Literary Short Cut

The shortest route from Switzerland's German-speaking region to its French-speaking one is via Paris...at least where publishing is concerned. An exhibition in Berne traces the 100-year history of that route.

The shortest route from Switzerland’s German-speaking region to its French-speaking one is via Paris…at least where publishing is concerned. An exhibition in Berne traces the 100-year history of that route.

The exhibition in Berne’s Kornhaus tells the story of a long relationship between Swiss authors and the Paris publishing house, Gallimard. It was organised by the Swiss National Library in collaboration with Gallimard, perhaps the best-known publisher in France.

“Gallimard is unique,” says national library director Jean-Frédéric Jauslin, “because of the high number of famous authors whose works are published by it, and because of the high quality of its publications.”

A century ago Swiss-French authors turned to Gallimard because the market for their books in Switzerland was too small. The result was that works by many of them, such as Albert Cohen and Denis de Rougemont, became so widely-read in France that many French people were unaware that the authors were Swiss.

Similarly, works by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and other leading Swiss-German writers were translated into French and reached a wide readership in France after being published by Gallimard.

The exhibition draws attention to the high quality of work by Swiss translators, which Jean-Frédéric Jauslin says continues to this day. But its main focus is on the happy relationship between a family publishing firm and many of Switzerland’s leading literary lights, with old photographs, first editions and letters from the archives of Gallimard and the Swiss National Library.

Previously seen in Geneva, Fribourg, Neuchatel and Lausanne, the exhibition is in Berne until March 12 and moves from there to Paris.