "Georges Marcenay", he wrote some articles for the right-wing newspapers Candide and Le Jour, where he advocated an alliance between France and Italy against Nazi Germany. Dumézil's opposition to Nazism figures prominently in several of his later works on Germanic religion. At this time, Dumézil joined the Grande Loge de France, a pro-Jewish Masonic lodge, for which he would later be persecuted by the Nazis.

Formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis

In the late 1930s, Dumézil broadened his research to include the study of Germanic religion. His research on Germanic religion was greatly influenced by the renowned Dutch philologist Jan de Vries, and also by Höfler. From the late 1960s towards the end of his life, Dumézil's research came to be widely celebrated in the United States, where many of his works on Indo-European mythology were translated into English and published. Additional works inspired by Dumézil's theories were also published in the United States by scholars such as Jaan Puhvel, C. Scott Littleton, Donald J. Ward, Udo Strutynski and Dean A. Miller. Many of these scholars were associated with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Dumézil was made an Honorary Professor of the Collège de France in 1969, and became a Member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1970. Dumézil was a visiting professor at UCLA in 1971. He was elected to the highly prestigious Académie Française in 1975. His election to the Académie Française was sponsored by Lévi-Strauss, who gave him the welcoming address. Dumézil was also an Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and the recipient of honorary doctorates from the universities of Uppsala, Istanbul, Berne and Liège. He was an Officer of the Legion of Honor.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dumézil vigorously continued with research and publishing, and devoted himself particularly to the study of the Indo-European components in Ossetian and Scythian mythology. The much awaited third edition of his Mitra-Varuna was published in 1977. He received the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca in 1984.

In his later years, Dumézil became a visible figure in French society, and was frequently interviewed and cited in the public press. His theories on Indo-European society were celebrated by Nouvelle Droite figures such as Alain de Benoist, Michel Poniatowski and Jean Haudry, but Dumézil was careful to distance himself from them. Dumézil openly identified with the political right, but always presented his works as apolitical, and had many friends and admirers on the left, such as Michel Foucault.

Personal life and death

thumb|upright=1.5|Animated map of [[Indo-European migrations in accordance with the Kurgan hypothesis. Dumézil's research, along with that of Marija Gimbutas, formed a basis for modern Indo-European studies.]]

Dumézil died in Paris from a massive stroke on 11 October 1986. He had deliberately refrained from writing a memoir, believing that the legacy of his work should stand on its scholarly merits alone. However, shortly before his death, Dumézil gave a series of in-depth interviews with his defender Eribon, which were subsequently published in Entretiens avec Georges Dumézil (1987). This book remains the closest Dumézil ever came to writing a memoir. Upon his death, Dumézil left a number of unfinished works on Indo-European mythology, some of which were subsequently edited by his friends and published.

Dumézil married Madeleine Legrand in 1925, with whom he had a son and a daughter.

Legacy and reception

Indo-European studies

Throughout his career, Dumézil published more than seventy-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles. His research continues to have a strong influence among Indo-Europeanists, classicists, Celticists, Germanicists, and Indologists. Prominent scholars heavily influenced by Dumézil include Emile Benveniste, Stig Wikander, Jan de Vries, Gabriel Turville-Petre, Werner Betz, Edgar C. Polomé, Jaan Puvhvel, Joël Grisward, Nicholas Allen, Georges Charachidzé, François-Xavier Dillmann, Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin, , Lucien Gerschel, Emily Lyle, Dean A. Miller, Alwyn Rees, Brinley Rees, Robert Schilling, Bernard Sergent, Udo Strutynski, Donald J. Ward and Atsuhiko Yoshida. Along with Marija Gimbutas, Dumézil's research continues to form the basis for modern Indo-European studies. His formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis has been described by C. Scott Littleton as one of the most important scholarly achievements of the 20th century. Since 1995, the Académie Française awards the annual for a work of philology.

Some critics, particularly adherents of Lévi-Strauss, contended that the mythological and social structures Dumézil identified with Indo-Europeans were not distinctly Indo-European, but rather characteristic of all humanity. Among those were Colin Renfrew, who doubts that Indo-Europeans had anything distinctly in common beyond speaking Indo-European languages.

Criticism of political affiliations

upright|thumb|left|[[Carlo Ginzburg charged Dumézil with having "sympathy for Nazi culture" for his works on Germanic and Indo-European religion, and accused Dumézil of conspiring to undermine "Judeo-Christian" values.]]

In the 1980–1990s, Dumézil came under heavy criticism from certain scholars, particularly left-wing historians, who accused Dumézil of being a crypto-Fascist and a neo-traditionalist, by implicitly defending in his scholarly writings the restoration of a traditional hierarchical order in Europe (e.g. the three estates). Many of these critics pointed out that Dumézil's lifelong close friend Pierre Gaxotte had been the secretary of Action Française leader Charles Maurras, and that his work had been influential on members of the European New Right, including Alain de Benoist, Jean Haudry, or Roger Pearson, who used his theories to support far-right political positions, with an "Indo-European race" (conflated with white people) being seen as superior to all other peoples. Bruce Lincoln has argued that Dumézil "maintained a cautiously ambiguous relation" with Nouvelle Droite figures like de Benoist and Haudry, "both of whom courted him avidly".

During the 1930s, Dumézil supported the far-right, royalist, anti-democratic, and anti-German Action Française. While he held for a while Benito Mussolini in high regard, he steadfastly opposed Nazism and voiced as a journalist his opposition to the growing danger posed by German nationalism. However, Dumézil never joined Action Française, contending that "too many things separated [him] from them. The credo of Action Française was a block: it forbade both appreciating Edmond Rostand and believing in the innocence of Captain Dreyfus." Furthermore, Dumézil joined Freemasonry in the early 1930s as a member of the Portique lodge of the Grande Loge de France of the Scottish Rite, and was consequently dismissed from his teaching positions and from the civil service by the collaborationist Vichy State during World War II.

The harshest critics of Dumézil were Arnaldo Momigliano and Carlo Ginzburg, who charged Dumézil with having "sympathy for Nazi culture" due to his writings on Germanic religion in the 1930s. They also accused Dumézil's trifunctional hypothesis of similarity with Fascism, and wrote that his reconstruction of Indo-European society was motivated by a desire to abolish "Judeo-Christian" values. Momigliano had himself been a member of the National Fascist Party in the 1930s, but was not open about this.

Dumézil was defended by many colleagues, including C. Scott Littleton, Jaan Puhvel, Edgar C. Polomé, Dean A. Miller, Udo Strutynski, and most notably Didier Eribon. Polomé and Miller saw the criticism of Dumézil as an expression of political correctness and Marxist ideology, and questioned the scholarly credentials of the critics. Dumézil himself responded vigorously to these accusations, pointing out that he had never been a member of a Fascist organization, never been sympathetic to Fascist ideology, and that the ancient Indo-European hierarchical social structure never appealed to him. In order to clarify his political position, he declared to Éribon in 1987: "the principle, not simply monarchical, but dynastic, which protects the highest office of the State from caprices and ambitions, seemed to me, and still seems to me, preferable to the generalized election in which we have been living since Danton and Bonaparte. The example of the [constitutional] monarchies of the North (of Europe) confirmed to me this feeling. Of course, the formula is not applicable in France."

Accusations of Fascist sympathies continued after Dumézil's death. Eribon's Faut-il brûler Dumézil? (1992) has been credited with permanently debunking accusations that Dumézil was a crypto-Fascist. Charges of Fascist sympathies have nevertheless continued to be leveled, most notably by Eliade's former student Bruce Lincoln. Inspired by the critique of Momigliano and Ginzburg, Lincoln has criticized Dumézil from a Marxist perspective, Similar accusations have also been leveled by the Swedish Marxist historian Stefan Arvidsson, who hopes that the "exposure" of Dumézil's alleged political Fascist sympathies may lead to the abolition ("Ragnarök") of the concept of Indo-European mythology.

Honours and awards

Honours

Officier of the Legion of Honour
Croix de Guerre 1914-1918
Commander of the Ordre des Palmes académiques

Recognition

Member of the Académie Française
Member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
Member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium
Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Member of the Royal Irish Academy

Honorary degrees

University of Liège
University of Bern
Uppsala University
Istanbul University

Awards

Prix mondial Cino Del Duca

Selected works

translation published in Mythe et épopée, three volumes, Gallimard (Paris), 1968–73.
translation of La religion romaine archaïque
translation of Du myth au roman: La saga de Hadingus
translation of Mitra-Varuna: Essai sur deux representations indo-européennes de la souveraineté, 2nd edition; revised and critical edition, ed. Stuart Elden, Chicago: Hau, 2023

References

Sources

External links

Overview of Dumézil's career
Academie Française biography of Dumézil