The Wandering Star (1992) is the expression of two poetic and ethical principles that Le Clézio would later clarify in his Nobel Speech. On one hand, Le Clézio sees himself as a witness in the tradition of the Sartrean intellectual. On the other, he seeks to transcend socio-historical divisions and to present, however loosely, images of mythic proportions, those of utopia itself. Indeed, the author comes close to the figure of the romantic magus as witnessed in his continual fascination for the ‘Mircea Eliade the initiator’, and for what he described in 1979 as his ‘cosmological universe’.

The novel is devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the testimony that is at the heart of Le Clézio’s project. ​​ The central section, entitled “Nejma”, describes the Palestinian exodus in the post-war period (1948), at the end of the British presence in Palestine and the proclamation of the State of Israel by Ben Gourion. Nejma is a young Palestinian who leaves the city of Akka and the coastal area where she lived to join the Nour Chams Camp and from there she goes to Jordan. At the request of Mahmoud Darwich, Le Clézio published in 1988 the first part of this story, up to the Nejma’s departure from Nour Chams, in the Revue d’études palestiniennes under the title “The Nour Chams Camp, summer 1948”. This publication, which addresses an issue already discussed in “Hanné” (1987), has given rise to what Jérome Garcin has termed a “cabal” or a conspiracy. Bernard-Henri Lévy read it as an extreme anti-Zionist statement whereas Tahar Ben Jelloun saw it as a very apt response to the “sobriety” and the “justice” of Le Clézio’s account.

Moreover, in several interviews, Le Clézio has drawn attention to his use of  ​​​​ historical sources, in particular, of ​​ “the newspapers of the period” and of the “dossiers of the United Nations” (“Le Clézio’s Inner Scars” and “J.M.G. Le Clézio, Palestine and Israel”).

Le Clézio’s novel contributes a second thread to this story, describing the narrative trajectory of Hélène/Esther Grève. In 1943, this young Jewish girl was the victim of Nazi persecution in the countryside just inland from Nice (Saint-Martin-Vésubie) before emigrating with her mother to Israel in 1948 and moving into the Ramat Yohannan kibbutz. At the beginning of the 1950s, she is in Montreal pursuing her studies, she then returns to Israel at the end of the 1960s and in 1973 settles in Tel Aviv as a paediatrician. Le Clézio has explained that the earlier part of this story (the oldest part) was based on the memories of his mother that resurfaced in 1982, when the heavy bombardments of Beirut coincided with the spatial fires on the hills above Nice (“The inner scars of Le Clézio”). The novel was completed in 1987, but Le Clézio claims to have delayed publication in order to avoid the direct link with contemporary events, notably with “the rebellion of stones” (“Le Clézio, victim of a conspiracy”).

Le Clézio endeavours to harmonize these two radically different life stories, both marked by violence: “At the time when I was writing The Wandering Star, I thought that, sooner or later, there would be a political settlement between Israelis and Palestinians” (“J.M.G. Le Clézio, Palestine and Israel”). It is particularly revealing that references here to Islam and to Judaism, although clearly present, are often direct rather low-key. It was not until quite late that Esther was introduced to Judaism, initially in a synagogue at Saint-Martin and then, with more impact, on board the Sette fratelli, the boat that will take her to Israel and where Reb Joel will recite the Livre du Commencement whereas her father, a communist and “teacher of history and  ​​ ​​​​ geography” would prefer to read her “the novels of Dickens” (EE, 185). ​​ It will be the songs of Billie Holiday (EE, 196, 338) that Esther remembers from the crossing rather than the religious incantatory songs. In the same way, it was Nejma’s father who taught his daughter the language so that she could learn the “suras of the Book” as well as how to solve problems of geometry (EE, 228).

However, Nejma’s writing is very much focused on ordinary everyday life: she signs her name “in Roman characters” (EE, 307) on the black notebook that she offers to Esther on the Siloe road (EE, 212), so that she can add her own. Later, at the request of her companion, le Baddawi, she will record the story of her life in the notebook (EE, 228). In the novel, Le Clézio adds a paragraph to the text of the Revue d’études palestiniennes in which Nejma insists on a gift, that is an exchange with Esther of “the notebooks of their ​​ memories”: “She came that day and I read my fate on her face. For a brief moment, we were reunited as if we had always been meant to meet each other” (EE, 228). The black notebook, where originally there were only the two names of the women, becomes an open book where Nejma writes her life story for Esther. Esther buys a similar notebook and records her own life story which she dreams of exchanging with Nejma as the sign of a “mysterious alliance”: “We will exchange our notebooks to abolish time, to end the suffering and the burning pain of the dead” (EE, 308). The black notebook has fragile roots as is frequently the case with Le Clézio: Tanguy Dohllau has recognized this in his beautiful watercolour “Letter to the wind”. These roots tend to replace official accounts or established readings of history. Le Clézio rather skillfully removes any traces of his characters’ relationship to the vertical plane or global events, focusing instead on the horizontal axe, that is, on individual life stories or “accounts of ordinary experiences” (Michel ​​ de Certeau, Daniel Fabre).

This movement from the vertical to the horizontal can also be detected in the symbolism of the text, and it is on this level that the book should be interpreted: “my text is anything but political. It is a symbolic attack against war in general” (“Le Clézio, victim of a conspiracy”). The star is a key symbol, both in Jewish culture and the history of Israel and in Palestinian culture and history. The text refers to the stars on the candles in the religious service at the synagogue (EE, 81), to the Festival of Lights when the hannoukas are lit (EE, 297) and to the star of David (EE, 207). In Palestinian culture and history, Nejma’s story mentions the “green star” of her father’s small boat (EE, 267). But, most importantly, the star in Le Clézio’s text is the name of the two protagonists: Nejma means “star” in Arabic and Esther is called “estrellita” (little star) by her parents (EE, 92, 165). The wandering star does indeed convey the erratic journey of these two: according to the back cover, “Esther and Nejma remain wandering stars”, but there is also the possibility of paths’ crossing, to cite Jacques Lacarrière’s beautiful expression. It is in this context that the “Peruvian song”, cited as an epigraph, can be interpreted: ​​ it would seem to be a response to the dedication (“To Captured Children”) exhorting the children to continue their journey: “Estrella errante/Amor pasajero/Sigue tu camino […]”.

Moreover, the figure of the shepherd, traditionally associated with the star, is somewhat blurred in this story. Mario, who was a shepherd before the war (EE, 56) and who possesses a sheepskin (EE, 84), dies in an attack of the maquis (EE, 66); Jacques Berger, whom Esther meets on the crossing and who will ​​ become the father of her child, has only the name and the appearance of a shepherd (EE,143) and dies in battle near the lake of Tibériade (EE, 302); Yohannan, the shepherd of the kibbutz where Esther lives, is assassinated the same day (EE, 302). When Esther returns to Saint-Martin in 1982, just after the death of her mother, she revisits the places where her father was assassinated by the Gestapo while he was accompanying fleeing Jewish families and notes that it is in the shepherd’s hut that the crime took place (EE, 334). Nelma’s companion, le Baddawi, has in all probably lost his flock (EE, 247, 281), and the goat and its kid, whom he found on the escape route, die (EE, 283). The figure of the shepherd, whose aura is eroded to the point that, by the end of the story, he becomes “an old deaf man who speaks by whistling to his dog” (EE, 335), is replaced by that of the fisherman. Le Clézio resumes the game of doubles that he had already introduced in Désert where Naaman, the fisherman (and storyteller) substitutes with the figures of the shepherd (Ma el Ainine and le Hartani). The fishermen of The Wandering Star find themselves on the shoals of Nice where they switch on their radios. The music that reminds Esther of what she heard on the boat or in the kibbutz in the company of Jacques Berger suffers interference from “spluttering sounds” (EE, 337) and becomes “tinny” and crackling (EE, 338). The radio here symbolizes the world’s multiple voices, a myriad of fables that Le Clézio strives to embrace in an essentially open manner: “It is an enormous task of craftsmanship, of patchwork” (“Le Clézio’s Inner Scars”).

Bruno Tristmans

Translated by Bronwen Martin

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CAVALLERO, Claude, « L’intellectuel et les médias », Europe, 957-958 (2009), p.176-186; CERTEAU (de), Michel, L’invention du quotidien 1, Arts de faire, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1990; DOHOLLAU, Tanguy, « Lettre au Vent », Les Cahiers J.-M.G. Le Clézio, 1 (2008), deuxième de couverture; FABRE, Daniel (éd.), Écritures ordinaires, Paris, POL, 1993; GARCIN, Jérôme, « Le Clézio, victime ​​ d’une cabale », L’Événement du jeudi, 22-28 décembre 1988, p.96-97; JOLLIN-BERTOCCHI, Sophie, « La Bible chez Le Clézio: références et réécriture », O. Millet (éd.), Bible et littérature, Paris, Champion, 2003, p. 221-232; LE CLÉZIO, J.M.G., « Mircea Eliade l’initiateur », La Quinzaine littéraire, 297 (1979), p. 1 and 16; « Hanné », Nouvelle Revue française, 419 (1987), p. 16-31; « Camp de Nour Chams, été 1948 », Revue d’études palestiniennes, 29 (1988), p. 3-34; Étoile errante, Paris, Gallimard, 1992; « Les Cicatrices intérieures de Le Clézio », Elle, 2149, (1992), p. 41-42 and 44; « Dans la forêt des paradoxes », Conférence Nobel (7 décembre 2008); LÉVY, Elias, « J.M. Le Clézio, La Palestine et Israel », Canadian Jewish News, 6 novembre 2008; MICHEL, Jacqueline, « Épreuves du livre. Réflexions sur Étoile errante de J.M.G. Le Clézio », Les Lettres romanes, 47 (1993), p. 279-285; MIMOSO-RUIZ, Bernadette, « Le Clézio et l’immigration: le tragique du réel », Voix plurielles, Toronto, numéro 8.2, 2011, p.116-131; SALLES, Marina, Le Clézio, notre contemporain, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006; THIBAULT, Bruno, « L’écriture de la guerre dans ‘Hanné’ et ‘Camp de Nour Chams’ de ​​ J.M.G. Le Clézio », Nouvelles études francophones, 24 (2009), p. 98-107; J.M.G. Le Clézio et la métaphore exotique, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2009; TRITSMANS, Bruno, « Figures du berger chez J.M.G. Le Clézio et André Dhôtel », Nouvelles études francophones, 20, 2005, p. 57-68 ; VAN ACKER, Isa, « Polyphonie et altérité dans Onitsha et Étoile errante », Thamyris, 8 (2001), p. 201-210.

Sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum), a variety of grass, is cultivated in all tropical or warm temperate climates. Sugar and its derivatives are extracted from its stem, which measure between 2.5 to 6 metres in height, and 1.5 to 6 centimetres in diameter. In average, the sucrose level in the sugar cane is between 12 and 15%. Economically speaking, it is one of the most important plants in the world, even now when its production is on the decline. It is said to have been spread by man first in all the Pacific islands, and in the Indian Ocean all the way to Malaysia. Until the beginning of the 19th Century, sugar cane was the only important source of sugar; today, it still represents 65 to 70% of total production (in Europe, sugar production derives essentially from sugar beets).

​​ 

​​ 

Cane cuttings are planted either in furrows, flat in the ground or in raised beds, depending on the soil’s humidity. Sugar cane plantations need a fair amount of irrigation while not faring well in excessively humid soils; porous soils are thus ideal to grow sugar cane. Plants produce about ten reeds (stems) yearly and cuttings are replaced roughly every five years. The crop is harvested after 10 to 12 months, or a few months later, depending on climatic conditions and agricultural practices.

The author of La Quarantaine notes realistically that “Médine ​​ was the first to cut the cane because we were in the West[ern part of the island] and that the cane matured faster [there]” (Q, 90), describing the rituals that accompany “the beginning of harvest” (ibid.). During the dry season, sugar cane reaches maturity, and the leaves dry out. Sugar concentration is then highest in the stem’s lower section. The cane is usually harvested at the beginning of the flowering cycle, when there is a dip in sugar levels. Leaves are often stripped from the plant before harvest to facilitate the cutters’ work, a task assigned to women in Le Chercheur d’or (CO, 309). Sometimes the field is set on fire to rid plants of their leaves, although this practice is rarely used today as it leads to a drop in sugar content. Cutters sever the reed right above the first node, cut off the growing tip, and section it if too long, using “sabers” or “long knives” (Q, 90), notes J.-M.G. Le Clézio, whose Mauritian texts resound of the cane cutters’ shouts, as echoed by the children “Aouha! Aouha!” (CO, 16 ; Q, 90). The growing tips are left to fertilize the fields. The cane reeds are then loaded into lorries – or ox-carts at the time of the Chercheur d’or – which deliver them to the sugar factory, located in short proximity to the plantations since sugar content declines rapidly once the cane is cut, losing 2.4 measures in less than 10 days. More and more, the harvest is mechanized, machines cutting reeds and removing leaves, while small bulldozers armed with power tongs load the cane onto waiting lorries. Of note the fact that the sugar industry has now been highly centralized in many countries, especially in the Mascarene islands. In Mauritius, only 4 sugar factories remain, each much more powerful than those of the Chercheur d’or, and located at the four corners of the island.

​​ 

​​ 

According to the traditional method named after the Dominican friar Jean-Baptiste Labat (1663-1738) who described it, sugar is purified by means of a “team or crew” of six boilers. The cane juice is first collected in the “Big One” (La Grande), clarified in the “Clean One” (La Propre), boiled down a first time in the “Torch” (Le Flambeau), then in the “Syrup”; the juice finishes cooking in the “Battery”. Once cooked, the liquid sugar crystallizes in huge wooden vats, the “rafraichissoirs” (or coolers). The massecuite or cooled sugar is placed in containers drilled with holes to evacuate the syrup. After four weeks, sugar is ready for use. Molasses, from the Greek melan, meaning black, a very thick and viscous residue containing a slight amount of sugar, vitamin B6 and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron, is then collected and can be fermented and distilled to make industrial rum; agricultural rum, on the other hand, comes from fermenting cane juice. Nowadays, this process is completely automated. The cane reeds are crushed in a grinder to extract the cane juice, also called vesou. The fibrous residue or bagasse, in other words the plant’s cellulose, is used to heat the ovens where the juice is thickened and evaporated to obtain the syrup, which is then clarified and concentrated to extract crystallized raw sugar, called cassonade. This brown sugar will then be refined into white sugar in a refinery. The author of the Chercheur d’or lyrically refers to the syrup stage of the process: “the clear juice which trickles on the cylinders, flows toward the boiling vats […]” and to the children’s joy when they scoop and suck on the first lumps of sugar, “the burning hot paste covered with blades of grass and strands of bagasse” (CO, 21-22). On the practical side, electricity produced by sugar factories burning bagasse, are routed to the national grid.

It goes without saying that the plantation economy has a deep influence on the sociocultural development of the countries involved, especially as it pertains to the French islands of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean where sugar cane cultivation is widespread in the 17th Century. The massive importation of slaves, from Western Africa to the Caribbean, and from Madagascar, Mozambique and Western Africa to the Mascarene islands, forms the basis for a society where the enslaved majority works incessantly for a small minority of Whites. No need to detail here the Black Code, marooning or the gradual transculturation of populations, nor the development of creole as a vehicular – and vernacular – language over the years. We must however mention, if only briefly, that the majority of slaves, classified by the synecdoche hoes (pioches) in archival documents, work in the fields. They are often (poorly) fed, housed and clothed in exchange for brutal work, in degrading conditions and under a cruel sun. Many of them escape and hide in the surrounding forests, or take refuge on the Morne mountain, today a UNESCO World Heritage site, where archaeological digs have unearthed maroon camps.

In his work De L’esprit des lois, Montesquieu ironically mentions the championing of slaves by sugar barons: “Sugar would be too expensive, were not the plant cultivated by slaves”. One of the protagonists of La Quarantaine echoes this irony, speaking of “a sugar baron as you would a slave trader” (Q, 429). In this novel, sugar cane exploitation is conjured up through the memories of Jacques, the only one having known the family property as a child (Q, 88-89). After the British conquest of the island, slavery is abolished in 1835. However, the British government imports Indian coolies who are contracted by plantation owners to work in the cane fields, in conditions closely reminiscent of those of Black slaves. Indenture, as it is called, is depicted in La Quarantaine by J.-M.G. Le Clézio, through Ananta and Giribala’s narration of escaping from the Sepoy Revolution in India to be hired on the Alma plantation (Q, 408-413). Women are dressed in a jute sack called gunny to work in the fields, under the eye of a field manager and sirdars, (usually Indian) foremen who coordinate task assignments. Workers who die on duty are sometimes buried in the fields, under cairns made of basaltic rocks piled in pyramids, after they have been removed from newly cleared space for cultivation. Arduous work, led by slaves or their offspring, and subsequently by coolies, are precisely described by Le Clézio in Le Chercheur d’or (308-310).

It is not surprising then, that maroons lent their support to Ratsitatane, a Malagasy prince exiled in Mauritius, during the 1822 uprising. Six of them are condemned to death by the British government; Ratsitatane, Latulipe and Kotolovo are beheaded. J-M.G. Le Clézio relates this historical event in Révolutions, through Kiambe’s story. She recites her African name in a litany to reclaim ownership. The Ratsitatane event is echoed in the spontaneous and extremely violent uprising as related by J.-M.G. Le Clézio in Le Chercheur d’or where a cruel field manager, having hit and insulted Black workers, is violently thrown in “the mouth of the bagasse oven” (CO, 67-68). Le Clézio also mentions hunger strikes (CO, 311). In 1943, a confrontation between the police and workers during a strike at the Belle-Vue Harel factory in the North of the island, results in four deaths, including Anjalay Coopen, a young woman who came to symbolize resistance to colonial authority and to the work conditions imposed by plantation owners.

​​ 

Sugar sack ready for export.
(Sacks are no longer made of goni, Creole spelling of gunny or jute).

​​ 

We have focused on Mauritius in the context of sugar cane exploitation because the island is J.-M.G. Le Clézio’s “tiny motherland”, the birthplace of his ancestors. François Alexis Le Clézio, émigrating from Britanny in France, establishes himself in the then Isle of France in 1793. In 1856, his son Eugène buys the villa Euréka together with a sugar cane plantation in the Moka region. For generations, the family is closely linked to sugar production in the island. Sir Henry Leclézio (Mauritian spelling of the surname) (1840-1929), “President of the Chamber of Agriculture, and last owner of the Alma family estate, fostered scientific development in the Mauritian sugar industry” (d’Unienville, 328-329). His grandson Fernand is the driving force behind the first centralization of factories in FUEL (Flacq United Estates Limited), long the biggest factory on the island. The financial ruin of Sir Eugène Le Clézio’s branch of the family, and the sale of Euréka to his brother Sir Henry, at the beginning of the 20th Century, causes the displacement of J.-M.G. Le Clézio’s ancestors, a diaspora romanticized in all the Mauritian Cycle novels of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature. A source of family wealth, sugar cane was then, and still is, one of the major economic resources of Mauritius.

Eileen Lohka

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CAUNA, Jacques, Au temps des isles à sucre ; Histoire d’une plantation à Saint-Domingue au XVIIe siècle, Paris, Karthala - A.C.C.T., 1987 ; D’UNIENVILLE, Noël, L’île Maurice et sa civilisation, Paris, G. Durassié & Cie Éditeurs, 1949 ; FAUQUE, Claude, L’Aventure du sucre, une histoire de l’île Maurice, publication of the L’Aventure du sucre Museum, Beau-Plan, Île Maurice, 2002 ; LE CLÉZIO, J.-M.G., Le Chercheur d’or, Paris, Gallimard, 1985 ; La Quarantaine, Paris, Gallimard, 1995 ; http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canne_à_sucre (consulted on October 22, 2013).

Photos : © Eileen Lohka

BALINT Adina: Professor at The University of Winnipeg, Canada. Her research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century French literature (Le Processus de création dans l'œuvre de J.M.G. Le Clézio, Brill, 2016 ; co-editor of the Les Cahiers de J.M.G. Le Clézio N°7). In 2021, she has become the coordinator of the online J.-M. G. Dictionary.

DAY-HOOKOOMSING Patricia: PhD in Education, BA Joint Honours Latin and French, University of Reading, UK. Long and varied career in English language teaching, corporate training, and translation work in Mauritius. Currently owner and managing director of an independent corporate training firm. Research interests: English in the global economy and women’s entrepreneurship.

LÉGER Thierry: Senior Associate Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of French at Kennesaw University State (USA) and Co-Director of the International Council on Francophone Studies (www.cief.org). His research focuses mainly on the works of Le Clézio. In addition to articles published in several journals including Europe and Les Cahiers J.-M.G. Le Clézio, he has co-directed with Isabelle GILLET-ROUSSEL and Marina SALLES, Le Clézio, passeur des arts et des cultures, 2010 and with Fredrik WESTERLUND, La Violence dans les premières œuvres, Les Cahiers Le Clézio, n° 9, 2016.

LOKHA Eileen: Professor at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on the francographic literatures of the Mascareignes and of the West Indies, on minority writing and on problems of identity and of memory. As a writer born in Mauritius (Jean Fanchette Prize 2006 for C’était écrit, Déclinaisons masculines, 2015), she has published La Femme, cette inconnue Isle de France, terre des hommes (île Maurice, L’Atelier d’écriture, 2013). She is the author of several articles on the works of J.M.G. Le Clézio and has co-edited Les Cahiers J.-M. G. Le Clézio no.6, ‘Voix de femmes’ (2013).

MARTIN Bronwen: Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. Author of three books on ​​ J.M.G. Le Clézio, The Search for Gold: Space and Meaning in J.M.G. Le Clézio (1995), Le Clézio: Le Procès-verbal (2005) and The Fiction of J.M.G. Le Clézio: A Postcolonial Reading (20  ​​​​ ). She has also published ​​ in the field of semiotics and critical discourse analysis.

MOSER Keith: Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Mississippi State University. He is the author of five full-length book projects. His latest monograph is entitled The Encyclopedic Philosophy of Michel Serres: Writing the Modern World and Anticipating the Future (2016). Moser has also contributed more than fifty essays to peer-reviewed publications representing many divergent fields including French and Francophone studies, environmental ethics, ecocriticism, ecolinguistics, biosemiotics, social justice, popular culture, and Maghrebi/Harki literature.

PAPEN Robert: Professor Emeritus, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada.

DER DRIFT Martha: Ph.D. in Romance Languages - French and Francophone Studies. Former Lecturer of French at Duke University, NC - USA. Independent French instructor and researcher in New Hampshire, USA where she also volunteers with community centers to promote the French language and Francophone films.

VOGL Mary: teaches French at Colorado State University where she chairs the Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures. She co-translated Open Correspondence by Khatibi and Khayat and has published on Le Clézio, Djebar, Ben Jelloun, Laroui, El Maleh, Kilito, Orientalist art and art in the Maghreb.

www.metmuseum.org

With nearly a billion worshipers, Hinduism is the third religion in the world after Christianity and Islam and one of the oldest religions (Roman-Amat 2013). The word Hinduism comes from the word "Hindû", a Persian term which indicates Indus (Lipner 1998) and Hinduism ended up designating the religion of the people living on the edges of Indus.

Unlike other major religions, Hinduism has no founder, no sacred book but several (Daniélou 2005). It is estimated that Hinduism appeared around 2000 BC and that Vedism or the religion of Veda represents its oldest aspect (~ 1500 to 900 BC). The Vedic texts are the first literary monuments of India and the most archaic testimony of the religion called Brahmanism (~ 900 to 400 BC) which later became Hinduism (Renou 1979, 5). It was during the Vedic period that the four Vedas, the founding texts of Hinduism were formed. The oldest texts are made up of the four Saṃhitā, or collections constituting the four Veda, namely: the Ṛgveda or "Veda of stanzas", the Yajurveda or "Veda of formulas", the Sāmaveda or "Veda of melodies" and the Atharvaveda of a magical nature (Renou 1979, 7). Each Veda is made up of four parts: Samhita, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and the Upanishads. Samhita is a collection of mantras (hymns). The hymns of the Vedas are recited to honor the natural elements: fire, rain, wind, rivers, mountains... (Ramnohur 2002, ii). The Brāhmaṇās include religious precepts and duties, the Āraṇyakas are forest treaties intended for hermits and the Upaniṣad comment on questions of a philosophical nature (Ramnohur, 3). The Vedas are referred to as Shruti (which is revealed) and more recent texts are called Smriti (which is remembered or memory/tradition).

Hinduism is also referred to as sanâtana dharma ("eternal socio-cosmic order") by Orthodox Hindus for whom the main source of religious education is the Puranas (Ramnohur, 1). The Puranas are part of Smiriti and are called the "popular" Vedas because their purpose is to allow the population to decode the ancestral texts. There are eighteen Puranas, six dedicated to Vishnu, six to Shiva and six to Brahma. The Smriti include the epics the Rāmāyana, the Mahābhārata (with the Bharatas from which the Bhagavad-Gita originates). These texts are considered sacred by the Hindus. The epic Rāmāyana, written by Valmiki, is a poetic description of the life and actions of the god Rama. The Mahābhārata, written by Vyasa, relates the fight between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The Bhagavad-Gita includes eighteen chapters during which Krishna maintains Arjuna of many subjects among which the immortality of the soul, Yoga, war, devotion...

Hinduism is a polytheistic religion which contains several million divinities but the different divinities are regarded as the different forms of the same divine expression underpinned by an ultimate reality. Hindus believe in personal and impersonal gods. The major personal gods are those of the Trimūrti, namely Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva, who correspond respectively to the Creator, the Protector and the Destroyer (Ramnohur v). The Hindus accept the doctrine of various incarnations (avatar) of the Trimūrti (Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu). Minor deities are creations or procreations of major deities. For example, Ganesh, who is an important deity in Hinduism, is related to Shiva.

Hinduism is both a highly organized way of life and social and religious system, often compared to the course of a river and its tributaries. Thus, through its diversity, Hinduism reflects the diversity of human nature. We can therefore understand the impact that Eastern philosophies and Hinduism in particular have had on J.M.G Le Clézio. In an interview given in India, he declares "I always read with enough regularity the Oupanishads and the Bhâgavata gîta and I even recently discovered with much enthusiasm the Mahabharata (...) I believe that of all the books I have read are one of my favorites" (La Revue de l’Inde, 2010). In his novel La Quarantaine, Le Clézio places Mauritius in the Hindu sphere in opposition to the Mauritian oligarchy and he largely calls upon Hindu mythology to operate this reversal of perspective. A study on the symbolic role of the river in the novel shows that it is the Ganges which really bathes and irrigates the novel from start to finish (with its tributary La Yamuna). It is a novel within the novel that feeds the flow of narration and gives meaning to the text (Mauguière 2009, 162).

The legend of the descent of the Ganges is told in several ancient Hindu texts, in particular in the Bhāgavata Purāna and it is an extract from this text that Le Clézio highlighted in La Quarantaine:

 At the twilight of this age

 when all kings will be thieves

 Kalki, the lord of the universe,

 Will be reborn from the glory of Vishnu

 (Bhāgavata Purāna I, 3, 26)

The novel is therefore placed under the aegis of the Bhāgavata Purāna, this religious treaty which describes the life of the hero-god Krishna (Mauguière 2004, 105). Kalki or Krishna is himself an avatar of Vishnu, guardian of the dharma, who incarnates on earth when the absence of law requires it ("when all kings are thieves"). The legend is also reported in the Rāmāyana (the journeys of Rama) which is considered to be the origin of all the Rāmāyana created in different periods by different poets. The legend of the Ganges is inserted in the first part of the Rāmāyana entitled Balkanda.

In La Quarantaine, as in the Rāmāyana, the rocks and the forests, the seas and the rivers, the clouds and the animals are an integral part of the epic in the same way as Rama, Sita or Leon and Suryavati. Le Clézio's project, like that of Valmiki, is to transform the Shoka (pain) into Shloka (verse). This is how we can understand the recitation of the 800 verses that line the descent of the river in La Quarantaine. We can see that the integration of Hindu mythology allows the true reconstruction of the origin in La Quarantaine (Mauguière 2009, 163).

A knowledge of Hindu philosophy related to the historical and mythical dimension of the novel makes it possible to supplement the reading of the text. Yama, who dominates the history of La Quarantaine, is the god of Death in India. In the Hindu epics, he appears as judge of the dead in a temporary place (Hades) where the bad deeds of humans are expiated in the interval between a birth and the next (Coomaraswamy 1967, 391). Among the avatars of Vishnu (10 in number) are Rama — Krishna and Buddha who is said to be the 9th. The tenth must come at the end of the present cosmic era. This is Kalki, of whom it is said at the end of La Quarantaine: “(…) We do not yet know Kalki, but he must come. No one knows when he will come, or who he will be, but it is becoming more and more obvious that his coming is near, that he will soon receive power ” (535). This quote recalls the highlighting at the beginning of the novel [“At the twilight of this age, […] Kalki, the lord of the universe, Will be reborn from the glory of Vishnu” (Baghavat Purana, I, 3, 26)] and reminds us that the end of the world is not an event to come, it is an event of psychological transformation, of visionary transformation (Campbell 1988, 230).

Bénédicte Mauguière

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bhāgavata Purāna tr. E. Burnouf, Imprimerie royale, 1844, Trésor de la poésie universelle, Roger Caillois/Jean-Clarence Lambert, Gallimard; CAMPBELL, Joseph, The Power of Myth, New York, DoubleDay, 1988, 234p.; COOMARASWANY, Ananda, Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists, New York, Dover Publications, 1967, 400 p.; DANIELOU, Alain. Mythes et Dieux de l'Inde, le polythéisme hindou, Flammarion, Coll. "Champs", 1994.; India: A Civilization of Difference. Rochester, Inner Traditions/Bear & co., 2005, 132p.; LE CLEZIO, Jean-Marie. La Quarantaine. Coll. Folio. Paris: Gallimard, 1995, 464 p.; LIPNER, Julius, Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, Routledge, 1998 (www..co.in /books?id=HDMLYkIOo WYC&printsec= frontcover&dq=sindhu+hindu&as_brr=3); MAUGUIERE, Bénédicte, “La philosophie orientale du cycle de vie et de mort. J.M.G Le Clézio. Eds. S. Jollin-Bertochi et B, Thibault. St. Quentin-en-Yvelines, Ed. de l'Université de Versailles, 2004, pp. 105-118; "Mythe et Epopée de la descente du Gange". Europe 957-958 (Janvier-Février 2009), Special issue Le Clézio, pp. 161-167; RENOU, Louis, L'hindouisme. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1979, 127 p.; RAMNOHUR, Mahadeo, Hinduism. New Delhi, Neeta Prakashan, 2002, 170 p.; ROMAN-AMAT, Béatrice, Hindouisme: La troisième religion du monde (www.herodote.net/Hindouisme-synthese-359); VALMIKI. La légende de la descente du Gange. Auroville, Auroville Press, 1998, 62 p.; GAUTIER, François, "Interview exclusive de Jean-Marie Le Clézio", La Revue de l'Inde No. 5, 2006, 192 p. http://www.larevuedelinde.com/itwleclezio.htm.

A boys’ secondary public school, the Royal College Curepipe is one of the oldest colleges in Mauritius. It has a reputation of excellence on the island because of the high-quality education it offers as reflected in the long list of laureates (end of ​​ secondary level award-winning students) on its roll. A large number of prominent figures, representing the country’s elite, attended the college thus contributing to its prestige.

In The Prospector, Alexis’ mother evokes the academic excellence of the college while scolding him : “ You never listen to the arithmetic lessons. You won’t be able to get into Royal College.” ​​ (TP, 18). ​​ His despicable cousin Ferdinand, son of his rich and hateful uncle Ludovic, is a resident at the college.

The Royal College Curepipe, in fact not a boarding school, dates back from the period when Mauritius was known as Isle de France. A Central School was created in the capital Port-Louis by the French Assemblies in 1791. In 1803, the last French governor of the colony, Captain General Charles Decaen, transformed the school into a colonial High School with the aim of giving a superior and, at the same time, military education to the boys of Isle de France and Bourbon (Réunion Island). Due to the hostility of the authorities in France, Decaen was unable to launch a similar project for girls.

After the English conquest of the island in 1810, the first British governor, Sir Robert Farquhar, passed a decree in 1813 changing the name of the High School ​​ into that of ​​ Royal College, thus granting the College a public status under the protection of the Crown.

Officially open to everyone, the Royal College remained for some time reserved to the sons of the upper class of the island, owing to the social barriers of the time. Rémy Ollier (1816-1845), a Mauritian journalist and poet, fought for the right to allow all students access to the College as well as to the English scholarship awarded to its laureates enabling them to undertake studies in prestigious British universities.

In 1871, with Charles Bruce as rector, the Royal College in Port-Louis – which still exists – opened a branch in Curepipe for the pupils of this city, bordering Forest Side, on the rainy and cold central plateau, where the island’s upper middle class had settled at the end of the nineteenth century, after fleeing the searing heat of Port-Louis afflicted by epidemics of malaria and black plague.

This migration of students influenced the development of the Royal College in Curepipe which occupied a building erected in 1888 on the Mare-aux-Joncs area. It must be this building that the author refers to in The Prospector, as Alexis recalls : “ one evening in the month of November, just before the turn of the century, our father died (…). They came to wake me up in the dormitory.” (TP,98)

The first stone of the new building was laid in 1912. Erected in 1913 and inaugurated in 1914, the impressive edifice was designed by Paul Le Juge de Segrais, an engineer and a former laureate of the College. It is built with blue basalt stones in an unmistakeable architectural style that makes it look like a diminutive Buckingham Palace set in the centre of Curepipe. The top stone face of the building still bears a royal crown flanked by the letters G and R (Georgius Rex) though Mauritius is now a republic. During the fifties, new structures were added to the main building without altering its original character.

In 1919, as a result of the Spanish flu outbreak that struck the island, the Royal College Curepipe was converted into a hospital. At the entrance of the College, there is a cenotaph surmounted by the statues of two allied soldiers, the English Tommy and the French Poilu. It was inaugurated in 1922 and dedicated to the memory of the English and French soldiers of the First World War.

Although still a boys’ school, the College appointed its first female teachers during the sixties and officially celebrated its centenary in 2014 with Lady Rector Chitra Awootar at its head. The Royal College Curepipe is classified as a national heritage of the State of Mauritius.

Attending the college is a particularly painful experience in the life of the adolescent, Alexis; he is far from the sea, from Mananava, and from the family home at Boucan, “ in the cold rainy shadows of Forest Side, then at the Royal College in Curepipe ” (TP,89). He finds it difficult to endure the monotony of his life, of these years of isolation, “ for life in the chill of the ​​ College and its icy walls was weary and humiliating. There was the promiscuity of the other students, their odour, their contact, their often obscene jokes, their penchant for foul words and their obsession with sex”. (TP, 91-92). This repulsive vision of a boys’ school – illustrated by the description of the high school attended by Jean Marro in the novel Révolutions – is echoed in a letter written by Le Clézio in 1999 to a librarian in Nice* : “My experience of the high school, namely during my primary-beginning of secondary grades, is that of a prison from which I wanted to escape”.

At the Royal College Curepipe, the world of Alexis inevitably falls apart when he is led “ to the Principal’s office, uncustomarily lit up at that hour ” (TP, 98) and told of his father’s death. Overwhelmed by “ something incomprehensible and disastrous about this sudden death (…) something that seemed like punishment from heaven ” (TP, 98), Alexis has a profound feeling of destitution and shame that haunts him bitterly : “ My grant for the College having expired, I had to go to work, and it was in the post my father had occupied in the dreary offices of W.W.West, the export and insurance company controlled by my powerful uncle Ludovic. ” ​​ (TP, 99)

Jean-Claude Castelain

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CABON, Marcel, Rémy Ollier, Port-Louis, Les Éditions mauriciennes, 1963 ; DE SORNAY, P., Historique des rues de la ville de Curepipe, Port-Louis, The Mauritius Printing, 1962 ; GIBLOT-DUCRAY, Charles, Histoire de la ville de Curepipe : notes et anecdotes, Île Maurice, Éditions Esclapon, 1957 ; LE CLÉZIO, J.-M.G., Le Chercheur d’or, Paris, Gallimard, 1985 ; * Lettre autographe signée, 10 juin 1999, au libraire Jean-Pierre Rudin à Nice (ebay-galeriethomasvincent.fr, 2016) ; Révolutions, Paris, Gallimard, 2003 ; The Prospector, London, ​​ Atlantic Books, 2016 ; PIAT, Denis, L’île Maurice - Sur la route des épices, 1598-1810, Paris, Les Éditions du Pacifique, 2010 ; ROUILLARD, Guy, Histoire de Curepipe des origines à 1890, Curepipe, Société de l’histoire de l’île Maurice, 1992 ; ROYAL COLLEGE CUREPIPE, School history (rcc.edu.govmu.org) ; ROYAL COLLEGE PORT-LOUIS, Brief historical background of the school (rcpl.edu.govmu.org) ; TOUSSAINT, Auguste, Histoire des îles Mascareignes, Paris, Éditions Berger-Levrault, 1972; Personal documents of the author of this article, a former student of the Royal College Curepipe.

Royal College Curepipe

(photo J.C. Castelain)

The cenotaph at the entrance of the Royal College Curepipe

(photo J.C. Castelain)

The Royal College : Curepipe branch (1888 - 1912)

(photo : copyright Guy Rouillard and Société de l’histoire de l’île Maurice)

An orchestration of voices, musical rhythms and poetry, Le Clézio’s polyphonic novel The Quarantine fascinates with its autobiographical resonances, the complexity of its narrative and the richness of its intertextual weaving. Published after Le Chercheur d'or* (1985) and Voyage à Rodrigues* (1986), before Révolutions* (2003) and Ritournelle de la Faim (2003), this text, published by Gallimard in 1995, forms part of what critics refer to as the “Mauritian cycle” which gives an autobiographical inflection to Le Clézio’s work.

​​ 

Traces and Blurring of Autobiographical References

 ​​​​ 

This novel is set against the backdrop of the writer’s family history and Mauritian origins: François-Alexis, the founding ancestor, made his home on Isle de France in 1794; his son Jules-Eugène Alexis purchased the Euréka home in 1856; ​​ J.M.G. Le Clézio’s grandfather Eugene’s side of the family lost their share of the family estate in 1920. This uprooting haunts his thinking and spirals through Le Clézio’s oeuvre: it is evident in his recreation of the family’s mythical house under different names in his various texts: Le Boucan (CO), Anna (Q), Rozilis (R), XAPI ∑MA (M), Alma (RF). A “diptych” effect (Bernabé-Gil, 2006, 88-98) is created between The Prospector, which depicts paternal grandfather Léon’s quest for the treasure, and The Quarantine which recounts maternal grand-father Alexis’s disembarkment at Île Plate* [literally, Flat Island] in 1891. Le Clézio thus blurs the autobiographical traces in these two texts by reversing the first names: Léon Le Clézio serves as a model for Alexis Létang in The Prospector, Alexis* becomes Jacques in The Quarantine, and it is his brother who bears the grand-father’s first name.

The Quarantine is predicated on the 1891 return journey of two brothers, Jacques and Léon Archambau, who had been exiled in France, to the family property (Anna) in Mauritius* where Jacques spent his childhood, and which Leon has not yet visited. However, an epidemic of smallpox leads to the quarantine of the boat’s passengers on Île Plate* and the travel narrative is transformed into a dramatic sequestration, with no exit possible, that depicts the anguished wait of these "prisoners", dissention amongst communities, the ravages of illness, deaths... As it pertains to reality, the novel intersects with two factual historical events: the first, in 1856, relates to the quarantine on Île Plate of passengers from the Hydaree who brought coolie laborers from India (it was on this ship that Ananta and Giribala arrived, fleeing the revolt of the Sepoys*); the second event was the great smallpox epidemic of 1891 during which Île Plate was also a center of quarantine. In The Quarantine the "family novel" fades away to be taken up again in Ritournelle de la faim. The two brothers' return to the island of their ancestors will in fact not take place and Leon, the narrator and protagonist of the central narrative, dissociates himself from the values ​​and the colonial power embodied by his family. He leaves with Suryavati*, the young untouchable (Dalit) who introduces him to Hindu mythology, allowing him to find his true identity.

An opposition is therefore established within the text and plays an eminently ideological role. On the one hand, History is represented by Jacques' happy childhood during the colonial era, and by Alexandre Archambau, the Patriarch, responsible for family’s ruin, who personifies order and Authority in the peculiar and unjust political system of Mauritius - the Synarchy. History also plays out in the tragedy of Indian immigrants abandoned on Île Plate by the Mauritian authorities. On the other hand, the personal story of Leon, who rebels against the separation between Westerners and Indians by crossing the imaginary border established by figures of Authority (such as the laughable Véran de Véreux), penetrates the world of Suryavati and thus highlights ​​the marginal domain of pariahs, the lowest of the Hindu castes.

 ​​​​ 

A polyphonic novel

​​ 

The Quarantine presents a narrative framework made complex by the interweaving of narrative voices. The first and fourth chapters – “The Eternal Traveler” and “Anna” - compose the frame story which opens and closes the novel and relates the journey to Mauritius by the narrator Leon “the descendant”. Following the path of his ancestors, Leon’s journey signifies a return to one’s origins. In the first chapter, Leon walks the streets of Paris, reflecting on his ancestry, how his grandfather Jacques met the "eternal traveler", poet Rimbaud. In the fourth chapter, he narrates his stay in Mauritius, his interviews with his aunt Anna, linked by her name to the mythical home, and his journey in search of lost time. The end of the journey, and of the diary which constitutes the narrative frame, recounts Leon's pilgrimage to Marseilles sites that Rimbaud used to haunt before his death, and where Léon evokes the disappearance of his ancestors. The two cities, Paris, Marseilles, serve as a backdrop for the interweaving of personal memories and the figure of the poet.

In the second chapter, The Poisoner, devoted to the beginning of his grandparents’ journey, Leon, the narrator, fades away, but the recurrent expressions "I think" or "I imagine" implicitly suggest his presence and mark the journal’s transition to the novelistic fiction of the third chapter. The writer here creates a peculiar travelogue, because if the form "logbook" implies a chronological order and spatial locations, we are in fact in the presence of imprecise notations which hide a temporal disorder, illustrated by various flashbacks. This temporal play reveals the symbolic and mythical dimension of the novel, announced by the epigraph taken from the Baghavat Purana.

The third chapter, specifically titled “The Quarantine”, represents a novel within the novel, a "metalepsis" (Dällenbach, 121), which can be taken as an autonomous narrative. A mise-en-abyme oriented towards the diegetic past, this internally duplicated narrative equates to the first narrator’s "dream" (438): to identify with "[...] the other Leon, the one who disappeared" (20). The stories of the two "Leons" establish an intertextual dialogue between the different parts of the text. Other voices are heard in this novel punctuated with excerpts from the journal of botanist John Metcalfe, whose scientific voice speaks concrete and constructive words in this world of violence and irrationality which exacerbates tensions and segregation among all the communities on the island. The Yamuna, another story-within-a-story, about the life and mysterious origins of the girl Leon calls Suryavati (Sun’s Power), opens up a temporal perspective through polyphony. The girl's mother and grandmother cross the sacred river of India, an adventure laden with initiation trials and rituals that lead them to the "miracle island" (331). The story of this epic adopts a different typography, as does the "gesture" of the blue men in Desert or the quest for Geoffroy in Onitsha, a process which can signal "the presence of some aspects of otherness" (Jarlsbo, 12). To the voice of Jacques evoking his mythical youth in Mauritius, is added that of Suzanne reciting the poems of Baudelaire, Longfellow* and especially Rimbaud, tutelary figure of the novel.

The novel, under the aegis of Rimbaud, the “cursed” and marginal poet, identified here with the departed ancestor, and with the narrator, this other "eternal traveler" who, when he walks in the footsteps of the one, finds images of the other. Jacques' first meeting with Rimbaud recurs obsessively. The enigmatic incipit of the novel presents the image of the poet on the threshold of the restaurant, an image - transmitted by Jacques – kept in Leon’s photographic memory. The second meeting with Rimbaud occurs during the stopover in Aden; Rimbaud is then the dying "poisoner" of scrawny dogs that roam the city. This episode is echoed at the end of the novel, as Aunt Anna also poisons abandoned dogs.

After this second meeting, Rimbaud disappears as actor, but he is present in the quotations from the “Drunken Boat” recited by Léon and Suzanne. The lines of this poem of revolt, the quest for adventure and the absolute, and disillusionment as well, make Leon, the missing man, a reflection of the mythical referent, the cursed poet in search of his identity. Leon’s quest is carried out by the sea voyage on the banks of the Ava, evocative of Rimbaud’s own voyage. But the recurrent image of the "drunken boat" gradually becomes diluted in the degraded figure of the drifting "raft" (471) until its complete disappearance, like the characters: "It seems to me that even the Aden's violent words disappeared in the sky, they were blown away and lost in the sea" (409).

Poetry thus represents one of the essential threads to interpret of the text. The poet becomes a myth or a "counter-myth" to which the legendary ancestor is merged through his rebellious and marginal character. The Rimbaldian motif associates the novel with travel, absolute revolt and poetry. It symbolically introduces a sign of the myth’s degradation that in some ways contaminates the entire novel. This myth is already present in the two contrasting images of the young, violent, demanding Rimbaud: that of Poetry, of “The Drunken Boat”, and that of the man from Aden, embittered and sick.  ​​ ​​​​ 

Maria Luisa Bernabé

Translated by Mary Vogl

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BERNABÉ-GIL, Maria Luisa, Narración y mito : dimensiones del viaje en Le Chercheur d’or y La Quarantaine de J.-M.G. Le Clézio, Granada, Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2006 ; La Quarantaine de J.-M.G. Le Clézio. Una novela del tiempo, Granada, Comares, 2007 ; DÄLLENBACH, Lucien, Le récit spéculaire, Paris, Seuil (1977) ; JARLSBO, Jeana, Écriture et altérité dans trois romans de J.- M. G. Le Clézio : Désert, Onitsha et La Quarantaine, Lund, Études romanes de Lund 66, 2003 ; LE CLÉZIO, J.-M.G., La Quarantaine, Paris, Gallimard, 1995 ; SALLES, Marina, Le Clézio, Notre contemporain, PUR, 2006 ; THIBAULT, Bruno, J.-M.G. Le Clézio et la métaphore exotique, Amsterdam/New York, Rodopi, 2009 ; VAN ACKER, Isa, Carnets de doute. Variantes romanesques du voyage chez J.-M.G. Le Clézio, Amsterdam / New York, Rodopi, 2008.

We are in 1948. World War II is a recent memory. Colonial empires are coming to an end even though many colonizers do not seem to know it yet. Geoffroy Allen, a United Africa Company agent stationed in Onitsha, invites his Italian wife Maria Luisa (Maou) to join him in Nigeria with their twelve-year-old son, Fintan, whom he has never seen. The commercial city of Onitsha becomes the meeting place for three distinct imaginary visions of Africa. For Maou it is a vast forest evoked in Geoffroy's letters: “a forest dark as night, inhabited by thousands of birds” (O, 32). Onitsha was for him a place where “everything would be different, everything would be easy” (O, 31). For his son it is a new world to explore, a world where he will be able to escape the tyranny of an unknown father he prefers not to know. For Geoffroy, Africa is the long road to an epic dream inspired by the destruction, in the third century AD, of the ancient city of Meroë. He is convinced that the Queen of Meroë led her people from Nubia in a great transcontinental migration, leading to the foundation of a new civilization. When he meets the Aros of south-eastern Nigeria, he is convinced that their language and culture bear the traces of an ancient Egyptian religion brought by the refugees from Meroë.

Geoffroy is expelled from his post by the colonial authorities and Fintan has no choice but go, as an adult, to England, where he witnesses from afar in 1968 the Biafran War, a failed secession war that sees the Igbo people reduced to famine, and near extermination. His testimony, as well as that of his parents, nevertheless reveals a complex geopolitical environment in which many of Le Clézio's favorite themes come into play. The role of the sacred in the history of peoples can be seen in the memory of Meroë and in the story of the desecration of the Oracle of Aro Chuku by the British army in 1902. We also see it in the remarks of Bony (a young Nigerian friend of Fintan) on the sanctity of eagles and termite mounds, and in the mystery of the apparently mute woman, Oya, who represents both the victims of colonial oppression and the resistance of peoples who refuse to disappear.

In this anguished world run by an oppressive colonial presence that does not try to understand the culture and society it claims to administer, the family begins to split. Geoffroy tries in vain to come to terms with the presence of his wife, considered strange and exotic in the eyes of the British in Onitsha. From the moment Maou publicly denounces the abuse of the African “convicts” that the District Officer Gerald Simpson cruelly employs to build a swimming pool, she is no longer welcomed in the small and pompous circle of colonists. Geoffroy understands his wife's dismay but he does not have the courage to confront his colleagues. Maou tries to love her husband while hating the system he has to work for. Abandoned most of the time by her husband and son, she befriends Nigerian women. Fintan seeks Bony's company to escape from his parents' company and forge roots among a people he chooses to love. He is confused when Bony associates him with the white people who oppress his family. However, the more Geoffroy, Fintan and Maou separate, the more they find each other again, as their experiences bring them together in a dream they share: the dream of knowing Africa.

​​ 

A dreamlike narrative structure

​​ 

The dreamlike aspect of Onitsha is not only the consequence of explicit references to dreams, although there are several. One has the impression of dreaming with one's eyes open when reading this story because of the subjective and personal multi-focus narrative. As soon as the Surabaya, a ship of the Holland Africa Line, approaches the African coast, we see everything through the eyes of Fintan and Maou. Later, Geoffroy seeks to explain the scars on the faces of the Aros traders as sacred Egyptian symbols, in a language that is both erudite and delirious. Everything seems real to these characters in a world they understand for the first time, and that, barely. Fintan begins to write a story he calls “A Long Journey” while traveling on the Surabaya, whereas in fact Le Clézio's novel is made up of several initiatory journeys that oscillate between discovery and hallucination. For example, when Fintan begins to reflect on his father's dream about the Queen of Meroë, “he tried to imagine this city, in the middle of the river, this mysterious city where time had stopped. But what he saw was Onitsha, motionless by the river, with its dusty streets and houses with rusty tin roofs” (O, 135). Not only does Fintan recognize his father's dream, but he wants to be part of it even when his own experiences do not match it. According to Karen Levy, Geoffroy and Fintan are “both unable to recognize their role in the construction of the myth that haunts them” (Levy, 1998).

The ambiguous gaze of renegade settler Sabine Rodes hovers over this set of delusional visions. This disturbing character mocks Maou as much as the British in the colonial community. He fails in his efforts to manipulate his African protégés Okawho and Oya but allows himself to predict the end of the colonial empire. He plays the role of surrogate father for Fintan, far from the biological father, while drawing Maou's hatred on himself. The author gives Rodes the last word when his death in the Biafran War is announced to Fintan at the end of the book: “His name was Roderick Matthews ... an officer of the Order of the British Empire” (O, 289). Since it was he who had suggested to Geoffroy the idea of following in the footsteps of the Queen of Meroë (O, 197), he can be said to play the role of agent. He sends Geoffroy in search of an elusive and illusory desired object, highlights the moral naivety of people like Maou who dream of fraternity between colonized and colonizer, and bequeaths to Fintan a sense of loss for the colonized country which remains vivid in his memory while, in reality, the modern world has forever changed it.

In a letter to his little sister born when the family has had to leave Nigeria, Fintan says: “Now there is nothing left of what I knew” (O, 275). Yet, he declares, “I have not forgotten anything, Marima. Now, so far away, I can smell fried fish by the river. [...] Must all this disappear forever? » (O, 279). Alexia Vassilatos considers that Onitsha is built from dense networks of memories perpetually reconstituted in the form of sensations (Vassilatos, 2013, 66). The agonizing contrast between these networks and their fatal outcome reinforces Onitsha's dreamlike quality and the tenacity of Fintan’s vision of the postcolonial world. He bequeaths to his sister his memories of a land he will never see again, “like that train of images that drowned men are said to glimpse when they sink” (O, 280).

​​ 

An unclassifiable book

​​ 

As a work of world literature in French, Onitsha remains enigmatic and unclassifiable. A French-language work, it represents a collection of African cultures, captured in an British colonial context. It has a strong autobiographical aspect, Le Clézio having also spent several years in Nigeria from the age of eight. However, the later publication of a more openly autobiographical work, L'Africain, underlines the part played by the imaginary in Onitsha's conception. Alexia Vassilatos sees Onitsha as an “alternative genre,” occupying the margins where prose and poetry are integrated into the characters’ delirious thoughts (Vassilatos, 2013, 66). Onitsha condemns the misdeeds of colonialism without easily giving up on the dreams generated by the colonial adventure. One can easily understand why the dream-like narrative form suits this narrative that subtly slides into the ambiguous interstices of the postcolonial era.

Whether the multiple quests evoked in Onitsha reveal an effort “to dialogue with the Other and to value African culture” as suggested by Dauda Yilla (2008, 187), or a “paradoxical posture, a sign of singularity and creativity” (Moudiléno, 2011, 79), the city of Onitsha and the journey of the Queen of Meroë remain in Le Clézio’s world symbols of an intimately unknowable horizon. As the title of the last part of the book - “Far from Onitsha” - implies, this story has the effect of bringing us closer to a certain Africa in order to move us away from it.

Robert Miller

Translated by Thierry Léger

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALSAHOUI, Maan, La Question de l’Autre chez J.-M.G. Le Clézio, Paris, Éditions universitaires européennes, 2011 ; BORGOMANO, Madeleine, Onitsha : J.-M.G. Le Clézio, Paris, Bertrand-Lacoste, 1993 ; « Onitsha, ou l’Afrique perdue de J.-M.G. Le Clézio », Les Cahiers Le Clézio, nos 3-4, Paris, Complicités, 2011, p. 95-105 ; LE CLÉZIO, J.-M.G., Onitsha, Paris, Gallimard, 1991 ; L’Africain, Paris, Gallimard, 2005 ; LEVY, Karen, « Intersected Pasts and Problematic Futures : Oedipal Conflicts and Legendary Catastrophe in J.-M. G. Le Clézio’s Onitsha and Étoile errante », The International Fiction Review, 25.1 et 2, 1998 ; MILLER, Robert, « Onitsha ou le rêve de mon père : Le Clézio et le postcolonial », International Journal of Francophone Studies, 6.1, 2003, p. 31-41 ; MOUDILENO, Lydia, « Trajectoires et apories du colonisateur de bonne volonté : d’Onitsha à L’Africain », Les Cahiers Le Clézio, nos 3-4, Paris, Complicités, 2011, p. 63-82 ; ONIMUS, Jean, Pour lire Le Clézio, Paris, PUF, 1994 ; PIEN, Nicolas, Le Clézio, la quête de l’accord original, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2004, p. 18-76 ; VASSILATOS, Alexia, « The Poetics of Sensation in J.-M. G. Le Clézio’s Onitsha », JLS/TLW, 29.3, 2013, p. 60-81 ; YILLA, Dauda, « Envisioning Difference in Le Clézio’s Onitsha », French Studies, 62, 2008, p. 173-187.

Inspired by the adventure of the author’s paternal grandfather Léon Le Clézio, The Prospector is set on the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues. Driven from their estate, Le Boucan, by bankruptcy and a cyclone, the narrator Alexis L'Étang and his family take refuge in the town of Forest Side. After the death of Mr. L'Étang, Alexis has only one desire: to realize his father’s dream of finding the corsair’s treasure hidden on Rodrigues Island. He undertakes this journey and carries out grueling excavations, in vain. In love with Ouma, a young manaf (descendant of the rebellious slaves of Mauritius), he leaves her to enlist during World War I. After a four-year stay at Anse aux Anglais on Rodrigues Island, Alexis understands the meaning of his quest and returns to Mauritius. His mother, seriously ill, dies and his sister joins the Loreto nuns. Ouma appears to him among the cane cutters before disappearing forever. He finds himself alone and, strengthened by his spiritual journey, dreams of a new beginning as he listens to the sea.

From beginning to end, the novel presents a unified structure and relies on symmetrical effects. Of rather traditional composition, centered on a main character, overall it follows a chronological order and highlights a single narrative voice.

The Bildungsroman or Coming-of-Age Novel The Prospector is an adventure and coming-of-age novel that resembles Stevenson's Treasure Island, where Jim, the hero, sets out to discover a hidden treasure on an island. The initiation begins by a break with the world of childhood: "Those who have chosen the quest [...] must abandon any kind of family and social situation" (Éliade, 1965, 156). Alexis’ departure is brutal. His initiation takes place at the cost of great physical and moral trials: at Anse aux Anglais where he undertakes his quest for gold, Alexis suffers from fever, hunger, thirst and cold (204-205). On the other hand, exploring the island is an arduous task that testifies to his heroic determination: Alexis probes and digs tirelessly. Neither empty hiding spots nor a wound from basaltic rocks (251) divert him from his quest. In addition to solitude, his exile underscores his moral suffering and causes him to lose his identity (184-185).
Excavations and intelligent decoding of maps prove ineffective. At the end of the war, he returns to Rodrigues Island and discovers that Anse aux Anglais is a sacred space. In reality, the purifying trials, and especially the experience of the war, have sharpened his senses, allowing him to apprehend, without trying to comprehend, the sacred and the irrational. "[The initiated] attains spiritual maturation and "ends up obtaining a flash of lightning - or enlightenment - [...]", and this mystical experience [...] reveals his aptitude for extra-sensory perception" (Eliade, 1957, 106). Through an "epiphany", Alexis understands that the signs on the Corsair’s stele represent an axis mundi and thus he is initiated into the mystery of the cosmos: “The configuration of Anse aux Anglais is that of the universe” (334). He then grasps the meaning of the Privateer's coded message, a message that his father had conveyed to him in Allée des étoiles (335) during an initiation trance. By abandoning the quest for treasure and calculations, Alexis discovers, together with the secret of Corsair’s plan, his primordial being. More importantly, he regains communion with nature (333).

In Rodrigues, Alexis falls in love with a young Manaf named Ouma who introduces him to simple happiness in harmony with the elements. Her teachings elicit the protagonist’s return to a pre-social world. Indeed, she holds both the secrets of the Rodrigues valley and those of the universe which she reveals progressively to Alexis, whose thoughts and heart she can penetrate. On this paradise island of initiation, through a bathing ritual, Alexis is restored to the simplicity and innocence of the original world. Then, the sensual young woman awakens desire in him (222-223). Physical contact frees him from anxiety while endowing him with a new force, and their carnal union ends in a kind of mystical ecstasy (234). The motive for Alexis' quest changes and it is no longer the attraction of gold that interests adventurers. Rather, his journey leads him to another treasure: Ouma’s love. Thanks to Ouma, Alexis is able to discover the real gold he carries inside (336). Thus it is with his beloved, who has become his alter ego, that the hero comes to self-actualization. "[...] I shout her name: 'Ou-ma-ah!' [...]. It seems to me that it is my own name that I cry, to awaken, in this desert landscape, the echo of my life that I lost during all these years of destruction" (328). He thus finds the feminine part of his identity in counterpoint to the values ​​of virility, brutally expressed in his roles as a soldier and treasure seeker.

In this autobiographical novel, the individual quest - of treasure and identity - turns into a search for origins.

​​ 

A novel grounded in myths
​​ 

Abolishing the boundaries that separate dream and reality, myths form the protagonist and change his vision of the world. Hence the importance of mythical substance "more apt to express a universal human truth" (Salles, 1999, 85). The novel combines a variety of collective and personal myths. The biblical myths of Genesis and The Fall are associated with Alexis's trials. In seeking his origins, Alexis connects to the myth of Creation. At Le Boucan, the biblical Eden is symbolized by the garden with its luxuriant vegetation and the elephant apple tree is likened to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (30). Alexis and Laure could be Adam and Eve: Laure transgresses by eating the forbidden fruit. For Alexis, an imaginative and sensitive child, the cyclone ravaging Mauritius is undoubtedly the biblical Flood, a punishment from heaven: "There is no longer heaven or earth, only this liquid mass" (80). But unlike Genesis where Noah and his kin are saved, the innocent are not spared by the flood. The rainbow paradoxically announces the fall of the "half-collapsed" wreck-house (89) which is far from being compared to the ark of salvation. The scorching heat on Le Boucan is interpreted in light of the biblical text as "the rain of fire that God sent to the cursed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah" (60). The two children plunge into a sacred place-time continuum as they scan the sky. Although they deny their fear momentarily, the cataclysm of the cyclone annihilates their earthly paradise which becomes "soiled land" (89). Alexis and Laure are driven from their Eden. Doomed to die, they embark on "a journey of no return" (99).

To relate his character’s adventures of and portray his emotional evolution, the author summons several literary myths, including that of Paul and Virginie, heroes of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's eponymous novel. The idyll of both couples is set in Mauritius. Alexis carries Laure on his shoulders, just as Paul carried Virginie. The whiteness of the women’s dress connotes the purity and virginity they both embody, and the wooded setting suggests the women are at ease in their natural surroundings. Both couples are separated by the quest for money (or gold). Alexis discovers moreover the legend of Rider Haggart "Nada the Lily", Nada foreshadowing Ouma, the beloved woman with "curly hair" and "copper" skin (211). The protagonist’s transition from a brotherly love for Laure to a manly love for Ouma signals his increasing emotional maturity. The development of his physical and intellectual faculties is suggested by a strong intertextual link with Daniel Defoe's novel: the Leclézian hero identifies himself with Robinson Crusoe. After the departure of Denis, his only friend, Alexis finds himself "alone like Robinson on his island" (71). Likewise, in Rodrigues, his outward appearance equates him with Defoe’s protagonist (365), whom he imitates by creating a calendar (245). Differences appear, however. Alexis, hostile to colonialism, is neither an "inventor" nor a planter like Robinson who colonizes his island. And while Friday, the savage, becomes the disciple of Robinson the civilized, Alexis is the disciple of Denis, his initiator to "wild life" (Onimus, 1994, 130). Finally, unlike Robinson's adventure, the search for treasure ends in the gold digger’s failure.

Le Clézio also transposes the Greek myth of Jason. Aboard the Zeta, Alexis imagines himself on the Argo ​​ (181). Like Jason, he courageously faces the obstacles that put his quest in jeopardy. Admittedly, he finds only an empty cache, while Jason returns to Greece with the Golden Fleece; nevertheless, beyond gold, the two travelers pursue the same goal: the quest for self and eternity (172).

To these written sources which give this individual story a universal resonance, Le Clézio adds the heritage of Mauritian oral culture. The story evokes the legendary figure of Sacalavou, leader of a slave revolt against the whites (257) who became famous for his exceptional courage. His suicide is considered an empowering act of emancipation: "He threw himself off the cliff rather than being captured" (41). So his presence, felt during stormy days, is likened to the cry of conscience - "a groan", "an eternal complaint" (109) - or rather to a premonitory sign: having chosen to live in Mananava, Ouma and Alexis must suffer the persecution of whites just like this slave did. ​​ Finally, the mythical status of the mysterious Corsair somehow determines Alexis’ life, dictates his actions and his steps until he "destroys what he had created" by burning the treasure papers (373) and freeing himself from his model and a fantasized past.

Other mythical figures, implicitly present, complete the development of Alexis’ own myth. The image of the gold digger doing the same sterile work of deciphering plans and undertaking useless excavations every day is reminiscent of Sisyphus. Like Icarus, he travels to escape fatality not by attaching wings of wax, but by "gliding in the middle of the sky" on the Zeta (142). "The symbolism of the Fall is still relevant for Alexis until the return from the war," notes Isabelle Roussel-Gillet (2001, 39). But, unlike Icarus, after his symbolic death during World War I Alexis is reborn like the Phoenix, despite the destruction of Le Boucan and the disappearance of Ouma.

How are we to read the end of The Prospector? Is it a happy ending? The ambiguity of the ending, a frequent phenomenon in Le Clézio’s work, casts doubt on the initiation of Alexis, who does not integrate himself in his island’s society or participate in its collective destiny. But his apparent material and social failure nonetheless offers him a privileged access to spiritual truth, serenity, and an appreciation of the world’s beauty, a harmony conveyed by Le Clézio’s poetic writing: "It is night now, I hear deep ​​ inside me the living sound of the sea that is coming' (375).

Béatrice Chahine

Translated by Mary Vogl

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CHAHINE, Béatrice, Le Chercheur d’or de J.-M.G. Le Clézio : problématique du héros, Paris, L’Harmattan, coll. « Approches Littéraires », 2010 ; DUTTON, Jacqueline, Le Chercheur d’or et d’ailleurs : L’utopie de J.- M.G. Le Clézio, Paris, L’Harmattan, coll. « Utopies », 2003 ; ÉLIADE, Mircea, Le Sacré et le profane, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Folio/Essais », 1965 ; ÉLIADE, Mircea, Mythes, rêves et mystères, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Folio/Essais », 1957 ; ROUSSEL-GILLET, Isabelle, Étude sur J.-M.G. Le Clézio : Le Chercheur d’or, Paris, Ellipses, coll. « Résonances », 2001, (2005 pour la 2e édition) ; LE CLÉZIO, J.-M.G., Le Chercheur d’or, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Folio, », 1985 ; ONIMUS, Jean, Pour lire Le Clézio, PUF, coll. « Écrivains », Paris, 1994 ; SALLES, Marina, Étude sur Le Clézio : Désert, Paris, Ellipses, coll. « Résonances », 1999.

The character of La Malinche is both a historical and mythical figure. La Malinche was the young indigenous woman who acted as Cortés' interpreter during Mexico's conquest. The very origin of the name Malinche remains unknown and could be a distortion of either her Nahuatl name Malintzin or her Spanish Christian name Marina.

Born circa 1500 in the region of Veracruz, a province of the Aztec empire, Doña Marina would have spoken Nahuatl as her mother tongue. Sold to a ruler from the Maya nations of Yucatán, whose language she came to learn, she was thereafter offered as a tribute to Cortés in 1519 (Arjona 2002: 9-10). The newly christened Marina was then taken along Cortés' path of conquest. Her career as an interpreter began when he made contact with the Aztecs. She became the Spaniards' lengua – tongue. Commonly used by Bernal Díaz del Castillo's contemporaries, this term shows the significant role of interpreters for the discoverers: both an organ and a system, the lengua personifies the very function of communication.

La Malinche in historical texts

La Malinche appears in Le Rêve mexicain ou la pensée interrompue (RM) as one of the major characters of the Mexican conquest. The historical text that describes La Malinche in most details is also the starting point of Rêve mexicain: Bernal Díaz del Castillo's tremendous chronicle. Díaz del Castillo explored the Mexican New World and Central America alongside Cortés and his chronicle went on to feature numerous elements of epic lyric, or geste, setting the cornerstone of a mythical tradition of which La Malinche would become the figurehead.

This text's objectivity is yet to be proven, as Díaz del Castillo published it more than fifty years after the facts, as a reaction to Spanish priest Francisco López de Gómara's "courtly lies" (RM, 56, my translation). Hired by Cortés in 1540 to write his biography, López de Gómara published Historia general de las Indias y Vida de Hernán Cortés in 1552. Doña Marina appeared in it only as a side note (Arjona, 2002, 15-19). Besides being based mostly on hearsay, as López de Gómara had never actually set foot on the new continent, the book was so full of historical and factual errors that Philip of Spain, the heir apparent himself, forbade its reprint.

Another historical text that features traces of La Malinche is the Florentine Codex, "the admirable work left in heritage by the Mexican people" (RM, 248, my translation). A compilation of conversations between Spanish monk Bernardino de Sahagún and Mexican informants, it is written in Nahuatl with Spanish translations in some places, and has numerous illustrations featuring La Malinche standing next to Cortés with Spanish soldiers and Mexican allies to her left and caciques to her right.

In his first letter to Charles V, Cortés wrote "After God, it is to Doña Marina that we owe the conquest of New Spain" (Carmona, 2007). However, although Doña Marina's participation in the matter was strategically significant, she was not, as the Mexican popular imaginary seems to have retained, solely responsible for the annihilation of an entire civilisation. She advised Cortés about divisions between nations composing the Aztec kingdom, which allowed Spain to ally with some of them to better defeat Moctezuma. But more factors came into play: European "modern arms" (RM, 11, my translation), epidemics that wiped out thousands of natives without the conquerors having to lift a finger, and of course, the "Spaniards' golden dream, a consuming, ruthless dream" (RM, 11, my translation), the main culprit of the "Mexican conquest tragedy". Adding to those were forced labour, systematic slavery, land expropriation and profitability, and especially the "deliberate disorganisation of peoples allowing to maintain them in and especially convince them of their own inferiority" (RM, 213, my translation).

Historical and mythical figures of La Malinche

Since the colonial era and throughout the periods of independence, nationalisation, indigenismo and return to the origins, this feminine figure is superimposed with all roles and myths, from the Chingada (the great prostitute of the Mexican popular imagining) to the Llorona (ghost of Latin-American legends), from the homeland's Mother to the homeland's wrecker.

La Malinche is associated to the popular Virgin of Guadalupe, the nation's patron saint, and also shares many traits of the Aztec goddess Tonantzín. The latter is a complex feminine character who represents, in the Conquistadors' Christian worldview, a transgression of the male, White authority. She is associated by some chroniclers such as Bernardino de Sahagún to the double figure of Eve and the snake.

This ambiguity is alluded to in Ourania (OU), where La Malinche is represented through Ariana Luz and, more subtly, through Lili. Whilst the former depicts an unequivocally "bad" Malinche – traitor, opportunist, shameless – the latter features many different characteristics of La Malinche such as her mediating qualities. Lili the young, "lost-lived" (OU, 131, my translation) native embodies the suffering of exploited women and of the colonised people forced into near-slavery by the global powers that be. However, Lili represents the persistence and beauty of a timeless human spirit: "You are as old as the temples' basalt, you are an enduring root. You are soft and lively, you have known evil and remained new. You push back the fringe of ​​ refuse at the edge of the canal, you filter the black water of the Orandino laguna..." (OU, 112, my translation). The American pipe dream that Lili seeks to join is a modern-day equivalent of the Conquistadors' dream at the time of La Malinche.

The femininities of La Malinche

La Malinche does not escape feminine role stereotyping. Did she give herself voluntarily to the Conquistador, or did he rape her? The truth is of no consequence: Cortés possessed La Malinche, and the Mexican woman through her weakness let herself be sullied by the conqueror. 

In El Laberinto de la soledad, an essay on Mexican identity, Octavio Paz assimilates the Mexican nation to La Malinche. He links them in terms of their common rape by the Spaniards, as well as of their similar "despicable passiveness", as demonstrated in their self-offering. The latter attitude is the main characteristic of La Chingada, a self-destructive figure whose name in Mexican Spanish translates as "the fucked woman" (in both the sexual and metaphorical sense) – "the cruel incarnation of the feminine condition" (Paz, 1985, 86).

La Malinche is also accused of colluding with the enemy and consenting to assimilation. She is also at the origin of the modern Mexican man's indignity: as symbolic sons of a raped indigenous woman and a bloodthirsty White father, as descendants of their son, a mestizo bastard, Mexicans are fundamentally dishonoured and emasculated. The Mexican woman, weak and powerless, is thus condemned to prove her purity continually and to try to reach an unattainable ideal: that of the Virgin of Guadalupe, pure, virginal, and pregnant. By assimilating Mexico to La Malinche, Paz creates a double alienation of a people he perceives as vanquished.

La Malinche is all but a victim. She provokes extreme reactions, never indifference, which stem from her power. Indeed, depicting her as the origin of the Mexican people's downfall invests her with great power. This unsettling trait disturbs her detractors, who predictably resort to hurling the least original insult commonly directed to a woman – that is, calling her a whore.

La Malinche is an emblematic figure of mestizaje in the New World. Indeed, as was highlighted by Paz, Mexican society is a land of superimposed pasts (Paz, 1985) built upon a prolonged mestizaje between Europeans and Natives. The Mexican people prides itself on being a mixed-race people, even a "cosmic race" (Vasconcelos, 1925). La Malinche's son with Cortés, Don Martín, will be dubbed the "first Mexican" in order to demonstrate the hybrid nature of this people, in an unapologetically subjective effort to promote national unity.

Over the past decades, La Malinche has become the figurehead of a new intercultural, feminist, plurilingual movement celebrating her subversive qualities. Today she is very popular in Mexico and among Mexicans living in the United States of America. The sizable immigration taking place between these territories is being questioned. Young Americans of Mexican origin, Americanised Mexicans or Chicanos call themselves Sons of La Malinche, thus reappropriating Paz's title.

Six centuries later, La Malinche remains, even outside of Mexico, an extraordinarily ambiguous character whose in-between nature still arouses curiosity and a need for interpretation.

Caroline Mangerel

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARJONA, Gloria. 2002. Mutaciones de la Malinche: Itinerarios de una leyenda en México y los Estados Unidos, doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California; BLYTHE, Martin. A Tale Of Two Women, Malinche as the Virgin of Guadalupe, <sexualfables.com/a_tale_of_two_women.php>, retrieved 2/08/2012; CARMONA, Doralicia. 2007. « Malinche », Memoria política de México, <memoriapoliticademexico.org/Biografias/MAL05.html>, retrieved 2/09/2012; DÍAZ DEL CASTILLO, Bernal. 1967. Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, México, Porrúa; LANYON, Anna. 2003. The New World of Martín Cortés, Crows Nest (Australia): Allen & Unwin; LE CLÉZIO, J.-M.G. 1988. Le Rêve mexicain ou la pensée interrompue, Paris: Gallimard, "NRF essais"; LE CLÉZIO, J.-M.G. 2007. Ourania, Paris: Gallimard, "Folio"; PAZ, Octavio. 1984. El laberinto de la soledad, México: FCE; PAZ, Octavio. 1985 [1961]. The Labyrinth of Solitude and The Other Mexico, transl. by L. Kemp, New York: Grove Press, Inc. VASCONCELOS, José. 1925. La raza cósmica. Misión de la raza iberoamericana, Madrid: Agencia Mundial de Librería.