{"id":16820,"date":"2020-07-21T06:56:12","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T10:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=16820"},"modified":"2020-08-21T11:41:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T15:41:00","slug":"mohammed-dib-celebrating-100-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/mohammed-dib-celebrating-100-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Mohammed Dib: Celebrating 100 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via the always excellent ArabLit Today:<\/em><\/p>\n

The great Algerian author Mohammed Dib was born 100 years ago today:<\/h3>\n

At least four French publications are\u00a0celebrating the Dib centenary<\/a>: There has been a reissue of Dib\u2019s collection\u00a0Formulaires<\/em>, a co-edition of his book of photographs and memoirs of Tlemcen\u00a0(Tlemcen or Places of Writing),<\/em>\u00a0a special section in the magazine\u00a0Europe<\/em><\/a>, and\u00a0a special edition of\u00a0Fassl<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that focuses on writing about Dib.<\/p>\n

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Young Mohammed Dib.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The novelist, poet, and short-story writer was born on July 21, 1920, in Tlemcen, in northwestern Algeria, to a struggling middle-class family. His father died when he was ten; five years later, at fifteen, he began writing poetry. He was only 18 when he started work as a teacher in the Moroccan border town, Oujda, but he returned to Tlemcen in 1945, at the end of WWII.<\/p>\n

He worked various jobs: weaver, teacher, accountant, interpreter, and journalist and published his first novel,\u00a0La grande maison,\u00a0<\/i>in 1952. The social-realist novel has echoes of Dib\u2019s own childhood, focused on a boy of around ten whose father has died and whose mother struggles to support the family; the bright spot in the novel is a young Communist, Hamid Saraj.<\/p>\n

The other books in Dib\u2019s first trilogy \u2014 \u00a0L\u2019Incendie\u00a0<\/i>(1954) and Le M\u00e9tier \u00e0 Tisser (1957) \u2014 as well as his writings in\u00a0Alger R\u00e9publicain<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Libert\u00e9<\/i>, posed a threat to French settlers, who advocated for Dib\u2019s expulsion from his country. In 1959, the French imperial administration forced Dib to leave Algeria.<\/p>\n

Although he went first to Morocco, he settled in France, near his French in-laws; several authors pressed French authorities to allow him to stay. Dib was based there for the rest of his life, where he\u00a0some 30 novels, volumes of poetry, short stories and tales for children, and also translated works from the Finnish.<\/p>\n

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Photo: @rymkhene.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though he wrote in and across a variety of genres, Dib called himself a poet. His poetry collections included\u00a0Ombre gardienne<\/em>\u00a0(Guardian Shadow),\u00a0Formulaires<\/em>\u00a0(Forms),\u00a0Omneros<\/em>\u00a0(Omneros), and\u00a0L\u2019Enfant Jazz<\/em>\u00a0(Jazz Boy). He also authored\u00a0a filmscript and two plays.<\/p>\n

The first of Dib\u2019s works to appear in English was his novel\u00a0Who Remembers The Sea,<\/a><\/em>\u00a0published by Three Continents Press in 1985; it\u2019s currently out of print.<\/p>\n

The second appeared in 2001, translated by C. Dickson, and has made more of a lasting impact in English. This collection of stories,\u00a0The Savage Night<\/a><\/em>, had been published in French in 1995, and they show many sides to Dib\u2019s gift: realism, magic, Borgesian wit, psychological portraiture. Inhe title story, \u201cThe Savage Night,\u201d a brother and a sister \u2014 N\u00e9dim and Beyhana \u2014 are going somewhere. Their relationship is so intimate that, at times, they seem to become each other. Time moves relentlessly and frighteningly forward as they journey through the city. Slowly, the reader realizes they are on their way to leave a bomb in a public place.<\/p>\n

In 1994, he received the Francophone Grand Prix, the highest literary prize awarded by the Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise.<\/p>\n

Dib\u2019s next work to appear in English was\u00a0his novel-in-verse,\u00a0L.A. Trip<\/a>;<\/em>\u00a0indeed, Dib had made his own L.A. trip \u2014 he was a visiting professor at the\u00a0University of California at Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The book\u00a0was translated by Paul Vangelisti and\u00a0published by Green Integer in 2003, the year Dib died at his home outside Paris. He was 82.<\/p>\n

Select photos from\u00a0T<\/a>lemcen or Places of Writing<\/a>:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Read translations online<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few excerpts from\u00a0LA Trip,<\/em><\/a>\u00a0tr. Paul Vangelisti<\/p>\n

On\u00a0Banipal<\/em>, \u201cThe Companion<\/a>\u201d tr. James Kirkup<\/p>\n

\u201cBloodred Dew<\/a>,\u201d on Words Without Borders, tr. C. Dickson.<\/p>\n

A few of Dib\u2019s poems, translated by Pierre Joris,<\/a>\u00a0are on Joris\u2019s blog<\/p>\n

15 more on PoemHunter,<\/a>\u00a0translators various<\/p>\n

Books<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Savage Night<\/a><\/em>, tr. C Dickson<\/p>\n

L.A. Trip,<\/a><\/em>tr. Paul Vangelisti<\/p>\n

At the Caf\u00e9 and The Talisman<\/em><\/a>, tr. C. Dickson<\/p>\n

An Algerian Childhood: A Collection of Autobiographical Narratives<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Tlemcen or Places of Writing<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0tr. Guy Bennett.<\/p>\n

Video of Dib discussing\u00a0Who Remembers the Sea<\/em>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via the always excellent ArabLit Today: The great Algerian author Mohammed Dib was born 100 years ago today: At least four French publications are\u00a0celebrating the Dib centenary: There has been a reissue of Dib\u2019s...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16820"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16869,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16820\/revisions\/16869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}