This book, which came out in February 2000, did not, to my knowledge, upend the Parisian literary landscape, nor even the national one. The fact remains that, in spite of — or because of — its confidentiality, and the style chosen by the author, half “entrails,” half analyst’s couch, it is, for me, an exceptional document on what any human being whose life has been overturned by History can feel.
Let it suffice for me to transcribe a few lines on the way Hélène Cixous speaks of this country where she was born and which she was never truly able to meet (do not think I have made typos as regards the punctuation, it is of major importance for the inside of things): “The whole time I lived in Algeria my native country I dreamed of arriving one day in Algeria, I pursued Algeria and it was not far off, I lived first in Oran then in Algiers at the Clos-Salembier on the edge of the Ravine of the Wild Woman and it eluded me on its earth beneath my feet it remained untouchable to me, I pressed myself against the body of Aïcha and she let me hold her country tight, laughing, for a thin instant with no sequel other than the hundreds of doors that, beyond the garden fence, turned their lowered eyelids toward my brother and me.”
From the outset, Hélène Cixous announces, underscores this affliction that she could not, as an adolescent, quite grasp: she was being separated from a country she wanted to enter, because she had been born there. This “one,” of course, is neither simple nor singular. It comprises those who held power in Algeria and who, on that account, not wanting to share it, preferred to compartmentalize, to isolate the “country proper,” but also the author’s own kind, her parents, her friends, who all bent to the unwritten law, the law not even spoken, a tacit mode of life that governed the gestures of every day and of all the day long. The Jews, then, who were neither Muslims nor Christians, were not quite Arabs and not yet French, in spite of all the Crémieux decrees in the world.
I quote again: “The most unbearable thing is that we were assailed by the very beings we wanted to love, with whom we were lamentably in love, to whom we were bound by all the kinships of destiny, of memory, of touch, of taste, there was error and confusion on all sides I wanted to be on their side but it was a desire from my side on their side the desire was without side, I could spend hours crouched a few meters from them without moving, hoping to demonstrate my good intentions, a patience I never had with the camp of the French. I, I thought, I am inseparab.” This neologism, in the form of a more or less Lacanian play on words, can by itself sum up this entire book, that is to say, all the suffering with which this young woman was inhabited toward people who rubbed shoulders with her without seeing her, whom she loved without even knowing them.
I am speaking of the Arabs, of course. Even if, by the time these lines appear, more than a year may have elapsed since this book’s publication, run quickly and read it. It is a book that speaks.
Rolland Doukhan. Les rêveries de la femme sauvage. By Hélène Cixous (Éditions Galilée)