The Professor of American History at the University of La Laguna, Manuel de Paz Sánchez, has donated to the Library Service of the University of La Laguna an important manuscript by the 19th-century French traveler Arthur Jean-Philibert Grasset, explorer and artist friend of Sabino Berthelot who, under the pseudonym Pailloux recounts the three trips made from Algeria to the Canary Islands, passing through the Moroccan coast, in 1877, 1879 and 1881. The work was acquired by the professor of the institution in 2019 from a Parisian bookstore, which in turn obtained this document through auction.
The formal act of receiving this donation was held today, Monday, July 25, in the Old Fund of the General and Humanities Library of the Guajara Campus, with the presence of, in addition to the donating professor, the rector, Rosa Aguilar; the vice-rector for Research and Transfer, Ernesto Pereda, the vice-rector for Culture and Social Participation, Juan Albino Méndez; the deputy director of the Library Service, Carmen Julia Hernández, as well as the director of the Institute of Canarian Studies, Maravillas Aguiar, whose entity published in 2021 a monographic work on this travel story edited, transcribed and annotated by the professor at the University of Strasbourg Nathalie Le Brun, who also attended the event.
The manuscript, whose original title is Voyage notes. Excursions sur les côtes du Maroc et aux îles Canaries, pendant les années 1877, 1878 et 1879, contains the diaries of the three trips mentioned, divided into five notebooks with 120 pages in total, written in French in ink and pencil, with illustrations, some of them colored in gouache. This work was never formally published and, therefore, there is a disparity of formats in the sheets that compose it; Thus, some of them are perfectly transcribed, with good handwriting and respecting margins, while others are written quickly, often in the middle of a journey or excursion.
As Professor Le Brun explains, the text is not so much a chronicle written in a calm style, but rather a real diary in which the author gave an account of the events that he was experiencing at each moment. His ironic style stands out, demonstrated in the lively descriptions he gives of some people, as well as the vast culture of the author, who filled the text with literary and historical references and, given his knowledge of music, even wrote down the melody of the song on a staff. song of the night watchmen of La Laguna, which was especially annoying.
Another example of Grasset’s intellectual versatility is evident in his remarkable watercolors, which allow you to observe landscapes of places such as Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Teror, Santa Cruz de Tenerife or Taganana, among many others, and appreciate how they have changed over the course of the centuries As a curiosity, some illustrations are only partially painted, since they were sketches made quickly in situ that the author intended to color later in his studio, so he wrote on each part of the drawing what color he should apply afterwards. .
Another notable illustration is that of a Canarian aboriginal figurine found in the monastery of Valerón (Gran Canaria) and currently guarded in the Museo Canario, which represents the first graphic representation of said idol, made by Grasset months before what until now was considered the first rebozo of the figure, by Sabino Berthelot.
Le Brun also explains that the style of the text is sometimes haughty and denotes the author’s belief, very typical of his time, in a hypothetical French cultural superiority, in such a way that he does not hesitate to state that, as his travels take him Further south, away from the European continent, he feels closer to “barbarism”. He also draws comparisons between “the Spaniards of the Canary Islands” and the Arabs (to whom he refers with the now derogatory term, but then very much in vogue, “Moors”).
For his part, Professor De Paz explains that he was able to acquire the work thanks to the notice given to him, precisely, by Professor Le Brun, who saw it appear in the online catalog of the bookstore. He has wanted to donate it to his “alma mater” because he knows the care that will be put into its digitization and bibliographic processing to make it accessible to the research community. It is also not the first donation he has made to the university, which already has some 600 volumes from his personal library on historical subjects. As an anecdote, and in a more humorous tone, he recalled that, when he had the valuable group of pages in his possession, he hid it in the safest place he could think of: “Underneath a pile of notes from the subjects I teach. I’m sure no one would look there!”
