{"id":8721,"date":"2012-07-30T04:46:56","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T08:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=8721"},"modified":"2012-07-30T04:46:56","modified_gmt":"2012-07-30T08:46:56","slug":"jean-el-mouhoub-amrouche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/jean-el-mouhoub-amrouche\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean el Mouhoub Amrouche"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the valley d’Oueil, high up in the Pyrenees right now (will post a series of photos form the walks soon) with most of the time still spent proofing the Maghreb anthology. Here is an extract from the\u00a0fourth Diwan:\u00a0Resistance and Road to Independence:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jean el Mouhoub Amrouche (Ighil Ali, 1906\u2013Paris, 1962)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u00a0ADORATION OF THE PALM TREES<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

At night the palm trees shed heavy tears.
\nTheir shadows bend over the sea
\nNearly soundless Like the scattered souls that weep
\nIn the serene immobility of the stars.<\/p>\n

Palm trees,
\nFor whom the tremor of your lowered hands
\nAnd your mute sob in night\u2019s vertigo?<\/p>\n

Palm trees, For whom the call of the distant seas,
\nThe warm perfumes,
\nThe anguish,
\nThat rest in the gold of your half-open hearts?
\nFor the cold kiss of the moon?<\/p>\n

Will he come, the naked Child, with the enormous eye,
\nTo spread his desire over all your silences,
\nAnd in the nameless sky
\nWill unhoped-for love be born,
\nAnd then shoot up into the fullness of the stars?<\/p>\n

Oh palm trees,
\nThe shivering coat of your blue\u2019d hair
\nAnd the shadow of your swaying bodies
\nEach day have sung the delirious suns of these dazzled shores.<\/p>\n

The hour when the big sleep
\nWill bend our heavy nakednesses toward earth
\nHas rung, far away, on the dream\u2019s high plain.<\/p>\n

On our forehead we carry the somber diadem
\nAnd our hearts made heavy with the impossible love
\nAdore throughout the night and the music of the stars
\nThe wound that your friends the leaves put to sleep,
\nAnd the endless sob of your fallen branches.<\/p>\n

Translation from French by P.J.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I have said nothing that belongs to me<\/em>
\noh tell me the origin<\/em>
\nof the words that sing in me!<\/em><\/p>\n

J.E.M.A.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

COMMENTARY<\/strong><\/p>\n

Somewhat forgotten in independent Algeria, Jean El Mouhoub Amrouche has begun to arouse the interest of scholars again\u2014witness the numerous recent essays on his work. Born in 1906 in Ighil Ali (Kabylia) to a family converted to Catholicism, he spent his childhood and adolescence in Tunis. After attending the Saint-Cloud Ecole Normale, he taught at different high schools in Tunisia and Algeria. In Tunis during the 1930s he befriended Armand Guibert (poet, translator, and publisher; Tunis, 1906\u201390), with whom he coedited the maga- zine Cahiers de Barbarie, in which he published his first poems. During World War II he met Andr\u00e9 Gide in Tunis & joined the Gaullists in Algiers, where he became the director of the magazine l\u2019Arche. He also produced radio pro- grams in Algiers and later in Paris for Radio France. His interviews with Gide, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Fran\u00e7ois Mauriac, & many others remain exemplary. Although dismissed from his radio job by Michel Debr\u00e9, the French prime minister, Jean Amrouche never ceased to plead the cause of an independent Algeria. He died on April 16, 1962, from cancer, just after the \u00c9vian Accords\u2014 which led to the independence of Algeria\u2014were signed.<\/p>\n

A torn & flayed being, highly cultured & principled, as his Journal (published in 2009) shows, he was the first to shape the French language to the lyricism of \u201cthe eternal Jugurtha\u201d (the title of one of his major essays, published in 1946). In the three collections of poems he published, Cendres (1934), \u00c9toile secr\u00e8te (1937), & Chants berb\u00e8res de Kabylie (1939), there is no place for a reduction- ist folklore or sterile provincialism; the poems develop with a purity of style rarely achieved by Francophone Algerian poetry. Despite being anchored in the tradition of St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9, Amrouche, his modesty hiding his pain, spoke loudly to the questions of the place and the addressee of literary expression.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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