Jacinthe noire

by Marguerite Taos Amrouche

"Voici ce que me reproche Mlle Anatole : - Une trop forte personnalité.- Une échelle des valeurs différente de la vôtre.- Des opinions, des pensées, des façons de parler qui me sont propres.- Nier la volonté ( !).- Parler de Rousseau et de Gide à tous moments.... Je pensais trouver chez vous - jeunes filles à l'idéal haut placé - la compréhension véritable et non celle qui s'en tient aux apparences.... Non, vous n'aimez pas : vous faites le don, mais l'élan, l'amour, en sont absents..."Taos Amrouche (1913-1976) est la première romancière algérienne de langue française. Soeur de l'écrivain Jean Amrouche, elle a été comme lui formée à la double culture berbère et française.Affirmant de façon irréductible sa maghrébinité, elle consacre une partie de sa vie à recueillir le patrimoine oral, parole et musique, de la tradition kabyle.Dans ses quatre romans fortement autobiographiques, elle analyse son déracinement, l'exil, la solitude et exprime le besoin d'émancipation des femmes étouffées par la tradition.

288 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 1996

About the author

Marguerite Taos Amrouche (1913-1976) was the first French-speaking Algerian novelist. Sister of the poet Jean Amrouche, like him she was trained in the dual Berber and French culture. Friend of Gide and Giono, admired by André Breton, she leaves a work that rises like a captivating song. In her four autobiographical novels (published by Éditions Joëlle Losfeld), she analyzes her uprooting, exile, solitude, and expresses the need for emancipation of women stifled by tradition.

In 1947, she became the first Algerian woman to publish a novel.She was born to a family of Kabyle Roman Catholic converts, the only daughter in a family of six sons.Her family had moved to Tunisia to escape persecution after their conversion.

Her mother Fadhma Aït Mansour, who was a famous Kabyle singer,had a great impact on her life, and her literary style would reflect the oral traditions of the Kabylie Berber people of her mother's heritage. Amrouche received her elementary and secondary education in Tunis, and in 1935 went to France for studies at the École Normale at Sèvres.From 1936, in collaboration with her elder brother Jean Amrouche and her mother, Amrouche collected and began to interpret Kabyle songs. In 1939, at the Congrès de Chant de Fès, she received a scholarship to study at the Casa Velasquez in Spain, where she researched the ties between Berber and Spanish popular songs.

Her autobiographical first novel, Jacinthe noir, was published in 1947 and is one of the earliest ever published in French by a North African woman writer. With her compilation of tales and poems La Grain magique in 1966, she took the nom de plume Marguerite-Taos, Marguerite being her mother's Christian name.

While she wrote in French, she sang in Kabyle. Her first album Chants berbères de Kabylie (1967), which was a great success, was a collection of traditional Kabyle songs that had been translated into French by her brother Jean. She recorded several other albums, including Chants sauvés de l’oubli (“Songs Saved from Oblivion”), Hommage au chant profond (“Homage to a Profound Song”), Incantations, méditations et danses sacrées berbères (1974), and Chants berbères de la meule et du berceau (1975).[1]

She was an activist in Berber issues and was among the founders of Académie berbère in 1966.

She died in Saint-Michel-l'Observatoire in France.

Reviews

[Elaine Ker]

Abandonné page 197
Les personnages sont intéressants, mais c'est si lent... si lent...

[Luke]

Pub 1947