La réécriture du mythe dans La femme sans sépulture d’Assia Djebar

Abstract

Rewriting of the myth in “The Woman Without a Burial Place”by Assia Djebar

In this article, we propose to study the rewriting of one of the founding myths: "Ulysses and the Sirens". Indeed, with literature, mythical data are transformed first into matters of analogy, then of confrontation, and finally of analysis and reconstruction. The challenge that makes the passage from myth to literature lies in the word "creation" that Assia Djebar works through a concerted rewriting with several voices, more than one language, more than one meaning. Through myth, the author sheds light on the past, inserting forgotten events into the present of fiction, thus giving life to buried voices.
This research allows us to consider that Assia Djebar replaces Ulysses in the epilogue. She is Ulysses in the feminine; "the traveler", "the foreigner" who has spent her life traveling the world. She has traveled from one continent to another, from North Africa to Europe to the United States. She seems to like this life full of nomadism, Hania the heroine's daughter addresses her words: "O you who took a long time to come back, she continues in a wavering voice, you Houria's niece died next door from our home, you've done, it seems almost around the world, but what to blame you for, you came back to us, isn't that the main thing? ». She returned the narrator / author to Caesarea to recharge her batteries, to recover her past, a forgotten piece of history. She does the same as the Homeric Ulysses who aimed to recover his past as a present. She returns to the patios of the women of Caesarea, today's sirens, she listens to their hidden words, these voices that tell the story of Algeria on the women's side, inside the houses, cloistered. These women reconstruct the past down to the smallest detail. They meditate in the space of silence, remember the past, build the puzzle little by little and make the story of Zoulikha the anthem of all the women of Algeria, those who died for their country.
"The visitor", "the foreigner not so foreign" listens to this word, this song, without being attached to the mast and assigns herself the task of transcribing the song of these women filled with tenderness and sadness in writing. The author is consumed by the desire to preserve the story of her women from oblivion to the point where she materializes this gesture by putting it on paper.
These sirens of Caesarea are all messengers who come to say what we don't know, what we don't see, What happened inside the patios and in the streets of Caesarea, what is forgotten, what is hidden.
Inside the houses, these women ensure the chain of transmission, fight against oblivion. However, the major oversight that arises in this novel is that of the women's fight for independence, their resistance, their mourning. History is the prerogative of the women of Algeria that Assia Djebar "Ulysses in feminine" has given herself the mission of saving her from "oblivion" because it turns out that it is the real death. Assia Djebar's story is constructed to make room for this word, to give it the impetus to take flight, to go beyond the walls of the patios, to reach us. Like the Homeric story that was able to transcend the ages to arrive at the center of the work "La Femme Sans Sepulture".