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 It would even be possible for an objective critic to study outdated literary trends here where they are still in vogue.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...