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Résumé     

D’habitude, tout émigré, tout rapatrié, tout exilé, tout homme éloigné de sa terre natale aspire à y retourner parce qu’étant généralement en proie à la nostalgie du pays perdu. A l’inverse de l’Ulysse homérique, qui ne pense qu’à retrouver son Ithaque natale, Irena et Joseph – les deux protagonistes de L’Ignorance de Milan Kundera – ne souffrent guère de nostalgie, mais éprouvent paradoxalement un sentiment rare, inédit: la « nostalgie de la nostalgie » ou la nostalgie de l’exil. Tout se passe comme si le désir de retour ou même la joie du retour que l’on observe d’ordinaire dans la littérature de l’exil, faisait place à l’horreur du retour. Ainsi, dans cet article, en mettant l’Odyssée d’Homère et L’Ignorance de Milan Kundera en parallèle, tentera-t-on d’examiner le sentiment de la nostalgie du pays perdu, celui de la « nostalgie de la nostalgie », ainsi que le thème de l’horreur du retour ou celui du « retour impossible ».

Mots clés: nostalgie, littératures de l’exil, Lectures intertextuelles, l’Odyssée, Homère, Milan Kundera

Abstract

Usually, all emigrated, all repatriated, all exiled, any man away from his homeland aspires to return because being generally prey to nostalgia for the lost country. Contrarily to the Homeric Ulysses who thinks about nothing but to regain his native Ithaca, Irena, and Joseph – the two protagonists of the L’Ignorance by Milan Kundera – do suffer little nostalgia, but paradoxically have a rare and unprecedented feeling: "nostalgia for nostalgia" or the nostalgia of exile. It is as if the desire to return or even the joy of return observed usually in the literature of exile gave way to the horror of the return. Thus, in this article, we put in parallel l’Odyssée by Homer and L’Ignorance by Milan Kundera in an attempt to examine the feeling of nostalgia for the lost country, that of "nostalgia for nostalgia", as well as the theme of the horror of the return or the “impossible return”. 

Key words: nostalgia, literatures of exile, intertextual readings, The Odyssey, Homer, Milan Kundera

Des œuvres d’exil, traitant des thèmes axés sur le sentiment nostalgique que peut éprouver tout homme éloigné de sa terre natale ou de son pays d’adoption, volontairement ou involontairement, et aspirant à y retourner, ou celles abordant des questions relatives à la désillusion, au désenchantement de tout expatrié, de tout émigré, de tout exilé qui, de retour à la terre patrie, se rend compte que les maisons de sa jeunesse, les paysages de son enfance ont perdu le sens qu’ils gardaient dans sa mémoire, ont changé ou se sont peuplés d’inconnus et n’ont plus rien à lui dire, ces œuvres, répété-je, sont nombreuses et variées. Parmi elles, figurent évidemment l’Odyssée d’Homère, l’épopée originelle, fondatrice de la nostalgie et du retour, mettant en scène l’errance d’un héros, Ulysse, qui ne cesse de vouloir retourner à son pays natal ; L’Ignorance de Milan Kundera aussi, un « roman du retour impossible », empreint de désillusion, ponctué de commentaires sur le voyage homérique et le retour d’Ulysse à Ithaque, donc un texte qui nous confronte à la question de la nostalgie, de la mémoire, du mal-être de l’exilé, de la quête impossible de son identité. Aussi dans cet article, parlera-t-on surtout de la nostalgie de la nostalgie, un phénomène inédit, rare dans les littératures de l’exil, et bien entendu, de la nostalgie du pays perdu, du retour, du désenchantement de l’exilé etc., et cela de l’Odyssée à L’Ignorance.

Dans  l’épopée  homérique, alors que la guerre de Troie est terminée, que la paix proclamée, Ulysse, comme tous les autres vainqueurs, décide de rentrer dans son Ithaque natale. Mais les dieux en décident autrement. Aussi va-t-il encore errer, dix ans durant, en proie à la nostalgie, ce désir intense de revenir au pays d’origine, ce «  mal du pays », éprouvé depuis toujours par tout exilé ou expatrié. Cela apparaît dans les attitudes, les comportements, les dires du héros. D’ailleurs, tout au long de son errance, et même à chaque escale de son voyage, Ulysse meurt de nostalgie, tant il désire retourner dans son pays et y retrouver Pénélope.  Au chant V, lors du conseil des dieux, qui a décidé de son retour, Hermès, envoyé par Zeus, ne le trouva guère dans la caverne. Le héros magnanime « pleuvait [encore] sur le cap, assis en cette place où chaque jour, les larmes, les sanglots, le chagrin lui secouaient le cœur… »[1]

          Dans le même chant, le cinquième, calypso, follement éprise d’Ulysse et cherchant encore à le  retenir dans son île, lui promet de le rendre immortel, s’il consent à rester avec elle. Mais le héros, désireux « de rentrer sous le toit de sa haute maison, au pays de ses pères »,[2] décline cet honneur. Ulysse demeure donc sourd à toutes ces propositions, toutes ces promesses de plaisir ou d’immortalité. De même, il saura résister à Circé, la magicienne, comme à Nausicaa, la jeune princesse. Il reste plus que jamais l’homme d’Ithaque. On se rend  compte même qu’il ne veut s’attarder nulle part. Pressé de rentrer, Ulysse  dit vivement à la reine Arété, comme aux autres convives:

Arété, qu’engendre le noble Rhéxénor ! je viens à ton mari, je viens à tes genoux après bien des traverses !...je viens à tes convives !...Que le ciel vous accorde à tous de vivre heureux et de laisser un jour, chacun à vos enfants, les biens de vos manoirs et les présents d’honneur que le peuple vous offre !... Mais pour me ramener au pays de mes pères, ne tardez pas un  jour: longtemps, loin des miens, j’ai souffert tant de maux ![3]

Il tient le même discours au roi Alkinoos, puisqu’il lui dit également:

Seigneur Alkinoos, l’honneur de tout ce peuple, faites aux dieux l’offrande, puis reconduisez-moi sain et sauf au logis. Je vous fais mes adieux. Vous avez accompli tous les vœux de mon cœur: ce départ, ces cadeaux, puissent les dieux du ciel me le rendre prospères ! Et puissé-je au logis retrouver sains et saufs ma femme et tous les miens[4].

Ce « désir de retour », il le répète aussi à Laodamas, le fils du roi Alkinoos, et il ne s’épuise à le répéter tout au long des chants qui composent l’Odyssée, ce thème revenant comme une sorte de leitmotiv dans cette épopée homérique:

Pourquoi, Laodamas, ces railleries d’invite ? Si mon cœur s’abandonne aux chagrins plus qu’aux jeux, c’est que j’ai tant souffert naguère et tant peiné ! Ah ! Dans votre assemblée, où tu me vois assis, je n’ai qu’une pensée: le retour que, du roi et du peuple, j’implore.[5]

Ulysse n’aspire qu’à rentrer au pays natal, Ithaque, qu’il considère comme un lieu béni, une terre sainte, qui n’est certes « que rochers, mais nourrit de beaux gars: cette terre ! il n’est rien à [ses] yeux de plus doux »[6]. Il ne  se sent vraiment lui-même qu’à Ithaque qu’il souhaite ardemment retrouver, et où il espère revoir ses parents: « Oh ! non, rien n’est plus doux que patrie et parents ; dans l’exil, à quoi bon la plus riche demeure, parmi des étrangers et loin de ses parents. »[7] Il ne connaît pas de terre plus douce que cette terre. Sa nostalgie prend, nous semble-t-il, une forme aiguë. Elle se mue en « nostomanie », sorte de pulsion irrésistible à retourner, à tout prix, quels que soient les efforts à faire ou les peines à supporter, observée chez des exilés. Plus qu’un nostalgique, Ulysse devient, en fait, un nostomaniaque, lorsqu’il avertit la reine Calypso de son impatience:

Si l’un des Immortels, sur les vagues vineuses, désire encore me tourmenter, je tiendrai bon: j’ai toujours là ce cœur endurant tous les maux ; j’ai déjà tant souffert, j’ai déjà tant peiné sur les flots à la guerre !... S’il y faut un surcroît de peines, qu’il m’advienne.[8]

Il prévient également le roi Alkinoos, le met en garde:                                                   

…Mais vous, sans plus tarder, dès que poindra l’aurore, rendez un malheureux à sa terre natale ! Que je pâtisse encore, que je perde le jour ; mais que je la revoie, elle, mes serviteurs, mes biens, mon manoir aux grands toits ![9]

Le retour auquel songe Ulysse, tous les réfugiés ou émigrés ne l’ont pas désiré. Tous ne se sont pas toujours sentis poussés vers la terre natale, n’ont pas été toujours fascinés par elle. Cette douceur de la patrie, « la douceur angevine », selon la belle formule de Du Bellay, tous ne l’ont pas également, toujours, éprouvée, regrettée. Cela, Milan Kundera nous l’apprend, à juste titre, dans l’Ignorance, achevée en 1999, publiée d’abord en traduction espagnole à Barcelone, en 2000, chez Tousquet, puis en version originale, en 2003, aux Editions Gallimard. Ce texte forme avec La Lenteur (entamée en 1993 et publiée en 1995) et l’Identité  (achevée en 1995 et publiée en 1998) ce que les critiques appellent « le cycle français » ou « le second cycle », regroupant ces trois romans brefs, (cent cinquante pages environ), dont chacun est construit en cinquante - trois chapitres, et chaque chapitre comportant un numéro. Ces romans du « second cycle » sont directement traduits en français, mais non encore, jusqu’à ce jour, traduits en tchèque, alors que le « premier cycle »[10] est composé de sept romans, écrits en tchèque,  traduits, tous, en français.      

          L’Ignorance, qui constitue le troisième volet du « cycle français », est, comme l’Odyssée homérique, centrée  sur l’exil, elle nous parle de ses multiples formes, de son rêve, de sa réalité aussi. Kundera suit les brisées d’Homère, qui demeure encore aujourd’hui un trésor d’images, et surtout une source d’inspiration pour bon nombre de créateurs. L’odyssée reste également un modèle de récit, et « Ulysse, le plus grand aventurier de tous les temps, est aussi le plus grand nostalgique »,[11] comme le précise si bien le narrateur de l’Ignorance. Il n’est donc point étonnant que le héros de l’épopée fondatrice de la nostalgie ait constitué une référence mythologique pour les écrivains de l’exil. Milan Kundera, qui  en est un, s’empare tout naturellement, lui aussi, du mythe d’Ulysse, après Ovide, Virgile, Du Bellay et tant d’autres encore.

          L’Ignorance, ce roman dans lequel apparaissent fortement les différentes visions de l’exil, raconte l’histoire de deux émigrés tchèques, Irena et Joseph, vivant à l’étranger depuis une vingtaine d’années, comme Ulysse, et qui reviennent dans leur Bohême perdue, l’une pour plusieurs mois, l’autre pour quelques jours. Là-bas, dans le pays d’exil, ils se sont construit une vie, Iréna à Paris, Joseph au Danemark.

          Un jour, par hasard, ils réservent une place dans le même avion, devant les ramener à Prague. Passant le contrôle de police à l’aéroport de Paris, Irena voit Joseph et reconnaît tout de suite le jeune homme qu’elle n’a pas eu le temps d’aimer, bien des années plus tôt avant son exil. Alors que Joseph n’ose pas lui avouer qu’il s’adresse à une parfaite inconnue: « Quand Iréna vit Joseph à l’aéroport, elle se rappelait chaque détail de leur aventure passée ; Joseph ne se rappelait rien. Dès la première seconde, leur rencontre reposait sur une inégalité injuste et révoltante »[12]

          Le thème de l’exil, l’un des thèmes privilégiés de Milan Kundera, traverse cette œuvre, comme toutes celles qui l’ont précédée. Dès l’ouverture, dans les premiers chapitres de ce roman, le narrateur donne le ton en nous invitant à réfléchir sur la nostalgie, le retour, ou plutôt sur la difficulté du retour. C’est Sylvie, l’amie française d’Irena qui aborde quelques-unes des multiples questions relatives au retour:

 « Qu’est-ce que tu fais encore ici ? » Sa voix n’était pas méchante, mais elle n’était pas gentille non plus ; Sylvie se fâchait.

 «Et où devrais-je être ? » demanda Irena ?

Chez toi !

Tu veux dire qu’ici je ne suis plus chez moi ? »

Bien sûr, elle ne voulait pas la chasser de France, ni lui donner à penser qu’elle était une étrangère indésirable: « Tu sais ce que je veux dire !»

Oui, je le sais, mais est-ce que tu oublies que j’ai ici mon travail, mon appartement, mes enfants ? …» [13]    

Quelques lignes plus loin, dans le même chapitre, le premier, Sylvie fait encore cette remarque: «  Mais Sylvie ! Il n’y a pas que les choses pratiques, l’emploi, l’appartement. Je vis ici depuis vingt ans. Ma vie est ici ! »

[14]

La problématique du retour est nettement posée dans cet échange de propos. En effet, Sylvie s’étonnait de l’attitude d’Irena, son amie tchèque, exilée à Paris, et qui après la chute de l’empire communiste en Tchécoslovaquie, ne manifesta aucun engouement pour le retour, le Grand Retour. Elle était même déçue qu’Irena « ne soit pas accourue dès le premier jour à Prague sur les barricades »[15]. Elle tentait de lui faire comprendre qu’un vent de démocratie commençait à souffler dans son pays, que ce qui s’y passait était fascinant. Et pourtant Irena n’avait aucune envie d’y retourner. Prague ne l’enchantait guère. Elle ne se portait pas candidate pour le Grand Retour, d’abord parce que vivant en France depuis vingt ans, elle s’y était construit une nouvelle vie, s’y sentait heureuse plus que chez elle. Elle ne pouvait non plus déposer solennellement sur l’autel de la patrie ce qu’elle a vécu avec les Français. Ces vingt ans d’existence hors du pays natal,  « ces vingt ans de sa vie passés à l’étranger ne [pouvaient] se changer en fumée »[16]. Irena ne pouvait y mettre le feu. Ce serait une amputation. Ensuite, elle n’était plus une étrangère à Paris, mais une Parisienne à part entière. Ne se considérant nullement comme une émigrée, Irena pouvait-elle désirer le retour, comme le héros d’Homère. Rappelons-le, au cœur de la sensualité, alors qu’il n‘ignorait pas qu’auprès de Calypso, Pénélope serait sans gloire, sans beauté, Ulysse ne pensait qu’à une seule chose: rentrer chez lui auprès des siens:

Déesse vénérée, écoute et me pardonne: je me dis tout cela !  … Toute sage qu’elle est, je me dis qu’auprès de toi Pénélope serait sans grandeur ni beauté ; ce n’est qu’une mortelle et tu ne connaîtras ni l’âge ni la mort … Et pourtant le seul vœu, que chaque jour je fasse, est de rentrer là-bas, de voir en mon logis la journée du retour ![17]

Si Ulysse se hâte de retourner à son Ithaque natale avec tant d’enthousiasme, s’il exprime tant d’impatience, c’est parce qu’il espère qu’il sera reçu dans son pays non pas comme un vulgaire étranger, mais comme l’un des leurs. De même, après bien des années d’absence d’errance, le héros de l’Odyssée revient avec beaucoup de bonheur sur son île. C’est « le retour, le retour, la grande magie du retour », ainsi que le souligne avec beaucoup de force le narrateur de l’Ignorance. Mais à l’inverse d’Ulysse rentrant à Ithaque, aucune magie ne s’opère avec Irena et Joseph. Les retrouvailles avec le pays natal s’avèrent difficiles, voire douloureuses. La joie du retour pour Ulysse, peut-on dire, fait  place à l’horreur du retour pour les deux protagonistes de l’Ignorance – Irena et Joseph – qui doivent vivre avec l’incompréhension de leur proches face au fait qu’ils n’ont pas envie de renouer avec leur passé, et face également à leurs anciens parents et amis qui ne leur pardonnent pas tout à fait leur départ, et qui ne sont pas intéressés à connaître leur nouvelle vie. Il va sans dire qu’Irena et Joseph n’ont plus en commun avec leur famille, et même leurs anciens amis, leurs proches qu’un passé antérieur, celui d’avant la vie qu’ils se sont construite ailleurs. Notons encore que lorsque la mère d’Irena est venue la voir à Paris où la fille a émigré, elle n’a pas dit un seul mot sur la vie que celle-ci mène en France, dans son pays d’exil. Ce mutisme absolu, « coupable », de la mère n’a pas échappé au narrateur qui fait cette remarque significative:

Et pourquoi, tout au long de ces cinq jours, ne lui pose-t-elle aucune question ? Aucune question sur sa vie et aucune non plus sur la France, sur sa cuisine, sa littérature, ses fromages, ses vins, sa politique, ses théâtres, ses films, ses automobiles, ses pianistes, ses violoncellistes, ses footballeurs ?[18]

De même, dans sa conversation avec Milada, ancienne collègue de Martin, son défunt mari, trait d’union commune à Irena et Joseph , la seule qui comprenne la difficulté de son retour à Prague, Irena, l’émigrée tchèque met aussi l’accent sur cette incompréhension: « Elles ne peuvent pas comprendre que nous sommes partis sans garder le moindre espoir de revenir. Nous nous sommes efforcés de nous ancrer là où nous sommes. »[19] Et, ajoute-t-elle encore:

Et puis: tout le monde pense que nous sommes partis pour avoir une vie facile. Ils ne savent pas combien c’est difficile de se faire une petite place à soi dans un monde étranger. Tu te rends compte, quitter avec un bébé et en avoir un autre dans le ventre. Perdre son mari. Elever ses deux filles dans la misère …[20]

Tout au long du roman, peut-on encore noter, l’auteur établit une comparaison entre ce que vivent Irena et Joseph, respectivement en France et au Danemark et ce qu’a vécu Ulysse dans l’Odyssée. C’est ce héros d’Homère, une figure principale, centrale, mythique, qui revient en toile de fond pendant toute la durée du récit, que convoque également le narrateur pour mettre en exergue la difficulté du retour:

Pendant vingt ans, il n’avait pensé qu’à son retour. Mais une fois rentré, il comprit étonné, que sa vie, l’essence même de sa vie, son centre, son trésor, se trouvait hors d’Ithaque, dans les vingt ans de son errance. Et ce trésor, il l’avait perdu et n’aurait pu le retrouver qu’en racontant.[21] 

Contrairement à Ulysse qui ne pense qu’à son Ithaque natale, Irena et Joseph trouvent plus de place dans le pays d’adoption, celui qui les a accueillis, que dans leur pays d’origine, celui qui les a vus naître. Aucun des deux personnages principaux ne désire le retour, car désirer le retour, c’est vouloir traverser l’espace, mais aussi abolir le temps ; c’est vouloir retrouver un lieu qui ne peut qu’avoir changé avec une même âme qui, elle aussi, a changé à travers l’Histoire et l’expérience de l’exil ; désirer le retour, c’est surtout avoir la nostalgie, c’est-à-dire ce sentiment que doit éprouver tout exilé ou émigré aux yeux des autres, de sa famille, de ses anciens comme de ses nouveaux amis. Or, paradoxalement, ni Irena, ni Joseph ne ressentent véritablement ce sentiment. L’attitude des deux héros du roman de Kundera nous rappelle celle d’Ovide, l’auteur des Tristes et des Pontiques, qui ignorait, royalement, lui aussi, ce culte pour le coin de province où l’on a vu le jour, cet amour du chez-soi. Et, c’est peut-être pour mettre l’accent sur ces paradoxes que Milan Kundera se livre, dans L’Ignorance, à une exploration des mots qui expriment la nostalgie dans toutes les langues d’Europe. En tout état de cause, dans ce roman, il décline les mirages de la nostalgie. Sous un éclairage étymologique précis, en espagnol añoranza vient du verbe añorar – avoir de la nostalgie – qui vient du catalan enyorar, dérivé lui, du mot ignorare[22] (ignorer), Kundera définit la nostalgie comme la souffrance de l’ignorance: « tu es loin, et je ne sais pas ce que tu deviens. Mon pays est loin, et je ne sais pas ce qui s’y passe »[23] C’est cette souffrance que ressent Ulysse et qui lui fait préférer Pénélope à Calypso.

          A leur retour à Prague, « la patrie que les rapatriés retrouvent leur apparaît méconnaissable, hostile de substance et de vérité. Le régime a changé, certes, mais non les êtres, leurs erreurs et leurs mensonges ; c’est la même vieille existence, la même comédie, plus ridicule encore de se croire maintenant innocent et libre »[24]

          Nous avons déjà fait remarquer qu’Irena a réellement souffert de l’incompréhension de ses parents, de ses proches, de son entourage, à sa rentrée dans son pays natal, après des années d’absence. Joseph aussi, quelques jours après son arrivée à Prague, commence à éprouver ce sentiment paradoxal: la nostalgie de « la nostalgie ou la nostalgie » de l’exil. Le malaise qu’ont vécu Irena et Joseph dans leur patrie, a été si intense, si aigu, qu’ils ont préféré repartir, retourner au pays d’exil, bien qu’ils aient aimé leur pays d’origine. L’attitude de Joseph est plus que significative. A son retour au pays, lorsqu’il est allé rendre visite au personnage controversé, nommé N. dans le roman, et que la femme de ce dernier l’a invité à déjeuner avec eux, l’émigré tchèque s’est contenté de regarder sa montre, avant de se lever et de dire:

 «  Dans une demi-heure, j’ai un rendez-vous !

-     Alors viens ce soir ! On va diner ensemble, le pria N. Chaleureusement.

-     Ce soir, je serai déjà chez-moi.

-     Quand tu dis chez moi, tu veux dire…

-     Au Danemark

-     C’est si étrange de t’entendre dire cela. Ton chez-toi, donc, ce n’est plus ici ? demanda la femme de N.

-     Non. C’est là-bas »

Il y eut un long moment de silence et Joseph s’attendait à des questions: Si ton Danemark est maintenant ton chez-toi, comment est-ce-que tu vis là-bas ? Et avec qui ? Raconte ! [25]

Joseph comprend  que sa patrie n’est plus  sa patrie, cesse d’être la sienne, et qu’il ne peut avoir qu’une seule demeure, qui est justement le lieu de son exil. A cet égard, comme le note François Ricard, dans son essai Le dernier après-midi d’Agnès, « L’Ignorance, en d’autres mots, ce n’est pas tant le roman du retour que celui de l’impossibilité du retour »[26]. A l’inverse d’Ulysse, le Danemark devient l’Ithaque de Joseph,

sa seule patrie, c’est-à-dire la terre de son exil, habitée par le souvenir de sa femme défunte. Joseph n’appartient plus à sa Bohême natale, il n’est plus le frère de son frère, ni le père de sa belle-mère, ni l’ami de son ami, ni l’amant de sa compatriote Irena ; pour toujours  il est l’émigré, le sans-papier, le neuf[27]

Au début, à la fin et tout au long du roman, il y a non seulement l’expression de la «  nostalgie de la nostalgie », mais aussi celle de l’horreur du retour. A ce titre, L’Ignorance peut être considérée comme le roman de tous les apatrides. Mais comment peut-on recommencer à vivre dans un monde duquel on a été éloigné des décennies durant ? Ce retour rime-t-il à quelque chose ? Tout avait réellement changé, et l’auteur de se demander alors si aujourd’hui  son Odyssée serait concevable:

Le gigantesque balai insensible qui transforme, défigure, efface des paysages est au travail depuis des millénaires, mais ses mouvements, jadis lents, à peine perceptibles, se sont tellement accélérés que je me demande: L’Odyssée, aujourd’hui, serait-elle concevable ? L’épopée du retour appartient-elle encore à notre époque ? Le matin, quand il se réveille sur la rive d’Ithaque, Ulysse aurait-il pu entendre en extase la musique du Grand Retour si le vieil Olivier avait été abattu et s’il n’avait rien pu reconnaître autour de lui ? [28]

Des émigrés qui rêvent  de revenir un jour au pays de leur naissance, dans leur Ithaque natale, qu’ils s’appellent Ulysse, Irena, Joseph ou non, espèrent et même croient y retrouver « le vieil olivier », leur passé, c’est-à-dire, ce qui, par définition ne leur sera jamais donné. Ce temps ne reviendra pas. Et bien qu’Irena et Joseph forment un duo qui est comme une sorte de «personnage central», chacun d’eux vit un destin particulier, qui lui est propre, va seul sur son chemin, même si le destin parallèle des deux protagonistes rythme le récit de l’Ignorance. Comme Ulysse dans l’Odyssée d’Homère, Irena souffre de nostalgie ou plutôt d’insuffisance de nostalgie. C’est une héroïne attachée aux images du passé, prisonnière du regard de l’autre, donc victime du discours dominant. Poursuivie par ses vieux rêves, elle croit avoir retrouvé le même homme qu’elle a connu, aimé des années auparavant, lorsqu’elle a rencontré Joseph, voulant même revivre avec lui un amour quasi éteint. Mais lorsqu’elle se rend compte que l’homme à qui elle s’est adonnée, par amour, « gratuitement », ne la reconnaît pas, ne reconnaît même plus le cendrier exhibé qu’elle a jalousement gardé pendant vingt ans, l’ignore jusqu’à son  nom, elle ne peut s’empêcher de verser des larmes:

 « Tu ne sais pas qui je suis ! Tu as levé une inconnue ! Tu as fait l’amour avec une inconnue qui s’est offerte à toi ! Tu as abusé d’un malentendu ! Tu m’as eue comme une putain ! J’ai été pour toi une putain, une putain inconnue. »

 Elle s’est laissée tomber sur le lit et elle pleure. [29]   

Contrairement à Irena, Joseph, qui paraît plus lucide, choisit de vivre le temps présent qu’il exalte, peut-être pour se protéger du passé. C’est pourquoi, de retour à Prague, il déchire en petits morceaux son journal d’adolescent, de lycéen, après l’avoir relu, voulant, par ce geste, montrer qu’il a tourné la page, c’est-à-dire qu’il a oublié le passé, l’a assassiné. Il n’idéalise pas ce passé, ne le magnifie pas comme Irena. A ce niveau, entre les deux émigrés, l’écart est grand et net. Donc leur rencontre,  dans le pays d’origine, ne peut être équilibrée, et son issue ne peut être que malheureuse.

          Et enfin, on le constate nettement, l’Ignorance convoque fréquemment, à plusieurs reprises, le voyage de l’Ulysse homérique. Même à la fin de l’œuvre, à l’hôtel où ils se sont donnés rendez-vous, Irena et Joseph disent encore qu’ils pensent à Ulysse absent pendant vingt ans, à son bonheur possible auprès de sa femme ou à ses malheurs avec les prétendants, à son retour. Mais contrairement au héros du poète d’Ionie, qui ne cesse de désirer le retour, de pleurer le pays perdu, les deux protagonistes du roman de Kundera ne souffrent pas de  nostalgie, ne sont pas fascinés par le pays natal, mais par la terre d’exil. Ils sont plutôt en proie à la nostalgie de la nostalgie. Dans cette production littéraire, on ne rencontre ni le désir de retour, ni la joie du retour au pays d’origine. Un des personnages – Irena – perçoit, par exemple, que s’il revenait s’installer au pays de sa naissance, devenu la République tchèque, après deux décennies d’exil, ce serait vingt ans de sa vie qu’on lui demanderait purement et simplement d’effacer. De même, à la question de Gustaf « Quelle est donc ta ville ? »[30], elle répond: « Paris ! C’est là que je t’ai rencontré, que je vis avec toi. »[31].

          Dans ce texte, on peut lire en filigrane le paradoxal bonheur de l’exil, sa richesse, sa fécondité. Ici l’exil cesse d’être un malheur, une malédiction, un drame pour devenir un salut:

…Et elle [Irena] se rendit compte combien elle était heureuse dans cette ville [Paris]. Elle avait toujours considéré comme une évidence que son émigration était un malheur. Mais, se demande-t-elle en cet instant, n’était-ce pas plutôt une illusion de malheur, une illusion suggérée par la façon dont tout le monde perçoit un émigré ? Ne lisait-elle pas sa propre vie d’après un mode d’emploi que les autres lui avaient glissé entre les mains ? Et elle se dit que son émigration, bien qu’imposée de l’extérieur, contre sa volonté, était peut-être, à son insu, la meilleur issue de sa vie. Les forces implacables qui avaient attenté à sa liberté l’avaient rendu libre.[32]

L’Ignorance décrit donc parfaitement ce que Michel Richard appelle « le piège de l’émigration », c’est-à-dire ne jamais arriver à évoluer au juste rythme, celui du pays d’origine ou du pays adoptif. Voilà pourquoi la plupart des personnages qui peuplent ce roman – Irena, Joseph, Gustaf, Sylvie, Milada – vont rencontrer le vide, étant presque tous amputés d’une bonne partie d’eux-mêmes.

          Plus qu’un roman de retour, L’Ignorance est proprement un roman de non-retour ou plutôt celui du « retour impossible.  » A la question de l’identité, s’ajoute celle de l’aliénation.

Bibliographie sélective

-    Du Bellay, Joachim, Les Regrets, Paris: Gallimard, 1967.

-    Duteurtre, Benoît, L’Eté 1976, Paris: Gallimard, 2011.

-    Homère, Odyssée. Paris: Armand Colin, 1931.

-    Kundera,  Milan, L’Ignorance, Paris: Gallimard, 2003.

-    Jankelevitch, Vladimir, L’irréversible et la nostalgie, Paris: Flammarion Edition, 1974.

-    Le Magazine littéraire, « Kundera en Pléiade. Le sacre d’un incroyant », N° 507, Avril 2011.

-    Ricard, François, Le dernier après-midi d’Agnès. Essai sur l’œuvre de Milan Kundera, Paris: Gallimard, 2003.

Note utilisateur: 4 / 5

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Résumé

    Cet article présente Ngugi Wa Thiong’o comme un géant de la littérature et civilisation africaines. Ensuite, il fournit des informations biographiques sur cet écrivain Kenyan afin d’éclairer le lecteur sur l’homme de lettre dont on explique le point de vue idéologique. A cet égard, il convient de définir le concept du Marxisme en rapport avec les sens connotatifs de l’idéologie comme développés par certains spécialistes du domaine. Après, le texte explique l’engagement idéologique de Ngugi comme décrit dans ses œuvres littéraires et ses essais tels que Writers in Politics (1986), The River Between (1965), and Petals of Blood (1977). Dans ces différentes œuvres, Ngugi croit fermement que tant que le système capitaliste existera en Afrique, les pays africains ne connaitront jamais la justice, la paix, l’égalité, la solidarité et le développement réel. Il impute cette situation de domination et d’exploitation de l’homme par l’homme à la nouvelle forme du colonialisme que certains appellent aujourd’hui   mondialisation ou néocolonialisme. Pour Ngugi, il est inconcevable que les écrivains africains  passent sous silence un tel état de fait dans leurs œuvres littéraires, surtout quand les peuples africains sont exploités et opprimés dans leur milieu socioculturel de survie, de combat, de construction et de développement. Cet article se termine en clarifiant la prise de position de Ngugi par rapport au choix de la langue qui doit être utilisée comme le médium le plus approprié pour écrire la littérature africaine. Par conséquent, il montre que Ngugi a une préférence pour les langues africaines qu’il considère comme les médiums les plus fiables et capables de présenter  de façon authentique  la réalité africaine. 

Mots clés: Idéologie, Engagement, Néo-colonialisme, Culture Africaine et Marxisme                                      

Abstract

    The paper presents Ngugi Wa Thiong’o as a giant of African literature and civilization. It then provides certain biographical information about this Kenyan writer. This is meant to enlighten the reader about who is actually the man that the paper tries to account for his ideological standpoint. Because of this, it strives to define the concept of Marxism in relation to the connotations of ideology as developed by some scholars. Thereafter, it explains the ideological commitment of Ngugi as it is expressed in his fictional and non-fictional works such as Writers in Politics (1986), The River Between (1965) and Petals of Blood (1977). In these different works Ngugi strongly believes that, as long as there would be a capitalist system in Africa, African countries would never ascend to justice, peace, equality, solidarity and development. He attributes this situation of domination and exploitation to the new form of colonialism labeled globalization or neo-colonialism by many people today. To him, in Africa, the African writer cannot and should never accept to be silent or close his eyes on the neo-colonial situation in which the African peoples are exploited and oppressed, especially in their socio-cultural location of survival, struggle, construction and development. The paper ends with the standpoint of Ngugi about the kind of language (indigenous languages) which should be used as the most relevant medium of writing African literature. His preference is for African languages that are considered as the only reliable mediums capable of authentically representing the true face or realities of Africa.  

Key words: Ideology, Commitment, Neocolonialism, African Culture and Marxism

Introduction

    African literature is a field of study highly appreciated by African readers and writers across the continent.  This paper revisits the conception and definition of African literature by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o on the basis of the use of African native languages.  Ngugi is a well-known literateur and literatus in Africa, and it is pertinent to explicate his standpoint in this paper, especially when the thorny question of the conception and definition of African literature is at stake. The paper is not only interested in demonstrating and explaining the ideological stances of Ngugi, but it also shows the way in which Ngugi Wa Thiong’o has described an indigenous path towards the mental decolonization of Africans. This path is generally related to the appropriate teaching of African literature in African schools by “non-uprooted” African teachers; which could highly contribute to the conscientization of African children about colonialism, neo-colonialism, and their underlying negative effects on their civilization, thought, and behavior. Unlike many African scholars, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o has always thought that when the teaching of literature starts with the teaching of African literature from primary schools up to the university levels, the African youth will eventually grow in perfect harmony with their cultural environment. They will not develop any complex of inferiority towards British and French literatures. It is actually from this particular angle that the paper seeks to see whether Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is a committed writer or just an ideologist who is only motivated by political issues, or if he is at the same time a committed and an ideologist writer.        

1. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: The Man  

    This Kenyan writer was actually born James Ngugi in 1938 in Limuru in the Gikuyu Highlands of Kenya. Limuru pertains to the central province of Kamiriithu. His father was a peasant and was working as a laborer on the estate of an African landowner. This clearly explicates that Ngugi is from a peasantry family. His mother was one of his father’s four wives, and he was one of the twenty-eight children his father had had. As for his education, he spent his primary school education at independent Kenyan schools.  He then attended the Alliance High School; an institution based on a western-biased curriculum and Christian teaching. During his high school years, many of his family members were involved in the Mau Mau uprising and the resistance movement. During the struggle, Ngugi’s parents were arrested and his stepbrother was killed by government forces. However, in 1958, he went to Uganda to pursuit his studies at the Makerere College, the only institution available at that time in all East Africa. The man is now living and teaching in the USA and he has received several honors and awards from around the world. Thanks to his engagement for Africa and her civilization, Ngugi abandoned his European first name, James, to adopt an authentic African first name, Wa Thiong’o. He did this to show Africans that there is nothing shameful about their naming systems. Like Chinua Achebe, he is also a link between the pioneers and the new generation of African writers. By reading these pieces of information on Ngugi, the reader may already imagine the ideological conviction and vision of Ngugi as the paper will demonstrate[1].  

    In addition, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is an African writer who cannot understand the validity or importance of any African piece of literature if it does not serve a given cause. The implication is that African literature should be committed to a people, a community or society, and this may even be observed in his works such as Moving the Centre (1993), Decolonizing the Mind (1981), Something Torn and New: an African Renaissance (2009) and others. In the same direction, it is noticed that the commitment of this Kenyan writer can be framed and comprehended within the boundaries of Marxism, Afrocentrism, and anti-neo-colonialism. This observation is based on the fact that this African scholar’s literary productions, such as essays, novels, plays, short stories, and poems, are all rooted in the principle of defending peoples of Africa and their civilization. They propound the absolute necessity for change through revolution and resistance. This kind of engagement is actually coalesced in his ideological stance which is at heart meant to liberate the African working class and peasantry from the capitalist and imperialist false consciousness. On this basis, his ideological vision of reaching an ideal society for his country and Africa is supposed to be totally enshrined in the Marxist ideology of a fair, just, socialist, and classless social space of daily existence. This is constructed in his literary discourse because he would like to achieve an authentic African society where African native languages, civilization, and model of development are valorized. The below sections therefore seek to demonstrate such a standpoint about Ngugi.

2. Marxism and Ideology

     From the outset, it is axiomatic to specify the definitions of ideology and Marxism before elucidating the way through which this Kenyan writer is “engagé” and an “Ideologist”. In concretizing this, let us see how ideology and Marxist ideology could actually be explicated in consistence with the main issue of the paper. In this a frame of mind, Terry Eagleton states:

Ideology is not in the first place a set of doctrines; it signifies the way men live out their roles in class-society, the values, ideas and images which tie them to their social functions and so prevent them from a true knowledge of society as a whole. [2]

From this definition by Terry Eagleton, it clearly appears that ideology is an illusion which is rooted in the creation of an ‘unreal world’ whereby all relations are done and maintained through a false consciousness. This kind of false consciousness is generally promoted by the hegemonic ruling class or the dominant power. Thus, people may comprehend that ideology is not a mere set of ideas or the science of the mind, or the philosophy of mind but it is more complex and problematic than all the definitions which may be given by different scholars when it is question to really define what is ideology. The answer would probably be to return to the way Karl Marx, himself, had defined it because of the diverse implications that the concept of ideology is subjected to. For instance, Karl Marx says:

Ideology is false consciousness, a set of beliefs that obscured the truth of the economic basis in society and the violent oppression that capitalism necessarily entails[3].

Therefore, According to Karl Marx, different people have distinct beliefs in various things at different epochs. As a result, he considers, for example, that the very fact of believing that some people are rich and others are poor is ‘natural and inevitable’; or the belief that Blacks are inferior to Whites is ideologically constructed. For him, the goal or rationale behind such beliefs is mainly meant to obscure the truth or reality (the false consciousness) from the masses so that they could not defeat, challenge, and revolt against the economic inequality at work in their society. In this direction, the point that Marx is entitling to reach is that the role of the intellectual is to disabuse the masses (the working class and peasantry) from the virtually established false consciousness so that they could be aware of the manipulation and the injustice at work in their economically divided society. This is ultimately meant to stir up the masses so that they could take some actions to subvert the man-eats-man’s economic system or the hierarchical order of productions and reproductions. In other words, it signifies to change the social status of the exploited by force or by revolution. If this is concretized, the masses could eventually aspire to a better world of equalitarianism, justice, and fairness. In a slightly different manner, Kossi Souley Gbeto states:

L’idéologie est l’ensemble des croyances, des mythes, des idées expliquant l’univers et les hommes .Elle correspond à plusieurs systèmes de représentations du monde et des êtres humains. Nos idées, nos idéologies sont en nous une sorte de reflet psychique des conditions objectives de notre existence[4].

It now becomes evident that the concept of ideology is defined and understood by scholars, writers, and people from various angles, depending on the ideological orientation of each one. In spite of the existence of certain nuances between the three definitions provided in the paper, it is important to specify that Marxism and ideology should be construed out of the definitions of Terry Eagleton, Karl Marx, and Kossi Souley Gbeto because their conception of ideology and Marxism is consistent with the ideological orientations of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o as indirectly constructed in his literary texts. What we intend to achieve in the above is to remind the reader that Marxism and ideology are not two different things. When people talk about Marxism, they imply Marxist ideology which is the converse of capitalist ideology or imperialist ideology. So, Marxism becomes the particular type of ideology advocated by Karl Marx in writings and speeches against exploitation, capitalism, and imperialism.    

3. Ngugi’s Ideological Commitment in African Literature

     The ideological commitment of Ngugi is, to an extent, clearly imparted in his different essays. It can be noted also in his novels, short stories, drama, and poetry, through literary codes, devices and strategies. However, the very sense of Ngugi’s Marxist ideology should be understood within the interstices of the definitions given in the previous section, especially when people have to account for his being a writer ‘engagé’ and an ideologist. Concretely speaking, what one may be enticed to construe out of this stance is to re-affirm the already-expressed idea that Ngugi is one of the rarest African Anglophone writers to ever preach overtly and defend Marxism for the sake and the well-being of his community and his nations of Africa as a whole. This signifies that he does not always hide his ideological position or orientation whenever the question of freedom, independence, and renaissance of Africa is at stake. For instance, in an interview he opines:

My position here is very simple. As I said in your earlier question, I believe that a people have a right to know how wealth is produced in their country, who controls it and who benefits. I believe that every Kenyan has the right to decent housing, decent food, and decent clothing. I believe that no Kenyan should be able to sleep with any peace of mind for as long as he knows that what he is feeding upon has been taken from the mouths of the thirsty and hungry in Kenya. I also believe that no Kenyan should be able to sleep peacefully for as long as he knows that the wealth of the country is still controlled by foreign merchants.[5]    

From the above assertion, people may see that Ngugi is ideologically committed to the cause of his nation, and to the welfare of humanity. For this man, the independence movement, which had led his country to autonomy and self-ruling, has been the object of betrayal. The fact is that the working class and peasantry have been deceived and betrayed by the newly chosen African leaders or the new African bourgeoisie ruling class. Hence, this bourgeoisie class has been “looting” the Kenyan economy in conspiracy with foreign powers, causing thus the pauperization of the economic and political systems of his country and of Africa in its totality. Consequently, as a committed writer, he believes in the liberation of the Kenyan masses from any external foreign involvement in the affairs of his country and Africa at large. In the light of such a Marxist thought, as indirectly evidenced in the above quotation, capitalism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism therefore become the true enemies of Africa. For Ngugi, as long as there would be a capitalist system in Kenya, his country would never make ascent to justice, peace, equality, solidarity, and development. This new situation is due to a new form of colonialism known as globalization, and which is after all meant to poach and loot the economy of the African continent. To him, in front of such a state of things in Africa, the African writer should never be silent and blind to the social oppression, exploitation, and marginalization of the African peoples in their immediate socio-cultural location of survival, and regeneration. As an ‘engagé’ and an ideologist, this Kenyan writer explicates that:

The writer as a human being is himself a product of history, of time and place. As a member of society, he belongs to a certain class and he is inevitably a participant in the class-struggle of his times. As a writer in a given society, it does make a difference whether he is allowed to write or not, whether what he writes is controlled or not; and whether he is espousing this or that class out-look. A writer’s subject matter is history: i.e. the process of man acting on nature and changing it and in so doing acting on and changing himself. The entire changing relations of production and hence the changing power relations consequent on mutable modes of production is a whole territory of a writer’s literary concern. Politics is hence part and parcel of this literary territory[6]  

At this point, it becomes less ambiguous to see how Ngugi defines the ideological orientation and the duty of the African writer in society.  For him, the African writer is the product and the by-product of the social milieu in which he or she was born or lives. The implication is that he is always-already interpellated by society to act as an agent of defense and resistance before social injustice and inequality. This is also explained by the fact that Ngugi considers politics as being the most important characteristics of any society and it is necessary for the African writer to account for it in his literary productions. For this Kenyan writer, the African writer is to be in the front line of class-struggle because he, himself, pertains to a given social class. All these are actually illustrated in the above quotation. From this point, people may subsequently see that Ngugi is advocating the absolute necessity of the commitment of the African writer to both: politics and society which are also shaped and formed by history. In this stance, therefore, and to more foreground his position as an ideologist or a writer ‘engagé’, Ngugi details the accountability of the African writer in society as follows:

Even today the African writer has often refused to see that values, cultures, politics, and economics are all tied up together, that we cannot call for meaningful African values without joining in the struggle against all the classes that feed on a system that continues to distort those very values. We must join the proletarian and the poor peasant struggles against the parasitism of the comprador bourgeoisie, the landlords and chiefs, the big business African classes that at the same time act in unison and concert with foreign business interests.[7]

By the above, people may concretely figure out the entire ideological ‘committedness[8]’ of Ngugi to the cause of his society along with all its cultural, economic, and political issues which are interlinked and unavoidable in African literature. It is evidenced in the assertion that, like Ngugi himself, the African writer’s primary role is to be fully an agent of protest and struggle within the different spheres of the geo-cultural locus wherein he was born. As a result, the African writer becomes an active and dynamic guide of the masses. In assuming such a role, the African writer would consequently help his people to rise up the false consciousness promoted by the new African bourgeoisie class to land into a new egalitarian world whereby socialism and humanism are the master consciousness of everyone. This actually connotes that such a socialist and humanistic society can never be possible if the African writer does not join in the struggle with the working class and the peasantry by showing them the actual inequality and injustice of their national economy. In short, he should show them the path to follow in their literary texts so that they could transcend the false consciousness of domination and subjugation at work in most African societies. The same ideological commitment of the African writer is also propounded by Kossi Souley Gbeto: 

La littérature est le véhicule de l’idéologie. La littérature étant un genre codé, il est important d’identifier les codes esthétiques, thématiques, pragmatiques et sémantiques qui la constituent. De ce point de vue, les écrivains sont les porte-parole de leur société et incarnent les thèses ou idéologie de leur temps. De sorte qu’interpréter l’œuvre d’un auteur revient à présenter ces codes qui y transparaissent dans l’œuvre[9].

Although Gbeto believes that literature carries ideology, he is actually confirming that the African writer cannot be excused from his ideological commitment in society. The writer, wherever he was born and grew up, is forcedly enticed by society to assume his or her responsibility for the well-being of a group of people or class in literature. We therefore comprehend that literature is not and cannot be ideology free because it is in any way ideology-bound.         

   In the light of Ngugi’s Marxist ideological orientation, the reader can acquiesce that he is also an ideologist and a writer ‘engagé’ who does not hesitate to show and defend his political stances. He does this for the sake of the working class or peasantry as well as for the cultural liberation of his society and the African continent as a whole. For instance, all his novels, starting from Devil on the Cross Road (1982) to Petals of Blood (1977), promote his African, Marxist, and philosophical vision for an Africa free of imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism or globalization[10]. His works better certify such an ideological engagement of the man through his characters, style, narrative techniques, plots, and themes. In The River Between (1965), for instance, Ngugi writes:

Now listen my son. Listen carefully, for this is the ancient prophecy… I could not do more. When the white man came and fixed himself in Siriana, I warned all the people. But they laughed at me. Maybe I was hasty. Perhaps I was not the one. Mugo often said you could not cut the butterflies with a panga.You could not spear them until you learnt and knew their ways and movement. Then you could trap, you could fight back […] Arise. Heed the prophecy .Go to the Mission place. Learn all the wisdom and the secrets of the white man. But do not follow his vices. Be true to your people and the ancient rites (p.20).

This quotation is about a discussion between Chege and his son, Waiyaki. They are talking about the way in which they can efficiently deal with the colonial system in their lands. Ngugi uses these characters to explain the way in which Africans may get rid of the colonial “master” in most African countries, especially in the late fifties and early sixties. The above excerpt actually attests and confirms the particular ideological orientation of Ngugi and his engagement for the preservation of African cultural values. However he believes also in cultural complementarity between Western and African civilizations as coalesced in the quotation. Ngugi is ideologically Marxist because, like in The River Between, his works advocate equality, justice, and freedom. Besides, he believes that revolution is the only appropriate means for the oppressed and exploited Africans if they aspire to real change in their society, especially to subvert the colonial, or even the neo-colonial hierarchy of exploitation, domination, and oppression. It is because of this that Ngugi characterizes Waiyaki as a committed and visionary hero in The River Between. Waiyiki quickly understands his social duty, and therefore struggles to educate his community about the new colonial situation of the country, and toward freedom. As for Petals of Blood, Koku Amazu further emphasizes that:

Petals of Blood seems to be the most ambitious and important of Ngugi’s works. It deals, in the main, with neo-colonialism in all its manifestation: oppression, exploitation, social abuse, and social injustice. It probes the history of the heroic struggles of the people of Kenya, from pre-colonial times to the present day, within a comprehensive cultural perspective which embraces the political, religious, economic and social life of Kenya. In a bold way, it attempts to rewrite the history of Kenya and neo-colonial Africa from the standpoint of the oppressed[11].                   

It therefore becomes clearer for the reader that the ideological orientation of Ngugi derives from his penchant for Marxist ideology. This ideology is promoted by Ngugi for the sake of reaching a humanistic and classless society whereby all the Kenyan people would profit from the national wealth, assets, and fruits of their daily struggling effort. Such an ideological positionality of the writer is also detailed in like manner:

Unless we as African writers have such a vision — a vision anchored in the struggles of the people — we shall succumb to self-despair, cynicism, and individualism, or else we become mesmerized by superficial bourgeoisie progress which in the words of Karl Marx has never been possible without dragging individuals and peoples through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation. To borrow words from the same author, bourgeoisie progress resembles that hideous pagan idol who would not drink nectar but from the skulls of the slain. The role of that pagan idol in Africa is doomed .African writers must be with the people in burying the imperialist idol and his band of white and black angels, forever.[12]

In addition to what Amazu Koku said about Ngugi’s Petals of Blood, the content of this literary text is fraught with the notion of class and the role of the capital in the definition of social roles and relations. In this vein, people may see in Petals of Blood that the Ilmorog village which is described is presented as a land where people used to live peacefully and prosperously years before the arrival of the white man. But after the advent of the white man’s capitalist system, which is always based on the making of as many profits as possible, this newly established system comes as an abrupt disruption to the development of the village. Hence, all the problems which the village is now facing are primarily reported to be the consequences of capitalism:

You are right about the shortage of land .It was the words of my youngest son before he left for the city. It was soon after a harvest like the ones we have had these last two years. He said: “I have worked on this land for a year. It mocks the strengths in these arms .Tell my father when the tax gatherer comes round, what shall I give him? When I go to Ruwa-ini and I see nice clothes, where shall I get the coins to give to the shopkeeper? ‘This land used to yield. Rains used not to fail. What happened?’ Inquired Ruoro.It was Muturi who answered. ‘You forget in those days the land was not for buying. It was for use…That was also covered with forests .The trees called rains. They also cast a shadow on the land. But the forest was eaten by the railway. You remember they used to come from wood as far as here—to feed the iron thing .Ah, they only know to eat and how to take away everything[13].

At the heart of the above it can be understood that the Ilmorog village used to be a true and peaceful place for the peasantry. The land was the property of the people and they could make good use of it by profiting from the benefits of their effort and endeavor. The implication is that the place was the one of a classless society whereby all the people were peasants. But, as soon as the white man came with his capitalist system which revolves around commodities, profits, sell and buy relations, the traditional village of Ilmorog has lost its very essence of collectivity and human development. The quotation is therefore meant to show the reader the way capitalism has gradually and efficiently made its own way into the village of Ilmorog and Africa at a larger scale. Then, what is striking in the novel is that from the beginning of the story, people are introduced to the four main characters (Munira, Karega, Abdulla and Wanja) who are summoned to the police to be questioned about the death of three capitalist African figures such as Chui, Kimeria, and Mzigo. Instead of relating the resolution of these three murders, the narrator delineates how capitalism has deprived the peasantry of their land, and undermined their social established values gradually. As ideologically engaged against exploitation and oppression in Petals of Blood, Ngugi successfully strives to dissect the bloodsucking nature of capitalism and its different modes of functioning within the African and Kenyan context. As a counter discourse or power to this Western capitalist system, the novelist therefore promotes socialism as an important and humane system. For the writer, socialism is the most relevant system for Africa owing to its advocacy for a democratic and humanistic society wherein equality, justice, opportunities, and solidarity are the right and property of every man and woman belonging to such a system. This novel, Petals of Blood, is a Marxist text which accounts for the different negative changes brought by capitalism in Ilmorog as symbolizing Africa. Capitalism and neo-colonialism are described as synonymous and as responsible for the alienation of the Kenyan people or Ilmorog villagers from their culture, values, arts, and land. In other words, this text of Ngugi reveals that the root cause of the disasters and misery of the African working class and peasantry is par excellence enshrined in neo-colonialism:

It was a new Kenya. It was a new Ilmorog. Nothing was   free…Indeed, changes did come to Ilmorog, changes that drove the old one away and ushered a new era in our lives. And nobody could tell, really tell, how it had happened, except it had happened within a year or so of the New Ilmorog shopping centre being completed […]. The new owners master-servants of bank power, money and cunning, came over…The peasants of Ilmorog had also changed. Some had somehow survived the onslaught. They could employ…Most of the others had joined the army of workers who had added to the growing population of The New Ilmorog. But which Ilmorog? There were several Ilmorogs. One was the residential area of farm managers, County Council officials, public service officers, the managers of Barclays, Standard and African Economic Banks, and other servants of state and money power. This called Cape Town. The other — called new Jerusalem — was a shanty of migrants, floating workers, the unemployed, the prostitute and…[14]  

In such a passage, it is shown that capitalism, as a process of modernizing Ilmorog and instead of bringing real and good opportunities for the well-being of the population of Kenya, has come to create and even deepen the misery and poverty of the African peasantry and the working class. Hence, the Ilmorog which is described in the quotation has broken all the promises of its citizens due to the advent of capitalism. In such a capitalist Ilmorog, everything is therefore entangled upon interest and profit regardless of the suffering and inhumane exploitation of the masses who cannot cope with money power instances such as banks. As a matter of fact the poor of Ilmorog have become poorer and the richer capitalists have consequently become richer and richer out the sweat and the blood of the masses. The position of this writer is that capitalism implies inequality, injustice and social divisions on the bases of the economy. According to Ngugi as seen in the text, Petals of Blood, the existence of a capitalist or neo-colonial system in New Ilmorog has given way to a new mode of living enshrined in individualism, self-interest and cupidity and the sum total of all that is the concrete antithesis of the pre-capitalist Ilmorog whereby solidarity and the interest of all the entire communities were at the heart of all human activities. This therefore signifies that the Ilmorog which was born out of the implantation of capitalism became that of materialism and that of the exploitation of man by man. This also means that the stronger always survives over the weaker like in the jungle and it is against this that Ngugi is or can be labeled as being ideologically Marxist and a writer “engagé”. His struggle for the cause of Africa and the African masses (peasantry and the working class) is undeniable and the above mentioned literary texts concretize and support what the paper tries to account for.

    As in the foregoing, the below section also continues explaining the thought of Ngugi through literature and how they are related to Marxism and Afrocentrism.  In so doing, it strives to show how the thought and ideological conviction of Ngugi are greatly influenced by Marxist ideology as already foregrounded in his works. In addition, the section re-assesses and contrasts the views of Ngugi on the use of African languages as the most appropriate medium of conveying and promoting African culture. This is done within the framework of a contrastive analysis of scholarly views on the issue of the language of African literature. However, it mainly focuses on the views of Ngugi and Achebe who have struggled for the decolonization of African literature as well as the decolonization of the African mentally, culturally, politically, and economically. The views of these two literary men are highly salient because they belong to the first generation of African Anglophone writers.

4. The Language of African Literature: The Standpoint of Ngugi

    Another key ideological engagement of Ngugi is seen in his positionality for the use of indigenous languages in African literature. It is in this domain that he can be seen as a writer “engagé” because of his everlasting defense of Africa and his struggle against Eurocentrism and neo-colonialism. However, dealing with the language of African literature is a problematic issue which has not yet found a unanimous or consensual agreement among African literary scholars, writers, and critics. It means that they did not agree upon a given language that can be accepted by all as the true and relevant medium of writing African literature. Yet, they can be categorized into two groups: those who claimed the complete rejection of European languages and those who propounded the Africanization or hybridization of European languages. In this dynamics, one would consequently try to elaborate on this idea of the language question in African literature, and it is done in relation to two well-established African writers whose positions are almost completely different, especially when the choice of the medium of writing African literature is raised. To specify, the reference is made to Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. The first writer may be rated as being much more open to the validity and relevance of the use of English or French as the medium of African literature; whereas the second may eventually be regarded as being radically against such an acceptance.

     To begin with Ngugi’s viewpoint on this issue of language, it is seen in his assertions and writings that he does not believe in the fact that African literature can really be written in Western languages. His position is very interesting due to the fact that language is, for him, the fountain and the bearer of any culture or civilization, and because of the specificities inherent in all cultures of the world. For him, the African reality or culture cannot truly be conveyed by foreign languages such as English and French which were primarily meant to alienate the African cultural consciousness and self-reflection from their culture, and society by conversely adopting the culture and values of the colonizer. In other words, he believes that European languages are responsible for the obliteration of African civilization and they constitute the mediums through which the African has been mentally colonized and uprooted from his collective cultural repertoire of reference, pride, and dignity. In the same direction, Ngugi explains that writing in English or French is the concrete sign that the African of today is still mentally colonized and uprooted from his glorious past. To elucidate this point, Ngugi has demonstrated that African literature cannot be dissociated from its essence which is the African culture and the oral tradition from which the African writer draws his inspirations, plots, styles, literary techniques, and metaphors. This fact, according to him, cannot be accounted for in Western languages which sometimes distort African realities because of the lack of the cultural elements being described in this or that European linguistic medium. For instance, in Decolonizing the Mind (1981), Ngugi displays that in many Western languages, the African geo-cultural location has been misinterpreted and misrepresented by many Westerners (Rider Haggard (1856-1925), Joseph Conrad (1887-1924), John Buchan (1875-1940), Joyce Cary (1888-1957)) and others due to the fact that whatever ever happens in Africa is automatically linked to tribalism, barbarism, and darkness. This particular ramification of Africa obeys the rules and the ideology of Eurocentrism. Or in African languages the true meaning of the word tribal or tribalism does not imply or bear any sense of ethnic conflict or clash. From the stance of Ngugi, it can be construed that European languages are par excellence enshrined in Eurocentrism. The way Westerners have distorted and continue to alter African cultural realities in their languages, the African type of literature which is produced in the languages of the colonizer would eventually continue to vilify and disseminate the same stereotypical and propagandist delineations of Africa and Africans in the collective consciousness of the West. In regard to what precedes, Ngugi explicates:  

[…]The ceaseless struggles of African people to liberate their economy, politics and culture from that Euro-American-based stranglehold to usher a new era of true communal self-regulation and self-determination, it is an ever-continuing struggle to seize back their creative initiative in history through a real control of all the means of communal self-definition in time and space. The choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people's definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire universe. Hence language has always been at the heart of the two contending social forces in the Africa of the twentieth century.[15]

 It is therefore important to notice in the excerpt that language is vital to the self-definition of any people and his culture, without which one cannot assert and position himself within the spectrum of different cultures. Hence, writing in English or French entails assimilating oneself to the English or French culture at the expense of one’s own culture which is prominently enshrined in African languages. Ngugi’s standpoint is that producing African literature in European languages is devastating to African culture and psychology owing to the fact that culture is responsible for literature and language carries culture and determines the way of thinking and behaving of any human being within the liminality of his or her culture. This signifies that culture carries the entire body of values by which people can perceive themselves and their place in the world and this, to some extent, leads to raise the following interrogation:  how can the African experience and culture therefore be expressed properly and authentically in another language from an African one? In other terms, the Kenyan writer’s stance about the use of African languages isthat writing in such African languages is a necessary step toward cultural identity and independence from centuries of European exploitation and domination. In order to achieve this, African literature should be written in African languages which is a vital step toward decolonizing the African mind which is somehow till nowadays colonized due to the fact that many African writers, intellectuals and literary scholars continue to use European linguistic tools as the true vehicle of African literature and culture. About this issue of language, the ideological engagement of Ngugi as a writer “engagé” may be summed up as follows:

The question is this: we as African writers have always complained about the neo-colonial economic and political relationship of Euro-America. Right, but by our continuing to write in foreign languages, paying homage to them, are we not on the cultural level continuing that neo-colonial slavish and cringing spirits. What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer who says Africa cannot do without European languages[16]?

The above actually concretizes and ascertains the standpoint of Ngugi in relation to the choice of the language of African literature. He does interrogate himself about the relevance of African writers using foreign languages such as English and French at the expense of African languages. His penchant for African languages is now clearer showing his engagement for Africa and her culture.    

    In opposition to the views of Ngugi about the language question of African literature, stands the Nigerian writer, the father of modern African novel, Chinua Achebe. In many interviews and writings, Achebe has always defended the relevance and the validity of the use of English or French as the medium of African literature. His position is not meant to acquiesce blindly all the rules and ideological mechanisms of the English language but he rather prefers to use the language of the colonizer in a particular way that he could subvert the eurocentrist established world order of the West by fighting against the colonizer and the ex-colonizer. In this optics, he once writes that:

Can he, the African writer, ever learn to use it like a native speaker? I should say no, I hope not. It is neither necessary nor desirable for him to be able to do so. The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience. I have in mind here the writer who has something new, something different to say.[17]

The idea of an Africanized or hybridized English suggested by Achebe in these lines is meant to show the reader of African literature that European languages can be used to establish a cultural dialogue between different worldly literatures, nations and continents. This means that the kind of English language which is used is a different one in color and assertion. By the above, Achebe’s choice and preference to learn English and eventually to write in English as a means of African literature is at heart entitled to “infiltrate the ranks of the enemy” so as to destroy him from within by prevailing one’s own culture and values. Subsequently, for him, it does not matter what language you write in, as long as what you write is good and worth defending. Therefore, in this locus, Achebe thoughtfully admits that English is symbolically and politically linked with the destructor of African traditional and authentic culture. Hence, the different languages of the colonizer used in African literature should become objectively and purposefully a weapon of defense, and of understanding the other so as to appropriately operate within the interstices of the bench of the colonizer. For this giant of African literature, unlike Ngugi, it is pointless to fight a language since it can be manipulated to bear the different specificities of one’s own culture. In short, Achebe propounds the Africanization or hybridization of English which can also help his culture to be open to other worldly cultures and societies.

    In spite of the fact that Ngugi preaches the writing of African literature in African languages, he also believes that priority should be given to the teaching of African literature in African schools before giving any importance to Asian and European literatures.  He is not actually the only African literary scholar to defend the revision of African schools’ curricula to give priority to the teaching of African literature and civilization. The Ghanaian Ayi Kwei Armah also develops and supports such a viewpoint in Osiris Rising (1995)[18]. However, the path suggested by Ngugi to educate and form new generations of authentic Africans is to introduce African literature at all the levels of the education systems of Africa from the first form of primary education up to the University. As developed by Ngugi in Writers and Politics (1986), African literature should be taught by Africans and the teachers of African literature should also be trained by “non-uprooted” Africans and in Africa. If this is not the case, the African child would grow by knowing more about foreign civilization and realities than African civilization and realities. This state of affairs can develop in the African child the complex of inferiority because European literature always promotes the beautiful sides of Europeans’ civilization in binary opposition to African, and non-European civilizations[19]. His point is that the best way to conscientize a child and help him know more about his own self is to teach him Africa first through African literature because this can prevent him from any mental colonization or complex of inferiority. The danger of teaching European literature in African schools at the expense of African literature from primary schools up to universities is summed up in the following words of Ngugi:

  […] the teaching of only European literature, and mostly British imperialist literature in our schools, means that our students are daily being confronted with European reflection of itself, the European image, in history .Our children are made to look ,analyze and evaluate the world as made and seen by Europeans. Worse still, these children are confronted with a distorted image of themselves and of their history as reflected and interpreted in European imperialist literature[20].

It can now be expounded that the question of the language of African literature is an ongoing issue which has not yet found a given agreement among African scholars. The fact is that neither Achebe nor Ngugi has had a convergent view about the concrete and true medium of imparting African culture and values based upon the oral tradition. In brief, and like Achebe, many other African writers have accepted the use of a foreign linguistic tool as the medium of African literature to resist the culture of the colonizer and, therefore, to foreground the culture of one’s own. Despite the existence of various positions about the choice of foreign or African languages as the most appropriate mediums of African literature, the standpoint of Ngugi is exclusively rooted in the writing of African literature in African languages. This particular choice of Ngugi once again reflects and attests the ideological orientation of this man and determines his sense of Afrocentrism. In the light of what precedes, it can be uttered that Ngugi is not only an ideologist and a writer “engagé” separately, but he is at the same time an ideologist and a writer “engagé” because he propounds Marxism and defends the African working class and peasantry in his works. In addition, he strongly believes in Africa as the basis of any African cultural regeneration, and the decolonization of the African mind is possible if the African child is first introduced to African literature.

Conclusion

    In conclusion, the paper has been able to pinpoint that the Kenyan writer’s literary works are the loci whereby Ngugi’s ideological vision and social commitment are propounded. He does this for the sake of defending African culture and, therefore, contributing to the valorization of African identity. The paper further explains, through concrete examples taken from Ngugi’s literary texts, that he is an African Marxist writer who unconsciously or consciously advocates the revolution of Africans by going back to their rich, ancestral , and socio-cultural values, principles, beliefs, and languages. His ideological engagement for the cause of Africa and of Africans is actually evident in the paper, and it is highly motivated by his sense of revolution, Pan-Africanism, and Afrocentrism. In short, he is an ideologist and a writer “engagé” who strongly believes in the political, economic, cultural, and mental decolonization of Africans through cultural struggle, and through the valorization and adoption of African languages as the only relevant means of writing African literature. From his African perspective, this cultural struggle would consequently lead to the revitalization and promotion of glorious historical heritage of great African civilizations which had existed from Black Egypt to the Songhay Empire in West Africa.                   

References

-Achebe, Chinua. Morning Yet On Creation Day. London: Heinemann, 1975.

-Amazu, Koku. Beyond Ideology: Literary Technique in Ngugi’s Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross. Accra, Ghana: Prowriting Ltd. 2013.

-Armah, Ayi Kwei. Osiris Rising.Popenguine: per Ankh.1995.

-Ashcroft, Bill and Ahluwalia, Pal. Edward Said. London: Routledge Critical Thinkers. 2009.

-Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa. Towards the Decolonization of African Literature, vol.1, Enugu, Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1980.

-Coulibaly, Aboubacar Sidiki. Culture and Politics in the Sub-Saharan Anglophone Novel: A Reading of Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen, Achebe’s No Longer at Ease and Ngugi’s Petals of Blood. Fes: University Mohamed Ben Abdallah.2008.

-Coulibaly, Aboubacar Sidiki and Maiga, Abida. “Defining African Literature within the Context of the African Novel” in Recherches Africaines. N^o 15, (2015), Retrieved on 04-11-2015.

-Gbeto, Kossi Souley. “Idéologie et Vision du Monde de Sony Labou Tansi, Ecrivain de la Post-Independence”, Revue Baobab. N^o: 50 ans de Littérature, 50 ans de Postcolonie. (2012), Retrieved on 04-11-2015.

-Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology: Study in Marxist Theory. London: Verso, 1976.

-……………….How to Read Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2013.

-Ngugi,Wa Thiong’o. Weep,Not Child,London: Heinamann .1964.

-………………….The River Between.London:Heinemann.1965.

-………………….A Grain of Wheat.London: Heinamman.1967.

-…………………. Petals of Blood .London: Heinemann,1977.

-………………... Writers in Politics: Essays. London: Heinemann, 1986.

-………………….Decolonizing the Mind. London: James Currey. 1981.

-……………….…Moving the Centre. London:James Currey.1993

-Ngugi interviewed by Magina Magina’, In Africa Report, No. 90 (February 1979).

-Said, Edward.Orientalism.USA: Vintage Books.1978

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Résumé

Que nous révèle Ferdinand de Saussure de la littérature ? Quels sont, d’après lui, les « principes actifs » qui permettent de générer de la signifiance ? Les thèses du linguiste suisse passent-elles l’épreuve de la pratique et de la théorie d’un poète tel que Stéphane Mallarmé ? Ferdinand de Saussure propose une théorie de la poéticité certes hésitante et fragmentaire mais très productive. En convoquant une métaphysique qui bricole avec les matériaux linguistiques, il donne à lire la poésie comme une démiurgie qui opérerait sur la trace d’une transcendance (un hypogramme) qui fonctionne comme un horizon non-actualisable.

Mots clés: Anagramme, bricolage, hypogramme, linguistique, métaphysique, poésie, signifiance.

Abstract

What does Ferdinand de Saussure reveal us about literature? According to him, what are the "active principle" that help generate the significance? The theses of the Swiss linguist do they pass the test of practice and theory of a poet such as Stéphane Mallarmé? Ferdinand de Saussure proposes a theory of the poeticity of course hesitant and fragmentary, but very productive. Summoning a metaphysics which tinkers with the linguistic materials, he allows to read poetry as a demiurgic that would operate on the trail of a transcendence (a hypogramme) which functions as a non-updatable horizon.

Key words: anagram, do-it-yourself, hypogramme, language, metaphysics, poetry, significance.

Introduction

L’étude qui suit peut être considérée comme l’analyse de l’écriture d’un Ferdinand de Saussure qui explore le champ de la littérature. Cette théorie du phénomène poétique prend son essor à partir d’une interrogation sur la langue puis sur le discours. C’est à partir de cette réflexion exigeante et audacieuse pour un scientifique que se mettent en place les éléments d’une véritable herméneutique saussurienne que Simon Bouquet (1997) appelle de ses vœux:

La prise en compte de cette dimension de la pensée de Ferdinand de Saussure qui entre en résonance avec les soucis d’un poète tel que Stéphane Mallarmé est essentielle à la compréhension de la pensée du sémiologue qui, tout bien considérée, possède l’envergure et la portée d’une herméneutique (BOUQUET, 2014). La mise en valeur de cette herméneutique saussurienne corrobore également une certaine vision moderne de la poésie qui en localiserait le site dans une Langue énigmatique. Pour des penseurs comme Ferdinand de Saussure et Stéphane Mallarmé la langue n’est rien moins que la maison de l’être. La modernité est justement marquée par cette inquiétude qui soupçonne ou plutôt espère au cœur du principe de relativité, qui semble définir les langues, un principe d’unité absolue qui ne cesse de se dérober. L’opération poétique fondée sur le principe de mise en résonance a justement pour vocation de disperser le principe de différence qui sévit dans les codes. Nous voudrions donc, en suivant les brouillons saussuriens édités par Jean Starobinski[1], montrer que la démarche de Ferdinand de Saussure est en définitive sinon plus importante du moins aussi importante que les résultats obtenus. Ces axiomes de lectures permettront de mettre à jour des instruments à même de libérer la signifiance littéraire (dans notre troisième section). Cette signifiance est plutôt un champ soumis à des forces. Afin d’en comprendre leur économie nous réfléchirons dans un premier temps aux enjeux de l’écriture saussurienne avant de cerner la nature de la règlementation à laquelle est soumise le texte.

1. Une rigueur littéraire

Ferdinand de Saussure est celui qui n’a jamais, à proprement parler, rien écrit. Jean Ricardou le démontre fort bien dans son excellent article sur le linguiste genevois[2]:

Que Ferdinand de Saussure n’ait pas été dans les meilleurs termes avec l’écrit, il suffit, pour l’apercevoir, sur un mode global, d’être attentif à deux indices. L’un est l’aveu sans ambages émis, nul ne l’ignore, dans ce qui paraît un brouillon de lettre: « j’ai une horreur maladive de la plume ». L’autre est l’étrange sort des principales recherches de l’auteur genevois. Comme le signale leur divulgateur, Jean Starobinski, l’on s’en souvient, à propos du « Premier cahier à lire préliminairement ». Il pourrait avoir été préparé en vue d’une publication – à laquelle Ferdinand de Saussure a préféré renoncer. Les « Cahiers sur les anagrammes » sont demeurés entièrement inédits. Et ce sont par des extraits qu’ils ont été offerts jusqu’aujourd’hui à la lecture. Comme le soulignent les éditeurs, Charles Bally et Albert Séchehaye, dans leur préface:F. de Saussure détruisait à mesure les brouillons hâtifs où il traçait au jour le jour l’esquisse de son exposé. Le Cours de linguistique générale s’est maintenu largement irrédigé. Et ce sont sous les espèces de reconstitutions, pour l’essentiel à partir des « notes consignées par les étudiants », qu’il en est venu à former un volume.

Il a, par contre, tel Platon, énormément enseigné laissant à ses auditeurs la responsabilité de fixer ce qu’il n’a pas voulu fixer. Comme s’il jugeait insuffisante et précoce la publication d’un appareil de conceptualisation de cette chose étrange qu’est le discours (ou la langue). Ces problèmes, on le pressent, sont des problèmes d’ontologie puisque leur difficulté consiste justement à décrire, théoriser cette chose fuyante qui constitue, cependant, l’assiette de l’être, cette chose qui est le champ de l’Etre. L’article de Herman Parret (2012[3]) montre bien ce lien intime de la réflexion sur le discours, à la réflexion sur la littérature et à la réflexion sur l’être. Si nous ordonnons cette théorie erratique[4] on voit que ce qu’on pourrait appeler la théorie du discours, s’enracine dans une théorie de l’être qui s’enracine dans une théorie de la littérature. Comme si la littérature était à la fois la maison de l’être et de la langue. A ce titre la convocation d’un certain nombre de philosophèmes empruntés à l’épistémologie brahmanique (PARRET: 2012) est significative. En refusant de publier, en multipliant les tentatives d’écritures léguées à la postérité, Ferdinand de Saussure procède comme un Malherbe[5] ou comme un Paul Valéry. A sa rigueur scientifique qu’on connaît mieux, s’ajoute la rigueur littéraire (l’inquiétude expressive) qu’on connaît moins. La poésie, la légende l’étonnent au même titre que la langue. Toutes choses, semble-t-il, égales par ailleurs.

Comme on le constate, toutes les précautions qu’il prend, au point d’en rester aux registres du fragmentaire et du brouillon ne sont, en aucune façon, des effets de préciosité. Du reste, ceux qui se sont aventurés sur le terrain du métalangage, ceux qui ont franchi le rubicon, n’ont fait qu’amplifier les paradoxes liés à de telles entreprises péchant par excès de précision, par un vouloir-saisir excessif. Tout au contraire le maître joue admirablement avec des concepts qui posaient des problèmes et dans le même mouvement proposaient des réponses qui nous donnaient la pleine mesure de ce monde fantastique, déroutant qu’est le discours dont le prototype est le discours littéraire (légendaire, poétique). Ce monde est à la fois énigmatiquement le plus déterminé (sans quoi on ne postulerait pas une sémiologie qui ne peut être que formelle[6]) et le plus créateur de liberté. Le discours poétique est en ce sens exemplaire car il génère des énoncés synthétiques qui ne cessent de s’adosser à des archi-règles. Le moi-poète cède l’initiative, pour parler comme Mallarmé[7], à un Moi universel (Parret[8]). Il semble que Ferdinand de Saussure se soit très longtemps attardé sur une hypothèse sociologique avant d’oser une lecture métaphysique. Cette archigrammaire de la littérature rappelle étrangement l’hypothèse du Livre Mallarméen qui peut être considérée comme une hypothèse mathématique.

Ce discours est donc à l’entité théorique qu’est la langue ce que l’existence est à l’essence, le multiple à l’un, le singulier à l’universel. Qu’une parole puisse être comprise par le lecteur de toute communauté, qu’un poète puisse composer un poème à partir d’archi-règles est la preuve évidente qu’il y a une archi-grammaire.

Ce logosphère (monde du discours) fantastique, énigmatique par la précision qui la règle assure donc à l’énonciateur une liberté exceptionnelle. En disant que ce Moi au moment de créer est comme dans un état de sommeil[9], Ferdinand de Saussure développe un extraordinaire théorème que l’on trouvera chez les surréalistes (avec la notion d’écriture automatique) et les Oulipiens.

Il est important de passer en revue et de méditer toutes les métaphores convoquées par le sémiologue suisse. Notamment celles du jeu et des mathématiques. L’énigme tient au fait que la simplicité apparente du discours donne peu à voir de l’ordre qui le règlemente et fait sa richesse incommensurable.

2. Une réglementation précise

C’est l’énigme d’un langage infini, d’une immanence transcendantale que Ferdinand de Saussure perçoit d’abord dans la parole ensuite dans la littérature. On comprend qu’un tel degré d’exigence conduise chez le créateur à la production de poèmes et chez l’interprète à la production de douloureuses menstrues c'est-à-dire des textes avortés portés cependant à l’attention de disciples présents et futurs sous la forme de la non-signature:

Absolument incompréhensible si je n’étais obligé de vous avouer que j’ai une horreur maladive de la plume, et que cette rédaction me procure un supplice inimaginable… (STAROBINSKI, 1971, p. 13)

A ce moment de son élucidation du phénomène poétique, Ferdinand de Saussure bute sur l’imputation de ce savoir(-faire): c'est-à-dire sur l’origine et la nature de ces règles. Autrement dit les questions qu’il pose sous un jour nouveau sont celles de savoir:

Qui est l’auteur de tels poèmes ?

Qu’est-ce qu’être un auteur dans l’activité poétique ainsi définie ?

Il est évident que dans l’environnement positiviste qui est le sien faisant du cogito le site et l’actant de contrôle du poème, Ferdinand de Saussure ne pouvait prendre la pleine mesure de la découverte magistrale qu’il vient de faire. A savoir que le poème est généré par une formule. Il tombe ainsi dans une triple erreur interprétative:

-       l’illusion du sujet créateur qui immanquablement verrouille une partie essentielle du texte,

-       l’illusion référentielle qui pose le thème, l’hypogramme, en avant de la création au lieu de le poser à l’horizon de son dire. Il reconduit la logique de la mimesis là où il a fourni les matériaux d’une pensée de la différance (DERRIDA, 1967) qui fait que le poète opérerait sur la trace d’un modèle absent. Dès lors les hypothèses interprétatives ne sauraient être que des axiomes. Dès lors aucune de ces axiomatiques ne sauraient rendre compte exhaustivement du jeu d’un texte littéraire digne de ce nom[10]. Toute axiomatique est réfutable, notamment par le texte supérieur à toute théorie et tout savoir écrivant. Paul Valéry a magnifiquement décrit le non-savoir qui tient lieu d’intention créatrice[11].

-       L’illusion substantialiste qu’il a magistralement déconstruite à propos de la langue mais qu’il n’a pas su faire à propos de la sémiosis, ou plutôt de la grammatologie littéraire. Il tombe dans ce piège notamment lorsqu’il fait de ce thème un mot-thème, le simple nom d’un Dieu. Ce faisant il nous installe dans un cercle parfait, faisant de la poésie un jeu non-productif d’être. Cependant il nous livre les matériaux d’une authentique pensée de la différance qui promeut le poème, et en cosmogonie et en ontogonie, par une théorie d’apparence religieuse. Dans un passage d’une grande rigueur métaphysique[12], il nous invite à nous libérer de l’anthropomorphisme (cette tournure qui empêche l’homme de sortir de l’homme c'est-à-dire principalement de la langue) afin de prendre la pleine mesure des dieux.

On le sait, dans le domaine des sciences l’impasse est parfois la solution. De fait si l’on prend Ferdinand de Saussure au pied de la lettre et qu’on fait jouer les philosophèmes brahmaniques, on peut dire que l’expérience poétique est une incorporation de l’Etre, sa mise en résonance. Grâce au poème la parole se fait l’écho sonore des dieux. Lorsque la langue est faite de différences, le poème est jeux de similitudes, orchestration d’harmoniques. Le poème est travaillé par une harmonie complexe. L’oreille est ici la faculté maîtresse qui a pour vocation de percevoir les ressemblances:

Il convient maintenant de démontrer, à l’aide des manuscrits de Harvard, que ce physique, ce transcendant formel et valorisant, a sa propre temporalité – le Temps de l’oreillequisaisitles ressemblances et différences sonoresdans leur ambiance, dans leur contexte physique. C’est bien ce Temps dont Saussure affirme dans les manuscrits de Harvard: Le temps est pour l’OREILLE ce que l’espace est pour la vue [Extrait du Fragment 52]. (PARRET, 2012, §24)

La modestie du poète aurait dû être partagée par le scientifique qui aurait alors compris que le poète n’est rien d’autre que le spectateur attentif:

Car Je est un autre. Si le cuivre s’éveille clairon, il n’y a rien de sa faute. Cela m’est évident: j’assiste à l’éclosion de ma pensée: je la regarde, je l’écoute: je lance un coup d’archet: la symphonie fait son remuement dans les profondeurs, ou vient d’un bond sur la scène.[13]

3. la signifiance poétique

Bouleversante est la découverte faite par Ferdinand de Saussure qui pose que des forces énigmatiques, incalculables, travaillent le poème. Ces forces sont d’autant plus fascinantes qu’elles se cachent sous le sceau de la simplicité. Ce paradoxe pose la question éminemment herméneutique et résolument métaphysique de notre précompréhension de l’être que dit le poème dans un langage mystérieux. Herman Parret y insiste: Ferdinand de Saussure est sensible à l’En-dehors et à l’inquiétante question de l’origine qui est présente au cœur de la signifiance poétique.

Afin de penser (voire théoriser) cette hypo-signification bricolée à partir de matériaux divers que Riffatterre appelle signifiance (1983), le pionnier qu’est Ferdinand de Saussure a évidemment recours aux concepts disponibles à son époque: ceux fournis par la rhétorique classique. Quitte à les subvertir. Ainsi la série des concepts anagramme/hypogramme/paragramme permet ainsi de décrire les règles d’une syntaxe déroutante qui annonce, à s’y méprendre, la projection de l’axe paradigmatique sur l’axe syntagmatique de Roman Jakobson[14].

Mais le poème est par ailleurs épaisseur. Il contient une troisième dimension actualisée par la lecture attentive, épaisseur qui simule celle du monde. On doit faire résonner les préfixes hyper-/hypo- ana-/para- avec la topique psychanalytique (au nom du principe d’intertextualité) dans la mesure où les termes manifestés (l’hypergramme) se réfèrent à un terme absent, dispersé, disséminé (l’hypogramme). Dans la perspective du poète, il s’agit d’une tentative d’écriture d’un texte en souffrance qui reste la mesure du texte manifestant. Ferdinand de Saussure, emprisonné dans l’épistémè de son époque, met cet archi-texte au même niveau ontologique que le texte manifestant. Mis en résonance avec la pensée hindoue de l’inaccessible, le concept de gramme permet de penser l’hypergramme comme un ensemble de signes qui réfère énigmatiquement à un modèle fonctionnant comme un Original placé en abyme. Ce qui nous introduit à une pensée de la trace.

Ce que nous enseigne le Maître, par-delà les errances conceptuelles, à travers, par exemple, le concept d’anagramme d’une extrême justesse, c’est que les mots des poètes sont les reflets brouillés, énigmatiques, l’ombre portée de significations pleines. L’hypertexte au sens saussurien est à l’hypotexte ce que les variations sont au thème dans la fugue. Celui-ci n’a de sens que si on le replace dans l’horizon interprétatif qui est le sien. L’intention poétique est énigmatique, mystérieuse, bref esthétique, dans la mesure où elle nous donne intuitivement la pleine mesure de cette harmonie. La poéticité réside justement dans cette réglementation tout aussi incommensurable que précise. C’est ce non-savoir, cette intuition d’une harmonie musicale que magnifie le poème. Echo sonore, inanité sonore, anagramme… le poète, dans son langage propre, avec les mots de la tribu auxquels il faut redonner leur sens le plus pur, qu’il faut refaire chanter, nous donne la pleine mesure de l’être.

Le poème est l’écho sonore d’un Ordre dont l’homme garde un souvenir précis enfoui dans les mots. Dans un passage étonnant, Ferdinand de Saussure, reprenant des idées de poètes, fait de la langue une réserve inépuisable de souvenirs, un système qui à travers les fascinants sons, voix et Oreille conserve la trace de l’Origine, de l’autre de la langue dont les langues sont les fragments épars résonnant de cette plénitude perdue[15]:

Mais Imagination sur lacune de mémoire est le principal facteur de changement avec volonté de rester autrement dans la tradition. Dans le domaine linguistique [après la légende dont il était tantôt question], on voit fleurir, exactement de même, toute une catégorie de formations ingénieuses provoquées par le défaut de mémoire. »  [STAROBINSKI, 1971, p.18-19]

En donnant libre cours à une imagination verbale (matérielle et sémantique) faite de systèmes de résonances et opérant sur les lacunes de la langue, le poète ne fait que réveiller la Langue dans sa plénitude. Dans cette page extraordinaire, l’oubli (le travail de l’inconscient) qui est au cœur de l’imagination poétique est producteur d’images. Il semble que la rhétorique de la ressemblance établit des ponts entre des mondes une fois que la subjectivité est abolie. Les lacunes que la tapisserie poétique crée dans le tissu de la langue et des représentations sont les véritables opérateurs de nouveautés sémantiques qui créent dans le même mouvement le champ de la signifiance poétique.

Il est étonnant que le plus grand linguiste fasse de la suspension de la volonté (le grand sommeil quasi surréaliste) qu’il appelle de ses vœux, la condition d’une énonciation poétique réussie (pour faire appel aux catégories de la pragmatique). Par conséquent moins une œuvre est comprise, plus elle est poétique ; plus il y a de structures subliminales, plus la poéticité est efficiente. Cette force illocutoire le poème la tire de ce qu’il opère sur la trace d’un prototype situé dans une autre dimension ontologique. Tous ces mots qui réfèrent à la réminiscence, à la hantise d’une forme dont les langues ne sont que les pâles reflets déformés sont à fortes consonances platonicienne et mallarméenne. Saisir cette signifiance, cette relation énigmatique (anagrammatique) à un référent inaccessible, c’est faire œuvre de poésie.

Conclusion

Nous avons commencé par nous étonner des difficultés de Ferdinand de Saussure à rédiger une pensée en pleine effervescence: la masse de documents irrédigés qu’on n’a pas fini de compiler témoigne de cette vivacité exceptionnelle. La conceptualisation est sans cesse dispersée par l’introduction de la métaphysique hindouiste. Il s’établit un va-et-vient constant entre l’épistémologie et la métaphysique (celle-ci étant indécidable, celle-là décidable ; celle-ci spéculant des réalités mystérieuses, celle-là théorisant des réalités précisément réglées). Nous y avons vu la marque d’une pensée exigeante à la mesure d’une exploration grammatologique. Le Maître a conscience que le discours (qui comme le rappelle l’étymologie semble courir au hasard) est précisément réglé. Il a conscience que ce discours littéraire, dont le poème donne la juste mesure, est travaillé par des forces centrifuges et unifiantes, par un ordre qui excède la conscience écrivant mais qui guide sûrement l’insouciance écrivant. Prenant Ferdinand de Saussure au pied de la lettre, faisant résonner, grâce notamment à Herman Parret, ses différents textes, nous avons lu la méditation sur la littérature comme une méditation sur l’Etre. Ainsi le poème serait la parole donnée aux dieux.

D’aucuns entrent en littérature par l’étonnement esthétique, Ferdinand de Saussure y accède par l’étonnement intellectuel qui lui enseigne que l’échec est la voie royale pour être initié à l’ordre du discours. Du reste en tant qu’anagramme (procédé qui est la fonction reliant l’hypergramme à l’hypogramme) cet échec-à-parler-de-l’Etre devient en définitive une exceptionnelle (dé)figuration de l’Etre. Certes le poème est de cet Etre une pâle copie, mais cette pâle copie d’un original inconnaissable Ferdinand de Saussure nous a appris à la penser comme l’épiphanie la plus juste de l’Etre.

Bibliographie

ARRIVE, Michel.À la recherche de Ferdinand de Saussure. Paris: PUF, 2007.

BADIOU, Alain. L’Être et l’Événement. Paris: Seuil, 1988

BADIOU, Alain. Petit manuel d’inesthétique. Paris: Seuil, 1998

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BAUDRILLARD, Jean. L’Échange symbolique et la mort. Paris: Gallimard, Paris, 1976

BEDOURET-LARRABURU, Sandrine, PRIGNITZ, Gisèle,En quoi Saussure peut-il nous aider à penser la littérature ?(articles de Michel Arrivé, Gérard Dessons, Pierre-Yves Testenoire, Francis Gandon, Daniel Delas, Jaeryong cho, Serge martin, Chloé Laplantine, Laurent Mourey, Jean-Gérard Lapacherie), Pau: Presses Universitaires de Pau, 2012.

BOUQUET, Simon.Introduction à la lecture de Saussure. Paris: Payot, 1997.

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DE SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de.Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot, 1995.

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KRISTEVA, Julia. Semeiotikê. Recherches pour une sémanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1969

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Résumé

Cet article a pour objectif d’analyser la thématique de la divination dans le roman de Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the Crow. Bien que peu et mal étudiée dans les critiques négro-africaines, la divination, ce fond commun de croyance à l’heure actuelle que partagent toutes les couches de la population africaine allant des plus humbles aux plus nantis, est utilisée comme un  leitmotiv obsessionnel dans les trames romanesques de Wizard of the Crow. Dans ce roman au souffle épique, les anachronies narratives se trouvent cloitrées dans la divination. Cet aspect folklorique est artistiquement manié comme un moyen de redressement de la vie politique et sociale et une quête identitaire par l’usage de la catoptromancie mis en place  par le protagoniste-devin.             

Mots clés: divination, miroir, analepse, prolepse, roman, identité, harmonie politique et sociale, magie, épique.     

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the theme of divination in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow. Although it is not granted full and due reverence in Negro literary critics, divination, a common belief shared by all African people ranking from the affluents to the wretched, is handled as an obsessional leitmotiv in this narrative frameworks. In this contemporary epic novel, the narratives anachronies are cloistered in divination. This African folk aspect is artistically manipulated by Ngugi wa Thiong’o as a pure medium of social and political harmony and a quest for identity which is done by a rife use of catoptromancy by the main protagonist.

Keywords: divination, mirror, prolepse, analepse, novel, identity, social and political harmony, magic, epic. 

Introduction

Being part and parcel of African oral tradition, divination is that gnomic, epistemological phenomenon, deeply entrenched in African imaginary. It enables the individuals to acquire foreknowledge about the upcoming events that structure their lifetime. Divination is on the odd occasion apprehended as a full and considerable leitmotiv in literary production. All the same, in Ngugi’s wa Thiong’o’s literary fiction, Wizard of the Crow (2006), most likely his  longest novel ever written, jam-packed with oral footprints, satirical, magical, comical and epical, divination seems to predominate, to appropriate, from the beginning to the end the entire narrative framework of this novel. Chinua Achebe however used the theme of divination in his village novels: Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964), when describing the philosophy, the moral foundation, the reestablishment of social order of the Ibo pre-colonial society, to the healing of people who labour under diseases as demonstrated in Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine (1966). The representation of divinatory art in Wizard of the Crow in a modernist, urban society and the natural and high proclivity to prediction of the round characters unearth the idea that this folkloric aspect is shared by a great majority of people no matter how their religious affiliations. It entails that human being is naturally propelled at the discovery of everything that remains to him incognito or mythic.

           This African ways of knowing which pertains more or less to the Anthropological field, akin to other African cultural or religious practice, was not spared from prejudices. Some scholars wrongly branded this divinatory art as “only a game of chance” (Burnett Taylor, 1958:133) by using “haphazard methods” (Parrinder, 1976:122) with the entiremise of the diviner’s wording which is vilified as “gibberish” (Middleton, 1971: 176) or completely derived, cleansed of logic. There is no doubt that these scholars who worked on African oral tradition have overlooked to put forward in their assertion the mystical aspect which is inherent, inbuilt to divination. And those researchers seem to be in no predisposition to glean the very essence of magic, mystic, and the African spirituality or responsiveness which do not require at all the appeal of the logos to be wholly grasped. Being sentient of the omnipresence of the racial daemon which is always standing by, ready to swallow and makes fade away for good this facet of the Negro’s ways of knowing inaccessible things, Ngugi wa Thiong’o writes Wizard of the Crow to show with effectiveness the centrality of divination in Kenyan society in particular and the African one in the broadest sense. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the African divinatory art is woven in the contemporary literary text.

I. Divination: A narrative device

In this African novel, Wizard of the Crow appears a magic realism. It is a “kind of modern fiction in which fabulous and fantastic events are included in a narrative that otherwise maintains the ‘reliable’ tone of objective realistic report’’ (Baldick, 1990:128). Such a literary artefact emerges in Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-wine drunkard, My life in the bush of ghosts (1994) and in Ben Okri’s Songs of Enchantments (1993). It comes into view that Ngugi wa Thiong’o has imaginatively attempted to set all the prolepses, the anticipations in the foretelling directly reported from the rumour mongers. The use of divination as a literary technique is noticeable when Rachael, the Ruler’s lawful wife, committed the unwarrantable misdemeanour when she goaded, scolded the tyrannical ruler to stop sleeping with schoolgirls. Seeing that the tyrant is never ever in mood of unloading any chastisements about his ways of doing and seeing things which is obviously related to his megalomaniac outlook and his unbendable manner, he comes to the gloomy and dismal resolution to incarcerate his spouse because of the latter’s whinges and moaning. In her secluded prison, not very far from the Ruler’s Mansion, the detained lives a monotonous life where everything remained unchanged, ranging from her food to the programs of the television. It is from this broadcasting program that the first mark of divination, of biblical prophecy manifests itself through a song. In this regard, the narrator put it as follows:

Our Lord will come back one day

He will take us to his home above

I will then know how much he loves me

Whenever he comes back

And when he comes back

You the wicked will be left behind

Moaning your wicked deeds

Whenever our Lord comes back (8)                                                        

In this prophetic tirade, the alluded redeemer, the restorers of justice and equity are any other ones but the members of the Movement for Voice of the People led by the activists-characters namely Kamiti and Nyawira. What is more, in this hymn-prediction used as a prolepsis, the victimized Rachael is a mere synecdoche in which her name and the oppression and the cruelty perpetrated upon her are substitutable for the suffering and the torment of the whole Nation of Aburiria. The author’s use of biblical prophecies implies that religion and social and political proceedings have always cohabited. Each important event that will make a turning point in people’s lives is more often than not vaccinated by oracles, diviners or prophets who mainly used what social anthropologist labelled as “ intuitive divination” or “wisdom divinational forms” ( Zuess,1987:376). The hymn that comes out as a warning for the Ruler is fulfilled in the literary fiction when the “wicked” symbolized here by the Ruler is overthrown at the end of the novel by the rebellious masses. But it seems that he has absolutely misinterpreted and misunderstood the real meanings cloistered in these proleptic and divinatory lines in the sense that he considered himself as the saviour who will come for the second time as Jesus to deliver Rachael who must expiate her sins before. Here, the Ruler had found ugly meanings on behalf of beautiful and farsighted lines. Through this exegetic theory or art, Oscar Wild says as follows: “all art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril” (Wild, 1998:8) .Wandering in the land of pure ignorance and regarding his wife as the real malefactor, he “ had amplifiers placed at the four corners of the seven acre plantation” (9) because the repletion of this song that hides a counterfeit coming event pleased him.

          Rachael, in the course of the novel is liberated not by him as he intended but by the committed women of Aburiria. According to Gerard Genette, in his Figures III this kind of narrative prolepsis that takes place within the narrative framework is labelled as a partial or external prolepsis. Such anticipatory narrative strategy which comes out through divination is also patent in the letter the Wizard of the Crow had addressed to Machokali, the Minister for Foreigners. The contents of the missive that appears through Arigaigai Gathere’s reminiscences are prophetic and forewarning words: “And I just want to tell him...Take care of yourself” (607). Despite this caveat, the minister had mysteriously vanished which implies a certain death foreseen by the diviner and which occurs during the progress of the narration.                      

         The Ruler’s divinatory conceits seem to be somewhat motivated by some traditional African metaphysical philosophy which perches itself on the idea that just after the investiture of the king the latter immediately transmuted in a superior being. Consequently, he is able to foretell all the events that will occur during his reign. But the nonexistence of the divinatory power that should dwell in Ngugi’s anti-hero can be explained by two main factors. On the one hand, the Ruler was not put in power to be a king, on the other hand even though he proclaimed himself a king who normally is seen as a representative of God in earth, the Ruler never acts as such. That is why all his predilections which appear at the beginning of the novel are deficient and go against his visions.  Hence what he tells as possible proceeding is a counter-prolepsis.              

           The use of divination as a literary technique in Wizard of the Crow appears also when the narrator sketched a scene in which diviners and medecinemen evolve. Basing the narration on the gossips which prove to be veridical, the elderly people of Aburiria who are profoundly   concerned with the dictator’s everlasting bloodshed, decided to go and consult a diviner in order to get rid of him. But unfortunately the mystical indication, which consisted in mixing the Ruler’s hair ‘‘with grass, salt and magic potions and gave it to a bearded goat to swallow’’ (3) so that he may stop his carnage, botched. Being aware of the scheme, he captured the conspirators who were given over the crocodiles of the Red Rivers to assure eternal peace. To consolidate his reign and aggrandise his power, he clandestinely paid a visit to a diviner. In this sense the narrator tells:

Still he worried about the fact that the goat had a beard, and he secretly consulted an oracle in a neighbouring country, who assured him that only a bearded spirit could seriously threaten his rule. Though he read it as meaning that no human being could overthrow him, since they had no bodily form, spirit could never grow beards, he became sensitive to beards and then decreed what came to be known as the Law of the Beard, that all goats and humans must have their beards shaved off. There are some who dispute the story of the bearded he-goat and even argue that applied only to soldiers, policemen, civil servants, and politician, and that the herdsmen shaved their he-goats out of their own volition, shaving goats’ beards then being the fashion about the Aburirian herdsmen. (6)                                                                      

These burlesque, grotesque lines reveal the buffoonery of some African leaders like the Ruler who once more failed or was in no posture to decipher and grasp the real meaning of these divinations given by the oracle he had consulted. He ignored that Kamiti, the Wizard of the Crow was endowed with a natural gift, a supernatural power to depart from his body and to let his soul, his spirit strolls all over the places he wishes to be. For this reason, Kamiti heralds here the bearded bird divination which let ooze nothing but ill omens for the Ruler. Bird divination, being a common literary use in epic narration, seems to represent a specific technique of prolepse pertaining to this genre.

Conversely to many epic narratives within which the judgment of a professional diviner is overruled or overlooked by the consulter, Ngugi wa Thiong’o obsessed the dictator with unawareness in order to let happen the inescapable which consists in taking the Ruler out of power and authority. The Ruler ignored that Kamiti the magician, the benefactor or the Marxist sorcerer will never hesitate to use his fabulous power for a dignified and gracious cause. He ignored also that Aburiria was deprived of a soul and that Kamiti the diviner will give it a new soul, will cleanse the fictional Republic of Aburiria of stains, of splashing. He did not take into account that his black magic and his endless human sacrifice will be completely shattered by Kamiti’s powerful mirrors and esoteric knowledge. This is how Ngugi wa Thiong’o, using the channel of African divinatory art, anticipates the episodes. The use of divination to the detriment of dreams, revelations, visions that are sometimes used as prolepses in many European novels except, of course, in the Homeric universe, can be justified by the fact that Ngugi wa Thiong’o really wants to offer Wizard of the Crow a local flavour which is directly hired from African folkloric literature, more precisely the oral epic literature. It is from the African attachment and belief to this system of thought through which prolepses and analepses related to divination about the fantastic impending of a hero are rife on, rampant. And it won’t be useless to say that Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow is somewhat similar to an epic narration where divination as a literary technique remained obvious. Here the reader can clearly observe the divination taken as prolepses concerning the apparition of the bearded bird that will threaten the Ruler’s throne is extended from the beginning to the outcome of the novel. This is what Genette calls complete or internal prolepses. Being unable to set proof of such a type of prolepses, Genette may be wrong when he says: “it seems that all prolepsis belong to the partial type (Genette, 1972:114) insofar as such an instance of prolepse comes out in Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow and sets the very basis of the narration. 

         It is worth nothing that in many African traditional and contemporary societies, divination is not only related to the supernatural power of predicting future events. It is also linked with the diviner’s predisposition to unearth all past information that concern the consulter. For instance, when a given consulter is sick, the diviner’s appears to be similar to the modern doctor who does not need to know what will happen to his patient but what happened to the later for medical prescriptions or sacrifices. For that reason, divinatory art is unavoidably correlated to the other constituent of narrative anachronies, the literary contortion of analepses. In Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow, the protagonist’s divinatory art had greatly contributed to fill the gaps of the narration which manifests itself by a temporary omission of information about a given character. It is this kind of prolepse that Genette had named as completive analepses. It is in this literary fiction through divination that the reader was informed that Tajirika and his wife Vinjinia were always concealing inferiority complex in their inner thought; that they disgust everything that is related to the black colour. Divination also goes along with visions and perceptions of the past.

II. Divination: A medium of social and political reestablishment                         

In Wizard of the Crow, diviner rush is by and large enthused, stirred by an immoral competition to accumulation, to greed as the diviner has clearly observed it: “my divinations were an appetite for evils” (207). And the diviner’s function is to look after the good functioning and implementation of humanity wrapped up in a shimmering loincloth of morality. In the realm of Aburirian government and in many non-fictional African countries, civil servants, ministers, policemen evolve with the everlasting thought or fear of having indistinguishable enemies mystically armed to harm them. That’s the main reason why a high-qualified diviner in a rural or urban area is doomed to be the philosopher’s stone; the Ariane’s thread opens to extirpate men from the abyssal area of uncertainty and vagueness.

The first character that experiments and benefits from Kamiti’s divination is Constable Arigaigai Gathere. He is traumatised by ‘‘his desperate need for a cure against the ill designs of his invisible enemies’’ (117). The patient’s needs are met insofar as he was promoted to a new professional rank. And his only unknown enemy has puzzlingly passed away in a car crash which does not mean the Wizard of the Crow is fully involved in this tragedy because it appears that he was just pulling the patient’s leg, passing himself off as “ a make-believe Wizard of the Crow’’ (125). Kamiti was unconscious that his words contain genuineness that shall come true. As in all divination scenes, prescriptions and proscriptions are made as a means of sacrifice so that the request of the consulter may be performed wittingly. What is liable to strike the reader’s mind at this point is that the diviner is in contrast and disparity with traditional practice. He did not stipulate the sacrificial and ritual acts of shedding animals’ blood ranking from chickens to cows to appease or please the spirits, of distributing kola nuts to particular individuals, burying talismans mingled with magic potions to the denoted spot.  Kamiti the diviner only ordered his patient to give more reverence and consideration to the wretched of the earth, to the oppressed and strangled people who were labouring under teething problems of well-being, if the consulter really wants his needs to come across his expectations. In this vein, Kamiti the Wizard of the Crow, the Marxist-diviner comes out as a person who longs for socio-political harmony, justice and stability. From the divination that shows that knowledge in this oracular literature is a real power, Kamiti directed the policeman in these mild and altruist tone terms that hint the establishment of a new jurisprudence in this imaginary Republic of Aburiria:

From today on, never molest a beggar, a diviner, a healer, a wizard, or a witch. If you ever do any harm to the helpless, this magic will turn against you. Everything that you have, including peace of mind, will be taken away. Go now your actions will be the mirror of your soul. Look always to the mirror of your soul. (118) 

An unforeseen visit of an underprivileged elderly man who suffers from serious stomach-aches and who did not possess financial means to go to hospital coerced Kamiti to accept the destiny designed for him. As the narrator put it: “the unexpected twists and turn of his life were becoming ominous’’ (130). His denial to acknowledge his healing and divinational potential is that such work was never part of his project and prospect. But there is something that seems a little bit incongruous or even contradictory. If Kamiti did not really yearn for the divination and the healing occupation why did he go to India for the purpose of learning the secrets and the virtue of plants? In any case the image of Nyawira, who picked him up in the streets of Eldares and gave him food and shelter while he was roaming like a desperate ghost, crossed his mind. Rebuffing the detrimental mind-set of the proverbial donkey that always shows gratitude by kicking his benefactor, Kamiti dumped the decision to run away to the prairies and came to the rescue of the afflicted old man. In this respect, through an overlapping of narratives voices, the leniency and the philanthropical conduct of the diviner gifted with appollian artefact become manifest:

Kamiti let him in, gave him the leaves and the roots, and instructed him to boil them and drink the liquid at regular intervals.

“And make sure to drink the extraction with food.” Kamiti told him.

“Food? Did you say food? You think I have not eaten for days? If the medicine depends on food, then it is not good to me.”

Kamiti went into the kitchen and quickly scrambled some eggs with tomatoes and gave the food to the old man, adding a glass of milk. He was sure that Nyawira would not mind his being so generous with her provisions. He handed him a leaf and a piece of bark to chew. Then suddenly an idea struck him: to renounce his role as he Wizard of the Crow, he had to dispense with the income derived from it. And what better way to achieve this than an act of than of kindness? So he dug into his bag and took out the entire bundle of notes and gave it to the old man as part of the medicinal treatment. (131)                                           

 This Marxist-diviner’s moral obligation toward other people who are in extreme need for help seems to be accommodated in the very social philosophy of the Gikiyu which springs up from a proverbial warning and guidance. The proverb ethically disallowed the human being from eating alone at the jeopardy of dying alone.

The use of Kamiti’s divination and healing to the service of the neglected unearths the idea that the protagonist aimed at showing that the moral obligation of solidarity was no longer a common tradition in Aburiria where the concern for man is swapped over by the interest for money. Those gluttonous and insatiable ministers of the government of Aburiria had disregarded the fact that the ideology of not-eating-alone has always been one of the pillars upon which human societies have built themselves. They forgot that solidarity is the ferment of social and political relationships between the individuals, the group and the successive generations. It is obvious that Kamiti had used money taken from some iniquitous consulters eager for power to empower the Movement for the Voice of the People which constructively contributed to the destitution of the Ruler. By the same token, the diviner’s political commitment became out-and-out again when the Ruler was severely anguishing from a “self-induced disease” (410) whose clinical symptoms expressed themselves by a gradual and an awkward swelling of the body.

          It turned out that Kamiti could use his mirror to make a diagnosis or even to heal the disease that “beats all scientific logic” (686) as Dr. Clarkwell from USA had frantically and desperately put it. It implies that modern, world medicine had no upper hand upon such illness. Nevertheless Kamiti’s occult power could remedy to it but the diviner restrained himself from giving the vital helping hand to the Ruler who never felt sorry for the glumness and dejection of the Aburirian population who lived in dire straits, a real hell of a life. Through the incapability or the limitedness of western medicine to heal the Ruler, Ngugi wa Thiong’o aimed at bestowing full credit to African divination, to the African traditional medical prowess and others healing practice that go along with it. In this perspective, he put the practical idea that snubs all sorts of therapeutic hegemony in the mouth of his protagonist who uttered in front of a nameless character-consulter that “divining is a science” (151).

Still, with his divinatory power “that is an articulator, not merely an articulation of norms but also of societies (Shaw, 1991:137), Kamiti, the “guardian of life” (365) could reveal to the policemen, under government order and who tempted him with an important amount of money, the whereabouts of Nyawira the head of protester movement that spoilt the anniversary of the authoritarian. But his add-on and attachment to the survival of the individuals, who might recover at any cost the bonfire smothered by a puppet-like-president and by foreign capitalists, morally prohibited the diviner to set his divinatory mirror in a vicious path. What is more, those emissaries did not know that the diviner was smarmily indoctrinated by the Buddhist philosophy that showed contempt and desolation upon human beings whose unique preoccupation appeared to be the unwanted search for possessions, passions and properties. These kinds of persons turned out to be symbolized in this literary fiction by the proverbial child who licks honey from the blade of knife and while tasting the sweetness he risks damaging his tongue (211). For the construal of this picturesque Chinese proverb uttered by the diviner himself, ‘‘damage tongue” goes beyond its outward understanding to signify inwardly the dreadful collapse of the individual inner peace and the dimming of his soul.                                     

            The use of Kamiti’s divination in a righteous way as he had enthusiastically given voice to his feeling in this delighted tone perceptibly dispossessed of the psychological encumber of blameworthiness and remorse: “I was proud that I never once dispensed magic that could harm anyone; and I never really lied to my clients. I never employed conjuring tricks to mesmerize” (207). Such imposture emerges in the character of Tiecoura in Les soleils des indépendances. He never gets weary of uttering some numbo jumbo, jumbled speeches to enthral Salimata who desperately suffered from barrenness (Kourouma, 1990:34).

Some African diviners like the Aro oracle who had intensely chipped in ‘‘the enslavement of many Igbo people (Oriji,2009:968),  would never dither to selfishly and greedily mishandle their mystic and occult power to open up Pandora’s box, expanding thus evils upon innocent and blameless people. But Isanusi the diviner in Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka: an historical romance did not restrain himself from giving “power that contains evils’’ (Mofolo, 1971:50) as did Kamiti when the other policemen who heard of the good adventure and the favours Arigaigai Gathere took from the oracle, rushed to Kamiti’s shrine so that the latter might do for them “exactly the same magic he did for A.G” (132).  Unfortunately for them, their claims were declined by the diviner. From this negative response may spring up one interesting question. Why did the diviner grant his benevolence to A.G to the disadvantage of the other policemen? It is because Kamiti had the natural predisposition of sensorial divination form by scenting every kinds of loathing impurity ranging from rotten money to ailing souls. That is why the narrator named him a “physician of wounded souls” (210). Kamiti the diviner had almost certainly smelt, through what Derek Collins names “extispicy or the reading of entrails” (Collins, 2002:20) that these puppet-security men, Elijah Njoya and Peter Kahiga who worked for a so called social order and who were motivated by greed did not deserve his magic. And that their souls were not redeemable, deliverable from malice and cupidity and chameleon’s double standards contrary to A.G.who appears to possess a good karma. It means the individual’s own potentiality to spread out humanistic deeds or demoniacal acts. Such decent form of knowledge which enables the individual to distinguish the good from the evil and adjust life in society, implies that:

Divination is clearly one of the tools bestowed by God upon man so that he may be better fitted to cope with the practical problems of life on earth. But these includes also the problem of handling successfully all the transcendental tools. And just because divination is such a twofold “prerequisite” and is basically indispensable its presence is simply taken for granted (Nadel, 1991:38)

Furthermore, in Wizard of the Crow, it becomes obvious that Kamiti had also resorted to nature, to animals’ intuitions. Animals are known to possess a considerable perceptiveness or insightfulness to nose at all kind of imminent and looming danger by way of what can be labelled as survival instincts. Every human being who is granted with the wisdom to listen and apprehend animals’ attitudes can be successful in predicting pending proceedings like the inhabitants of Togobola in Ahmadou Kourouma’s Les soleils des indépendances. They had recourse to an aged hyena and a snake as an oracle and whose cries and successive movements in the hills and in the river are submitted under interpretations which are straight away tagged along by offerings and sacrifices (Kourouma, 1990:34). Kamiti the diviner is among those atypical individuals who providentially benefited from it.

Referring to animals’ cries, the Wizard of the Crow had a foreboding that the plot-demonstration the Movement for the Voice of the People was hatching against the inauguration of Marching to Heaven’s site, would not end up without blood shedding. In this vein, the diviner who instinctively follows the movement of some natural elements, warned Nyawira of the gravity of the situation in these divinatory terms full of worries and moroseness: “when I look to the distance of time I only see a kind of darkness, a mist, smoke, nothing clear. Nyawira, I smell tears and blood [...] however, on my part I don’t feel ready for the task. I still want to hear what the animals, the plants have to tell me. (212). Notwithstanding his shrewdness based on abstruse commutation and which consisted in preventing loss of human lives, Kamiti could not do anything about it. In any case, what is important is just the reverence he has, the love he manifests as a diviner for human lives and dignity.

           Marching to Heaven is probably Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s diatribe, invective against Kenyan former President, Daniel Arap Moi’s phenomenal and nonsensical project of erecting the biggest Tour in Africa, a sixty-two stories skyscraper in the middle of Nairobi’s largest park. This environmental destruction would have cost 200 million dollars borrowed from foreign banks while his population was in the pangs of desperation and ecological issues.

Still in the process of social and political adjustment, Kamiti is comparable to the diviner Mugo wa Kibiro, in Ngugi’s The River Between. This seer buckled down to warn the antagonist villages of Kameno and Makuyu of the forthcoming arrival of white missionaries. Even though no one heeded on his prophecies, he has, at least, like Kamiti the revolutionary diviner bluntly assume his sentinel function, looking after the protection, the unity and the moral values of their societies passing through his divinatory art.                                                              

III. Mirror scrying in divination: A quest for identity

Mirror scrying in divination also known as crystallomancy or catoptromancy was on practice in Ngugi’s fiction. Kamiti the diviner in Wizard of the Crow had used it as a medium on a purpose peering into the mystic future or revealing the concealed and devilish thought of some of the characters in the literary text.  Mirror scrying is, at the outset of the novel, used as a significant quest for identity and self-consciousness. When Aigaigai Gathere came to the shrine of Kamiti for divination, the latter asked the patient if he was used to mirror himself. But the consulter provides him with a negative response. By putting forward these questions, the diviner metaphorically intended to let him know that self-mirroring is nothing but a mere matter of passing an overview upon one’s previous life by the means of which a human being can ponder over his deeds, cross-examine his private consciousness  to make out whether his endeavours are praiseworthy or illaudable . In other words, it is the individual’s own moral mirror image. And it is only from this estimation he can really have a pure idea about himself, and see clearly the direction he wants to take, of course, if only he desires to give a real sense on his life. It is a kind of self-awareness without which “we might as well be folkloric creatures without souls, such as vampires, who cast no reflections” (de Waal, 1996:32). The implication of mirror can also be found in the life the Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, who, during his childhood, feared these crystals. But later on he managed to seize intellectually, in his The Book of Imaginary Beings, the figurative essence of mirrors through an auto-contemplation so as to straighten out unyielding guiding lines on one’s own life. It is a psychological overview which always reminds a person of his humanity and “what is his place in the universe” (Anderson, 2007:15)  

Strange, those are dreams that are mirrors.

Strange that the ordinary, worn-out ways

Of every day encompass the imagined

And endless universe woven by reflections. (Borges, 2006:95

 To help the policeman grasp the factual sense of mirroring, its epistemological functionality, the diviner resorts to a metaphor of a vehicle deprived of mirrors. Here, it is obviously clear that such locomotive poses solemn threats both for the driver himself and for the many others passengers and pedestrians insofar as it is cursed and doomed to accidents. In this vein, the pedagogue-diviner depicts the instructions shrouded in these disquieting and precautious terms: “How can he drive without mirrors? A driver of a vehicle without mirrors is a menace to his own life and that of others. Even a broken mirror is a danger” (116).

Beside the allegorical analysis of self-divination which definitely shows the way to self-knowledge, there is as well in Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow, the more or less concrete use of mirror by the diviner to hollow out inhumed realities. In the narrative, Tajirika, head of Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate was appointed by the Ruler as chairman of Marching to Heaven. A while subsequent to his ascension to a new political status, he starts receiving bribes from myriad and bulimic businessmen who long for taking their share of the national cake. The unconceivable amount of money which appears here as a nuisance has brought about Tajirika and his wife’s health deterioration whose perceptible symptom is a biased dumbness with utterances that begin with ifs which never come to an end. To puzzle out such incongruous illness, “a severe case of whiteness” (180), Tajirika was taken to the Wizard of the Crow thanks to Nyawira who acts as a go between. In the narrative, the healing episode is presented as follows:                                           

The voice of the Wizard of the Crow now seemed to issue from inside the mirror:

‘‘Vomit the words, the good and the bad!’’

‘‘If…’’ Tajirika said and paused.

‘‘Now’’, urged the Wizard of he Crow.

‘‘My…’’ Tajirika added, and then got stuck.

‘‘More.’’

‘‘Skin…’’

‘‘Keep going.’’

‘‘Were not…’’

‘‘Good, good…’’

‘‘Black.’’

Tajirika paused as if to take breath before climbing another mountain. From inside the mirror came the same commanding voice.

‘‘Complete the thought. The good and the bad. Complete the thought!’’

‘‘If only’’

‘‘Yes!’’

‘‘My skin…’’

‘‘Don’t stop now!’’

‘‘Were…white…like a …white man’s …skin…’’ Tajirika said, enunciating each word like one learning how to read.

‘‘There! You have voiced the treacherous thought’’ The Wizard of the Crow said in congratulation, removing the mirror from the windows. (178-179.)  

 In this catoptromancy, the fragmented, disjointed thoughts of the patient perplexed by a crisis of identity are both gathered in a consistent and sensible reasoning by the magic power of the word and by that of the mirror. To unburden the mind of this contemptuous contractor and to loosen his tongue, the diviner undertook a psychiatric journey, a therapy which is ‘‘a process of constructing a narrative, of reconstructing a history and essentially, of re-externalizing the event’’ (Felman and Laub, 1992: 69). In other words, it is about a psychological dialogue escorted by the mystery of the crystal. It has enabled the reader to discover that Tajirika was infatuated by the daemon of whiteness. And that his profound lament and grievance were to be born black. At the time he was in ownership of the bags of Buris, the unique item that distinguished him from the Westerns, symbols of wealth and power was his excessive rate of melanin. In this point of view, he said: “I longed for the power of whiteness, political power, military power, the power to rule” (345). In a whole, his sickness was considered here by Ngugi wa Thiong’o as the result of his sinful consideration, his denial and insult addressed to blackness, to black community.

Tajirika perceived blackness as a colour of damnation and malediction; a colour bestowed only to the powerless. What is more, the catoptromncy did not only disclose the patient’s inner and vile desires but it has also, through the psychotherapeutic divinatory conversion, given back to Tajirika his power of speech which is facilitated by an exorcism of the white evil spirit. The patient’s wife, Vinjinia was unfortunately contaminated by Tajirika. As her husband verbally abused, Vinjinia vilified the entire black women whom she qualified as dirty Negroes who are always in a complete ignorance of good-manners. She goes up to say, by a way of revenge for Tajirika, guided by a serious pathology of disaffection that ‘‘if her skin were not black would her husband have thought of marrying her’’ (185) .All these diseases due to the vice of alienations are unveiled and cured by the diviner’s mirror and psychiatric method of verbal dialogue.

           Kamiti’s mirror which offers a way of teaching and curing behind appearances to another source of knowledge is here a “psychological pills, water injections” (Tuma, 1993:34) as Yibabe Yitbarek put it. He is a character in Hama Tuma’s collection of short stories entitled The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories. The African mystical practices, the belief on the power of the occult, the use of magic to fight a dictatorial regime, and the last episode of Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow which ends up with the capture of the protagonist and his trail in a public place, all these plots appear to be drawn out of Tuma’s literary output. A literary fiction in which Ngugi wa Thiong’o was confided with the privilege to write down the introduction. Therefore, what the guest did is to artistically re-write and re-contextualize the plot, the space fiction in contemporary Kenyan political and social situation. It is in this context of transcendality of literary text that Eileen Julien defines intertextuality as “the continuous dialogue of works.” (Julien, 1992:26)                             

Conclusion

Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s  portrayal of the African divination in Wizard of the Crow is one among other means of combating artistically the supremacy of European Cartesian thought and the stereotypes articulated against this ancient way of knowing; careworn from African oral tradition. In this wonderful novel that is also the celebration of magic, the Kenyan author has hitched himself up to represent the imaginary and esoteric cognition unerringly as Okot p’Bitek recommended: “African scholars must endeavour to present the institutions of African peoples as they really are” (p’Bitek, 1970:7). In this narrative full of magic of African orature, Ngugi’s Marxist fondness became noticeable when he used divination as a sophisticated warhead, a weapon against the authoritarian power of the national leaders. By the means of the fees collected during the divinatory scenes, Kamiti the protagonist had on the one hand undermined and shaken the dictatorial State by setting jarring among them. He had extracted from them the robbed money which will serve on the other hand to supply the Movement for the Voice of the People with a benevolent energy, a survival power in order to free the masses from exploitation and oppression. The practice of mirror, the still form of water, has been transcendently handled by the diviner so as to heal physically a sufferer like Tajirika or metaphorically like A.G. Mirror scrying symbolizes a self-awareness-examination. Anyway, divination in this literary context has been used as an AK 47 against the oppressors; a psychotherapy for the acutely assimilated; a divination to serve the people, a divination which settles itself at the depth of Marxist and altruistic and ethical discourse.                          

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