Le Polygone étoilé

by Kateb Yacine

"D'un bout à l'autre du monde méditerranéen, un motif ornemental revient avec une puissance presque obsédante. C'est une sorte de rosace, ou plutôt un polygone pointant vers l'extérieur des angles offensifs." Rencontrant Jacques Berque à Tunis, en 1958, Kateb Yacine décidait que tout son travail procéderait (et avait, depuis l'origine, procédé) de la figure du "polygone étoilé". Ce livre, au carrefour du roman, de la poésie et du théâtre, à la frontière de l'écrit et de l'oral, peut être considéré à juste titre comme fondateur de la littérature algérienne moderne.

Genres: Fiction

192 pages, Pocket Book

First published August 11, 1997

About the author

Reporter for Alger Republicain until 1950; then full-time writer. Yacine is one of the most notable French Algerian writers. Nedjma, a long prose poem reminiscent of Faulkner in the handling of time, has been called by Georges J. Joyaux "undoubtedly the best testimonial to the birth of a new Algeria." Yacine once said: "Nedjma [the girl in the story] is the soul of Algeria, torn apart since its origin and ravaged by too many exclusive passions."

From Wikipedia: Kateb Yacine was officially born on August 6, 1929, but it is more likely that his birth occurred four days earlier. He was born in Constantine. Born as Yacine Kateb, he once said that he was so used to hearing his teachers calling out names with the last name first that he adopted Kateb Yacine as his pen name when publishing.
He came from a scholarly maraboutic Berber family from Djebel Nador in eastern Guelma Province, called Kheltiya (or Keblout). His maternal grandfather was the 'bach adel', or deputy judge of the qadi in Condé Smendou (Zirout Youcef). His father was a lawyer, and the family followed him through his various assignments in different parts of the country. Young Kateb (which means 'writer'), attended the Sedrata Quran school in 1937, then in 1938 the French school in Lafayette (Bougaa) in Little Kabylie, where the family had moved. In 1941 he enrolled in the colonial 'collège' (secondary school) of Setif as a boarder.
Kateb Yacine was in his third year at the collège when the May 8, 1945 demonstrations occurred. He participated in these demonstrations that ended with the massacre of between six and eight (according to nationalists forty-five) thousand Algerians by the French army and police. Three days later he was placed under arrest and imprisoned for two months. From that point on he became a partisan for the nationalist cause. Expelled from secondary school, watching his mother's psychological health decline, passing through a period of dejection and immersed in the writings of Lautréamont and Baudelaire, his father sent him to the high school in Bône (Annaba). There he met 'Nedjma' ('the star'), an 'already married cousin' with whom he lived for 'maybe eight months', as he later acknowledged.
While living with Nedjma he published his first collection of poetry in 1946. He had already become 'politicized' and started giving lectures under the auspices of the PPA, 'the great nationalist party of the masses'. Yacine went to Paris in 1947, "into the lion's den" as he put it.
In May 1947 he joined the Communist party and gave a lecture in the 'Salle des Sociétés savantes' on emir Abd al-Qadir. During a second visit to France the following year he published 'Nedjma ou le Poème du Couteau' ('a hint of what was to follow') in the revue 'Le Mercure de France'. He was a journalist at the daily 'Alger républicain' between 1949 and 1951, his first great reportages coming from Saudi Arabia and Sudan (Khartoum). After returning to Algeria, he published (under the pseudonym Said Lamri) an article denouncing 'swindling' at the holy place of Mecca.
After his father's death in 1950 Yacine worked as a longshoreman in Algiers. He returned to Paris where he would stay until 1959. During this period in Paris he worked with Malek Haddad, developed a relationship with M'hamed Issiakhem, and, in 1954, spoke extensively with Bertold Brecht. In 1954, the revue Esprit published Yacine's play 'Le cadavre encerclé', which was staged by Jean-Marie Serreau but was banned in France. 'Nedjma' was published in 1956 (and Kateb will not forget the editor's comment: "This is too complicated. In Algeria you've got such pretty sheep, why don't you talk about your sheep?"). During the Algerian war for independence Yacine was forced to travel abroad for a long time due to the harassment he faced from the DST. He lived in numerous places, subsisting as a guest writer or working various odd jobs in France, Belgium,

Reviews

[axelottvn · Rating 1 out of 5]

« Mais tu écris n’importe quoi, en fait.»
« Oui, il faut pas ? »
« Ah non, il faut un peu réfléchir. »

[Raouf Jemmali · Rating 4 out of 5]

« Le polygone étoilé » (éditions du Seuil, 1966) de Kateb Yacine (né en 1929 à Constantine et décédé en 1989 à Grenoble) est, comme nous le révèle le titre, une œuvre imbriquée, dont les histoires, poèmes et extraits de conversation, sont parfaitement entrelacés. Il s’agit d’un livre d’une complexité déroutante mais agréable à la fois. L’écrivain, poète et dramaturge algérien nous laisse faire la connaissance de quatre amis : Rachid, Mustafa, Murad et Lakhdar. Le lecteur pourra les découvrir à la prison, à l’hôpital et en exil et vivre avec eux amour et folie. Ce livre est un miroir reflétant les expériences nationales et personnelles durant la colonisation française, dont l’épicentre ne peut être que la Résistance. « Le polygone étoilé » nous incite à penser aux mécanismes de guerre et à l’existence humaine. Kateb Yacine est considéré comme étant un des principaux fondateurs de la littérature maghrébine moderne de langue française.

[Pony · Rating 5 out of 5]

difficult to follow but incredibly beautiful.

[Aomar Abdellaoui · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hermétique, je n'ai pas pu l'achever

[Sarena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I 100% did not understand what was going on, as my reading of the book was as fragmented as the book itself (I read it in various airports while traveling to and from conferences), and the book mixes first-, second-, and third-person narration, as well as prose and poetry. But there are some beautiful lines and poignant passages, especially the more obvious autobiographical ones.