OBIT ~ Mohammed Dib, novelist, poet
Hyfler/Rosner
Novelist and poet exiled from his native Algeria
05 May 2003
Mohammed Dib, novelist and poet: born Tlemcen, Algeria 31 July 1920;
died La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France 2 May 2003.
Although he was born in Algeria, the great writer Mohammed Dib was thought
of not as Algerian, but as one of the finest contemporary French novelists
and poets. His last novel, Simorgh, was published a few weeks before his
death, and in it he writes: "I didn't know I was an Algerian; I didn't know
what it takes to be an Algerian: and I wasn't the only one. In my generation
no one knew more than I did about that."
What is a simorgh? It is the Arab name of a mythological bird inhabited by
the souls of the gods. It is also an image for the writer himself. Dib's
whole work contains elements of the ancient past, of mythological mysteries.
It is not the work of an exile. He brought up his children in France, and he
travelled widely, establishing enduring friendships with Americans and
Finns, for whom he wrote some of his best prose and poetry: the "verse
novel" L.A. Trip (1999), the poem collection L'Enfant Jazz ("Jazz Boy",
1998) and the great late Finnish trilogy of novels Les Terrasses d'Orsol
("The Terraces of Orsol" 1985), Le Sommeil d'Eve ("Eve's Sleep" 1989) and
Les Neiges de Marbre ("The Snows of Marble" 1990).
The poet Louis Aragon, introducing Dib's first collection of poems, Ombre
gardienne ("Guardian Shadow", 1961), wrote: "This man from a country that
has nothing in common with the trees at my window, the rivers along my
quays, the stones of our cathedrals, speaks with the words of Villon and of
Péguy." Dib produced about 40 books, writing to the very end. The Académie
française rewarded him with Le Grand Prix de la Francophonie; and among his
many other distinctions are the Prix Mallarmé for L'Enfant Jazz and Le Grand
Prix du Roman de la Ville de Paris for the whole of his fictional (although
largely autobiographical) work.
Dib's childhood was spent in Tlemcen, Algeria, where he went to school, and
learnt to read in French before he learnt to read Arabic. His father died
when Dib was 10, and life for him and his mother became a struggle for
survival. He lived in Tlemcen and the town of Oujd just across the border in
Morocco where he worked and studied until the war of independence. He soon
began to write poems and to paint. He was a teacher in Oujd, a wartime
French-English interpreter (1943-44), a designer in Tlemcen (1945-47) and a
journalist on the Alger Républicain in 1951.
He made his first visit to France in 1952 for the publication of his first
autobiographical novel, La Grande Maison ("The Big House"), the first of a
trilogy continuing with L'Incendie ("The Fire", 1954) and Le Métier à Tisser
("The Loom", 1957). This first of his trilogies is marked by a generous
nationalist-humanist populism, the style deeply influenced by literary
realism (Zola, Céline).
In 1955 he was a signatory of the manifesto Fraternité algérienne, which led
him to be expelled in 1959 from Algeria by the colonial authorities. In that
same year he published his first book of children's tales, Baba Fekrane and
a novel about his childhood and youth, L'Eté africain ("African Summer").
His exile in France became permanent in 1964 and marked a turning point in
his writing. But Algeria always remained a presence in his novels and poems,
though in a veiled and more muted way, as in Qui se souvient de la mer ("Who
Remembers the Sea", 1962), Cours sur la Rive Sauvage ("Along the Banks of
the Wild River" 1964), La Danse du Roi ("Dance of the King" 1968), Dieu en
Barbarie ("God in Barbary", 1970) and many others that proved popular with
French readers, especially those who had once lived in colonial Algeria. He
was also a master of the short story and published several selections
including Le Talisman (1966) and Au Café (1984), some of which, along with
selections from his poems I translated for publication in the London-based
magazine of contemporary Arab literature Banipal.
After a long silence, caused by deteriorating health, in 1987 Dib published
the joyous outburst of poems in a book with the punning title of O vive
(Eaux vives or "spring tides"), nourished by the double themes of woman and
water, and with a languorous eroticism that seems to force the verses into
longer and longer lines - a new form of verse composition for Dib, who had
usually written in brief, unrhymed lines.
He also wrote beautiful essays, published in two volumes, Tlemcen ou les
lieux d'écriture ("Tlemcen or Writing Places", 1994), a very moving return
to his birthplace as a writer, and L'Arbre à dires ("The Tree of Sayings",
1998), an inspiring work on the spiritual and moral duties and rewards of
writing. In all that Mohammed Dib wrote, there is the same continuous sense
of the poet's moral duty towards humanity and towards language itself. In
commenting on L.A. Trip, he writes: "It's obvious that verse has to control
a language suffering at once from chronic diarrhoea and slumping under the
adipose tissues imposed upon it by the Nouveau Roman." And about poetry he
wrote, quoting an ancient Arab proverb: "If your song is not more beautiful
than silence, remain silent."
James Kirkup