Repeating Islands

Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau has published a new book with Gallimard titled The Neuf consciences du malfini. In a departure from previous work, Chamoiseau has chosen the fable as his form, building his text on the lessons learned by a bird of prey (the malfini, a broad-winged hawk) when he comes to know two small and vulnerable birds, the coulibri (or blue-crested hummingbird) and the foufou (the Antillean-crested hummingbird).  Chamoiseau has long been interested in the use of birds as metaphors, an interest he has associated with a play on his last name, oiseau de Cham or bird of Cham, and the link to the story of Noah’s son Cham and the curse the father placed on Cham’s descendants, predicting that they would be “servants of their brethren” or slaves.

The principal challenge for Chamoiseau in this text is that of doing justice to the social, political, historical and aesthetic reality that he is interested in addressing through an allegorical world from which humans are absent. For the reviewer of Le Monde, Chamoiseau accomplishes his purpose by allowing the birds to take flight, so to speak, and to give wings to the imagination. The result is a book that is “audacious in its form, admirable for its lyricism, toucing because of its poetic and political generosity.” The book is, in its political approach, takes it cue from the two books Chamoiseau has recently published with Edouard Glissant, Quand les murs tombent, l’identité nationale hors la loi ? and L’Intraitable Beauté du monde, where they argued for the poetical foundation of politics: “The absence of beauty,” they write, “is the sign of a threat to life itself, a call to resistance.”

For the review of the book in Le Monde (in French) go to http://www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2009/04/09/les-neuf-consciences-du-malfini-de-patrick-chamoiseau_1178485_3260.html

To whimsical photo above is by Jean-Luc Bertini and can be seen in its original context at http://souleymanedieye.blogspot.com/2008/01/une-flamboyante-mditation-potique-de.html