13

Literary Reflections

Having emerged a major crossover writer from Tunisia publishing in French and as a significant figure in the world of francophone literature, Memmi became an arbiter on the direction of the tradition, helping to canonize Maghrebi literature. He edited and prefaced three huge collections of North African literature in French between 1964 and 1985. He also edited a series of books at the Maspero publishing house that produced a dozen titles. The first selection is a staged dialogue with himself, where Memmi discusses his relationship to the classic literature of the nineteenth century, to French existentialist novelists like Sartre, and to the experimental pioneers of the nouveau roman, or new novel (selection one). His introduction to the 1964 collection of “indigenous writers” addresses his principles of selection for an anthology of colonized writers (selection two). It is followed by his preface to the 1969 anthology of writers who are not “of the Maghreb” ethnically or nationally but are instead pied noir French citizens whose lives and work were an expression of a separate existence but still key to understanding the totality of French literature from the Maghreb (selection three). The 1985 preface is a collection that mixes these previously bifurcated voices and is clearly inscribed under the title of francophone literature, indicating the evolution of the tradition as Memmi understood it (the fourth selection). Memmi also addresses the problems faced by third-world writers, including issues of mentorship, resources, distribution, and networks of support, all summarized in the question of what language to write in (selection five). The final piece considers the origins and development of postwar Maghrebi literature (selection six).

For a Novel of Meaning (1959)

[ . . . ]

HIM: So, it’s the hegemony of the novel-as-object that you take issue with?

ME: Yes, young novelists are producing much more diverse and open works. . . . It’s that simple, more diverse and open. . . . And I say simple, because the expressible real is infinitely richer. Here’s the thing: that particular “school” [of the nouveau roman, or new novel] asserts that the traditional novel is outdated. There is undoubtedly some truth in that. But they add that, from now on, all we can do is describe, and describe a non-signifying world, independent of mankind. The novelist has to turn into a kind of eye (or camera), “an eye at the tip of a pen,” in the words of Émile Henriot.¹ Taken to its extreme, the result would be a depersonalized, geometric universe. . . . I can’t help seeing in this “novelty,” this “progress,” something quite opposite, the sign of the end of an era, a new preciousness . . . sometimes a depleted period, or one that’s heading in that direction, providing little inspiration to artists. They can’t take it seriously, and they take refuge in weirdness, in quirky writing or literary tics, and odd thought processes . . . (or they revolt, but that’s another story altogether, which I believe is my own, in fact).

HIM: You find that the description of objects is quirky and weird, a literary tic?

ME: Not exactly. An object can become a source for a myriad of impressions, a series of thought adventures. . . . Look at Sartre’s Nausea. But there’s everything in Sartre, everything. Beside his narrowly painstaking attempts, and his literary salon revolt, Sartre comes across as a giant that has exploded. And we reaped one piece of him, the one that expresses his anxiety at the notion of being-in-itself. . . . What is curious—and revealing, I believe, of an avoidance, of a certain despair—is that he made this the sole object of his novel-making art. Here, I am going to confess something: personally, things bore me . . . even “nature.” What interests me are people, their passions, my passion and that of others. . . . I feel involved in objects only to the extent that they signify something in the human world, they must have a human meaning.

HIM: Is that your personal opinion?

ME: With some nuances, perhaps, but if one common feature has emerged from these three important days, I do believe it is that of meaning. I’m not sure if my friends would be in complete agreement, but if it were up to me to define who we are, I would gladly reclaim the expression “novelists of meaning” (the term is Pichon’s or Bloch-Michel’s, I don’t remember which). Duvignaud² wants to dig deep into history and “give it back in the form of myth” to his readers, while Le Clec’h³ strives to “question his own fate,” and Bory⁴ seeks to introduce “discomfort into the mind of the reader, like pebbles in a shoe.” Kern is “outraged” by his life and that of others. Glissant⁵ cannot separate his fate from the fate of his people, Zéraffa wants to explain himself by explaining the world, etc.

Against the Traditional Novel

HIM: You did say a moment ago, though, that you agreed with the Robbe-Grillet crowd on one point: the traditional novel is dead.

ME: I never said that! It’s precisely this kind of dogmatism that I can’t abide. And it would be a blatant falsehood to say that I did. The traditional novel is alive, doing a brisk business, better than the “new” novels of all stripes, you have to admit! We do agree . . . in a kind of upside-down way, if I may say. They refuse the traditional novel because it feels somehow too rich for them, too cluttered. We, or some of us anyway—I’ll be cautious here—find it, on the contrary, to fall short. To put it another way, I agree with them to say that we can no longer write in a certain way. The self-indulgent wordiness, Balzac’s artistic naiveté (and I apologize to Balzacians) seem inexcusable to me in today’s writing. On the other hand, far too many taboos used to paralyze past generations, preventing them from broaching a certain number of topics that were considered distasteful. For example . . .

HIM: For example?

ME: I remember Mauriac writing about how scandalized he was by [Simone de Beauvoir’s] Mandarins. It wasn’t simply a moral attitude he was taking, a question of right-minded decency: he actually didn’t understand. He thought that the description of sex—and by a woman, at that!—was there to appear trendy, that it was simply tacked on for effect. But the perspective was exactly the reverse. In certain human situations, the choice not to talk about sex, and as directly as possible, amounts to cheating. How in the world can you talk about a couple [ . . . ] without talking sexuality? How could emerging women writers not talk about sexuality?

Another example: the way traditional novels dealt with politics. An important representative of the previous generation argued recently in a weekly that politics is a domain that is foreign to art. I was amused to note that this writer was countered by none other than Mauriac, who has finally begun a career as political author. But Mauriac himself is not political as a person; politics are relegated to his diary, his notes. There is not room here for me to examine the causes of this compartmentalizing. It would take far too long to account for this blind spot with regard to reality. But it is clear that one cannot take total stock of contemporary man without including this dimension. . . .

HIM: In short, socialist realism . . .

ME: Not in the least! It would take me a whole chapter. . . . On the issue at hand, let me at least clarify that this isn’t about giving a work a political objective, or aiming for a particular result through writing, and certainly not about politically influencing people. The artist’s purpose is first and foremost to make art, to produce a body of work. The needs of a given work determine the choice of instruments to accomplish it, never anything exterior to the work; otherwise, you end up with a tract or a piece of propaganda. I think you see that, in a way, we are turning our backs on the intentions of socialist realism. Still, to refuse the political aspects of life is once again a form of cheating.

HIM: On second thought, it seems to me that your critique is aimed mainly at novelists who immediately preceded you, and their current successors, but Balzac, Stendhal, Tolstoy—they were certainly never blind to these problems!

ME: You’re absolutely right. I believe we find the outlines of these same problems in the great novelists of the past. In a certain sense, I believe my friends and I are following in the footsteps of these great forerunners, we are taking the high road. We don’t reckon that there is such a thing as progress in art (again, it is naïve to think so, the false naiveté of those cunning “objectivists”). But every historical moment, every generation sees things in its own light. For heaven’s sake, since Balzac’s time, we have experienced psychoanalysis and world socialism, to mention only those two earth-shaking trends. The irruption of science into the lives of every individual, the inescapable irruption of history . . .

Are there still any novelists?

HIM: A little warning here, I’m going to ask you two rather blunt questions. You’re so ambitious and keen to express so much realness, to discover so much “meaning,” so here is my question: is it still novels that you are writing, in that case?

ME: Ah, now, we’ve gotten to the point! Your objection is hardly blunt, since everyone seems to be asking it these days. You hear it everywhere: Is so-and-so really a novelist? I’ll answer you just as “bluntly.” Recall the episode of Diogenes walking around with his lantern looking for honest men. One has the impression that certain people move about with a definition of the novel and measure books by that gauge: hmm, let’s see if this is a real novel. The result is usually disappointing, increasingly so, since the minority that corresponds to that definition is constantly shrinking. Disappointing and surprising, since they are not always the best. . . .

HIM: Which explains the crisis of the novel we’ve been hearing about, even though novels are being written in record numbers.

ME: That’s a non-issue that disappears, again, as soon as you flip the perspective. It seemed to us that a certain kind of traditional novel was either unable or unwilling to render our problems, our current situation in the world. Which explains several things: all our effort and research work, the collapse of the classic notion of the novel, and the erosion of a certain manner. It also explains the emergence of novels that are not novels, if we insist on judging them from a single perspective. One can’t have it both ways: either you maintain that there is a set form, in which case, there are no more novels, the novel is dead, or you flip your perspective and declare that the novel exists in multiple new guises. Rather than being enfeebled, hidebound, and on the verge of extinction, this way of seeing things considers that the notion of the novel has been considerably enriched.

HIM: So, here is my second question: Why do you persist, then, in calling these works “novels”?

ME: The muckrakers will tell you it’s a purely financial question: novels sell. And when, halfway through a “novel,” readers find it’s something they were not expecting, we’re hoping that, by then, they’re already hooked. . . . But all joking aside, there is a far deeper reason: this form is still, perhaps, the one best adapted to our times. It goes without saying that all the written arts are available to a creator to express what can’t be said in novel form. There are times when only poetry can render this or that experience; other times, a more advanced conceptualization calls automatically for the essay form. (At the moment, I can tell you that I am working on something whose form I would be incapable of identifying.) But the novel alone has the ability to deploy and synthesize direct life experience, imagination and thought. It alone seems rich enough—for our times, I repeat—to express and render the extraordinary wealth of the human adventure.

Introduction to Anthology of Maghrebi Writers in French (1964)

Here at last is the first anthology of Maghrebi writers to appear in France, [ . . . ] long after collections devoted to Black writers. Perhaps some hindsight was necessary in order to perceive a literary movement in French whose authors, it is true, still mostly live in Paris for the most part. Or perhaps its very richness, its diversity and inadequate classification may have thus far baffled the critics.

Still, the effort to gather works coming out of North Africa under a single label dates back to the early twentieth century, and to the manifestos of the so-called Algérianist School. Audisio, then Camus, used the expression somewhat half-heartedly: the Algiers School, the North African School of Letters. When questioned, writers themselves revealed only their reluctance, as always, to categorize their own work. They all acknowledged their particular lyric qualities: a tendency toward the passionately confessional, an appetite for violence, a love of sun and light, a belief in fate. . . . But none of these features, as Audisio has remarked, is specifically North African. Would it not make more sense to broaden the issue to include the entire Mediterranean? This is what Roblès concluded, in his series entitled “Mediterranean,” where Moroccans, Algerians, Spaniards, Italians and Corsicans rub shoulders.⁶ Or perhaps forego any particular classification at all: the North African literary movement would then be nothing but an offshoot sprouting haphazardly from a random seed at the edge of the desert.

French artists’ fascination with North Africa is hardly a recent phenomenon. To mention only the most prominent, Flaubert had already taken on the variety of landscapes as a thematic exercise. Gide then began seeking renewed nourishment there in 1894, and Montherlant wrote a draft of Desert Love between 1933 and 1934. It is noteworthy that in all these works, the people actually living in these lands are either absent or clichéd: the little boys that proved so delightful to tourists, the wild and lusty Bedouin women, or the rugged desert Arab, these are hardly representative of the everyday North African population. A few instances of writers who dared get closer and try to understand the people are worth mentioning: Duhamel’s Le Prince Jaffar, or the late René Laporte’s Les Passagers de l’Europe. But these are so rare and fleeting as to allow us to conclude that, for French writers, North Africa was nothing but an incidental enrichment of their palette, at best, a getaway. Like the Romantics in Italy or the Holy Land, they went there seeking a manageable escape, a safer and more geographically convenient Orient than Chateaubriand’s Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem, one dotted with French flags, Civil Inspectors and Spahi cavalrymen.

This tendency toward the exotic has so little to do with a genuine North African literature that just about any writer could call it his own. The Americans, for instance, had hardly discovered North Africa than they also adopted this New Italy. Soon, there were dramas involving American heroes seeking adventure in the maddeningly humid heat of this postcard Maghreb. In short, for these writers-cum-tourists, the Maghreb amounted to nothing more than a pretense, an African accessory.

This is why I argued, a few years ago, for a distinction to be made between this whole period and the one to follow, despite the odd anachronism here and there. A new era had indeed dawned, with the first generation of writers in French born in North Africa. These could now be called authentic North Africans, at least in some respects. Weary of their Parisian exile, these writers would return home especially for their land’s natural wonders, a marvelous discovery of pure astonishment and pleasure for outsiders, but the absolute starting point for these native-born novelists. Their oftentimes painful nostalgia is distilled in the works of Camus. Nuptials (Noces) is beyond a doubt more faithful and suggestive of Mediterranean bliss, with its warm stone and full sunshine, than anything Gide could ever have written. It is worth rereading that essay collection if only for the return home from the beach around Algiers, or the meditations on the ruins at Tipasa. There are pages in Audisio on fishing, for instance, that make Flaubert seem forced and factitious, in the end.

This generation, however, was hardly destined to create a North African literary school, for a number of reasons. Although Roblès, Jules Roy or André Rosfelder were North African by origin or temperament, they were also very much part of the Parisian scene. From their earliest days, they aspired, and legitimately so, to be included among French writers—or among the best French writers. They were constantly trying to put North Africa behind them, though it always remained their touchstone. (Not to mention someone like Henri Bosco, who took no inspiration from it.) The North African figures that appear in their work are nicely drawn but remain rare silhouettes, mere shadows. Nature and objects were thus given a presence, but the absence of people persisted. As if these writers were simply incapable of sustaining a deep interest in these human beings. That was just the problem: they were not, in fact, wholly human. By birth (or by adoption: Jean Amrouche’s plight began with his family’s conversion to Christianity), the writers belonged to minority groups who did not quite consider themselves North Africans. Add to that the impermeability of the groups among each other. The term used to designate them means more than a mere geographic location: they were the French of North Africa. They were from here, but especially from elsewhere, they were closely tied to North Africa, but as a second homeland.

The humanism and generosity of these writers is absolutely unquestioned, may I emphasize, and they have often proven this during recent events. Nor do I deny their aesthetic achievements, since many of the greatest writers have emerged from their ranks. It would be absurd to claim that one cannot produce a valuable body of work without sinking roots into some native soil or other. But the fact remains that they don’t know the North African majority well enough to feel a need to portray them.

Either that, or they speak directly to their separation: it is quite possible, I believe, to interpret all of Camus from that perspective. The Stranger is not only a metaphysical narrative, a tale of existential angst; it is also Camus-the-stranger in his native land. The Misunderstanding, his first work for the stage, if I am not mistaken, is nothing short of a representation of this socio-historic misunderstanding. Even the political stance of this great writer, which often appeared inconsistent, can be explained in this manner. And although I have not always agreed with some of his turns of phrase, I never ceased to hold him in high esteem and consider him a friend. But I will confess this: perhaps I did not always take the full measure of how torn he must have felt. It took a letter from Marcel Moussy, which I conserve with great care, and a long conversation with Albert Camus himself. With all of that being said, however, these French writers are certainly more North African than Tristan Tzara is Romanian, Pierre Mac Orlan Swiss or Henri Michaux Belgian, and certainly less than Mauriac was Bordelais or Daudet Provençal.

After covering the Writer-Tourists, followed by the French North African writers, let us move to the third and final category to date: the Maghrebi writers of French expression.

The advent of this group is momentous: for the first time, North Africa has taken full charge of itself. Whether accepted, claimed or disputed, it has ceased to be a mere backdrop or geographical accident. These new authors are coming to grips with their countries as with the essence of their beings. Indigenous, belonging to those populations that have no other pole of attraction, they share a common plight. As colonized subjects, they needed only to express themselves, not to testify against colonization, but to give voice to the colonized subject’s universe, from both within and without. However independent, new and thirsty for the future, they are still bogged down by patriarchy and religion, torn between their psychology and history. It is almost in spite of them that North Africa finds such broad expression in even their most oblique processes.

I have said elsewhere that coming into existence through literature is particularly challenging among the Colonized. And it is obviously no coincidence that this first generation of Maghrebi writers, definitively tagged as the 1952 generation, was to blossom on the eve of Maghrebi independence. The time had come when they had to lash out at their own lives, at the lives of their fellow citizens, and at the colonizer. They had to discover and confront their true purview, their specific object of concern, which could not be taken for granted when the very notion of self-determination had been missing for so long. German writers had to wait until the 18th century to find themselves, literarily, to dare disclose themselves and get the latecomer German nation to accept this disclosure.

In short, the depiction of North African reality at last had currency; North African people were making their entrance into North African literature, notably, in French language literature. Henceforward, every season would witness yet another contribution to the scene, where all regions and social strata seemed to call for a representation: after the dirt-poor fellahin in the works of Feraoun,⁷ the landowners of Kabylia in the Forgotten Mountain of Mammeri, Dib’s⁸ Algerian Fondouk residents, and the ghetto-dwellers of Tunis in my own books, it was Chraïbi’s⁹ bourgeoisie of Fez or Mazagan, and Kateb Yacine’s Algerian working class . . .¹⁰

To put it accurately, this beginning did not come out of nowhere. Every chapter, every genre had its precedent. To cite only Tunisia, I am thinking of the sorrowful Italian-Maltese poet Mario Scalesi, or of the poignant efforts of a few school teachers at the Alliance israelite, such as Ryvel or Danon. But it is the first time, both in terms of quantity and quality, where North Africans have burst upon the scene of French literature, and perhaps world literature. For the first time, a certain number of major obstacles have been overcome, ones that seem common to most nascent national literatures.

The pitfall of regionalism seemed unavoidable: it is out of excessive loyalty to their subject, at long last discovered, that numerous literatures get mired. It was often thought that all it took to create something aesthetically valid was to describe in minute detail some odd traditions or to name a few objects in local dialect. This overly respectful attention to customs and local color, it is amusing to note, echoes the phony exoticism of the Writer-Tourists. Conversely, another impulse, equally disastrous, consisted in the false claim that a historical and sociological situation had been overcome. Did they hope, perhaps, that by ignoring it, they could deny it? Under the pretense of universal intent, they ended up staging disembodied beings, moving toward ever greater abstraction. In this vein, works have appeared where an Ali or a Mabrouk had a go at speaking like the well-to-do of provincial France. Which is why such characters were not worth much.

To resolve this paradoxical requirement, there was no pre-established set of guidelines; a talented author alone might retroactively intuit one, once a work was complete. For the first time, once they realized what it was, numerous works had managed to untangle this apparently unresolvable dialectic: achieving universality while remaining faithful to oneself.

It is again the issue of fidelity regained that explains how most of these writers came to spontaneously draw on so many similar themes. Foremost among them is the theme of revolt, in all its forms, including against oneself and one’s tribe (Dib, Mammeri, Chraïbi and Kateb were each involved in serious run-ins with their own). It is no easier to live in North Africa now than it ever was: colonization and its aftermath, the yawning gap between social classes, the generational rift, the complete alienation of women, cultural desiccation. . . . The best way to understand North Africa, I am utterly convinced, is to read its writers. You will see that it is still a somewhat political literature, though never as a fiat pasted arbitrarily onto the work, as certain idle discussions in Europe would have it. If most of the works represented here have a socio-political dimension, it is practically by necessity, since the conflicts they deal with are born, by and large, of that disastrous historical situation that is only just beginning to recede today.

These aspects of disclosure and revolt, this newly heightened awareness of the struggle to live, of the shadowy side of our existence, must not obscure the luminous face of this young literature, its pleasure in storytelling, its exuberance and lyricism (almost all of these novelists are also poets), as if the violence of its despair were offset by the pure Dionysian rapture. But my purpose here is not to enumerate each and every theme. I invite you to read the texts of this anthology, and you will see for yourselves that North Africa indeed possesses its own literature, one which, through its discovery of a specific content and innovative formal achievements, compares favorably to the world’s best young national literatures.

I must circle back, however, and reemphasize a formidable and still unresolved problem: the issue of language. I have been taken to task by just about everyone for having written that, although our movement may well be representative, its linguistic vehicle, French, curtailed its scope and future prospects. Gradually, all writing from North Africa will be produced in the language of the majority, which is Arabic. And I stated this with the peace of mind that comes with wise resignation, as a writer of French myself. For our generation, and I am speaking for other French-language writers of North Africa as well, the game is pretty much over. Many of us, for both practical and sentimental reasons, hoped that French would continue to hold pride of place in North Africa. There was a time we thought it could not be otherwise. Since then, history has marched forward, Arabization has made strides, and school is available to an increasing number of boys and girls, yet none of this has made me change my mind.

Most movements involving literary birth or rebirth have come up against an analogous problem. Let us recall the efforts exerted by the Pléiade, or by Malherbe, or Luther in Germany. Clearly, the solution to the matter at hand was found mostly in the choice of a more or less amended language (moving from Latin to French or German). There is no reason to believe that a similar evolution in the Maghreb would be any different. The first generation of North African writers, the French of North Africa, never experienced this problem, not acutely, at least. The mother tongue of these writers was French, and they were writing for a French readership. Our generation has had to face two serious challenges: our literary language, chosen and imposed by history, is not our mother tongue. And what’s more, this literary language is not the spoken language of the overwhelming majority of North Africans. It is easy to forget that, apart from a slim upper stratum, North Africans are not French speakers.

The mismatch between mother tongue and language of high culture is already a source of far-ranging disadvantages and psychological conflicts. It contributes to a significant degree to school achievement problems, to discouragement among even gifted individuals, and to a definite slowness in acquiring the tools of culture in general. It requires an enormous effort to create an aesthetic work in a language acquired later in life. And further, if a writer has to render objects and relationships that he or she never experienced outside the mother tongue, then we see just how arduous the task might prove.

Then again, it might not be as serious as all that, since our writers have indeed managed to get into print, with new works appearing every year, with every genre currently represented: novels, poetry, theater and essays. What is so devastating is that the language problem has now become the public’s problem. Sooner or later, once the honeymoon period of seeing one’s work published has passed, the North African writers have to ask themselves the unavoidable question: who am I writing for? Language is a tool for both expression and communication. North African writers, now poised to succeed in expressing themselves and certain new realities, have still not managed to address their natural public, their true readership. Is it not paradoxical, then, even unsettling for the future of their work, that these writers, because they write in French, cannot be heard and understood back home?

The flip side of this coin is the place held by literature in Arabic, the language of practically everyone in North Africa. Having once been asked to sketch out a quick defense in praise of Maghrebi literature, I proposed four criteria: a specific object, an aesthetic form that could be universally intelligible, an extension and renewal of tradition, a suitable linguistic tool. The first three have been fulfilled, more or less, but the fourth remains problematic. That said, culture is not an abstract phenomenon. This particular French language literature is probably the only literature that North Africa could have, and it’s already wonderful that it does. After all, it has managed to win over a certain readership: apart from the French, who have thus far accounted for the largest share, there also exists a small North African audience, the majority being well-to-do Muslims and Jews. This is the same everywhere in the world: avid readers are to be found mostly among the bourgeois classes. This young literature is in a precarious and shifting situation, its fate linked inextricably to the future of the French language in North Africa, or to put it more plainly, to the political climate and overall Franco-Maghrebi relations. But we have reason to hope that those relations will steadily improve over time, and that the French will finally grasp the importance of the cultural investment they have in North Africa.

In any event, North African literature in French will have represented at the very least a crucial and necessary moment in the literary history of North Africa. Whatever the future holds, this tenuous posterity takes nothing away from its aesthetic achievements and significance. Apuleius and Saint Augustine have most definitely survived.

A Literature of Separation: Introduction to Anthology of French Writers of the Maghreb (1969)

It is well known that Volume I of this Anthology of Maghrebi Literatures stirred up some controversy. We shall set aside the emotional reactions that inevitably follow the release of most book projects of this sort. The more fundamental issues, the legitimate talking points, are to be found elsewhere.

I adopted a classification system for Maghrebi writers, distributed according to the ethnic groups that have lived in the Maghreb, and tracing the phases of its social and political history. All classifications are subject to debate, and the present one is no exception. This one might be especially contentious, I would readily admit, since the material involved is particularly complex, perhaps impossible to completely disentangle, as were the lives of most of us during the colonial period. And although the situation has been somewhat elucidated by now with the end of colonization and the birth of new nations, it has gotten more complicated in other ways.

To be an Algerian writer, you indeed need only be of Algerian nationality, even if you write in a language other than Arabic, even if you do nothing more than admire the flora and hint at birdsong, without having to necessarily describe the hardship of dirt farmers or advocate for the anticolonial struggle. But there are now Algerian and Moroccan writers who, after advocating so hard on behalf of their countries, now live abroad and have no intention of returning to their liberated homeland. There are also writers of Algerian and Moroccan nationality who would like to return home but cannot, while there are French writers who continue to solemnly assert that “Algeria is my homeland,” without specifying whether they mean the ex-French Algeria or independent Algeria. There are even French writers who decided to stay behind in Algeria, whatever the cost, even if it meant changing nationality, as if a piece of paper at the civil registry could make a difference. And then, there are writers of all origins who have decided to have nothing more to do with the Maghreb at all, as if it were possible to live at a remove, without any psychic damage, as if one could simply excise and cauterize an essential part of one’s being.

Still, I had to dare creating a classification; otherwise, I would be producing a kind of dictionary of names and titles whose sole interest would reside in satisfying the writer’s vanity and the reader’s curiosity. I felt it necessary, instead, to determine the meaning of what we had all just experienced, and whose literary expression was certainly one of the most faithful. Thus, Volume I was able to bring together the elements of a kind of collective self from among what used to be called the indigenous, their hardships, aspirations and revolts. Volume Two, which is being presented here, gathers into a kind of synthetic portrait the European inhabitants, or those of European extraction, from the former colonies.

Are such portraits feasible? Were the communities so very different that they required a diptych, two distinct panels? This is the flashpoint: by presenting separately two human groups that once lived on the same land, who had adopted the same pace of life, all the way down to the way they moved their bodies, the same nonchalance that bursts suddenly into a frightening passion, were we not magnifying, falsely emphasizing their differences? Would we not be falling back into those colonial categories that I had denounced so ferociously in the past, the ones that claimed to set for all time the distinctive features of both peoples?

The times call for cooperation, this I know, and no one is more delighted than I am. And I understand how we wanted to wipe the slate clean of our cruel past, or at least, of what was, for both parties after all, the darker side of a certain period. We could try to forget the humiliation of our colonized status and the conflicted conscience of the colonizer, and recall only our joys and the shared melody of our Mediterranean. And it is true that, through some unlikely convergence, former colonials and former colonizers are coming together now to imply that colonization had actually been idyllic, not without a little commotion, but poetic on the whole, after which these wise lovers would remain the best of friends. Thus, the requirements of politics dovetail quite nicely with another ordinary aspiration of peoples: to forget the hardships of the past, transfiguring them into reassuring or flattering myths.

But our purpose here was to produce a work of literary history, or a balance sheet of those happy or unhappy years. How then could we expect to escape altogether the categories left by colonization, when the great adventure reflected in the work was so imprinted by colonization itself? There can be little doubt that the face of each group was deeply chiseled by colonialism in all its facets. One need only read their texts, here in concentrated form, to sense how much North African writers, whether colonizer or colonized, experienced the colonial relationship, each in his or her own way. Even if one group was experiencing the flip side of the other’s reality, it was still the same adventure. A chapter of frustration, deprivation and refusal for some, a chapter of glory and privileges for others, for which they felt confusedly proud and guilt-ridden, but everyone felt strongly, and expressed, more or less directly, the act of colonization.

Need I confess, at this point, that I am not convinced that it’s necessarily the smartest or healthiest or most economical thing to do, in the long run, to keep fiddling with the past? I would claim that there is really no need to conceal from a great nation a few dubious episodes of their otherwise splendid history, that they might remain worthy of it. Nor is it necessarily a good thing, I would suggest, for a conquered people to turn their failures into glorious episodes. A clear-eyed evaluation of the past strikes me as the most useful gateway to the present, and the best springboard for the future.

It goes without saying that the personality, generosity and open-heartedness of such writers in particular is not being called into question here. I have always secretly thought that writers express what is best in a society, even when they get it wrong, when they go astray: they believe that this or that way is more accurate, no matter what others think. In my view, the writer is always a moralist at heart, no matter how he conveys or disguises his anxiety. On the contrary, there is no doubt that the majority of French North African writers denounced the injustices of colonialism, and at times heralded, with no overwhelming sense of regret, the emergence of autonomous political powers won by the former colonial subjects; or at the very least, they avidly sought all lines of communication that would move these countries and their first inhabitants to open up their hearts to them.

Good faith notwithstanding, there is no getting around the overall historical meaning of the two literary movements: they expressed two different human communities, separated in the end, by their destinies that were complementary, but historically too divergent for those differences not to prevail over their similarities. And what I find most important and exciting is the way in which each conveyed this contradictory complementarity, experienced by all as a tense and forever dysfunctional relationship.

Thus, the indigenous experienced it as frustration, sometimes as deficiency and lack, sometimes as grievance and revolt, with regard to the others, those entitled citizens who, through the accident of birth and race, enjoyed power and privilege, whom they admired and detested, envied and aggressed, imitated and rejected. Examine, then, in work after work by autochthonous writers, the image of the European woman, so passionately desired and yet held in such violent contempt by moralists and politicians. The Europeans felt strangely out of place, in the face of these people they regarded as unfathomably downtrodden, left out of their present and of history, of business and politics, of glory and worldly goods, who closed themselves off all the more for it, vigorously defending what remained of their souls, alternating unpredictably between politeness and bursts of violence. Basically, the two partners in colonization hardly knew one another, despite their long cohabitation. And if truth be told, neither of the communities felt much like mingling and becoming friends.

Might things have turned out differently, we often wonder? No one can answer with certainty. I’m inclined to think not: in a situation involving coercion, a trustful closeness between dominators and dominated was doomed to remain an illusion. But let us put that aside. The indisputable result, in any case—and here again, literature is extraordinarily enlightening—is that the indigenous population remains a shadow, a stereotype, or as the specialists say, a stranger. It has been noted, and rightly so, that there are no plague-stricken Muslims in The Plague. The disease seems to affect only Europeans. Is this because Europeans, Camus included, never saw their Muslim fellow citizens, and therefore, the writer Camus couldn’t imagine a fully rounded native character?

It would be perfectly foolish, need I repeat, to reproach these writers. Speaking for myself, I am constantly having to refute this accusation so often brought against them. Writers express what they can, namely, what they know and what they feel; from that point, they can but imagine. Should they have ventured to talk about something else, they would have been mistaken, for they would have gotten it all wrong. French North African writers were unable to talk about their fellow countrymen and women, Muslim or Jewish, for they never engaged them in any way. They did well, then, to abstain altogether. Otherwise, they would have resorted inevitably to clichés, which they are known to have done on occasion.

It is not our place to hold artists accountable for what they did not want to or were unable to address, but only for what they actually undertook. The French writers of the Maghreb depict their own, their childhoods and their later adventures in life, accidentally inserted into a country and a landscape and a population in which they don’t quite recognize themselves. How do they convey their relationship to this land, to these people? What do they teach us about themselves, and how have they achieved self-depiction? These are the matters worth our consideration.

Still, there is another outcome that I believe has not been sufficiently emphasized: if I were to sum up in one phrase, inadequate as all such phrases are, the two main features of these two movements, so immediately contemporaneous, I would be willing to state: where one of the hallmarks of Maghrebi writers was the theme of revolt, that of the French writers of the Maghreb was separation.

In the end, each era hears and understands only what it can or wishes to; we readers can distinctly perceive the accents of triumph, victory over nature and men in colonial literature. What we have not attended to quite as well, however, is the pathos, which is indeed profound. Admittedly, it is more recent. The first generation, which I have chosen to name the pioneering writers, had not so clearly emphasized this impossibility of mutual understanding. The settlers were still too busy with their conquests and getting a strong foothold. Randau, and even Bertrand, never doubted the sustainability of colonization.¹¹ Their works are more euphoric, more confident that Europeans would become permanently established. And yet, they were already striving to legitimize the venture, concocting theories, dreaming up a history that would better mesh with the present and future of the community. Everyone knows Louis Bertrand’s Latin Mediterranean argument, as opposed to the Eastern Mediterranean. Basically, he was rehearsing the old Rome versus Carthage struggle, a theory that would lead all the way to Mussolini and the Fascist Mare Nostrum. It was the sons of settlers who would rediscover a nostalgia for Europe, and a certain feeling of loneliness among the crowds that they failed to find as picturesque as did their forebears. A nagging anxiety and increasing tedium took hold. They started dreaming of mainland France, and discovered that they had practically ceased to belong there, nor could they truly belong in the colony, since the majority of people living there were not their own. In short, they were slow to realize that, if the colonized subjects were wretched, the colonizers, for different reasons, were also miserable.

This literature shows us that if the natives were nothing but shadows, the colonizers were somehow a people apart. And that it is neither natural nor healthy, but is harmful and distressing to live separated from the vast majority of people in a country, to feel their distrust, if not hatred, even when their entitlement is assured, or even when they endeavor to break down barriers through kind, selfless acts. It is the literature of a society in crisis, an insurmountable crisis, perhaps, which is something these writers intuit in the midst of their desperation.

I suggested earlier that Camus’s The Stranger was probably first of all Camus himself as outsider in his native land, and not merely, as some claim, the experience of metaphysical or psychological estrangement, born of the absurdity of the human condition. (Though it is indeed that as well.) Camus’s entire oeuvre could be reread through that lens, from The Misunderstanding, with its self-explanatory title, to Exile and the Kingdom, so tangibly evocative, the final publication in his lifetime. It is as if fate wanted to definitively capture the physiognomy of the greatest writer of the Maghreb today.

But is it any coincidence that André Rosfelder entitled one of his best books Les hommes frontières, the border men? That Pélégri made one of his protagonists a mahboul, a madman, who kills without knowing why?¹² That Curel talks about illegitimacy, and that the journalist Jean Daniel started with a novel entitled L’erreur (a title straight out of Camus)? Where did this irresistible need come from, that all of them should convey such strangeness and absurdity? Whence the particular sense of tragedy that seems to accompany this land of deadly sun that melts all colors into a blinding white, and drives one mad with passion? Undoubtedly, geography has much to do with certain features common to writers who share the same sky, the same climate. Undoubtedly again, any meditation of the human condition, so long as one does not defer unconditionally to a divinity, or possess too euphoric a temperament, is liable to drive one to despair. But is it not equally enlightening, at least, to also consider this common despair as resulting from the very human hardships we experience, both on a daily basis and historically? Would it be such a long shot to assume that the literature of the French writers of North Africa portrays the failures and despair of the former colonizers, just as Maghrebi literature conveys the hopelessness of the formerly colonized? And that these failures result first and foremost from this state of separateness, of being an outsider in one’s native land, which irreparably marked the colonizer in the colonial situation?

Because I have dwelt so painfully on this separation, some have read this as my acquiescence to misfortune, or worse, as my somehow approving it, which would be a gross misreading indeed. Who could possibly derive pleasure from everything that has taken place, prior to and during the long war years, and even now, when nothing looks the way we would have liked it to!

All I was doing, alas, was relating the facts. A great divide has always separated the human groups living in North Africa. Every one of us, at one time or another, has owned up to this, and deplored it at some point in his writing. Nostalgia for an unachieved unity has become the grounds for today’s exasperated grievances, bordering on myth, but that is no reason for us to project this myth onto a past that never existed outside the realm of poetry. Yes, we lived separated into tight groups, more or less mutually hostile. Yes, with a few rare exceptions, we did not develop real ties of friendship. Mixed marriages were as good as non-existent. We nearly always monitored each other with a distrust only very slightly tempered by civility and neighborliness. François Bonjean, who reached out as far as anyone, even marrying a Muslim woman, was constantly demanding more openness, to broaden the terms of the contract: what could that mean, except that he realized it wasn’t going to happen without a struggle? And when, almost fifteen years ago now, I broached the subject of this separateness in a Parisian weekly, nobody was outraged. At that time, it was simply self-evident, and posed no threat yet to the dream that was taking shape, that of a grand lost community. I was unpleasantly surprised to find the otherwise gentle Audisio among those who most vehemently criticized me for depicting this separation, and for keeping the notion in the public eye through the act of uncovering it. The pain he is feeling today may have blinded him to the fact that he often agreed with me in the past. To cite just one example, his Feux Vivants, published in Cahiers français, in September 1962:

There are two branches to this family of writers: those of European extraction and those who are, in the true sense of the word, the indigenous people.

(The European authors) . . . might well have allowed a prominent place in their works for their Muslim compatriots . . . but they were at best witnesses and not interpreters of the inner life of the indigenous populations.

Is this not, in essence, my very point? All I added, perhaps, was a deeper explanation, which I would like to see anyone challenge, not that it would change anything about this harsh reality.

For in the end, I merely called attention to the historical and colonial origin of this separation. Was I then supposed to trivialize the two groups’ cultural and institutional differences? Who would dare claim, without appearing ridiculous, that our collective customs, values and codes were essentially comparable? How could one fail to acknowledge that the people of this wondrous land, which they adored with one heart, and enjoyed with the same fervent pleasure and ease, were profoundly divided by moral standards, customs, history and politics? And is this not what the writers show us, perhaps unwittingly, by not writing tracts or demonstrations? That these communities, who might have lived intermeshed, who yearned for exactly this kind of brotherhood, lived woefully separate lives? That their literatures are the expression of separate peoples and communities?

This literature thus tells the story of a failure. A missed opportunity, as colonization worldwide will have been humanity’s extraordinary missed opportunity for fusion, for the foundation of a broad community. We will probably have to wait for centuries before this melding takes place, painstakingly, while it could have happened so much sooner; we could have struck while the iron was hot, so to speak, during colonization, which could have enhanced its standing a thousand-fold, and finally found legitimacy, if it had at least succeeded in comingling these peoples, reconciled after the victory of some and the defeat of others, through mixed marriage and assimilation. As had occurred in other circumstances, between Romans and Carthaginians, or Romans and Galatians. In the end, perhaps that was not what colonization wanted, or not what it was capable of, as it devolved into an economic and political enterprise. But it might have at least mitigated the differences, tamed the passions. Instead, it “respected,” as they were fond of saying, which amounts to preserving and congealing the status quo.

In short, there were no winners in the colony. Whether conqueror or conquered, everyone was isolated, and in the final analysis, alienated, some by their defeat, others by their victories. Which explains why some produced a literature of revolt, while others indulged in a wistful southward-looking literature full of nostalgia for an impossible community, a literature that expressed the impossibility of even conceiving another world, because they vaguely intuited that they would cease to exist. This sunbaked southern literature marks the end of a world, one where there is no going back, no possible redress.

Even so, thankfully, a literature of failure is not a failure of literature. In fact, it is more commonly just the reverse. Literature is perhaps first and foremost the expression of foregone inevitabilities, whether subjective or objective, of that which has remained unresolved. It is because this movement emerged largely out of a relatively inextricable human and social situation that it has produced a few of the best works in the French language, and will probably take its place among the tightest and most evocative chapters in the history of French literature.

Yes, I will concede that I have perhaps overstated the turmoil and heartbreak revealed in these texts. I am reminded of a passage from Freud where he defended himself against an oft-repeated reproach, which claimed he spent an undue amount of time on the conflicts that unsettle the soul. He argued that this is because we customarily want to see only the bright side of our being, not that this side isn’t also important, of course. I have already spoken of the song shared by all of us living in the Mediterranean. Need I return to that subject? Ah, it never takes much coaxing for me to further elaborate! The summer evenings in front of my father’s shop, the market full of the best fish in the world, at the foot of the old Spanish fortress, the Sicilian taverns on the port. We all learned how to balance sun and shade, how to trap the cool breeze, to outwit the sun. All of us have extraordinary memories of going fishing, wading for hours waist-deep in water. We all possessed that instinctive graciousness, that somewhat formal amiability, all the more necessary in that we were living collectively in the same street, but were not of the same race or culture. . . .

I talked about the South, so I should add that it’s a good-natured South I’m referring to. There remains much to be said about what might be called the North African picaresque (and Mediterranean, too, which dates back to Cervantes), where the feisty Cagayous channels the wily Jeha, two local characters in dialogue. The poor white protagonists of the French writers of the Maghreb, Marcel Moussy’s characters, for example, hot-headed but with a heart of gold, are the most immediately recognizable, different even from the Marseille types: they speak with a Bône accent, for instance, and their head-butts are deadly.

It is not altogether impossible that, beyond the vagaries of history that so cruelly kept us apart and made us suffer, often at the hands of the others, it is this shared song that will survive the longest, and will grant us our definitive aspect, forever brotherly.

Preface to Francophone Writers of the Maghreb: An Anthology (1985)

When we set out to put together this anthology, which we present today to the public, we obviously came up against the same problems [of classification, as with the prior two anthologies of Maghrebi writers in French]. Yet, with the passage of time, did we really need to go about things the same way as before? First of all, there was considerable updating work to be done: certain authors, like the late Malek Haddad, have died in the interim, and their oeuvre is now complete, while others meanwhile have just been born into the literary world. Those of the earlier generation whose output has continued look very different now, physically. Their work, having often shifted its center of gravity, requires fresh insight. For this reason, we thought it might be wiser and more faithful to our readers to rework the whole anthology: the introductory texts are all new, and the extracts we chose are not identical to those of the previous edition. Specialists in the field might well find it interesting to compare the two collections.

With the upheavals of history now easing somewhat, might we not consider revising our classifications in accordance with these changes? Our previous decisions were based in a certain socio-historical moment, which for convenience’s sake we shall call the immediate postcolonial period. We had to acknowledge a parting of ways, even when those paths coincided sometimes, even when our assignment to categories seemed almost unfair. Again, with the passage of time, such distinctions carried less weight, perhaps, and conveyed less meaning.

Which brings us once again to the problem of language. We took for granted that the issue had been resolved, temporarily at least. It has not been, and if anything, it has grown more acute, requiring fresh insights. We are free to believe that a nation ought to possess a single language, the so-called national language, the one spoken by the majority. Taken to the extreme, however, this would imply that anyone unable to speak this language could not belong to the nation; or, at least, could not represent it, no matter how gifted, no matter how prestigious for the country. But for our purposes, we find ourselves in a bind: since the majority of Maghrebi writers are continuing to write in French, should they be excluded from the literary canon of their respective nations? In response to this agonizing question, some authors are experimenting with writing in Arabic. This is the case with Rachid Boudjedra, or with Kateb Yacine, who is attempting to promote theater work in Algeria’s Arabic dialects. But for the moment, most of the contingent are in no position to give up writing in French without seriously compromising the vitality of their work.

Conversely, does every writer in a given language automatically belong to the majority group of users of that language? This is how Henri Michaux has come to be considered a French writer, even though he is Belgian, just as Jean-Jacques Rousseau is ranked as one of France’s great eighteenth-century writers, although he constantly reminded people that he hailed from Geneva. But this misapprehension only raises a further problem: should all writers from the Maghreb be treated in the same way, despite their statements of solidarity with their people, the content of their work, their authentically African imaginary . . . even if they express themselves in French?

Someday, perhaps, when we have become less touchy about such issues, less jealous or anxious, these deliberations will lose some of their intensity. Once we concede that someone can belong to two or even three communities without being seen as a monster or a traitor, the whole problem will cease to generate such controversy. Why not accept that Henri Michaux could be at once Belgian and French? Ramuz, Swiss and French? There is no reason why Maghrebis who write in French should not be included among French writers, since they already belong, in effect, and in very different ways, to two separate patrimonies. As I write these lines, I can already feel the kind of issues they will raise, but the acceptance of this reality, which someday will seem absolutely commonplace, would allow us, writers of a double culture, to live with ourselves more easily.

I must interject here how much the category of francophonie, which we experience spontaneously [ . . . ] has really come to our rescue. The notion has not always had great press. Some saw it as colonization’s final trick, a way to maintain cultural hegemony in a failing political situation. It is undeniable that cultural ties, language in particular, are the surest gateway to economic exchange. It is certainly more convenient for a French firm to seek out business prospects among a French-speaking clientele. But it is equally true that a considerable shift has taken place: with French no longer the language of a colonizing nation, it should cease to arouse any particular suspicion. At any rate, it has become easier for us to express ourselves in French without having to justify it each time with our unconvincing arguments. The simple truth was, and still is, that we have never had a choice in the matter: write in French or not write at all. Still, writing in French meant using the language of a nation that was considered the enemy. We wrote anyway, but our feelings of guilt had us bending over backward to account for ourselves. We would go to great lengths to mark our distance, to sound original. There is no longer any need for that. Francophonie today simply means that the French language has miraculously brought together a certain number of writers around the world.

Readers will pick up on a new unifying feel to this latest anthology, for we decided to reintroduce, in the same volume, any writer who identifies as Maghrebi. All those who, using French as their vehicle, belong to the same cultural place, beyond any particulars, and come to define a certain literary space, that of the francophone writer of the Maghreb.

This is how a problem that had triggered such passionate debate found something like a resolution: that of French writers born in the Maghreb. They recover their well-earned place in this anthology, since they have continued, against all odds, to remain faithful to their birthplace. We were more reluctant, however, when it came to writers who left the Maghreb a long time ago, and have seemingly lost interest in it. Some have ceased writing altogether, but others, who have moved on to different subjects, are nonetheless still included in our inventory. René-Jean Clot is one example. Often, we made do with simply mentioning them in the appendix. An interested reader can consult one of our earlier anthologies.

A related category consists of those writers who were born in North Africa or whose parents were, but who then emigrated elsewhere, and who have no direct experience of the real Maghreb. This is the case of Serge Bramly, a promising talent, and in all likelihood, he is not alone, for there seems to be a new generation of writers of Maghrebi origin, but who have wandered from the land of their roots. Included in this category are those who have come to be known as the “second generation”: sons and daughters of harkis, who are therefore French nationals, or Muslim immigrants, who sometimes seek naturalization. Then, there are those unsettling cases where North Africa is both absent and present, as with the symbolists, including the Tunisian Jacques Zibi, who published a moving story entitled Ma, where he expresses his tenderness for his Jewish mother.

We have left out (for the moment) those we previously referred to as “tourist writers.” Not that their writings are in any way trivial (Flaubert, Fromentin, Gide), but these were all outsider viewpoints. We decided to confine ourselves here to this more contemporary renewal of Maghrebi literature in French, to those authors speaking from the inside. We therefore chose to present, preferably if not exclusively, native-born writers, whatever their religious, ethnic or national identity might be. Not exclusively, as I said, for it would be impossible not to mention the writers whose influence has been so considerable.

Since aesthetics played into our decision just as much as historical and sociological criteria, we have also left out, for the moment, those essayists for whom aesthetics played no predominant role. We might include certain journalists among them, whose work deserves a place in a more ambitious collection than this one. For instance, Béchir Ben Yahmed, the founding director of the weekly magazine Jeune Afrique, whose incisive writing is well worth mentioning. And on the subject of worthiness, we obviously devoted more space to those writers for whose work we have the greatest admiration. It bears repeating that since there is no bureau of weights and measures when it comes to literary standards, we are free to admire and critique at will.

At the other end of the aesthetic spectrum, so to speak, we have paradoxically reduced the amount of space devoted to poetry. We merely cited in passing the poetic works of successful prose writers. We in no way intend to ostracize an entire genre, poetry in particular, the very essence of literature, but there was simply too much of it. French language poetry of the Maghreb would require an anthology all of its own. There must surely be some unwritten law: among young nations (or ones newly rejuvenated by events), the poetry output intensifies. Still, let us face the harsh reality: the Maghreb has yet to produce a poet whose oeuvre stands on its own merits.

For similar reasons, we left out writers who had published only a single book, citing them in the appendix, for the time being. We intend to reintroduce them in a subsequent printing, if they should live long enough to produce further work, and provided our publishing project lasts into the future. Whatever the case, readers should find a shorthand version of all they need to know in the present volume.

Clearly then, it would be appropriate to speak of Maghrebi literatures in the plural rather than the singular. Opening the field in this manner allows for all kinds of potential additions. For instance, there exists an intriguing and by no means negligible writing tradition among the Maghreb’s Jews. A researcher should make a project of compiling the complete list. And of course, French is not the only language at issue here. Having undergone so many different influences, North Africa includes, in addition to the majority Arabic speakers, users of Hebrew, Italian, Berber/Kabyle, all of which have enriched, to varying degrees, the shared cultural heritage. Here again, all these people should be reintroduced into some larger compendium. The list of should grows ever longer. . . .

And thus it is that we have once again, deliberately and most regrettably, left out of our anthology, for the time being at least, the oral tradition still thriving in our countries of origin. How could we fail someday to mention the “Jeha cycle,” whose little stories are constantly resurfacing in ordinary conversation? Indeed, new ones are being invented every day, to meet the needs of daily life. And if we dared reach back even further, beyond the time limits we set for ourselves, shouldn’t we also consider including the great Latin writers?

Have we resolved all the difficulties inherent to a work on this scale? Of course not. The truth is that no exhaustive classification exists that could cover a single human reality, whatever it might be. An anthology is but one choice among many, one key that we offer. What matters is to adopt a code that will allow for an appropriate reading, and to make that code clear to the reader. Now it’s done. We can only hope that you will recognize that we have done our best.

What Language to Write In?: The Literary Homeland of the Colonized (1996)

Writers in still colonized regions [or] those living in exile or exiting prison all share in common the desperate sincerity of those with nothing left to lose. In most young nations of the Third World, their condition remains worrisome and ambiguous. It is as if their former difficulties were added to and compounded by new ones, liable to be even more noxious for the free exercise of their line of work.

Under colonial rule, if you did not write in the language of the colonizer, you were practically guaranteed to have no readership. Apart from a few well-read bilinguals, most academics, white collar workers and the bourgeoisie in general were more fluent in that language than in their mother tongue, at least with regard to written expression. The masses didn’t read at all, since most of them had never learned to read in any language. If a writer were to have decided to stick with the language of the people, whatever the cost, where would he or she find a publisher? How would the book get distributed? Then, there was also that other more formidable obstacle, psychological this time, which the writer would encounter within himself: the interiorized disrepute that tainted everything involving the colonized subject. Young men and women who came of age in an already independent nation have no idea that their fathers and uncles were often ashamed to use their native tongue in public!

Today, however, writers are free: who prevents them from working in their national language? Not only are they free, but it is time for them to exercise their long suppressed right. And yet, they seem to waver. Unnerved by the urgency of the choice, they would appear to be postponing the deadline. We have never heard so much rhetoric and commentary over these issues as since the end of colonization. The truth is plain, however: these writers are already, and irrevocably, writers in French or English. This is no sign of weakness or betrayal, but an unavoidable legacy, however controversial the question remains. Better, then, to admit it in all frankness, so that the debate might come to a close regarding these writers, who lived their historical moment, one that cannot be erased from the nation’s past.

The issue is less straightforward for the new generations, who learned both languages from their first day at school: why, then, when the time comes to choose, do the overwhelming majority of them end up opting to become writers in French or English? Why is most literature still produced in French in Algeria, Morocco and even Tunisia, where the promotion of Arabic is more far-reaching than elsewhere? And in practically all francophone and anglophone sub-Saharan Africa? Against all expectations and despite prideful proclamations?

We cannot blame material conditions for national literatures, which have improved greatly. State-backed publishing houses have been created nearly everywhere. Distribution networks have been set up through the government, run by civil servants. Literary prizes have been created, theater companies formed, and cinema is gaining a foothold. All this will certainly boost artistic production and hopefully garner honors and financial rewards for the authors. Real as these improvements may be, there are still so many obstacles and stumbling blocks, often different from those of the past. State-run publishers bring to bear all the disadvantages of unwieldy public administrations and of political groups, without the positive sides of either. They tend to be cumbersome, unyielding and ineffective, not to mention cash-strapped in a business where it pays to be nimble and willing to take risks. The administrators distrust the writers they are supposed to be promoting, fearing that their deviant language and irresponsible behavior might stir people up, and therefore prefer a heavy-handed approach. And most importantly, which readership are we talking about here? A sparse foreign market, and a tiny domestic one, so that young writers murmur ironically that their local book launches feel more like funerals.

The problem of readership obviously follows that of language. Colonized writers were living a misunderstanding: they gave voice to their people’s grievances, but couldn’t make themselves heard by them. They tangled with the colonizers, but sought them as an audience. They were avidly searching for a genuine readership, at least, this was what they claimed. Then came decolonization, and the nation gradually asserted itself. Did this mean they would at last encounter their natural constituency, the only one that mattered? The readers who not only understood the language of their writing, but [also understood] all the nuances of the heart, the resonance of memory, even when unconscious, and who would discover themselves in the writing, with surprise and delight, on every page? This miraculous readership, commonplace for writers elsewhere, spontaneously granted to its writers by that secret pact that bonds a cultural community, is still nowhere to be found.

Admittedly, the rise of compulsory schooling, which has already made strides, might lead us to hope that new generations of readers will emerge in the not too distant future. But will it take this long waiting period before writers are sure to be read? And especially, in what language? Has the nation really chosen, in concrete terms, how to run its daily operations? We all know Ben Badis’s famous unifying proclamation: “Islam is my religion, Arabic is my language, Algeria is my country.” But what about since then? What is going on now? A certain Minister of Education spoke boldly and sensibly to the issue when he said: “[Algerian schools] are governed by a de facto bilingualism . . . for us, it’s a bilingualism of circumstance, and is in the country’s best interest” (Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi).

The traditional languages of Africa have yet to adopt to the technical needs that the future of their nations require of them. And it is wise that Egypt, often the model for the Maghreb, continues to train its engineers and doctors in English. For a too hasty Arabization would hinder the technical and economic development of the country. In the meantime, however, heated arguments over a definite national language policy are ongoing: should we opt for modern standard Arabic or the dialect, which is the language of the vast majority of potential readers? Or for some third language that blends all of them, the one that journalists and radio hosts are already implementing as their vehicle? Opposing sides resort to insult, to mutual accusations of betrayal or revivalism. All the while, writing in French and English continues apace. And the writers continue to address their work to the readership of the former metropole, with a sigh of feigned resignation. . . .

Thus, out of the dozen or so works of quality produced annually by writers from the Maghreb, almost all are published in Paris. And what is tragically paradoxical, few of these ever arrive in the bookstores of Algiers, Rabat or Tunis, for hardly any can overcome the red tape, the censors’ scrutiny and the readers’ low income. Granted, with French culture remaining one of the world’s most prestigious, Paris continues to exercise its despotic fascination on anyone who speaks French, and even on those who do not. But is that a reason to give up, after so many proclamations, promises and challenges?

A centuries-old cultural tradition is expressed in Arabic as well, and it is utterly inconceivable that such a prestigious legacy should be allowed to fade. But it is equally true that there is no longer one Arabic, but several; or more precisely, one classical Arabic and several spoken ones. Over one hundred languages are spoken in sub-Saharan Africa, almost none of which are written and therefore have no textual tradition. The thorny problem of Kabyle in Algeria is also worth addressing, and more broadly, Berber in Morocco, which arouses much passion and concern. After all, a majority imposes its cultural imperatives on a minority only by violence disguised as law.

All of this poses new and daunting problems, ones that writers obviously cannot escape. Resigning oneself to writing in a language other than that of the majority of a nation amounts to perpetuating the rift between writer and street, between average folks and the privileges of money and culture. The consequences are not only moral: the cultural sidelining of the majority most probably leads to adverse social and economic results. In the long term, schooling could also help heal this rift, but the current dilemma is worth observing: a European language is chosen to avoid immediate harm and to move the nation forward more quickly, but this choice itself involves harm that can be repaired only with the passage of time.

Moreover, how can a nation that has only just begun the reconstruction process, slowly and painstakingly building its future, give in to this fragmentation impulse? With time, perhaps, if linguistic unification is not achieved, one might imagine the prospect of dual languages or even more. But early in a nation’s existence, achieving liberation without restoring collective culture seems egregiously shortsighted. Restoring culture without a basic language is an absurdity. Which brings us to the unsettling problem of collective identity (too massive an issue to address at any length here) that haunts so many young nations: to successfully unite a people and build it into a modern nation, must this people share a deep identity? Or does that notion cross over into a belief system where the real is inextricably linked to collective legends, origin myths, stories of a homogenous past, a mother language and common ancestors, and therefore, myths of a future that is necessarily common, homogenous and indivisible?

Artist and Citizen

No wonder, then, that writers are so distraught, anxious to find the best path as artists and citizens in a nation that is too young not to be both exacting and unsure. As crafters of language, better acquainted with myth-making than most, they must decide in short order for themselves and for their people, at a time and place where every decision is highly consequential. Where no solution is immediately and entirely satisfactory. Where the shifting, fragmented and wary public remains to be created, rallied and persuaded. Where no single language as yet achieves unanimity, because the people themselves are no longer unanimous, if indeed they ever were. Is all this the persistent consequence of colonization, of vast inequalities of cultural development among the different classes or social groups, of varying extents of absorption of the former colonizer’s civilization, of the persistence of ethnic or tribal prerogatives? Whatever the explanation, there is no getting around a painful choice when it comes to language.

At any rate, it will be a tricky decision, for it requires at the outset a certain conception of nationhood. If, for example, a new nation is fortunate enough to already have a predominant national language, should the country opt for its learned, more scholarly and prestigious form, even when the majority of the population lacks the schooling to understand it? Or should the country go with the popular language, the idiom of the street, as so many nations of Europe did in the early days of their history? Would this second option not risk depriving the still fledgling nation of the resources of its tradition, of the cultural treasure it so urgently needs? There is no single solution that outshines any other, such that it would spare writers their feelings of guilt and unease. There is no solution that would not have some momentous impact or another on their work and the future of the nation.

After the challenges of the colonial period, followed by the turmoil of decolonization, we now face the difficult task of collective affirmation of the nation in the making. A formidable one by any measure. Precisely because it is more hazardous, rebellion against the enemy is more exalting than contesting one’s own side. Even so, presumably free citizens of a presumably free country, writers are faced with a new set of duties: they must take stock of their own people’s weaknesses, of the unearned privileges of certain classes, of the transgressions of their leaders. They must question their own alliances, to struggle against their own assumptions, at the risk of adding to an already confused state of affairs. Were they not in revolt, in solidarity with their countrymen and women? And now they are suspected of betrayal, an uncomfortable position to occupy. It is far less painful to be rebel than a traitor.

We are now in the era of Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen and Naguib Mahfouz, whose Nobel Prize did not prevent him from being stabbed in the streets of Cairo. Algerian intellectuals such as Rachid Boudjedra fear for their lives, and must live in hiding, erasing their footprints as they go. It was not the colonial powers that threw Abdellatif Laâbi into prison.

Writers could remain silent on certain topics, but writing always involves disclosure of one kind or another, and therefore, dissidence. If they give in, they give up. Is a writer who accepts a ministerial position in the government still a writer? These are issues that go beyond the scope of decolonization itself. We can no longer address only our individual problems, country by country. Beyond our particular national, ethnic and regional issues, we must together come up with a global, shared definition of contemporary man.

Emergence of a Maghrebi Literature in French: The 1954 Generation (2001)

Mireille Calle-Gruber: Thanks to the preface by Camus, then one by Sartre, and to your advantageous relationship with Les Temps modernes, you enjoyed rather special recognition and status, which allowed you to bridge the French and Maghrebi literary scenes. You were a literary guarantor, in a way.

Albert Memmi: When I arrived in Paris for the first time to go to university, I didn’t know a soul. For the sake of convenience, I rented a room 200 meters from the Sorbonne, at the Hôtel Molière, which has since disappeared. I had hoped to run into Jean Amrouche, but he was travelling at the time. Then, while working on a degree in Philosophy, I got married and we moved back to Tunisia, where we spent seven years, during the waning years of colonization. When I came back to Paris, at that point I did indeed serve as a binding force. The magazine L’Express asked me to write an article on “Perspectives on Maghrebi Literature in French.”

In this article, which was important for its timeliness, I identified four stages or periods. I spoke only about those who write in French, for I was not fluent enough, and never have been, to appraise anything written in Arabic. Stage One: particularly among the Jewish population, there were a number of short story writers, Levy, for instance, whose alias anagrammed to Ryvel, or Vitalis Danon, both of whom were school principals by profession. Their works were not trivial, though they never attained a form distinctive enough to earn recognition. The second stage consisted of those I call the “migratory birds.” They would come to Tunisia for five or six years, the duration of a contract in teaching or administration, and then return home, which was perfectly legitimate. But since they never mingled with the native population, nor did they ever learn the language, they never got to know the locals. Apart from Fatima the servant and Mohammed the gardener, the “natives” did not really exist for them. Only with the third period do I make my point, the generation of Dib, Mammeri and myself: these texts reintroduce Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans, in all their wonderful Maghrebi diversity, which is to say, the presence of Muslims, Berbers and Jews. All of a sudden, the protagonists were finally locals. In my Express text, I point out how these writers, without consulting among themselves, seemed to spontaneously divide up the work, each addressing the social issue that they knew best. In Dib’s La grande maison, it is the Algiers urban proletariat; in Mammeri, the Berber milieu; and in my early books, the Jewish ghetto and lower middle class of Tunis. Each developed a literary sociology and a literary language all his own. The fourth period, which I don’t talk about in that article, since it was still too early, marks the flowering of the third period, with Kateb Yacine, Chraïbi, etc., who should not be included among those earlier writers, as is often done.

Mireille Calle-Gruber: Kateb Yacine is often cited as the precursor because of his Nedjma, which became something of a touchstone novel, but Nedjma is already 1956 . . .

Albert Memmi: Right, and this is an error. Kateb Yacine, Malek Haddad, Driss Chraïbi, these are writers of the second generation. During this period, there are poets, novelists, essayists, a plethora of high-quality literary works. By way of anecdote, in my text for L’Express, I announced that there would soon be another period, that of Maghrebi literature written in Arabic. L’Express cut this from the article. I sent them an angry letter, for in my mind this was very important, a harbinger of decolonization. They responded graciously but never published my letter.

Mireille Calle-Gruber: What exactly did you mean by Arabic language literature: that new writers would be emerging or that the French language forerunners would also write in Arabic, for an Arab readership?

Albert Memmi: No, I did not believe that my contemporaries would start writing in Arabic, and certainly not myself, I was totally incapable of doing so. Occasionally, some fluent Arabic speaker would get upset with me: why did you never write in Arabic? I would answer plainly that I had never learned classical Arabic. We write in the language we can. I write in French. No, I rather envisioned yet another new generation. But I misjudged the duration of the previous one. I wrote in The Colonizer and the Colonized that Maghrebi literature in French would probably die young. I took a lot of criticism for that, and rightly so. I got it wrong. I thought that Arabic language literature would come much faster than it has. It is still in its infancy. I fell into my own trap! It seems I blindly adhered to a logical forecast, whereas I should have paid better attention to what was really happening, as I usually do.

Mireille Calle-Gruber: So, back then, you considered literature in French in the Maghreb to be a mere transition toward emancipation and therefore a national language? How has all that turned out?

Albert Memmi: As I said, Arabic language literature in North Africa is still in its infancy, which is not the case in other countries, Lebanon, for example. I’m not in a position to judge. At any rate, no one can claim that there is an Arabic language literature equal in value, diversity and innovation to the literature in French. In Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, excellent writers continue to emerge. Production proceeds at a sustained pace, in Algeria especially, and what is most significant is the arrival on the scene of so many women writers. This is a phenomenon whose impact we have yet to fully measure. Since women are in charge of educating children, both boys and girls, their influence is obviously crucial. So long as women are held down, the education they provide will fall far short. As more high-profile women appear on the scene, real emancipation will take place, even if men oppose it with all their might: this will mark a major shift in the education of young Muslims. There is also the issue of language. It is clear that writers have emerged and continue to emerge in French language works, while writing in Arabic, as I said earlier, remains marginal. The most daunting challenge is therefore what to teach in schools. We are still in this situation of in-between-ness. Look at my own case: three or four years ago, I received the France-Tunisia Prize, but since I was already naturalized as French, I was invited as a Frenchman, which seems to defeat the whole purpose, in a funny sort of way.

Mireille Calle-Gruber: You have always been split among languages and cultures: Arabic, Jewish, French. You are Tunisian, but French, non-Muslim, a secular Jew, French-speaking but more or less Berber-speaking as well, from your mother’s side.

Albert Memmi: Yes, the problems of language, nation and nationalities are linked. Either you believe that literature is tightly linked to a national entity, as its expression and its banner, and therefore adheres to the exclusive labels of Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan. Or you consider that literature may well be a phenomenon nourished by national divisions, but that it transcends them, which then allows multiple generations of writers to reintegrate the North African fold, going all the way back to Saint Augustine, born in Thagaste, today’s Souk Ahras in Algeria, or Apuleius or Camus! In that case, Camus and I are most definitely Maghrebi writers.

Mireille Calle-Gruber: This is Assia Djebar’s gesture in her Algerian White (1995), where she lists Camus at the top of her “Algerian writers.” And later, she goes on to call the author of The First Man (1994) “Camus the Algerian.” But let’s go back, if we might, to the presence of Jewish writers in the Maghreb. How would you situate them in the literary movement emerging in 1954? What was their impact?

Albert Memmi: There has always been a strong presence of Jewish writers in French language literature in the Maghreb. The reason for this is that Jews acquired French before the Muslims did, thanks to the work performed by one specific institution, the Alliance israélite universelle. This institution, headquartered in Paris, was devoted to improving the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean region. And not only for cultural reasons, but for what I would call vital ones, a matter of survival in many instances. The ghettos were squalid beyond belief, rife with malnutrition, disease and substandard sanitation, you cannot imagine how bad it was! In these circumstances, French served as a vehicle for modernization, for their emancipation. Inevitably then, the inception phase of their writing had to be in French. Arabic, my mother’s language—the spoken dialect, the non-written version—was not a language we could read or write in. But all the school principals and teachers, they all taught French, and it was in French that we learned the language of hygiene and citizenship; in other words, it was a political language. The whole issue is as sociological as it is cultural. And it is because the path to modernization—at the most basic level: sanitation, other early learning tools—was conveyed in French that Jewish literature in French preceded Arab-Muslim literature in the Maghreb. This also explains why we experienced the related concerns earlier than the Muslims did: the problem of double language, the question of belonging, etc.

Mireille Calle-Gruber: You have occasionally claimed to have held an intermediary position, sharing in the life experience of both Muslims, i.e., the colonized, and the French, the colonizers.

Albert Memmi: This is true, I shared with the Muslims the fate of people deprived of their rights, such as the right to vote. We had special passports, for instance, and our grasp of the language was weak; all the features of being colonized, in fact, were common to us both. On the other hand, to the extent that I intended to achieve fluency in French—and I believe I have succeeded—I see myself rather as a Parisian intellectual, an heir to the eighteenth century enlightenment, a progressive, a bit revolutionary, or reformist, secular. . . . For sure, I identify as a writer much more with Diderot than with any Arab writer or Jewish traditionalist.

To sum up, you have said that my itinerary has made me the exemplary writer for understanding the Maghrebi literary movement, and I thank you for that. And I hope this is ongoing! At least, I’m making an effort in that direction. . . . In fact, it is one of those ironies of history that I am once again exemplary, for that attraction to the secular, defiant West is now shared by a growing number of third-generation Maghrebi writers, today’s young authors. Human rights, freedoms for women, social justice—these are values that we have tapped in the West, and that we share with a certain European intelligentsia, beyond our respective peculiarities. In any case, as far as I am concerned, I am pleased to know that I am considered a secular humanist, an activist humanist.