On January 5, 1960, Fernand Gregh, who had made his mark in French poetry, literary and dramatic criticism, passed away in Paris where he was born in 1873 of Maltese origins. This occurred exactly seven years after he had reached the pinnacle of his career on becoming the only Frenchman with Maltese ancestry elected to the prestigious Academie Française.

La Maison De l’Enfance – Fernand Gregh’s first published collection of poetry.

The esteemed academy was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635 to “labour with all care and diligence possible, to give exact rules to (the French) language to render it capable of treating the Arts and the Sciences”. Membership is restricted to 40 seats, its occupants known as the Forty Immortals, considered to be the most distinguished living Frenchmen of letters. This means that one could only aspire to inherit such an eminent seat when its occupier expires.

It appears that after several attempts, at the insistence of his literary admirer and compatriot, Laurent Ropa, in January 1953, Gregh – the name was thus written on his passport when his grandfather Calcedonius emigrated to Algeria from Malta where he was appointed British Consul – was elected to occupy seat number 19, following the death of diplomat Charles de Chambrun a year before. The same seat had a historic connection with Malta as it was previously relished by the ecclesiastic Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (1789–95), who deciphered the Phoenician alphabet after studying the Maltese Cippus with its Phoenician and Greek inscriptions.

This was not the first time that Gregh received an accolade from the French academy. After publishing his first book of poems, La Maison De l’Enfance, introducing radical changes in the writing of poetry, Fernand, aged 23, entered his poem L’Enfance for the competition held by the Academie Française and won the Prix Archon-Pespurouse.

Four years earlier, 19-year-old Fernand had his very first public contribution published in the literary review Le Banquet, of which he was one of the founders. Other contributors included the fêted novelist Marcel Proust, Leon Blum, who became Prime Minister of France, and Henri Bergson, who in 1927 won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his philosophical works.

The 19th century in Malta dawned with several hundred Maltese refugees leaving the island because of their French sentiments

Fernand was the first of two sons, the progeny of Louis Charles Gregh, born in 1842 in Algeria, and Charlotte Elisa née Bonnard. He often recalled his relatives telling him that his great-grandmother from Lija was one of the young Maltese ladies who on June 12, 1798, went down to the Marina in Valletta to welcome General Napoleon Bonaparte on his arrival.

Poet Fernand Gregh in later years.

Fernand’s father was a musician, a good performer and composer who wrote a handful of opéras bouffes. In Paris he ran a music shop at 10, Rue Chaussée d’Antin, over which he lived with his wife in a small apartment where they had their sons. Fernand remembered that he was only three years old when his mother pointed out to him the popular writer George Sand; most probably she was returning home from the offices of the Republique Française, the newspaper published by Leon Gambetta with whom she collaborated during the last years of her life.

In 1885, Fernand attended the funeral of the French literary genius Victor Hugo with his parents. This experience left such an impression on the 12-year-old boy that later he penned several authoritative critical works on this giant of French Romanticism.

Fernand Gregh, whose literary acquaintances and friends included statesman and journalist Georges Clemenceau, philosopher Gabriel Seailles and Anatole France, the 1921 Nobel Prize for Literature, besides others such as Marcel Proust, Emile Zola, Sarah Bernhardt and Gabriel d’Annunzio, is remembered for his euphonious and lyrical verse inspired by philosophical thought. He travelled to England, Italy, Switzerland, the United States, Cuba and other countries, where he often recited his poetry, lectured and held literary courses.

Fernand Gregh’s signature – ‘g’ replacing ‘c’ in the original Maltese surname Grech he inherited from his grandfather’s passport when emigrating from Malta in the 19th century.

When he passed away 60 years ago he left to mourn him his son François-Didier (1906-92), who in 1969 was to be appointed Minister of State for Monaco, and his daughter Geneviève, a radio broadcaster. She was married to Maurice Droun, the Culture Minister in the Pompidou government. Fernand’s son and daughter have both passed away.

An Academie Française medal in honour of Fernand Gregh.

The 19th century in Malta dawned with several hundred Maltese refugees leaving the island because of their French sentiments, or victims of state sentences like Mikiel Anton Vassalli. As poverty and unemployment crept in, thousands sought livelihood elsewhere, at first in neighbouring Algeria, where most, in the 1960s were accommodated in France after the Algerian independence. A handsome number of them made a name for themselves especially in the Arts.

Along with Nicolò Isouard, who is remembered on the Opéra de Paris, Fernand Gregh – a monument to whom in Lija or at the University would not be amiss during this anniversary year – was perhaps the most appreciated by their adopted country. Other emigrant men of letters – like Laurent Ropa (he has a monument in Gozo), Jacques Ellul, Pierre Dimech, Michel Rizzo, Joseph Xuereb and many more – equally deserve our homage and commemoration.

A list of awards and numerous publications of Fernand Gregh appear in a critique by Godfrey Zarb-Adami (1973) entitled Fernand Grech and His Son François-Didier, Frenchmen of Maltese Origin.

The Collège Fernand Gregh, in rue Pierre de Coubertin, Champagne-sur-Seine, Paris.

Postscript

Former French ambassador to Malta, author Daniel Rondeau was last year elected to seat number eight of the Academie Française. This seat also has another historical connection to Malta as it was previously occupied by politician and lawyer Michel-Louis-Étienne Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angély (1803-14), who was the first French Commissioner of the Government of Malta in 1798.

Homage to Malta

All his life, Fernand Gregh had wished to visit Malta, but as he grew older his hopes faded. He mentions this disappointment in his letter of thanks to a telegram of felicitations he received from Maltese authors on his election to the academy. Furthermore, in his many travels, he fondly remembered the land of his lineage in verse (freely translated here to reflect his inspiration):

Sometimes standing in the choir
Of a church in Italy,
Its maddening paganism
Wakes Malta in my heart.

Under the Roman splendour
My French reason folds
And, with difficulties overcome,
I believe in it with passion.

Yes, before the mighty charms
That God takes here, tears
Of hereditary times
Rising from the depths of ages
To a hundred and a thousand faces
That once I had on the island...