Albert Memmi was spinning on its one hundred years. The author’s memorable Portrait of the colonized (Gallimard, 1957, preface by Jean-Paul Sartre), novels sharp (Hagar, The Statue of salt), had also reflected on what it means to be jewish in particular in The Jewish and the other. He was born in 1920 to parents of very modest, father, saddler, of jewish origins. In 1967 he obtained the French nationality. Its three cultures (Arabic, jewish, French,) gave to his work a formidable acuity. CNRS Editions publishes little at his newspaper. It is time to re-read Agar published in 1955.
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A young couple comes to Tunis
This is the story of a love. It ? “Very fair, French Is catholic “. Him : “very mediterranean “, ” african and disbeliever “. It ends in Paris studying medicine. For this son of a small merchant tunisians, the French capital is a synonym of ” precarious housing “, of ” food insufficient “, again another ” learning alone “. But “the African” has met the fine Marie Müller. Diploma conquered, they were married, in a civil union. They decide to go to live in his native country, that Tunisia, as the author waits for the page 48 for quote. They love each other but during the trip he wondered, ” how would she judge mine ? If disputes from it by the morals, the religion, the language… ” It is the hour of indulgences shared, she understands his torment, reassures him with a glance. This is fracassera, the indulgence becoming vinegar, on the wall of the everyday.
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Prejudices of the South vs the prejudices of the North
life Began to Tunis. The discovery of the family, numerous, present, omnipresent. They live with his parents who have left their room, installed a shower, a luxury in this household without a large income. The return of the son is synonymous with deliverance for the father. He passes the sceptre to the head of the family to his boy who did not ask for much. He is a physician, one sees already at the top of the success in social and financial terms. The return did not, however, the taste provided, that of the child. A pregnancy occurs with the myriad of cultural misunderstandings it causes. The father, Abraham, asks his son that he named the baby as him. Stunned, the narrator discovers that he is merely” a ring in the great chain “. Without a wedding or baptism, this son has no status. The young doctor consults with a lawyer, who responded : “For your son is legally yours, there are only two options : circumcision or wedding. “Of wobbly, the torque becomes a stranger to himself. Without frills, the novelist Memmi excels to describe these clashes cultural.
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A mécontemporain
The writer and sociologist Albert Memmi, the great French writer of jewish origin, tunisian, known especially for his novels the humanist and his work on the “jewishness”, the colonisation and / or racism, passed away on 22 may in Paris, at the age of 99 years. © BOYAN TOPALOFF / AFPAlbert Memmi has dedicated his novel, in capital letters, ” TO MY WIFE “, a story not to cause mix-ups. In a preface added in 1984, he made it clear that there has been a misunderstanding about his book : “Agar is a singular case “, ” I would have laid an anathema on all mixed marriages “. He corrects this impression, answering the question ” do you believe that the agreement is for ever impossible between a man and a woman who are not of the same blood ? This would be false, inhuman and retrograde “. Albert Memmi was the man of the triple culture. It could as well ignore the taboos, nationalism, fears.
It would have celebrated its one hundred years the 20th of December next. The author of the Pharaoh, novel tunisian independence, has had its first success with The Statue of salt, dubbed by Albert Camus. Throughout his work, he alternated essays and novels. His journal is in the editing process and the CNRS for the maneuver. Guy Dugas driver this broad-based editorial work.
* ” Hagar “, by Albert Memmi. 1955. 190 pages. Editions Folio.
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Tunisia. Literature : fiction, a genre in search of authors Marriage Tunisian with a non-muslim : the press arab-speaking warm Marriage of women with non-muslims : the view of the street on the algerian Tunisia : the cause of women
