Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics introduces and makes available, for the first time in English, an incandescent corpus of experimental leftist writing from North Africa. Founded in 1966 by Abdellatif Laâbi and a small group of avant-garde Moroccan poets and artists and banned in 1972, Souffles-Anfas was one of the most influential literary, cultural, and political reviews to emerge in postcolonial North Africa. An early forum for tricontinental postcolonial thought and writing, the journal published texts ranging from experimental poems, literary manifestos, and abstract art to political tracts, open letters, and interviews by contributors from the Maghreb, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The essays, poems, and artwork included in this anthology—by the likes of Abdelkebir Khatibi, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Albert Memmi, Etel Adnan, Sembene Ousmane, René Depestre, and Mohamed Melehi—offer a unique window into the political and artistic imaginaries of writers and intellectuals from the Global South, and resonate with particular acuity in the wake of the Arab Spring. A critical introduction and section headnotes make this collection the perfect companion for courses in postcolonial theory, world literature, and poetry in translation.
Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics introduces and makes available, for the first time in English, an incandescent corpus of experimental leftist writing from North Africa. Founded in 1966 by Abdellatif Laâbi and a small group of avant-garde Moroccan poets and artists and banned in 1972, Souffles-Anfas was one of the most influential literary, cultural, and political reviews to emerge in postcolonial North Africa. An early forum for tricontinental postcolonial thought and writing, the journal published texts ranging from experimental poems, literary manifestos, and abstract art to political tracts, open letters, and interviews by contributors from the Maghreb, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The essays, poems, and artwork included in this anthology—by the likes of Abdelkebir Khatibi, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Albert Memmi, Etel Adnan, Sembene Ousmane, René Depestre, and Mohamed Melehi—offer a unique window into the political and artistic imaginaries of writers and intellectuals from the Global South, and resonate with particular acuity in the wake of the Arab Spring. A critical introduction and section headnotes make this collection the perfect companion for courses in postcolonial theory, world literature, and poetry in translation.
Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics
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Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics introduces and makes available, for the first time in English, an incandescent corpus of experimental leftist writing from North Africa. Founded in 1966 by Abdellatif Laâbi and a small group of avant-garde Moroccan poets and artists and banned in 1972, Souffles-Anfas was one of the most influential literary, cultural, and political reviews to emerge in postcolonial North Africa. An early forum for tricontinental postcolonial thought and writing, the journal published texts ranging from experimental poems, literary manifestos, and abstract art to political tracts, open letters, and interviews by contributors from the Maghreb, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The essays, poems, and artwork included in this anthology—by the likes of Abdelkebir Khatibi, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Albert Memmi, Etel Adnan, Sembene Ousmane, René Depestre, and Mohamed Melehi—offer a unique window into the political and artistic imaginaries of writers and intellectuals from the Global South, and resonate with particular acuity in the wake of the Arab Spring. A critical introduction and section headnotes make this collection the perfect companion for courses in postcolonial theory, world literature, and poetry in translation.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780804796231 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/25/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 22 MB |
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Souffles-Anfas
A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics
By Olivia C. Harrison, Teresa Villa-Ignacio
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-9623-1
CHAPTER 1
SOUFFLES 1: FIRST TRIMESTER 1966
PROLOGUE
Abdellatif Laâbi
Translated from the French by Teresa Villa-Ignacio
The poets who have authored the texts of this, the manifesto issue of the journal Souffles, are unanimously aware that publishing in this venue means they are taking a stand at a moment when issues pertaining to our national culture have attained a degree of extreme tension.
The current state of literary affairs is not characterized, as some might believe, by a proliferation of creativity. The cultural disturbance that some individuals or groups are hoping will pass for a literary growth spurt is, in fact, only the expression of our ongoing stagnation or a certain number of misunderstandings about the deeper meaning of literary activity.
Petrified contemplation of the past, sclerosis of forms and themes, shameless imitation and forced borrowings, and the misplaced vanity of false talents constitute the adulterated daily bread with which the press, journals, and the greed of our rare publishing houses bludgeon us.
Even when we leave these multiple prostitutions out of the discussion, literature has become a form of aristocratism, a rosette on display, a force of intelligence and cunning.
This is not a quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. In fact, the literature ravaging the country today most often conceals a shocking eclecticism of heritages and borrowings from hearsay. It would even be possible for an objective critic to study outdated literary trends here where they are still in vogue. And since the tourist brochures speak of a "land of contrasts," one will find in this literature whatever is needed to satisfy all curiosities, all nostalgias: the residue of classical medieval poetry, Oriental poetry of exile, Western romanticism, symbolism from the turn of the century, social realism, not to mention the results of existentialist indigestion.
As a result, "representatives" of "Moroccan literature" occupy a special place at international gatherings, and congresses of writers are held in our country. The reader is at once disoriented and nauseous. His dissatisfaction is all the more justified in that he can find some of his problems echoed in foreign literatures, those that various "missions" have benevolently placed at his doorstep. We can explain the oft-commented complex of our national literature by its current incapacity to "touch" the reader, to gain his attachment, or to provoke in him some kind of reflection, a wrenching away of his social or political conditioning.
On an entirely different level, Maghrebi literature in French, which at one time gave birth to so much hope, is currently stalled and seems, according to some observers, to belong to the domain of history. This literature must, however, be called into question today.
Two of its most brilliant representatives prematurely celebrated its demise with touching funeral ceremonies. Analyzing the situation of the colonized writer, his linguistic dramas, his lack of true readers, they concluded that this literature was "condemned to die young."
Others have abstained from falling into this pathetic determinism. But they are all ready, despite their lucid self-critique, to entertain the paradox of a suicidal literature that keeps going, in spite of everything, albeit in slow motion, along its path.
A glance through the most recent publications in French reveals that that those who have pronounced the imminent death of this literature have come to this conclusion too quickly. Although we should in no way ignore the issue of the very status of Maghrebi literature in French. This is a delicate issue, and we must approach it prudently while excluding all tendencies toward generalization. In fact, the situation of writers of the previous generation (Kateb Yacine, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri, Albert Memmi or even Driss Chraïbi), reveals itself to be closely tied to the colonial experience in its linguistic, cultural, and sociological implications. From the pacifist autobiographies of the 1950s to the protestatory and militant works from the period of the Algerian War, we may remark that despite the diversity of talents and creative power, this production was entirely inscribed within the framework of acculturation. It perfectly illustrates the relationship between the colonized and the colonizer within the cultural sphere. Thus, even when a Maghrebi was represented in these works or when autochthonous writers spoke up to denounce abuses, this literature almost always remained a one-way street. It was conceived for the public of the "Métropole" and destined for foreign consumption. That was the public it aimed to move to pity, in which it sought to awaken solidarity; that was the public to whom it needed to demonstrate that the fellah in Kabylia or the factory worker in Oran were not so different from the farmer in Brittany or the dockworker in Marseille. Today one has the impression that this literature was a kind of immense open letter to the West, or something like a list of Maghrebi grievances. Of course this enormous deposition has proven its usefulness. These Maghrebi works caused a scandal and accelerated a coming-to-consciousness among progressive milieux in France and elsewhere. In this sense they were revolutionary.
In order to avoid making generalizations of our own, we should point to the exceptional work of two or three writers who surpassed all the limiting frameworks of their time, even if their work initially arose from these common preoccupations.
We must admit that this literature now only concerns us in part; in any case it is hardly able to satisfy our need for a literature that bears the burden of our current realities, of wholly new problematics in the face of which disarray and savage revolt are gripping us.
Writers have had to attain a certain level of putrefaction, or maturity, if you will, in order to be able to formulate what you will read in these texts.
The poets who clamor here have not been able to avoid their elders' agonies, but it has fallen to them to rigorously delineate the limits of the arduous task they have inherited. They intend to demonstrate that they are less continuers than they are initiators.
Amidst the chorus of insults about our underdevelopment and current humiliations, these poets have seen with the eyes of peace the mutations of a society that has too often been taken for a testing ground or a storehouse of legends. They are its witnesses and its leading actors. Despite the kaleidoscope of tones, their voices come together in fierce alarms.
Hypotheticals remain to be leveed, contradictions to be sealed up and surpassed, but complexes are being swept away, a new circulation is gaining momentum.
At this point we can already guess what charges will be made against us, notably our choice of language.
Without wading into the murky waters of false issues, let us respond for now that four of these poets discovered their literary vocation through the French language. There is no drama or paradox there. This situation has become too common in today's world. The priority is to arrive at a correspondence between written language [langue] and the poet's inner world, his intimate, emotive language [langage]. Some are not able to achieve this. Others, even those who write in the national written tongue remain at the surface of their selves and of the reality they wish to theorize and put into question.
Despite their linguistic disorientation, the poets in this collection succeed in communicating their most profound feelings through a language filtered through their history, their mythology, their anger — in short, through their very selves.
The issue of communicating this poetry remains. On the one hand, and this has already been said (but strangely never taken seriously), there is the possibility of translating these works if one even briefly considers that they have their place and their role to play in the context of our national literature. On the other hand, the particular issue of communicating our literature in its entirety is not as simple as one might think. Putting aside questions of appreciation, interpretation, or critique of literary works, the Moroccan public that is even capable of reading such works is exceedingly limited. Illiteracy on the one hand and a superficial culture on the other has limited this readership to a nearly derisory residue.
Another paradox, but one that derives from a global social situation that can't be overcome through reasoning or some kind of magic trick. Why then resign ourselves to an even more overwhelming, sterile silence? The poet's language is first of all "his own language": the one that he creates and elaborates in the heart of linguistic chaos, the manner also by which he re-imagines the veneer of his world and the dynamics that coexist in him.
Why should we be distressed about this situation, as if we suffered an infirmity, when we must by all means make up for the delay we have incurred and respond to the urgencies of the moment?
Perhaps the next generations will resolve this issue, though they will already bear witness to their own world, a world that will no longer be ours though we are self-consciously striving toward it.
What is most important is that the one-way communication of past works is abolished. The era of managers and masters of thought is finished. We can no longer tolerate limitations due to favoritism or territorial taboos.
Something is about to happen in Africa and in the rest of the Third World. Exoticism and folklore are being toppled. No one can foresee what this "ex-pre-logical" thought will be able to offer to us all. But the day when the true spokespersons of these collectivities really make their voices heard, it will be a dynamite explosion in the corrupt secret societies of the old humanism.
We have had to exercise strict patience and rigorous self-control in order to produce this journal, which above all views itself as the vehicle of a new poetic and literary generation.
Souffles is not here to swell the ranks of ephemeral journals. It responds to a need that we can no longer ignore. If the journal finds its public, as we are hoping it will, as long as resources are available, it will become a flashpoint for debates on issues in our culture. All the texts that come to us will be examined with objectivity and, if they are accepted by our editorial board, published.
Souffles is not sponsored by any niche nor any minaret and does not recognize any frontiers. Our Maghrebi, African, European, and other writer friends are fraternally invited to participate in our modest enterprise. Their texts will be welcome.
It is still necessary to juggle with words tarnished by dint of being dictated. The act of writing cannot depend on any tabulations of income, nor concede to fashion, nor to the tear-jerking needs of wealthy demagogues hungering for power.
Poetry is all that is left to man to reclaim his dignity, to avoid sinking into the multitude, so that his outcry forever carries the imprint and attestation of his inspiration [souffle].
DOLDRUMS
Abdellatif Laâbi
Translated from the French by Andrew Zawacki
Surrender
small pledge of allegiance
and the earth goes pale
safe but not sane
the splinter plunders
this tadpole accuses
and for starters who will I stick up my toe or thumb to
I accuse yet again
this time surrender
small pledge of allegiance
it's too much
vast vast the fire vast
and the vast bombs
and this cursed Archimedes at the window
turns turns a vast seism
blows up the baobab's greening
turns turns the scorpion dance
and the arachnid's suicide
black like my face
or this crow watching over me
turns turns the axis turns
double
the crowd of sharded abysses
double facet
you die
but your place is an electric chair
there will be no letting up
Into the garbage poem
Into the garbage rhythm
Into the garbage silence
the word thunders
its first victim is me
nevertheless I extract it
and chuck it
at you
I accuse yet again
and myself to start with
of being your social animal
your strapped for cash cow
this dry moolah
amid the soil
the tree
where I lay myself down
and the centuries' crank handle turns turns
the weapons' brew turns
MINED
our globe is mined
terrestrial life is mined
our human voices are polluted
when the equations turn turn
the cube roots of missiles
Stop you airlift of ruins
bastard Shem
blow your nose
you also look pekid
and my face is afire
like dry cilantro
my face that no longer resembles me
my face
falls
cluster of ants and spit
my face cries out
* * *
My body lifts up
a poem wrings me
I jack it off
like a rancid fetus
I detach it
place it under your gills
your haywire lenses
it's no vaccine I serve you
hocus pocus or lighthearted truths
Lord give us our share of the daily absurd
and shield us from our overwhelming freedom
I emasculate you
in your husbandly pride
your strident culture
your floor level babble
you make my text ugly
you snuff me out
you soften me up
you dissect me in mini ceremonies
how-are-you-doing and health-is-what-matters
you fling your blandness
your single-storey manners at me
your flatlined familiarity
you dumb me down to a blueprint my brothers
but barely sully my torso
I've roots
a route of subterranean signs
a breath of unknown elemental stuff
Get out my body
scar furred hyenas
empty my bilgewater blood from your biles
begone
for good saltpeter and trash
I've slammed my life shut
on alms
to your oblivion
I'm going
I leave you my carapace
my appetite and my everyday talk
I exile myself among you
I hold my tongue
I pull my anger in
my brotherhood that takes you aback
my words worn down by othering you
freeze beneath your gaze
poems stalk me
foment
the charges
my putting to death
* * *
It's freezing
someplace inside my brain
a glass wall shatters in my temples
a people gnashes its teeth
let's say children die
a woman aborts
a man sells his body
a cry stops me cold
blasphemy hurled
at the entrails of heaven
the cemetery repopulates
with hands
It snows on the graves
somewhere there
in my brain
* * *
strong wind
people united
you explore my history
you exclude yourself from my rigid perception
walks
hanged or guillotined
wanks
squatting
your stride
but shuttle body
sweats
walks
wears out
walks
hush the horizon
the pillory
undo the language
form the word
return to me
sarcophagus down in the dungeon
take my hand
suck in your tummy
heave your heresies
drool
I don't like your blue Tuareg moon
stomp on the recipe
wind body mellowed
citadel's crenels
horde of convicts
hide your gripes
disguise your hunger
your fag ends of hope
your round the bend headwind from hand to mouth
coarse and mine own
morsel
mundane
you come from out the stunted dawn
from the clanking of centuries
and give your name up
Pubescent
tallying of ages
you affect nothing but my freedom
you seize only my freedom
you don't know me
but stay
don't pity me
don't plead me not guilty
don't lie to the crowd
to clear me
* * *
You
you've got but a day
haze from the levees
edges of towns
you should speak
ducking out after would be easy
they'll stone you
so say what a dagger can conjure
between the eye and the wound
speak of this blood
boils off in your breath
tell them
if your reach exceeds your grasp
or else what
dream of paradise
of butterfly houris
or flitting angels all ambrosial
you stand guard
your torch is the word
exploding in your arteries
don't titter
I'm serious
a serious swollen with gas
I bloat myself
to erupt at the crossroads
at the pits
at water's source
Once polluted
my life sterilized of the world
I accuse yet again
surrender
small pledge of allegiance
but this humanity I couldn't care less
its copulations
its thin-skinned skin
its coitus between two cuts of meat
Peoples with no memory
none
peoples of slag and hail
mine are muscular
dark skinned
with a callused hide
and turns turns the noria
to a null tempo
turn the seasons at random turn
the colossal gusts of locusts turn
rags
typhus
trachoma
the buildings hold back
when death turns turns
in the alleys
mucky
like my face
dispossessed of this face
a mole has muddied by night
my face
multiplied in all the faces
that shout
voice of the gut
of sex
and of a sickly dignity
unwritten
that pussyfoots
through a bombing
by catapults
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Souffles-Anfas by Olivia C. Harrison, Teresa Villa-Ignacio. Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents and AbstractsIntroduction: Souffles-Anfas for the New Millennium chapter abstractThe introduction presents the history of the journal from 1966, when it was founded, to 1972, the year it was banned, a period that coincides with the beginning of the "years of lead," as the oppressive regime of Hassan II is known in Morocco, and discusses its evolution from Francophone poetry review to French and Arabic tribune of the radical left. The editors situate the journal's founding mission of "cultural decolonization" in relation to the seminal writings of postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon and Maghrebi writers of the previous generation, such as Kateb Yacine, Malek Haddad, and Albert Memmi. After a brief explanation of the selection and translation of texts included in the anthology, the introduction ends by assessing the journal's enduring legacy in Morocco, the Maghreb, and the decolonizing world, and presents it as a precursor to the recent pro-democracy protests across North Africa and the Middle East.
Part ISouffles 1–Souffles 3 (1966) chapter abstractThis section begins with the incendiary manifesto-prologue of the founding issue of Souffles, which breaks with previous attempts to imitate French poetry and announces a new era of aesthetic innovation. In addition to poetry by Abdellatif Laâbi, Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, and Abdelkebir Khatibi, this section includes a long essay on popular Moroccan poetry by Ahmed Bouanani, a scathing critique by Abdallah Stouky of the 1966 World Festival of Negro Arts held in Dakar, and of the philosophy of Negritude that subtends it, and an essay on Maghrebi novel by Khatibi.
Part IISouffles 4–7-8 (1966-1967) chapter abstractThis section is book-ended by two important editorials by Abdellatif Laâbi on the decolonization of Moroccan culture, a double process involving a sustained critique of Orientalism and the elaboration of non-derivative literary forms. Laâbi's defense of a novel by the Moroccan writer Driss Chraïbi as well as his fascinating interview with Chraïbi and a short autobiographical text by the Tunisian writer Albert Memmi are also included in this section, which is heavily focused on literary and artistic expression. The final essay, by the art critic Toni Maraini, presents the artwork of the "Casablanca group," as the graphic artists involved in the creation of Souffles are known. Alongside works by Souffles-Anfas artistic directors Mohamed Chebaa and Mohamed Melehi, this section includes reproductions of artwork by Jilali Gharbaoui, Ahmed Cherkaoui, and other pioneers of modern Moroccan art.
Part IIISouffles 9–13-14 (1968-1969) chapter abstractThis section includes three bilingual issues featuring French-language poems by Mostafa Nissabouri, Mohammed Ismaïl Abdoun, Tahar Ben Jelloun, and Adbellatif Laâbi, and Arabic-language poems by Mohamed Zafzaf and Ahmed al-Madini, introduced by the noted critic and writer Mohammed Berrada. The journal sharpened its critique of Orientalism and racism during this period with a condemnation by the Haitian writer René Depestre of François Duvalier's oppressive regime—informed, according to him, by an essentialist version of Negritude—a biting critique of Albert Camus by founding member Bernard Jakobiak, and a sympathetic interview with the French anticolonial theater director Jean-Marie Serreau that nevertheless warns against the danger of appropriated Third World theater for European consumption.
Part IVSouffles 15–Anfas 7-8 (1969–1972) chapter abstractThis section begins with the fifteenth issue of Souffles, devoted entirely to the Palestinian question, and ends with a poem by the Sudanese poet Muhammad al-Fayturi published in the last issue of Anfas, the companion Arabic-language journal launched in 1971 and banned alongside Souffles in 1972. This final period of the journal is marked by a clear engagement for Palestine, as evidenced in its special issue and subsequent editorials, as well as for other anticolonial and leftist causes, most notably the struggles for independence from Portugal in Africa and the plight of Vietnam. Adopting a more accessible format and tone and an overtly Marxist-Leninist editorial line, Souffles-Anfas became the tribune of the Moroccan radical left in the closing years of the 1960s, and one of the first victims of the clampdown on freedom of expression and opinion in Morocco.