Nimrod: Selected Works 9780472074068, 9780472054060, 9780472124381

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Nimrod Selected Works Frieda Ekotto, Editor Prose translated by Dawn Cornelio Poetry translated by Catherine du Toit, Patrick Williamson, and Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

Page iv → Copyright В© 2019 by Frieda Ekotto All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data has been applied for. ISBN: 978-0-472-07406-8 (Hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-472-05406-0 (Paper : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-472-12438-1 (ebook)

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Nimrod Frieda Ekotto .В .В . to be exiled in the heart of a language is to work to adapt meaning to the rhythm of thought. —Nimrod, The New French Matter (35) Nimrod opens his collection of essays, The New French Matter, with an encounter he had with a French man “of a certain age.” The man says to him: Sir, I have read your book. I know Africa, having spent some time there, and I can tell you that you are not African. Just look at your name: Nimrod is not African. The man’s racist and culturalist claims are not subtle, but they are familiar. They suggest questions that French-speaking writers from Africa and the Caribbean, including LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor, AimГ© CГ©saire, Г‰douard Glissant, and V. Y. MudimbГ©, among others, have sagaciously addressed, for more than a century: What is French literature? Who defines it? Who writes it? In the essays included in this collection, Nimrod draws from and expands upon the work of these great thinkers as he develops his responses to these questions. He also uses his training in philosophy, his deep and loving engagement with African literature, his elegant and perceptive close readings, and his own writing practice to turn these very questions—and the man’s obtuse declarations—on their head. Indeed, all of Nimrod’s writings—his essays, fiction, and poetry—address these questions in some form, and, when taken as a whole, the works collected in this volume illustratePage 2 → the many ways that Nimrod engages in the reconceptualization and rewriting of French letters. First and foremost, Nimrod argues that writing is its own world, the world of the author. He underlines that for African writers to claim this world as their own, not only as representatives of a race or a continent (although he embraces his African and Chadian identities), but also as individuals, creators, philosophers, and masters of the French language, remains a political act. Yet, he insists, the act of writing is also, explicitly and fundamentally, an act of love, of love for the self, for the language, and for the people and places that emerge beneath the pen. In practicing writing as an act of both agency and love, and by drawing from his depth of knowledge and his acumen as a reader and a thinker, as someone “exiled in the heart of a language,” Nimrod creates shifts in perspective that are both subtle and potent. This is similar to the work of his literary predecessor, LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor. Indeed, Nimrod makes his admiration for Senghor, and his ability to reorient our vision with a deft sleight of hand, clear. “Senghor forces [the French] school, its instrument of control, to collaborate in our emancipation [by writing]: вЂThe French have, in their past, a “colonial” history, those from overseas, a French history.’ What a beautiful short cut to underline the reversal of perspectives!” (153). Senghor’s central project was to show how African philosophy could be integrated into French through creative manipulation of the French language, the very tool the French Empire used to “civilize” its subjects. This means, as Nimrod shows us, that French is, in fact, an African language. For Nimrod not only admires Senghor, he also follows in his rhetorical footsteps. We find in LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor: In Memoriam,1 for example, a reevaluation of Senghor’s significance in French and European philosophy. To do this, Nimrod revisits one of Senghor’s most infamous statements, “Emotion is Negro, as reason is Greek,” “L’émotion est nГЁgre, comme la raison hГ©llГЁne,” a line that has been critiqued intensely for its apparent essentialism. In Nimrod’s reading, however, Senghor’s statement must be understood in the context of his entire oeuvre, which philosophically problematizes the nature of “difference” and the important role of the African in the creation of European modernity.

In addition, Nimrod insists that we read as Senghor did: according to rhythms. And, through a close reading of the sentence’s syntax, Nimrod performs his own sleight of hand, demonstrating his own adroitness of the ear and illustrating how Senghor both establishes equality and problematizes his own assertion: Page 3 →The essential point, however, appears in the statement itself. The word as establishes a parallel between black and Western. This parallel presupposes a separation, partly scientific, partly ideological. Senghor knows, as all Westerners do, that emotion is the daughter of reason; just as rational behavior is a wall erected to prevent impulsive attacks. Being Cartesian presumes seeking out counterpoints. Thus “as” suggests relational opposites. But that is not all. The “as” is the pivot of a perfect Alexandrian line—if, at least, we disregard the dieresis and the synereses. It separates the roles neatly with a break that comes precisely after the sixth syllable. The die is cast. Yes, a statement such as this, formed as an aphorism, is an intellectual game, one that, though the outcome is predictable, gives a great deal of authorial pleasure. It is all the more successful because it should, theoretically, awaken our suspicions. Senghor set himself a brilliant trap. (145) In reading this line through its syntax, Nimrod shows how Senghor used the rhythm of language for its own rhetorical effect. We must read the statement not only for its “rationalist” fact, but also as a powerful intellectual game that both uses and critiques Cartesian language and modes of thinking. For Nimrod, Senghor dropped this “rhetorical bomb” (145) to bring our attention both to the fallibility of Cartesian oppositional categories and to the possibility of relationships created by rhythm. This example illustrates Nimrod’s acuity as a reader and hints at his sparkling insights into the work of African writers, often sprinkled with wry humor, which you will find in the essays in this volume. Nimrod sees beyond political posturing and misleading commonalities, offering instead deeply relevant interpretations of this world of “French letters.” Nimrod’s work embodies Senghor’s ultimate goal: the possibility of mГ©tissage, the mixing of European and African modes of knowledge. But rather than working in binaries, Nimrod shows how, if we are paying attention, and if we are willing to understand the complexity of what he is doing (unlike that French gentleman “of a certain age”), he expands upon Senghor’s ideas by insisting upon the author as an individual, who, from his or her perspective, is always active in the reshaping of French language and letters. The power of this approach is clear, not only in Nimrod’s essays, but also in his short stories, such as the collection The Rivers’ Gold, which is introduced in more depth subsequently, as well as in his poetry. Indeed, we should not be surprised that Nimrod is such an adroit reader, for, before he wrote Page 4 →novels, philosophy, and literary essays, he was a poet. Over the past two decades, Nimrod has published several acclaimed collections, 2 and he has been praised as the first writer from Chad to write so hauntingly of his home and his exile. This fact alone merits an English-language collection. But we find so much more, for as the critic Daniel Leuwers has written, “Les poГЁmes de Nimrod sont en fait des letters d’amour dont le destinataire est l’amour mГЄme” (In fact Nimrod’s poems are love letters to love itself). Indeed, Nimrod’s genius, in his poetry and prose alike, stems from his insistence on viewing the world, French letters, and the French language through his love for them, even as he keeps a clear eye on their many blemishes. In the poem “Les Murs” (“The Walls”) he writes: Achevons l’espace avec patience Achevons-le dГ©sobligeamment Puis avec amour—un zeste de durГ©e Au fond des yeux au fond des mots

Et l’espace nous regarde juste un brin Le brin d’herbe qui le fait ciller— Let us complete the space with patience Let us complete it disobligingly And then with love—with a touch of persistence In the depths of eyes in the heart of words And the space watches us with just a sprig The sprig of grass that makes it blink— (Trans. Catherine du Toit) Nimrod’s invitation to think about what it means to write in French as an African and as a member of the world of French letters, “with patience,” “disobligingly,” and yet always “with love,” challenges us to reimagine what this world is and can be. By publishing this collection of his writings in English translation, we hope that a new set of readers will engage with Nimrod’s poignant, masterful reflections, his blistering critiques, and his scintillating lines of poetry and prose. Page 5 →

Notes 1. In Memorium has earned great critical acclaim, and Nimrod has been acknowledged by the Office of Francophone Affairs in Paris as one of the two most important scholars on Senghor in the world today, an accolade he shares with Harvard professor emeritus Janet Vaillant. 2. Recently Nimrod’s works have been recognized by several French and international awards, including the Prix Édouard Glissant, the Prix Benjamin Fondane and the Prix Ahmadou Kourouma for Le Bal des princes (2008), the Prix Max Jacob for Babel, Babylone (2010), the Prix des Charmettes / JeanJacques Rousseau for Un balcon sur l’Algérois (2013), and the Prix de Poésie de la Fondation Pierrette Micheloud for Sur les berges du Chari, district nord de la beauté (2016).

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Essays

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The New French Matter Translated by Dawn M. Cornelio La Nouvelle Chose française: Essai © ACTES SUD, 2008 English translation and publication by permission of Éditions Actes Sud, Arles, France The translator wishes to thank Sylvie Kandé for her meticulous rereading, as well as the University of Michigan for its support.

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The New French Matter In Praise of Decolonized Literature The French have, in their past, a “colonial” history, those from overseas, a French history.1 —Léopold Sédar Senghor For ye have not received the spirit of bondage.2 —Saint Paul

To Begin I’ll commence with an event that happened in Nancy, France, on Tuesday, April 20, 2006. Following an exchange regarding my novel Le DГ©part (2005), a man of a certain age, short, rather stocky, with a beard kept delicately trimmed, addressed me thus: “Sir, I have read your book. I know Africa, having spent some time there, and I can tell you that you are not African. Just look at your name: Nimrod is not AfricanВ .В .В . The people of southern Chad have no religion (I’m exaggerating just a little, no people are entirely without religion), but compared to northern Chad, where they are Muslim, the rest of you became Catholic (or Protestant, as in your case). Of course, we sent you our holy fathers, who were very poor. They put a lot of effort into catechizing you, but their methods were insufficient, that we know for a factВ .В .В . Luckily, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian missionaries arrived via your neighbor Cameroon. They asked the French authorities for permission to evangelize in their territory. They, by contrast, were rich. They lived in well-appointed homes; they had lustrous Bibles. They taught you to read, not just mumble vacuous Page 14 →prayers like the Catholics didВ .В .В . And I will tell you, my dear sir, that this is how you became Christians. Recruited by American missionaries, your father went to evangelize on the islands in Lake ChadВ .В .В . At that time, this was still possible. Now the Muslims would rip him to pieces. The American missionaries caused you to become fanatics; they taught you to read the Bible and, in the end, you were no longer Africans, you were no longer anything at allВ .В .В . I don’t say this to humiliate you. I’m simply recalling the hard truth: there’s nothing African about you. “Your name is Nimrod. The characters in your book are Gath, Evodie, RoyГЁs, things like that. These are Christian names. And what really makes me laugh is that you talk about leeks, turnips, carrots, daisiesВ .В .В . For God’s sake, those aren’t African! Not in the least! I know Africa. I know your country. There are no carrots, no turnips, no daisiesВ .В .В . Nothing you describe is AfricanВ .В .В .” I am obliged to interrupt this attack on my person. Since March, when one of my essays on Senghor, the great Senegalese poet, was published, I have heard this every time I give a talk. I’ll admit, for the first fifteen years I lived in France I was spared. All signs point to the enactment of laws for the benefit of French colonization in Algeria, which awoke the dozing demons—colonizers and bureaucrats whom the French Republic had rushed unceremoniously to wipe from history. Those demons are again raising their heads. This man, this tyrant, whose identity is unknown to me, must have been a zealous clerk in the now defunct French Empire. Still faithful to his former mission, he doesn’t even question his right to give an African orders—and a writer, at that, a steward of thought. Men of goodwill are mistaken when they unilaterally decree the emancipation of minds. Colonial France continues to speak, or at the very least, they who are nostalgic for a time not as distant as we’d like to think. What’s being rehashed is French bitterness; France, whose mission was to make the natives 100 percent French. Yet the words that burn my ears are the most perfect denial. I won’t even mention the intellectuals’ betrayal. Beneath evangelization and the civilizing mission’s veneer, colonization has never been anything but a barbarous act with killing and objectifying Africans as its goal. Yet Africans believed in the

Gospel, they believed in the Enlightenment taught in the middle and high schools, and the leaders of our young nations continued in the humanist tradition, to the point that, over the past seventy years, some of us have become writers, authoring English, French, and Portuguese fiction as if our Western adventure began centuries ago. Nigeria received its Nobel Prize in 1986, while South Africa already has Page 15 →two, and don’t forget Egypt. We only continue in the Western literary tradition, a tradition so Western that elements of our own imaginary have been shattered. And for good reason. Some of us possess only a Christian imaginary. If our literature were to be authentically African, it would have to be written in our languages. We might note that, fortunately, we are still far from this. Because here, as elsewhere, “authenticity” only births sickening ideologies. Literature—past, present, and future—written in our languages will continue, in many ways, the Western tradition, no matter what our arrangements. Since the beginning of time, this has been how human exchange has been completed. We always make honey with our neighbors’ flowers. If we follow the logic of the man who raked me over the coals, a Muslim would be welcomed in the West, for a literary “voyage” at least. Yeah, right. Consider the chaos caused by the attacks of September 11, 2001 (New York) and March 11, 2003 (Madrid). You don’t have to be a great thinker to see that the crux of the problem lies elsewhere. It’s cultural mГ©tissage that racist Europeans reject. They talk as if modern Africa weren’t a European invention, as Valentin Yves Mudimbe, the highly distinguished philosopher and novelist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, has so aptly demonstrated. These reactionaries are revisionists. They talk as if every African village weren’t following, on live TV, Nasdaq’s ups and downs and the triumphs of Paris Saint-Germain or Real Madrid. Unfortunately, racists are not the only ones to reason this way. France’s most distinguished Africanists would affirm, without batting an eye, that the real Africans are the ones who live in villages. Africans are encouraged to join the Western order, but only if they remain the “good savages” they are expected to be. If Africa is an essence, the West’s good conscience is safe. Thus an African must remain an African; an African must never change. Why would he want to die in Ceuta or Melilla? Why do African engineers and authors insist on living in France? They don’t belong here; they belong over there, where they came fromВ .В .В . In the October 1950 issue of the journal Esprit, Senghor replies to such nonsense thus: As colonized people, our vocation is to overcome the contradictions of circumstance, the paradoxes between Africa and Europe, our heredity and our education. Our freedom must be born from the graft of the one onto the other, the aroma of the fruit of the graft, which is not the sum of its parts. The superiority, due to liberty, of a MГ©tis, who chooses, where he wants, what he wants to make, from reconciled elements, a strong, exquisite piece of work.3 Page 16 →This is what I wish I had said to the man who misread me. And also to the woman, trembling though she was, at a library outside Paris, who says, “Are you the one who wrote the commentary on Senghor’s poems? Please don’t take this the wrong way, my dear Sir. Your reflections do Senghor’s poems such a great service that it would seem he wrote them himself!” I smile and answer politely. Still, I desperately wish to say to her, “I am a writer, and literary production, not simply beautiful prose, is my job. Introducing Senghor’s poetry to a public that may or may not be familiar with it requires a great mastery on my part.” Indeed, the woman’s ambiguous words were meant as a kind of praise. We must not close our eyes to the fact that the lot assigned to Africans is the most perfect proof imaginable for colonizing minds. Loyal to the nineteenth century’s racist schemas, Westerners—especially the “beautiful souls”!—still think of Africans in terms of the schematics established by the Count of Gobineau and Ernest Renan: They are at the bottom of the human ladder. It is now the twenty-first century, but I have the impression that some people still do not realize that Africans can become writers. Or travelers or engineersВ .В .В . Or simply poorly educated people, who don’t consider this to be a problem. The desire to succeed, the illusion of an easy life, and a common misunderstanding of European realities all may cast them against the fences of Ceuta and Melilla. Who ever said that the pursuit of happiness is a crime? Isn’t that where we find the origins of the metaphysics of bien-ГЄtre, well-being, at least in Western societies? And what about African writers? It seems they are supposed to produce exotic literature for Europeans and themselves, in other words, to condemn to nostalgia an Africa that disappeared long ago. And this is through

literary work that purports to be authentically African: excised girls, forced marriages, all preferably taking place in a village setting. This is where Africans are authentic. But the majority of Africans live in cities. Times have changed, but we continue to live in the olden days. Today girls are sent from the cities, even Paris or London, to be excised in the villages. Similarly, Senghor is not African; neither is Bernard Binlin DadiГ©, but HampГўtГ© BГў, what an African he is! If we accept this, we forget the work the “civilizing mission” accomplished. Among our ranks we can now count three generations of intellectuals and men and women of letters. They read the same books as their Western counterparts, the same literature, the same philosophy, despite the color of their skin, despite their “race.” They are modern, if Baudelaire and Rimbaud Page 17 →are to be believed. In any case, the question doesn’t occur to them. Literature travels through their lives, compelling them to write, not the literature of an authentic Africa, but rather the literature of urban Africans—in every sense of the word. This extraordinary ordeal is reserved for the cultural mГ©tis they have become, they who are in touch with their most selfish passions, as when the morning mirror reflects them as they shave or put on makeup. For we know the melancholy that can unexpectedly take hold of a man or woman in front of a mirror. Melancholy is a dark mood, is it not, that the mirror in its transparency reflects with unequaled precision. There is no need to be white to feel a little crushed in the glow of the bathroom’s neon light. Why not write about it? Are certain subjects forbidden to us? By whom exactly? The prohibition comes, as inconceivable as it sounds, from freedom itself, the freedom upon which our very entry into modernity is based. We are free, it’s true, but only with “freedom enmeshed in servitude,” as Hegel wrote in his famous Phenomenology of Mind. After the divisions that began in Berlin, we embraced our Suns of Independence (Ahmadou Kourouma) within the framework prescribed to us. Becoming a member of the West requires a completely different freedom, however, one that compels us leave borders and the master’s consent behind. This is the price of becoming oneself. The philosopher and novelist insisted on the credo—the only one he ever accepted—that “existence precedes essence” (Jean-Paul Sartre). In this context, nostalgia is not only the matrix (literature’s undeniable matrix) of our sorrows, but also of our happiness. But the latter will never be the proper framework for stories of survival or forced marriages. Happiness always transports us toward the horizon of a destiny produced knowingly. It is not written in diktats or injunctions. It is not concerned with essence. It strives to describe the world as it is enjoyed, not as it is endured. A rose is just as worthy of our song. No, I am not the African writer who will entertain Europeans with the story of an innocent life. If other writers devote themselves to this, it is because they do not know what it means to write today. On this topic, James Baldwin confided, “One of the difficulties about being a Negro writerВ .В .В . is that the Negro problem is written about so widely.В .В .В . But it is part of the business of the writer—as I see it—to examine attitudes, to go beneath the surface, to tap the sourceВ .В .В . [T]he price a Negro pays for becoming articulate is to find himself, at length, with nothing to be articulate about.”4 In other words, Africans write like everyone else. We have absolutely nothing original to say that can be chalked up to our heredity. The only heredity we have ever shared is domination. Those who ask us to tell that story—just so they can verify the ghost of their power over us—are numerous. “They” are the cause of this. Enjoying Page 18 →and trafficking the troubles of others are activities that are as old as the world itself. No one holds a monopoly, neither us nor them. Our supposed Africanness is often only another name for the mask that has been tossed discreetly over our historical disaster. These days it is the boon of NGOs. Langston Hughes proclaimed, “I, too, am America!” Following this example, we only need a few thousand years to place our literature into its orbit, by which I mean to say its world. It’s not certain it will continue to be written in European languages. At that point African literature will be able to boast about having had enough time to create, in the astronomical sense of the word, its universe. This is the price for the visibility of world literature, which is our hope. In The Mirror of Limbo, AndrГ© Malraux places in the mouth of Senghor some of the most meaningful statements imaginable about domination: “Our Africa must enter history. But no History has ever reached Africa. The Algerians were told, вЂThere never was an Algerian nation.’ They replied, вЂWell then! We’ll create one!’ For the Senegalese, too, History is their responsibility!”5 Thus speaks a writer proud of his history, by which I mean, a kind of master of the world. Indeed, Malraux’s pen

relies upon—and recalls—France’s radiance. He is improvising, of course, but always within the axis of French literature! This is how we inhabit the geography of our desires. African letters only ever bears witness to the disaster of the quest for the other, the goal of all literature worth the name. Social, romantic, economic, existential disaster . . . This is the fruit of their tragic quest. For a long time to come, they will only be able to speak in the name of the human beings shot beside the barbed wire fences that surround Ceuta and Melilla. We tend to gardens of bloodstained roses. We do not belong to the same ministry as André Malraux’s. And, in the end, our position is to give counterperformances, even in the realm of literature. If writing means to dominate one’s subjects and career, let us just say that History has not given us the time. But not all is lost: We can revolt. Let us become its masters.

African Literature Written in French: A New Galaxy I am particularly fond of a region found in France: the land of literature. The French know how to trade in letters with a generosity that has no equal. Their book fairs, festivals, and literary prizes, from the most grandiose to the most eccentric, create a country that belongs to literature alone. This is the territory in which I feel most welcomed. The biggest paradox in an African’s writer’s Page 19 →life is that—on an incidental level—he is connected to his country of origin, and that—on a fundamental level—said country exists. No matter the race of writers we come from, we cannot avoid writing for a single country or nation, no matter how universal our work is. French literature is only great because, rightly or wrongly, it embodies France. One writes for a country, even if, as in Beckett’s work, there is never any mention of a national origin. It must be said that France is perhaps the only state in the world to found its unity and membership on a language and, beyond the language itself, on the literature produced by this language. Now, African literature written in French would already largely be liberated if African countries really existed. We would have already seen, on stage in Paris and throughout the country, the Belles Г‰trangГЁres from Senegal, the Ivory Coast, or Congo. But this isn’t the case. If indeed, language is the oldest of human trades, economy—in every sense of the word—is its counterpart. The latter is then called upon to take it over effectively. A country exists economically. Now, it’s true that African literature written in French was born in France (in the shadow of the Sorbonne and other national universities) thanks to students’ enthusiasm and talent (from Senghor to Fatou Diome, as well as Mongo Beti, exceptions are rare), but, its most viable market—by far—has always been France. Everyone knows “Bamako’s Г©tonnants voyageurs” took off in RennesВ .В .В . I am quite tempted to say that French generosity in literary matters is the one that we should suspect the least. In any case, I am happy to offer praise. I owe it my existence, as my own country continues to ignore me. (The precariousness caused by such a situation aside, a country’s indifference toward one of its writers is one of the best schools of thought there is.) And I’m not the only writer in this positionВ .В .В . This situation could justify, in the short or long term, our possible allegiance. It certainly justifies racist attacks against us. We’re taken for welfare recipients, even when our state corresponds to a reality previously unseen in world history. We’re writing for countries that do not yet exist; we’re writing for the readers of a future nation. To tell the truth, the patronage France offers us is the same as any other. Even though artists die of it, they could have died of numerous other causes. But there’s more. African literature written in French has invented a new France, and new ways of writing in French. It incited a revolution and made it a success. Even the French who are most knowledgeable about African work only have an approximate measure of this incredible event. The stakes of this particular upheaval mean nothing less than the inauguration of la nouvelle chose franГ§aise (“the new French matter”).6 Let us examine this more closely. Page 20 →Circumstances in Africa show that underdevelopment and literature are a political problem. This is what causes me to lament the nonexistence of African countries, a nonexistence knowingly orchestrated by individuals who do not hesitate to teach us lessons. If domination creates subhumans, in the artistic sphere it creates genius. Jamal Mahjoub, an Anglo-Sudanese writer, tells us, with a sly wink of the eye, that twentiethcentury Africa has only produced two categories of men: great dictators and great writers. We can smile at this; we have the right to do so. But the observation can also teach us a particular lesson. Individual expression—at least in the artistic field—is where our insignificance disappears. Creation liberates. To this day, it represents the

only honest exchange between France and Africa. Our contribution to the littГ©rature-monde justifies our ability to express in French realities that are distinct, to a certain extent, from French culture and sensibility, because the French language succeeds at speaking our languages even as it remains French. This is the kind of upheaval that it was unable to create in Russia, for example. In the nineteenth century, the Russians had infinite admiration for French literature. In fact, Varlam Chalamov always mocked the propensity of his fellow countrymen—especially Isaac Babel—to write Russian as if they were translating from French. This shows the weight of foreign influence. But the stakes of French in Africa are completely different. For the neocolonialized the language of literature is a revolution that is both political and metaphysical. African literature unveiled new galaxies that continue to expand. Each of our writers’ installments adds a new star, although this can be said about any literatureВ .В .В . at least when its creation occurs outside a context of political domination. We can change orbits like Samuel Beckett. In other words, we can choose French, although, when we look at it more closely, the African situation is more complex. For us, writing supposes moving from an oral tradition to a written one. This implies setting foot in new, unknown lands. This change in direction—at least at the beginning—was caused by the violence that we are well aware of. This was not the case for Beckett. In addition, he changed languages but not traditions. An African always faces a double revolution that affects his exile. Is it not frequently suggested that he direct his attention to his “beautiful oral tradition”? This suggestion is all the more calamitous because it confuses oral heritage with written heritage. As if France, to produce Racine and CГ©line, had settled for inventing the record player. The revolution brought about by French letters is measured by the fact that, from ChrГ©tien de Troyes to Rabelais, and from Corneille to Queneau, new Page 21 →language always needed to be invented. This is the utopia that every major literature must accept. African writers—like Ahmadou Kourouma and his The Suns of Independence7—were, in the French language’s colonial adventure, the first to bend its syntax to their native language, specifically, Malinke. In so doing the Ivoirian writer succeeded brilliantly in conquering another country: another French. In his writing, we find no trace of the Haitian poet LГ©on Laleau’s painful nostalgia, expressed thus: “Do you sense this suffering / This despair without equal / To tame, with words from France, / The heart that came to me from Senegal.”8 Kourouma thought in Malinke and translated the fruit into French. It was important to him to simultaneously respect both the genius of his mother tongue and of French. We imagine that such juggling gave him quite a bit of pleasure. It gave us the following (I’m quoting the first paragraph as well as the first half of the second): One week had passed since KonГ© Ibrahima, of the Malinke race, had met his end in the capital city, or to put it in Malinke: he’d been defeated by a mere coldВ .В .В . As with every Malinke, once life had fled his remains, his shade rose, spat, dressed and set out on the long journey to its distant native land, there to impart the sad news. On lonely paths far out in the bush, two Malinke pedlars met the shade and recognized it. It was walking fast and did not greet them. They knew straight away what had happened: “Ibrahima has finished,” they said to themselves.9 This short excerpt makes us forget pain and exile. To tell the truth, Kourouma takes what suits him from Malinke, as he does from French. It’s half Malinke translated into French, and half French unfurled in its own genius. And, as great innovations assume a high degree of paradox, by mixing these two imaginaries together (because this is, when all is said and done, the issue at the heart of the novel), Kourouma successfully turns us into mischief makers. He seems to be telling us that one must be able to take “a heart that comes from Senegal” and produce honey with “words that come from France.” This is the origin of the happiness we feel when we read his work—even the saddest pages. In Malinke his title, The Suns of Independence, means “the era of independence.” Perhaps literary success depends only on a good dose of cunning.

Page 22 →Permanent Exile We are hybrids; it is futile to want to oust the African within us. Rather, let us send out probes that, through a comma and a resonating phrase, give us information about how Rimbaud, Claudel, Chateaubriand, and Proust acclimatized to the tropics—tropics that are no more tristes than the temperate zones. This literature, called African, owes everything to French literature. In any case, it owes it the inauguration of a modern tradition. In one of his last interviews, Edmond JabГЁs describes the foreigner as a questioner. He, who for so long was only involved in monologues, wants to begin a dialogue. “A true dialogue,” JabГЁs maintains, “can only happen between two foreigners. Each expects something from the other that will awaken him to himself.”10 A literature that translates such a truth has earned, in all cases, its ticket to the Universal—the term that was used before literature-monde was created. Literature only ever speaks of the other and the language of the other, the other that it invents and which invents itself, through the court of words. Literature, no matter where it comes from or what world it belongs to, attests, unknowingly, to the destiny of African writers, because we became others long ago, although no one realized it, neither our own people, nor the stewards on either shore, with the French who have never forgotten our former subjugation first and foremost. Let us stop considering French a foreign language. This makes us accomplices to an attitude that disavows our profession. A Congolese writer often says he does not write French but in French. Can one denigrate oneself more? Fortunately his work does more than write in French. There are no francophone writers; this label should be banished from our vocabulary. We can attribute the existence of a francophone galaxy to the hard of hearing; in any case, a francophone writer is a heresy. As a writer, I do not settle for “phonie” or francophono“graphie”: I create a world—the New French World. This is the situation of the African galaxy, which, due to its exile within the French galaxy, has uncertain visibility. And yet, to be exiled in the heart of a language is to work to adapt meaning to the rhythm of thought, while, in the meantime, we sometimes must pick up discarded bits of ourselves—our most conclusive contributions to the littГ©rature-mondeВ .В .В . Living in exile, affirmed Edmond JabГЁs, is to take refuge in an ideal image. In fact, a writer has nowhere else to live. The Franco-Egyptian poet writes, Page 23 →There is only language. If a foreigner comes to a country because he’s chosen its language, he will find his place. But where will he find it? Solely in the language. However the language he works without cease to perfect is no longer the one spoken all around him. His place is the place of language: the book.11 When I die, I would like someone to write a similar epitaph on my tomb.

Notes 1. Léopold Sédar Senghor, “Les élites de l’Union française au service de leurs peuples,” in Liberté, vol. 1, Négritude et humanisme (Paris: Le Seuil, 1964), p. 149. 2. King James Bible, Romans 8:15. 3. Senghor, “De la liberté de l’âme, ou l’éloge du métissage,” in Négritude et humanisme, p. 103. 4. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), pp. 5–6. 5. André Malraux, Le Miroir des limbes, vol. 2, La Corde et les souris, in Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, “Bibilothèque de la Pléaide,” 1976), chap. 1, p. 500. 6. “The French matter” [la chose française] comes from a letter from Saint-John Perse to Paul Claudel (August 1, 1949) in Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, “Bibliothèque de la Pléaide, ” 1972), p. 1017. Pierre Oster reused the expression—“French matter”—in his homage to the

poet in 1964, in the Nouvelle revue française, in an article he republished in his collection of essays Pratique de l’éloge (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1978). 7. The first edition of Les Soleils des indépendences was published by the Presses universitaires de Montréal in 1968. The novel was then published in Paris in 1970 by Editions du Seuil. 8. See L. S. Senghor, Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, preceded by Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Orphée noir” (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1948), p. 108. (“Sentez-vous cette souffrance / Et ce désespoir à nul autre égal / D’apprivoiser, avec des mots de France, / Ce coeur qui m’est venu du Sénégal?”) 9. Ahmadou Kourouma, The Suns of Independence, trans. Adrian Adams (London: Heinemann, African Writers Series, 1981), p. 3. 10. Edmond Jabès, interview conducted by André Velter, Le Monde des livres, April 29, 1989, p. 21. 11. Edmond Jabès, interview.

Page 24 →Page 25 →

How to Be Francophone? Page 26 →As a matter of fact, it’s impossible. Let’s not go on blindly repeating The Persian Letters. Page 27 →Certain circles specialize in certain questions. For example, in requesting that African writers explain why they use French. Forgetting the assumptions behind this petition tinged with flattery, our dear foreigners—“in French French”1—comply, usually without a second thought. How very sweet! Responding to this request allows our merit to be measured, we who come from so far away. As if we could come from somewhere closer, from the very den of language, so to speak; and supposing that, by heaven knows what oracle, this would make us an authentic native. This reasoning seems convincing, but it is not. Because only distance felt in the most intimate part of the self pushes a man or woman to write. They seek only to ward off a kind of indisputable distance between word and object. Thus the zeal that generally accompanies this phenomenon. Personally, I maintain a passionate relationship with French. It cannot be any other way: Writing is an act of love. My work is an element of my being. Denying this would be to lie. We cannot know a language better than by writing it. My strongest identity—and, yet, my least certain—is only ever revealed in the hand-to-hand combat in which my prose is born. This struggle teaches me that my identity as a writer is never established once and for all. Whether I have to write three hundred words or a million, I must give 100 percent of myself. Claiming that African or Maghrebi writers have greater difficulty than their French counterparts—or referring to their diglossia or even their “bilingualism”—does nothing but displace the problem. The French language is no one’s mother tongue. Writing is its own galaxy. African literature specialists are mistaken when they maintain the contrary. No, French is not a “spoil of war” (even if there may have been wars in the past). No, French does not rape my mother tongue (even if there may have been rapes in the past). Wholesale use of metaphor keeps us from considering writing for what it is. It is as if African writers give in, as soon as it comes to conceptualizing writing, to the contagious use of circumlocution. Add mystification and our cup runneth overВ .В .В . The only account I can accept without reservation is the one Senghor put forth in an article in a November 1962 edition of the journal Esprit: Page 28 →It is a matter of expressing our authenticity as cultural mГ©tis, as men of the twentieth century. Now as the Civilization of the Universal is being built by totalization and socialization,2 it is a question of making use of this marvelous tool found within the debris of the colonial regime. This tool is the French language. La Francophonie3 is an Integral Humanism being woven around the globe: It is a symbiosis of the “dormant energies” on all continents and of all races, which are awakening to their complementary warmth. “France,” a delegate from the NLF [National Liberation Front of Vietnam] said to me, “is you and me. This is French Culture.” Let us be even more complete and reverse the proposition. Our values now animate the books that you read, the language that you speak: French, Sun that shines outside the Hexagon.4 “The marvelous tool that is the French language” can only spark declarations of love. This is the condition for all creation to be possible, whether we are aware of it or not. There is no love without exchange. To write is not to return to an essence, although writing certainly indicates a long cultural process. If one were to put it on trial, History would be at its center. From Plato to Heidegger, European thought has always endeavored to declare its most remarkable inventions “Western.” The Freiburg master maintained that the expression “Western philosophy” was

redundant: Philosophy is, in fact, a Greek “science.” One of the most taboo debates in French thought, although this is beginning to change, is the one that carefully separates “race” and “power.” If France avoids this question, it is because of a refusal to think about what, in the beginning, allowed for Athenian democracy, that paragon of our current democracies: the exclusion of “barbarians,” shopkeepers, and slaves from citizenship. Democracy, as practiced by the Greek cities, was, at best, a democracy of aristocrats. The same logic is found, admirably disguised, at the heart of what is called francophone literature. French language authors who were born outside of Europe are said to have another essence. Such a distinction distracts from the study of “la petite musique” of their sentences. First is the indictment of race. In the collective publication For Nelson Mandela, compiled by Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot confirmed: What is a fit way to speak and write about the segregation of whites and blacks? We see what mankind experienced when the Nazis excluded a part Page 29 →of humanity from life and the right to life has survived after the calamitous defeat that once seemed to make this wretched doctrine impossible, even inexpressible.В .В .В . Similarly, it is a great crime for the black to acquire Westernstyle culture. When an evil like this occurs, it upsets the social equilibrium and can lead to communism or something like it. Hence the condemnation of Nelson Mandela. He is too educated and too capable to be allowed freedom.5 It is a true scandal for Africans and Arabs to become French-language writers! And I do not exaggerate. Salah StГ©tié’s testimony can follow Maurice Blanchot’s: We would do well to note that it’s the non-Europeans who are defined as francophone, while Europeans take their place naturally at the table. Who would ever describe Ionesco, Beckett, or Cioran as francophone, although SchehadГ© is, Kateb Yacine is, AbdelkГ©bir Khatibi and Rachid Boudjedra are, and I am? But who cares? I’ll say it again. I am, against all odds, a happy francophone; happy, in any case, to be true to myself and to my origins, which are at the heart of my chosen francophonie. I’m never going to sell exotic postcards to feed the orientalist dream of a West, which, in its expert way, would make me conform to its own needs even as it nourishes me in turn.6 Here the revendication of the “francophonie” is accompanied by a subversion that remains nearly imperceptible. Salah StГ©tiГ© writes and tries to appear as a Westerner, because writing in French means inhabiting, whether one wants to or not, its “values,” a concept truly feared by French intellectuals! It’s true that the West has provoked quite a few disasters in the name of valuesВ .В .В . But is that any reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater? A foreigner, he who comes from non-Western languages and realities, understands instinctively the need for values. Don’t all of his efforts consist of translating his world? As the Haitian poet LГ©on Laleau so pathetically sang, doesn’t writing in French come down to asking how .В .В . to tame, with words from France, The heart that came to me from Senegal7 The answer is found in the question itself. Logically, “with words from France” one must respond in a French style! There is no other way. Essentialism and race disappear as soon as language is considered in and of itself. Page 30 →Writing makes us whiter or blacker, depending, but “white” and “black” remain, notwithstanding, metaphors. The search for skin color in one’s use of language—this iniquity—is the greatest atrocity ever committed in the history of French literature. As Jonathan Littell’s case has shown, writing in French turns you automatically into a bearer of a French passport. This is what African writers are. Lawmakers have already anticipated the situation and have passed a law to cover it, a law kept from all publicity, undoubtedly to retain its aristocratic value. As always, good intentions anticipate the film that chronicles our

present and future missteps. To write is to write politically. For a long time I thought my origins in Chad caused this. I know now this is not the case. Language is a political matter. Even more so because I didn’t need to make a choice, French is the language in which I learned to read, to count, and to write, all acts of decoding the world, of taking into account one’s own self, and then reporting back to that self and to others. Politics and metaphysics, or for Charles PГ©guy “politique and mystique,” are the two founts of my French. In my work, the litany of the mother tongue is not to be found. To write is not to mother oneself; it’s precisely the opposite. It inflicts an amputation of the entire being. Samuel Beckett reinvents himself when he writes in French. He does the same when he translates his texts back into English, his supposed mother tongue. To write is always to struggle against disaster. This explains what Claudel said about Aragon: “When you read Aragon, you’d think French is his natural language!” This statement encourages us to never lose sight of the following question: Does the author, no matter who it is, always achieve a self-naturalization, by which I mean, become nothing but the flow of his prose? If he is successful, it’s a felicity. Legal naturalization and the LГ©gion d’honneur can wait. The linguistic Croix de Guerre is only ever won for oneself! Jorge Luis Borges maintained that the genius of French writers resides in their ability to interrogate the modes and paths of their art. Creation presupposes genius and method, and I am condemned to being the critic of my own cause. Beyond considerations related to the profession, such a position targets an artist’s very being. In fact, it compels him to wonder, “Am I a creator? Am I a god?” Questions to which he must respond. Sometimes, at the heart of the French I write, a language, inaudible and mysterious, makes itself heard. It bears no connection to any of the languages I speak. It is wild, rebellious, implacable. By this I know I’ve found a way of Page 31 →speaking that contradicts the meaning that should make it transparent. This problem always arises when the sentence is long. How can I resist the allure of two phrases, one after another, followed by two clauses topped off by new phrase that is, miraculously, embedded with two or three syllables that serve as a final foundational reinforcement? I especially love it when the meaning adopts the rhythm in a kind of sui generis clarification, one in which I have the opportunity to glimpse, within the very inflexions of the sentence, a hint of the swiftness characteristic of seventeenth-century prose, or perhaps the riches of a romantic exaltation, Albert Camus’s poignant minerality, or even Paul ValГ©ry’s exquisite clarity. But I can tell you’re nervous. “What happened to the African?” you wonder. Well, what does it seem like? He is speaking to you at this very moment. He is emphasizing the sentences that unfurl before your eyes. I am the son of French literature, a clichГ©d confession, I’ll give you thatВ .В .В . OnГ©sime Reclus, we picture him as being from the Champagne region. This man from BГ©arn, a geographer by profession, successfully calmed the Atlantic’s furor with writing that almost sparkled. He knew nothing of chalk streaked across blackboards. He was equally unconcerned with the bubbles that give the divine bottle its foam. He dreamed of grandeur in the manner of geographers: by educating his gaze with a survey map in his hand. Let’s say it plain in the modern style (the Talmud encourages this too): OnГ©sime Reclus was full of hot air. According to Jacques Darras, champagne succeeded in ennobling the carbon dioxide that escapes from one of our, no less noble, orifices. With this particular wine, passing gas became elegant in democracies as well as in monarchies. In Algeria, that most vast and most splendid colonial settlement, OnГ©sime Reclus got it into his head to measure French greatness. It was 1886. He invented the term francophonie as part of this project. The Arabs, who came so late to French, were to be called “francophones.” The new concept exclusively designated foreigners, to the point of sabotaging the rule that governs the creation of French nouns. OnГ©sime Reclus did not want to measure the extension of the language, but rather the extent of French overseas possessions. Francophonie is a statistical method. It is geopolitically important to set the table with the values of the patrimony. A table from Champagne is set with bread and wine. We also expect cheese from Auvergne and crГЄpes from Brittany. In any case, to apply the term francophonie to foreign speakers of French is to confess that they cannot always seize all of its nuances.

In Paris Page 32 →today, it is still possible to hear, “By associating MallarmГ© and Bashung, two rhГ©toriqueurs whose language thrives on opacity, EncrevГ© reminds us that literary language has more and better to offer than clarity. It doesn’t exist in order to relieve francophones of what they don’t understand.”8 Some inventions serve a single purpose. In the meantime, Senghor got ahold of the new term. The Senegalese poet loves the concept of “the francophonie.” As an institution, he awards it with a capital F. Of course, he would have preferred the word francitГ©, because the poet, unlike the geopolitical view of the man from BГ©arn, believes in the intrinsic values of the French language. He believes in them so strongly that he allows himself to regress. In 1954, for a lecture given in Strasbourg, he wrote these inimitable words: “Who said it was the gray, atonal language of engineers and diplomats? Of course, I said it myself at one point because my dissertation required it. I hope I am forgiven. I know its resources for having tasted, chewed, and taught them; it is the language of the gods. Listen to Corneille, LautrГ©amont, Rimbaud, PГ©guy, and Claudel. Listen to the great Hugo. French is a great organ that can lend itself to every tone, every effect, from sweet softness to sudden storms. From one moment to the next, and indeed simultaneously, it can be a flute, an oboe, a trumpet, a tom-tom, even a canon.”9 According to this poet of Chants d’ombre, French values are universal insofar as they are able to bend to the sensitivity of the natives who have just arrived to francitГ©. Rhythm, Senghor emphasizes, is life. It is at once the life of the world and the life of the fusion of singularities that each of us remains. Without even realizing it, Senghor has demolished fortresses and the Fortifications of Vauban. He is more revolutionary than ever. It’s 1954. The struggles for African independence are at their height. The Bandung Conference, where the Non-Aligned Movement was created, is on the horizon. From September 19 to 21, 1956, the First International Congress of Writers and Artists of the Black World and the Diaspora will take place. The event takes place at the Sorbonne, in Paris, not without being subjected to all sorts of pressures. Senghor is juggling hats as a Senegalese deputy, a French minister, a supporter of the third world, and an intellectual. In Comme les lamantins vont boire Г la source, it is still possible to hear the accent of the youthful thirty-two-year-old man he was when, in 1938, he wrote, “The old myth of Antaeus has not lost its truth. And it’s with this Greek myth that I wish to conclude. It’s not strange, this meeting between a Negro10 and a Greek. I fear that many today who claim to represent Greece are actually Page 33 →betraying it. The betrayal of the modern world is to mutilate man by making him into a вЂreasoning animal’ rather than crowning him a вЂgod of reason.’ The Negro’s contribution, along with other peoples, was to recreate the unity of Man and World: linking body and spirit, man and his brethren, stone and God. In other words, the real and the surreal—not with Man at the center, but as a pivot, the navel of the World.”11 In the 1960s and 1970s, owing to his status as president of the Republic, Senghor had to put a damper on his revolutionary bent. I don’t blame him for it, quite the contrary. He would have appeared foolish if he had acted differently. Just like the bloodthirsty SГ©kou TourГ© who, in 1958, said no to General de Gaulle’s referendum, to the great joy of African intellectuals and writers, including Mongo Beti and Stanislas Spero Adotevi. They preferred stupidity to ruse deliberately. In 1972, without faltering, Adotevi wrote, “Because SГ©kou TourГ© himself did not hesitate for a moment to write in his message to the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists: вЂIt’s not by chance that French colonialism took off at the time of the famous—now outmoded—theory of “primitive and prelogic mentality.”’ It is a sign!”12 Stalinists are fools for whom killing takes the place of intelligence. They are crooks. In their case, we would discredit ourselves by seeking attenuating circumstances. I share Adotevi’s criticism, but I condemn his allegiance to SГ©kou TourГ©. Making jokes with a killer is the same as knighting him. Adotevi wants to destroy Senghor by calling him a racist. By so doing, he commits an intellectual crime that makes him complicit in actual crimes. In addition, is this not why, in African Stalinist circles, Senghor is always associated with genocide, including the one in Rwanda? Our Stalinists rewrite history. It’s understandable. They are responsible for many of the crimes from which our continent suffers. Ideological combat is always an imperial apparatus. The same goes for la francophonie. Senghor, like OnГ©sime Reclus, wants secure a kind of leadership over

French-speaking Africa. He shows himself to be a geopolitician, even if lacking the appropriate apparatuses and financesВ .В .В . He uses cunning, altering his reasoning, disguising his integrity. He’s an astute politician. He deigns to write (but, Senghor, where is your sense of humor?): “What exactly do the neologisms francophonie and francitГ© mean? A French geographer, OnГ©sime Reclus was the first to employ the terms francophonie and Francophonie. Since then, the formulation and meaning of the second word have often been contested. Wrongly so. As my teacher Ferdinand Brunot, a founder of modern grammar, used to say, the fundamental law of grammar is not rationality but analogy.”13 Page 34 →What theВ .В .В .В ! Senghor is changing sides! He is using his erudition to defend the indefensible! It’s a game, of course, but it has all the hallmarks of an authoritative argument. It’s 1985, it’s true. When he makes this speech, he is no longer president, and we could never reasonably maintain that the AcadГ©mie franГ§aise has any influence on African destiny. Senghor is condemned to preaching “la francophonie.” He does not deny himself any pleasure. He gives speeches in which his position becomes more and more radical. He is perfectly aware of this. It is the cost of having a body: Every revolutionary, with the help of age, becomes more or less conservative. Although he hasn’t taught for years, Senghor’s luxurious quagmire remains inhabited by a professor’s phraseology. Because a thought, when repeated, sinks. Senghor hardens his past theses, theses whose potential comes from what they borrowed at the byroads. At thirty, Senghor was his own Socrates. And like the inventor of philosophy, Senghor’s thinking is nothing but a vast aporia. By defending OnГ©sime Reclus’s theories, he fulfills his involuntary servitude. The name OnГ©sime comes from the Gospels and means “useful.” Saint Paul converted this slave in the prison at Ephesus, where their paths crossed. Thereafter the former slave burns with an even greater devotion to service. OnГ©sime from BГ©arn and LГ©opold the Senegalese lion are the kind of people who want to make themselves useful. You can never blame servants. Without their help, there would be neither empires nor states, starting with the trifling industries that make communal existence possible. Aristotle maintained that the family unit was the embryo of the nation. Servants are builders. This is the unsurpassable greatness of servitude. I revere Senghor even in his weakness.

Notes 1. As LГ©on-Gontran Damas mockingly called it in a 1936 poem entitled “Le Hoquet” (“The Hiccup”): “Did I not tell you to speak French from France, French French?” In Pigments (Paris: GLM, 1937, then PrГ©sence africaine, 1962). 2. “La civilisation de l’universel” is a key concept in Senghor’s thought and writing. For example, see his LibertГ©, vol. 3, NГ©gritude et civilisation de l’universel, published by Le Seuil in 1977. 3. Translator’s note: In general, “La Francophonie” denotes the political organization, while “francophonie” indicates the ensemble of French speakers in the world. Here, however, Senghor capitalizes “La Francophonie” to emphasize its conceptual importance. Page 35 →4. L. S. Senghor, “Le franГ§ais, langue de culture” (“French: Language of Culture”), in LibertГ©, vol. 1, NГ©gritude et humanisme (Paris: Le Seuil, 1964), p. 363. Our italics. 5. Maurice Blanchot, “Our Responsibility,” trans. Michael Holland, in For Nelson Mandela (New York: Seaver Books, 1987), pp. 249–50. 6. Salah StГ©tiГ©, “Le franГ§ais et moi,” Agotem, #1, Obsidiane, 2003, p. 70. 7. Quoted in L. S. Senghor, Anthologie de la nouvelle poГ©sie nГЁgre et malgache de langue franГ§aise, in NГ©gritude et humanisme, p. 108. 8. Philippe LanГ§on, “Le gardien du nГ©nufar,” LibГ©ration, “Livres,” March 29, 2007, p. viii. The article’s author is obviously citing and commenting on Michel EncrevГ©, whose book, coauthored with Michel Brudeau, Conversations sur la langue franГ§aise, was just published by Gallimard. 9. L. S. Senghor, “Comme les lamantins vont boire Г la source,” postface to Ethiopiques, in Oeuvre poГ©tique (Paris: Le Seuil, collections Points, 2006), pp. 171–72. 10. Translator’s note: “Negro” is chosen to translate “NГЁgre,” as it is the term that was in use at the time Senghor was writing.

11. L. S. Senghor, “Ce que l’homme noir apporte,” in Négritude et humanisme, p. 38, our italics. 12. Stanislas Spero Adotevi, Négritude et Négrologues: Essai (Paris: Collection 10/18, 1998; republished, Bordeaux: Le Castor astral, collection “Les Pourfendeurs”), p. 53 n. 12. 13. L. S. Senghor, “De la Francophonie à la Francité,” in Liberté, vol. 5, Le Dialogue des cultures (Paris: Le Seuil, 1993), p. 261.

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Brief History of the Young African Literature Written in French

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The War of Language Will Not Take Place Mars is an empty god. —Pierre Grouix The Greeks feared what is rudimentary. From stone, they brought forth perfect images of human beings. It cannot be done better. And it won’t be. —Edward Bond A What’s distressing about war narratives and poems (and narratives and poems about war) is that they never offer hospitality. This only seems to be a paradox. War is one thing, literature another. Just as tears and revolt never represent, for the one who is crying, home or refuge, in literature, war will always look to testimony. Here we leave experience behind; there is where we enter fiction. And the artist’s language becomes the site of a fraternal collision. It finds its place within us; this is where it takes shelter. Literature transforms us, no matter our sex, into a womb capable of sheltering both embryos and grown children. On this point, it is a mistake to separate CГ©line the novelist from CГ©line the polemicist. The emotions evoked by Ferdinand Bardamu in Journey to the End of the Night prepares us for the CГ©line of Bagatelles pour un massacre. Both novel and essay touch upon the same internal revelation. In Voyage there is already resentment; recriminations and imprecations are at work. That which begins with snorts ends with a bark; this “emotional style” is a dish that, over time, becomes indigestible. Health, as we well know, depends upon a variety of foods. To try and move with each syllable is, at best, an attempt at one-upmanship; at worst, it is a dictatorship that desires our delight. The words in Voyage are those of a civil war, an aesthetic war. Page 40 →In general, CГ©line’s novels recreate us while his essays unravel us. Besides, all those who bark, inside or outside literature, share a commonality: They don’t have a home. The more they bellow, the more distant their chances of building one becomes. The inner home—both the womb and the home of the father! —does not shelter the violent. It’s a land of harmony, an atrium1 of maturation. Some polemicists have understood this, and, as soon as they could, returned to the dangerous waters of artistic tranquility. Others, with no other indictments, simply disengaged. For literature cares little about domestic happiness. B Polemical texts, even those endowed with literary form, do not welcome or greet or hug their readers. They shout from the rooftops! This is one of the reasons why polemicists are so often forgotten, even the most prestigious: LГ©on Bloy, Charles MaurrasВ .В .В . Language that gets stuck in war suffers from reality. But literature invents its own reality; it is, in a certain way, the most radical rupture with reality that we can perform. In La Tentation de (saint) Flaubert, Paul ValГ©ry mocks nineteenth-century realists, and rightly so. According to him, they had to invent an “artistic style” to guild their harsh documentary reports. According to the author of La Jeune Parque, literature is not meant to record reality—the true reality of ordinary people; it has no use for the provincial middle class. Literature invents its own world, and this world, from the outset, steps over social classes. Just as in the Iliad and the Odyssey, princes, gods, and soldiers trade in language that allows them to attain, far from any artistic style, the literary real, without begging the question, without manifestos of any sort. C For African writers, literature was an instrument of liberation from the start. We believed in it. As readers, we enjoyed works that seemed without political ambition. Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir and Ferdinand

Oyono’s Le Vieux Negro et la mГ©daille are two examples. We entered them with a freshness that is unforgettable. The little Guinean who laid before us the universe of blacksmiths, that caste of fire tamers to which his father had belonged; old MГ©ka, who was given a medal in thanks for yielding his lands to the French authorities (and thereby disinheriting his own people); they made us laugh even as they revealed us to ourselves. Page 41 →Whether it celebrates or denounces, literature is the authority that repatriates us. People and things are at home there, in all their beauty. D Kourouma couldn’t have been more wrong, he who reinvented French, a rather rare talent in francophone spaces—the “crГ©olistes” (Confiant, Chamoiseau, etc.) and Kateb Yacine, excepted. The great novelist from the Ivory Coast always underlined the need to rape French, an act that allowed him to turn French into an African language. Even if he successfully reached his goal, he did not explain himself very clearly. Kourouma is the kind of writer who thinks through his fiction. Outside the literary laboratory, he only stammers. The author neither practices nor creates theories, any more than he feeds bellicose intentions. Despite what he says, he does not wage war on French syntax, nor on its words or syllables. In Les Soleils des indГ©pendences this hunter (this is what his name means; it is an aristocratic title in Malian lands) invents a shameless way of writing in French. In the beginning, he wanted to transcribe Malinke in the language of CГ©line. As this expression underlines, he does it without shame, he does it victoriously. Fama, the protagonist, is a nobleman who has become a cul-terreux, a bumpkin, and no one, rich or poor, sits on anything except their backsides! Even writers have yet to find a better position. This proves that writing a novel is an act of freedom. This shameless way of sitting proves it. The practice of writing removes French from the bosom of the oppressor. How could we have made such a mistake on this point? The colonizer trapped himself by introducing schools to our lands. By having us read Voltaire, Hugo, Chateaubriand, the colonialist revealed his humanity just as he sowed within us the seeds from which future writers would grow. The very idea that French could be a language of oppression, a language of rape, is nonsensical. Language is confused with its uses. The language used in forced labor is not the same as the one that allows us to write poems. One divides, the other unites. One lowers us to the level of animals, the other recognizes our humanity, our universal humanity, as these poems were not written for us. And yet we are sensitive to them; their beauty ennobles us. E In literature, the only war that exists is aesthetic. The artist must please. All a novel’s syllables are arranged in the sole object of obtaining a coherent building. Let’s reread the beginning of Voyage: Page 42 →Г‡a a dГ©butГ© comme Г§a. Moi j’avais jamais rien dit. Rien. C’est Arthur Ganate qui m’a fait parler. Arthur, un Г©tudiant, un carabin lui aussi, un camarade. On se rencontre donc place Clichy. C’était aprГЁs le dГ©jeuner. Il veut me parler. Je l’écoute.2 What should we admire most? The efficiency of style? The word choice? The short sentences? A brevity not lacking length, but infused with silence? The Г© endings (parler, twice, and dГ©jeuner) upset the “continuous bass” of the verbal architecture, causing it to reel just a bit. The first sentence sets up a kind of silence favorable to listening: “Ça a dГ©butГ© comme Г§a.” The novelist begins and ends the sentence with “ça,” or, rather with “comme Г§a.” There are two syllables (plus a little more): and they are completely edible! Framed in such a way, “dГ©buté” doesn’t sound strange anymore. As judiciously as he can, the novelist closes the movement, just begun, with a silent “Je l’écoute.” We have reached the tollgates; beyond them, another world begins. It doesn’t matter if we don’t realize this; we have already had our hearts’ content. And then,

“Arthur, un carabin, un camarade” melts on our tongue like caramel. CГ©line has a rhythm based on a multiple of 3: 6, 9, 12; and sometimes 13. (The trick is in the odd number.) The rhythm governs the subtle machinery of the admiral’s vessel. With citation, a bit of wind—dry, honest—rises. It’s clear it won’t diminish; within it lies the principle of its own expansion. F In Allah n’est pas obligГ©, Ahmadou Kourouma goes to war. To do this, he must be cunning. The plot—the only real plot, and the one that unites all the others in the novel—is seduction. This comes at the very beginning: I’ve decided the final, finished title of my blablabla is Allah is not obliged to be fair in all his affairs down here. That’s it. Now I’ll start with my tales.3 Then comes the introduction: We must, of course, meet this “I.” And firstВ .В .В . number oneВ .В .В . My name’s Birahima and I’m a p’tit nГЁgre. Not cuz I’m black and a kid. I’m a p’tit nГЁgre because my French is no good. That’s how things go. Even if you’re a grown-up, or old, an Arab, Chinese, white, Russian—or even American—if your French is no good, they say you speak Page 43 →petit nГЁgre, and then you’re a p’tit nГЁgre, too. Those are the rules of ordinary French. Number twoВ .В .В . I didn’t go too far in school; I cut out when I was eight years old.4 This little black boy doesn’t lack for self-confidence. Without being insolent, he establishes, from the start, that he’s a writer. And, as if that weren’t enough, beneath the writer is a budding theologian, a reasoner: “Allah is not obliged to be fair in all his affairs down here.” End of story! That same sentence could be understood in the opposite way: God is not obliged to endorse injustice. But there’s a snag: “his.” It accentuates the fact that God is behind things—good as well as bad. Here we approach one of the toughest theological discussions there is. No reason to get upset. Having dealt us a blow with his fine sentence, this first commandment, after which we soon find the implicit second, the little soldier turns resolutely toward his goal: “That’s it. I’ll start with my tales.” It is important that rather than speechify he tell his story. To tell the truth, he manages to do both. After proclaiming God’s omnipotence, he declares himself (and this is the second commandment): a writer. The word itself is never used, ever. But we understand: it has to do with a writer who doesn’t need “nГЁgre”!5 Indeed, one who speaks petit-nГЁgre has no use for it. This is where the narrator leads us off target. What Birahima really wants to show us is: There is no such thing as a writer of “nГЁgre.” G What is held against Africans? That they are nГЁgres. For them to be nГЁgres would be intolerable. And even more so if they’re white nГЁgres. I imagine this situation will continue for a while. From the time of Herodotus to the jurists and theologians who, in their justifications of the slave trade, composed the Black Code, the West has designated our skin color to be the height of abomination. We have no place in Humanity, unless it’s as slaves, as chattel, midway between the world of animals and puppets. The narrator of Allah Is Not Obliged decodes this aspect of the question masterfully when he declares: “Even if you’re a grown-up, or old, an Arab, Chinese, white, Russian—or even American—if your French is no good, they say you speak petit nГЁgre, and then you’re a p’tit nГЁgre, too. Those are the rules of ordinary French.” Let’s listen closely to Birahima. Beneath his petit nГЁgre, disturbing ideas are breaking through. A nГЁgre, he says, is never an “adult” or “old”; he is thereforePage 44 → never a full-fledged, mature, accomplished being. Being a man means, first and foremost, mastering different levels of discourse. French, according to the narrator, has definitively declared that all those who speak French poorly speak petit nГЁgre.

Language clearly reflects social stratification. This is where class struggle occurs, in the war of languages. And when Birahima says, “I didn’t go too far in school; I cut out when I was eight years old,” we can also hear (with ambivalence at its highest point): “I cut out” of all these debates! Yes, the French are not—any more than God—obliged to be fair in all they do down here on earth! Petit nГЁgre short-circuits the language of decision-makers, members of the AcadГ©mie, and those who establish the norms. This is how the nГЁgre’s inferiority was created. Unable to raise himself up in language, he throws himself on the crumbs fallen from aristocratic tables, and feasts upon them. Obviously, this is not how the novelist tells us about the war in Liberia, a war in an English-speaking country, and which ending up being an indictment against certain prejudices in the French language. By cutting off this unimportant debate, by short-circuiting and creating shortcuts within an agglomeration of stereotypes, Birahima teaches a lesson on liberty, a lesson on humor. H Humor, the bastion of the defeated. Just look at people who make their living in the subways (vendors of knockoffs and newspapers; beggars, real and fake; musicians; etc.). We give generously to the ones who make us laugh and cry. The revelation is created with ease (nothing could be less true); some of the Paris subway’s “professional” entertainers understand this. Their work is no less demanding than that of an engineer or a writer. They have to be strong, have tons of guts, and be extremely dynamic. The small soldier6 in Allah Is Not Obliged possesses all of this and more. He makes us laugh about the condition of the nГЁgres (a carryall word describing a subject no one wants to talk about), about unspeakable killings, butchery, trafficking; we hang on his every word, we ask for more. And yet the reader is reprimanded severely, as are France and the United States. The petit-nГЁgre traces a genealogy of African conflicts, exposing inside information. Thanks to his dictionaries, the ingenious narrator is a historian: Le Larousse, Le Petit Robert, L’Inventaire des particularitГ©s lexicales du franГ§ais en Afrique noire (an essential work, one would imagine, for our soldier-author!) and, of Page 45 →course, The Harrap’s Shorter (we must not forget Birahima is an anglophone). The small solder is irresistible when he acts like a clown. Not only does he subvert language (and social classes along with it), it is also the only time when petit-nГЁgre is given the dignity of a literary language. This metamorphosis does not remove petit nГЁgre’s underlying ambiguity. We even have good reason to believe those who laugh remain who they are: non-nГЁgres, bourgeois who think they’re reading one of their own, a brother. They have no understanding of the changes that happen without their knowing. They whitened the nГЁgre, this is what they prefer: to decide, to take the initiative. The opposite situation is tremendously unappealing. Yet Kourouma succeeded in showing that the nГЁgre (nonhuman, no-writer, nonaware) does not exist. Even as Africans and non-Africans beg him to distinguish himself as a “nГЁgre” writer. The misunderstanding lies in the fact that language is a symbolic institution. I The former colonizers and formerly colonized have French in common. But they don’t share History. Julien Gracq wrote: The former ties of subjection have left indelible marks on both the colonizer and the colonized, the protectors and the protected. “Free” and “freed” are not synonyms; only when, over time, freedom erases its genesis and history, does one become truly free, free like the air, the air that we breath without thinking. Blessed unawareness that only some Anglo-Saxons or Nordics seem to have attained! For the rest of the planet, former masters as well as former subjects live in the current

postcolonial stasis, which reveals dark repressions, a psychoanalysis of crowds that has yet to be invented. The freed feels he should be free in addition to something else, something that would remunerate him for past servitude; the liberator, who feels a paternal streak sprout after the fact, watches bitterly as the prodigal son turns his back on him, never to return.7

Has it been better said? J African Americans, in their passionate fight for civil rights, declared, “Black is Beautiful.” What is beautiful is not strictly the color of our skin, but ratherPage 46 → the color of our monetary value. We are desirable in proportion to our strength and power. K Kafka could have represented the end of these notes, but I chose Kourouma instead; we are talking about French letters, after all. A subtle observation shows that, at their vanishing point, their universes come together in a certain way. What the two authors tell us is this: The war of language takes place every day.

Africa and Its Young Writers Do we have a collective future? Is it possible to love this country, the probable theater of tomorrow’s genocides, without a doubt the next Rwanda? If we were given the means to go elsewhere, would anyone stay? If we consider the resigned patience with which our youth lays siege, daily, upon foreign embassies and consulates, they only seem to have a single slogan: leave. —Mongo Beti, Trop de soleil tue l’amour For a writer, belonging to a motherland is like a quest, which presupposes a daily search for a cradle of sensations. Indeed, the relationship I have with my country is catastrophic, to say the least. It reveals both unrest and scruples. Now is a good time to remember what Kafka said: “Literature seeks comfort. Writers, on the other hand, seek happiness, which is anything but comfortable.” Let’s expand upon that. The discomfort generated by writing is of a domestic nature. Writing looks after its own territory. It rightly brings to the surface, from the heart of its syllables and by virtue of its highest form of harmony, a space that is able to accommodate a world. Harmony in found within comfort; as for happiness, it is a gift from our profession. We sweat blood and water for it; we turn ourselves into laborers. For a writer is a homemaker; he’s a family chef who specializes in the gourmet. Only a handful of men have access to his art. Let demagogues say what they like. There is no popular art. Literature speaks to an elite, even if the misery all around compels us to keep silent about this truth. Africa has been speaking French for barely a century, and for the past twenty years, it has been unlearning it with France’s active assistance. In other words, Africa is young, it doesn’t know how to build its own house; it isn’t concerned with happiness. Page 47 →At the end of a debate in which I was a participant, an academic stood up and dropped this bomb upon us: “Kourouma’s literature is what interests us. That’s where we find our chaotic Africa, line by line, from the Ivory Coast to the Congo.” I muttered who knows what in reply and only succeeded in getting myself thoroughly trounced. They say our continent is declining. The worst is that Africa is so involved in its own misery that it can hear nothing else. And despite constant denials, neither can it hear Kourouma’s message, in which he mocks our infantile malady: Africans’ tireless belief in kindness. I quote: “[The president of the Ebony Coast] talked and talked, about the brotherhood that binds all black men together, about humanism in Africa and the good-heartedness of Africans.”8 The irony is obvious, but with all we’ve been through, we don’t want to hear it. We are good, we conclude; we believe the dominated are without fault. If this were true, we would

stop being Malian or Cameroonian. We would be Africans once again—nations and flags would be abolished. We would all be brothers, dripping with kindness. The truth, of course, is another matter. Kourouma harangues us again: “What awaited us along our difficult path: political independences, the one party, the charismatic man, the father of the nationВ .В .В .9 Without a single party and a charismatic guide, we are lost! This belief still dictates our behavior and thinking. The great Ivoirian’s work plays the role some patients assign to their doctor’s diagnosis. Some people with tuberculosis, Roger Nimier10 said with irony, feel healed, just by looking at the x-rays of their lungs! The lure of a quick salvation is underwritten by the emotions. We say, “There it is, that thing that’s making us suffer; we are examining it, we have mastered itВ .В .В .” Literature’s strength is sometimes measured in its power of consolation, a consolation that is the fruit of a misunderstanding. In our literature, the work that meets public triumph is that wherein readers recognize themselves somehow. The ill are filled with joy; now they have a name for their disease. The discomfort—it’s extreme—in which the writer places himself in order to birth his work must, from the reader’s point of view, create comfort that is just as extreme. Now the creator, even Kourouma, describes a country, a couple, a flower as if he had to leave them behind forever. A writer must always be taking leave of all that he has started. This is how he creates openings for new projects. In writing about war, he seeks peace; in writing about jealousy, he seeks love; in describing unrest, he seeks calm. If readers understood what writing does, they would continually sue writers. Because, far from solidifying domestic tranquility, they upset it. Contrary to what I said earlier, a Page 48 →writer divides the family. The reason is simple: He’s writing in his own name. For him, we doesn’t exist, there is only I. What is called “African literature” is about to demonstrate that writers, in our societies, are individuals. They are the only ones who do not give their allegiance to “charismatic leaders.” What’s more, they are not members of the sole party. Our prose writers hold degrees in liberty. This is why writers of my generation reject—in a rejection diffuse, implicit and unformulated—Kourouma’s model. This does not mean that the great Ivoirian is without merit in their eyes. Quite the opposite, Kourouma remains an unavoidable reference. Some of us, even though we haven’t read him, object. The public, by begging them to imitate his style, demonstrates that their independence is under attack. We rob them of their opportunity to inscribe their names within the chamber of commerce of the imagination. In fact, in the image of Senghor, whom they don’t really appreciate, they seek the path of personal expression. The stance of writers such as Gaston-Paul Effa, Sami Tchak, Alain Mabanckou, or Fatou Diome is a striking example that we would do well to meditate upon. A literature that says “I” is being invented before our eyes. Camara Laye did it first in the 1950s with L’Enfant noir (The African Child). A young Guinean from the Fula tribe of Fouta Djalon recounts his childhood in his father’s foundry. As he plays, he is confronted by a snake, his clan’s totem. Soon he will be circumcised and then initiated. It’s a life story that could have a Laplander or Serbian version. The writer does all he can to describe domestic happiness. This is why most of our creators now live in exile. Starting with Kourouma, many of our founding writers were dignitaries. High-level civil servants, ministers, presidents of the Republic, ambassadors or international diplomats, they experienced, to varying degrees, the good fortune of protected lives. The Independence Generation, mine, is the generation of war, blood, and chaos. We are criticized for living in exile—as if it were our choice. Children of French and Belgian universities, we knew the book, in the original, so to speak, the writer’s unique stance. Literary history familiarized us with the vicissitudes of social integration. And when it comes time to identify with inhospitable Africa, our discomfort is revealed. Let’s think about it. For a child to imitate his father and mother, he must see marked qualities within them. This is true for all children, and particularly so for all those pathologically sensitive beings: artists. African writers between thirty-five and forty-five are completely French. Page 49 →They only aspire to French happiness: a wife to love, a love to sing. Especially as their native countries have gone bankrupt and become the

dens of dictators. The writers’ attitudes corroborate Senghor’s portrait of the African elite. He praised mГ©tissage once again in 1953, at the Youth Council of the French Union in YaoundГ©,11 when he encouraged them to find within their studies the abundance of soul that would allow them to surpass simple scientific technique with creative imagination. For him, African intuition had to encounter Western science before it could create tomorrow’s executives, an approximate variation of a new race of men—to use the nineteenth century’s dubious concepts. A new race that, at the end of the 1960s, was forming the embryo of the future middle class. A few of us, barely a third, are the sons and daughters of educated parents. Instead of a middle class, as such, there was a young, dynamic ruling class. It never had the chance to prove itself. Under normal conditions, it would take two or three centuries to establish it, but the Cold War and its ravages stopped its metamorphosis in its tracks, creating a bastard offspring instead. Despite all this, the Western seed is making its way underground. Little by little, the educated imaginary has changed its message, which opens the door to a change in social ideals. People neglect to emphasize the fact that Senghor’s works, together with those of Ferdinand Oyono and his countryman Mongo Beti, the emblematic writer in exile, as well as those of Tchicaya U Tam’si and so many others,12 were written, in whole or in part, in France. Literary historians rarely invoke exile in regards to them. The phenomenon only began to be grasped in these terms in the 1980s, when Africa was imploding. Literary creation would echo this ten years later, in such a way that the same historians were left completely at sea. The names of Alain Mabanckou, Gaston-Paul Effa, Sami Tchak, and Kossi Efoui, to name just a few, are veiled mirrors that reflect an unrequited love: A father unable to love his child, a father who wanted to kill him so that he might remain the sole monarch of this thin, tight continent. The area of Africa defies all limitsВ .В .В . Togolese writers Sami Tchak and Kossi Efoui describe reasonably well the mutations in identity that are common nowadays. Their styles are both marked by a certain reticence about their countries of origin. Sami Tchak gave us Place des FГЄtes (Gallimard, “Continent noir”) in 2001; the novel was well received. We cannot say (despite the author’s statements to the contrary) that it is a formal success. Tchak imitates CГ©line without understanding the mechanisms at work in his model’s sentences. Voyage au bout de Page 50 →la nuit is composed in a ternary rhythm. Despite the slang that colors and singularizes it, it is classical in form. CГ©line’s “orality” is overwritten. However, Place des FГЄtes does not make its aesthetics clear. Fair enough. Two years later, Tchak returned with the novel Herminia, whose style is more controlled. And recently he published La FГЄte des masques (2004), which has a tighter plot (even if the writing, desiring to be aesthetic, has a hard time supporting the tension created by tragedy, its principal mode). The story slips over us; we are left almost indifferent. The verbs seem disarmed, somehow drained of all their energy. Reality steals away, as does our “drifting” attention. The three novels share a common point: They do not take place in Togo, the author’s country. The story begins in Cuba (the setting for the second and, probably, the third), and then travels to Paris and its suburbs, where the first is set. There would most probably be a lot to write about if these works had been written well. After all, James Baldwin, a black American, wrote the novel Giovanni’s Room—his first, in fact—in which there are only whites. Camara Laye, in some ways, painted European’s quest for redemption in Le Regard du roi. When an author explores a territory that is new to him, he is all the more responsible for making it believable. In La FГЄte des masques, Tchak offers an abundance of literary references, most of which are Latin American in origin. The books published that year seem to parade by, as the author reads new releases. They create a kind of self-portrait—and also allow him to place himself beside his peers. As the title indicates, we only conceal ourselves when we reveal ourselves, which happens, if possible, with panache. This suggests both defiance and praise. But, in any event, Tchak succeeds in talking about himself—and only himself. He does not arouse the suspicions of his native country and its formidable censors. It would be difficult to assume Sami Tchak’s disinterest in his homeland or to champion the writerly stance he’s trying to force on us. Obviously the situation seems more complicated. Perhaps discerning critics will help us to lift a corner of the veil? All the same, it reaches the limit when one pretends to take on the role of a

writer even as one ignores Africa and Togo. It would have been easier if he changed his name beforehand! But that’s not the issue. I find the deafening silence about Togo to be his most explicit admission of membership to the country. Tchak gives us a way out; he makes us understand that he will return in a more constructive way; it’s simply a matter of time. The Togolese novelist is careful, a gambler, a hedonist, a masked man. He dreams out loud of writing a novel that will finally satisfy his people’s wait, in other words, a novel of national preference. He is probably honing his weapons now. Page 51 →From Gaston-Paul Effa to Kossi Efoui, and including Kangi Alem, Sami Tchak, and Alain Mabanckou, African letters is henceforth solely concerned with the pleasure of writing. What this means is that our writers accept themselves as men among other men. They are neither leaders of the sole party, nor politicians, nor prophets. Why would anyone want to see them play at being firefighters, when, like all their fellow citizens, they are the preferred victims of pyromaniacs? How long will we continue to believe in the power of words, the only food that politicians are able to offer to the masses? The writer’s word has only one ambition: aesthetics. Africa is in urgent need of action. The age of orators is over. The third generation of African writers is about to achieve its assimilation, which would have scandalized Senghor if he were still with us. I’m making an unnecessary overstatement here. It could be that the current change, which exasperates some of us, including Boubacar Boris Diop and his team at Fest’Africa (the city of Lille’s Festival du livre africain), conforms to the dialectic adventures specific to cultural mГ©tissage, which Senghor has described. In the business of imagination, French is our native land. The so-called “good African writers,” the ones who supposedly write in Africa, demonstrate, on a daily basis, that they live and write in the diaspora. Between France, Germany, Switzerland, and even Lebanon, they have become professional writers-inresidence. They feed their nest eggs, which is praiseworthy. But, with all due respect to our world travelers, their lives among us, for want of “permanent visitor cards” (a fact that they are ashamed of, as they are supposed to be writing in Africa!) become sites of open conflict. After which, they spend the better part of their time denigrating their peers who live in the West. In one way, this is what they are paid to do. Their militant discourse is not enough to hide the fact that these visitors to the West travel more and more and write less and lessВ .В .В . well! To put it bluntly, they’re not writing anymore, they’re making money. Writing flees from them with good reason. And when it comes time to submit their texts—the fruit of their numerous stays as writers in residence—catastrophe! No publishers in France or Navarre are interested. This is when our writers discover they need a lot more writing and a lot fewer “residences” to deliver a text worthy of the word. It’s true: Writing does not reside. Who in the world invented this awful idea? Nothing is worse than writing that resides, and no one is bitterer than an author without a publisher. Because writing Africa is just writing. And just writing is inventing. And inventing is to eat away at the rupture with one’s initial designs. It’s not an accident that good writers are always criticized. They serve writing before state or cause. French, I repeat, is our native land. This is why Page 52 →it is understandable that Senegal’s poet-president preferred a seat on the AcadГ©mie franГ§aise to one in the land of his birth. In fact, this reflects neither a rejection of Senegal (as has been written) nor a desperate quest for immortality. Between France and Africa there has always been exclusion and belonging, love and hate and rivalry and attraction, simultaneously. We are subjects and actors for a cause in which French politicians regularly entangle themselves, whether over the death of Senghor or of Kourouma. At the same time, the French make African authors feel welcomed. Between French readers and our writers, commerce, which never lies, occurs. We don’t need political knighthood. From Africa to France, a single country—exuberant, colorful, and welcoming—is taking shape. This is the model African states lack. Yet before our very eyes, young writers promote it; it should be an inspiration to us all. If we look closely, the model is almost identical to the French Union, that confederation of states once defended by Senghor as such great cost. As we know, his West Indian friends were able to attain it, particularly AimГ© CГ©saire, who worked to link Martinique with France. Africa was given the gift of an independence that is killing it. But we can’t go back now, that we know. Nevertheless, it is possible to share in an impartial commerce with France (isn’t that the definition of francophonie?). A similar reorientation in trade happens with writers, also known as freedom fighters. This is what Sami Tchak is saying in his brutal and bracing way, when he discusses the economy of the book:

If an African author thinks he’s going to find his books in Africa, he doesn’t know what a book is, he’s not familiar with the literary market, and he’s not familiar with AfricaВ .В .В . In my opinion, when we talk about culture, especially in terms of literature, Africa doesn’t count. I’m not a militant, I’m a realist. To gain access to the world of writing, a person must not only be an exile, he must also be comfortable being an exile and aware of the fact that he comes from a culturally mediocre or powerless place. We could pose the same question to all Latin American writers who publish in Spain.13 We wonder how to escape French hegemony. We need only deal in language. It is the only property we, the dominated ones, can share with her. She can have the oil and raw materials; we will keep the culture. It suits our birdlike appetite. Page 53 →

The Ignorant Novelist America, sometimes. Or, rather, America, whenever possible. It’s an essential rite of passage for any artist who wants to breathe in the air of the open oceans. Strictly speaking, is Camus’ The Stranger anything other than a seminar in American writing? It takes all the talent in the Mediterranean to make the world of The Stranger into a European novel. The truth of the world will always reside in translations. The same is true for African literature written in French. Alain Mabanckou’s Broken Glass is an excellent testament to this transformation. A female intern at the literary magazine Matricule des anges has accused the Congolese novelist of being a “recycler.” The mademoiselle couldn’t stand that an African was doing what Westerners do: recycling materials pillaged from African tales, tragedies, and music, as if they were natural resources. It’s common knowledge that this exploitation is untaxed—unless it’s an African who’s gotten it into his head to do it without the West’s approval. In that case, he’s accused of pillaging the property of humanity. In mid-2000, Alain Mabanckou resigned from the legal department at Lyonnaise des eaux and left Paris. He demanded and received his pension. The novelist had less and less patience for bureaucratic work, so he planned to wander around the United States. Besides, he’d just been offered a position as a writer in residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He played with the idea—without really understanding what it implied—of living the high life. Being Congolese, was he not born to be a sapeur, a member of the SociГ©tГ© des ambianceurs et personnes Г©lГ©gantes (or SAPE, from which the word sapeur is derived)? The thing about Congolese sapeurs is that the only two things they will go to hell and back for are extravagant clothes and Zairian pop music. A life that sings is the world’s truth. Alain Mabanckou wanted to sail away, but not the way European aristocrats do. He was too afraid of solitude to imitate that pose alone in front of the mirror. He needed the masses, masses of admirers. Congolese truth is a collective truth, as with the defunct People’s Republic of Congo. With Broken Glass Mabanckou attained both admirers of flashy clothes and an extensive readership. His only goal was to be a master hotshot. Isn’t the States the best place for Hollywood-style premiers? Every atom of air he breathed vibrated with this promise. To start, Mabanckou finishes two books on American soil: Les Petits-Fils nГЁgres de VercingГ©torix and African Psycho. He hates teaching as much as his office in Paris. Learned speech is not his forte. More consequentially, he refuses to learn, settling instead for superficial effects. Even though he travels Page 54 →extensively, he does not attend conferences or any other university rituals. Instead he accumulates the elements that will make Broken Glass famous, specifically a trip to YaoundГ©, where he discovers a bar called Credit Gone West. It’s Christmas 2003. Mabanckou is familiar with life in the slums, even if he thinks of himself as a country squire. He will always look to this group, counting on its greater numbers to pull the rug out from under the feet of his more learned colleagues. Mabanckou will never forget the shock of arriving on the main campus of the University of Michigan. The Mirlyn Library Catalog lists more than 1,200,000 volumes, more than 360,000 journals, and as many newspapers. He hates the place instinctively. And his American guarantor’s house is collapsing under the weight of her books. He wants only one thing: to flee, but where? He asks for advice about which books to read, but is careful not to

open a single one. Well, all but two: The Old Man and the Sea and La Modification. Hemingway’s novel is in a bilingual edition (necessary for learning English) and Michel Butor’s is completely random. His guarantor is teaching it that year. He reads a few sentences, and its rhythm strikes him like lightning. It will take him two years to get over it. Butor’s long sentences and their “railway rationality” (Leo Frobenius) will inspire Mabanckou to a decisive accuracy. Indeed, rails run toward infinity, with neither break nor pause, except for commas, the true crossties, which punctuate the ballast sustaining the divine length like clockwork. This is how the most beautiful, and the most paradoxical, praise ever given to a library came about. Although he does not take himself for Alberto Manguel, Mabanckou will use the books’ titles to tell the story of books, he who has never been inhibited by identity theft—whether it comes from heaven or hell. The Congolese novelist reaches universalism by the most unbelievable denial of knowledge possible. Ignorance is a common disease. It is easier to fantasize about an object than to wrap one’s arms around it. America makes such miracles possibleВ .В .В . Broken Glass is the most successful confession that could ever be created in favor of ignorance. Nothing like it will be produced for a long time. Mabanckou gives us a list of works that are indispensable for the education of a respectable man. We’ll give him credit for that and avoid, as much as possible, questioning him about the titles in his personal library. The novel glorifies the powers of the imagination; nothing else is at stake. To be perfect, the imagination needs glorious buttressing. Let’s read Broken Glass closely. It is undoubtedly a lesson in liberation of the highest sort, the kind that rhymes with creation. Page 55 → Plot The plot develops like a schoolboy farce. Although, in this case, the school is a drinking establishment. This is the refuge in which the novelist sets up his library. He writes using the titles in front of him: books, CDs, videos or DVDs, movies or paintings, in other words the kind of mishmash that signifies someone who’s “got culture.” A challenge, right? Well, no. We are jolted into shock by the very first notes, which ring from the titles and suggest a masterpiece is about to begin. Giddiness pulls us along on what promises to be a fantastic ride. We discover characters from fairy tales, although the author does not concede to the tropisms and overly convenient morals of the genre, nor to the immodest joy of crowning himself a literary theorist. He’s too good for that. On the other hand, his imagination mixes together a wide variety of data. Several hundred titles are mentioned, including works by, to name the most famous: CГ©line, Hemingway, Hugo, Amos Tutuola, Mongo Beti, Faulkner, Emmanuel Dongala, Dany LaferriГЁre, Jean Echenoz (and Les Editions de Minuit), Kossi Efoui, HampГўtГ© BГў, Kourouma, etc. The technique of the list is put to perfect use. Every title tells a story, emphasizes a feeling, qualifies a remark, ridicules someone, parodies an attitude, or debauches a thought. Never since Robert Burton (Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621) and Laurence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, 1760–1767) has the use of the list given birth to techniques in which the pleasure of the text is so obvious. Speed erases capital letters and replaces them with an infinite series of commas. Thus continuous spurts form a narrative. Aragon and his DГ©fense de l’infini wander through the pages. For infinity, as well as lists, is a means to elevate orality. Africans’ propensity for genealogy and inventories (the simple act of saying hello requires them, as do supermarket receipts) obeys the same rule. Thought processes that use lists make repetition delightful; Mabanckou can’t resist. To the art of litany, let us add a stockpile of commas. The song starts right back up again, put back on the rails with Le Pas suspendu de la cigogneВ .В .В . The intuition that permitted Mabanckou to create Broken Glass’s style is the African use of French. Schoolchildren, fathers, ministers, presidents, they all chase after a language whose resources they can hardly imagine. This is why we see Congo’s head of state worry himself sick. In fact, his minister of culture, in a speech peppered with “J’accuse,” became famous overnight; while Mr. President himself, who dreamed of immortality because of the unforgettable nature of his expressions, saw his chances compromised. When his nГЁgres, or ghostwriters, Page 56 →(of whom Senghor, a member of the AcadГ©mie franГ§aise, is an unintentional contributor) finally manage to find one for him, it has been one famously borrowed: General de Gaulle’s “I understand you.” Every single one of the novel’s two hundred pages applauds the controlled skid. Each line is an invention, each part of each sentence an achievement, each turn of phrase an

articulation of uncommon nerve. You laugh till your stomach hurts. In Broken Glass we see a masculine conscience in search of a father, by which I mean: The mother is at the heart of the story, but to a boy she can only be the domestic strength to which, as he explores the world, he has sworn eternal loyalty. Actually, his muscles—and the metaphysics they foster—require this. This is why, despite being a drunk, the narrator spends his time lurking around Hemingway, wanting to breathe air from beyond the Congo River. When he arrives, he addresses his filial piety to Victor Hugo: and there was this other guy in exile in Guernsey, I felt sorry for him, an old ancient with his face all riddled with lines, he never stopped writing, and doing drawings in India ink, he was inexhaustible, with bags of flesh beneath his eyes, he didn’t even hear me coming, and over his shoulder I read about the punishments he’d planned to inflict on the monarch who was looking for him, on whose account he couldn’t sleep, and whom he’d nicknamed Napoleon le Petit, I envied him his grey hair, he was truly somebody, I envied his flowing patriarchal beard, this man whose life spanned the century, apparently even as a child he said “I want to be Chateaubriand or nothing” and I admired his unwavering gaze, which I’d noticed before in an old Lagarde and Michard, which was my basic textbook back when I was a man like all the rest, and I found myself standing in his home, the Feuillantines, I had crossed the garden and hidden among the roses, and from there I was able to spy on the rebellious and womanizing grandfather, his back was stooped, his nose buried in a sheaf of scattered papers, which he was nervously correcting, sometimes he left off writing poems and began drawing hangmen, I was only a few steps from his house I watched as he got to his feet, with difficulty, his work had exhausted him, as he wanted to leave the house, walk for a while, just to stretch his legs, so I hid, not wishing to meet his gaze, and I left that place, and came back to Trois-Cents, from where I would make a trip to the Atlantic Ocean14 And this is how everything is brought full circle, or, if you prefer, this is how the world tour happens. The stories at Broken Glass’s heart are declarations of love. They’re not addressed to Les MisГ©rables or Cosette or Gavroche. Page 57 →There is no Jean Valjean. Transcendence is suggested by the novel’s very arc. We see this suggested in the quotation’s urgency. The only thing that counts is the notebook in which each of the characters wishes his name would appear. Stubborn Snail, the watering hole’s founding director, had given the most faithful frequenter of his establishment a notebook in which he could write news flashes, not about the bar, but about life. This is how the novel begins. Broken Glass is a singular being. Indeed, he must be a broken glass so that we can watch him survive, somehow, the great quantities of cheap red wine he downs—several liters a day. The rest evaporates, who knows how. There is something angelic in Broken Glass. An impassive angel, a smiling angel, a god made smiling. Because Broken Glass, like all the other characters in the novel, is the dregs of the neighborhood, aptly named Trois-Cents. But as alcoholics, the disadvantaged hold a trump card that the privileged and other drunks do not: the ability to laugh at misfortune. This is how Broken Glass explains his destiny to be a scribe: let’s say the boss of the bar Credit Gone West gave me this notebook to fill, he’s convinced that I—Broken Glass—can turn out a book, because on day, for a laugh, I told him about this famous writer who drank like a fish, and had to be picked up off the street when he got drunk, which shows you should never joke with the boss, he takes everything literally, when he gave me this notebook he said from the start it was only for him, no one else would read it, and when I asked why he was so set on this notebook, he said he didn’t want Credit Gone West just to vanish one day, and added that people in this country have no sense of the importance of memory, that the days when grandmothers reminisced from their deathbeds was gone now, this is the age of the written word, that’s all that’s left, the spoken word’s just black smoke, wild cat’s piss, the boss of Credit Gone West doesn’t like readymade phrases like “in Africa, when an old person dies, a library burns,” every time he hears that worn-out clichГ© he gets mad, he’ll say “depends which old person, don’t talk crap, I only trust what’s written downВ .В .В .”15 The story proceeds thus. And when we arrive at the station “Mission Accomplished,” having encountered

characters that are simultaneously so similar and so different, we realize that this is only the beginning; it is the start and the finish all at once. In the meantime, we’ve gotten a taste of borrowing, misappropriation, quotation, parody, pastiche, and iconoclastic praise. HampГўtГ© BГў, Kossi Efoui, and, of course, CГ©line and Mongo Beti are all put through the mill of his prose. Page 58 →Alain Mabanckou offers readers a literary manifesto in which gambling is the gamble. It’s play, filled with love and humor. It’s play that is defended and illustrated by unprecedented stylistic means. The contract linking Broken Glass to Stubborn Snail singularly recalls the Barcelona native Enrique VilaMatas’s novel Never Any End to Paris (New Directions Publishing, 2011), which pays tribute to Hemingway, a first-class drunkard. On top of that, there is Le Mal de Montano (Christian Bourgois, 2003) by the same Barcelonean, of which Broken Glass appears to be the African twin.16 The Congolese novelist’s declaration of love to the author of The Old Man and the Sea is a kind of novelistic Russian doll that conceals his love for Bukowski (Charles), Brautigan, Lowry (Malcolm), Dostoyevsky, Sony Labou Tansi, and, above all, Amos Tutuola, the brilliant Nigerian author of The Palm-Wine Drinkard (London: Faber and Faber, 1952). An alcoholic is a born confessor. He needs a church, or better yet a congregation, where his flock awaits him, growing in numbers all the time. His reputation has reached the ears of the entire word. One morning, Holden, a U.S. citizen, shows up to beg him to write down a few episodes from his life, too. This wink to, and appropriation of, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye is in a certain way Broken Glass’s tipping point. All the characters (whether borrowed from other books or not) urge Broken Glass to put their stories down on paper. Pirandello’s model in Six Characters in Search of an Author appears respected, in its inverse. This time, the author has to do his best to negotiate with his heroes. In turn, they, like the “guy in Pampers,” can withdraw the stories they entrusted to him. Thus Broken Glass is not exactly a professional letter writer. Neither the plotlines nor those who report them belong to him. He is not their creator; he is their steward, a writing clerk, a scribe. The owner of Credit Gone West is the one who decides everything. He’s the backer, the historian, a kind of head of state. He establishes the agenda and the means to accomplish it; he watches over it like a wary project manager. From “the gullet of a laurel chewer,”17 prophecies emerge that are capable of cultivating grand schemes. It’s like a dream! To achieve his goals, the architect who builds in twists and turns must not neglect good, old-fashioned formulas: unity of place, and, in a certain way, unity of time. There is no doubt. This is not the seventeenth century, and we don’t wish it were. But here is Credit Gone West, where people come to confess the evils of the world and where the locals knock down their walls—to parody Miguel Torga. So one after the other we see them parade before us. First the guy in Pampers; his sphincter was injured by a gang rape in prison. Page 59 →(He had been sent by his wife for a misleading reason: pedophilia.) Then comes Robinette, a cheeky prostitute. The pissing contests are delightful! And then Zero Fault; the Printer; Joseph, “a black Van Gogh”; the Bald Soprano, purveyor of hot meals; and then the neighborhood, the town, and the country, each of which, in one way or another, find echoes of their lives in Broken Glass’s notebook—a list of grievances, in other words. Unintentionally, Alain Mabanckou created an assemblage of humanity’s common conditions. Style Broken Glass is defined by the hiccups, stench, and detachment of a drunkard; they create his rhythm, his singular, inimitable rhythm. The words call out to each other; they either line up or cling to a thread of astonishing breadth and length. Mabanckou invented a meter and prosody that faithfully replicates an alcoholic’s broken delivery. Its meter fills the space of enunciation in successive strands, allowing us to hear pieces of sentences as they come together and fall apart. In this way, they lead us along the railways of the past, the kind that, like metronomes, at the regular intervals of welded joints transmit an unforgettable cadence into the cars. The lyricism proves surprisingly pure, sure, and elastic. But it all depends on the use of the famous comma. Can one achieve such sumptuous ends with such simple, limited means? An attentive study shows us that the comma, when at the service of a single, long sentence, causes the words to become equals without diminishing their “individual moods.” You realize that, before our medieval fathers invented punctuation, sentences must have had identical

freedom. With the removal of the harnesses designed to ensure their regular stride (so-called “good behavior”), as they glide over all manner of difficulties, they manage to effortlessly recreate questions and exclamations, full pauses, brief pauses, and suspense. All that is required is that they be lifted up by a song and carried away by a thoroughbred’s force of conviction. Alain Mabanckou is a master. The author gives the best explanation of this phenomenon himself, proof that this structure was the result of deliberate effort. When Broken Glass’s sponsor finally agrees to look at the manuscript, he’s frightened. This isn’t surprising, really. We might note that authors who need nГЁgres confess, without knowing, that the nГЁgres are the only writers. Let’s judge based on Stubborn Snail’s reaction: but it’s a real mess, this book, there are no full stops, only commas and more commas, sometimes speech marks when someone’s talking, that’s not right, I Page 60 →think you should tidy it up a bit, don’t you, how am I supposed to read all that if it’s all run together like that, you need to leave some spaces, a few breathing places, some pauses, don’t you see, I really expected better of you, I’m a bit disappointed, sorry, but your mission isn’t accomplished yet18 The sponsor-author’s attitude is different from a writer’s. Broken Glass will take advantage of the situation to free himself from the sponsor and the characters haunting the bar. To do this, Mabanckou makes use of the mise en abyme technique. Because, within his avant-garde plaything, the narrator likes to reflect on himself, study himself, comment on himself. This is proof that a writer cannot settle for being a nГЁgre. To write is to whiten the real—something that has nothing to do with the whitening of “races”; it is the recreation of a reality in accordance with an aesthetic that is being invented in the here and now. Senegalese hacks, with their obsequious use of petit nГЁgre, will just have to accept it. This causes the suspicion that we feel about each line, a suspicion about where the speaker is speaking from. Because, with each comma, we simultaneously touch deepest Africa and humanity in general, no matter who they are or where they come from. Broken Glass analyzes the situation in these terms: I pick up my book and my pencil, and I leave the joint, I write down the dialogue I had earlier with Stubborn Snail, as though it were happening right now, in the present19 “Right now” and “in the present” are the modalities that give the book its “railway rationality.” The writer, who, in typographical terms, holds his “railway” dear, turns himself into an engineer. As a surveyor of words, he holds a surveyor’s wheel in one hand and a sextant in the other. Even if he doesn’t give a damn what people think: I’d begin awkwardly and I’d finish as awkwardly as I’d begun, and to hell with pure reason, and method, and phonetics, and prose, and in this shit-poor language of mine things would seem clear in my head but come out wrong, and the words to say it wouldn’t come easy so it would be a choice between writing or life, that’s right, and what I really want people to say when they read me is “what’s this jumble, this mess, this muddle, this mishmash of barbarities, this empire of signs, this chitchat, this descent to the dregs of belles lettres, what’s Page 61 →with this barnyard prattle, is this stuff for real, and where does it start, and where the hell does it end? ”20 All important inventions occur in the shadows of brothelsВ .В .В . True speech is always uttered in a cafГ© or a parlor (or perhaps Flaubert’s gueuloir). When the distinguishing trait of speech is an obstinate pursuit of its path, it is called orality. It does nothing to words but get them started. There are no learned terms in Broken Glass. CГ©line’s model (and his use of slang) can sleep soundly. The same goes for Marie NDiaye, when she was writing ComГ©die classique. “Classique” is the description that best suits the syntax in Voyage au bout de la nuit. With Broken Glass, however, orality creates a new essence for itself. And even though we are at the apex of natural, nothing about it seems natural. The drunkard dances a divine dance, and it’s not in the bush21 (being in the Congo, we would be mistaken; but its forest is near, as are its Pygmies), but on the plain. By

liberating himself from classical syntax, the novelist separates himself from gravity. This causes an extraordinary fluidity that is nonetheless marked by syncopations. We dance above the waterline, our feet hardly touching the ground. Then they jump from one book title to another, like a jazz drummer making the scent of melancholy jazzy. Taken to the extreme, the love of the horizon and the pacing of the plain indict limitlessness. Just as we embrace the amplitude of Broken Glass’s sentences, they change musical scores. We are taken over by a symphony; it’s Wagner, but it’s insane. Envoi Is Alain Mabanckou an ignorant writer? Let’s ask Boileau. He answers, actually, in the affirmative: But, always ignorant of our own needs, We ask the heavens for what we need the least.22 In two lines, the author of the EpГ®tres tells us that we will always be limited in our desire to know, since the heavens, that seat of infinity, exceed human understanding. This makes Mabanckou’s hatred understandable. He’d like to laugh at everything, to be serious only in laughter. He is desperate with a capital D. And laughter is the mortal version of infinity. Mabanckou seems to have given himself over to Ahmadou Kourouma’s remark: “The infinite in the heavens has changed languages.” This is exactly Page 62 →what Broken Glass is doing: proclaiming, endlessly, the wreck to come. The wreck of model trains on the living room carpet; the wreck of an electric toy, an adult toy that attempts to satisfy a desire to travel, but at a low cost. Broken Glass is African literature’s first railway novel. Yes, it’s The Modification, a tribute to Michel Butor, and to those lines that, they say—they take us for idiots at school!—remain parallel ad infinitum. This is to neglect how movement changes us throughout our lives. In this regard, we are inevitably ignorant.

Criticizing Writers Isn’t it the nature of eyeglasses to be personal, subjective? —Léopold Sédar Senghor23 All his life, André Bréton, the leader of the surrealists, read vigilantly and fruitfully—to the benefit of the cause he held dear. The French tradition is teeming with similar examples, of which, undoubtedly, Baudelaire would be the prizewinner. For twenty years, and with a generous passion, he exercised his gaze and sensibility through contact with paintings, novels, poems, and newspapers. From this, he coined the maxim: “I consider the poet the best of all critics.” It is possible to object. This is debatable. And, to tell the truth, the crux of the matter lies elsewhere. Among members of the writing species, it just so happens that one of our two greatest literary critics is also a poet: Léopold Sédar Senghor. His aesthetic owes a great deal to the author of The Flowers of Evil. The Senegalese lyric poet wrote his 1932 thesis on him: L’Exotisme dans l’oeuvre de Baudelaire. The Senghorian approach to childhood or, rather, to “the kingdom of childhood” bears the influence of “the green paradise of childhood loves.” Senghor accepted the filiation. In his opinion, Saint-John Perse’s Eloges also owes a debt to Baudelaire’s genius. Among great minds, genius is passed on . . . To maintain his sensitivity, Senghor read and collaborated with hundreds of artists and writers. Such an attitude is particular to poets. They find nourishment in the world, even when partisan ideologies are rife. The poet only trusts what touches him, and what touches him is the very heart of the world, its universal heartbeat. This is what distinguishes Senghorian criticism from that of another of our literary greats: Cameroon’s Mongo Beti. Beti’s mind was as keen as it was caustic, and ideology often blurred the pertinence of his views, the

luminosity of his intuitions. He and Senghor representPage 63 → two ideological figures for whom aesthetics goes hand in hand with politics or, at the very least, with the underlying cultural stakes. Mongo Beti often responded ironically to his elder’s positions, but my intention is not to show which of the two won out. That would be pointless. Rather I must acknowledge that while they were both as concerned with aesthetics as with ideologies, we must take a step back from their respective positions if we are to refocus upon their ideas in the debate before us. Both Mongo Beti’s emphasis on engagement and Senghor’s desire to bring all aesthetics back to a socalled Negro-African aesthetic are, upon careful examination, preconditioned reflexes, signs of the times. Mongo Beti was obsessed with the ravages of neocolonialism, Senghor with defending NГ©gritude. In addition, for both a kind of allegiance to History (the Cold War is present in everyone’s minds) weakens their analyses, which at first had appeared to be of universal scope. For commitment does not keep us from singing about love. Trop de soleil tue l’amour, for example, is a hymn to a woman, to jazz, to beauty. It is also an important political novel. And we don’t need to bring Proust or Pierre Soulages into the core of a supposedly African aesthetic, as Senghor does, by mentioning their use of syncopated rhythm or African physical qualities. It is clear that men, no matter which continent they belong to, know and express common forms, the same proofs and trials of utmost commonplace sensibility. Beyond skin color and cultural conditioning, the body remains fundamentally the same. That being said, Senghor deserves our praise. By shining a positive light on specific African approaches he caused the West to notice us. He aspired to the universal; he made himself its illustrator. The Body My desire to consider this criticism that some of us have devoted ourselves to is simple enough. From Claudel to Saint-John Perse, and not forgetting Senghor, Breton, ValГ©ry, Michel Leiris, or Julien Gracq, what I love about their exercises in admiration is the writing itself. They don’t write anything that isn’t dictated by the body, receiver of all sensation. They write about the ideas of an epoch with expressions destined to become catalysts and leave their investigation to specialists. They know the ins and outs of the business, its ruses and trade secrets; they know its good fortune and its agony. Trade, creation, and practice are variations that come from the body—above all, an artist’s body. When a painter composes an image, ValГ©ry says, he “brings his body.”24 As Page 64 →for Senghor, he revisits the question by referring to a story. I quote: “вЂI want you to feel me,’ a certain African dignitary tells us, while a European specifies, вЂI want you to know me.’”25 In this exchange, which appears commonplace, two contrary methods can be distinguished. “To feel” another writer is to bring oneself into the most intimate part of his being, to invite oneself into his laboratory. It is to live his life, to move to the rhythm of his heartbeat. Despite Claudel’s pun, connaГ®tre (to know) does not mean naГ®tre avec (to be born with). Knowing has to do with scientific investigation, which assumes knowledge as well as ability. These alone allow us to decode behavior. “Feeling,” on the other hand, assumes consent and agreement; it is capable of both lighting the way and distorting judgment. Such an approach is almost opposite in form to the act of criticism, to the ability to discern. And yetВ .В .В . A Literary Critique of Writers From the Renaissance (I’m thinking of Joachim du Bellay) to the twenty-first century (I’m thinking of Yves Bonnefoy, Paul Louis Rossi, Jean-Yves Masson, Salah StГ©tiГ©, Jean-Baptiste Tati-Loutard, etc.), poets have shown that it is possible, through total support of a peer’s work, to unveil its many facets. Thus the socalled scientific method is not a cure-all. Senghor writes, “For criticism to be the expression of the truth, it must be humane, since a man is judging a work and, by extension, another man. It’s the meeting of one sensibility and imagination with another. Each grasps the other: it’s a reciprocal love at first sight between imagination’s intuition and the flash of style.26 We must analyze this as an autobiographical admission: in many ways, it sums up Senghor’s work. A great reader of both twentieth-century poets and courtly Gascony and Wolof poets, Senghor found, within the flow of their verse, the flash of genius that made his expressions possible. And his empathy emphasizes mutual fertilization. Reading the work of another makes both his poetics

and our own intelligible. We enjoy taking part in another’s enjoyment. Each gives of himself; each devotes himself. Senghor’s “grasp of the other” allows us to rationalize the seduction a work has on us. It helps us share another writer’s aesthetic without giving in to the temptation of repeating it. Criticism (from the university or the world of journalism) helps us understand the stakes at work in our practice. It’s demanding, and its absence has impoverished contemporary poetic creation. A number of so-called poets are unaware of all that is published in this field, including its current debates. The academic idea they have of poetry inevitably leads to disastrous results. They lack curiosity. Criticism, I repeat, Page 65 →begins with a predilection for reading. Reading others is being open to creation. Within each of us singular forms and structures are being sketched. We undoubtedly take energy from others (that is the meaning of human destiny), but elaboration is our own, because each of us digests the world in our own way. Despite an almost complete absence of theories and aesthetic intentions, no one can say we don’t read. Yet, in an era of global literature, it is unfortunate that African artistic circles are teeming with people who, having gone to prestigious preparatory schools and universities, don’t have a taste for criticism. We could mention Kangni Alem, Abdourahman Waberi, Kossi Efoui, Boubacar Boris Diop, Tahar BekriВ .В .В . There must be more of us than that. Why the depletion? A lack of culture is not an excuse. A writer is necessarily a cultured man. Equally unacceptable is the argument that more of us write fiction than poetry or essays. Senghor maintained that “ideas are not on one side, feelings on the other. There are feelings that are born from gestures and images, and ideas that are born from feelings.”27 Reading rewards us with emotions: they inform us about the ideas vibrating beneath the characters’ skin. Without being “homing devices,” all writers, by the simple virtue of doing their job, are qualified to bear witness to the most common ideas and experiences. In the contemporary world, thought is being nationalized in an imitation or duplication of the stakes attached to the notion of “national literatures.” This phenomenon is not an evil in itself, but it will become one if friendship and collaboration don’t succeed in breaking down its artificially erected frontiers. More than nations, it’s the world that we must conquer. We have the means: literature represents the only arena in which we can do just about anything without fear of power’s controls. “National literature” reduces our vision and fields of expertise. In its current nationalized form, competition has been emptied of its substance. It has become covert, if not shameful. This is how national competition has come to reveal our multiplicities; we belong to our respective nations, to a certain number of neighboring countries, and to the world. Coming from neocolonial states, we live simultaneously in our own countries and in France, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and the United States of America. We are border crossers. It is time to come to terms with these words, for they alone make our trade possible. This is also how we are understood in France. One of the few events that has the capacity to prompt the meeting of several nationalities there is African literature. This is a consolation prize, I know, but, given the situation, what else might take its place? Page 66 →Our ranks, in exile as well as in our individual countries, are often so scattered that it would be impossible to bring together more than two big names at once—with one or two exceptions. Still, this is not enough to erase national differences. They can only adapt to the roles that we writers have bestowed upon them, to serving as a “framework” for all kinds of creation. “African literature” is the label placed on a certain kind of sensitivity. The singular hides a plural. Our popularization will exist until our production has reached the critical mass needed for commerce to conquer the space we need to live. In the image of the antiglobalization movement, we make up a dominated class. Solidarity is always built upon this base. As a reader, I can see African writers’ vast range of knowledge and their spheres of interest, or those that could become theirs. My conclusion is simple. We are condemned to being critics, to awakening consciousness. But I must accept the obvious: When compared to the larger task, we are on the front lines of an economy that lacks ideas and energy. Despite a generalized exercise in democracy, our regimes have become radicalized, making us bloodless. Those who are in a position to produce can see the great distance. Right or wrong, we have

lost our appetite for penning political essays. We have emancipated literature. And besides, few among us are eminent. What we seek is individual expression. And, even if we are not able yet to say “I,” we are moving away from general chaos. Exile has become our true country—interior exile and, more often than not, an exterior one. In foreign countries, we find the tools we need to help us conceptualize war and peace, literature and society. And yet no literary essay has yet to synthesize this experience. At least, not in the francophone world. Perhaps it’s too soon. Because all I can see is the experience of my colleagues in their thirties and forties. We are weak. But our weakness is also our strength. I remain convinced that nothing great will occur that we cannot undertake in a foreign land. We come from elsewhere. Today we make up an untraceable community—to rework Maurice Blanchot’s expression—but the business of the mind is always there, everywhere, embracing us. It is enough to see the bookshop windows in France and Navarre. The time will come when minds are repatriated. What am I saying? The mind can never be repatriated, except within itself. It blows to the four winds.

Page 67 →From Verb to Proverb: Kourouma’s New Terminological Philosophy At its core, all my philosophy, like all true philosophy, comes down to justifying and rebuilding what is. —Marcel Proust For laughter is in all evil present, but it is sanctified and absolved by its own bliss. —Friedrich Nietzsche Not everyone can be a Nietzschean, although it would have made Ahmadou Kourouma smile to be called one. And it’s the most sensible homage we can pay him. The smiles, or rather laughter, in his work conceal the revolutionary he was, or, to be more precise, how he was a mastermind of a revolution well suited to French thought. His revolution creates change at the very heart of words; it is literature. Since Saint-Just, Condorcet, Robespierre, Fourier, and, above all, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and the surrealists, the unique quality of French revolutions is how it follows Nietzsche’s famous “reversal of values” that occurs within words. This requires that the imaginary they depend upon be toppled, and that a new imaginary be created. In 1968, Ahmadou Kourouma did just that. Proverbs: A Philosophical Appearance? This first decentering is not innocent; it may announce others. How can an actuary become a revolutionary—the accident of rhyme not withstanding—if, as Antoine de Saint-ExupГ©ry maintained, one’s professional devices are an instrument for knowing the world? Albert Camus, Augustinian by temperament as well as training, justified his career as a novelist in these terms: “If you want to be a philosopher, write novels.” The actuarial sciences, a discipline that uses statistics in banking and insurance, may appear far removed from belles lettres. The banking world loves polished facades, marble tombs, but in literature, this results in well-known sentences and bourgeois prose. It doesn’t come close to reflecting Kourouma’s universe and The Suns of Independence. Since Birago Diop’s Tales and New Tales of Amadou Koumba, never has an African author—at least not in the francophonie—availed himself of such a twisted use of proverbs, that essence of popular thought. They are his raw material. Yet close examination shows that he does not enhance the proverbs. Kourouma uses them as if to darken the scene, and we search in vain for Page 68 →accents we might call communal. His style is not that of popular novels! To tell the truth, Kourouma’s work never calls itself philosophical. If philosophy runs through it, it’s because all fiction worth the name cannot do without it. It is everything but proverbial. In fact Kourouma philosophizes like a writer. Even in his first work, he charged himself with telling tales with rage, loss, and roars. The ancient world had failed; new suns appeared—may Allah drive away Ibliss, al-seitan! This is how unhappiness began to philosophizeВ .В .В . through proverbs. The reader receives, at bare minimum, an ethnic vision of the world, yet this vision, despite its intrinsic relevance, is misleading. Kourouma is iconoclastic

with Africa, France, and French, as any great writer can be. Upon the ruins of an ancient system, new modes of being and thinking must be built. All accompanied, of course, by incomprehensible laughter. Three of the four novels published during his lifetime, The Suns of Independence, Monnew, and Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote,28 use similar chapter models. Each appears to include a brief summary at the opening. But close examination reveals that these are not true summaries. This is clear from Monnew’s table of contents. Often, rather than a title, the author gives a sentence taken verbatim from the text. Occasionally, a proverb slips in. Only rarely does Kourouma include a true summary, so to speak, as with Suns, for example. In this novel, he plays with style, providing proverbs perhaps, or an innocent-looking note to introduce the text. In Monnew the novelist takes his titles to a virtuosic level. And Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote is a kind of masterpiece. All the subtitles are composed of well-chosen proverbs. Yet, more specifically, after each proverb, to which we have given our immediate support, comes another that not only makes us smile, but which also gives us, without this being our intention, an argument that could be used to refute it. The table of contents thus unfurls before our eyes with proverbs that are alternately forceful and harmless. Clearly, the author is playing over and over again with ready-made ideas whose reserves and resources he is familiar with. The more liberties he takes, the more he increases the relevance of his far-fetched and daring titles. More than ever Africa is present in his writing, even as “the bell tolls” for it. In Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote, this becomes even more flagrant. The Dark Continent unfurls its philosophy of the bazaar, although we might say that the author is using this as a screen. It is the apparent philosophy of an entire people or, if you will, it is a philosophical appearance that Kourouma, without seeming to at all, subverts from top to bottom. But why? We are fascinated by proverbs because they are in the form of beautiful Page 69 →thoughts. Their combined excess of aesthetic and ethical perfection makes them unreal for anyone who wants to enjoy their substance. Africans used proverbs to forge a route to the kingdom of essence. We don’t need Socrates to reach it. No one needs to create a proverb, but only to repeat, as needed and when needed, the one that will light a spark of happiness (if not intelligence) in the eyes of all. Ideas become momentarily incarnated; a feeling passes through us, warms us, links us together. The lesson (in fact, so unappealing) of proverbs is cohesion, a unanimity against the desire to be unique. They summarize our will to be together, made necessary by our sharp awareness of the relativism underlying all we say and do. Proverbs are a kind of Platonism. They encourage us to aim for the ideal. This is how we manage to diminish the disappointments that are an unavoidable result of our actions. They encourage minimal action. So-called African wisdom, in the image of the “noble savage,” is the exaltation of nonaction. It seems as if the West turned us into a people excluded from the realm of victors, a people that will never dominate another people on earth. This is why we have served as slaves in all four corners of the world, and this is what the proverbs in Kourouma’s work corroborate. To say yes to the chief, to say yes to Being, yes to magical forces. A professional yes-man, whose thinking is a forgery of the conquest, the noble savage is not happy; he is only sad; he vegetates, and that’s much worse. We understand why, when there is an attempt to help him (or when he dreams of flying to the aid of his people), the action always becomes a caricature. Happiness is a conquest. Our proverbs forgot to make note of this. So something remains artificial in the beautiful clichГ©d phrases. For example, in Suns, it is only in the final pages that Kourouma reaches the sincerity of the human condition. As we read, we say, enough with the proverbs! In the end, the novel speaks of the hearts of individuals. Fama, on death’s doorstep, becomes endearing. He had to experience harsh challenges, including betrayal, servility, and prison, before arriving at a deeply moving greatness of the soul. Thanks to Salimata, the bullied and neglected wife, we witness a complete reversal in perspective. “The Substance of Dreams” To show that we have actually changed themes, Kourouma must leave behind the waltz of the proverbs and invent a new approach. This is what makes a writer a writer. Let us recall what Proust said. The art of writing, he insists,

entails “justifying, rebuilding what is.”29 “Justifying” and “rebuilding” suggest Page 70 →reality’s invisible structure (that which is behind appearance), and that which the authors renders visible and tangible. This act is called justification. A great writer becomes capable of this: binding the visible to its invisible structure, making connections circulate between them, laying the foundation for the reign of phenomena, which, in a word, cause dream and reality to live together. Only in dreams are we fulfilled. Artists know this, including Jacques Brel: “Life is failure; we only ever succeed in our dreams.” Freud adds, “The dream represents a fulfilled wish.” Fama Doumbouya, the protagonist in Suns, is right there with them: One morning, a few moments before he awoke, a dream flashed before his eyes.В .В .В . Astride a white charger, Fama was flying, or rather floating, his white robe fluttering in the wind, his stirrups and spurs of gold, escorted by a throng of gold-bedecked courtiers. A true Dumbuya! Authentic! The prince of all Horodugu, the only one, the great, the greatest of all. Beneath him something was fleeing, a lack, a desire, something that had slipped through his fingers. Was it a horse? A woman? Fama leaned over, but he couldn’t make anything out, the something was as swift as the wind, and glowed like the trail of a distant bush-fire.30 There is no better way to describe the substance of dreams, the texture of the material in which we find ourselves taken, and whose bond changes us. There is a substance to dreams just as there is a substance to the world, and to headwinds, to seasons and to their unpredictable flow. All are part of the game. In a dream, in all dreams, speed prevails. A kind of velocity matches our speed of movement to the speed of light. This is why we float in our dreams. As for Fama, he is able to slip from dreams into reality: Intoxicated with joy, Fama burst out laughing, laughing like mad; he laughed so loudly that he woke up, and once awake kept on laughing untilВ .В .В .31 With good reason! In life, lies take the place of dreams. We promise what we cannot do or give, speak of kindness when the facts show nothing but unbearable cruelty. We lie to lessen the harshness of life. For this reason, laughter, whose origins lie in dreams, is authentic. Here we really laugh. Dreamscapes are the source of happiness. The same goes for any speech act that is both appropriate and pleasurable. This is particularly true of the president’s speech to the prisoners of the Republic of Ebony: Page 71 →He talked and talked, about the brotherhood that binds all black men together, about humanism in Africa and the good-heartedness of Africans. He explained what it was that made our country peaceful and hospitable: willingness to forget past offences, love of one’s neighbor, love of our country. Fama could not believe his ears. From time to time he would thrust his little finger into his ears, to clean them; he kept wondering if he were not still dreaming. But amazingly, it was all being said.32 The president has no intention of stopping midway, and he, too, ends up using proverbs, an art both of speaking well and of creating a quasi-mystical agreement between intentions and actions: The most beautiful harmony is not sounded by drums, xylophones or trumpets; it is harmony between men.В .В .В . A single foot cannot tread out a path; and a single finger cannot lift the smallest pebble. He, the President, could not build the country alone. It was a task for everyone.33 This is how we discover the flip side of the coin. In dreams, we truly adopt the emotions we feel. We think, talk, and move in complete harmony with existence. In reality, words are rarely followed by actions, and thoughts are not always realized. There are no necessary links between a project and its fulfillment. More often than not, we talk so we don’t have to act; we make plans to soothe our immobility. But there is something worse. Proverbs and maxims are the largest collection of statements ever dedicated to inaction. They ease our conscience; they are shortcuts. As such, they do not satisfy the requirements of thought or of action. They are nonmovement’s alibi. The president’s speech is nothing but a fabric of lies. Despite his affirmations, he needs no one. As in Waiting

for the Wild Beasts to Vote,34 if his countrymen refused to give him their votes, he would create animals, who would vote for him in return. Cynicism has never been so eloquent, nihilism so assertive. Proverbs express a double defeat: a lack of thought, a failed exchange with desire. Within them is deposited the only vocabulary ever elaborated to name a people’s expectations. Our passion for short sentences is proof of a people who surrendered on the front lines of happiness. We could say it’s a universal tendency. Of course it is, but this changes nothing about the fact that Africa possesses all the necessary shortcomings that make it worthy of representing universal misery. Upon the pediment of creative imagination, Africa has engraved creative powerlessness. And with Page 72 →a heartbreaking laughВ .В .В . Each of her witticisms works the pump of consolation, to the point of denying the most flagrant suffering. Proverbs become slogans. And as with all slogans, the lie is uttered in the most honest and most universally acceptable way possible. This means the president is sincere when he asks his countrymen for their cooperation. They give their word, although the facts will show the other side of the coin: the humiliation of a president having to reach out to the ones he despises! Repression becomes even more rampant. And proverbs, too, reveal their true nature: a sounding board for wishful thinking. This uncovers the word’s true essence; like sight, it is possession at a distance. A society whose only wisdom is speech is destined for disaster. Urgently, it must procure practical wisdom to reorient itself, wisdom that can, if need be, move from obscure pharmacopeia to the pharmacy. As with writing, each society is called to approach its being-in-the-world rationally, without being suspected of subscribing to any borrowed ideology. African Laughter With Kourouma, French syntax invents African laughter, a ferocious irony used at one’s own expense, and which makes possible, perhaps for the first time in the history of the language, the telling of atrocities. The laughter in question is the expression of unparalleled despair. And to think that the Ivoirian writer managed to seduce the AcadГ©mie franГ§aise, the AcadГ©mie royale de Belgique, Livre Inter, Goncourt des lycГ©ens, and the Prix ThГ©ophraste-Renaudot, to name only the most prestigious. Kourouma pronounced the harshest indictment ever leveled against French colonialism—against official France and against President FГ©lix HouphouГ«t-Boigny, who protected him, after a short stay in prison, by appointing him an international civil servant in West African banking organizations. He was a universally recognized talent, even when this talent turned inside out the good intentions, the deception, and the masquerades of the “Era of Independences,” along with neocolonialism, the Cold War, and occult practices, common in the villages of African chiefs. He denounced our crimes untiringly. Without becoming court jester, he amused us as he accomplished his task. Our love of witticism was gratified. We only really enjoy his defeats, especially when one is a blood prince like Fama or an aristocrat like Kourouma. The novelist becomes Nietzschean, not by our fault or his. Royal stories (and all rulers play kings and gods; for the most part, Kourouma writes only for them, which is to say he writes for us, the commoners who swoon as they listen to their jeersВ .В .В .), royal stories Page 73 →bandage our wounds. Must we blame Kourouma? Certainly not. He served the poison with the antidote. We should laugh about it because, as Rabelais wrote, “Laughter is unique to man.”

Exile, Aristocracy, and Co. In the end, it doesn’t matter much to me to know where I’m writing from. Exile has become my home. Here my essay of self-definition stops. I write from a country of exile, to which the registers in which I set myself apart contribute greatly. But there is a more fundamental question, all the rage in our countries, that of notable writers. For many of us, they are a foil. A war of taste has been declared. The stubborn presence of local show-offs compels us to promote a social approach to literature. Whether in Paul Claudel, Léon Laleau, or some Congolese diplomat,35 we see nothing but prominence in face of which all attempted readings would be a crime of lèse-majesté. A writer who condemns them would glorify Beaumarchais and Chateaubriand, who in their times were both royal ministers. In the case of Beaumarchais, we should add that he was also a spy for His Majesty, his pen, his doer of dirty work; in a word, he was a trafficker. We have forgotten his immorality; all we

retain is Figaro’s panache. We should never remove the ideas that sparkle above feeling from their social roots. If we use Haiti as an example, we might consider LГ©on Laleau (1892–1979), a governmental minister, a mulatto—of course—and a grand bourgeois. He dabbled in poetry with the gifts he possessed. He could not change them or himself. He was born with a library. Rather precociously he learned to make words sparkle. Following the painters of yesteryear, he composed full-length portraits. They eventually cluttered the walls of an art gallery. But the misery swarming around the painter only increased his remorse. He is a poet; he is sensitive. In any case, he knows how to show himself as such. The magnificent fragment from “Trahison” demonstrates this: Do you sense this suffering / This despair without equal / To tame, with words from France, / The heart that came to me from Senegal. Everyone cites it, and Senghor, who discovered it, enjoyed it without hesitation. Of all of us, he was the intellectual who knew LГ©on Laleau best. To his credit, the Senegalese poet never embraced anything but the universal. One was a government minister; the other, in 1948, the year Anthologie was published, a professor at the Page 74 →Г‰cole Nationale d’outre-mer, and, after 1945, Senegal’s socialist senator in the French Constitutional Assembly. Besides, Senghor hated terror—political and literary. For the first time, thanks to Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous preface, NГ©gritude echoes beyond the walls of Paris’s Latin Quarter. And even if it was LГ©on Laleau’s guilty conscience that incited him to write this kind of poem, we demand more, we the Africans. Truth on one side of the Atlantic, error on the other? No. The Haitian poet was spreading the gospel, even if he sometimes misled himself. In difficult historical periods, a good sophism is better than a complete absence of response. And the mulatto didn’t fail to provide responses. (To tell the truth, we never even knew he was mГ©tis.) Since time began, highly educated men of letters and provincial notables have used literature as their calling cards. This is a French childhood disease that the rest of us bastards have inherited. Some Africans, because they are writers, also become government ministers, then diplomats, and thus never leave the halls of power. Some become special advisers and are able to return to the solitude that originally made their literary work possible. But solitude has changed in essence over time; now our Г©minences grises whisper into the ears of the princes of the world. We must admit that euphoria, in the realm of power, is immediate, violent, infinite, all adjectives that prevent the production of verse and prose. In principle the writerly profession is repetitive, uncertain, destined to be more familiar with failure than with triumph. It is easier to demand a high price for excellent intellectual advice than to sell a poem, no matter how sublime. Given to a politician, a flashy idea is immediately turned to cash. In market terms, what a writer-adviser loses in genius, he gains in social position. So we will forget our curses. We know how to distance ourselves enough to contemplate the lights that blur our failings. The only way to be an aristocrat in literature (and not simply a petit, or even a grand, bourgeois) is to find a language and style while disdaining all the terrors of our ideological expectations. The affluent will always be here; so will the poor. Great literature ignores intimidation, no matter its origins. Some aspirations can change us into puppet masters or costume directors for a social system in which poems will never be anything but embellishment. The habituГ©s of literary scenes see to that. Their audience is superficial, but at least it exists, with no offense to us. Exile is not a land in which I would have chosen to flagellate myself; it’s a set of circumstances; that’s it. It doesn’t increase my talent any more than it diminishes it. Within its core, I see a sumptuous world at dance. Decorative beauty is also useful. But it is urgent that I read a book by one of our own, one that would begin in this way: Page 75 →“Of course, I have nothing to complain about,” he said, as he finished telling me his simple and none too romantic story, which you will soon be reading, “for thank God, I am no longer someone to even assume that I was ever anything at all, and I wish for many ambitious men to have a happy ending such as my own. I have found certainty and rest, which are better than all possibilities. I have also come to terms with myself, which is perhaps the greatest victory that one can have over the impossible. Finally, though I was useless in the past, I am now useful to some, and from my not-too-promising life, providence has produced perhaps the only thing that no one ever expected: an act of modesty, prudence, and reason. Therefore, I have nothing to complain about. My life is done

and was made according to my desires and worth. I led a country life, and I am all the better for that. I have pruned its top and though it has less grace, resilience and dignity, and cannot be seen from afar, its roots will be strong and have a larger shade. There are now three beings who must depend on me and to whom I am bound by infinite duties, responsibilities that are not too heavy, and by faultless attachments and regrets. And if it is true that the goal of human existence is less to make something of yourself in the world than to perpetuate yourself, if happiness is in the balance of our desires and strengths, then I have tread the straightest possible path of wisdom, and thus you can say that you knew in me a happy man.”36

I like that the language digs into itself—and its own clarity—in the opening sentences of Dominique, as if to emancipate itself from every possible foundation, even a social one. In other circumstances, declarations of this sort would have been enough to plant seeds of doubt. By denying, and also affirming, so confidently, the novelist verifies the validity of his contract with the reader. One of the clauses brings out the confidence in the language’s resources. The writer, it is stipulated, must use all the resources in his power to prompt the language to a high degree of being—a high discourse. The primacy accorded to this affirmation permits the utmost boldness. Its sole goal is to flatter the “self.” In this way, it reaches its ultimate goal: happiness, a truth that, in many ways, is untenable. This is where the true challenge is unveiled—in the sense of a masked, hidden challenge. It reveals its face to us: passion and desire, conquest and will. In other words, this boldness causes the story to advance like a knight. When the aristocrat RenГ© Descartes took a long step away from France to write his books, his first concern was for language; it must, in all regards, be equal to the assumed importance of his own personage. The style this knight of the language uses makes us forget his numerous achievements. In society Page 76 →as well as literature, true actors often wear masks. There are so many purebred individuals among us who have never held a lance or a rack of arms, compared to the many wealthy who are yokels. I owe this reflection to Marie-MichГЁle, the seventeen-year-old heroine of Dany LaferriГЁre’s Dining with the Dictator.37 The young woman returns to this idea several times in her diary. She lives in PГ©tionville, in the hills of the capital. The aristocratic demeanor of farmworkers, with next to nothing (including next to nothing to wear), flabbergasts her. All the possessions and knowledge of her class cannot make them as beautiful and great as their illiterate servants. We have all had to make this observation more than once. All that remains is to translate it into literature, so that this aristocracy of soul and body can be reflected in its entirety. This is where we find the ideas beneath EugГЁne Fromentin’s prose. Our lettered caste prefigures that of a national elite. It also assumes the existence of a relatively prosperous and stable country. But our elite only ever encounters dictators. Education hurled us into an intellectual class so quickly that society couldn’t keep up. We incarnate an aristocracy without an environment. Our role, like that of well-born children, is to affirm ourselves, to signal that, like them, we have received everything—something that is obviously false. Our status deceives us. Our farmers, military, and storekeepers are only interested in money, so we cannot fully engage with that sublime, elite French version of irresponsibility, which consists (at least apparently) in donning national ideological orientations. Without prejudging our capacity for expertise in any arena, we have nevertheless become the targets of our own people as well as of international tribunals who wish to sell our countries everything under the sun. We therefore must find the means to survive in this hostile environment. Dany LaferriГЁre helps us. The poor man Marie-MichГЁle described in her diary didn’t rise to the heights of the nobility through supernatural grace. Aristocracy is a matter of will; it is constructed. Through it we understand that our societies are becoming complex. This is how hierarchies, “castes” of all sorts, are born, even the untouchables. Our task consists precisely in making sure no bastions of untouchables formВ .В .В . In the past, we approached such questions in Marxist terms; we advocated revolution. The Revolution of 1789 shows us that a great night worthy of the name can only be conceived of and written about by the likes of Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, Maximilien de Robespierre, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, or some other name with an aristocratic particleВ .В .В . The aristocracy, in France as elsewhere, no longer uses such names, but its function hasn’t changed: to instill a nation with notions of equality and progress. This Page 77 →is why we call that particular aristocracy the “Enlightenment.” In our very powerlessness, which

is only increased by exile, we incarnate a similar “race.” So it’s up to us to discover America.

Notes 1. Translator’s note: Nimrod includes “AГ®tre, naГ®tre” here in a footnote. This plays on the rhyme between aГ®tre, an open space in front of a church, and naГ®tre, to be born. 2. It began like that. I hadn’t ever said anything. Nothing. Arthur Ganate is the one who made me talk. Arthur, a med student too, a friend. So we met at the Place Clichy. It was after lunch. He wants to talk to me. I listen. 3. Translator’s note. Allah Is Not Obliged has been translated by Frank Wynne and published by Anchor Books; however, I have modified these passages to better follow Nimrod’s comments. 4. Allah n’est pas obligГ©, p. 1. 5. Translator’s note. French allows for wordplay with the word nГЁgre, in addition to alluding to pГЁtit nГЁgre, which figuratively suggests a ghostwriter. 6. In a certain way, Ahmoudou Kourouma owes a great deal to the novel Sozaboy, by the Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa (Nigeria: Saros International Publishers, 1985). 7. Julien Gracq. Extracted from an unpublished text, attributed to Le Monde on Saturday, February 5, 2000. 8. Ahmadou Kourouma, The Suns of Independence, trans. Adrian Adams (London: Heinemann, African Writers Series, 1981), p. 120. 9. Ahmadou Kourouma, MonnГ©, outrages et dГ©fis (Paris: Le Seuil, 1990), part, 6, p. 287. Translated by Nidra Polleras as Monnew: A Novel (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1993). 10. Roger Nimier, Les Г©crivains sont-ils bГЄtes? (Paris: Rivages, 1990). 11. LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor, “Les Г©lites de l’Union franГ§aise au service de leurs peuples, ” in LibertГ©, vol. 1, NГ©gritude et humanisme (Paris: Le Seuil, 1964), pp. 147–52. In this speech is found the most stimulating definition Senghor ever gave of the African elite. The text is a kind of Discours de la mГ©thode where not a single problem concerning the foundation of our future independent states is obscured. Before an audience of young executives, the poet declares, “Well now! What strikes me in most cases is, along with their self-importance, their lack of seriousness, as if their heads were only full of frivolity. Their mouths only open to make demands. They only ever proclaim the вЂrights of the elite’.” 12. The Congolese writer Soni Labou Tansi always said he only wrote in planes, when they were taking him away from his country to be a writer in residence, or for a few weeks in France, the United States or Germany. By his own admission, he was unable to write even a single line at home, in Brazzaville. The quiet that was necessary to Page 78 →his art was sabotaged by the squawking disquiet of his people. Wonderful praise for the curative virtues of exile, even if it’s temporary! 13. Sami Tchak, “Le dГ©bat littГ©raire serait-il une impossibilitГ© en Afrique?,” an interview conducted by Taina Tervonen, in Africultures, no. 57 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004), p. 128. 14. Alain Mabanckou, Broken Glass, trans. Helen Stevenson (London: Serpent’s Tail, e-book 2010). 15. Mabanckou, Broken Glass. 16. Alain Mabanckou indulges in intertextuality, a technique as old as literature itself. The prince of intertextuality is undoubtedly Saint Augustine. Broken Glass soars with words taken from other writers, like Rousseau’s Confessions or Bible verses. 17. Translator’s note: The sixteenth-century French poet Pierre de Ronsard coined the expression gosier masche-laurier to refer to a mediocre poet. 18. Mabanckou, Broken Glass. 19. Mabanckou, Broken Glass. 20. Mabanckou, Broken Glass. 21. Translator’s note: The title of the French translation of The Palm-Wine Drinkard is L’Ivrogne dans la brousse, The Drunkard in the Bush. 22. “Mais, sans cesse ignorants de nos propres besoins / Nous demandons du ciel ce qu’il nous faut le moins.”

23. L. S. Senghor, “Pour une critique nГЁgre,” in LibertГ©, vol. 3, NГ©gritude et civilisation de l’universel (Paris: Le Seuil, 1977), p. 427. 24. Quoted by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et l’esprit (Paris: Gallimard, Folioplus philosophie, 1964), p. 12. 25. Senghor, “Pour une critique nГЁgre,” p. 429. 26. Senghor, “Pour une critique nГЁgre, p. 428. 27. Senghor, “Pour une critique nГЁgre, p. 428. 28. His posthumous novel, Quand on refuse, on dit non, was published by Editions du Seuil, in September 2004. 29. Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Gallimard, Folio/Essais, 2001), p. 303. 30. The Suns of Independence, pp. 118–19. 31. The Suns of Independence, p. 119. 32. The Suns of Independence, p. 120. 33. The Suns of Independence, p. 121. 34. Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote (Paris: Le Seuil, 1998). 35. This is a reference to Henri Lopes who created an absolutely beautiful novel in Le Chercheur d’Afriques. Inspired by the universe of Patrick Modiano, he adds a nobility from the other side of the Atlantic, a marvelous thing. The art of the novel will always be found in a skillful decentering, which constitutes the invention of a world. We can savor its first lines: “Few are here to listen to him in this neighborhood cinema, a handful of Page 79 →the faithful, drinking the wine of a new religion.” This says everything. The novel can be obtained through Editions du Seuil, Paris. 36. EugГЁne Fromentin, Dominique, Book 1, trans. Cecilee Link (Kindle version, 2013). 37. The original work, Le GoГ»t des jeunes filles was published by VLB Editeur, MontrГ©al, in 1992. The translation by David Homel was published by Coach House Press in 1994.

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Léopold Sédar Senghor: In Memoriam Translated by Dawn M. Cornelio Tombeau de Léopold Sédar Senghor © 2003 Éditions le temps qu’il fait English translation and publication by permission of Éditions le temps qu’il fait

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LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor In Memoriam

I .В .В . the problem of Man himself, which is the problem of culture. This is no longer a detail, and even less a distraction, but the real, uninterrupted movement between ideas and facts, thoughts and actions, that the Integral Man accomplishes; not a linear movement, but an oscillatory, dialectic, centripetal, centrifugal movement; the movement of reason and the heart, of science and myth. When confronted by those who would have us choose between black Africa and Europe, stagnation and assimilation, we discovered that, while Europe excelled in adapting physical surroundings to Man, a work of conscious will, then black Africa has taught us the opposite, a loving abandonment to nature. And yet, this remains a rather crude sketch. —De la libertГ© de l’âme ou L’éloge du mГ©tissage1 Senghor is dead; the dialectic is dead. The Senegalese poet alone represents the race of strategists produced by the anticolonial struggle. A small group, it’s true, that includes Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, and FГ©lix HouphouГ«t-Boigny. At ninety-five, Senghor has just left us. This winter poetry is an orphan,2 for Africa, its chosen land, no longer gives birth to men like him, seeds nurtured in those French nurseries, the khГўgnes and grandes Г©coles.3 Senghor used to say that the French, or rather francophone, writer cannot do without a solid university education. This is a scholarly language, he maintained; to use it properly requires intimate knowledge. At a time when the “Y a bon Banania”4 style is again flourishing, when it is even being promoted by Africans themselves for reasons, they claim, of authenticity, we can take measure of the master’s thought. Page 83 →These new wordsmiths have neglected to note that it was in the name of “authenticity” that Field Marshal Mobutu destroyed his vast, rich nation. It similarly inspired Chad’s FranГ§ois Tombalbaye to institute the worship of his modest personage. He would die of it, tragically of course. After Senghor, we can no longer produce uneven work, no more than we can sport the mask of exoticism. Although there are many who would wish to make us to wear it. Our high schools collapsed at the beginning of the 1980s, just as Senghor was bidding farewell to power (December 1980). History was also bidding her farewell, the heroic history of resistance that fed on our myths and legends. So, too, went self-pride. This explains why, in literature, the changing of the guard has been slow to arrive. Henceforth the marketplace will be responsible. It will offer us a variety of compositions—enthusiastically; it’s just that some will be more than questionable. At just the right moment, the impending disaster will receive substantial encouragement. Because of that noble movement, crГ©olitГ©, which arrived on a wave from the Antilles with a manifesto equal to its genius, the authenticity defended by our scribblers struggles to get itself noticed. They are not the first to be mistaken. In his time, even the great philosopher Martin Heidegger paid the price for it—although, by contrast, crГ©olité’s zealots prove that, by mixing and mГ©tissage, it is possible to build authenticity without giving in to the fatal temptation of getting back to one’s roots. In any case, the authenticity touted by our own zealots masks neither their incompetence nor their lack of thought. To write, all they have to do is start to learn. More than fifty years after Chants d’ombre and Hosties noires, Senghor’s first poetry collections, the African school seems to have regressed so much that instead of sending writers worthy of the name to France, it now sends Senegalese scribblers, as it once did tirailleurs.5 This mistake is instructive, however. Africa, no matter what anyone says, is, by nature, refractory. Even today, its immensity makes it opaque. It collaborated in the slave trade and colonization; it paid its dues during the two

world wars, but this does not prevent it from believing it has remained authentic. At the beginning of the twentieth century its offshoots, although ghettoized, made the United States home to a new kind of music (blues, jazz), and the Antilles a land of creole language, culture and literature. Africa alone has not experienced mГ©tissage. At least, that’s what it tells itself. This is not Page 84 →Senghor’s opinion. Hailing from the Senegalese coast, he owes his name to the Portuguese Senhor, a nickname, he reminds us with the utmost simplicity, in Г‰lГ©gie des saudades:6 I hear in my depths the shadow-voice song of the saudades Is this the ancient voice, the drop of Portuguese blood rising up from the depth of time? My name rising to its origin? Drop of blood or good Senhor, the nickname a captain gave once to a good laptot? I have found my blood again, I discovered my name one year in Coimbra, beneath a jungle of books. Sealed off world of strict, mysterious characters, oh night of green forests, dawn of wondrous beaches!7 A biological mГ©tis he is indeed, and he claims himself as such, with humor and deference, with joy. Most of all, he defines himself as a cultural mГ©tis—an unsurpassable element of his philosophy. His mГ©tissage implies edification and contact with all sorts of sensibilities. The 1930s Latin Quarter was an ideal place for this. Those who think Senghor accepted oppression are wrong. His most radical thought must be sought out in his literary essays. When we examine both what he read and his network of friends, the proof is undeniable. To fight with Western weapons, Senghor tells us, we will always need, on the one hand, the inhabitants of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and, on the other hand, black Americans. Our cousins from America and the Islands have not only undoubtedly had more experience seeing masters at work with their whips, but also with their pens and paintbrushes. Whether in the Caribbean or on the mainland, the descendants of slaves live with models that remain inaccessible to us. Of course they know more than we do. Especially as Africa no longer has the means to send its best subjects to the French khГўgnes. A three-way gap is created and widens: between us and France, between us and the Antilles, between us and African Americans. We notice more and more often that, with the exception of memories of shared secular ordeals, nothing is left that links us to them. With the upheavals of the last two decades, one now claims to be part of the former colonial power; the other, part of America: both are late-blooming Western offshoots. Today, our brothers call themselves creole or African Americans to distance themselves from Africa. We must not forget that, in his time, Senghor successfully forged relationships with them, LГ©on Gontran Damas and Page 85 →AimГ© CГ©saire, for example, although it’s true that there are few artists in the world—whether visual artists, novelists, poets, or essayists—the author of Г‰thiopiques didn’t read or meet. And he wrote many a page about them! —pages bearing the mark of friendship and tribute. Like Saint-John Perse, his model in poetry, he often gave in to the exercise of admiration. He knew, for example, to praise RenГ© Maran (born in Martinique), who for his Batouala was, in 1921, the first black man to win the Prix Goncourt. This makes it predictable that Martinique would become a driving force, a Trojan horse, for us. RaphaГ«l Confiant and Patrick Chamoiseau are expert guides indeed. The crГ©olitГ© of the Antilles and “authentic” Africa are actually a retreat toward two weaker positions: exoticism and particularism. For Senghor’s readers, this is a tragic step backward. The marginalization of Africa—despite its destiny to be raw material for the West—confirms this. As we bid farewell to Senghor, rereading his essays means realizing Africa has learned very little. It’s all well and good that we are unable to master economics, but we must recognize that, even in the intellectual realm, we have forgotten how to organize resistance. Africa lives far from the sight of the rest of the world, forgetful of it and itself. To ordinary eyes a cultural mГ©tis doesn’t exist. This is the tragedy of this social category, and the tragedy of all

Africa—from the Maghreb to the Cape. It is significant that in South Africa during apartheid, the mГ©tis were less mistreated than the blacks. Their color was reassuring, so they benefited from a more adequate educational system. The situation of black Americans is uniquely akin to that of Africans. They are blacks, in other words separate beings. They both fascinate and disgust. With the AIDS plague, the continent itself has become a kind of reservation, like the ones for American Indians. When a man from Martinique presents his brother or his cousin with these words, “He’s black but he’s smart,” when he defends his daughter’s husband by saying, “My son-in-law is black but he’s a doctor,” it’s Africa that is being stigmatized. Social security and unemployment insurance, these two staples of an evolved society, have improved their lot. They are now enjoying relative well-being. They dream of capital. Soon, they will be rich and free because that is how the power of money works: it whitens. France changes them even within themselves. Who will whiten us? Why, writing! For the time being, this is all we intellectuals and writers of Africa have, nothing else. When Senghor took up the campaign for NГ©gritude, he began to work and understand himself as a universal man. He worked at building his own house. We don’t emphasize this aspect of his struggle enough. Isn’t this what makes it complex? The more he Page 86 →worked to define the Negro, the more “his” Negro slipped away from him. Characterizations became exaggerated, depictions turned into displays. The Negro Senghor was explaining to the world was certainly not—and undoubtedly never will be—he who, in and through himself, questioned specificity and essence in order to define the scope of the one who is different. Having reached that level of ability, he was anything but different. Or, rather, he was only different because it was an opportunity to meet his fellow creatures. Nothing can lead someone who truly knows how to debate difference astray: neither prejudices nor taboos. This is undoubtedly the truth we wish Senghor had told us. As he explains us to the world, and as, in so doing, he also gives us the weapons to explain ourselves, it must be that we become whitened. The dialectician, this mediator par excellence, can operate simultaneously on several planes of reality. This is how a thinker’s, a poet’s, identity is constructed. All of Senghor’s essays and poems proclaim this: There will be no more discussion of us as a unique species, as the color of our skin seems to imply. We, too, are universal beings. Reading Senghor today makes our syntheses easy. Yet in his own time, he swam most often in troubled waters. Thanks to our filters, we see what he could not, rushed as he was to do us justice. Besides, he could act no other way. An intellectual always explains himself; he is a man of public debate. The first reflex of the intellectual tiger isn’t to eat its prey. Wole Soyinka, in his now famous statement (“The tiger does not proclaim its tigritude, it just kills its prey and eats it”), was a little fast to mock Senghor’s method. The intellectual tiger discusses. He would not know how to evade an exchange of ideas. In short, Senghor taught us everything. And, if he is the most disliked by African intellectuals, it is because, although he wanted above all else to restore the coherence of our world, he ended up locking us up within it. There was nothing premeditated in this. Dialectic’s fortune fluctuates. In so doing, Senghor unknowingly acceded to those who commanded that we make ourselves transparent. Those who dominate, we know, never explain themselves. They are immediately understandable.

II Senghor reminds us that in the past, missionaries who were sent to evangelize in Africa would receive the following advice from their superiors: “Be Page 87 →Negroes with the Negroes so that you may win them for Christ.”8 These instructions are a variation of Saint Paul’s statement: “And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews.”9 For Paul, it was a matter of basic respect. It seems now as if Africans, when dealing with Westerners, must first be concerned with becoming like Africans. This is the high road followed by those who, as writers, plan to sell junk and negrobilia. An apt reversal of perspectives, it seems. And yet it may be true. Yesterday the West was selling its Christ to the Africans. Today, Africans are selling it their

soul: the degree of “Africanness” equals what is sold in the tourist trade. This is why I began these pages with the trial of authenticity. We are drowning in fakes and shams. The two or three writers I’m attacking (without naming names) have never written a literary theory or manifesto. On the contrary, surrounded by their loyal devotees, they have uttered more than one decree. With the exception of Senghor and Mongo Beti (who also just left us this past autumn), our writers have rarely taken this path. This suits those who went to the elite schools, ardent admirers of political journalism and lampooners, none of whom are widespread in our circles: their introduction is recent. However, we note that Kourouma’s novels are full-fledged manifestos. His books are filled with the literary crГ©olitГ© we are searching for—and rightly so; it’s better to widen our horizons—in the Caribbean Islands. Every African country represents a living Tower of Babel. It is truly a rich place for anyone trying to make French more mГ©tis! The author of The Suns of Independence proclaims this richness. In his novel French syntax reinvents itself in the heart of Malinke, with the health and happiness that shows nГЁgres wallowing in their jokes. The author uses this strategy to show his disenchantment. It’s a tour de force. Senghor shows us that, even if Africans assimilate everything, this doesn’t mean that they are assimilated. We owe it to ourselves to always consider the statement Assimilate, don’t be assimilated10 in relation to Emotion is Negro, as reason is Greek.11 We will examine the latter in the next chapter. For now, let’s consider this detail. African evangelization, though it wasn’t a failure (where has the Gospel ever succeeded in transforming the human species into gentle lambs?), does shed light on one fact (which is not really all that surprising): Africans resist. These emotional beings, these grown children, are loyal only to the animism that hatched them. Their ability to assimilate other sensibilities may not be a trompe-l’oeil, but it is a paradox. They never stop being themselves, even as they assimilate the world. Their stance, as it concerns Page 88 →knowledge, tells us that they have more to offer. Senghor was right to insist, his whole life, on what black men bring to Universal Civilization. Resistance is a trait shared by the dominated. They assimilate and resist. In other words, they only ask to be what they are. With influences from the four corners of the world, they manage to live according to their own rhythm, their own tempo. They cede nothing to anyone, not even what domination taught them. Senghor glorified, although we haven’t noted to what extent, the liberty that shapes the dominated. There is a lesson here that compels us to believe in our capacity to borrow and recycle everything, except freedom itself. The example of Kourouma, explored above, attests to this. Mongo Beti and Senghor do the same. To exalt the destiny of the oppressed in the language of their oppressor is an incredible revolution. Accomplishing this shows that, once again, we have assimilated the foreign element. This points to the importance of syntax, whether it is used like a French person from France, or like a francophone from Wolof or Malinke country. Mastering syntax, which must be French syntax, even for Kourouma, is the path of freedom. Senghor wanted to build a Negro-African aesthetics, and his research allowed him to pinpoint the elements that suggests it in the works of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and MallarmГ©. Claudel and Saint-John Perse are there, too; indeed, this list could include the names of more than a hundred painters, sculptors, and writers. As Senghor often demonstrated, his preference was for a classical kind of writing, the kind sixteenth-century linguists and seventeenth-century grammarians invented and imposed. For Senghor to write was to create a work of art. He explains this in 1954, when he takes up the defense of Laye Camara (he inverted the name himself) in an article entitled “Laye Camara et Lamine DiakhatГ© ou l’art n’est pas d’un parti.”12 He points out in passing, “I will not linger over the correctness of the language, nor over the elegant sobriety of Laye Camara’s style—even though they are the essential qualities of an artist, which so many Negro-African writers lack.”13 Already a complaint about “bad writing”! In his 1964 posthumous homage to RenГ© Maran, a writer from Martinique, he clarifies his thoughts on what a sentence by a Negro-African author could be. We read the following:

Whether the author is Ferdinand Oyono or AndrГ© Demaison, all Negro novels in the Francophonie can be traced back to RenГ© Maran. After Batouala, it would be impossible to make Negros live, work, love, cry, laugh or talk like whites. They can no longer be made to speak “petit-nГЁgre,” but instead speak Page 89 →Wolof, Malinke, or Ewondo in French. For RenГ© Maran was the first to express the “soul nГЁgre” in the Negro style, in French.14 If, under normal circumstances, writers translate their feelings and thoughts, an African writer must also translate an imaginary, a language—several perhaps—that act to enrich French, a conjugal tool (RenГ© Char). This task, while not more difficult, is richer in resources. To write in nothing less than a French that has been bred with several foreign idioms; in another French language and a new French sentence. When Senghor correctly notes, “It will no longer be about making them speak вЂpetit-nГЁgre,’ but rather Wolof, Malinke, or Ewondo, in French,” he is celebrating, before the fact, the genius of Ahmadou Kourouma’s The Suns of Independence. It would be four years, 1968, before we could read the Ivorian novelist’s first work. Senghor is only referring to syntax: generally speaking, it alone gives character to a language; specifically, it is that of a writer. He urges us to examine how Camara Laye, Ferdinand Oyono, and RenГ© Maran, in writing classically, translate the famous “style nГЁgre,” a sensibility conditioned by our civilizations. For Senghor, all writing, whether classical, baroque, or precious, and including French writers, passes through the filter of personality. It is thus easy to imagine the form of acclimatization and enrichment that French is bound to experience when those who use it also practice other languages and appreciate other cultures. This almost entirely sums up the undertaking, which, in the Caribbean realm, made In Praise of Creoleness possible. Every criticism that we bring against France (and the inverse is also true), every fight once carried out in the name of NГ©gritude returns to the conflict generated by recognizing other perceptions of the world. Accordingly, this conflict, for negative reasons—those that appear mercantile in particular—still offers us some beautiful polemics. But let’s return to syntax. When Kourouma writes, “вЂThe Almamy asks us for horses, oxen, millet, warriors, and slaves to nourish the combat against the Nazarene invaders,’ Djigui declared to the enthusiastic crowd at the rampart gates dancing a welcome for his return to Soba,”15 dancing a welcome is, strictly speaking, offering a triumphant welcome. This includes Malinke syntax, which here has replaced the French. Moreover, when the sentence is read out loud, the oral quality running through it can be heard; this orality is in the style of Kourouma, the chronicler. Djigui speaks “upon his return to Soba to the crowd dancing his welcome.”16 The cascade of prepositions accentuates and then closes the movement of this long oral sentence, among whose Page 90 →syllables a distant humor slips in, as if to neutralize an impending, imperceptible destiny. The author-narrator’s discreet laughter successfully defuses the tragic, taming it just a bit. Kourouma is baroque: He has to lay it on thick. The sentence carries “excesses,” because meaning is multiplied, as in the quotation; the narrator describes Djigui’s return and the crowd’s welcome with twists that lead, in the second part, to a slide, an inflexion, a new modulation (minor compared to the first). If Senghor prefers classical sentences, it is undoubtedly due to his education (his personality also plays a major role). This has its advantages: it gives birth to a lean kind of writing in which rhythm and meaning are in close contact, given the tempo of the words and the attention paid to their arbitration. This quotation from Batouala proves this: “The wind blows. A scream proceeds it. It brushes back the grass, twists the branches, bullies the vines, rips the leaves, sweeps the ground, picks up its red dust, passes, flees, wanes.” Here the verb is king. It appears to function at the very heart of the utterance, making the wind’s movement more noteworthy. Reading the passage makes us aware of the writer’s skill, his approach to the world and to writing, his ethics and his aesthetics, which Senghor summed up in one word: integrity.17 In the light of this fragment, there is no room for doubt. We become aware of Senghor’s solitude retrospectively. He was truly a solitary man in the African literary scene; he had neither equal nor companion. Nevertheless, he was godfather to a number of writers and artists, as he sought out talent with which to communicate, walk, and grow. This is not to say that SembГЁne Ousmane, Cheick Hamidou Kane (who was also his minister of culture), and Cheick Alioune Ndao were short on talent. But

he lacked a brother who was able to create and think about creation, who had a spirit that was curious about Africa and the wider world, an artistic spirit. However, the “classical” sentence is undermined because, henceforth, its classicism brings out that which the style nГЁgre has subjected it to. By this, Senghor refers to both tempo and duration. Once again he quotes Batouala: “Now the clouds obstruct the heavy sky, and, motionless, tower over the Bamba, tower over the villages, tower over all the greenness their shadows smother; they obstruct daily routines, and, filled with imminent threat, await a signal that does not come.” This is tropical inertia. The reader experiences it as a kind of mysterious flight, a flight whose magic comes from the fact that it is at one with the rhythm of the clouds. It makes us feel as if we, like the clouds, are strangely Page 91 →“motionless.” The classical sentence has lost its icing. It now integrates a kind of vehemence that distances it from its usual statements of fact. RenГ© Maran’s prose allows for knowledge through empathy. Must we, like Senghor, conclude that this is the polish of a style nГЁgre? Probably. But this time the affirmation means little, for the style nГЁgre is pure French! It is as if the Senegalese poet wanted to be recognized as such without anyone paying any attention to his French side—and the contradictions associated to it. As if there were an intellectual or spiritual exchange that could dispense with the conflicts, so often bitter. Spouses, loves, and friendship all feed on it and gain their strength from it. Senghor himself shows this in unmatched terms: Strange people indeed, these People of France, incredibly seductive and sometimes irritating. I have traveled many times across Europe; I know of no other people more human than they, who fought everywhere people remained to be freed. I know of no other people more tyrannical in their love of Man. They want bread for all, culture for all, freedom for all; but this culture, this bread will be French. This people’s very universalism is French, so much so that the barbarians of the French empire—I saw the expression for the first time in Danton’s writing—convinced themselves in the end that they could have no other destiny. Just like that excellent writer from overseas, who liked to think he was a “French” writer. Let us assume that Senghor is drawing his own self-portrait here. The future member of the AcadГ©mie franГ§aise appears so similar to this “excellent writer” he alludes to that he could be mistaken for him. If, in fact, we are not French, what else can we be? A mГ©tis is undoubtedly an in-between being, but, when a mГ©tis passes through the French school system, the school wins—though not without ambiguity or ambivalence.18 Senghor confesses: “As colonized people, our vocation is to overcome the contradictions of circumstance, the paradoxes between Africa and Europe, our heredity and our education. Our freedom must be born from the graft of the one onto the other, the aroma of the fruit of the graft, which is not the sum of its parts. The superiority, due to liberty, of a MГ©tis, who chooses, where he wants, what he wants to make, from reconciled elements, a strong, exquisite piece of work.”19 There is no better way to describe the benefits of mГ©tissage, or the danger it exposes us to. To be intertwined, that place of ambiguity par excellence, cannot be welcomed immediately with shouts of joy. Synthesis is a strange Page 92 →process for anyone who has not experienced it. If Senghor considers it to be the product of freedom, it is because it emphasizes multiple belongings, the image of refracted light on unpolished glass. Only artistic souls find something advantageous in it. MГ©tissage is an affirmation. This last remark is the antithesis of the manifesto whose first words are “Neither European, nor African, nor Asian, we proclaim ourselves CrГ©ole.”20 Three negations for one affirmation—the height of evasion. This time, as the intellectual quacks go into hiding in the forest, they set it on fire, risking their own lives. This is the price they must pay for being. There is nothing to be surprised about. In a famous comment, some became eunuchs, unlike those who received this gift at birth. As we can see, theorists of crГ©olitГ© belong to the first category: in other words, they are worthy. This proclamation—isn’t this how, as I showed earlier through the allusion to Wole Soyinka, NГ©gritude began?—this proclamation, reflected by the cultural mГ©tis’s invisibility, means that a creole individual should make use of such petitions if he wants to gain access to his

being. This is a completely negated individual, or, rather, one whose hallmark is the “work of negation.” But a problem arises. I am afraid that, from this point on, he can no longer be reached, either in his being or his essence, or in any substance at all. His state is that of a consciousness subjugated by its own singularity. We read, “Neither European, nor African, nor Asian, we proclaim ourselves CrГ©ole. This will be our interior attitude, or better, a vigilance, or even better yet, a kind of mental envelope within which, in complete awareness of the world, our world will be built.” As a consciousness that preexists itself, this birth is original. With extreme “vigilance,” it then chooses its place among peoples and their aesthetic production. Never in the history of thought has there been a more irrational affirmation, because we are born first, and then we discover the world. Consciousness comes to us as part of this journey. The superiority of crГ©olité’s zealots calls to mind Tom Thumb, that is to say, divine children. Like them, they thwart domination brilliantly. They owe nothing to anyone; they are themselves. The trauma of slavery, as we live it on the Islands and in Africa, produces virgin births. At a time when the world has become disenchanted, they are indebted to fairy tales and Christianity. Yet here, as Senghor insisted, we escape the rebuke normally used to tar and feather the mГ©tis: “Too assimilated and not assimilated enough.” To which Senghor adds, “This is precisely our destiny, as cultural mГ©tis. It’s a thankless role, difficulty to play.” This “difficulty” is too hastily eliminated by those who defend creole genius. Senghor pleads for the cultural mГ©tis’s place within the French nation. Page 93 →The quotation cited above continues as follows: “It’s a thankless role, difficult to play; it’s a necessary role if the present situation and the French Union are to make any sense. Confronted with nationalisms, racisms, academicisms, the fight for the liberty of the soul, of Man has begun.”21 It’s no secret to anyone that Martinique belongs to France. The same cannot be said of Africa. And God knows how Senghor fought so that the latter would remain in the French Union. No one who is unaware of economic domination can give us lessons: this is a condition for all that follows. The Martiniquans are like Descartes, who, in his time, refused Latin and wrote in French. That was in 1637 with the Discourse on Method. Today people from Martinique and Guadeloupe can work to liberate their language, Creole, because they’re no longer starving to death. They can devote the better part of their time to the cause. Having only this to worry about is to admit that other concerns have become secondary. In any case, they have, more or less, found their answers. “Lord” Descartes could think in French “in his heated room” (in Dutch territory, we must not forget) because he had freed himself from domestic needs. Defending a language, history has taught us, cannot be separated from economic revolution. Mocking CГ©saire and Senghor because they labored so Africa and Martinique could remain in the French fold is the sign of a self-satisfied bourgeois mind. Without such integration, Raphael Confiant and Patrick Chamoiseau might not have become the writers they are today. All we need to do is take a look at their neighbor, Haiti, the first free, black, independent republic in the world, to have the good sense to exercise a little self-control. In a thousand years, Africa will write in the styles and the languages that matter to it. We can imagine that even a firebrand like In Praise of Creoleness will be read—if it is not forgotten—in Bambara or in Hausa, rather than in French. Let us recall that, to my knowledge, while it has been translated into English,22 our world’s dominant language, In Praise of Creoleness has not been translated into Creole, even though it was originally addressed to Creole speakers. And we must not forget the most important part. Literary manifestos, as Paul ValГ©ry astutely points out, began to appear during the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution. He borrows their “commercial eloquence [that] gave birth everywhere to the vocations of countless вЂsuckers.’ Broadcasting campaigns, ” he goes on, “publicity flyers, irresistible ads multiply their crude prestige; all wealth is mobilized at the call of hucksters and businesses.” “It was time to undertake the vast transformation of the world Page 94 →by industry. But all sciences together could not have succeeded without the power of words.”23 He adds the most important: “Even in literature, a kind of revolution intervenes to instruct the Muses on morals, in violence, the charlatanism of electoral battles. In poetry, factions, with the same rude and bitter manners as

political parties, arise. Manifestos are written. The first performance of Hernani is a veritable вЂpublic meeting’ with organized supporters and detractors, whose places and roles have been decided in advance.”24 The economy is the tool of historical reversals. Africa does not control it. Perhaps in a thousand years it will. The time is really insignificant compared to the time it took to build the West. In the meantime, let us use, following the Tom Thumbs of the Antilles and Senghor, our Ulysses, the Sirens’ song, the Signares’ song,25 to tame the wave of a consciousness that has finally cast off its neurosis. We, too, have a meeting with the Ruse.

III “Emotion is Negro, as reason is Greek.”26 Dialectics goes hand in hand with rhetoric. When the former goes astray, the latter brings it back on course. At least that is how I understand the impasses of the beautiful handmaiden. Throughout human memory, one has not ventured forward without the other, and, in Socrates’s time, it was the (Sophists’) abuse of rhetoric that changed the nature of dialectics. The borders between the two are slim, but they do exist. Senghor respects them. I will attempt to prove this. So the statement that opened the door to scandal; the statement that, more often than not, is misquoted, mistreated or shortened, is always brandished as I have done here, without any preparation at all. Few have read it in the text in which it originally appeared, a text whose very title delimits the debate: “Ce que l’homme noir apporte” (“What the Black Man Brings”). I do not know when it was written. Before being reprinted in 1964 in the collection of essays LibertГ© I, it was published in 1939, in a work most likely collective, L’Homme de couleur, as well as in Г©ditions Plon’s collection “PrГ©sences.” We know the role played by the gaze of others in forming our consciousness. It is as if Senghor, through his contribution to L’Homme de couleur, was working as an ethnographer of his own people. When explaining who they are Page 95 →to Europe, of course he does not give in to the dizziness of the most civilized of the less civilized, by becoming their interpreter. Senghor’s action, groundbreaking as it is, is not only the fruit of his own era. Even today we do the same, and our interpreters do not always possess Senghor’s expertise. No, the Senegalese grammarian gave France, the colonizer, La Civilisation des Noirs. Without beating around the bush, he affirms this by quoting the German Leo Frobenius, whose masterwork, Histoire de la civilisation africaine (Gallimard) influenced all the intellectuals of the epoch: “Sudan, too, possesses a glowing native culture. It’s a fact that, in equatorial Africa, exploration has encountered nothing but ancient, fresh, vigorous civilizations; everywhere that domination by Arabs, Hamitic blood, or European civilization has not shaken the powder from the once beautiful wings of the peppered moth. Everywhere! .В .В .В I know of no northern peoples that can compare with these primitives for the unity of their civilization.”27 In order to present what blacks had to offer, Senghor had to establish the equality of civilizations. In a certain sense, this precondition closes the debate. Or, rather, it opens it to the question of the complementarity of cultures. In this way, the war, or the “clash of civilizations,” is defused. Then, two pages later, the graduate of the Г‰cole normale supГ©rieure unleashes his statement (the italics are his own): Emotion is Negro, as reason is Greek. This is a beautiful use of rhetoric by the man who, as he describes his own people, simultaneously paints a self-portrait. Because, when he attributes “emotional sensitivity” (24) to blacks, he’s insisting, as he has always done, on the prevalence of rhythm and aesthetic values of black African civilizations. The essential point, however, appears in the statement itself. The word as establishes a parallel between black and Western. This parallel presupposes a separation, partly scientific, partly ideological. Senghor knows, as all Westerners do, that emotion is the daughter of reason; just as rational behavior is a wall erected to prevent impulsive attacks. Being Cartesian presumes seeking out counterpoints. Thus “as” suggests relational opposites.

But that is not all. The “as” is the pivot of a perfect Alexandrian line—if, at least, we disregard the dieresis and the synereses. It separates the roles neatly with a break that comes precisely after the sixth syllable. The die is cast. Yes, a statement such as this, formed as an aphorism, is an intellectual game, one that, though the outcome is predictable, gives a great deal of authorial pleasure. It is all the more successful because it should, theoretically, awaken our suspicions. Senghor set himself a brilliant trap. When dealing with others, we always exaggerate our own uniqueness. This Page 96 →is fair enough. Discrimination or, rather, our ability to distinguish between things and people turns our natural or cultural differences into unchanging values, as if grafting, or mГ©tissage, were impossible. Besides, Senghor ultimately recognizes the impasse the statement leads to, despite its ability to dazzle: “This is the negro soul, supposing that it can be defined” (25). As I said, the excess of the affirmation was infinitely mitigated by rhetoric, although it is well known that we ignore this. If the Negro defines himself in relation to the Westerner, taken in himself, in his own mirror, the determining factors lose their strength. This leads to this confession of partial failure. Only confrontation can reveal us. But who is this us? The fruit of confrontation! The other, be he our brother or a stranger, reveals us. And anyone who claims to offer something to the world automatically puts himself in the other’s gaze—to the point, in the worst-case scenario, of only acting according to expectations. If Senghor’s expression should inspire any vigilance within us at all, it would be precisely in this domain. Having failed to define the “negro soul,” Senghor takes inventory of qualities unique to Africans. Their enumeration, if unconvincing, gives a sense of repetition. They seem artificial. But should we doubt the pertinence of “emotional sensitivity”? Or the assets of a culture imbued with Cartesian rationalism? Certainly not, because they are always relative, even if their opposition tends to render them absolute. With the sentence Emotion is Negro, as reason is Greek, Senghor resolves to make Africa the land of shared emotion. Was it not his countryman, Cheick Hamidou Kane who, in L’Aventure ambiguГ« (1961), opportunely notes, “It is easy for me to see what distinguishes us from them [the Europeans]. Our first impulse is not to conquer, as they do, but to love. We, too, have a vigor that places us straightaway at the heart of things. The knowledge we possess is so intense that its fullness intoxicates us. We feel victorious. But where is this victory? The object remains intact; man is no stronger.”28 This is the trial of knowledge—in Africa and in the West—that C. H. Kane is making a case for. Only objects, he tells us, can be dominated. Hence the triumph of Western rationalism. When Senghor makes emotion the distinguishing mark of an African, it proves to be, if we distance ourselves from the letter of his thought, a critique of our way of being, a critique that we who have been westernized understand quite easily. The great Senegalese dialectician forces us to put our finger on something fundamental. We will not be able to dominate objects, as the novelist tells us, if we are nothing but emotion. Senghor’s formulation and C. H. Kane’s assertion are iconoclastic: Page 97 →Only a cultural mГ©tis can do this. Senghor polemic is in proportion to his rhetorical bomb. We are well aware that we are at war. His verbal pyrotechnics calls us to wage it, he whom all the African intellectuals accused of being a colonial lackey. Anyone who attempts to define himself is necessarily in opposition to someone and something. After that, the road is open for exploration, for challenge, for synthesis. Thus Senghor brings us back to our original landscape: the sharing of harmonious and compassionate speech. Beyond this, the statement calls to mind something not considered: domination. Senghor speaks and thinks from the position of a dominated man. Being in harmony and sympathy is to live in conditions that have not experienced an abundance of commercial goods. We have a sense of sharing because, animists that we are, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s savage, we are happy with little and, at this point, unfamiliar with the imperative of the verb “to accumulate.” From the beginning, this primitive state of happiness has denounced hoarding. The antithesis of paradise is “economic horror.” This is how, in the American context, James Baldwin superbly analyzed it:

Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents—or, anyways, mothers—know about their childrenВ .В .В . [O]ne watched the things they did and the excuses that they gave themselves. And if a white man was really in trouble, deep trouble, it was to the Negro’s door that he came. And one felt that if one had had that white man’s worldly advantages, one would never have become as bewildered and joyless and as thoughtlessly cruel as he. The Negro came to the white man for a roof or for five dollars or for a letter to the judge; the white man came to the Negro for love. But he was not often able to give what he came seeking. The price was too high; he had too much to lose. And the Negro knew this, too.29 More often than not, Senghor the essayist seeks to rid himself of the research tools available to him as a professor. He wants to latch onto the subtleties that distinguish the writer’s page. This can only attest to the merit of the facetiousness of those writers who operate at the very heart of things, in other words, in emotion. Senghor moves constantly between scientific reports and whimsical embroidering. He would have preferred to embroider only, to follow the always unexpected logic of sensations, feelings, and words. The writer’s realism consists in writing before reality. This experience is written Page 98 →between words and things, between things that are felt and the intelligence that understands them. Like a story, this approach only convinces those who, from the very beginning, trust the rhythm of thought: a process made up of verbal mechanics and the echoes of what was simultaneously felt, observed, and described. “Negro hysteria?” asks Senghor. No, he protests, and borrows his answer from Baudelaire: “a postulation of nerves” (27). A brilliant pirouette, one might say, if it weren’t a quotation. But this is precisely what wins our esteem. Because the postulate is the artifice of language that we all agree has its roots in the secret of our hearts. Senghor paints the true nature of our sensitivity. We accept, without discussion, the Westerner’s more or less ideological hypotheses; so why should we deny Senghor’s? We will only understand the limits of this childhood illness of language—the definition of the self—the day we accept that it is the expression of our attempts, almost always inadequate, to grasp reality. All his life, Senghor wrote only about understanding. He was a subtle hermeneutist, explaining, interpreting, and proposing a system of reasons. “The negro soul” is undefinable because of its specificity. Have we forgotten that this makes it characteristic of the human species, in other words, one quality among thousands of others. Nevertheless, Senghor’s decisive breakthrough is that he turns the African (and all others who have been dominated) into the one who always puts himself at risk, while, at the same time, the Westerner resorts to the confessional, the psychoanalyst’s coach, or solitary imprisonment. The lesson appears to be, we must, at long last, let ourselves go, even in public. A man is someone who stands and faces another man. This is what allows us to rediscover our essence. Emotion, when it is real, saves us. Let us be grateful to Senghor for teaching us this.

IV The death of a famous man always occasions a unanimous tribute. Through our praise the sky sparkles. Senghor, I believe, enjoys this innocently. All honors go to Erik Orsenna, who, reacting against the Parisian ruling class, cried out, I’m ashamed!30 Never mind that French politicians shirk responsibility. After all, Senghor was a fifth wheel in that context; he, like Page 99 →Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou, was the last French-speaking president to distinguish himself as a writer. His presence in politics blurred the visibility of this microcosm slightly. The world’s affairs can weather anything, except the contributions of artists, for they only care about man. And Senghor, a man-emotion, fully embodied this status. So much so that, when he died, we did not pour over his family album, but rather over the register of complaints and blame that bitterness has always kept open. For the African elite, Senghor remained the poet, the only one. He was therefore the one to be eliminated.

Let us point out that, in the history of literature, this attitude is not new. There are precedents. Michel Parfenov reminds us: There was next to no one at Stendhal’s funeral. It wasn’t much better for Baudelaire, and for Flaubert—despite “many friends from Paris, young people especially, all young people, even unknown ones”—the situation borders on the ridiculous: Hugo, Renan, Taine, DumasВ .В .В . sent their regrets, Maxime du Camp, the childhood friend, absentВ .В .В . Edmond de Goncourt, Heredia, Zola made the trip. Guy de Maupassant, of course, was there.31 Shame on all of us who, when we heard of his death, did not rush to his photographs. The ones from his youth show a boy with a faced marked by dignity as well as melancholy. We might say rather timid. But strength shines through him, piercing his natural reserve, occupying the space he prepared in the secret of his heart. Senghor smiles at the future. At the Biderman seminary school, which was run by Jesuit priests, he begins to study humanities. Never would the word have a happier use. For the boy from Joal, the humanities are what pushed him to discover another world. Perhaps he already has love, passion, for it. Happiness illuminates the photos from that period. When he became president of Senegal, he poses next to de Gaulle, HouphouГ«t-Boigny, Malraux, and Pompidou like an eternal youth. Overcome with gratitude, moved, very moved, by so much splendor in black and white. Never would these two colors translate his soul with such integrity. Senghor reigns like a myth in all eras. The color of his skin plays a large role here. Iconography served it perfectly, marrying the aquafortists’ blacks with a legendary sepia. His forehead frees itself from the dregs of youth. Time polishes the bronze. Maturity is reflected. Senghor poses in full knowledge of the facts. We discover a fragile, determined man filled with wonder. Everything Page 100 →reminds him to control his movements, but he has so little hold over them. To be honest, he cannot. This is the poet in him. If he appears a good actor, this is unintentional; he does not act like a professional. Always impressionable, the photographic proofs reveal his soul for us to esteem. He is life itself, a life of ebony wood. His face offers a generous smile, while worried attention shines in his eyes. I see him as the figure of a shared fragility. I do not know what it was like to be with him on a daily basis. But in the glossy pages of the papers, I see that this man was only love, and that his most constant attitude was a tacit gift of himself. I have had the opportunity to read his poetry while pacing through his photo gallery. Through the photographs, I have touched him. Until that point, being in contact with his poems had been enough. Now, I, more than anyone, must associate them with his album. In the pantheon of private images, it is my duty to find a little bit more of the soul that the poet transforms into words. His politics and his personal approach drank from the most certain of knowledge. School is part of its fabric. Senghor loved learning (the kind that links the master and the disciple, the book and the reader) more than anything. A born teacher, everything that involves an intellectual adventure captures his interest. Senghor is an enlightened prince, the universal instructor of the cause of the Mind. His vision of Man and his conception of politics are never more evident than in the realm of culture. Death has snatched the greatest of tutors from our love. Senghor only had one concern: contributing to the construction of the New African. This expression owes nothing to Karl Marx, although he was one of his rare readers. It would be wise to attribute this to his humanist training and to the influence of Henri Bergson, Father Teilhard de Chardin, and the Bible. Once the colonial shock was over, he understood that School must be the crucible of our metamorphosis. When you list the titles of the articles and essays that compose LibertГ© I (it has four volumes), nearly all of them return to the problem of culture. Before anyone else, the graduate of the Г‰cole normale saw the danger Africa was opening itself up to: Its need for technicians incited it to turn its sons and daughters into specialists. Senghor protests, “Technique is not culture. As we practice our professions, we must go beyond them.В .В .В . Practice will become routine if the light of reflection is not shone upon it every day.”32

For Senghor, an African must work at the synthesis that will call him to be more than a specialist in the transfer of technologies, but instead someone who morphs, a “cultural mГ©tis, like the Egyptians, Indians, Greeks once were.”33 Page 101 →Becoming a cultural mГ©tis is to situate oneself beyond Africa and beyond France, beyond their particulars. In a word, the cultural mГ©tis is the New African. His birth thwarts and modifies the colonial project. Senghor forces education, its instrument of control, to collaborate in our emancipation: “The French have a вЂcolonial’ history behind them, and men from abroad have a French history.”34 What a beautiful shortcut to underline this reversal of perspectives! According to Senghor, for us Africans “French History” must move away from technical training, which is nothing but the instrument of our domination. It is used by those who blatantly help themselves as they aid the most underprivileged among us. Thus, our “French History” is what allows us to think both like the French and like Africans. It is the expression of conclusive simultaneity and alterity. Living in two worlds or two imaginaries. Saying France, when, for the moment, the African side is winning out within us, and saying Africa, when, for the moment, the French side is winning out. Only a certain concern for knowledge can give us this balance, which Senghor defines in these terms: Culture is not made up of an accumulation of knowledge, but rather of a certain way of thinking and being: a discipline, a mind-set.В .В .В . This is Man’s common activity, and its originality is in being creative.35 Cultivating oneself means exercising one’s mind through contact with matter. This is the lesson Senghor retained from Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution. The Senegalese man pleads for an elite class that, as pioneers, cannot afford the luxury of pure specialization. He cares too much for the generalist produced in his time by the Г‰cole normale. This explains, in “La Jeune Fille et le latin,”36 his homage to the “uselessness” of the language of Cicero! The mind can be understood as an organ, whose function is to envelope matter, to invest it, to inhabit it. In this way, the mind succeeds in giving a mental equivalence to matter: With language’s resources, it actualizes it. The mind is a muscle whose essential quality is to encompass the totality of what is. We might also call this “generic” intelligence. The mind, when it molds to the “world’s” inflexions, possesses it without changing it. Culture is the same as Latin; to know them, because they only operate in generalities, appears “useless.” Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Specialized knowledge also flows from the “generic.” Page 102 →Let there be no mistake. The mind, as Senghor sees it, is not disqualified by the twentieth century’s hyperspecialization. Quite the opposite. Who doesn’t see that computer technology (just to give one example) is the sum of several domains of knowledge: statistics, electrical engineering, linguistics, etc.? Even if it is nearly impossible today to be completely competent in both “hard” and “soft” sciences, a mind accustomed to general exercise, which is to say, thinking, will always be able to stand up to our technological evolutions. When, as a national executive, a man is faced with these changes, he will know how to listen, lead, and guide debates so as to lead to an informed decision. (Which, in turn, will not engage only him, but also his people and nation.) When he approaches culture in this context, Senghor remarks, almost painfully: “It is the most urgent problem of the day.”37 This is the origin of his very daring analogy: “We will say that culture is to Teaching what the artist is to the labourer. It is imagination, an active mind, for there is, within the word, the idea of creative dynamism.”38 Culture, Senghor adds, is a racial reaction of Man to his surroundings, tending toward an intellectual and moral balance between Man and his surroundings. As surroundings are never static—and neither is race—culture becomes a perpetual effort for perfect balance, a divine balance. Teaching is the labourer and the instrument of culture.39 What matters here is not the concept of race, as it was understood in the 1930s (Senghor’s lecture dates from

1937), but his description of the extraordinary interaction between man and his physico-social environment. Senghor is working with an incredibly light touch, debating culture and race in the only appropriate realm: the realm of remixing. Again, Bergson shows himself to be in the background of Senghor’s thought. MГ©tissage (whether biological or cultural) is a creative force, just as the Mind embraces the realm of its fears. Its role is to raise itself up, to uproot itself in the goal of reaching a form and body. On the subject of culture, Senghor defined, for two or three centuries, the framework that African intellectuals and artists will have to follow. The West, as we know, has taken over the “hard” sciences and all the world’s financial resources. The key elements escape us. What we still have is culture. This “industry,” which, by definition, cannot be separated from people and their Page 103 →conditions of existence, is the only sector where our participation is accepted without resistance. No matter what you read, there is no such thing as World Culture; the same goes for World Music. These are nothing but commercial labels. As long as we work to make use of our heritage, as long as we are able to paint, write, and think about the enigma of our being-in-theworld, as long as an equatorial forest, the Sahel, and the Chant des Bozos40 remain in our countries, we will live. In his famous “Master-Slave Dialectic,” Hegel taught us that the slave is a creator of culture,41 or, at the very least its inventor. We are not surprised by the German philosopher’s unexpected praise of the subservient. I think that, for us Africans, our role, for the distant future, our only role on the World Plantation, is being artisans of culture. Senghor’s insistence and his fight in the 1950s for the French Union—a desperate attempt to keep Africa within the French fold while he was leading the fight for Senegal’s independence—are clues that he sewed along our path to modernity. He used contradictions that, for anyone not a dialectician, border on denial, to clear our paths to liberty. And because Senghor approaches it as an artist, he does not make culture into a theology, or a magic tool; he turns it into a form of self-organization that each of us can use to build a world. Senghor left us between three and four thousand pages of essays. This abundance deserves to be considered in great detail. The testimony of the real, in its complexity, is no less important than the poet. In his heuristic attempt, there is the vivacity and acuity of a song; the urgency that pushed him to complete these analyses approaches the abyss of creative necessity. Poems and essays demonstrate life—his as well as ours. We hope that francophone Africans, who, tomorrow, will be assailed by doubt, will be led by benevolent genies toward this work. Like Senghor’s life, this work was built thanks to the stones moved by the throes of History. It’s an aesthetics of reconstruction: it finds its legitimacy in politics. Never again will we see a similar political destiny unfurl, nor a literary undertaking that annihilates egotism and demagogy as his did. Head of a neocolonial state with no strategic resources, and exposed, like all dominated nations, to shameless exploitation, when he celebrates the francophonie, Senghor behaves like the hero of The Odyssey. In the land of the Cyclops, he calls himself Ulysses—Senhor Ulysses. To have nothing but a ruse for distraction, this ruse that is life itself. Page 104 →We would not know how to survive otherwise. In a universe in which the roles have been so well distributed, conflicts shift and change. Senghor, the griot, loses nothing when he celebrates the Francophonie. On the contrary, it is nothing but one modality of his deepest being. In this realm, he reigned exemplarily, without rival. May we simply remember.

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Leopold SГ©dar Senghor Praise Singer of a Happy Africa I don’t know what time it was, I always confuse childhood and Eden Just as I confound Death and Life—linked by a bridge of softness. —Éthiopiques All his life, Senghor forced himself to make words resonate.42 He knew how to reach into their depths, to that place of nocturnes, the song of the depths, the same as the color of his skin. Just as the arguments that structure his essays can sometimes make us smile, so does the poetry prove him right to think the way he does. Chants d’ombre, Hosties noires, Г‰thiopiques, Nocturnes, Г‰lГ©gies majeures, all these collections, except for Lettres d’hivernage, are the most radical manifestos he could have dedicated to the cause of the African sensibility. In his way, he defines the scope of the black man’s intervention in poetry and the arts. Senghor’s signature mark lies within the monotone “timbre” of his words, an elegiac “monotony.” Is this epithet not how he bid farewell to poetry, in the image of the mourning he took on in his old age for his son Philippe-Maguilen? But Senghor’s monotony (as with Verlaine’s, for that matter) includes a homage for the ternary rhythm of the tam-tam, because real monotony supposes a combination in which minor tonalities win out over major ones. It isn’t where frenetic rhythm is soldered, but the heart of notes, subtle and “moist.” This is how to produce the cords suitable for such deeply melancholy beings as ourselves. In truth, Senghor is not a poet of the tam-tam. This noun—nothing more Page 106 →than an onomatopoeia! —causes misinterpretations. Senghor loves the symphony too much to reduce it to nothing but percussion, even when it’s at its most “spirited.” The great man from Senegal is the most classical of African writers. His phrasing is clear; his prosody espouses the most horizontal geometry. Doesn’t he quote Verlaine in “Blues”? Oh, the sound of the rain on the monotone leaves! A metronome rules Senghorian rhythm. His meaning is the same as his arrangement of syllables. The prosody makes us feel that sentences, from their very start, move toward their only conclusion, immanent from the beginning. Thus propositions follow one another without any striking metaphor. Quite the contrary—the words are strangely docile about their “flow.” The poet knows how to “lead” them toward a disturbance-free happiness. He is not concerned with liaisons; they arise on their own. Sometimes—and this is the hallmark of his style—he allows for ruptures and juxtapositions. Meaning, then, becomes enigmatic. But it is an attractive enigma. It introduces into French syntax a new aroma, a perplexing gap. This is how he expresses his creative freedom. In fact, an analysis of his work shows that metaphors, as such, rarely appear. The poet uses abstract words sparingly. This is Senghor’s poetics, which he illustrates and defends with a benevolent firmness most clearly in his Lettre Г trois poГЁtes de l’Hexagone. For him, the word that helps us represent fire, a beating heart, and anxiety translates the identity of Africa. Thousands of kilometers separate him from his country. He misses it in Paris, in Touraine, in the Stalag. He dwells on the memories that all lead him back to childhood. We are arriving at the purpose of our research: Happy Africa constitutes what Senghor, following Baudelaire, calls “the kingdom of childhood.” In his Serer tribe, he saw wrestlers, contemplated gymnastic and initiating rituals, heard the Three Graces in the poets Koumba Ndiaye, MarГґne Ndiaye, and Siga Diouf. In his poems, he

recreates the beauty that animated his younger days. He was a happy child and never tires of saying so. Who cares what myth, what illusion becomes attached to literary recreation! To be surprised by the Africa Senghor paints, one has to be unaware of life’s metamorphoses. The childhood he turns to is not an unchangeable monument. Neither is it a treasure-filled palace. His words bring a buried world back to life. If through these words we can detect the “the flavor of the Origin,” it is thanks to an effort of recreation that is more than praiseworthy. Writing means always saying thank you to an Origin. It means celebrating it and magnifying it. It’s a joyful gesture. It is felt upon returning to one’s native land, not as with CГ©saire, his Page 107 →traveling companion and brother in arms, but as with Ulysses, when he was reunited with Greece. Let us hear how Senghor tells it: All day long, on long, narrow rails Inflexible will upon the sands’ torpor Through droughts of Cayor and Baol in which anxious baobabs twist their arms All day long, all along the line By small identical stations, chatting little Negro girls at the School exit and the aviary All day long, shaken roughly on the seats of the dusty, wheezing iron train I seek to forget Europe in the pastoral heart of the Sine43 Happy Africa begins with the trial of exile. This is emphasized by the expression “to seek to forget.” When we think about it, can we really say this is a joyful act? Our answer is in the affirmative. The poet strips Europe from himself—from the adult he has become. He knows that rationality, science, and Western civilization have distanced him from his childhood. What is the village of the past to him now? So he is unsure of being immediately understood by his people. His heart and his spirit, like the “chatting little Negro girls at the School exit,” have become an “aviary,” in other words, the site for a whole new kind of worry and concern. In fact, what we witness here is the happiness of an educated African. Senghor is indeed the first of his kind. He is a relatively solitary man, who knows how to taste “educated solitude,” as Petrarch put it, and thus the Book as well, insofar as it represents space dedicated to thought and creation. “In the pastoral heart of the Sine” (in other words, going all the way “to the Sine to the Seine”), he relaxes, after Europe. Africa resurfaces there, for this double man, this “cultural mГ©tis”—to use his most famous expression—takes on, without exception, all the dimensions of his being-in-the-world. The return to African earth is first and foremost a return to the landscape. The opposite would have been surprising, yet many poets who come from rural areas are insensitive to it. Senegal is a rural, pastoral place. At its breast, the future poet finds his momentum, a fitting pace for his blossoming lyricism. Does he not say that the plain “thirsts for love as for a friendly rain”?44 In Chants d’ombre, the incantatory rhythm unfurls a song in which nostalgia, another name for the blues, allows a celebration of Beauty and the Page 108 →dampness of tears to coexist in the nocturnal thickness of its syllables. The reader of these poems cries because he finds himself on the very “platform” of the sentences, or, rather, on the phrasing that expresses a world gone forever. Everything there is the color of twilight, for Africa has become a cloistered continent. Whether the child from Joal evokes the European winter or the African rainy season, whether he’s describing a mask or a black woman, a visit or love, we travel with him through the misery of a nostalgia whose only remedy is the poem itself. Because he paints a world that has disappeared—not an uncommon task among poets—a massacred civilization, the great defender of NГ©gritude is a poet twice over.

Senghorian prosody always brings us back to the horizon of the sentence and the world, the line of flight by which our gaze delimits the territory so dear to its quest, and in which our arms struggle to contain infinity. We cross the plain and, sometimes, a complaint escapes our chest (“.В .В .В the ever fatal succession of plains and of complaints silently”).45 As in “DГ©sespoir d’un volontaire libre,” the poet, “on tiptoeВ .В .В . leans forward, raises himself up to pierce his despair, the horizon.”46 It is as if, for Senghor, if the poet in his “fusion” with the landscape does not extract its truth, then at least he should pierce the mystery of its unfurling. Following the example of the slightly metaphysical questions asked by children, the young Senghor is captivated by the vastness. He would like to sleep in “the shadow of her hair” (“Black Woman”), to taste the “grace of the dancer in the elastic air!” The plains are the inscription of the span of time within a “flexuous” infinity; it is a romantic conquest. For the poet, the child fully inhabited this world only yesterday. If he returns now to the “founding” horizon, he is to be forgiven like the prodigal son. This is the origin of the pathetic cry, “Oh child weak, too weak, so faithfully a traitor to your genius!”47 This fidelity allows itself to be a traitor. It is a gap, a sidestep, the only thing that allows anyone at all to contemplate the real perspective of things. Anyone who tastes it must be a native of the plains. With each sunrise, he sees fabulous rebirth and, in the evening, grand twilights. He drinks and is nourished by extreme sensations. The plains are an ocean of generosity; the eye that embraces it resembles a set square unfurled, needlessly, at the threshold of the absolute distance that composes its two poles. Nevertheless, it is impossible to say that we feel torn apart there. No matter what we do or where we go, we are always within a horizon of gentleness. Thus, the absence of direct opposition, and the sense that everything is unfolding uniformly. Page 109 →And yet, nothing is more misleading than this impression. Rainer Maria Rilke would say that the plains are “the feeling that allows us to grow.”48 In the same way, the plains, in the image of infinity, drain their dunes, their swells higher than the ocean’s, for they raise themselves to the sky and merge with the center of the earth. Here the wanderer pacifies his feelings. The plains embody the absolute. To return to the “pastoral heart of the Sine” is an act both of enrichment and of austerity. Senghor’s genius is to make us feel this, although, to my knowledge, he never theorized landscape. It doesn’t matter; in his poems we are constantly confronted by the essence of limitlessness. “The twilight in which Coumba Ndofen wished to trim the cloth of his cloak,” the quilted atmosphere that inspires the tales that rock children gently to sleep, nocturnal transparence, the song of the harvesters, the echo of the tam-tams. We must note that in reconstructing his childhood universe, Senghor staged and “ritualized” these motifs. “Here we are happy,” he seems to tell us. “Here flows nourishing sap.” More often than not, when people want to criticize Senghor, they bring up how he overrates the African way of life. This critique does not consider the fact that all writing, when it claims on one hand to be a defense and illustration of a cause, and on the other to be a celebration of a world, takes on a mythical dimension. It would be far more appropriate in Senghor’s work not to see Africa as it is, but rather a recreation, the result of his quest for identity, the “product” of his feelings. The Senegalese president’s poems speak of plenitude, exaltation, and marvels. It is the happiness of an isolated subject: it is the work of a writer. Thus the book, by its particular means of diffusion, creates a shared possession. This situation is even less remarkable since, if Senghor had spoken only in his own name, the richness of his imagination would have been praised and his talent would have been lauded. But in the colonial context, racism and the denial of African values caused the first of all Africans to work for the recognition of an entire continent. This is why, occasionally, the ideology of NГ©gritude “confuses” the singularity of his poetry. This man from the plains is generosity itself. As Jacques Brel shows, the “flat country” gives rise to phenomenal lyricism. And generosity is the mark of great poets. In the image of happiness (if we give in to the temptation to personify it), Senghor constructs a kingdom that is supple, green, amber, scented, fluid; in short, a “swarm of mercies,” as Saint-John Perse would have put it.

Page 110 →Whether celebrating women, Africa, or the Ancestors, his word remains one of loving fervor. Because lyricism is man’s first landscape. It offers our ear and our heart the fabric of words, expressions that clothe us better than any ornamentation. Landscape is our first skin. It is the original quest of a man seduced by the world’s spectacular and subtle harmony. For him, the flower and the woman (images of beautiful shape and sensuality) are the sole locus of life. The world as womb, of course, “world of sowing” (CГ©saire); the exaltation of life forces, they all rise to the rhythm of a glorious canticle. Generosity is a disposition—this is what most criticism fails to see. Senghorian profusion is that of an individual in the grip of nature’s beauty. Speaking in the name of a mythical Africa, Senghor simultaneously constructs his own portrait. He hands the secret of his heart over to us. When we think we see the theorist of ancestral Africa, we must immediately pause; Senghor’s momentum is too magnanimous, his views too passionate for us to ignore that he himself is at stake. Colonization, in a perverse way, allowed NГ©gritude to compose its identity haphazardly. His gesture forces us to admire him even more, because it also seems artificial. As with any reconstructed identity, the one that Senghor offers us shines with the perfection of its features. His Africa is glorious: the emperor Soundjata, the pharaohs, the queen of Sheba, the Portugal of the Great Conquests, and even a certain ancient Greece, are all members of his family. Senghor always aligned himself with the Universal, and we can hardly measure the fruitfulness of this expression. The defender of African traditions is the praise singer of cosmic nuptials, the steward of life’s processions, the “composer” of harmonic energies. An identity, especially when grand, only finds its worth in the variety of combinations and annexations it offers. Hybridization is its law. To convince ourselves, let us listen to “ÉlГ©gie de Minuit”: Summer splendid summer, nourishing the Poet in the milk of your light And me like Spring wheat, drunk on the greenness of water, the green seeping through the gold of time Ah! nevermore to tolerate your light, the light of lamps, your atomic light that disintegrates my being No longer to tolerate your midnight light. The splendor of honors is like the Sahara Immense nothingness, without erg or hamada without grass, without the blink of an eye, without the beat of a heart. Twenty-four hours a day, and eyes wide open like Father Cloarec Page 111 →Crucified on the rock by Serpent-worshiping pagans from Joal. In my eyes the Portuguese lighthouse turns, yes twenty-four hours a day Machinery, precise and unceasing, until the end of time.49 Even in this painful context, the words weave their symphony and unearth a “childhood kingdom.” They evoke a stretch of colonial History and a bloody sacrifice. In other contexts they are a political exhortation. Indeed, how could we avoid this in Senghor’s work? The subtitle, “Happy Africa,” accounts for the gaze and the life that Senghor, the man, breathes into the entire continent. The “ÉlГ©gie de Minuit” allows us to see that even when Senghor (with contained violence) dismisses his “Kingdom,” it is only to better reveal its continuity. Every word of the poem crystalizes an emotion. A grave charm irradiates it. In sum, the poet’s determination to remain vigilant “twenty-four hours a day” benefits the landscape; in an unexpected reversal, he directs his praise there. Yes, “twenty-four hours a day,” Senghor is haunted by rebellious Joal, a shadow of sacrilege hovering over it. It is the “midnight light,” an expression that calls to mind the phenomenon of the “midnight sun,” well known to Scandinavians. The great man from Senegal, even if he refuses to give in to its charms, still describes its beauty. He confirms that “the splendor of men is like the Sahara.” When they killed Father Cloarec, his countrymen added to the splendor of Joal, but this splendor frightens him. Therefore he has vowed to remember it always (“Machinery, precise and unceasing, until the end of time”).

Here we can gage the compassion that animates Senghor. He pardons his people, and he pardons the French, the colonizers. Catholicism and, above all, his humanist faith have protected him against all hate. Senghor needs connivance and Г©lan to magnify the earth and woman, trees and animals. For him, loving fusion is a refuge, and kindness makes him noble. He is, above all, a praise singer, a god drunk on plenitude; one who shares it willingly. Lord, I will not take out my reserve of hatred, I know, for the diplomats who show their long canines And who will trade black flesh tomorrow My heart, O Lord, has melted like snow on the rooftops of Paris In the sun of your gentleness. It is gentle to my enemies, my brothers with white, snowless hands Because of the hands of dew, at night, all along my burning cheeks.50 Page 112 →

Notes 1. Translator’s note: Throughout this text, titles of works that have not been translated remain in French. 2. I began writing this tribute on December 22, 2001, forty-eight hours after Senghor passed away. 3. Translator’s note: A khâgne is a post-high school, intensive two-year preparatory program for students who plan to take the entrance exams for the grandes écoles, the most selective institutions of higher education in France. 4. Translator’s note: “Y bon Banania” was the slogan for a chocolate- and banana-flavored powder that was added to milk. It is based on the pejorative “pidgin French,” commonly referred to as petit nègre, which was supposedly spoken by Senegalese riflemen, 5. Translator’s note: The tirailleurs sénégalais were African riflemen who fought alongside the French in World War I and World War II. 6. Translator’s note: Saudades is a Portuguese word with poetic reference to “longing,” “yearning,” or “nostalgia.” 7. Senghor, “Nocturnes,” in Œuvre poétique, rev. ed. (Paris: Le Seuil, collections Points, 1990), p. 203. 8. Senghor, “Ce que l’homme noir apporte”, in Liberté, vol. 1, Négritude et humanisme (Paris: Le Seuil, 1964), p. 23. 9. I Corinthians 9:20, King James Bible 10. Senghor, “Vues sur l’Afrique noire, ou assimiler, non être assimilés,” in Négritude et humanisme, p. 39. 11. Senghor, “Ce que l’homme noir apporte,” p. 23. 12. Senghor, “Laye Camara et Lamine Diakhaté ou l’art n’est pas d’un parti,” in Négritude et humanisme, p. 155. 13. Senghor, “Laye Camara,” p. 157. Our emphasis. 14. Senghor, “René Maran, précurseur de la Négritude,” in Négritude et humanisme, p. 410. 15. Ahmadou Kourouma, Monnew: A Novel, trans. Nidra Polleras (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1993), p. 17. 16. Translator’s note: In French, each of the three prepositions is à . In English, the first must be changed to “upon,” “at,” etc. 17. Senghor, Négritude et humanisme, pp. 408 and 409. 18. Senghor, Négritude et humanisme, pp. 408 and 409. 19. Senghor, Négritude et humanisme, p. 103, our emphasis. 20. J. Bernabé, P. Chamoiseau, and R. Confiant, “In Praise of Creoleness,” Callaloo 3, no. 4

(Autumn 1990): 886. 21. Senghor, NГ©gritude et humanisme, p. 103. 22. M. B. Taleb-Khyar’s translation was first published in an American journal Callaloo 13 (1990), then reprinted in Gallimard’s bilingual version in 1993. Page 113 →23. Paul ValГ©ry, “Stendhal,” in Е’uvres, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, BibliothГЁque de la PlГ©aide, 1957), p. 574. 24. ValГ©ry, “Stendhal,” p. 574. Our emphasis. 25. See Senghor, “Nocturnes.” Senghor explains the term as follows: “Signare: a word that comes from the Portuguese senhora, “lady.” In the past, it described a mГ©tis woman of some power in Senegambia.” 26. Senghor, “Ce que l’homme noir apporte,” p. 24. 27. Quoted by Senghor in Oeuvre poГ©tique, pp. 22–23. 28. Cheick Hamidou Kane, L’Aventure ambiguГ« (Paris: Collection 10/18, 1961), p. 164. Our emphasis. 29. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York: Dial Press, 1963), p. 116. 30. Le Monde, January 5, 2002. 31. Michel Parfenov, “Un “cas” magnifique .В .В . ,” preface to Gustave Flaubert by Guy de Maupassant (Paris: ed. Parangon, 2001), pp. 5 and 6. 32. Senghor, “Les Г©lites de l’Union franГ§aise au service de leurs peuples,” in NГ©gritude et humanisme, p. 151. 33. Senghor, “Les Г©lites de l’Union franГ§aise,” p. 150, our emphasis. 34. Senghor, “Les Г©lites de l’Union franГ§aise,” p. 149. 35. Senghor, “Les Г©lites de l’Union franГ§aise, p. 149. 36. Senghor, “La Jeune Fille et le latin,” pp. 436–39. 37. Senghor, “Le ProblГЁme culturel en A.O.F.,” in NГ©gritude et humanisme, p. 11. 38. Senghor, “Le ProblГЁme culturel en A.O.F.,” pp. 11–12. 39. Senghor, “Le ProblГЁme culturel en A.O.F.,” pp. 11–12. 40. Birago Diop, Leurres et lueurs: PoГЁmes (Paris: PrГ©sence africaine, 1954). 41. G. W. F. Hegel, PhГ©nomГ©nologie de l’esprit, trans. Gwendoline Jarczyk and Pierre-Jean LabarriГЁre (Paris: Gallimard, 1993). 42. “LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor, Chantre de l’Afrique heureuse” was first read at the Cercle Alienor (Poetry and Aesthetics Research Group) on October 14, 2000, at the Brasserie Lipp in Paris. Large excerpts were published in February 2002 as a gesture of posthumous tribute in the magazine Aujourd’hui poГЁme, issue 28. 43. Senghor, “Tout le long du jour,” in PoГЁmes (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1984), p. 13. 44. Senghor, “Hosties noires,” in PoГЁmes, p. 67. 45. Senghor, “Hosties noires,” p. 67. Translator’s note: in the original, “plaine” (plain) and “plainte” are juxtaposed. Although, in this case, the meaning of “plainte” is closer in sense to “moan,” I have translated it by another other option, “complaint,” in order to retain the similarity between the two words. 46. Senghor, “Hosties noires,” p. 67. 47. Senghor, “Hosties noires,” p. 67, vol. 1, 48. Rainer Maria Rilke, “Worpswede,” in Oeuvres, vol. 1, Prose, 2nd ed., ed. Paul de Man (Paris: Le Seuil, 1982), p. 385. 49. Senghor, “Nocturnes,” in PoГЁmes, p. 198. 50. Senghor, “Chants d’ombre,” pp. 22–23.

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Short Stories

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Introduction Frieda Ekotto .В .В . for when you dive deep enough into experience you come to a place where we share our lives. And so in language there is something underneath our language which is shared and this is curious, this is subtle, this is a secret and also this is known to all of us. —Muriel Rukeyser, The Music of Translation It is twilight when we arrive in Chad, a sub-Saharan country in Central Africa colonized by the French and granted independence in 1960, to join the narrator in a search for his identity and his ghosts. The stories that make up this search—prose poems, really—meld into a novel, or a memoir, refusing to be a single genre. Within them, Nimrod mixes the personal with the national and cultural, celebrating the beauty of his country by playing with and within interstitial spaces and times, blurring the lines between temporalities and places, even continents. Chad’s violent history vibrates beneath the text, but it is tempered by Nimrod’s attention to the human relationships and the beauty of places he holds close in his memory. Echoing Homi K. Bhabha’s comment about “Remembering Fanon” as “a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present,”1 Nimrod uses memory to question temporality and the complex manner in which the needs of the present and the call of the future complicate our relationships to past, place, and history. The texts evoke the sacred humility of the human experience, as with this passage, in which Nimrod visits his mother at dusk: When twilight approaches, I visit my mother. As an exile, it’s all I can accomplishPage 118 → during my brief stays. This is how I am polite to myself. Such a humble and imperious temple demands intense fervor. It’s a literary religion. It works well for lyrical hearts—and twilight is a lyrical phenomenon—as well as for the empty-pocketed proud. I come back to my mother’s house like a beggar, on foot, not in a car. Friends stop by to say hello. They park their cars at my door. I could make use of them, but I want to be alone with my mother, alone with the twilight. I have a meeting with two kinds of devotions: my mother and vespers. Nimrod’s style, which allows him to evoke exile, Chad’s contemporary condition, and his mother simultaneously, is vivid, poetic, and fluid. It manifests the wisdom of Vilashini Cooppan’s statement: “World literature is not an ontology but an epistemology, not a known but a knowing.”2 These short stories—the first from francophone Chad to be published in English—brings into being a new kind of knowledge about Africa, its intricacies and beauties. If the politics of world literature ask us to engage in questions of representation and power, this novel asks us to know—and, more importantly, to feel (Nimrod is a student of Senghor, after all)—Chad as a memory that is an indelible part of the present. Neither historical dates nor events emerge from Nimrod’s narratives of Chad, but the memories of a place well loved. “Can you leaf through a river? Can its watery expanse be a metaphor for a book? Is the splendor of its waters equal to that of the page?” he asks. The answer seems to be yes, for that is what he does. Nimrod dives into the river of his memories, sketching before his readers, in the rich yet mottled tones of twilight, memories of his childhood in Chad, creating the sense, as Muriel Rukeyser evokes, that the depth of experience takes us to a place “where we share our lives.”

Notes 1. Homi K. Bhabha, “Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition,” foreword to Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (London: Pluto, 1986), pp. xxii, xxv. 2.Vilashini Cooppan, “Ethics of World Literature: Reading Others, Reading Otherwise,” in Teaching World Literature, ed. David Damrosch (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2009) p.38.

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The Rivers’ Gold (2010) Trans. Dawn M. Cornelio L’Or des riviГЁres: rГ©cits В© ACTES SUD, 2010 English translation and publication by permission of Г‰ditions Actes Sud, Arles, France Page 120 → for my mother Tabitha Soimakang What have I learned with such effort? There is nothing certain among the Ancients, nothing beautiful among the Moderns. The past and the present are two incomplete statues: one, mutilated, has been pulled from the debris of the ages; the other has not yet been given its future perfection. —Chateaubriand

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My Mother’s Dreams In the evening, my steps carry me toward my mother’s house. I say this reverently. It belongs to the sacred register, to the personal effusion of the poet who, though having failed to make his fortune, finds in metaphor a richness capable of supplanting, even if only for a quarter of an hour, the kind of opulence that cannot be stolen by anybody or anything. My knowledge is certain. My heart swells with pride. My body verifies it with gentle joy. I look at the world with assurance, with kindness; I look at it in its beauty. This is what makes me different in this earthly life—at least in N’Djamena, if not in Chagoua, the neighborhood where I’ve chosen to live for forty years, despite exile. A neighborhood where I live only a few days a year and where most people don’t know who I am. I am the essential foreigner. My manners make that clearВ .В .В . My very person provokes hidden laughter. I don’t take it to heart, because beauty—so infrequent in this land of drought—reassures me. Those familiar with this beauty often fail to see it. Which of my hearty chuckles will attach to the pisГ© walls like emotions unfurled by termites, or to the politeness oozing from a corner of the sky, even when coolness is scarce on a thirty-eight-degree April morning? And yet these walls, although not transparent, seem to me like Japanese screens, because the heavy, opaque wave of blind heat is still to come. For now, an attentive ear can still hear pigeons and angels in flight. There is time yet to dream of tenderness. I have known a series of maternal homes. Among the very first is the one dearest to my heart. It was in the same neighborhood, five hundred meters from here. It only had two rooms. I was ten years old; RoyГЁs, my little sister, was seven. It was cool, spacious, and Maman was a young woman who sometimes wore T-shirts. She was particularly beautiful in one of them, a dark one. In a black-and-white photo taken in 1967, she looks seductive, as if it took quite an effort to catch her. She is barely smiling, suspicious of the Page 122 →lens. But I thought she was lovely. This image, like a bust placed on a pedestal, stood inside me, giving me a special pride. Maman’s face was perfect. Her scarifications were in the Baguirmi style. They went all the way down to her chin, slicing her cheeks into regular furrows that made me speechless with admiration. Later, I would know her to be my goddess from Ife. Even as a child, I would caress her incomparable head, my fingers tirelessly examining her furrows. In my memory, that photo, along with a few others, are attached to that “first” house. It was happiness in its purest form. My drawings covered its walls. They weren’t frescoes; I missed my calling as a painter before I even knew what the term entailed. Giotto, Delacroix, and so many African masters (Mouloui Massas from Chad, Ndebele women from South Africa, etc.) clothed the walls of my heart like shimmering twilight. I resolved that I would paint with words instead of colors. My mother’s houses burn within me. They are always made of earth. That is how I feel them; that is how they satisfy me; that is how they are happy, as am I. Later, in Picardy, when I discovered houses made with cob walls, I was deeply troubled. The clay that moved me so greatly, the sandiness that scratched my colored chalk whenever I attempted even the smallest drawing, these are indeed man’s universal mother. Without knowing it, I was working upon her very body. But my actions sullied her. As for my friends, they have become respectable people: They’ve built houses made of concrete. They’ve raised themselves above the clay. They’ve escaped the mud. In one sense, it’s good—you must give them credit. But in another way, they have broken forever with the source of shivers, and I feel sorry for them. It always seems to me that when cement is poured, everything stops breathing. In any case, houses are not the only things that no longer breathe; neither do the bodies—our adult bodies—now solid or solidified, affirmative or airtight. What’s more, the city had taken over our neighborhood, filling in the ponds, the marshes, the vacant lots, the weeds, the umbrella mulga, the euphorbia, the termite mounds, and the land itself, the most rebellious of all, unfit for masonry, but which we managed to reshape with sand and gravel brought in from faraway quarries. That’s when my mother built her second house, the one I’ve been living in for forty years. This house is at the origin of all my departures. The most wonderful gift it gave me is freedom. It only appears life-sized, in other words, when I contemplate the Milky Way. My mother may never know what I owe her; I have never admitted it to her. Perhaps she caught a glimpse of the hint of a star in my retina? I doubt it. In the rectangular

yard of an equally rectangularPage 123 → house, I let sensation guide me. She saw this, but modesty will always keep her from acknowledging it; just like the lines I am writing here, they will remain forever unknown to her. I counted on her modesty, just like I counted on the childhood mat that I would unroll at the blue moment when the stars shone on shared secrets. A few hours later, the Milky Way would unfurl. The vantage point of my mother’s yard is unique. I’ve tested many other observation points—in the Ivory Coast, France, the United States, Italy, Holland, Germany, Morocco. Nothing measures up to it. There, the Milky Way wanders like a giant. I was only surprised once, in Finland, on the summer solstice. The sky was so low, the night was so bright, and the Milky Way so stupefying in its grandeur and beauty that it made me cry. I was overwhelmed, in every sense of the word. When twilight approaches, I visit my mother. As an exile, it’s all I can accomplish during my brief stays. This is how I am polite to myself. Such a humble and imperious temple demands intense fervor. It’s a literary religion. It works well for lyrical hearts—and twilight is a lyrical phenomenon—as well as for the emptypocketed proud. I come back to my mother’s house like a beggar, on foot, not in a car. Friends stop by to say hello. They park their cars at my door. I could make use of them, but I want to be alone with my mother, alone with the twilight. I have a meeting with two kinds of devotions: my mother and vespers. When I was seven, I was already trying to draw this on the walls. There was a donkey, a camel, a basin, a doum palm, and several coconut palms. I was crazy about those. Yet the species is not native to Chad. I’d sketched it from my reader. I liked its lascivious fronds; I liked the curve of its stem. A son of the great river, I had a vague sense that it was leaning toward the ocean, but at that time the salty, liquid immensity was beyond my imagination. I began drawing the palms as if I were trying to grasp the edges of the unknown, the edges of something beyond the horizon, for it is completely true that Chad is an ocean of savannas, sand, and sky, all mixed together. Land—flat and grassy—was much more familiar to me; the walls of my mother’s house were witnesses to this. I scribbled on them, happy as Jacques PrГ©vert’s dunce. With the same innocence, I would cross a number of seas, a number of oceans. I didn’t know I was telling myself the story of Abidjan on the walls of my childhood home. All that was missing was the steamy sun, the old-fashioned splendor, and the close-mouthed clouds over wharfs in Port-BouГ«t or Grand-Bassam. Missing too were Vridi’s marine scents, and DeuxPlateaux’s crystal-clear, July air when the palm trees sparkled like Paul Page 124 →ValГ©ry’s Charmes. This is the kind of country I landed in fourteen years later, without advance planning. Before I even had a foothold, I had distinguished myself as a sort of a magician who could use his chalk to draw his destiny on sand. At these moments, I was less a soothsayer than a prophet. I painted what I didn’t know, like a prophet announcing events whose importance he cannot grasp. In fact he doesn’t care about the events; they left him indifferent. It was the same with my drawings. They were just a child’s scribblings. Except that, even after I stopped painting wall frescoes, I was still sketching palm trees in every imaginable medium. One of the absolute last (and therefore most remarkable) gestures was in 1981, during the war. I was getting ready for my final high school exams. I hadn’t come up with anything better to scratch on my binder cover than a giant palm tree. Below it I had written a quote from Saint Augustine, “Do we love anything but the beautiful?” To me, this was the proclamation of a young man trying to be modest. But then my friends pointed out that there was no modesty in either the gesture or the sentence. This was distressing. I had misjudged how they would react. Back then I was unfamiliar with human cunning. This shines a light on the hierarchy of values. I was set on fire by beauty, but had no intention of handing over my heart to self-worship—I will never convert to that religion. It seemed to me that aesthetics was one category of love. Judging by my friends’ reaction, I was mistaken. I was surrounded by the sons of peasants who were pretending to be modest because they hadn’t had a long, peaceful relationship with European books and culture. This was the unspoken object of our dispute. When it came to our traditions, they were as effusive and immodest as I was. There was a subtle class war going on between us, even though we belonged to the same class. It resulted from a certain nobility of mine that cheated them of a delayed start, which they couldn’t tolerate. By somewhat solemnly proclaiming my literary penchant, I had authored my own exclusion. I needed to use tact when showing I was well read, like an unpolished work of art. Only a naive style had a legitimate place. All in all, my friends were talking to me about an old childhood wall; they were sharing the myth of the cave shadows with me. Unfortunately for me, O ancient

Socrates, I had forgotten everything! Orange flecks caressed the walls. The sky was pure above the terminalia tree etched along the horizon. The patches of setting sun filled me with nostalgia for the time when Chagoua was nothing but countryside. In the past, the umbrella mulga would welcome the twilight with filters. The light would Page 125 →surround their stems like an invitation from Bedouins at teatime. Wasps and hornets would bustle around the peaks of the trees, which loomed like a ballet of water carriers. The atmosphere would rustle as if all things and beings were preparing for a final kiss. That particular place has disappeared; houses have invaded. But when twilight arrives, I still see it in my mind’s eye. All I have to do is step out the door and look in the direction of my mother’s house. Then everything is set in motion, although not without some drama. Because when I’m out in the street, I become a foreigner again. They can hardly stand to see me as a simple pedestrian. They killed the child that was in me, the only being who, year after year, motivated my return to this neighborhood. What do I care about my public wrappings, if the gaze of the eternal child that I am must grow dull and then disappear? How many friends have given up physical exercise because, in our society, if you’re anybody at all, you don’t walk? They play the game, only traveling by air-conditioned car. They drink cold drinks, eat fatty foods. They are now obese and suffer from diseases that come straight from another century—like gout, for example. But, given the way I’m looked at, I do envy those big shots of mine a bit. I only have three hundred meters to cover, and after that, I’ll feel better. In the meantime, I console myself by thinking, “Luckily Maman doesn’t have a TV!” She doesn’t know about the series celebrating the festival of fancy cars. Her imagination may be less haunted than my friends’ mothers’. But still, there are plenty of these tanks on her path every day; she took stock of my poverty long ago. I am sure of at least one thing, however: She doesn’t know anything about the Calabrese Mafia. Knowing she’s sheltered from such infamy amuses and consoles me. Even though so many other writers claim to have been inspired by The Sopranos, we, at least, will remain the only ones left on the planet who have never seen it. I will reap the promises of the evening like a monk concentrating on the recitation of the angelus. My mother is my area of research; her heart is my nuclear fission. A poem is a victory won over an atom on the equator. Long ago, HonorГ© de Balzac, the genius poet of The Human Comedy, single-handedly carried out an investigation that neither I—nor any poets to come—have anything to be ashamed of. Before going to meet my mother, I take a shower. It’s a moment of absolute happiness. The shower is cobbled together behind the house. This suggests its name in Chadian Arabic. To go to the bathroom, to go take a shower is to go behind the house. In my opinion, this is the most remarkable of all Chadian inventions. I don’t know of a single way to bathe that is better. I have Page 126 →tested baths and showers of all kinds (in the most modest of hotels and in those with five stars). None have produced the happiness you feel in a roofless shower, completely open to the sky. What makes this an incomparable sensation are the earthen walls, unequaled poverty, but which, in this situation, are enriched with sun, with infinity, with air and space, as only a landscape as rough as Chad’s can give us. Neither a dip in our rivers nor a sauna in Finland has ever left me with infinity prickling through my skin. It often happens that young women, as well as those of a respectable age, enjoying the sensation, lose track of everything and, their bodies sticky with soap, suddenly find themselves trapped by an inexplicable lack of water. So, from behind the house, they raise up an SOS whose meaning is lost on no one. A basin of the precious liquid flies to their rescue. It is whispered that the shower, on that particular afternoon, has been a successВ .В .В . Carried away by the desire to exhaust the pleasure of water on the skin, these sensual women end by pouring the bucket of water over their heads, along with what is left of the dirt. With outdoor showers, the sun, air, and water emancipate the body, opening it up to a freedom like no other. The space around us has neither mirror, nor tiling, nor towel rack. In fact, it can be quite dirty. Water stagnates there, and the first touch can be repulsive. The first drops of water bouncing against the dry earth can be strange and unbelievable. “What am I doing here?” you ask. “Am I really going to take a shower here?” Then, little by little, your body is dampened, then soaked, then it invents its very own ocean equal to the celestial expanse, its silent witness. A miracle governs the shower beneath the sun: Your body feels as though it’s being watched, admired, loved. When the scale is this immense, it is no longer a question of voyeurism or even modesty. Your

body approaches the shore of happy nakedness. A shower, always taken in an upright position and with an open roof, culminates verticality with the cosmos: The sky, the sun, the zenith—even when it’s no longer high noon. In the tropics, heat is a kind of eternal noon. The world reconfigures itself upon the skin of the bather beneath the sun. The sky, without a doubt, has fallen in love. Within this vesperal poem, can I mention, parenthetically, the furtive page of a particular morning? I want to talk about the birth of the world, mornings in the countryside, my neighborhood’s distant past. But the city has invaded its space, masked its splendor; the scorching heat has gotten the better of the bit of energy remaining in my power. I no longer get up at dawn to await the sunrise over the Chari. But occasionally an adversity arises that sets us straight Page 127 →again. It took my mother coming down with a bout of malaria for me to find the power I needed to get up early in the morning. Chad’s grandeur is measured in the fact that happiness, in its very permanence, is felt as a state of impending danger. It is equal to thirst, a real thirst that is part of the experience of a rift. Such thirsts are never quenched. Since four o’clock, I have kept watch over the night. It grew whiter as time passed. The stars competed with one another in bursts. They were words made of diamonds. Their harmony was desperately precise, so beautiful; so perfect was their music, and, at the same time, so indifferent to me, their most appreciative listener. For the first time, I understood the meaning of our literature’s foundational text, In Chad under the Stars. For the most part, residents of N’Djamena represent the extreme tip of the group fashioned by the ample thirst and hunger in the north of the country. Without risk of error, one could say that the nation’s tragedy became visible in dawn’s first glimmers. I was admiring this land of pure spirits, a land of diamonds. Its ferocity is superior to the angels’. Lucifer was nothing in comparison. For the collection of stories In Chad under the Stars, Joseph Brahim Seid, the first Chadian writer of that name and the founder of our literature, had only to raise his eyes to write. Our destiny was sealed with the comets’. When you understand that, you become forever indifferent to the affairs of the world. What can I tell my people, but that the sky is as captivating as disaster. Moving as it is, it is as unjustifiable for me to situate my hope within it as it is for me to curb it. Yes, that beauty, too, is unjustifiable. Like cardboard cutouts from major Hollywood films, it charms us all the more assuredly when nothing worthwhile is promised behind the scenes. My countrymen do not contemplate our vibrant, marvelous sky, and rightly so. From four to five o’clock, I got ready. My mother’s illness and her lack of coolness undermined my enthusiasm. If the authorities at the Chagoua Land Registration Office had possessed the necessary skills—and when you think about it, the required skills were not particularly extraordinary—they would have turned it into a new Sanaa. The Yemeni capital was our model. Not only Chagoua, but N’Djamena as well. In fact on old postcards, Fort-Lamy, as it used to be called, is nothing but colonial buildings. The only picturesque note, the sole mark of authenticity, are the Sudanese houses—made of pisГ©, naturally. On yellowed photos they reach up with pride, like giant termite mounds, to conquer the sepia skies. The atmosphere rustles with their otherworldly solemnity. This morning, I walk close to similar walls. This relative solitude makes Page 128 →me feel as if I were recovering the neighborhood’s true identity, still plunged in crystal transparence—because the day keeps me waiting for a few minutes more. Imminent brightness reigns and I am a god—the sun and the son of a divine ray. Which of our engineers will teach our builders to mix cobs with bricks and not lead us to our ruin? When will we learn to be happy with our own materials? And to build functional homes that answer all the demands of modernity and still last for one hundred years? Yes, which of our technicians will teach us to build multileveled houses out of pisГ©, which were so common in my childhood and which amazed me so? Through them, I knew I inhabited myself, even though I was not able express such an idea until decades later. My nostalgia goes all the way back to my childhood; it is the same color as my skin, it is my skin. I stood there as a child, long ago, watching with fascination as they rose vertically toward the sun. Just like this morning, when the North Star guides my steps toward my mother.

One after the other, I count the compounds on my street. There is my Aunt B——’s house. She has three daughters, three goddesses, three beams of light, three flirts. They’ve left their mother’s home, brought a good deal of money back to her. My aunt has become a real bourgeoise, but she’s ashamed of it. She came across a secret and this made her grow distant. Even her house has transformed itself—it’s so hard to return to childhood. My aunt’s compound was dismantled brick by brick (the bricks were made of earth) and then rebuilt in red brick. It’s solid, I like it; it’s not made of hollow blocks. Right now, my aunt lives far from my thoughts. When she’s dying, childhood will return, and we’ll get back in touch. A hundred meters from there, Benjamin’s father—the neighborhood leader—doesn’t look like he’s changed in thirty years. His wife died last year. He’s still as tall, as thin, as clever. Yesterday I saw him on a scaffolding repairing the facade to his entryway. How old is he? Seventy? Seventy-five? Eternity is etched in his bronze features. Benjamin, my childhood friend, has been ruined by alcohol. His father brings him home every night in a wheelbarrow. Then he straightens up and smiles. I must have seen about twenty people before arriving at my mother’s. They were all strangers in the light coming from the desert, coming from the “world” .В .В . This emphasized the farewell to the stars; under the sun’s pressure, they faded without regret because they knew a cycle was being completed. Page 129 →My own cycle was beginning. Day is always experienced as deliverance, but in N’Djamena, this feeling doesn’t last. As the morning ends, I already feel the need for twilight. Hell begins at 8:00 a.m., and by 11:00, the suffering that has been endured equals a lifetime. Happiness, if it can be imagined, is the possibility of a smile despite it all, is the possibility of lunch, work, reading, and, possibly, writing. I may be deceiving myself, but I know my mother isn’t proud of me. How many times has she suffered under the sun? How many times have her sandals swept the dust of the roads? And the nights when she waited for help? No one calls the police in N’Djamena. Or the fire department or a taxi. You’re left to your own devices. In this city only the bourgeoisie survives. Lesser people are condemned. Unless you have your own car (or some devoted, sophisticated friends), you are subject to serious danger. My television tangent—the allusion to the Calabrese Mafia—is truly pathetic. It’s nine-thirty in the morning. I say goodbye to my mother in a crystalline light that quenches our thirst with its gentleness, like a star that never takes its eyes from us. My mission is drawing to a close. I saw my mother, we have seen each other: This is happiness. I prepared her breakfast; we ate in the front yard. Opposite us, the soap tree, in its hunter-green dress, looked gray. The sun is transparent; the sky could dissolve into it. They form an alliance of unbearable beauty. A straw hat protects me from their reverberations. Sunglasses, too. The streets are teeming with people. At the market in Abena, there’s a real crowd. I make my way through without too much difficulty. Now I’m on the main street. I cross. People become more scarce, motorcycles, too. An empty lot stretches out before me, ending at the feet of the barracks’ high walls. From time to time, I raise my head; I want to whistle a tune. Suddenly, an apparition. In the road’s crevasses, on the horizon, like a bull ready to charge, a big, beautiful Japanese car takes shape. I am in awe! A Land Cruiser is like zebus and gnus, buffalos and rhinos. The top-of-the-line models (preferably white) are like nickel-and-chrome tanks. They tumble through the dust flexibly; their back ends swinging like the rolling movement of an exotic dancer. Thus why it moves like a gnu. The all-terrain vehicle contains a muscular kind of explosive beauty. I’m also thinking of a bison’s stubborn strength. A Land Cruiser, on Chagoua’s ruined roads, is forced to crawl along slowly: It rocks, dances, waltzes. A dozen meters separate us now. Page 130 →Its chrome (door handles, bumpers, hubcaps) shines with a brilliance that is both insolent and gentle, a surreal brilliance. Its front emblem captivates my attention. A beautiful nickel oval encircles another vertical one, a kind of rugby ball, and the whole thing is girded (not exactly in the middle) by an ellipse in the upper quadrant that looks like a pair of stylized zebu horns. A Chadian zebu, of course. When, finally, the imposing Japanese vehicle reaches, and then passes, me—still in no hurry—it’s as if, by its proximity, my zebu ripped away my remaining inertia. The untamable machine has just passedВ .В .В . Enlightened by its barely contained power, I can no longer doubt this 4x4 was invented for the people of Chad.

Nothing seems to justify being honored in this way. Or, rather, yes it does. We are not a race of engineers (our intelligence is not to blame), we are a race of walkers; it’s the dust that offers me this lesson. The way the Land Cruiser rocked across our good old flour suddenly appears to me like the indication of a great discovery. My feet are no longer touching the ground; I feel wings sproutingВ .В .В . As a cloud of dust marks the increasing distance between me and the Land Cruiser, my mind returns to its emblem. I realize that it represents an overly simplified globe. The vehicle is indeed a globetrotter. This clarification does not satisfy me in the least; it’s too emotionless. Because I loved the 4x4 for its dust, the dust of one of our very own zebus charging with every ounce of its nickel. That’s when the memory of a “bullfighting” morning came back to me so violently. Thirty years ago, just as Sunday school was beginning, I was almost engorged by the horns of an enraged zebu. A herd had just gone by, but I hadn’t paid it any mind, when, suddenly, I realized that a “bull” was about to charge me. It was about thirty meters away. I had time to see it coming. The world froze around me. As the extraordinary mass of muscles and energy rushed toward me as fast as it could, I was petrified with fear. Or, rather, it seemed frozen in the eternity of speed. I was doomed and I found it unjust to die in such a fashion on a Sunday morning, far from my mother’s gaze. I had not yet read Death in the Afternoon or A Happy Death or any other literary transposition of life. It was morning, it was nice, it was cool, and, in a few fractions of a second, I found the time to revolt before dying. I could vaguely make out the people surrounding the arena the crazy zebu and I formed. Behind him, incredibly small, because I was seeing everything through a tunnel, his owner, a Fula man on puny legs, was struggling to catch him. And before the animal could impale me, an old man at the edge of the Page 131 →improvised arena shouted at me to get down on the ground. And I obeyed him, carried away by the shouts coming from both inside and outside me that I had to give myself over to the animal that was going to disembowel me without hesitation. My salvation, I instinctively understood, resided in somehow sacrificing my body to him by joining myself to the earth, as the voice commanded. What I heard was the echo of my own dread. This in no way negated the presence of the old man; it reinforced it. And this is how I wound up on the ground, unconscious. The beast waved its horns over my body, it drooled; its master intervened—or that’s what I was told later. He rained blows down upon it. Then they continued their wild race across the road. As for the old man, he looked after me when I regained consciousness. “It’s doesn’t matter,” he told me. “The zebu charged you because of your red shirt,” he added with a smile filled with understanding. So my life had been hanging by a thread. This made me even more upset. As for my mother, when she heard my Sunday morning miracle, she was speechless. It is twilight again: the hour of visits. I can do this because feeling has returned to my body. It is the return of the body to itself. Going out onto the front step involves a curious manner of admitting this to yourself. Happiness is the opening. It’s my turn to discover myself. I remember when Papa came back from Lake Chad. We were still living in Maman’s first house. Personally, I was unaware that I was watching the unveiling of paternal incompetence. I would have this confirmed many times afterward, particularly in regard to myself: my inability to have a career, to amass property, to compile or simply manage the most modest of inheritances. For our well-being, Maman tried desperately to include her name on various and sundry land-title registries. Papa cared nothing for these things, and even appeared to be somewhat frightened of them. When he returned among us, he carried only an oar, a pole, and a Bible. Beneath other skies, he would have undoubtedly equipped himself with the hammer and sickle in one hand, The Little Red Book or Das Kapital in the other. But enough with revolutionary emblems! Chagoua’s landscape was still green then. My mother had a vegetable garden in the yard: two flats of lettuce, one of carrots, two of tomatoes. Papa seemed a bit lost. But I was happy to see him again. I had missed him so much. The only land he had to reconquer was his place beside my mother. I had been unaware that such a drought could exist within human beings: a drought of the soul. Papa was known to be a good pastor, but now he had to Page 132 →prove he had a green thumb. Just like the Chadian drama to follow, he failed to make Maman’s heart blossom again. We had drawn away from paradise forever: Sara-de-Gaulle, the untouched garden, was well and truly lost.

The great homeland of the poor is not the stars. I must play Baudelaire off against Joseph Brahim Seid (Paris Spleen vs. In Chad under the Stars). The stars are rocks of thirst; they are never slaked. What man has the power to fulfill a diamond’s attention? A Chadian warrior has a thirst for blood, and nothing has the power to color his immaculate soul for all eternity. He possesses immense skies within, but he lacks clouds, the clouds to which, in my youth, I dedicated coconut palm fronds. “I love clouds, the marvelous clouds!” shouted Baudelaire’s stranger. I admit it: This is the only motivation for my daily visits to my mother. When I was a child, as soon as the sky clouded over, we would shout at the top of our lungs, “The weather’s nice! The weather’s nice!” In the tropics, well-being is winning your place in the shade. This is a life truth that I will have to reconquer in another way than though questioning my childhood. It is getting late now. My goal is to remain loyal to the dust. In it we find a summary of my existence. Ever since my first book, I’ve been skirting the difficulty of living within it. What wisdom can be derived from it? I do not know. The observation remains: Widowed and orphaned images are sketched upon the ruins of our houses. Dust has nothing of value to offer. I wait for the clouds. They will come, backlit perhaps, like this morning, as the North Star disappeared—just where the nine o’clock sun should be, as if to roll its eyes at me—in the furbelows of celestial coolness. My mother invents this country. It took me such a long time to articulate this. Yet it is so simple. Forever stripped of the least of my treasures, especially when I turned nineteen—the age of the civil war—the country has never ceased pillaging me. My mother incarnates this destitution. To Chad’s poets, of today and tomorrow, I dedicate this parcel of nudity that even the morning coolness scorns. To find a maternal attribute here, much imagination is required. As a poet, this is my job. My mother invents Chad.

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The Lover The secret was indeed too heavy. But it was light, all the same. I understood immediately that I would never again have another like it. I was fulfilled. It was the beginning of June, the school year was nearly over, my last at that location. I was finishing fifth grade. The flamboyant trees bedecked Avenue Mobutu. To the left of the schoolyard, at the edge of the empty lot, they unfurled their purple hues toward the sky, like declarations of love. This transfixed me. Finishing off the year with such efflorescence caused me to think that the road to middle school would be delicious. It also meant that I had been found worthy of trying out my first pair of pants. I felt a kind of pride that originated in the very pulp of time. It protected me from nostalgia, against the sadness of leaving these buildings, the desks, the dust in which we had sent our marbles rolling during recess, from the first day of our studies to the last. A kind of pride helped me begin my ascension; it sanctioned my entrance into sixth grade and my entrance into adult life, with its anticipated regrets, stifled heartbreaks, sobs (no, let’s not talk about that, it’s unbecoming). I knew that the beloved faces of Dossou, Malick, Jean, Mathys, Randi, Paul, Djimtou, Abel, Titus, and so many others would scatter among different schools: the LycГ©e FГ©lix-EbouГ©, the CEG 1, the CEG 2, and the CollГЁge Г©vangelique (this one was preferred because it offered the best education). My own two eyes would not suffice for the associated tears; I would need to create my own exaltation, a fairy-tale enchantment. I never imagined I would succeed so brilliantly. The solution was obvious, but it had never occurred to me. All it would take was falling in love. Was my current state due to the flowery month that alternately offered rain, sun, and blue skies? Perhaps. For the first time, I could feel my heart. Or, to be more precise, my heart was revealing itself to me. Inside I was brand new, just like the twenty-five-franc coin Maman would slip into the palm of my hand when it was time to buy bread. It was Page 134 →very difficult for me to hand this coin over to the baker. I would make sure that Maman had no other coins; if she did, I would ask for the other, less shiny one, instead. After all, the baker cared little for how the money glistened; all that mattered to him was that it was authentic. The twenty-fivefranc piece was never fake; its golden patina and its modest value were protection against counterfeiters. It took something of a poet to appreciate this copper coin, something of an aesthete—in short, a child at heart, as luckily, I was. For me, the coin represented a priceless farthing, a kind of gem. Inside my sheltering pocket, my hand turned it over again and again; I knew it was there, safe and sound, wrapped in precious metal. Its beautiful coating emphasizing its marvelous, fundamental value. In the meantime, I had grown. I was still enamored with the little coin, but that was all. Its glitz, like that of many other coins of the realm, always ended up fading, even if it could be restored with a bit of saliva and a handful of sand. The sad thing about a facelift is that it never completely erases the insults of time. It can make old skin shine, as if to both fascinate and trouble us. The waters of the fountain of youth can never replace a youthful return. One has only to see old people. I mean seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds, when they butt into our business. They don’t suspect how their presence weighs upon us like shadows of anxiety, improper for our age. Usually the whole thing ends in an argument. Oh, such learned intruders! But where was I? Ah, yes, the lovely little coinВ .В .В . By itself, it serves the public health. It doesn’t clean you up like we clean up a bargaining chip. No, it is more miraculous. It operates from within. Actually, only three weeks before I learned how metal, even a brand-new penny, could be so very cold. That’s its nature, you say. My heart, my own pretty little heart, was shooting off sparks that couldn’t be compared to the token, which, until then, had kept me warm. That’s the right expression: kept me warm. The twenty-five-franc coin carried me away; it turned me into a butterfly. (Although I’ll admit I have yet to see a golden butterfly, even in a picture book, but that doesn’t matter.) I was beaming. Somehow this word fits within the realm of my abilities. At home, at Sunday school, we were urged to beam like children of light. The golden-bronze coin sparkled with immaculate kindness, universal light; it was without origin, infinite in its mission—God himself, in a way. The emotion it generated within me was too large, too vast, even if its fireworks were only in the palm of my hand. A saint’s halo is a splendor from another place. I could finally say this: A flame of unknown essence was causing my heart to beat. I nearly confessed to my father, “God lacks infinite tenderness, a kind of sensual pleasure.”Page

135 → But I did not say this to my father. Or to Mathys, my best friend. I had been enlightened; my knowledge was based on evidence. It was up to them to see that now. And Mathys did see it. “You’re always running,” he said in surprise, “you whistle, you leap, you climb trees; the end-ofthe-year sadness isn’t getting to you.” When I heard his words, I smiled. I smiled like a rasta in a Connaissance du monde documentary: subtly, as if filled with sweet wine. If I think hard about it, I too had been given the distinguished pleasure of receiving a portion of universal intelligence. I was shining from a place no one could locate. In other words, I no longer belonged to myself. But then I was deeply happy. I could feel the life of the world, each atom of inhaled air, the vibrations of every thought, aromas, flowers, the molecules of my blood, and that great softness whose origin I couldn’t place, but which convinced me that I had come into a full awareness of myself. I was living a sort of rebirth. My desire to confide in Mathys was all the greater because I couldn’t decide to do it. Everything happened as if the end of that last school year wanted to reveal a secret to me. I, the only one who could enrich my future, by displaying to myself the delights that lived within me. I was unaware how nice I could be—at least, to myselfВ .В .В . So within my sanctuary I stroked Mathys’s face; or, to give honor where honor is due, the mischievous knowledge of my teacher, Mr. Jean-Claude MalaГЇka—and also, and always, the buildings whose births I’d witnessed one after the other, from the first set of three classrooms—the school’s foundation—through to the two classrooms in seckos the second year. They would soon be replaced by an earthen house that would in turn be destroyed to make way for a concrete building. My heart followed the evolution; it was growing. I was unaware that it was saving the best for last. So, I fell in love. Mathys knew the girl who put me in this state. I wondered if he would suffer or laugh if I told him her name. Her face was always before my eyes. I could make out her features in an instant. I knew there was no danger in confiding in Mathys. What worried me were the three months of vacation we would spend on our own, three months of absence, in addition to the possibility of being separated again in September, for example, him at one school, me at another, and my love at the girls’ school. I wasn’t strong enough to address that kind of outcome. I was saving myself in the hopes that the new school year would live up to my expectations. I cultivated them in my garden. A garden of rocks and water, a natural garden, a daisy garden. I believed in their permanence. Every year, in the Page 136 →month of May, when wildflowers dot the banks of the Chari, the same feeling engulfed me. This time, it seemed the daisies would survive September’s floods; they would open and offer themselves like a bouquet of sun, only to be gathered by kindly hands and then immediately given to my beloved. She was calm, the very picture of kindness, and sweet. Her name was Odile. She had won me over the year before, at about the same time, and then had turned away from me. There was nothing violent or excessive in her gestures or words; she was interested in my friend. But Mathys preferred Prisca. Odile, always respectful of others’ choices, had withdrawn without a fuss. At the start of this past school year, she returned with a shadow of femininity in her body and voice. I loved her from the first time she batted her eyes. She was wearing a flowered dress that outlined her waist and revealed her curves. It made me tremble. I would have liked to confide these impressions to my friend. For the one who feels them, they are a contentment that is stronger than speech. The sun shines in them, the world is fresh. Contemplating such beauty would have led me to keep watch over a kindergarten. For it’s innocence that sustains my heart. Yesterday, Odile approached me: she gave me her hand. I didn’t know the palm of a girl of her age—or of any age—could be so creamy. Without thinking, I took hold of that surface of fathomless depth, which still suggests eternity to me. I never got over it. A different morning, we went to the back of the schoolyard. Sheltered from other’s eyes, Odile gave me a handkerchief, pale blue, almost mauve, like the bindweeds that grew along the canal behind the school. It was as if she were offering me the sky.

At the center of the handkerchief, and in pink, Odile had embroidered a heart pierced by an arrow. At the arrow’s point and tail, “you” and “me” were joined by a very bloody shot. I looked at Odile . . . If any part of her deserved contemplation, it was her eyes. They were as vast and beautiful as always. In her white pupils several teardrops danced. She was crying, she was emptying into me her pent-up joy. And I drank it up. This is when I understood why I should hide from my friend. I wanted to keep Odile’s affection to myself, because the vacation would be far too long. I would exhaust its flame and energy if I shared it with Mathys. Now, I was sure to use it sparingly. All through my heart’s winter, I would maintain the fire that consumed me, and even my mother, leaning over the hearth, would know nothing about it. And, when school started again, enough wood would be left to light a blaze.

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The Return My mother conformed consciously with common conceptions of widowhood. Her mourning dress (without a collar, as if bare on her leathery flesh, her bright, silent flesh) haunted her thin body, stirred by a certain vitality that also gave it a regal bearing. If you looked her in the eye, you could see she distrusted herself. Her revolt thus seemed irreversible. On her neck, an Augsburg cross sparkled like a jewel. Yet it was only a bit of common metal, worn thin by old skin. The cross emphasized her Lutheran beliefs and the memory of my pastor father, who had died four years before. It also expressed what remained of her pride, the only trace of insubordination that still moved my mother’s spirit. She protested against life with her entire being. Without this stiffness, I would not have recognized her. Later, as I became accustomed to her presence, I would learn that it was GisГЁle, her French daughter-in-law and a perfect stranger, who had sent her the dress. I had arrived at the N’Djamena airport at eight in the morning. Within this new space, my eyes tried to focus. They struggled against different kinds of light: the diffuse light of the night from which I had emerged, the light of the country opening up before my eyes, and the residual light that I had left behind. All sent their regards to my facial muscles. It was November. I had left the French autumn to find the earliest signs of Chad’s harmattan. A hint of the season’s typical coolness distracted me from the fear of the unknown, although my panic skyrocketed during the customs formalities and would only continue to grow. I hadn’t let anyone know I was coming. Since I had been living in France for so long, I had become a naturalized citizen. Still, I presented the border police with my Chadian passport. The agents settled for giving me a sniff, an undeniable sign that my position as an exile impressed them. They could have arrested me and thrown me in prison. My long Page 138 →absence from the country was an excellent motive for confinement. But they could always call me back and torture me, so I couldn’t be certain of having escaped seeing my name on some blacklist. I had left an intensely anxious GisГЁle in Paris. Alain, our two-year-old son, was looking after her. Our adorable little mГ©tis had promised me as much, his lips pronouncing the simple words that a father and mother find so touching. As I left, I assured GisГЁle that I would register with the consulate general at the French Embassy. I knew (or at least had a feeling) that she had already called the consulate. My visit would just confirm what she had done. I was walking along marked paths. More and more, the trip from N’Djamena seemed an opportunity to break—at least temporarily—with the excess of comfort that my life had become. I almost asked the taxi to drive me to the embassy. I thought the better of it in time, but not without some anxiety. Determined to keep myself in check, I was falling back into my old ways. That’s when I decided to call GisГЁle and the French mission after I’d seen my mother. A stranger greeted me. She was round, pretty, and cheerful, helpful in any case. She called me petit pГЁre and I showed my surprise with a smile. But before she finished the sentence, “I’m Rebecca, Bena’s daughterВ .В .В .” I already understood. She was my cousin. I had last seen her when she was seven. Now she must have been about fifteen. This perfect village girl seemed to have adjusted to the city, but I was confused to see her here. Papa hadn’t really nurtured his relationship with his younger brother. Usually the girls who busied themselves around our house were from my mother’s side of the family. There was so much to do in the home of a minister of God, and Maman always needed the help of many hands. Uncle Bena had shown his charitable side when he had his daughter come work for my mother. This is how I knew it was finally possible to breathe in my father’s house. More specifically, the space he’d left vacant in death had opened up just enough to hold his wife’s anger. Observing my mother in this way sets my father’s memory in a rather unflattering light. I was upset about it, but I was also eager to find the cause of such a radical change. Sitting in my father’s favorite chair, my mother filled the entryway. Her worn face, an old woman’s face, froze my blood. Its impression discouraged my plans to remember it. I filed it away instinctively, knowing that, in a few moments, I would have completely forgotten the initial shock,

helped by the outrageous sentimentalityPage 139 → our loved ones communicate to us. My return was running up against a great wall from the past. For the time being, amazement was winning out. I maintained enough composure not to ask, “Who is this?” The gentle Rebecca hurried quickly into the house, as if she sensed my confusion. Just as she was disappearing, she turned around, her neck leaning lightly toward her right shoulder. As she raised her head, she gave me a smile full of understanding, encouraging me to approach. Maman was in the middle of the room; the light from the door fell upon her. I prayed, “Let her still have her mind!” Then no, this couldn’t be happening. She didn’t deserve such misfortune. I approached the old woman. I crouched down at the foot of her chair. Her face, which had become too long for my taste, now resembled an African mask, except that it seemed much more alive than the even the most perfectly executed patina. The perfect motionlessness of Maman’s features made her even nobler. Her cheekbones, once so high and well versed in showing surprise, had melted. The last time I’d visited, five years before, I had spent all my time making her laugh so I could enjoy the show they put on. I had given myself the mission of returning to Paris with the kindness that encircled the lower parts of her eyes. This was my war treasure, my pleasure, my most buried happiness. Even GisГЁle didn’t need to know about it. I acted like a mother who, during her unending periods of contemplation, enjoys making her baby laugh, even if it leads to stomach cramps. In her current state, I would have ample opportunity to congratulate myself. My mother’s face had become unrecognizable. Her eyes were filled with blackness at the center of a limitless sea of white. In their depths was the trace of permanent reproach. I was crushed. My mother’s features had lost their sharpness; it had become hard for emotions, especially the “good” ones, to take hold. She was in a free fall in the middle of her own face. For the first time, I realized that this face was a sensitive lens in which the image of the world had been reconstructed. I was afraid she could feel my thoughts. All the while, she looked at me with a smile that suggested the former outline of her beloved face. I shouted, “Maman!” And she immediately tensed up. “There. Now our family is reunited once again,” I said to myself. Yet I knew that Papa would not be coming back to us. I had murmured the words out of sheer need: It was essential that the words be said, like that, within me. They filled a void, and now that the void was no longer empty, I began to feel a Page 140 →sense of euphoria. Fullness and emptiness symbolized me. Then I mumbled, “A child should never go too far from his mother, I mean an only child.” “Very true,” my mother replied, without missing a beat. It was as if she’d read my mind, and, in fact, she had. How stupid of me. I had forgotten that she was the one who created the emptiness inside me, as well as the fullness. She had never acted in any other way. She’d make me feel comfortable, I’d start murmuring kind things to myself, and then just like that she’d intervene. It was always to bring me back down to earth. Yet again, her reply left me speechless. I hated conversations that remained in limbo, and the one I had just begun with Maman was highly predictable. We had been practicing intensely since the earliest days of my childhood. Through me, Maman spoke to the stillborn boy who had preceded me. She scolded him in my name, as he had not even had time to receive one. “He was as handsome as a god, you know. The angels were jealous, so they took him back into their ranksВ .В .В .” She had confessed this to me only once, but it marked me forever. I would always have to accept having an absent brother, with being the pale double of a ghost. This increased my fear of not exactly being an only child. This return brought me face-to-face once again with the same evidence: Mother’s endless success in making me feel guilty. Were we about to start again? Yes, undoubtedly. I was her son; she was my mother. All she had to do was breathe as loving mothers breathe to make me feel, once again, the headiness of devotion. Music was unleashed within me, a kind of lullaby, a mellifluous rocking chair. When I was here five years ago, she had said, “You want to dissipate my race by marrying a French woman? I will not curse your union; mothers don’t have that right. But stillВ .В .В . I don’t like your fiancГ©eВ .В .В . This is unbelievable! You never miss a chance to create distance between us. You’ve been doing it since you were a teenagerВ .В .В . Is this reasonable for my son, my only son?” She wanted me to give in to her, as always. I found a place to hide while she complained. It was a compromise

solution. Between revolt and resignation, I gained a space that allowed me to love her without being angry. I liked places where my mother’s presence was most palpable. Those were the places where I could dance, where her vibrations were strongest, the only child. Because everything had to remain intact between Maman and me. When I married, I acquired other brothers and sisters, but from a kind of borrowed mother. In my mother’s eyes, I remained an only child, because such siblings were questionable. But she took stock of the situation’s risks. She knew I multiplied easily in the hearts of others. In the past, she had been jealous of my friends who came from large families. Whatever she may have thought of Page 141 →them, when I was with them, I attained fullness. The universe would begin to sing above, beneath, and around me. I loved these numbers and the way they gestured from within the heart of the music. By reminding me of my duties, or at least what she called duties, Maman almost turned me into a rebel. She wouldn’t have been accused, however; Papa would have paid the price. People would have said: “Have you seen the pastor’s son? What a failure!” I didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to talk that way. I had dodged my father’s profession, but that didn’t mean I wanted to put him to shame. Maman is the one who wanted this misfortune. Because that’s how she was. She liked to do harm without knowing why. Without appearing involved, she would nonetheless give her support to the evil spirit that was attempting to set me against my father. She wasn’t entirely responsible for this unfortunate inclination. It was every family’s destiny—and, oddly enough, the destiny of families in which, from morning to night, kids are told, “You are children of the light.” These children rebel; inevitably they become “children of darkness.” And, incomprehensibly, Maman would make it a point to become the fatal teacher in this particular school. Whether doing this or something else, she always acted casually. She would never apologize. Papa accepted everything with magnanimity. He did not dictate how I should behave; he let me live. Maman thought he was apathetic and would often scold him. He would smile in return. When Maman’s mood allowed, he would add, “I only have one son!” to which mother would reply, “and of course you created him all by yourself! ” Personally, my response was to laugh. Papa, too. He would laugh discreetly, or when he was out of her sight. He always made an effort to be good to her. Papa’s courage made me think of those butterflies that, without our knowing it, decorated the edges of our world so as to increase its harmony with our happiness. But, when Maman exceeded the limits, he would correct her good-naturedly. “That’s enough, ThГ©rГЁse!” “Oh! Defending your son against his mother? Poor preacher, you’ll have to account for it to God.” “God is not just a judge, ThГ©rГЁse my loveВ .В .В . Let’s forget it, okay?” “As you wish, my good husband, you make the decisions.” This is how unimportant squabbles would end, and, in a certain way, they were all unimportant. They were justified by the fact that Maman always had to get a word in. This was a sacred requirement. Sometimes she would intervene in the council’s discussions, something my father’s associates did not particularly appreciate. They misunderstood Maman’s true character. To Page 142 →tell the truth, she dominated me and me alone. Papa only had to pretend to be offended for everything to settle down again. By occasionally intervening in the Elders’ Council, Maman wanted to point out that a woman had her place there as well. My father’s authority was strong enough to keep things from getting out of control. Papa was a tall tree; the birds of the world could compose, at the whim of the branches, their skillful or mischievous scores. He guaranteed their genius. What would happen to their music if he was no longer present? This is what happened to Maman. Now a widow, alone on the stage, she was misjudged. When Maman finally decided to talk to me, she said, “How is my grandson?” “Great, Maman,” I said, relieved to hear the sound of her voice. With such a fine preamble, I expected her to ask about her daughter-in-law, but she said nothing else.

“GisГЁle sends you her best,” I finally said. “She must be a good mother,” she answered. “Her son is very handsome.” Then she added, “Rebecca, bring me the picture that’s on the sideboard.” Without a glance at the young girl, she grabbed the small, wine-colored, wooden frame, then she murmured, as if admitting to herself, “I gaze at them every day, the son and the motherВ .В .В .” After that, she went silent for a full second. “Now that you’re here, you must go to AdrГ© to raise a stone for your father. You owe him that much.” “Yes, Maman.” For the first time, I’d acquiesced to my mother without feeling the kind of surrender that made me suffer so. Let me just say that I knew exactly what I was doing when I accepted her call. The only goal of my trip was to inscribe my presence on the landscape. The most appropriate place for such a gesture could only be the cemetery in which Papa had been buried. In one of her letters, Maman had told me the following, “Behind the presbytery, a row of white stones outlines the rectangle of his final resting place. Come pour a slab, my son. The church is cowardly, they are slow to act.” I did not understand the confusion that had precipitated my father’s death, but I did understand Maman. If the church had failed at its task, as she maintained, this failure would relieve me of my debt. I had the opportunity to show my worth. Maman wanted a family member to pray at my father’s tomb. At the same time, she carefully neglected to tell me that my uncle Bena had been at his brother’s burial, even though she hadn’t gone herself. Nor had she Page 143 →gone since. In any case, she didn’t tell me any of that. She never got over her grief; she had walled herself up within it. Papa’s final post was one she could not accept. To her the eastern part of Chad meant nothing good. The desert, the expanse of sand, the dustВ .В .В . It was too much for a woman her age. After so many years of loyal service, she demanded the right to rest. This is why she refused to follow her husband. She never imagined she would lose him in the meantime. The country was indeed very troubled. Even at the last outposts of the desert, militias sprouted up like mushrooms. Like Maman, what I objected to most was the fact that they sent a man with most of his career behind him to such a place. The church’s decision had stunned me. Did they have so few young pastors? Or, as I imagined, had Papa asked for the transfer? He was undoubtedly counting on a rich experience. But he knew absolutely nothing about the revolution. The man that had descended upon the country had released a cohort of criminals, who sought to make themselves known in organized bodies, like a militia. Their methods were efficient. It seems one of them murdered Papa to get hold of the church’s collection box. It was too high a price to pay. As for my mother, she held fast to the explanations that guilt imposed on her. “They wanted to punish your father,” she repeated over and over. I could only believe her. In Paris, I had already been subjected to my mother’s dreadful missives. They would come in bursts of two or four, as if they had been deliberately retained in some post office in France or Cameroon—the route they followed. There they took time to pool their energy, their poison, for eight to sixteen weeks. Then they would find me like a prisoner chomping at the bit with shame and remorse. That’s when a certain tune would begin to play in my head. It was a sort of plea for a man on death row. I was unhappy and wished to be even more so. This was the only way I had found to be forgiven for living in exile. Now that I was in my mother’s presence, my feelings reached a higher level of common sense. I could touch their edges, their depths; I could measure their echoes. The facts, which had filled me with anxiety because of their distance, now gave me pleasure. I was close enough to Maman not to be blamed for my supposed indifference or my absence. I heard some of her words anew, even with some pleasure, “Behind the presbytery, a row of white stones outlines the rectangle of his final resting place. Come pour a slab, my son.” For these words alone, I would have come running from the end of the world. I was ready to pay their price. At the time, my mother’s letter had arrived after September 21,

1981: the week after our wedding. For the past year, the revolution Page 144 →had been acting up. There were no more regularly scheduled flights between N’Djamena and Paris. Travelers had to go through YaoundГ©. There, they would switch to a different plane and then a bus in order to reach our capital, at the confluence of the Chari and the Logone, across from the peaceful Fort-Foureau. It was too much of an adventure for GisГЁle, who had never set foot in Africa. I was resigned to my sad fate. Distance exaggerated my worries—it also protected me from my mother’s unpredictable reactions. In the meantime, while we waited for things to calm down, we decided to have a child. I had taken the time to soak up information about the revolution before I got close enough to smell it. After four years of uncertainty, it was possible to venture a description of what it wasn’t. And just what wasn’t it? A regime of nonliberty—but that’s exactly what shouldn’t be said. I had worked, I had slept, I had dreamed of tomorrows that would sing, like everyone else. I remembered GisГЁle’s birthday, and Alain’s, and my in-laws’. When I finally decided to travel, GisГЁle did not prevent me. France had given the revolution the guarantees it demanded. Things were stabilizing. The revolution would continue till the final struggle. The terms of the agreement didn’t bother me. They were a testimony to normalization. International flights, business, and exchanges resumed. Even for me, with no criticism from the revolution. To visit one’s mother again was not a crime. “They never took your father seriously. Can you imagine, sending him so far away at his ageВ .В .В .” Despite what my mother said, my father was never more himself than when he made extreme gestures. At least, if I were to put faith in my memories, this would be the most favorable testimony the child I once was could give on his behalf. In January, the fog made our bodies gaseous, a condition our fishing trip would reinforce. I realized then that the air possessed a soul. Trapped in vapor, the bow of the pirogue on which Papa sat was barely discernible. Water became air and air became water. I knew he was there, silent, fuzzy, even as, with the strength of all his nerves, he attended to the different maneuvers. The situation was as melancholy as can be imagined. That’s when I thought about the story Maman told me about the woman who, every full moon, would carry her bundle of wood beneath the gaze of the world. She was said to be paying the penalty for disobeying the prohibition against working on the sabbath.Page 145 → Why didn’t she observe the sabbath (where I’m from Sunday is known as the sabbath)? “This is the punishment given to children who do not follow their mother’s instructions,” the learned voice reprimanding me concluded. I don’t know why I’ve always associated the curse of the woman and her bundle of sticks with any work that appears to be a task. It seemed that Papa was slaving away to keep us afloat. In my eyes, his ministry belonged to the kind of nobility that should exempt him from all other jobs. Except for the fact that, in my father’s day, pastors received neither salary nor subsidy. I went to AdrГ© without contacting the embassy. I did not rent a car; that would have been too flagrant for the guardians of the revolution. I traveled in disguise. Draped in a djellaba, I melted into the crowds. I braided white cheches into beautiful crowns upon my head. That is how I arrived at the Diguel bus depot, a ghost among other ghosts. My capacity for evanescence was accentuated by anxiety about the departure. It was like a breathing exercise to help you relax, a leap into the heart of duration, a return not to be realized. To tell the truth, I was gasping for breath. N’Djamena, as always, was breathing like an asthmatic. And this was not only due to the combination of a heat wave with carbon monoxide. My fellow countrymen had difficulty breathing because they so very rarely spoke. The inhabitants of the capital were sinking under the weight of silence. No day passed without news of disappearances. This was acknowledged in silence. But refraining from chatter was like digging cavities into the air. It ended with a mysterious benefit: stupor, painted in the depth of their eyes, powerful enough to transform their faces into vast question marks. With each goodbye they grew more absent from themselves. They became gazes filled with silent pleas. The city was filled with people who wanted to talk, and who couldn’t. Whenever a new case of disappearance reached the ears of the Ndjamenois, it felt as if speech had

reached a new level of aphasia. No matter the neighborhood, the street, or the house, people felt like prisoners in a glass cube. When a set of eyes rested upon it long enough, the transparent material would begin to perspire. The bravest Ndjamenois said the glass was weeping. They told you this with the depths of their eyes, with the thin layers of tears that coated their eyeballs. Of course, people still laughed—often about the memories of loved ones who had passed on—they even sang, they danced, they honked car horns, but in every burst of joy echoed a void. Something dry forced you to see the emptiness,Page 146 → which would release a waterfall of tears within you. They were molecules from which the moisture principle had been removed. N’Djamena, a body without water, moved via mysterious, coiled springs. People cried readily, even if this were seen. Sobbing, I took my place, horrified that my tears could dry up. But Maman’s words held me up: “You owe your father a grave.” Her command made me strong. I walked resolutely toward my duty, like my brothers in N’Djamena. They hurried toward a single goal: to resemble their dearly departed. They never lingered, they always went quickly, in love as in business. At the Diguel market (which is also the bus depot), the seller took my coins and then evaporated. The hard, bitter desert invaded me, until the moment when the seller reappeared. Three hours passed. Now, he looked at us seriously. There was a mix of intimidation, reserve, and curiosity in his gaze. He counted us, the number was right, so he disappeared again. After an expanse of two long hours, we finally boarded, squeezed closely together. I sat with a jug of water crammed on my lap, my sunglasses fixed under the cheches bandaging my head, while the truck moaned as it rattled off. For my companions, this was undoubtedly a routine trip; for me it was a pilgrimage. I knew nothing about the North; I knew the Sahel in upper Sudan only by name, its geologic beauty, its nudity whose destiny was an expanse in devotion. The grasslands I knew well; I had spent long hours contemplating them. I was familiar with the intimate fabric of hills and hillsides; I knew all about the density that grew beneath our feet when we walked the scrublands or moorlands; I have become well acquainted with the paths of France, but I knew nothing about the splendor that has created the great taciturn men of the Chadian Sudan. Their land of despondency and strangulation, their land of mortal transparency, I admired them like the eldest son of a ray of sunlight. But I did not yet know how this desolate landscape translated the secret of their survival; I did not know what to do or what to say, beyond the sensation of lightness and absence within my own body, which taught me abandon and forgetting, inertia and sleep. If I had hoped to distract myself from myself with this trip, I had reached my goal. None of my organs were in the usual place. My eyes told me of sound filling space; my mouth informed me of light; my hands took the pulse of my kidneys and liver; my eyes transformed into enormous palaces in which my mother’s voice, I have no idea why, repeated, Page 147 →again and again, “They’re waiting for you.” I began to understand the silent happiness of the people from the North. Despite what you might think, in cities they became talkative. The cities distract them from an essential truth: to see, to see, and to see without breathing a word. I arrived in the land of the revolution. All the players came from desert regions, a portion of the world that summed up the universe in a single stroke. It was an immense land, an immensity so miserly with word and gesture that you had to enter into yourself in order to seize a sense of honor, an indispensable emotion to the people here. Faced with its amplitude, faced with its beauty, you could not fail in the eyes of your brother, or of your enemy. Honor was a supply they never parted with. It represented their goatskin full of milk, their daily reserve of patience. No other form of richness was to be found. Even childhood remained hidden, except perhaps the childhood of the gods, just over there, just beyond the waterline where the Elysian fields sparkled. This detail sometimes made their country worrisome. I was unable to find a place where I could sketch the fleeting silhouette of a child, with his games and toys. This world was too grown-up for my taste, too stiff for tenderness. Their fundamental land was pride. Nothing else could be invented here, because there would never be a house, nor an action, to compete with the harshness of this land of absolutes. If the revolutionaries desired so desperately to impose silence upon us, it was in the memory of this undivided land that was their own. For as long as they could remember, they had had no other food: Their clans and tribes had tasted the presence of poverty, famine, their

share of unconfessed shame. Even when they became rich, it followed them. These new activists wanted to force us to contemplate the Sahel. What they neglected to tell us was that every man and woman actually owed themselves this. In the desert, by virtue of the exquisite modesty of bareness, God’s name was Allah and Allah’s name was God. I was happy to learn these new truths. I was happy about my place in the truck with the white boubous. We were piled against each other like bundles of used clothes, but I wasn’t offended. I let myself be carried along by the other travelers’ mysterious gazes, and by the vast, unchanging expanse, which slowly unfolded, as distant as the effort we shared in pronouncing a single word, the word “impossible,” for instance. And at the same time, the desert was now so near to me, so maternal, that it made the truck shiver. Page 148 →At each of our stops, my companions, opposite the sand-ocean, offered me tea. The bottom of the glass would taste of honey. At my last stop, I settled for saying goodbye by raising my arm. The truck was already moving off. Their ghostly eyes followed after me intently. When I arrived at the AdrГ© missionary station, I was still transfixed by their consideration. I walked about a kilometer. The flagpole on the modest prefecture building stood out behind my back. The road unfolded without a bump, mixing life and death to its endurance. I thought, “It’s still and always the Sahel, it’s life’s essenceВ .В .В .” At this moment I heard a dog, or rather, I realized he was happy I was there, his howl coming from nowhere. I was intrigued by this cry as vast as the sky, a cry that was the same, in my unbelieving eyes, as a starving animal’s. He rubbed against my legs, whined, and yelped. That’s when something Maman used to say occurred to me, one of those statements still wrapped in mystery: “Have you ever heard a dead man’s moan? I hear your father every day. Why didn’t he take me with him?” With this memory, a riddle that had haunted my nights for years was suddenly explained: Dream stories in which Maman told me she had met dead, dearly departed family members. When did my father stop paying attention to my mother’s stories? I am unable to say for sure. Perhaps when I was seventeen? I don’t know. It is possible that Papa never did take Maman seriously, but this, too, I am unable to confirm in any straightforward way. It is not that easy to expel the old African inside you. So I was the one Maman talked to about her restless nights. Her voice would turn hollow, her face would contort. She would explain her strange nocturnal encounters in plentiful detail. Sometimes, she would tell them as if she were a spectator, wrapped in a black dress that made her appear tiny. Other times she would identify with her ghosts and, like them, wear a white dress. “I saw my father,” she would say to me as if she were the victim of narcotics, “I saw my father and I spoke to him. This was the first time he spoke to me in a dream. Usually, even when we meet, he pretends to ignore me. This time, it wasn’t like that. Papa was nice to me. And my mother was there, and my big brother Jean, your uncle, too. It was hard for me to leave them. I thought of you, I couldn’t just leave you behindВ .В .В .” After a while, I began to understand Maman when she talked to me like that. I, too, burned to follow her into her kingdom of dreams. It frightened me a little, but Maman would reassure me. The only risk I ran was becoming somber,Page 149 → like she could be sometimes. Otherwise I had nothing to fear. For as long as her recollections lasted, I was a child again. What I mean is that I became someone navigating between the two shores of reality. Now I felt that nothing about life’s mystery could escape me. I made my decision; from now on, I would trust my mother’s dreams. What would Papa think? I don’t know. There, on the road leading me to his grave, the sense that I might meet him physically, so to speak, filled me with confirmation. I embraced realities that were not compatible with the Gospels. I can still hear my father preaching, “With the coming of Christ, dreams were no longer the vehicles of divine messages.” This statement no longer had meaning. Anyone who had seen how my mother lived would not be able to believe it. She frequented two worlds that were not as far apart as people claim. I liked the ghosts she enjoyed spending time with. The trip to AdrГ© would reveal that at least to me. Beneath the noonday sun, I felt as if I were being protected by the mosquito netting that Maman used to unfurl in our large living room at the heart of winter. But this time, the gauze tent wasn’t protecting me against mosquitos. I still didn’t understand what made the

dead howl, or why they made dogs howl. I was now in a position to understand Maman’s agony. She would give in to pain as to a friend. In her nightmares, I was sure, Papa showed he was proud of her. He had always defended her through thick and thin. My father would howl in grief, if he could see her where he was. When he, a great fisherman for the Eternal One, would return from the river and fog, Samuel, the handsome dog from my childhood, would dance a saraband for him. He followed us everywhere. It seems that, even after we die, dogs can still catch our scent. Beyond rivers, clouds, the ether. But Samuel had died fourteen years before, and I hadn’t had the heart to adopt another dog. Even Papa gave up this favor on behalf of his son, his own son, who was no longer really a child. We had also stopped running after balls on the beach. A pastor’s house should not shelter animals that frighten visitors. “You’re Daniel’s son, I suppose?” A European, about sixty, tall but slightly hunched, the skin on his neck crumpled like a sponge, stood a few steps from me. The dog had taken up so much of my attention, that I hadn’t noticed him. “Don’t be alarmed, young man, the dog clued me in. He belonged to your father.” Page 150 →I was stunned. “Yes,” he continued, “dogs are mysterious, this one in particular. He sensed a member of his master’s family in you. I’ve been here for six months and it’s the first time he’s shown any life. “A few hours ago—at dawn—someone knocked on my window, I thought I was mixing up facts and dreams. But the dog let out a long howl—the first I’ve ever heard—to remind me of the weight of the world. It pierced my heart. A few minutes ago, he let out the same cry. I leapt from my chair. I was sure then that this was an omen, and I was reassured when I saw you.” As he said this, I no longer knew where I was, only that the sun was crisscrossing through me like a crystal ball about to implode. “But please come in. The house has room, and the sky is vast.” This is when my host introduced himself, with a smile. “I am Ulrich, the pastor at this mission.” Adding to his words, he extended a dry, chubby hand. I nodded my head, and then I followed him, only half-conscious. Before I collapsed, I had just enough time to ask, “What is the dog’s name?” “Samuel,” he said. Then the black hole. “It was just a bit of sunstroke, but you’re strong, everything will be okay.” These were the first words I heard when I awoke. I found myself in a comfortable bed, almost in a sweat. This impression must have come from the fact that they would have had to cool me down. The walls of my room were bare; their sandy blond stucco linked the outside—where I’d been suffocating—to the inside, where a kind of serenity was beginning to settle. “Can you move?” Ulrich asked me. I tried to get up, and had no difficulty.

“Follow me then,” the pastor ordered. He stopped mid-movement. “I thought you would want to go to your father’s grave before nightfall. In an hour it will be too late.” His posture was meditative as he spoke, and, this time, I had the strength to say, “I was just about to ask you.” “Let’s go,” he said, in a tone that still did not completely mask a vague worry. I found the horizontal evening light violent, even though I knew it wasn’t. I had been lying down for more than four hours, weighed down by the strange Page 151 →sleep that had melted over me without warning. My first steps were like a convalescent’s. I moved toward my father in a state that would have pleased him. When he had been alive, he would have taken me in his arms, as he had done during one of those fevers that so alarmed Maman. For her, death was never very far away. The year she turned twenty, she lost her father and her mother. When she was forty, it was her brother’s turn, Uncle Jean. All this mourning had made her inconsolable. I must have stumbled because Ulrich was immediately at my side offering support. We were in the courtyard. The house was behind us, as was the stubby, meager vegetable garden by the left-hand corner of the main entrance. The church—or the rectangular house that played this role—occupied the western side of the mission. On the right was the rectory door and off to the side was the stone upon which my father’s first and last names were engraved. It was a great shock for me to gaze upon the earth in which he was buried. The slab was about twenty centimeters thick. All around it, they had laid pumice stones that looked like shells. I was pleased that they had thought to honor him in this way. Fishing, that symbol, followed him to the end, I thought. The architect of this work must have been Pastor Ulrich. I stepped closer to the epitaph; it read, “Cast here your nets.” The words gave rise to such emotions that I couldn’t tell if I were laughing or crying. It took me some time to understand that the vastness itself was in accord with the image of fishing engraved on my father’s grave. Since geological times, the sand deep in the countryside would spend itself freely, just like the waves for one who lets his imagination run free. In the fossilized stones that surrounded my father’s slab, there was a porousness from which an ocean-river could burst. I sat down and cried as if compelled to use my tears to fill the earth’s false flatness. I was alone and without witnesses; Pastor Ulrich had slipped away, but not before putting Samuel, who was whining softly, on a leash. From time to time, a shadow would cross through the evening glow. Light was growing scarce; soon I would be forced to go back toward the pastor. I could hear voices now. A woman helping my host set the table, a gardener saying goodnight. Although I wanted only one thing, to lay out a mat beside the slab and spend the night there, my face as riddled with stars as my father’s tomb with its necklace of white stone, I did the pastor the kindness of returning to the house. The man seemed calm, although when I had arrived, I’d found him talkative. My arrival seemed to have helped him get over some Page 152 →obstacle. The Swiss man, who was from RomainmГґtier, a village in the Alps that overlooked the French border, had been described to me in N’Djamena as a very bizarre individual. He should have gone back to his country long ago. According to the contract he signed with the Chadian Federation of Protestant Churches, his mission was limited to good offices. Nonetheless, the Federation appreciated his unexpected extension: The Swiss citizen’s presence meant the revolutionaries couldn’t touch the AdrГ© mission. “This is Bintou, the housekeeper,” he said. “We owe her that we eat our fill every day. She is the one who looked after your father.” When he said this, I almost fainted. They surrounded me as one and settled me into a chair. Shortly after, Bintou took my hand and began to sob.

“Your father was a Nabi, a holy man. Islam sometimes offers men like this.” I liked her voice, and her presence helped put a name and a face to the person who had discovered my father’s body. Undoubtedly, it still haunted her. But her appearance offered no evidence of the violence she must have witnessed. For me, the horror finally had a body; it became human somehow. I could feel the chimera created by my anxiety quietly settle into the depths of my memory. We were free now of a game that had lasted far too long. How old did I think Bintou was? Thirty-five? Perhaps less. I don’t know. She was beautiful, with jet-black skin and silky hair beneath a transparent poplin veil. Her lips were delicately outlined, and her fresh, young face made her look as if she were sympathetic. Her husband allowed this woman of Arab origins to work for Christians, although they were Muslim. I praised them for it. When I saw Bintou the next day, she said, “Samuel gained a pound last night. It’s unbelievable! I was almost expecting him to die.” I knew that Samuel had run away; the pastor had told me the story at dinner. After my father had been buried, the dog had run away only to show up again forty days later, as if to mark, as is dictated by tradition, the conclusion of the mourning period. Bintou had welcomed him with some difficulty, as he was unrecognizable. He was dying, so she fed him drop by drop. He never barked anymore; her never reacted, and Bintou struggled to make him exercise, even if for only a quarter of an hour walk every day. After four months of care and Page 153 →attention, he had regained his confidence, although not enough to revive his reflexes. After she finished talking, Bintou remained lost in thought. To break the silence, I dared say, “Samuel’s getting back on his feet.” The young woman smiled. Although she wasn’t facing me, I could sense her pain. That night, at dawn, Samuel again unleashed his prophetic cry. Before giving in to it, he had scratched at my door, as if he wanted to alert me of his intentions. Later, at breakfast, I asked the pastor, “Do dogs have so much love that, after we die, our soul wishes to survive within them?” The kind man looked at me affectionately. “Love is how we survive, young man. But we lost this secret long ago, except, perhaps, in lands like this.” After a pause, he added, “Don’t think I idealize poverty. No, my quest is quite different. I am like the ethnologists who go to Africa not to study primitive cultures, but to establish courageous connections between different kinds of human knowledge.” “Your father’s dog was shocked by the violence you know of, and by the absence that followed. And the animal has been a companion to your family for a long time.” “I had a dog named Samuel,” I answered, “but he died fourteen years ago.” The pastor remained silent for a long while. When he began to speak again, his voice was animated by imperceptible warmth. “What do we live off of here? Barrenness and nothing else? I’ve never stopped asking that question, although I never miss a single meal. And, I’ll admit that I’m ashamed of this. Many are those who do not eat their fill.” “My time here has taught me to love the kind of excess that once pushed ancient Christians to withdraw into the desert. Here we are close to God. You could call it infinity; it doesn’t matter. We can taste our mortal condition—but what causes the intoxication that takes hold of us during these experiences?” “I came to write a report about your father’s death; six months have passed; I have yet to convince myself to return to Switzerland.”

Touched by his words, I thought, “It took these poor fellows long enough!” They could have started their investigation earlier, but the revolution was doing no harm to the Swiss, French, or Americans. They could come and Page 154 →go as they pleased, even at the worst of times. Nevertheless, they waited for official authorization before they surged in like tourists; in these kinds of circumstances they are as suspicious and ambiguous as possible. But I didn’t share my thoughts with him; Ulrich really did inspire my affection. Just like my father, he wanted to dig his own river-ocean. On an earlier evening, he had held a service for my father’s soul. I was his only parishioner; Samuel was asleep at my feet. By all accounts, the clergyman and I were mad enough to plunge into the desert like this, and leave the revolution to rage in the city. “Could I take one of the stones from my father’s tomb?” “Of course,” he said. “You know, Samuel has stopped howling; I hope as well that my mother has stopped seeing dead people when she closes her eyes.” “Love, not death, fills her eyes.” “Your words are true.” Then I asked, “What will I vouch for when I return to France?” “Your mental health, for heaven’s sake! What can you expect your wife to understand about your father’s death? After spending a few weeks here, I realized he wanted his death to happen here. In any case, he wished for it more than once. Without your knowing, he had sought an even rougher existence. In some of his letters—those that are dated from early 1981—he told me about his desire to gaze upon other horizons. I am never without your father’s letters, but I would be happy to give them to you, if you would like them. They are filled with friendly confidences; it would be acceptable to share them with his son. In any case, the austerity of the revolution (which we can compare to the austerity of rocks, sand, and sun) suited him perfectly.” I did not comment on what he said, but his meaning troubled me, as did its mystery. It suggested an unknown portrait of my father; I needed time to make it my own. I had no desire at all to consult with my father’s letters. I had not been aware that he included a Swiss cleric among his friends. But I was quite touched to learn this—even if it grieved me. Then I had an irresistible desire to confide in him. “Last night, I dreamed I couldn’t cross the border.” “A classic dream for someone who is concerned about a return,” the pastor said smiling. “At the airport, after I’d gotten on the plane that was going to take me back to Paris, I was forced to get off again because of a shady story about luggage. I felt like an earthquake had struck. I felt condemned, and the absurdity of Page 155 →the situation made the nagging feelings of injustice even stronger. Before this, I hadn’t realized that the simple act of deplaning passengers could be an act of great brutality. Because just as I expected the plane to pull me from the earth, and, little by little, to reach an altitude at which immobile bodies float, the world itself was slipping out from beneath my feet. But I was far from experiencing this. Quite the opposite, I could see myself going down, and the feeling of descent was fighting it out with the horror of dying so basely. When I was at the foot of the Airbus A320—which I came to consider my coffin—the security agents told me I’d forgotten to identify my suitcase. “Identify my suitcase?” “вЂYes,’ answered a revolutionary with burning eyes. “Nothing ruffled me more than his gaze. It had the same tone as his words, a kind of fire that removed all hope. It revolted me. I could not accept being put through this at the sole discretion of a simple revolutionary, for he would distinguish himself as the master of my life and the director of my thoughts. I resisted the intimidation that was to make me understand that he held the ability to break me and, above all, to cancel my trip. I could already see myself condemned to wander the tarmac as if it were a new land of exile.”

“You know,” the pastor said after a little while, “revolutionary cruelty always reaches its pinnacle in the cities. Don’t worry, everything will work out.” “Thank you, but I feel though if I won’t be able to talk when I’m at the airport.” “Forget about your revolt, you have already triumphed over the country.” We stopped there. That night, we held another service for the dead. As we left the church, we noticed Samuel had disappeared. Panicked, we searched the mission without success. Then we began to comb through the yellow grass around it. It was so sparse that it embodied benevolent ghosts. There was no place to go, for beyond was infinity.

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The Trees I was long unable to justify the pleasure of the title: A Walk beneath the Trees, for I could only see my own admiration reflected within it. Each time I walked beneath the trees, the power of those words was confirmed. In fact, I walked up and down Avenue Mobutu at least twice a day. In some parts, the cailcedrats were numerous enough that their branches formed an honor guard. These bitter-sapped trees afforded me, the pedestrian, against all expectations, a gentle shade. They were in the image of the “little eaten book” the angel gave to St. John the Apostle in Revelations: “Take and eat it; and it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.” As a child, when I had a bout of malaria, my mother would occasionally have me drink a cup of cailcedrat tea. Its bitterness, it was believed, contained quinine. The cailcedrats were part of N’Djamena’s identity. Unfurled, they adorned the city. In the past, when they were painted with lime, their trunks seemed to be wearing shoes. Sometimes little purslane roses decorated each base. A pedestrian rarely noticed such details; he was better at generalities. His perspective was where the trees lined up like Boy Scouts in short pants. It was a rare moments in which we can measure the amount of human intervention, their artistic touch. I was penetrated by the awareness that the cailcedrats were finally there. They showed their full potential in the town center, confirming that this was the downtown of a capital city. They also gave it an oasis-like atmosphere. And indeed, with its colonial buildings and arcades, N’Djamena was the gateway to the desert. Sometimes they made an effort to sweep the avenue, sometimes they even sprayed it—or at least they tried. Other neighborhoods Page 157 →contained houses made of straw and pisГ©; the dust wasn’t such a sharp contrast as it was downtown. The cailcedrats along Avenue Charles-de-Gaulle were like unfurled gods above busy heads. They revived the air, and the birds chirped in response. This morning, as I left the airport, I was suddenly shocked. The cailcedrats downtown had disappeared. There was just more sky, more people, more cars, more houses—all of this teemed around me, but the greenery was gone, and, with it, the aviary that had been even more moving to me that I had realized. In this country so prone to emptiness, they had represented angels’ voices. All of a sudden I was struck with panic. I asked the taxi driver to turn on the air conditioning. “Where do you think you are, sir?” He paused for a moment before adding, “Welcome to N’Djam!” “Oh, sorryВ .В .В .” After I regained control of myself, I asked, “What happened to the trees?” “What trees?” “The cailcedrats, for God’s sake!” “There were never any cailcedrats on Avenue Charles-de-Gaulle, where have you been?” “Let’s make a deal. Let’s say you never drove your taxi down this street, okay?” “Well, you’re not the pope, that’s for sure.” “And you’re not the Ayatollah Khomeini!” “Easy there, jerk. This isn’t France. Relax.”

Despite my anger, I got the message. I didn’t say another word. The avenue continued to rush past in the transparent light of the city center, the kind of light that usually illustrates postcards. There was so much desert, I couldn’t believe my eyes. What event had happened in my absence? What catastrophe? When I arrived home, I immediately called city hall. I was told nothing unusual had been observed along the downtown artery. Thinking I was quite the sleuth, I thought I’d overcome the obstacles by calling the reforestation service, which is technically the office for road construction. A young person answered, “Goodness, you’d better go back!” “How do you know I just got here?” Page 158 →“People from around here don’t ask these kinds of questions.” “Oh.” This was the second time I’d been called a foreigner. I now knew what to expect.

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The Rivers’ Gold Who am I? Or rather, what haunts me? The question nags at my ego, even as I try to paint the Lutheran priest who, one December morning when Chad was on the brink of independence, picked up his finest pen and, from the city of Yagoua where he was completing an internship, urged my mother to name me Nimrod. The beautiful new mother complied. At that decisive moment of my birth, she and I only had a letter, instead of a presence, as an interlocutor. Since then, I have been haunted by the absence of a father image. Years have passed, but the absence persists. I always see my father a short distance away, as is fitting for a phenomenon whose revelation occurs only through words. Presence and absence in hollowed-out exaltation. The trough of the wave and the ink of the words mingle with the water, giving birth to an infinite nuance of fluids: they modulate being as much as the curve of emotions. They came to speech too early; I chanted them too early, supported by the grand stanzas of a strong, young word. My preacher father seemed jealous. The Bible is a serious matter, and a son, if need be, must become a disciple and walk in the footsteps of the master. He must advance in silence. Savage spirituality that gags you, thereby fulfilling the laws of subjection. When we were children, our training sometimes rivaled that of the Koranic school. But as soon as we were out of our father’s sight, when it was just us—it goes without saying when it was just us boys, my sister RoyГЁs didn’t want anything to do with any of it, to tell the truth, she wouldn’t have even dreamed of it—we would laugh lightheartedly. But this emphasized a renewed respect, which even the most well-informed observer would certainly have missed. He would think we blasphemed. Actually, learning Bible verses led us astray as soon as we reached the impulsive banks. Page 160 →

I After shedding a profusion of tears, which were, in many respects, secret, I had to do my childhood justice. A certain love, a passion that was poetic to say the least, is proof that my father was a most mysterious man. His time upon the earth left only a trace upon me, like the one left by the wind on the river. It unfurled the song of the plains upon it, an ode to freedom that I often consider a miracle. I caress pleasant deities. The first paradox: I evoke the life of a theologian, yet my sensibility is constantly teased by pagan truths. My father would not have appreciated this. Never was a man so unaware of the real Africa—and without ever accompanying this attitude with any violence. An individual used to the most indisputable solitudes, he belonged to no one. He did not depend on the most basic geometry. He couldn’t bear contact, but there was no way to surmise this: between him and others, distance was a rule, mandatory. He demanded no privilege; he never profited from his status. He looked the space straight in the eye. I always sensed that he was afraid of crowds. Separation gave him a cautious peace. He was an abstract man. On certain mornings at the crossroads of Sara-de-Gaulle and Chagoua, a libation would be made from leaves or twisted stems that the earth would welcome in a dark puddle. Father would say to me, “In this way they banish a disease or a curse. The intersection increases directions; the disease may get lost and never return to torment its victim. But those who rise early, those who go fishing at daybreak, can step over these evil spells and suffer from them. If you are strong enough to step over them, then do so. If you don’t have enough faith, step around them.” With these words, he would hop over the offerings and not look back. This action offered me the sight of a riverbank that could be gained without effort or affectation, almost in ignorance of what had been accomplished. Now I had his back for a screen, so I was given to share, in the most intense way, a fragment of time in which I could exercise my power of decision. I would avoid the malefic deposit out of respect and superstition. It seemed to me that the appalling offering deserved to be honored. I did not yet know that humanity was made in such a way that some could appropriate the right to dedicate their misfortunes to others. As long as I was capable of folding into myself and calling up obscure reasons, strangely seductive, strangely frightening, and, to tell the truth, foreign to my ways of thinking, I felt as if I could understand both the gesture and those who might become guilty of it. I was even tempted to love them. They offered an extension of my own ego, a Page 161

→curious one, but a highly flattering one. So the idea of Evil (a social Evil, the ordinary metaphysics of our petty hatreds, and the premonition that it could be spread by means of water and air, like germs destined to contaminate us democratically) finally began to within me. I was fourteen years old, and, to tell the truth, the question of Evil remained unfathomable.

II Can you leaf through a river? Can its watery expanse be a metaphor for a book? Is the splendor of its waters equal to that of the page? I cannot say; to tell the truth, these speculations make no sense. My father was a footbridge between the river and the book. I imagine him as the origin of this association. (When I imagine him, it begins with this association.) Immediately after leafing through the holy book, the same hands took hold of a pole and propelled a dugout canoe. They opened the waters, cut a moving swell between them. In turn the water became like batter, which becoming gigantic, connected to kilometers of riverways that reached all the way to the ocean on Cameroon’s coast. Reading is equal to the rigor of presiding over fishing maneuvers on the high seas. This activity, whose essence brings you face-to-face with a radiant solitude, is identical to freediving, even at the most professional level. Yet the depths of immersion attainable by reading cannot be reached by any diver. Was it by chance that my father, a fisherman by profession, became a seeker of souls? A true swimmer, when he ceases to breathe, soars. He hesitates before returning to the surface, even if he is fully aware of what is at risk. At such times, he has so little control over his body. It has escaped him. He remains convinced that he can ask anything of it, even as he is aware he is deceiving himself. These thoughts are flattering to him because he has succeeded in pushing the limitations of his body. Let’s agree that a situation of this nature deserves some illusions. The most methodical act can reap a short-lived vanity. It is the price to be paid for the reversibility of our actions. Pure rectitude humiliates. For soaring is letting go. This is false, of course. We reach the highest point only by becoming ultralucid. The diver’s destiny hangs by a thread. The thread of the water, of risk. We will never have the opportunity to glide like a corpse within the water, at least not if we insist on being counted among the living. Page 162 →One who reads a great deal can hold onto the thread of a thought that might isolate him from the world, until he makes room for a most singular exchange. Freediving, I called it earlier. Where we breathe so well! Hence the sadness that would consume me as soon as my father turned away from his books to devote himself to his “water labor,” to use the Kimois’ wonderful expression. The only place where you can give birth to yourself is a river. This suggests the seriousness implied by the expression. My people were conscious of this, even though the expression “water labor” did not originate in any kind of wordplay. Fishing was labor like any other and, as such, both serious and joyful. It is true that it can lead to death. If I felt any melancholy at seeing my father pass from one job to another, it must be because, as a high school boy, I had ample time to spend with books, while at set times my father had to interrupt his reading in order to provide for us. Such was the injustice of the paternal condition. He, my strong, handsome father, had to change professions to survive, a duty from which I was shamefully free. To my great dismay beauty—for this was the content of my experience—was being ill-treated. Father’s love, his hands, his books, the beach, the sky intended it for me by way of the world’s acceptance and drudgery. I was thus aware of the privilege I was enjoying. Fishing, strictly speaking, was something I did during school holidays, especially during summer vacation. I embraced it all the more happily since it was appropriate for boys my age in the tribe, a tribe that, this time, when the disparaged term was uttered, no longer suggested to me the slightest amount of racial connotation. Wherever they were born in Chad, young men had to show their virility through a wide variety of sports. For us, fishing was like a destiny. By partaking in it, I illustrated our way of life, which made me more than a little proud. I came to understand quite early the pride of participating in a team sport, in which one learns to belong as much to a group as to a nation. Fishing gave me access to a joy in which both the sky and the sea could resonate. When faced with the waters, I felt universal.

The majesty of the wave in its oiled jewelry box, the sparkling thoughts of the man who, on the shores of his private ocean, feels guilty for pushing his father to sin. What was the nature of the crime that created such suffering in me? On the road leading to our fishing spot, I would become inconsolable. My sadness was heightened by the fact that I could share it with no one. Instinctually I knew this time was reserved for virility. It was therefore out of the question for me to disturb my father with my feelings. This prohibition was like a rod Page 163 →I would give myself for my own beating. And yet my distress had undeniable causes: a child’s great panic caused by the transformations of evening. Indeed, at twilight, when we would go fishing, I would examine my father’s profile, transfixed by the fear of a child about to be punished. Because there were so many tears in me, I had great difficulty in hiding them. Luckily, I would walk behind my father. He would lead the way, clear the path. Shadows would invade, and the order I thought was unchangeable would be reversed: big ones first, little ones second. Then I realized I was no longer a child: I was almost a man now. I knew I had not stopped being a kid, even if I had acquired a more muscular frame and a more developed sense of reflection. For me, night fishing represented my father’s absolute renunciation of books and the lamp that illuminated his reading. The surface of the water reflected our souls surely enough, but on moonless nights (as well as some nights with a moon) the liquid mirror would display an even more frightening depth. I would have been panicstricken to see it reflect my image. Deep in the shadows, the eye’s power is dulled, but hearing is sharpened. We become both blind and hypersensitive. The night clothed us, but the river carries us with it, as far as the end of the world, to the threshold of transformations that would ultimately sink us. That was why I cried in silence. When we left before 6:00 p.m., my father would whistle. This distracted me. It was the perfect time for fishing, and I had time to acquaint myself with our surroundings. I would imprint the last of the day’s colors, the birdsongs (especially the quail on the steep cliff faces), the movements of the reeds, the visual riddle that carried my image away with each stroke of the paddle, clouding it at the edge of the blue willows. I entered a nocturnal exile as if I were experiencing the successive stages of an initiation, serious yet tender. In this way, I could follow the metamorphosis of the fisherman without allowing my inner sadness to become too overt. The decision to live on the water for these long hours made me feel as if I were dead to the world, which was unbearable. Yet the river offered some comfort, a certain kindness. First, there was the feeling of casting off, like an aristocrat looking back disdainfully at his chateau, and then taking to the seas, where he would embrace the purest solitude. To make this work, a few rays of sun were essential. They would accompany you, push you toward the unknown in stages, so the world wouldn’t disappear abruptly. Without your knowing, the water would flood into you, making you porous, like so many materials, and you would unfurl yourself again, one consciousness, tiny and immense, who shares the life of the Absolute. Regrets dimmed, you felt multitudinous. Page 164 →Life could be a never-ending shipwreck. You are sure of it, and the adult sitting mute as god, at the prow of the pirogue, shares this conviction. You and he tower above nothing in the vast element, yet your intuition says you are one with it; you fit there so snugly, you feel you’re a part of the river’s family. This explains the inconceivable pain of seeing yourself tossed into the liquid shadow. The phenomenon is like banishment. Nostalgia for domestic peace embraced me so tightly that, although it didn’t feel like I was dying, I did feel that I would never be able to survive after this fishing trip. Sometimes it would take me three hours to get my balance back. Luckily, Papa refrained from talking. In any case, the nocturnal blanket did not encourage chatting. The words rippled within us. They carried a gage within them that measured our fluctuations. For sometimes it happens that we become intimate with the river. We feel good. We play in its waters as if it were a swimming pool. Dark rivers, deep rivers. To tell the truth, my only dream ever was of the “Big Two-Hearted River.” The depiction of Nick, an angler in Hemingway’s 1924 short story, captivated me. Though I’d never navigated a river like that, in my mind I could populate it with the trees and reeds so dear to my heart. These images captivated me all the more when the river could be navigated in all seasons. Green land, a deep river, green-gold hyacinths. I dreamed of this painting every day, testament to the happiness of a boy fishing with his father. In fact, the metaphor “the rivers’ gold” speaks for itself. The muteness of quiet men, the silence of readers. Eventually the moment occurs when I forget books. I’m on vacation with my father, each of us armed with a fishing pole like a growth upon our impalpable dialogue. Melancholy no longer has a hold on me. In

my case, the part most likely to be redeemed is sealed within by a few pages of prose, clear as river water. My father only angled in August, when the Chari became an inland ocean, its waters as dirty as ever, its banks as limitless. And, since I was forced to become immense, I stopped crying. Every year, at the same time, he allowed himself ten days of vacation. Leaving behind his nets, he would take his poles, his lines, his flies, and lead me into a sport in which waves of daylight would bathe the earth, the grass, our hands. Yes, an intellectual was creating a diversion from his work. I was perhaps the only one who could witness this. My young friends are far away, my sister, too. I hear them; I’m waiting for them. Yet this is the initiatory session, behind closed doors—“Come on,” one of them says, “Come on, Nimrod!” I must never give in to him. I am in a sacred place; I have become as powerful as a god. Because, beneath the sun, fishing means to keep busy, thoughtfully. Page 165 →Silence floats on the line, from time to time the cork goes under, the hand swings imperceptibly, as if standing in for words. It’s the riddle of the book illustrating itself; it’s the presence of worlds within us, castles resembling poems. I love them like one loves wellsprings. This is where I drink in words more precious than gold.

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Que sont les amis devenus? I This place holds many surprises for those who return.1 First, there is the obvious: The rawness of the light makes the horizon end abruptly; the blue of the sky looks as if it’s been cemented over. In the time it takes to get used to them, they suddenly pull back—they penetrate you. People arrive in small groups, completing the transformation of time and space. The number of visitors goes far beyond what I had hoped. I haven’t seen some in twenty-two years. Others, in ten. Generally speaking, they have not become more attractive. I read my past on their faces. The muscle around the mouth; cheekbones witness to a former freshness. Since Jonas pushed open the door and sat down on the chair opposite me, I’ve been playing the film of our youth in my mind. In all these years, I never thought about him for a second. And then he appears, and my affection belongs to him. What a strange reflex. My guest hasn’t changed much. I’m surprised at how smooth his body is—especially his face. He was no stranger, I remember, to beatings, his skin was often covered in bruises. He was an unrepentant fighter. He’s starting to have the shakes; this is clear when, filled with emotion, he brings up our childhood in Sara-de-Gaulle. He remembers the spats, says he’s ready to do it all again. He’s had practice making predictions with this kind of braggadocio. Of all my friends who are now alcoholics, he is the only one to shave his beard. You can make out the blue of the whiskers behind his darkened mahogany skin. In a more urbane setting, handsome Hercules could have been quite a ladies’ man. But life’s randomness caused him to be born in Chad. Despite his drunkenness, his charm remains intact. I imagine he’s still capable of acts of bravery. In the past, he would smash his fist into the face of anyone who did not show him respect. This was how he triumphed over Page 167 →anyone who mocked him, and how he obtained vengeance for “his people,” because he liked people to be devoted to him. Friendship, in his book, was for life. His beauty (and the strength of his muscles) didn’t reassure him all that much. He had trouble getting over his academic failure, by which I mean the excessive importance we give to this thing called intelligence. He was traumatized. But he knew how to smile, and that was his greatest asset; although his natural charisma never succeeded in making the girls who fell for him, one after the other, into permanent companions. They rarely lived together for more than a season. His capricious relationships have resulted in two sons, now men. Reversals in fortune taught him the taste of misfortune. He smiled about that, too; he couldn’t help himself. Occasionally, he would be fickle. With a bit of flattery, yesterday’s enemies would momentarily take the place held for lifelong allies. The next moment he would repent with shouts and tears. He loved strong, public emotions. On this particular afternoon, Jonas is giving me the friendship that should be given to someone who is not here: his little brother, Enoch, he was the pal. Jonas knows it, for it is in his name, this brother who was carried away by the waters seven years ago despite the fact that he was an excellent swimmer, that Jonas allows himself to be on relatively familiar terms with me. This familiarity was what touched me most of all. No, he isn’t trying to replace him in my heart; he just wants to be there. Suddenly, he looks at me brightly and smiles. He turns his face away, the space between us growing wider. Now he has his own space. Perhaps this is the crux of what he wanted to tell me, the revelation of a truth he had not premeditated. The one, markedly absent, is the invisible referee of our meeting: Jonas and I are imposters. My guest knows this, too. He knows I know about his alcohol-soaked life. When I think this, tears fill his eyes, my vision turns cloudy. Then Jonas resumes his speech in richer tones. I could listen to him for an entire day, which would be unkind. He has to wind things up, an elegance of gesture returns. Even though he’s a lush, he has the soul of a purebred. I always wondered how he got over his misadventures. In the end, it must not be as painful as all that, except for in those sharp moments of crisis. I got over my own, as well, without ever having to use words like “resignation” or “disenchantment.” We assimilate our problems, they become part of us, first transformed, then digested. For everything molds us, starting with social failure, the biggest of all, its arch unsurpassable. Yes, Jonas and I are trying to bring magic back into our lives. Repeated disappointments inform our mistakes. They are the only reason that orders us to remain always

joyful. Page 168 →Jonas makes me forget the excessive heat. I’m sweating; he’s not. He wears his hair in a flattop, which unifies his gaze and makes his skull look more even. This elder brother no longer indulges in fighting, but he can’t keep from talking about it; he probably dreams about it at night. The skin on his face is leathery, a thin ribbon of flesh over regular bones. His alcohol-burned eyes reflect muddy and blue; they are affectionate. Who is their gentleness directed at, I wonder. At me, undoubtedly; at his lucky proprietor, too, since Jonas keeps harping on about the past and our shared inheritance. Does my temporary tenant really think we used to live in Eden? An Eden in which fighting was all the rage? Of course he is joking; he only half-believes what he’s saying. His little brother and I didn’t know anything about the world of fighting. Alcohol and bravado were not part of our age class. Jonas pretends not to realize this. There is mischief in him, a mischievous kindness. Present times rarely give him any reason to dream, so childhood has become a refuge for him. He still laughs like he did back then. He’s lost across the board, and he knows it. He’s decided not to be bitter about it. Examining his silhouette, I can tell he would have been a smiling intellectual, a real hedonist. On top of that, of all the drunks, he’s the only one whose clothes fit perfectly. They’re not brand new, but they’re clearly clean. His undershirt shines. I can’t imagine wearing a T-shirt under a shirt in this scorching heat. And he’s not sweating. He’s not drunk at this hourВ .В .В . I smile; Jonas knows I’m admiring him. He stands up cautiously and extends my smile with another that is even slyer. I place a five-hundred-CFA bill in the palm of his hand; tears fill his eyes and, moving like a cat about to spring, he motions for me to stay seated while he moves toward the door; then, before diving into the courtyard and sunlight, he turns to me, and, ham that he is, shouts, “Oh, Sara-de-Gaulle really was fantastic!”

II After Jonas will come ThГЁs, Ambiel, and a stranger who says he is a former student of mine. The violence of the latter leaves me speechless. They are all alcoholics. ThГЁs is the older brother of Simon, a childhood friend, who like Enoch passed away. I don’t remember the circumstances surrounding his death; maybe it was in the war. I think about his mother, an extremely likeable Page 169 →woman, who was very attached to my father, although he kept her at a careful distance. They were related, cousins, I think. She always said that Papa was a wonderful godfather to her. I liked it when she would take the time to talk to me. She was the only person—and a woman on top of that—who could bear witness to certain aspects of my father’s childhood, a mysterious arena for me, which even when mentioned only in part, would cut me to the quick. When she talked about Papa, I could picture her as a little girl, and because this return to the past felt like it was restoring my roots, it filled me with pleasure. I had gotten into the habit of calling ThГЁs and Simon’s mother “aunt.” Life’s circumstances had made her a widow at a young age; perhaps this justifies the distance my father maintained between them. My old man did not socialize easily. The child that I was fell for her. I was fascinated by the sensuality that emanated from her body, a sensuality you could go on consuming at leisure, and which gave her skin, her lips, her high and welcoming forehead, and her gracefully relaxed arms a charm that I never tired of. ThГЁs, her oldest son, had always been an unruly boy. No game with him ever finished calmly, and unsurprisingly, he botched everything. Our houses faced each other. We each went home behind the outer walls as if in denial of the world outdoors. Now that roads have been opened, our houses face each other again, but more geometrically. Above the din of the traffic, their pediments call to each other. An ironworker’s shop occupies one wing of ThГЁs’s house. Dust, the most important element in the sand’s daily buildup, links them organically. ThГЁs nabs me on the doorstep. “What? You don’t recognize me?”

“ThГЁs, please.” “Look at that, he thinks he’s something special!” “Come on, ThГЁs, be nice.” “Keep talking like that and you’re in for it! I’m someone around here, you understand? Me, ThГЁs, captain in Fifth Infantry, Serial Number 2587, no longer neededВ .В .В . Go ahead, try itВ .В .В . Look at my handsВ .В .В .” He shows them to me. “You see the grease? It’s from bicycle chainsВ .В .В . You must’ve noticed it—the bicycle shop on the ground floor. You see (he motions toward a place behind him with his thumb, but his eyes focus on one hand, then both of them), you see the bikes, I’m the one that fixes them, me, a captain in the Fifth Infantry, currently unemployedВ .В .В . I can see it, you’re like them, you think I’m good-for-nothing too; being a drunk is nothing, it’s lousyВ .В .В . Still, I fix bikes, Page 170 →I’ve got something going for me. They say, “ThГЁs is worthless!” But that’s not true, I know about business, it’s not true at all. Besides, who cares, they can just keep talking, the bastards. Give me 100 francs, no 150 francs, so I can finally go get something to drinkВ .В .В .” I comply, and he leaves. That afternoon Ambiel comes next. Since there are already people here—Emile-Mercy, Malachie, and AggГ©e chatting with me in the shed—he stops at the gate and forces me to come to him. His burning eyes do not smile, a sign he is already drunk. Those eyes never keep him from smiling, except when drunk. He’s a mean drunk. He’s a real mechanic, compared to ThГЁs. He learned his trade in Nigeria; that’s also where he learned to drink. When he reappeared after three years, he had the physical traits of a grown man. His muscles seemed more developed, in any case, more than ours, which were already pretty good. As we were leaving adolescence behind, fishing, the tribe’s natural sport, transformed some of us into young men with strong muscular potential. Silas, Job, Etienne, and so many others experienced this transformation, which, as usual, seemed to catch everyone off guard. All it took was three weeks or three months away from the neighborhood and you’d be faced with surprising familiar faces. Because it was always after the long school vacation that the marvel occurred. Some came back with beards, fuzz changed into thick, heavy whiskers. The girls tasted the changes with sparks of desire in their eyes. Ambiel gave me the same impression when he returned from Maiduguri, which made his handicap all the more astonishing; he even limped with a certain elegance. When he stood still, he leaned on his left leg, and his walk was, in general, quite deliberate. This often fooled us. We would accidently make him fall to the earth when we leapt forward to hug him. A good observer would have looked twice at the Converse trainers—his favorite kind of shoes—on his feet. The one on the right was more deformed than the other. It was an unusual deformity; it made the Converse curve like a high heel, a heel that really never touched the ground. I remember that sometimes, when we were children, we envied Ambiel’s atrophied foot. It was like leather soft as velvet. We never tired of stroking it, to his great joy. Polio had given him the gift of a foot that could survive winter without scabbing or cracking. During the cold months one of the sports we indulged in was polishing and rehydrating our feet. Especially on Saturday night, the night before Sunday school. A number of our instructors valued cleanliness highly. Ambiel would have no problem passing the test. Page 171 →I hadn’t even made it over to him when he shouted, without laughing, “Where have you been hiding? I came yesterday already.” “I think I must have been at my mother’s.” “Didn’t anyone tell you? Come on, where are my five hundred francs?”

“Don’t you want to stay for a while?” “My five hundred francs, shit!” “Here.” He takes the money, his eyes rolling spitefully, and then he moves away. It doesn’t matter that I know what makes him so unpleasant, it still depresses me. Two days ago, I went to his parents’ house—his sister Rachel just died in childbirth. Her death affected me all the more because it wiped away part of our shared childhood. Their house unfolded behind ThГЁs’s. We had played together as babies. The day before yesterday, at Ambiel’s, his mother didn’t recognize me. The beginnings of a cataract blurred her vision. But when the women who were with her told her it was me, she hugged me. Then she took my face in her hands and stroked it. Outside, in a makeshift shed, I joined the group of men. I sat down next to Ambiel, who seemed pleasant. When he’s sober, he’s the best of friends. He talked to me about the games we used to play, especially the one he always beat us at: zougoulou. Like maracana, you had to make it to the other team’s side while hopping on one foot—you held the other one against your behind with the opposite hand. To beat the other players, you had to dribble around them and lose them, without getting knocked over, and without anyone undoing the other foot. If that happened, you were out. By the end of the game, one team would be left with only one valiant competitor. The game required speed and flexibility, strength and skill, great physical and psychological endurance. Zougoulou was created especially for Ambiel. Running like a onelegged man suited him perfectly. To tell the truth, Ambiel excelled in every activity that required manual dexterity. This is why he excelled at repairing bikes, and then mopeds, transistors, and finally cars. There was no doubt about his future: he’d be a mechanic. No school managed to assimilate him, however. He did not like studying, and he never bothered with theories, unless they were mathematical. His only option was to try his luck in Nigeria, the sole country, we all believed, where you could succeed without a degree. Just before he turned seventeen, he left. He came back just a few weeks before the war of N’Djamena broke out, on February 12, 1979. He looked big; he’d bulked up. And something else had changed about him: he smoked and drank. The uncertainty heading toward Page 172 →us demanded we be sober in every situation. And he had his handicap on top of that. But Ambiel was no longer able to keep sober, so he went back to Nigeria—it was a practical way to avoid the shortages, if there were to be any. Out of all of us, he was the only one who could claim any experiences that allowed him to act in that way. He was already familiar with exile. I have always thought that smoking, drinking—tastes of a certain bohemian lifestyle—were like bridges connecting several of the world’s shores. Unfortunately, the footbridges Ambiel chose systematically destroyed him. His beautiful muscles melted away. They cling now to his bones, long networks of nerves propelling his limping carcass through space, like a wading bird in search of children to frighten. I had in fact promised him some money. Yet he demands it with a declaration of war. It doesn’t matter; the other Ambiel will come back.

III The next day, at about eleven o’clock, on the same doorstep where Thès had put on his show, a stranger, almost a solid six feet tall—a real monolith—comes up to me with a hateful look. He speaks in perfect French. “I can see that you don’t recognize me. I wasn’t one of your best students, that’s for sure, but I wasn’t unworthy either. You didn’t see me yesterday, but it doesn’t matter. You could redeem yourself now by giving me five hundred francs?” “Well . . . perhaps we could get to know each other better first?” “Stop acting like a big shot! I thought you were honest, but you’re despicably bourgeois: Avoidance doesn’t do you any service. I’m talking about honor, sir, I’m talking about dignity. Don’t

belittle me: I hate spending time with beggars. I’ll be back tomorrow, you’re not going to get out of this easily.” With that he turned on his heel as quickly as he could, and before I had even realized what was happening, he had disappeared. “He talks like Madame de SГ©vignГ©, doesn’t he?” I jumped as if I’d been reprimanded yet again. I was beside myself. My friend Emile-Mercy, always reliable, was standing across from me. “You? Here? What a blessed surprise!” I threw myself in his arms, half sobbing. “Do you know that young man? What’s his name?” “Pull yourself together, my friend. That fast talker is Dorio. No, he was Page 173 →never your student. He’s 100 percent Ndjamenois and he spends his time perfecting acts to break the hearts of one bourgeois after another. He thinks he’s an underdog aristocrat. He created his persona to impress, particularly his teachers, who never managed to get anything out of him. He’s the worst student the tribe has ever produced.” “This is unbelievable! You’re making this upВ .В .В .” “Nope, you’ve been put on by the biggest buffoon in the neighborhood. The truth is simple as that. The only difference is that he knows literary terrorism.” “I’m speechless.” “Oh yes. The neighborhood is undoubtedly archaic but some Pretentious Young Ladies remain.” With these words, the atmosphere around us suddenly darkened. My neurons were jumping in every direction, and part of me wished only for a particular kind of rest, the rest I’d had one afternoon on the Amalfi Coast, in Salerno—more specifically—when the mountain split into shadow puppets, as if to play a joke on me. Why did my mind carry me to that shore? During one of my stays in Italy a few years before, I had met both happiness and death in the Mediterranean. Upon reflection, when I die, may it be far from our landscapes. “What’s wrong?” Emile-Mercy asks me. “You look pretty down.” “That’s true.” “Let’s hear it then.” “When we die in our countries, many people cry for usВ .В .В .” “Oh, I see, you’re worried about your obituary. There won’t be anyone to write it and that bothers you.” “I’m not sure. I aspire more to a kind of temperance in everything: the weather, men, the seasons. I know I’m asking too much.” “Undoubtedly.” “Let’s go home, we’re going to roast.” I waited in vain for Dorio’s visit until the end of my stay, confronted day after day by a sense of revolt and

increasing injustice. He had succeeded in troubling the best years of my life, or at least the memories I had of teaching middle school in my home village Koyom between 1981 and 1983. I don’t remember any altercations at all. I remember all the kids, even if I’ve forgotten the names of a few. They are fathers and mothers now. The period of my life is still luminous. Where did this bird of ill omen come from? Page 174 →

Note 1. Translator’s note: The title of this story is drawn from the first line of a poem by Rutebeuf (1230–85), written in old French. A contemporary French version of the poem was used by Léo Ferré in his song “Pauvre Rutebeuf.”

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My Father’s Lamp In the winter, twilight undergoes infinite metamorphoses. Depending on the day, it will mix blue and mauve indifferently. Even when mixed with other shades of blue, these colors are always set against an indigo background, for there is nothing like the theater of the sky’s blue curtain to accurately render the flight of the star deep into the budding night, or the extraordinary luxury of “boreal” flames. As if taking a bow, the sky moves away into itself, and a flame—a huge flame—places all familiarity at a distance. Sometimes, as you watch this show, even if you’re no longer twenty, you’d like to send yourself, like a lover long overdue, a postcard cut from its cloth. Time passes, the horizon glows. In this way, even after night has fallen, you will have embraced the moment of a vast presence. As night falls, life frees itself from the heat. We revive simple gestures: exchanging a few words, the ones as familiar as can be, yawning, smiling; once again imagining, without worrying about burning our eyes, the charms of distance. Because as the day wavers, there is, within the eye of one who contemplates it, an illuminated balance. We relax at the threshold of my father’s house. The strangeness of a man who knew how to keep twilight with us—thanks to his lamp. It was big, the biggest to be found in any shop, and made in Germany. For us, it was a simple piece of haughty architecture in enamel called “Hand Feuer.” As twilight emerged, my father would take it off the shelf where it was kept, next to his large Hausa Bible and his thick glasses, which he used to decipher the Holy Book’s typography. On the same shelf, you could find a row of laundry soap and hand soap, a gentleman’s comb, a lady’s comb, a pocket mirror, a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush and, sometimes, some Norwegian canned goods, cans of condensed milk. To the left of the arched Page 176 →corner armoire, and at the foot of the only window that opened to the outside, was my father’s bed, always impeccably made. There was a Swiss bedspread with wide green, gold, and red stitches, or a satin one, probably made in France, ennobled by navy blue and purple crosspieces and silver edging. At the foot of the bed, facing the door, was an oil can that fed a stove more worn by time than rust. It’s the red hour of sunset and the Hand Feuer has been removed from its shelf to be cleaned. Equipped with the proper rags, my father touches its metal framework and strokes the lamp now free of its glass, lingering over each grain in the enamel. His fingers love such redundancies; they rub them affectionately; that’s where the rebellious dust atoms hang on. Just when they leave it to move on to the glass, twilight occurs. This act saturates the evening’s beauty, confined to the space where his fingers work. At the end of the mat where Hand Feuer’s skeleton rests, the gold of the setting sun casts a fatal shadow on the finished work. For, unlike the twilight, this shade of blue brings the enamel to life. But this conflict never lasts more than two minutes. Then comes purification. The evening becomes lighter, a soft clamor fills our respective bedrooms; the streets echo within the weight of their happiness. This is when my father’s gestures move the particles as slowly as the patterns behind an icon. A little more and he would almost strengthen the sun’s traces as they are attacked by shadow. Now he’s finished wiping the glass, which is replaced in the metal frame. Striking a match, my father brings rebirth to the moment of his ashes. The walls sparkle. Stars ricochet upon the glazed metal. The lamp shines, and the night increases the illusion of its rebirth; forgetting its own identity, it mimics the morning. When the thickness of the day mixes with objects, my father leaves the house. He goes to the river to swim. Like tonight, all he must do is step away and the day will fill up the space. In the morning, the phenomenon works differently. The door opens as he passes and the room fills with so much light it seems like a visitation. Upon sheets still damp with nocturnal moisture floats the impression of a fairy. But vespers lack the irrepressible certainty of light that enchants the waking time. As my father moves away, I hear the echo of his firm suggestion: “You’ll light the lamp. Make sure the wick is the right length.” Could we possibly think that the light of the lamp did not come from the regulation of its incandescence? In the

small courtyard where it shines, lifted Page 177 →about twenty centimeters off the ground by a tiny stool, a gleam, of the faintest blue, illuminates the space reserved for where the mats meet. The contours of my father’s forehead are seen in relief, and, in turn, his dark and shining complexion is underscored. He stands in the light as if he were the image of who-knows-what shepherd. The halos of his eyeglasses are touching: they isolate and accentuate the breadth of his eyes. The house dozes, deeply; my mother stands away from the light of which I’ve been appointed guardian. Raised to its highest point, which is only halfway to the point where it would smoke, the Hand Feuer’s wick emphasizes the night’s darkness. Beyond the smell of burning oil (it seems that, since the simplicity of the light has been sharpened, nothing could trouble it, not even crystals bursting at its very heart, fanning its radiance), I remember the times when, during fishing trips, my father would light the fire. First, his hands would collect nice, dry, mimosa twigs that at night near the river would become elastic. Then he would dutifully poke the fire under the pair of tilapias he had placed on a bed of straw. When they were finally cooked, he would place them solemnly before me. And then, without a word, he would turn his back, for he never tasted a single bite of this meal. In the family, every night, a light spreads between a man, a woman, and a child. Not that the days are uninteresting, or that, when darkness arrives, life finds a justification for its inconsistencies. Usually the day separated us from each other, while the night brought us together. The Hand Feuer becomes the site of our encampment. We would scrutinize each other around it, as if it were a question of becoming the other and helping him, by the gaze alone, to leave his glass bubble and come into the light, where, little by little, the glimpsed country is becoming sharper—another glass bubbleВ .В .В . For when light equals our emotions, isn’t it just like the opening of a world within us; when the dark, terrifying blue sky knocks on the door of our senses, isn’t it as if someone is asking for welcome? What my father never said, and what might be compared to a walk through the neighborhood of happiness, was represented by this lamp, this “tongue of fire” of a new Pentecost, burning with oil and a wick. We were never good at sharing conversation, and we never will be. Every evening, around a German lamp, three people who had been skinned alive wracked their brains to protect themselves from one another. To tolerate the rigors of this coexistence, we gave our tongues of flesh over to the tongue of fire. No cloister was more demanding and no vow of silence Page 178 →more respected. This is how we curbed a violence that came neither from meanness nor a deliberate desire not to communicate, but from a simple fear of scratching each other, the same as skinning ourselves. For this reason, an emptiness always had to remain between us, a blue emptiness pierced occasionally by words of the utmost politeness, trembling with the most extreme love and fear—in sum, the fear harbored by silence. It was the land of Father’s great worksВ .В .В . But without a doubt, the country belonging to my mother and myself was on the other side; besides, here, we had much to do. Mother looks after the wash, the house, prepares meals; I take care of the lamp: by its light, the signs in the open Bible increase our solitude. We are waiting for another world to become accessible. And, even when my tears flow down my mother’s breast and hers cover my hair, it never occurs to us to break the glass in which the angels converse. We were, in a way, mutes sentenced to contemplating the twilight, for the one who is moved by celestial bodies and books will gladly let his gaze, and sometimes his tears, speak, but he will never create words, because, born in books, they return to him, and, at the heart of this merry-go-round, God is jealous.

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Poems

Page 180 →Page 181 → Le Cri de l’oiseau —à Daniel BourdannГ© J’ai voulu m’enivrer de silence J’ai dГ©laissГ© la femme aimГ©e Je me suis fermГ© Г l’oiseau de l’espoir Qui m’invitait Г gravir les branches De l’arbre, mon double J’ai saccagГ© l’espace de mon jardin J’ai ouvert mes terroirs J’ai trouvГ© agrГ©able l’air qui circule Entre les vitres. Je me suis rГ©joui D’être le sorcier de ma vie Alors que le soir dГ©roulait ses spectres L’oiseau en moi de nouveau s’est Г©veillГ© Son cri diffusait l’angoisse Au sein de mon royaume

The Cry of the Bird —for Daniel Bourdanné I wanted to be overcome with silence I abandoned the woman I love I closed myself to the bird of hope That invited me to climb the branches Of the tree, my double I created havoc in the space of my garden I opened up my lands I found the air that circulates between the panes Pleasant. I was happy To be my life’s witch doctor

When the evening rolled out its ghosts The bird in me awoke again Its cry spread anguish In the heart of my kingdom Translated by Patrick Williamson From Pierre, PoussiГЁre Page 182 →Les Murs (exerpts)

2 Tristesse Ma sœur ma belle c’est mon âme que tu informes Cette tendresse quand vient le soir comme une fille Qui louche la nuit a la couleur de ses yeux L’air s’est chargé de sa réserve Les feuilles en tombent L’automne survient immature J’ai l’occasion de mesurer la profondeur L’oiseau chante en mi bécarre Ne m’émeus pas davantage j’en perdrais le nord

3 L’herbe sèche dépasse de temps en temps L’écrin sensible du temps Nos murs sont des foins nos murs ont besoin De fourrage de litière de patience Le balai d’une très jeune fille a dessiné Sur la page vierge du jour Un haut besoin d’espace

4

Achevons l’espace avec patience Achevons-le dГ©sobligeamment Puis avec amour—un zeste de durГ©e Au fond des yeux au fond des mots Page 183 →Et l’espace nous regarde juste un brin Le brin d’herbe qui le fait ciller

5 Ils sont beaux ils sont propres ils se sont abandonnГ©s ГЂ la clartГ© essaim de lune  symptГґme C’est comme un besoin de jeune fille Son portrait sur le mur comme si j’avais faim

The Walls (excerpts) 2 Sadness My sister my lovely you give form to my soul This tenderness when dusk falls like a girl Who squints the night has the color of her eyes The air is heavy with her restraint It makes leaves fall Autumn comes too early I can measure its depth The bird sings in E-natural Don’t stir me any deeper I’ll lose my way

3 From time to time dried grass exceeds The sensitive capsule of time Our walls are straw our walls need Fodder and bedding and patience

On the blank page of the day Page 184 →The sweeping of a very young girl has drawn An urgent need for space

4 Let us complete the space with patience Let us complete it disobligingly And then with love—with a touch of persistence In the depths of eyes in the heart of words And the space watches us with just a sprig The sprig of grass that makes it blink—

5 They are beautiful they are clean they abandoned themselves To the brightness moon swarm  symptom It is like a young girl’s need Her portrait against the wall as though I were hungry Translated by Catherine du Toit From Babel, Babylone Page 185 →Ciels errants Г Denise Moran, i.m.

I En ces temps primesautiers, j’épelais le ciel O pour la surface (vase d’argile soleil et lune) I pour souligner son trait son appartenance U son arme son armure—derviche danseur dont les deux bras rappellent le N de la naissance et le M du mourir. La gravité rattrape mon alphabet. J’expose mon cœur à un champ orphelin. Le bleu des sentiments vire aussitôt au blues

Et j’entends l’ancГЄtre gueuler un De Profundis ГЂ l’heure oГ№ le ciel entre dans sa bergerie. Sa couleur Est d’eau infinie. Elle rГ©pond au mirage qui berne Mes yeux. Les nuages les en rГ©compensent Je chante pour allГ©ger ma petite existence C’est le grand art. Tu me guides d’une main Affectueuse, et les nuages, au-dessus De ma tГЄte, se piquent d’humour. Il en faut Pour attendre les mamans parties lГ -haut Quand la route rejoint l’espace Cette terre mienne est ma rГ©serve de larmes Une flaque d’eau reflГЁte la banquise cГ©leste Je lui dГ©die la fraГ®cheur oГ№ l’herbe DГ©ploie ses Г©pis semblables Au feu du soir richesse rieuse L’amour est mon vin, qui songe en la forГЄt de belle Гўme, cette chambre oГ№ j’ai aimГ© en vain oГ№ les refrains se rГ©crient sur un ciel sans cesse refait Г neuf Je pleure une mГЁre abandonnГ©e Page 186 →J’épelle encore les syllabes cГ©lestes O pour la surface (sa nuit dormante) I pour des vЕ“ux sans couleur V pour vivre et vouloir qu’on me laisse A imer le ciel enfin serein I pour y afficher un cerf-volant

II J’ai aimé ma mère j’ai embrassé son destin Comme un fils comme un mendiant

Qui priait en secret les dieux d’allonger Ses jours à proportion des miens. Je l’aime Comme un exilé saisi par la douleur d’espérer Les vœux qu’on remise à peine nés Au fond d’un cœur taillé pour le bonheur. Au sort, ma mère présentait des comptes Sans envier personne ni même la lune Ni même le soleil elle qui était Courageuse sans être mère courage. Je pleurais en la voyant si sereine Moi que tourmentaient les pressentiments En cette zone de l’être où naît un cœur de poète

Stray Skies To Denise Moran, i.m.

I In these impulsive times, I spelled out the sky O for the surface (clay sludge sun and moon) I to underline its traits, its belonging U its arms its armor—dancing dervish whose two arms recall the Page 187 →N of nascent and the M of mortality. Gravity grabs my alphabet. I expose my heart to an orphan field. The blue of feelings soon becomes the blues And I hear the ancestor bawling a De Profundis In the hour when the sky returns to the fold. Its color

Is of infinite water. It answers the mirage that fools My eyes. The clouds compensate them I sing to lighten my small existence This is the great art. You guide me with An affectionate hand and the clouds Above my head are proud of their sense of humor. They need it to wait for the mothers who have gone up there When the road meets space This land of mine is my supply of tears A puddle of water reflects the celestial ice field To her, I dedicate the freshness where the grass Unfolds its similar tufts Laughing richness at the evening fire Love is my wine who dreams in the forest of a beautiful soul, this room where I loved in vain where refrains are exclaimed against a sky continually renewed I cry for an abandoned mother I still spell out the heavenly syllables O for the surface (her sleeping night) I for wishes without color L for the life and the longing I am left with To love the sky serene at last I to fill it with a kite.

Page 188 →II I loved my mother I embraced her fate Like a son like a beggar Who prayed in secret to the Gods to lengthen Her days to equal my own. I love her

Like an exile seized by the sorrow of hoping The wishes one puts away as soon as they are born Deep in a heart carved for happiness My mother settled up with fate Without envying anyone not even the moon Not even the sun she who was Courageous without being mother courage. I cried to see her so serene I who was tormented by forebodings In this zone of being where the heart of a poet is born Translated by Catherine du Toit From Sur les berges du Chari, district nord de la beautГ© Page 189 →Tibesti (extraits)

I Faites, Seigneur, que cette montagne m’épargne, Et qu’aux ombres du couchant elle s’accroche, Pénitente. Le ciel, grand ordonnateur, coule sur moi L’or de la Tripolitaine. Ainsi se concertent un verbe blond Une sentence de paille, des beautés transhumantes. Et quelle lenteur, jardins, pour moi qui veux dormir ! J’ajuste ma faim aux pas des enfants, je traque Le verbe être, hormis la césure du glaive. Mes pieds foulent le seuil d’un bref commencement.

II Berger, pour toi les Г©toiles ne somnolent, Et leur symphonie emplit ton oreille. ChambrГ©e en ut majeur, elle travaille Au renouveau du plain-chant. Archivons

Les chemins, la source. Un gazouillis profond Prononce la paix ; une palmeraie y répond. Et sur nos lèvres l’écho venu de nulle part, L’obole du rêve. Une montagne survient Qui, sur l’heure, semble verte.

III La douceur du matin, ce lieu enfoui et superbe, Un besoin d’infini. Oasis de Faya-Largeau, Onguent pour la peau et les yeux, pour la priГЁre Vous attendrissez nos paupiГЁres. Des paysans rГ©gentent les dattiers, leurs fleurs Ont Г©tГ© fГ©condГ©es par de justes mains. Les femmes Page 190 →AuprГЁs de qui nous trouvons asile, dans leur velours Gras et noir, se destinent Г nous avec autoritГ©. Nous avons gagnГ© le lieu exempt de toute brГ»lure. Si nous y taquinons les muses, c’est que la paix Y remonte des nappes phrГ©atiques. Le sol fleuritВ ; il orne nos fronts d’une fiertГ© parfaite.

Tibetsi (exerpts) I O Lord, make this mountain spare me And cling to the shadows of the setting sun In penitence. The sky, the great organizer, covers me With Tripolitanian gold. Thus take counsel, a blonde verb A straw sentence, transhumant beauty. Such languor, O gardens, for me who wishes to sleep! I adjust my hunger to children’s footsteps, I hunt down The verb to be, save for the sword’s caesura.

My feet trample the threshold of a brief beginning.

II Shepherd, for you the stars never sleep, And their symphony fills your ear. The tempered piece in C major Reworks the plainchant. Let us archive The paths, the source. A babble deep down Pronounces the peace: a palm tree replies. On our lips the echo comes from nowhere, The offering of the dream. A mountain emerges That, at the time, looks green.

Page 191 →III The soft morning, this superb place tucked away, a need for infinity. Oasis of Faya-Largeau, balm for skin and eyes, for prayer You soften our eyelids. Peasants rule over the date trees, their flowers were pollinated by just hands. The women with whom we find asylum, in their thick black velvet, are destined for us with authority. We reached this place exempt from any burns. If we tease the muses here, it is because peace Rises from the ground water. The earth blossoms: it adorns our brows with perfect pride. Translated by Patrick Williamson From Pierre, poussiГЁre Page 192 →Or L’infante De Salamanque (considГ©rations inactuelles sur l’élГ©phant)

L’éléphant est irremplaçable —Alexandre Vialatte

I Noli me tangere, telle est sa devise, Et j’ai gardé la haute main sur la douceur. Elle anime ses flancs. Cet œil qui me jauge Est la sûre balance où peser mes pensées. Ses pieds ont calmé la poussière, apaisé Ma brûlure. La terre, en sagesse, Lui ordonne de nous être favorable.

II Sa bonté est confiante, sa patience, édifiante. Pour faire le tour du monde, pour garder le nord, Navigateurs, protégez le divin astrolabe Avec l’exquise étoffe de sa peau. Vêtement des rois, asile des moines, Ainsi habillons-nous l’orbe des planètes, De la Croix du Sud à l’étoile du Berger.

III Son front, sГ»rement, tient parole. Son teint SГ©duit l’asphalte : il y a grand bonheur ГЂ admirer la roche-mГЁre qui nous a vu naГ®tre. Un bonheur odorant, une chanson bien douce. Page 193 →Qui l’éprouve est bouleversГ©, qui l’entend Est pacifiГ©. Ce sont sentiments que les monarques Voudraient graver sur leur blason.

IV

Prince des ermites, docte animal qui dispense Son savoir au gré des errances, entre forêt Et savane, le long des baobabs, au creux des chardons. La rose de ton œil humide, la science qui l’habite, Fait reluire la poussière, l’écorce, les épines. Au fronton Du vieux temple logicien, brille, insigne faveur, La gloire toujours neuve des grands théologiens.

V Et quand vient l’heure de la haute retraite, Quand les princes d’Espagne s’avisent de Salamanque, Délaissant boucaneries et passions ombrageuses, Et t’adressent leurs dernières suppliques, Tu leur conseilles de savoir distance garder. Et s’ils veulent gagner l’estime des gisants, Rien ne vaut la gloire des culs-terreux !

VI La terre rumine, peut-être est-ce le ciel ? Ensemble ils fondent une ténébreuse confiance. Qu’ils ruminent donc et ne cessent point, Puisque nous sommes des herbivores ! La trompe, comme une fontaine, élève L’eau aussi bien que la poussière : Elle nourrit une mienne douceur.

Page 194 →VII Assis, nous paraissons debout. Debout, Nous assurons, Г l’arriГЁre-plan, une assise Aux neiges Г©ternelles. Les vents qui battent Nos oreilles, ont, par leur orbe, la finesse

Des acacias parasols. Qui connaît le contour De l’air ? Et cette science, en lui, Qui régit un continent de transparence.

VIII L’aube est certaine dans ces yeux d’amour, Et sa rondeur, idoine, et la joie et le calme. Le sceptre que nous ne tiendrons jamais En notre main, le totem antique—ténébreux Talisman—, nous le laissons à d’autres, trafiquants D’ivoire. L’espace, lui, nous équilibre; L’herbe est vaste, le monde nous appartient.

IX La douceur, notre cuirasse, on dirait Qu’elle bat le rappel des nombres entiers. Parfois, ce sont la terre, le sol, l’écorce du monde Qui demandent au bel animal d’augmenter Leur présence d’un front plus haut que le ciel ! La matière vitale est une masse, une momie Aux organes somptueux, et le sommeil vient Couronner une marche et dévote et nuptiale.

X Car le destin de cette peau, le destin mien, Toile cirГ©e d’un marche-pied si catholique, Page 195 →N’a pas rГ©sistГ© au dГ©peГ§age. Lui reste l’allure, MГ©tronome des Г©motions. La douleur, Cependant, n’a pas rГ©ussi Г le vaincre. Chaque jour, l’élГ©phant s’éloigne, S’éloigne mon autoportraitВ .В .В .

Yet the Infanta of Salamanca (unfashionable considerations on the elephant) “The elephant is irrefutable” —Alexandre Vialatte

I Noli me tangere, that is his motto, And I keep supreme control of the softness. It rouses his flanks. This eye, that sizes me up, The sound pair of scales to weigh up my thoughts. His feet calmed the dust, brought relief To my wound. The earth, wisely, Orders him to be kind to us.

II His kindness is confident, his patience edifying. To travel round the world, to hold steady North, Navigators, protect the divine astrolabe With the exquisite material of his skin. The cloth of kings, the haven of monks, Thus do we dress the orbit of planets, From the Southern Cross to the evening star.

Page 196 →III His brow, certainly, keeps its word. His coloring Seduces the asphalt: there is much joy In admiring the mother-rock that saw us born. A fragrant joy, a gentle song. He who feels it is moved, he who hears it Is calmed. These are sentiments that monarchs

Would like to engrave on their coat-of-arms.

IV Prince of hermits, learned animal that bestows Its knowledge throughout its wandering, between forest And savanna, along baobab trees and through thistles. The rose within your moist eye, the science therein, Polishes up the dust, bark, and thorns. On the front Of the old logician temple shines—a signal favor— The ever-fresh glory of great theologians.

V And when the time comes to leave worldly things behind, when The princes of Spain suddenly become aware of Salamanca, Abandoning their goatish behavior and sudden passions, And address you their latest petitions, You advise them moderation in all things. And if they want to win the esteem of royal tombs, There is nothing better than the glory of peasants!

VI The earth ruminates, perhaps it is the sky? Together they built a mysterious trust. May they ruminate therefore and never stop, Page 197 →Since we are herbivores! The trunk, like a fountain, lifts up Water as well as it does the dust: It nourishes a softness of mine.

VII Seated, we look as if upright. Upright

We ensure, in the background, a foundation For everlasting snow. The winds that chaff Our ears have, through their orbit, the fineness Of parasol acacias. Who knows the contours Of the air? And the science it contains That governs a continent of transparency.

VIII The dawn is certain in these loving eyes, And its roundness fitting, as is the joy and stillness. The sceptre that we will never hold In our hands, the antique totem—mysterious Talisman—we will leave that for others, for ivory Smugglers. Space gives us our balance; The grassland is vast, the world is ours.

IX The softness, our cuirass, one would say That it summons up whole numbers. Sometimes, the earth, the ground, the world’s crust Ask the beautiful animal to increase Their presence by a brow higher than the sky! The vital matter is a massive body, a mummy With sumptuous organs, and sleep comes to Crown a march that is both pious and nuptial.

Page 198 →X For the destiny of this skin, my destiny, Oil cloth for so catholic a footstool, Has not resisted dismembering. Only the stride remains, A metronome of emotions. The pain,

However, has not managed to overcome him. Every day, the elephant becomes more distant, And so does my self-portraitВ .В .В . Translated by Patrick Williamson From En Saison Page 199 →Le Lieu du PoГЁme Je connais le lieu du poГЁme, ma gorge. Je ne connais qu’elle. Un fanal prГ©cieux la soutient. Pierre poreuse, pierre ponce, tessons.В Je ne compte plus mes nuits de veille. J’ai tendu l’oreille, ai tari la source des Г©chos. FГ©erie de la brГ»lure, Г©tincelle d’amourВ .В .В . J’ai mis ma voix en veilleuse. Je ne sais qui jure En moi, ni pourquoi. Ce qu’il me veut, C’est comme le retour de flamme d’une passion dГ©funte. Je suis le gardien des Г©motions rocheuses. J’entends leur reflux, j’entends leur remontГ©e Douloureuse ; les voici, ma gorge prophГ©tise. Je n’ai plus de corps . . . Sous l’arche des vents Se dГ©ploie le soleil, empire du souverain calme. Il me presse de partir.В

Where the Poem Is I know where the poem is—in my throat. It is all I know, sustained by a beacon of light. Porous stone, lava stone, shards . . . I can no longer count my nights of wakefulness. I pricked my ears, dried up the wellspring of echoes. Fairyland of burning, spark of love . . . I put my voice on dim. I do not know who swears

Within me or why. What he wants would be for me to rekindle the flame of a love long since past. I am the guardian of rocky emotions. I hear their ebb; I hear their flow, Their painful return. Here they come, my throat foretells. I no longer have a bodyВ .В .В . Under the arch of the winds The sun unfurls, empire of sovereign calm. I cannot wait to goВ .В .В . Translated by Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© From Pierre, poussiГЁre Page 200 →Remords SitГґt que je m’avise d’être, survient La dГЁche. SitГґt que l’amour me sourit, La phynance me nargue. Je vais par les rues, Muet, le plus souvent, le pas mal assurГ©, IncapableВ .В .В . Ceux qui m’entourent Ont plus que raison et sagesse gardГ©es, Mais pour sonder mes flops, mes dГ©routes Ma dГ©bine, il faut renoncer Г ne rien Comprendre Г rien. Quand sonne L’heure du blues, vous grimpez au rideau. C’est tout pareil pour moi qui succombe Toujours au charme entier du zГ©ro.

Remorse As soon as I dare to be, penury Comes. As soon as love smiles on me, Money mocks. I walk down the streets, Silent, most of the time, unsteady on my feet. IncapableВ .В .В . The people around me

Have kept their fair share of wisdom and sense, Yet to fathom my flops, my detours, My bad runs, you must not hope to understand anything at all. When the hour of the blues Sounds, you climb the curtain. It’s all the same to me as I fall Under the spell of absolute zero. Translated by Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© From En Saison Page 201 →Les Superbes Le Suffisant Son Е“il disait qu’il Г©tait directeur Sa parole fusillait ou assommait C’est selon. La tendresse il en avait fait Le deuil tant il s’était habituГ© ГЂ sabrer dicter rabrouer Sa jouissance, quelle misГЁre ! Il voulait qu’on l’aime, il s’y prenait TrГЁs mal. Le mГ©tier d’intelligence Г‰touffait en lui l’émotion, cette Г©motion Sans aplomb sans armure. Son humour Г‰tait savant, autant dire inaudible. Son verbe Г©tait cassant, autant dire InhabitГ©. Cet intelligent-lГ N’avait pas compris que la faiblesse Est dГ©sirable, et que l’amour Conquiert le conquГ©rant

The Arrogant Man

His gaze said he was director His words broke bones or bored stiff, depending. Tenderness, he gave it up, busying himself with imposing, spearing, snubbing. His pleasure, what a pity! He wanted to be loved; he went about it The wrong way. His career in intellect Choked his sentiment, this sentiment Without assurance without armor. His humor Was erudite, which is to say incomprehensible. His language was caustic, which is to say Page 202 →Soulless. This intelligent fellow Had not understood: weakness Is desirable; love Conquers the conqueror. Translated by Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© From Sur les berges du Chari, district nord de la beautГ© Page 203 →Le ContrГґleur SNCF Il avait des souliers noirs Г boucles Il suffisait que je batte de l’œil Pour les couvrir d’or et de rubans Pas trГЁs grand, portant bien L’uniforme, les joues couperosГ©es Les lГЁvres affinГ©es par un esprit Doux profond heureux Il occupait une banquette Sur ma gauche car le train

Avait Г©tГ© remplacГ© par un bus Et nous voyagions en voyageurs Qui ne se formalisent de rien

SNCF Conductor He wore black buckle shoes All I had to do was blink my eyes To cover them in gold and ribbons Not too tall, he wore His uniform well, blotchy cheeks Refined lips reflecting a spirit Mellow deep and happy He lounged on a banquette To my left for the train Had turned into a bus And we travelled like travelers Offended by nothing Translated by Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© From Sur les berges du Chari, district nord de la beautГ© Page 204 →L’élГ©phant J’ai souvenir de cet Г©lГ©phant Qui s’éloignait comme se dГ©ploie Le dГ©dain. Il avait vu Senti Г©valuГ© le petit point Dans l’espace que j’étais Г‡a n’entravait ni le ciel ni l’herbe Pas plus que l’infini qui au loin TГ©moignait de ce qu’on se serait dit Moi qui Г©prouvais si fort L’écho d’une parole commune

The Elephant I have a memory of that elephant Walking away like the unfurling Of disdain. He had seen Felt assessed the small dot That I was in the world It obstructed neither sky nor grass Nor the infinity which in the distance Bore witness to what we would have said I who so strongly felt The echo of a common word Translated by Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© From Sur les berges du Chari, district nord de la beautГ© Page 205 →Ma VГ©randa Moi le pauvre de ce canton Je tiens en haute estime Cette pauvretГ© qui m’a laissГ© Libre de toutes obligations L’hiver me rappelle Au confort bourgeois Assis lГ prГЁs de mon poГЄle J’écris un poГЁme Sur l’or qui court Dans l’herbe jusqu’au Pied du grand tilleul

My Veranda I the county pauper Hold in high regard

The poverty that left me Free of all obligations Winter brings me closer To bourgeois comforts Seated here near my stove I write a poem About the gold that runs Through the grass To the foot of the tall linden tree Translated by Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© From Sur les berges du Chari, district nord de la beautГ© Page 206 →Visages de paysannes ГЂ soif des visages labourГ©s C’est un grain broyГ© un Г un Qui les Г©pure de tout bavardage Nomades et souverains, ils transhument D’asile en asile et d’âge en Гўge Vers une beautГ© sГ©vГЁre et sГ»re Un hanneton de transparente origine Remue en eux son humus

Faces of Village Women As for the thirst of ploughed faces It is grain crushed one by one That expunges all their gossip Nomads and sovereigns, they herd From refuge to refuge from age to age Toward a stern and solid beauty A may beetle of transparent origin Digs its fertile soil within them.

Translated by Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© From Sur les berges du Chari, district nord de la beautГ© Page 207 →Quai FranГ§ois-Mauriac Je suis formelВ : aux TGV gratifions les bonnes secousses Du train Corail, et aux Corails, le luxe discret des TGV. ГЂ moins d’emprunter le TГ©oz, leur moyen terme. Celui-ci me procure le sentiment sans pareil de passer Comme de la seconde classe Г la premiГЁre. Souvent, Mon cЕ“ur en devient voluptueux. Sur les rails de Normandie, Sur ceux de Clermont-Ferrand, quatre heures deviennent Presque deux, et je tiens Г ce presque, qui raccourcit d’autant Le poids de la fatigue, le venin de l’ennuiВ .В .В . En deux heures—ou presque—le silence emplit Mes oreilles, et le fond, le trГ©fonds de l’airВ .В .В . L’usure des nerfs file alors son cours, parallГЁle aux rails, Toujours luisants, toujours fidГЁles Г leur capВ : l’infini, Cette manne qui sied aux poГЁtes et aux thГ©ologiens. Elle file, dis-je, la loco, elle file son fil de soie, de cristal Et d’estime, elle file, Г©longe le manuscrit que je corrige Sur ma tablette d’ivoire, vГ©rifiant que les mots, sur la page Un brin instable, ne dГ©raillent. Il se trouve toujours un mot Pour faire du tГЄte-Г -queue. Celui-lГ , je le tiens Г l’œilВ ; Il aurait pu mettre en pГ©ril tout le voyage. HГ©las, un autre suit sa pente, puis un troisiГЁme. C’est mon Macintosh qui va se rГ©jouirВ .В .В . Mon esprit, lui, RГ©agit Г la vitesse de la lumiГЁre, la vitesse du TГ©oz, Qui est Dieu lui-mГЄme poursuivant Dieu. Parfois, la France Fait de ces inventionsВ ! ГЂ prГ©sent, deux heures s’achГЁvent, Entre vallons et plaines, coteaux de pinГЁdes, herbe sagement

CultivГ©e par la science qui donne du chien Г l’humaine douceur. ГЂ ce train, nous habiterons le XXIe siГЁcle en poГЁtes consuls. La gare de Lyon est en vue. Dans une semaine ou dans un mois, Je testerai ma prose sur les rails d’un autre TГ©oz. Du Train Г Grande Vitesse Г la TrГЁs Grande BibliothГЁque, M’est avis que j’achГЁverai mon poГЁme sur un parchemin. Et, en TrГЁs-Grand-PoГЁte, je le rangerai au milieu Page 208 →des incunables, LГ , sur le parterre du Quai FranГ§ois-MauriacВ .В .В .

Quai François-Mauriac Let me be frank: to the TGV we attribute the big jolts Of the Corails, and to the Corails the discreet luxury of the TGV. Unless I take the Téoz, their mid-range option. The Téoz gives me the unparalleled feeling of moving From second-class to first, as it were. Often It makes my heart flush with pleasure. On the rails of Normandy Or Clermont-Ferrand, four hours becomes Almost two, and I insist on this almost, which pares in measure The weight of fatigue and the venom of boredom . . . In two hours—almost—silence fills My ears, and the depths, the deepest depths of the air . . . Nervous exhaustion speeds through the body, like on the rails, Always gleaming, always staying their course: infinity, This manna for poets and theologians. She speeds, I say, the engine speeds her spinning of silk, of crystal And esteem, she speeds, lengthening the manuscript that I edit On my ivory tablet, checking that the words, on the page, A little instable, don’t derail. There is always one word

Spinning in the wrong direction. I’m keeping my eye on that one; It could put the whole trip in jeopardy. Alas, another follows in its tracks, then a third. It’s my Mac that will rejoiceВ .В .В .As for my mind, it Reacts at the speed of light, at TГ©oz speed, Which is God chasing God. Sometimes France And its inventions! Now, two hours have come to their end, Between valleys and plains, pine-covered hills and grass wisely Cultivated by scientists to give a little enhancement to humanity. At this speed, we will inhabit the twenty-first century as poet-consuls. Page 209 →The gare de Lyon is in sight. In a week or a month, I will put my prose to the test on the rails of another TГ©oz. From the Train Г Grande Vitesse to the TrГЁs Grand Bibliotheque, I think I will complete my poem on parchment And, as a TrГЁs Grand Poet, I’ll place it among the early printed books, There, on the lawn of the Quai FranГ§ois-MauriacВ .В .В . Translated by Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© From Sur les berges du Chari, district nord de la beautГ© Page 210 →Peine Capitale Et cette joie ancienne m’apportant la connaissance de ma prГ©sente misГЁre, une route bossuГ©e qui pique une tГЄte dans un creux oГ№ elle Г©parpille quelques casesВ .В .В . AimГ© CГ©saire Page 211 →DГ©sespГ©rГ©ment elle se traГ®ne Le soleil est un peu trop fardГ© Pour un enterrement de pauvres gens On te vole en tout ici ton argent ton Гўme ta maison Car de la ville poubelle tu ne connais que l’intervalle oГ№ le plastique vient Г©chouer comme une nuГ©e de

corbeaux. Et la terre s’en gave, rongГ©e tapissГ©e. AoГ»t, dans sa douceur mГЄme, la drape d’un suaire Et voilГ que tu retrouves le sourire. Cette vie si lГўche—la vie est bien lГўche d’accorder tant de crГ©dit Г la vie. Mais ce n’est pas sa faute. C’est la faute Г personne—d’ailleurs. Hier c’était le 11-AoГ»t Un tel dГ©filГ© d’armadas inutiles Tandis que nos rues charriaient charognes chats crevГ©s bouteilles plastiques et pour toujours et pour rien et pour toujours et pour rien DГ©sespГ©rГ©ment elle se traГ®ne. 15 minibus comptaient chacun 23 passagers, ce qui donnait 345 en tout sur une surface d’à peine 30 mГЁtres. Il y avait aussi 15 taxis autour de moi, 6 fois 15 personnes bien tassГ©es contre des ferrailles que leur menue monnaie ne mГ©ritait pas. Il fallait aussi ajouter 15 motos japonaises et chinoises, et autant de voitures, de camionnettes qui passaient Г vive allure sur l’asphalte disputГ© par mille klaxons mille fumГ©es Гўcres Гўpres Г©tirГ©es sur mille ans, dГ©lires majuscules et humains cependant et mГЄme pas dГ©shumains et mГЄme pas rances ni dГ©rances n’eГ»t Г©tГ© cette odeur d’essence et de combustion machinique le dГ©sordre organique Page 212 →le dГ©cervelage traumatique qui vous Гґte jusqu’au dГ©sir d’habiter, d’être et de dГ©sГЄtre la force transitive qui est le point sur le i. DГ©sespГ©rГ©ment elle se traГ®ne C’est quand le soleil est au zГ©nith qu’elle ment le plus outrageusement. Au-dessus de l’immeuble de la BEAC, et ses aluminiums Г©tincelants, hautain comme une nouvelle Babel, plutГґt beau, plutГґt aimable, brun cerise par alternance, climatisé—il va de soi. Sa propretГ© est requise pour me distraire de la laideur ambiante. C’est un rГ©pit de courte durГ©e. Je ne sais quel aveu de mon pГЁre lui appliquer, qui trouvait Г une certaine fidГ©litГ© des motifs d’angoisse. La laideur est notre pain quotidien, la laideur est du plastique noir, tapis de corbeaux, cortГЁge de corneilles, carcasses de freux sur l’éternitГ© des jours. C’est un monde sec, heureusement. Un monde tropical sec mГЄme en aoГ»t si pluvieux. Les fleurs abondent, la verdure n’est pas avare de ses charmes. (La Cour d’Appel est elle aussi cernГ©e de plastique noir, la

place de l’IndГ©pendance, le monument des Martyrs, l’immeuble empoussiГ©rГ© de l’Onu, la prГ©sidence rutilante sous le soleil. Ses gardiens sont pittoresques dans l’escarbille aoГ»tienne, Г©chouГ©s lГ plastiquement. Quel dieu, quel ange donnera le grand coup de balai ? ) DГ©sespГ©rГ©ment elle se traГ®ne Un hГ©licoptГЁre en sauterelle piqueuse emplit le ciel de coups de tonnerre. Aux pollutions terrestres il ajoute des pollutions bien fanfaronnes. D’ailleurs il a l’odeur et la couleur du plastique : il veut nous hanter, prend de la hauteur—le soleil est noir Г force de clartГ©. J’aurais voulu connaГ®tre la pestilence. Il a du bon, le climat tropical sec. MГЄme notre pourriture est sГЁche. On en ferait volontiers des confettis Г NoГ«l. Elle est craquante. On en ferait des fruits secs, des dattes, des jujubes, des gousses de savonnier. Et pourquoi pas de la viande sГ©chГ©e ? Nous les partagerons avec les hyГЁnes, aux confins de la nuit. Page 213 →Maintenant, le dimanche, l’église pentecГґtiste, notre voisine de quartier, diffuse sur un gueulard des cantiques hystГ©riques. Elle copie le muezzin. Le Seigneur vient, mes frГЁres Le Seigneur vient, prГ©parez-vous ! C’est dГ©sespГ©rant, la venue du Messie dans une nation de boue. Et qu’on me fiche la paix avec l’espГ©rance qui piГ©tine. OГ№ sont les leГ§ons de rГ©volte ? OГ№ sont les leГ§ons de vie ? On ne rГ©veille pas un peuple de caniveau, on l’essore. Dans la foule, sur la route, au marchГ©, dans les bureaux, dans les hГґpitaux, les transports en commun, je connais son odeur, je sais qu’elle n’est pas pestilentielle. C’est l’acide qui s’exhale, car le dГ©sert nous a assainis. Dans nos maisons surchauffГ©es, il nous enivre en un temps Г©clair. C’est dГ©sespГ©rГ©ment rapide. Seuls les soГ»lards sont humides. Les soirs de visite Г ma petite sЕ“ur au quartier DembГ© sont une maniГЁre de fГЄte. La tombГ©e de la chaleur (dГ©jГ cinq degrГ©s de moins) dГ©senclave une faune humaine dГ©raisonnablement parquГ©e sur des terres de braises. Jadis, quand elles Г©taient vertes, on y faisait paГ®tre le troupeauВ ; puis elles sont devenues un marchГ© Г bestiaux. Au crГ©puscule, le quartier rГ©vГЁle d’inavouables ressources. Le bitume est envahi par la jeunesse. C’est le trafic. On prend l’air, on achГЁte du pain, des lГ©gumes, de la farine. Le boubou organise du mou autour des corps secs et austГЁres (le dГ©sir fait Г©clater le masque de leur visage). L’éclat de leurs yeux tient contient soutient un bonheur fragile, un espoir insensГ©. OГ№ vont-ils ? Vers quelles erres quels asiles—chez qui, avec qui ? J’imagine qu’ils savent oГ№ ils vont. Le soir est assez magique. Il inscrit la beautГ© sur l’ascГЁse des maisons. Cyclistes, motocyclistes, taxis, voitures, camions, gros-porteurs et le bataillon de marcheurs Г tongs donnent de l’unique route moderne une vie bouleversante. Page 214 →Les tongs

tongs tongs  tongs Ainsi martГЁle l’horloge chinoise attachГ©e Г nos pas C’est dГ©sespГ©rГ©ment suave Trois filles viennent vers moi Trois aiguilles de l’horloge cosmique Celle du centre est belle Г ravir Sa tunique aux couleurs automnales S’accorde parfaitement Г son teint Ses yeux en amande Sont un ourlet de jais au-dessus d’adorables pommettes Elle a un joli petit nez Et une jolie petite bouche Qui dГ©couvre une dent en or Laquelle fait sonner la lettre В« k В» Si nombreuse dans la langue qu’elle parle Comme le rehaut de son ГЄtre Les tongs tongs tongs  tongs Je hais l’oxyde de carbone, mais lГ , j’en respire volontiers sans maugrГ©er. Cyclistes motocyclistes font du slalom Г travers la foule. Au carrefour, un gros-porteur s’est mis en tГЄte de les imiter. Le flux l’a immobilisГ© quelque dix minutes ; Г prГ©sent, il s’impatiente. Il avance par Г -coups, mais personne ne s’en soucie. Tout le monde s’ingГ©nie Г le contourner : piГ©tons, voitures particuliГЁres, taxis. J’ai le tournis. Le coucher de soleil m’avait dГ©sencombrГ©, mais voilГ que la marche m’emplit de chaleur, de vertige. Ce n’est rien. ГЂ midi, j’aurais trouvГ© cela infernal. Le soir, je l’assume sans dГ©plaisirВ .В .В . C’est pour l’amour de ma sЕ“urВ .В .В . Page 215 →Г” multitude ocГ©ane ! Qui nous dГ©nombrera ? Tout le monde est de sortie, les maisons dГ©peuplГ©es sont si tristes. L’amour ne leur manque pas, mais la fiertГ© comme valeur, son papier peint—son quitus d’installation. Par exemple, dans ce coin-ci, on aurait pu amГ©nager un lit confortable,

un petit coin-salon comportant des meubles choisis par les occupants mГЄmes, avec une table oГ№ trГґnerait un respectable poste de radio dont la vitrine lumineuse serait le faire-valoir d’un confort absoluВ .В .В . Tout autour rГЁgnerait une dГ©licieuse pГ©nombre. Autrefois, le soir, on Г©tait Г l’abri dans un foyer blagueur. Aujourd’hui, passГ© sept heures, on ne peut plus rГЄver d’abri : l’hospitalitГ© a dГ©sertГ© les demeures en mode majeur. C’est dГ©sespГ©rГ©ment fГ©cond une terre anxiogГЁne Nous l’érigeons nous la dГ©tourons nous la dГ©tournons Nous lui confГ©rons une Гўme La fiГЁvre de fin d’aprГЁs-midi a fait de nous des voyageurs incognitos dans la lumiГЁre rasante du soir C’est le prix que nous payons pour rendre urbaine l’angoisse Des maisons sont partout On a ouvert des routes Je dГ©couvre le surnombre et son paysage On se presse sur des routesВ sans trottoirs Je n’entends plus les coups de klaxon. J’avance comme tout le monde. Cet instant qui me fut doux entre tous, il suffit que je songe Г ma fiancГ©e de l’époque pour que des larmes me submergent. Moi aussi j’allais dans la presque nuit vers un bonheur certain. AprГЁs la minute dorГ©e, survenait la minute bleue. Je retenais mon souffle, car les lampadaires y inscrivaient leur empreinte, qui Г©tait bleue elle aussi, un bleu qui allait s’éclaircissant. Au bout d’une nouvelle minute, il faisait danser les enfants. Je m’en allais alors. Les lampadaires n’étaient jamais aussi beaux que lorsqu’on les inventoriait de loin. Les lumignons qui Г©clairaient les rues adjacentes les surpassaient en poГ©sie. C’est Г leur lueur que j’embrassais ma fiancГ©e. Quelquefois c’était dans la maison de sa grand-mГЁre, au village, lorsque survint la guerre. La vieille demeure exhalait l’odeur des brebis. J’en fus incommodГ© au dГ©but. AprГЁs une minute, elle me Page 216 →devint toute naturelle. Une ou deux lampes-tempГЄte illuminaient la maison. Si les Caravage nous touchent tant, c’est que les lumiГЁres pauvres sont une maniГЁre de sculpture. ExposГ© au lumignon, le visage de ma fiancГ©e Г©tait le plus beau du monde. Le lui ai-je jamais ditВ ? J’en doute. Et, pourtant, je venais tous les soirs le contempler. Mes sorties Г l’heure des vГЄpres avaient du sens. Je savais dГ©jГ le prix que j’allais payer. Une fois mariГ©s, il y aurait foule dans notre maison. Son visage deviendrait un dГ©sert pour moi, comme le chemin poussiГ©reux de cette ville. DГ©sespГ©rГ©ment je me traГ®ne au bout de ma citГ© au bout de mon couple au bout d’une table Г manger au bout d’une salle de bain au bout d’un tableau DГ©sespГ©rГ©ment je me traГ®ne au bout de la place que la ville me dГ©nie

Ce n’est pas faute d’avoir cherchГ© Г l’assainir. Dans le cimetiГЁre oГ№ dort mon pГЁre, les plastiques s’amoncellent : des noirs, un peu de blancs—et la terre ocre prolonge les pastels. J’aime le dГ©nuement de ce lieu. Un rГўteau y ferait place nette en une journГ©e. Tout ce que la terre rГ©clame ici c’est elle-mГЄme : un sol meuble, stГ©rile en apparence, mais que l’herbe recouvrira aux premiГЁres pluies de l’hivernage. En attendant, le ciel gueule dans un bleu sans bavure. ГЂ la nuit tombГ©e, les Г©toiles se presseront par-dessus les tombes. DГ©sespГ©rГ©ment elle se traГ®ne De terrain vague en terrain vague Elle multiplie des vagues Г l’âme Comme un ingГ©nieur du nГ©ant L’ange de l’Apocalypse est malin qui sourit de mes mГ©taphores Dormir enfin avec les fleurs de lis Avec les pourpiers la soie filГ©e Г l’infini Violon de mon Гўme Page 217 →J’ai pleurГ© sur la tombe de mon pГЁre L’absence Г demeure en moi C’est une douleur portative Conforme Г l’espace, nue, sans charme presque sans mГ©moire Le vent la caresse  des oiseaux voluptueux M’ont conduit Г la porte de la maison de ma sЕ“ur C’était midi, personne ne parlait Et pourtant ma sЕ“ur entourГ©e de ses dix gosses riait comme une jeune fille en fleurs et la veuve de mon neveu (et ses onze gosses)      riait         elle aussi

de son beau visage de madone c’est fou l’apaisement ressenti hier dans le voisinage de ma mГЁre C’était comme si j’avais douze ans. Elle m’avait offert un repas de pauvres : de la pГўte accompagnait une sauce de poissons aux gombos assaisonnГ©s Г la fleur de sel. Ç’avait le meilleur goГ»t du monde. AssurГ©ment j’avais douze ans hier soir.В DГ©sespГ©rГ©ment elle se traГ®ne dans sa vГ©ritГ© militaire—qui est plastic, mais sans nitroglycГ©rine—, juste encombrante, poubelle (pour tout dire). Les maisons sont devenues des enceintes, agencement de briques rouges maГ§onnГ©es de guingois, pare-feu de parpaings qu’un architecte ratГ© aligne vaille que vaille au mГ©pris du fil Г plomb. Page 218 →L’horizon est une enceinte, les jardins des enceintes, des squares des enceintes, des ronds-points des enceintes, et partout elles sont cernГ©es de sacs plastiques, leur porte-drapeau, leur Г©tendard, leur tapis. Voyageur, contemple d’un Е“il sobre tous ces bivouacs du nГ©ant. Des lГ©gions romaines ont ruinГ© lГ bien des vies. Or la ville tissait jadis l’infini comme sa matiГЁre premiГЁre. De mon enfance Г mon Гўge adulte, elle savait accompagner mon rГЄve Г la dГ©clivitГ© du soleil, quand celui-ci, au terme de sa rГ©volution, passait le relais Г la lune et aux Г©toiles. La lumiГЁre est une semence divine pour qui sourit Г la paix des maisons non barricadГ©es. Nims et cailcГ©drats, terminalias et kapokiers, fromagers et tamariniers, le paysage est vert, qui les honore de son tempГ©rament. Je dirai un jour prochain la haute magie des maisons de terre Je dirai leur charme naturel Je dirai leur climat Je dirai leur douceur de rosГ©e Je dirai la grande rosace Et sa fraГ®cheur termitiГЁre Je dirai la rГ©gion divine en elles OГ№ ni poux ni belles   ni poubelles    ne vicient

      l’air         du bon dieu Car des bondieuseries occupent nos tГЄtes Mais le paysage n’en a cure Il n’est mГЄme pas paГЇen Il n’est mГЄme pas chrГ©tien Et pas mГЄme musulman Il est infini Г la mesure De l’amour qui nous consume Page 219 →Vivre savamment Mourir avec le sourire Quelle rime triste J’éclaterai ma tГЄte contre leurs bons mots Eux qui m’ont dГ©pouillГ© de tout espoir De toute quГЄte De toute mГ©taphore La poussiГЁre l’ocГ©an les Г©toiles Ulysse Aladin Nils Les rivages les cГґtes l’horizon me sont refusГ©s Г jamais On ne me dira mГЄme pas Juif errant Ni coolie Indien ni sale Chinois Je suis la derniГЁre figure de l’homme Je suis le trГ©passГ© de Lampedusa Je suis le fusillГ© de Ceuta et de Melilla Je suis le naufragГ© de Gibraltar de Malte de Sicile Je suis le vendeur Г la sauvette de Rome de Venise De New York et du TrocadГ©ro Je suis la maniГЁre noire de Vienne Je

suis la der  niГЁre  fig  ure   de    l’hom       me OГ№ est mon pays ? Je n’ai plus de pays Nos diplomates m’ont vendu aux plus offrants Et mon malheur est sans bornes Me voilГ condamnГ© Г l’exil, noyГ© dans l’ocГ©an des misГЁres TournГ© dГ©tournГ© tel un tournesol au dГ©but de l’étГ© Mes yeux n’ont pas mГ»ri, non plus ma peine Je suis l’enfant dont le regard a sГ©chГ© Page 220 →au bord du chemin, comme les blГ©s Dans la Beauce et comme la luzerne en Picardie Je me suis adossГ© Г la paille ; j’y ai roulГ© : C’étaient des piqГ»res et du soleil jusqu’au fond de mon Гўme. Ah, ces chagrins d’amour dont on ne guГ©rit jamais Fallait-il que des nГ©griers s’en mГЄlent Issus de mon sang de ma peau de mon Гўme Le ciel est fГЄlГ©, qui fait Г©cho Г mes remords.

Page 221 →Capital Punishment And this ancient joy that brings me knowledge of my present misery, a bumpy road that jumps head first into a sunken place where it scatters a few hutsВ .В .В . AimГ© CГ©saire

Page 222 →Hopelessly it crawls The sun is made up too heavily For a poor man’s burial Here they steal everything from you your money your soul your house For in the trash city all you know is the gap in which plastic lands like a plague of ravens. And the earth gorges on its chewed up carpet. August, in its very sweetness, the folds of a shroud And voilГ , you find again your smile. This cowardly life—life is awfully cowardly for having so much faith in life. But it is not its fault. It’s nobody’s fault—by the way. Yesterday was August 11th Such a useless parade of armadas As our streets carried along cats cadavers and carrion plastic bottles and forever and for no reason and for ever and for no reason Hopelessly it crawls 15 minibuses with 23 passengers each, which makes 345 in an area of less than 30 meters. There were also 15 cabs surrounding me, 6 times 15 low-fare commuters squished against scrap iron that they could not afford. On top of that, one must add 15 Japanese and Chinese motorcycles, and as many cars and vans speeding by on asphalt claimed by a thousand klaxons a thousand acrid bitter fumes spread out a thousand-years long, uppercase madness and yet still human and not even unhuman, and not even rancid or unrancid except for this smell of fuel and combustion mechanisms Page 223 →organic chaos traumatic uncerebration that deprive you of all desire

to settle, to be and unbe the transitive force that is the dot on the i. Hopelessly it crawls It is when the sun is at its zenith that the city deceives most outrageously. Right above the BEAC building with its shiny aluminum, haughty like a new Babel, relatively beautiful, relatively nice, cherry brown in places, equipped with AC–needless to say. I need its cleanliness to forget all the ugliness. It is a short respite. I do not know which of my father’s confessions to apply to it, for he found reasons to fear in a certain regularity. Ugliness is our daily bread. Ugliness is made of black plastic, carpets of crows, a cavalcade of ravens, rook corpses littering the perpetual unfolding of time. It is a dry world, fortunately. A dry, tropical world, even when rain abounds in August. Flowers blossom. The greenery is not stingy with its charms. (The Court of Appeals, too, is enclosed in black plastic, la place de l’IndГ©pendance, the Martyrs Memorial, the dusty buildings of the UN, the PrГ©sidence, gleaming under the sun. Its guards are quaint in the August grit, stuck there, plastically. What god, what angel will give a great sweep?) Hopelessly it crawls A helicopter, a whipping grasshopper, fills the sky with its thunder claps. To the other pollutants of the earth, it adds the pollution of boastfulness. As a matter of fact, it has the smell and color of plastic: it wants to haunt us, take to the sky—the sun is blackened by its brightness. How I would have liked to have known pestilence! There are some advantages to a dry, tropical climate. Even our decay is dry. Gladly we would make Christmas confetti from it. It crunches. We could make dried fruit, dates, jujubes, pods from the soapberry trees. And why not dried meat? We will share it with hyenas in the depths of the night. Page 224 →Now on Sunday, the Pentecostal church, our neighbor, has taken to broadcasting hysterical hymns on a loud speaker. It’s imitating the muezzin. The Lord is coming, brethren The Lord is coming, prepare yourselves! It’s hopeless, the coming of the Messiah in a nation of mud. And spare me this trampled hope. Where are the lessons of rebellion? Where are the lessons of life? A nation that lives in the sewer cannot be awakened; it can only be wrung out. In crowds, on roads, at the markets, in offices and hospitals, on public transport, I know its smell. I know it is not pestilence. It is acid rising, for the desert has sanitized us. In our overheated houses it intoxicates us in a flash. It is hopelessly quick. Only the drunkards are wet. Nighttime visits to my younger sister in the Dembe neighborhood are a kind of celebration. As the heat recedes (already five degrees less) the human fauna, unreasonably penned into smoldering quarters, escapes. Long ago, when they were green, the cattle were let to graze; then, they were turned into a cattle market. At dusk, the neighborhood reveals shameful resources. The asphalt is invaded by the young. Business is conducted. Some are there for fresh air, others to buy bread, vegetables or flour. Boubous soften the contours of dry, austere bodies (desire causes their wooden faces to burst).

Their shining eyes contain, retain, sustain a fragile happiness, an absurd hope. Where are they going? Toward what adventure what asylum—whose home, which companion? I imagine they know where they are heading. The evening is magic enough. It writes beauty onto the asceticism of the homes. Riders of bicycles, motorcycles, taxis, cars, flatbed trucks, heavy trucks and Page 225 →battalions of flip-floppers give the single modern road overwhelming life. Flip Flop Flip Flop The Chinese clock attached to our footsteps hammers away It is hopelessly smooth Three girls come toward me Three hands on the cosmic clock The one in the middle is ravishingly beautiful Her tunic in colors of fall Complements her complexion to perfection Her almond eyes Are a jet-black hem To her adorable cheekbones She has a cute little nose And a cute little mouth Which reveals a golden tooth That makes the letter k So frequent in the language she speaks Ring like the punctum of her being Flip Flop Flip Flop

I hate carbon dioxide, but here I breathe it gladly and without complaint. Cyclists motorcyclists slalom through the crowd. At the intersection a large truck is determined to imitate them. Immobilized by the flow for more than ten minutes, the driver is impatient. For him, it is stop and go, stop and go. But who cares? Everyone finds a way to get around him: pedestrians, cars, taxis. I am dizzy. The sunset had cleared my head, but walking fills me with heat, dizziness. It doesn’t matter. At noon, I would have found it hellish. In the evening, I accept it without displeasureВ .В .В . It’s for the love of my sisterВ .В .В . Page 226 →O ocean multitude! Who will tally us? Everyone is out, leaving the depopulated houses in sadness. They do not lack for love, but for the value of pride, its wallpaper—the execution of its installations. For instance, in this corner, the occupants could have fit a comfortable bed, a little parlor with furniture of their choosing, a table graced by a respectable radio whose bright display would give proof of absolute comfortВ .В .В . All around a delicious half-light would reign. Long ago, in the evenings, we would find shelter in chattering homes. Today, we no longer dream of shelter after seven o’clock in the evening: fundamentally, hospitality has deserted our dwellings. An anxiety-provoking land is hopelessly fecund We erect it, we rout it, we divert it We ascribe it a soul The fever of late afternoon has made us anonymous travellers In the shallow light of evening This is the price we pay for making anxiety urbane Houses are everywhere Roads have been opened I discover surfeit and its landscape Crowds hurry on roads without sidewalks I no longer hear the honking of horns. I press on like everyone. For the sweetest moment of all, I simply think of my former fiancГ© and drown in tears. I, too, travelled in the semi-darkness toward certain happiness. After the golden hour came the blue. I held my breath, for the streetlights would make their mark, which was blue too, but lighter in nuance. As it faded, it made the children dance. Then I would take my leave. The streetlights were never more beautiful than when assessed from afar. The lamps that illuminated adjacent streets were more poetic. In their flare, I would kiss my fiancГ©e. When war broke out, sometimes it happened in her grandmother’s house in the village. This old house smelled of sheep. It bothered me at first. After a minute, it became familiar. One or two hurricane lamps lit the house. If Caravaggios are so moving, it’s because poor lighting is a kind of Page 227 →sculpture. Beneath the lamp, my fiancГ©e’s face was the most beautiful in the world. Did I ever tell her? I doubt it. And yet, I came every evening to contemplate it. My visits at vespers made sense. I already knew the price I would eventually pay. Once married, there would be crowds in our house. Her face would become a desert to me, like the town’s dusty road. Hopelessly I drag my feet to the edge of my city to the edge of my marriage

to the edge of a dining-room table to the edge of a bathroom to the edge of a painting Hopelessly I drag my feet to the edge of the place the city denies me And yet, attempts were made to sanitize it. In the cemetery where my father sleeps, plastic piles up: black, some white—the ocher of the soil draws out the pastels. I love the bareness of this place. A rake could clean it in a day. All the earth expects is itself: loose soil, sterile only in appearance; the grass will cover it as soon as the rainy season starts. Meanwhile, the sky bellows a dripless blue. When night falls, stars will gather above the graves. Hopelessly it drags itself From vacant lot to vacant lot It multiplies the blues Like an engineer of nothingness Smart indeed is the Angel of the Apocalypse amused by my metaphors! To sleep at last with lilies With purslane, silk spins to infinity Violin of my soul I cried on my father’s grave Page 228 →The absence dwells within me A portable pain True to any space, nude, unattractive almost without memory The wind caresses it  voluptuous birds Have brought me to the door of my sister’s house. It was noon, no one spoke. And yet my sister surrounded by her ten kids laughed like a girl in the flower of her age

and my nephew’s widow (and her eleven kids) laughed she, too with her beautiful face like the Madonna It was amazing the soothing I felt yesterday in the presence of my mother It was as if I were twelve. She offered me a frugal meal: porridge with fish sauce and okra seasoned with sea salt. It was the best taste in the world. I was twelve last night, no doubt.В Hopelessly it drags itself in its military truth— which is plastic, but without nitroglycerin—just cumbersome, in a nutshell, trash. The houses have become enclosures, with red bricks stacked and cemented haphazardly, cinder-block firewalls that a pseudo-architect put together willy-nilly without regard for the plumb line. The horizon is an enclosure, gardens enclosures, squares enclosures, traffic circles enclosures, and everywhere they are encased in plastic bags, their standard bearer, their flag, their carpet. Page 229 →Traveller, with a sober gaze contemplate these bivouacs of nothingness. There Roman legions have ruined many a life. Yet, long ago the city could spin infinity as its raw material. From my youth to my adulthood, she knew how to accompany my dreams with the slanting sun, when it, at the end of its revolution, let the moon and the stars take over. Light is a divine seed for he who favors the peace of houses without barricades. Nimtrees and cailcedrats, terminalia and kapok trees, silk-cotton and tamarind trees, the scenery is green, honoring each with its temperament. I’ll sing another day of the high magic of earthen homes I’ll sing of their natural charm I’ll sing of their atmosphere I’ll sing of their dew-like sweetness I’ll sing of the large rosace And its anthill-like coolness I’ll sing of its divine core Where

no left no overs no leftover garbage        pollutes           the good Lord’s                  air For religious knick-knacks fill our heads But the landscape doesn’t care It is not pagan It is not Christian And not even Muslim Its infinite is commensurate With the love that consumes us To live wisely To die smiling Page 230 →What a sorrowful rhyme I will crack my head against their bons mots Those that strip me of all hope All quest All metaphor Dust ocean stars Ulysses Aladdin Nils Bank coast horizon are denied me forever No one will ever call me a wandering Jew Or coolie from India or dirty Chinese I am the last face of man I am he deceased at Lampedusa I am he executed at Ceuta and Melilla I am he shipwrecked near Gibraltar, Malta, Sicily

I am the peddler in Roma and Venice New York and Trocadero I am Vienna’s mezzo-tinto I am the last face   of     man Where is my land? I no longer have land Our diplomats sold me to the highest bidder And my sadness is unfathomable Here I am, condemned to exile, drowned in a sea of misery Routed rerouted like a sunflower in early summer My eyes are not yet ripe, nor is my sorrow I am the child whose gaze has dried On the side of the road, like wheat In Beauce and like alfalfa in Picardy I leaned against the hay; I rolled in it: It prickled and the sun shone into the depths of my soul. O this lovesickness Page 231 →Which can never be cured Must slave traders be mixed up in this Born of my blood my skin my soul The sky splits, echoing the sound of my remorse. Translated by Emily Goedde and Sylvie KandГ© From Babel, Babylone

Page 232 →

Solitary Form A Closing Meditation Frieda Ekotto It’s mortifying, although tolerable all the same, to be born among people who will never speak of you. —E. M. Cioran, Г‰bauches de vertige “To be born among people who will never speak of youВ .В .В .” This epigraph reflects Cioran’s charming self-mockery as well as his poignant irony: Romanians have given the world revolutionizing writers, painters, sculptors, and filmmakers, and yet Cioran, one of their most illustrious, chose to write in French. He did this, in part, to escape the anonymity that plagues Romanian writers. Of this ambition, he once said: “I was, in my youth, prey to the folly of grandeur.”1 Yet he was party to a particular kind of ambition: For thirty years he refused all literary prizes and the checks that came with them. He did this despite the fact that he was never a wealthy man; his compagne’s salary was just enough for an attic room in OdГ©on, which he preferred to all possible comfort. And when his friend and compatriot EugГЁne Ionesco, the author of La Cantatrice chauve, was inducted to the AcadГ©mie franГ§aise in January 1972, Cioran mocked him relentlessly, for he could never accept how writers engage in society’s games. Instead Cioran chose to turn himself inward toward his individual being,2 translating human solitude into radicalism. He preferred to remain a solitary figure, connected to the world only through language. Page 233 →Yet, even while Cioran denied himself the pomp and circumstance, the honors and the income that came with social recognition, he never mocked Ionesco’s relationship to the French language. For that, he only had praise. This leads me to wonder: What does it mean, ultimately, “to be born among people who will never speak of you”? Born in Chad in 1959, Nimrod, too, is a solitary figure. To be sure, Nimrod’s work can be understood as part of the African intellectual traditions that began with the NГ©gritude movement. His lineage extends back to luminaries such as LГ©on Damas, LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor, and AimГ© CГ©saire. His essays, novels, and poems engage their epistemologies, axiologies, and methodologies, and remind us that NГ©gritude explored, in strikingly novel ways, connections between continental and diasporic African identities, cultures, literatures, and languages.В But Nimrod’s path to this position as a man of letters was not direct. Chadians are generally defined as warriors—not writers. For example, we find this observation from an early twentieth-century French merchant: We must always have soldiers to defend usВ .В .В .В ; Chad is a country of soldiers; let us leave it to be ruled by soldiers, who know how to maintain the warrior spirit, and who have also proven to possess the energy and competence necessary to initiate social, or economic, reforms.3 This assessment is underlined by Marielle Debos, who, in her analysis, shows that Chad has long been governed by the mercenaries and illiterates of the armed profession.4 Indeed, from 1982 to 1990, during Nimrod’s young adulthood, HissГЁne HabrГ© established the bloodiest regime the country has ever known. Overthrown by a coup d’état in December 1990, he now lives peacefully in Dakar, while his case shuffles through innumerable legal procedures.

One of Senghor’s nephews makes a similar point: “When they told me that the author of LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor: In Memoriam5 was Chadian, I snapped back вЂThat’s impossible! I know Chad, I was a lawyer in N’DjamГ©na for seven years. If Nimrod is really Chadian, he must be utterly alone.’” No one expected this Chadian writer who appeared suddenly on the Parisian scene, neither the French nor his community in exile (if there is one). Nimrod is as much of an extraterrestrial in his own country as he is in France, where he now lives. Yet, as Nimrod underlines in The New French Matter, when he arrived, France represented everything to him. It was on French soil that he was to become a writer, the place where he would overcome his countryPage 234 → and his demons. He survived a thousand pitfalls, a thousand dangers, all of which had a common denominator: the indifference of those “who will never speak of him.” Poet and essayist Sylvie KandГ© describes Nimrod’s place in French letters well. When Nimrod’s Un balcon sur l’AlgГ©rois first appeared, she wrote: The publication of Nimrod’s latest novel, following what has been called his Chadian trilogy—Les Jambes d’Alice (2001), Le DГ©part (2005), and Le Bal des princes (2008)—and to which we must also add his collection of short stories, L’Or des riviГЁres (2010), confirms the kinship of his work (he is also a poet and essayist) with Proust’s. The two writers, in their search for what Claire Ferack calls “the flash of concurrence between disparate elements, separated by time,” create a poetic sameness through extended reminiscence. In listening to the writing at work within them, they seize the analogy, with its ability to ensnare relics from the past, tear them from the void, and project them, with the intensity of days gone by, into the present.6 If history separates Nimrod from Proust, literature brings them together. And it is within this world of letters that, against all odds, Nimrod has made his niche. For, in addition to Senghor and CГ©saire, it is Proust who makes Nimrod possible, along with Hugo, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Stendhal, Voltaire, Rousseau, Camus, Sartre, and so on. Yes, in coming to France, Nimrod had a kind of homecoming, described brilliantly by Jean-Paul Sartre in his analysis of the development of French writers: But we, well before we began our first novel, we had literature at our service. It seemed natural to us that books push up in a civilized society, like trees in a garden; it’s because we loved Racine and Verlaine too much that we found, for ourselves, at the age of fourteen, during evening study time, or in the lycГ©e’s central courtyard, the occupation: writer. Before we were swept away by a work in progress, that insipid monster, sticky with all our juices, we were nourished by literature already made, and we thought, naively, that our future work would emerge from our beings in the same state of completion as the work we had before us, complete with the stamp of collective recognition, the ceremony that come from a secular consecration.7 Page 235 →We find that Cioran, too, joined the aristocracy of the People of Letters through the French language. For, as with Sartre, it imposed itself from the very beginning. He writes, with his typical abstraction: There is a force that is rather complicated to betray without immediate reference to an object or a person. To renounce all without knowing what this “all” represents: to isolate oneself in one’s milieu, to reject—by a metaphysical divorce—the substance that shaped you, which surrounds you and which you carry.8 Cioran wants us to understand that henceforth he is a Frenchman in his own right. For him, the foreign writer can only survive in the country of MoliГЁre through self-transformation. This is the price he pays for fame. It is the sacrifice needed for artistic survival, which is to say his own survival. Indeed, the substance that “shaped” and “surrounded” him, and which he “carries,” is the same that converted him to French. But for Nimrod, as for Senghor, taking on the French language is not only an abstraction. It is also the act of

tending to a garden that will bear real fruit. Senghor believed in the French language, even as he tempered it with African languages and cultures. Nimrod discusses this act of creation in the clearest and most incisive terms in LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor: In Memoriam. For example, in Senghor’s posthumous homage to Goncourt Noir, Nimrod points out that, contrary to all expectations, Senghor valorized, among other things, the baroque language of the Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma: All “black novels” in the francophone sphere began with RenГ© Maran, whom the author calls Ferdinand Oyono or AndrГ© Demaison. After Batouala, we could no longer live, work, love, speak les NГЁgres as we did les Blancs. It was no longer a question of having them speak petit-nГЁgre (pigeon-French), but Wolof, Maninka, Ewondo in French. For it was RenГ© Maran who was first able to express “the black soul” in le style nГЁgre in French.9 Similarly, in The New French Matter, Nimrod insists: “We consider French to be an African language.”10 To demonstrate why, he teaches us how to read as Senghor did, according to the rhythms of the writers. It is here, Nimrod argues, in the relationship between the ideas and the rhythm of the lines, that the soul—which reflects both the individual and an African mode of Page 236 →being—is expressed. This rhythm is created by syntax with which the writer blends Wolof or Malinke into a new kind of French. It embodies the enriching effects of mГ©tissage. The possibilities created between language and meaning are at the center of a battle that is extremely important to Nimrod, for the very reasons that Senghor articulated: Our Vocation as the colonized is to overcome the contradictions of this set of circumstances, of the artificial antinomies that have arisen between Africa and Europe, our heredity and our education. Our liberty will be birthed by grafting one from here to one over there, and the flavor of this grafted fruit will not be the sum of its parts. The MГ©tis’s superiority stems from his freedom; he chooses where he wants, what he wants to make, from reconciled elements, a strong, exquisite work.11 This statement, first published in 1950, also illuminates Cioran’s situation. He, too, was a colonized subject. He, too, had to extract himself from a Romanian destiny. And, for him, too, the only path open to him was to become a pure writer. His oeuvre is both testimony to and commentary on this condition. Senghor chose another path, even if he did not escape entirely from the temptation of essentialism, for it was as an African that he would become one of the great poets of the French language. He inaugurated the path of cultural mГ©tissage, with all of its implications, and thereby created a global intervention (to use contemporary terms). He wrote: “Our values are what make the books that you now read and the language that you now speak beat, French. The sun that shines beyond the Hexagon!”12 In this statement, Senghorian mГ©tissage attains its highest point. For the invention of Africa, as philosopher Valentin Mudimbe demonstrates, is in direct relationship to “the colonial library.” For this library is, without a doubt, part and parcel of what made NГ©gritude possible. As it concerns those who would, by ignorance or misinformation, be inclined to see NГ©gritude as a racist ideology, Nimrod recalls in Visite Г AimГ© CГ©saire this remark by CГ©saire (if we could only recall it every day): If les NГЁgres were not a people, let us say a defeated, or indeed, an unfortunate, unhappy people, a humiliated people, etc., if we could invert history, and make them the conquerors. Then I believe, for my part, that NГ©gritude would not have come to be. Page 237 →Which is to say that NГ©gritude is, as CГ©saire defines it:

a community subjected to oppression, a community of imposed exclusion, a community of profound discrimination. Of course, and it is to its credit, a community of continued resistance, one that shares a stubborn struggle for liberty, and indomitable hope.13 Like Senghor and Césaire, Nimrod opened new ways to read the French language. In so doing, he has expanded the work of both canonical French writers and Négritude thinkers. He is able to do this because, in his writing, he gives shape to his solitary form, as a Chadian, as an African, as a man of exile. In so doing he has allowed us to think beyond physical and linguistic borders to the many conditions of the exilic Self. For all of his work—his poetry, essays, and fiction—teaches us about separation, separation from one’s family, from one’s country, and from one’s own being. Nimrod illuminates shadows, born of separation, and reveals the many unique outlines of exiled subjects. He shows us absence, hinting at how we might come into contact with it again and again. For, and this is the most important part, he makes it clear that we must embrace the presence of absence. Indeed, there is no presence without it, no day without night, no words without silence. Exile is an ontological marker of our destiny, our words, our art. It is our solitary form. It is what it means to be born among those who will never speak of you.

Notes 1. E. M. Cioran, “Interview with Fritz J. Raddatz,” in Entretiens (Paris: Gallimard, coll. Arcades, 2012), p. 185. 2. This, of course, was not the case for his Romanian family, to which he regularly sent money and goods; they haunted him day and night. 3. Abou-Digu’en, Mon voyage au Soudan tchadien, introduced by Nimrod (with the collaboration of Roger Little) (Paris: L’Harmattan, coll. Autrement mГЄmes, 2013), p. 14. First edition, ed. Pierre Roger, Paris, 1923. 4. Marielle Debos, Le MГ©tier des armes au Tchad: Le gouvernement de l’entre-guerres (Paris: Editions Karthala, coll. “Les Afriques,” 2013). 5. Nimrod, Tombeau de LГ©opold SГ©dar Senghor, essay (Cognac: Editions le temps qu’il fait, 2003). Page 238 →6. Sylvie KandГ©, “Le corps du texte: Un balcon sur l’AlgГ©rois de Nimrod,” Afrikadaa 7 (2014): 11. 7. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Situation de l’écrivan en 1947,” in Qu’est-ce que la littГ©rature? (Paris: Gallimard, Folio/Essais, 2009), p. 172. First edition, Paris: Gallimard, 1948. Translated by Bernard Frechtman as “Situation of the Writer in 1947” in What is Literature? Reprinted in “What is Literature?” and Other Essays (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988). 8. E. M. Cioran, PrГ©cis de decomposition, essays (Paris: Gallimard, 1949). Translated by Richard Howard as A Short History of Decay (New York: Viking Press, 1975). 9. L. S. Senghor, “RenГ© Maran, prГ©curseur de la nГ©gritude,” cited by Nimrod, Tombeau, p. 25. 10. Nimrod, La Nouvelle Chose franГ§aise: Essai (Arles: Г‰ditions Actes Sud, 2008), p. 27. 11. L. S. Senghor, “De la libertГ© de l’âme, ou l’éloge du mГ©tissage,” cited by Nimrod, La Nouvelle Chose franГ§aise, p. 15. 12. L. S. Senghor, “Le FranГ§ais, langue de culture,” cited by Nimrod, La Nouvelle Chose franГ§aise, p. 33. 13. AimГ© CГ©saire, Discourse sur la nГ©gritude, cited by Nimrod, La Nouvelle Chose franГ§aise, p. 65.

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Biography Born in Chad in 1959, Nimrod is a poet, novelist, and essayist. To date he has published more than twenty books, of which Les jambes d’Alice; Le bal des princes; La nouvelle chose française; Rosa Parks, non à la discrimination raciale; L’or des rivières; Babel, Babylone; have been honored by le Prix de la Vocation, le Prix Benjamin Fondane, le Prix Édouard Glissant, le Prix Ahmadou Kourouma, le Prix Max Jacob, and le Prix des Charmettes—Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His most recent works are Un balcon sur l’Algérois (novel, Actes Sud, 2013), Visite à Aimé Césaire (essay, Obsidiane, 2013) and Sur les berges du Chari, district nord de la beauté (poems, Bruno Doucey, 2016), which was awarded the 2016 Pierrette-Micheloud poetry prize. In addition, L’enfant n’est pas mort was published by Bruno Doucey (2017), J’aurais un royaume en bois flottés, 1989–2016 (poetry, Gallimard, 2017), and Gens de brume (fiction, Actes Sud, 2017).