Nights in Strasbourg

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Nights in Strasbourg ( French : Les nuits de Strasbourg ) is a novel by the French - Algerian writer Assia Djebar from 1997. It was published in French by Actes Sud and the German translation by Beate Thill was published by Unionsverlag Zurich in 1999 .

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The prologue highlights the evacuation of Strasbourg at the beginning of the Second World War in 1939. The impressions of the different residents, until in the end the birds leave the city and only dogs, cats and rats remain.

The story is divided into nine days in 1990. There are nine days in which the protagonist Thelja visits a man in Strasbourg. Thelja left her family in Algeria when she was in her early 30s and moved to Paris. She visits the much older man she met in Paris and they spend the first night together. The next day she visits her childhood friend Eve, who is also in Strasbourg and an Arab Jew . Eve also left her husband and child in Marrakech and works as a photographer in Europe. She is now in a relationship with a German, Hans. Since she has sworn to never set foot in Germany based on history, she has drawn as close as she could to Strasbourg to the Heidelberg-based urbanist. She is now expecting a child from him. Thelja and Eve indulge in childhood memories from Algeria before Thelja returns to the man in the hotel.

On the third day she visits the university library to indulge in the copies of Herrad von Landsberg's Hortus Deliciarum . At night the man talks about his mother and his memories of the evacuation of the city. He never met his father. As an Alsatian nationalist, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and died in Russia. The following Saturday, Hans from Heidelberg arrives at Eve's. For the first time it becomes completely clear to him the meaning of the coming fatherhood, and they get into a brief argument about the boy's circumcision . In the evening the couple gives an aperitif . In addition to Thelja and Francois, there are also Irma and Karl and Jacqueline, who staged the play Antigone with young people from the banlieue . Thelja explains how she got her first name ("snow"). Her father was in command of a rebel unit in the Algerian War of Independence and had met with her mother away from the village. On the way back, the mother ran through deep snow in winter. That night the couple just lay next to each other.

The next day they all attend the dress rehearsal of Jacqueline's play. Eve asks Hans to repeat the Strasbourg oaths with her - in this context she speaks to him in German for the first time. A day later, Eve goes to a small village in the Vosges with Irma . As a Jewish child, Irma survived the German occupation because a Resistance fighter had passed her off as her daughter. She wants this woman to officially adopt her as a child, but she refuses. Thelja visits Francois at his home. The following day, Eve and Thelja visit an old monk. He lived in Algeria in his youth and later offered Maghreb migrants a roof over their heads in France. He has kept photos from the two friends' home region. Irma goes to a play with Karl. On the way home, Karl confesses to her that he hopes for more from her acquaintance. He also tells her that he grew up as the son of a family originally from Alsace in Algeria and only later came to Alsace as pied noir . Irma rejects him at first, but decides differently during the course of the night.

The following day, Jacqueline is shot dead in the street by her former partner. He is a young man of Algerian origin, the son of Eve's neighbor. The main actress of the play, Jamila, can no longer confess her love to Jacqueline and is in despair. Eve and Thelja comfort the day and night about the completely distraught mother of the perpetrator. On the last day of Thelja's stay in Strasbourg, everyone attended the play. However, it is not played, Jamila only gives a monologue that is difficult to interpret.

In the epilogue it becomes clear that there was no future for Thelja and Francois. After her return, she hardly reported to him and when he visits Paris it becomes clear that she does not want to continue the relationship. Thelja later disappears, neither Francois nor her husband in Algeria know where she is. Only the reader learns that she returned to Strasbourg with unknown intent.

Recurring motifs

Within the different storylines there are different motifs that keep recurring. One of them is the legacy of the past. Eve, Thelja, Francois, Karl and Irma are all shaped in one way or another by the events of World War II or the Algerian War. Another is the connection between the regions, stories, people and actions from Algeria and Alsace seem to be interwoven. The last chapter is then also called "Alsagerie". Finally, it is a recurring motif of the role and diversity of languages ​​in Assia Djebar, for example when Eve speaks German for the first time with Hans.

shape

The book is mainly described from Thelja's narrative perspective, but later chapters also from the perspective of other characters such as Eve or Irma.

Classification in the work of the author

In an article published in The French Review, Michael O'Riley interprets nights in Strasbourg as a continuation of Assia Djebar's confrontation with the Algerian war and the wounds of Algeria's past. The traumas and upheavals described in the book, which arose in Europe as a result of the Second World War, are representative of the suffering of the people in Algeria. He also highlights some of the contradictions created by Djebar in the work. Thus, the Oaths of Strasbourg were indeed spoken for the purpose of the peace agreement, but the goal was associated with them, a common campaign against the third pretender Lothar I lead. He also emphasizes that the name of the theater company Smala is, as mentioned in the book, one of the words that got from Arabic into French, but the background to it is a famous battle of the Duc d'Aumale in the course of the suppression of the Algerian uprisings in 19th century was.

Kathryn Lachman, who has a PhD in Romance studies and music, sees the application of a narrative concept by Edward Said in Strasbourg . He had applied the musical doctrine of counterpoint, intended for the composition of polyphony, to the narration of controversial history, especially in colonized countries. The events must be presented equally from the point of view of all parties and their mutual dependence must be considered. In Djerba portraying the events of the Algerian War both from the point of view of Thelja and the displaced pied noir , she would follow this idea. The juxtaposition of the wars and oppression in Alsace and Algeria also went in this direction. It also shows that Assia Djebar anchored certain self-references in the book. For example, Antigone is described on page 210 as "unyielding" and "one who illuminates the truth about the dead". Both are references to her pseudonym, Djebar is "the uncompromising" and Assia is a healer and companion.

This is Djebar's first text to be played exclusively in Europe. A literature grant from the city of Strasbourg was available to her for research. Djebar did not write the book until later in Louisiana.

reception

Reception upon arrival

In the FAZ, Kristina Maidt-Zincke criticizes both the linguistic exhaustion of the novel and a lack of thematic focus. The prologue about the evacuation of Strasbourg shows Djebar's ability, but the rest of the novel is characterized by "stiff dialogues, awkward changes of perspective and laborious lyricism". Maati Kabbal writes in Liberation that Thelja offers the image of a woman who is "at the same time inflamed and desperate, the image of absolute passion".

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara Frischmuth, in her laudation on Assia Djebar for the award of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, explains this question of language as one of the central themes that Djebar's work is going through, including in "Nights in Strasbourg" https: //www.friedenspreis-des- deutsche-buchhandels.de/sixcms/media.php/1290/2000_djebar.pdf
  2. ^ Michael O'Riley: Translation and Imperialism in Assia Djebar's "Les Nuits de Strasbourg" . In: The French Review . tape 75 , no. 6 , 2002, pp. 1235-1249 .
  3. ^ Kathryn Lachman: The Allure of Counterpoint: History and Reconciliation in the Writing of Edward Said and Assia Djebar . In: Research in African Literatures . tape 41 , no. 4 , 2010, p. 162-186 .
  4. ^ Lachmann, The Allure of Counterpoint, p. 169.
  5. ↑ Review: Fiction: Cold Hand, Fetched From Your Belly . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed June 20, 2018]).
  6. ^ Conte des neuf et une nuits. Par l'Algérienne Assia Djebar, au coeur de Strasbourg, une histoire d'amour, d'exil, d'errance et de folie. Assia Djebar. Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Actes Sud, 405 pp., 128 F. In: Liberation.fr . ( liberation.fr [accessed June 20, 2018]).