what is Ivorian literature?
In pre-colonial times, the country that is nowadays called Ivory Coast made part of the Gyaaman, a state of Akan people, and from the beginning of the 18th century, the Kong (Wattara) Empire, an Islamic state that also encompassed a part of Burkina Faso. The country became a protectorate of France in 1843 and its colony in 1893; it became independent in 1960. Apart from French, 78 local languages are spoken.
Ivory Coast has an abundant oral literature cultivated by the specialised group that the French ethnographers called griots. They played also an important role in the modernisation of the local patterns of expression. This is why the most important genre also in the new, Francophone literature is the drama that builds upon the memory, myths and heroic tradition transmitted by the griots. Such dramas were created by François-Joseph Amon d’Aby (1913-2007) and Germain Koffi Gadeau (1913-2000) for the colonial Théâtre Indigène (1939). Among those authors who balance between theatre and poetry, a name to remember is Bernard Zadi Zaourou.
Among the classical Ivorian novelists there are Aké Loba (1927-2012) and, even more importantly, Ahmadou Kourouma (1927-2003).
More recently, a certain critical attention is focused on the poetry of Konan Roger Langui, the author of Manka talèbo: ou chant rituel pour l'Afrique (2010).
Ivory Coast has an abundant oral literature cultivated by the specialised group that the French ethnographers called griots. They played also an important role in the modernisation of the local patterns of expression. This is why the most important genre also in the new, Francophone literature is the drama that builds upon the memory, myths and heroic tradition transmitted by the griots. Such dramas were created by François-Joseph Amon d’Aby (1913-2007) and Germain Koffi Gadeau (1913-2000) for the colonial Théâtre Indigène (1939). Among those authors who balance between theatre and poetry, a name to remember is Bernard Zadi Zaourou.
Among the classical Ivorian novelists there are Aké Loba (1927-2012) and, even more importantly, Ahmadou Kourouma (1927-2003).
More recently, a certain critical attention is focused on the poetry of Konan Roger Langui, the author of Manka talèbo: ou chant rituel pour l'Afrique (2010).
I have readAhmadou Kourouma, Les soleils des Indépendances (1967)
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I have written... nothing ...
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a tragedy of sterility
(panther totem dies out)
Les Indépendances, tombées sur l'Afrique comme une nouée de sauterelles, ne lui ont laissé en poche que la carte d'identité nationale et celle du parti unique... Fama, an ex-prince malinké, le descendant des Doumbouya, is broken. In a French that follows the African way of seeing things, Kourouma gave the first critical image of the postcolonial reality. "Soleils" have no joyful connotation; they are just a way of evoking the time passing by, and "soleils des Indépendances" are by no means a time of hope or enthusiasm, but that of general chaos and things falling apart, when those belonging to the blacksmith clan are not even buried in their native villages, and totem panthère faisait bande avec les hyènes (p. 11).
Ivory Coast, a French protectorate since 1843 and a coffee and cocoa-rich colony since 1893, achieved its independence in 1960. After the end of Houphouët-Boigny era (1993), there have been two civil wars in this country, one in 2002-2007 and another in 2010-2011. Till the present day, Ahmadou Kourouma, the bitter critic of early postcolonial reality, remains the country's most recognizable writer. Some people say that the version initially published in Canada (before the Parisian editors, i.e. Seuil, got interested in the novel that they had once rejected) omits the explicit critical details referring to the regime of Félix Houphouët-Boigny that appeared in the manuscript. Be that as it may, at a given moment, Kourouma commented on the burden of responsibility he feels upon him as his country's only writer remaining out of prison. But the novel is not entirely dedicated to politics; at least in the version I know, it is not overburdened with details evoking local power relations, I would say it is adapted to the white reader's taste, who appreciates a touch of poetry and a touch of African saugrenu rather than direct confrontation with affaires he ignores. This is why those baroque chapter titles, such as: Le cou chargé de carcans hérissés de sortilèges comme le sont de piquants acérés, les colliers du chien chasseur de cynocéphales (p. 32) or Marcher à pas comptés dans la nuit du coeur et dans l'ombre des yeux (p. 92). Kourouma remains faithful to the ethnographic taste of the former, colonial literary tradition. He takes pleasure at evoking customs and usages, the charms, the rituals, the picturesque, that comes together with a sort of naturalistic vision. This is why remaining faithful to the old style helps him to build up a critical approach to many things, such as the female condition, associated with the figure of Salimata, Fama's sterile wife.
Salimata's tribulations start at the moment of clitoral excision, when she faints and bleeds more than other girls. This is why she cannot participate in the triumphal return to the village and the feast that makes the African equivalent of a bal des débutantes. To the contrary, left behind, she is raped, right in her wounded body, by a sort of witchcraft man, le féticheur Tiécura. Later on, unable to conceive, she seeks help with an Islamic marabout, Hadj Abdoulaye, who proposes her the same solution, that she refuses, accepting rather her fate of a sterile woman. On her way back, she throws the sacrificed chicken into a torrent: Elle suivit le poulet sacrifié longtemps et loin. Elle pensa que son giron venait de couler de tous les enfants rêvés, recherchés, et que le coq en sang les emportait définitivement. Elle avait le destin de mourir stérile (p. 78).
The marabout could nonetheless be right, Salimata's sterility should be explained by Fama's sterility, and the latter one, treated as a reflection of the general state of the country, its suspension in the time (soleils) of the Independence. New, postcolonial reality suspended the two main activities of the Malinké, the only sources of their prosperity: Le négoce et la guerre, c'est avec ou sur les deux que la race malinké comme un homme entendait, marchait, voyait, respirait, les deux étaient à la fois ses deux pieds, ses deux yeux, ses oreilles et ses reins. La colonisation a banni et tué la guerre mais favorisé le négoce, les Indépendances ont cassé le négoce et la guerre ne venait pas. Et l'espèce malinké, les tribus, la terre, la civilisation se meurent, percluses, sourdes et aveugles... et stériles (p. 23). Fama is one of those men good for nothing else, childless and lost in the new reality. In fact, he lives on what his wife manages to earn as a seller of cheap boiled rice: les choses à bas prix s'enlevaient vite, les bas prix, qui apportaient assez d'argent pour nourrir Fama, pour vêtir Fama, loger Fama, payer les marabouts et les sorciers fabricants de sortilèges (p. 51)...
The life of Salimata seems to progress from one religious man to another; the life of Fama, from one funeral to another. That of Ibrahima Koné, at the beginning, in the city, and then, that of his cousin Lacina in the countryside. The inheritance that Fama would like to obtain is Marian, a young, fertile woman that he might bring back to the capital. Meanwhile, the possibility of returning to Togobala, the native village and fiefdom, is also an option. Not an easy one, nonetheless, in such a state of poverty as the one Fama can observe.
Be that as it may, the return to the village creates for the writers endless opportunities of presenting the usages of the region where Islam apparently predominates, in spite of the importance of the fetish men, such as the wise Balla. There are other traditional figures of knowledge, such as the griot Diamourou; they help Fama to get an orientation in the local affaires, as he awaits les funérailles du quarentième jour of his cousin Lacina. No wonder that griots still play a central role in the committees of the ruling party. At the end of a long evening, Fama is nominated le chef coutumier, and a part of the committee (p. 136-137).
Everything would be well, if Fama stayed in the village, in this modest reality he managed to control. But unfortunately, together with his young wife Mariam, he decided to return to the capital, a much more complex, unpredictable reality: Le pays couvait une insurrection (p. 154). Unable truly to adapt to this complex world, Fama ignores the warnings. One night, leaving a villa of a minister with whom he was hardly acquainted, he is arrested and condemned to twenty years of imprisonment. The prediction of Balla is to be fulfilled: Tu es la dernière goutte du grand fleuve qui se perd et sèche dans le désert. Cela a été dit et écrit des siècles avant toi. Accepte ton sort. Tu vas mourir à Mayako. Les Doumbouya finiront à Mayako et non à Togobala (p. 169).
Contrary to Salimata, Fama refuses to accept his predicted sterile death and utmost failure. Meanwhile, there is a subtle process of border-making that goes on. The postcolonial national frontier cuts across Malinké territories; the native village of the Doumbouya lies in Guiné, which is dubbed in the novel la République socialiste de Nikinai. Being amnestied by the president of the République des Ébènes, Fama decides to realise his dream of a triumphal return to Togobala, à califourchon sur un coursier blanc, boubou blanc au vent (...) Vrai Doumbouya ! Authentique ! Le prince de tout le Horodougou, le seul, le grand, le plus grand de tous (p. 171). The violence introduced by the process of border-making will become crucial in the final part, when Fama is prevented from entering the neighbouring country and dies on the border bridge: La route était barréeet fermée par un dense réseau d fils de fer barbelés, à l'entrée du pont. Dans les deux hauts miradors surplombant le tout luisaient les canons des fusils des gardes de faction (p. 187). Once again, alien to the new state order and unable to comprehend its modalities of producing oppression, the hero ignores the danger: Fama, le plus tranquillement du monde, comme s'il entrait dans son jardin, tira la porte et se trouva sur le pont. Il redressa sa coiffure, replia des manches de son boubou et fièrement, comme un vrai totem panthère, marcha vers l'autre bout du pont (p. 190).
Ahmadou Kourouma, Les soleils des Indépendances, Paris, Seuil, 1970.
Neuville-sur-Oise, 9.03.2021 - 6.06.2021
Ivory Coast, a French protectorate since 1843 and a coffee and cocoa-rich colony since 1893, achieved its independence in 1960. After the end of Houphouët-Boigny era (1993), there have been two civil wars in this country, one in 2002-2007 and another in 2010-2011. Till the present day, Ahmadou Kourouma, the bitter critic of early postcolonial reality, remains the country's most recognizable writer. Some people say that the version initially published in Canada (before the Parisian editors, i.e. Seuil, got interested in the novel that they had once rejected) omits the explicit critical details referring to the regime of Félix Houphouët-Boigny that appeared in the manuscript. Be that as it may, at a given moment, Kourouma commented on the burden of responsibility he feels upon him as his country's only writer remaining out of prison. But the novel is not entirely dedicated to politics; at least in the version I know, it is not overburdened with details evoking local power relations, I would say it is adapted to the white reader's taste, who appreciates a touch of poetry and a touch of African saugrenu rather than direct confrontation with affaires he ignores. This is why those baroque chapter titles, such as: Le cou chargé de carcans hérissés de sortilèges comme le sont de piquants acérés, les colliers du chien chasseur de cynocéphales (p. 32) or Marcher à pas comptés dans la nuit du coeur et dans l'ombre des yeux (p. 92). Kourouma remains faithful to the ethnographic taste of the former, colonial literary tradition. He takes pleasure at evoking customs and usages, the charms, the rituals, the picturesque, that comes together with a sort of naturalistic vision. This is why remaining faithful to the old style helps him to build up a critical approach to many things, such as the female condition, associated with the figure of Salimata, Fama's sterile wife.
Salimata's tribulations start at the moment of clitoral excision, when she faints and bleeds more than other girls. This is why she cannot participate in the triumphal return to the village and the feast that makes the African equivalent of a bal des débutantes. To the contrary, left behind, she is raped, right in her wounded body, by a sort of witchcraft man, le féticheur Tiécura. Later on, unable to conceive, she seeks help with an Islamic marabout, Hadj Abdoulaye, who proposes her the same solution, that she refuses, accepting rather her fate of a sterile woman. On her way back, she throws the sacrificed chicken into a torrent: Elle suivit le poulet sacrifié longtemps et loin. Elle pensa que son giron venait de couler de tous les enfants rêvés, recherchés, et que le coq en sang les emportait définitivement. Elle avait le destin de mourir stérile (p. 78).
The marabout could nonetheless be right, Salimata's sterility should be explained by Fama's sterility, and the latter one, treated as a reflection of the general state of the country, its suspension in the time (soleils) of the Independence. New, postcolonial reality suspended the two main activities of the Malinké, the only sources of their prosperity: Le négoce et la guerre, c'est avec ou sur les deux que la race malinké comme un homme entendait, marchait, voyait, respirait, les deux étaient à la fois ses deux pieds, ses deux yeux, ses oreilles et ses reins. La colonisation a banni et tué la guerre mais favorisé le négoce, les Indépendances ont cassé le négoce et la guerre ne venait pas. Et l'espèce malinké, les tribus, la terre, la civilisation se meurent, percluses, sourdes et aveugles... et stériles (p. 23). Fama is one of those men good for nothing else, childless and lost in the new reality. In fact, he lives on what his wife manages to earn as a seller of cheap boiled rice: les choses à bas prix s'enlevaient vite, les bas prix, qui apportaient assez d'argent pour nourrir Fama, pour vêtir Fama, loger Fama, payer les marabouts et les sorciers fabricants de sortilèges (p. 51)...
The life of Salimata seems to progress from one religious man to another; the life of Fama, from one funeral to another. That of Ibrahima Koné, at the beginning, in the city, and then, that of his cousin Lacina in the countryside. The inheritance that Fama would like to obtain is Marian, a young, fertile woman that he might bring back to the capital. Meanwhile, the possibility of returning to Togobala, the native village and fiefdom, is also an option. Not an easy one, nonetheless, in such a state of poverty as the one Fama can observe.
Be that as it may, the return to the village creates for the writers endless opportunities of presenting the usages of the region where Islam apparently predominates, in spite of the importance of the fetish men, such as the wise Balla. There are other traditional figures of knowledge, such as the griot Diamourou; they help Fama to get an orientation in the local affaires, as he awaits les funérailles du quarentième jour of his cousin Lacina. No wonder that griots still play a central role in the committees of the ruling party. At the end of a long evening, Fama is nominated le chef coutumier, and a part of the committee (p. 136-137).
Everything would be well, if Fama stayed in the village, in this modest reality he managed to control. But unfortunately, together with his young wife Mariam, he decided to return to the capital, a much more complex, unpredictable reality: Le pays couvait une insurrection (p. 154). Unable truly to adapt to this complex world, Fama ignores the warnings. One night, leaving a villa of a minister with whom he was hardly acquainted, he is arrested and condemned to twenty years of imprisonment. The prediction of Balla is to be fulfilled: Tu es la dernière goutte du grand fleuve qui se perd et sèche dans le désert. Cela a été dit et écrit des siècles avant toi. Accepte ton sort. Tu vas mourir à Mayako. Les Doumbouya finiront à Mayako et non à Togobala (p. 169).
Contrary to Salimata, Fama refuses to accept his predicted sterile death and utmost failure. Meanwhile, there is a subtle process of border-making that goes on. The postcolonial national frontier cuts across Malinké territories; the native village of the Doumbouya lies in Guiné, which is dubbed in the novel la République socialiste de Nikinai. Being amnestied by the president of the République des Ébènes, Fama decides to realise his dream of a triumphal return to Togobala, à califourchon sur un coursier blanc, boubou blanc au vent (...) Vrai Doumbouya ! Authentique ! Le prince de tout le Horodougou, le seul, le grand, le plus grand de tous (p. 171). The violence introduced by the process of border-making will become crucial in the final part, when Fama is prevented from entering the neighbouring country and dies on the border bridge: La route était barréeet fermée par un dense réseau d fils de fer barbelés, à l'entrée du pont. Dans les deux hauts miradors surplombant le tout luisaient les canons des fusils des gardes de faction (p. 187). Once again, alien to the new state order and unable to comprehend its modalities of producing oppression, the hero ignores the danger: Fama, le plus tranquillement du monde, comme s'il entrait dans son jardin, tira la porte et se trouva sur le pont. Il redressa sa coiffure, replia des manches de son boubou et fièrement, comme un vrai totem panthère, marcha vers l'autre bout du pont (p. 190).
Ahmadou Kourouma, Les soleils des Indépendances, Paris, Seuil, 1970.
Neuville-sur-Oise, 9.03.2021 - 6.06.2021
