This weekend was under the sign of cosmopolitan literature.
First of all, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio received the Nobel Prize in literature: ‘author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.’ This was the occasion for me to deepen my acquaintance with Le Clézio’s works. I started reading his first novel, Le Procès-Verbal, for which he obtained at the age of 23 the Renaudot Prize — a prestigious French literary prize, awarded by journalists and critiques.
In Paris, where I currently resides, is organised yearly a literary event called ‘Lire en fête’ or ‘Party for reading’. This was the occasion to attend to two events with a Danish and a Swedish writer, very different the one from the other.
Jan Sonnergård, born 1963, became famous in Denmark with the publication of a short novels collection entitled Radiator published in 1997, to which succeded Sidste Søndag i Oktober (last Sunday in October) in 2000, and Jeg er stadig bange for Caspar Michael Petersen (I am still afraid of Caspar Michael Petersen), 2003. The name ‘Radiator’ was chosen because one of his literature professor declared that it was not possible to imagine ever using this word in a novel. This trilogy describes three classes of people in their meaningless existence in Denmark during the nineties. The language is extremely provoking, as the title ‘Radiator’ was meant to be. The first short novel Jan read, from Radiator, is written in a language close to a techno beat, and was uttered just as fast by a reader wearing an agressive blue and red Spiderman shirt. A group of young underprivileged have decided it was ‘payback time’ as they are going to loot a discount supermarket of its best products, and walk a rampage tour in an aggressive and nihilist cynicism, attacking anyone on the way. Another one told the story of a middle-class couple, leaving the most hypocritical life in their knowledge of the wife’s affairs with other men. The last one, told the story of a young drug addict from the upper class. These short-novels represent for me exactly the Copenhagen I experienced during my years 2001-2006, as I read his short-novels at this time, and as I was experiencing a different kind of life in Copenhagen.
Jan read three short novels, cut with jazz music interpreted by a trio tenor sax, bass, guitar led by the Danish saxophonist Martin Jacobsen. They were soothing the harsh tone of Jan’s stories, perhaps to remind of the higher value, the ideal of perfection that humankind is also capable of aspiring to in its unquenchable thirst for eternity.
Jonas Hassen Khemiri, born 1978 in Sweden, is a writer of Tunisian descent who explores the relation of language and power, and questions identity through language-plays in his two novels. He was in Paris to present and talk about his last novel recently translated into French. French was for him a ‘family language’, to which he declares having a vocabulary related to those things. Still, he displayed a good command of the language and was able to introduce to the audience a very vivid understanding of his world views in the novel Montecore-En unik tiger (Montecore: a unique Tiger), which won the Swedish P O Enquist literary Prize in 2006. It is not possible to translate such a book, and especially in French, since French is part of the book in Swedish. In the French translation, Lucile Clauss and Max Stadler decided to imagine a different character than the Swedish one, more accessible to French readers, by transforming him into a Tunisian man whose use of French is transformed into a reverence to what is perceived as high culture, and hence using formal language.
It is possible to read an interesting Chat in Le Monde with Jonas, in which he explains his relation to language and identity.
I have thought a lot on identity, language, globalisation and cosmopolitanism this weekend, from a literary perspective. Every language is tightly related to a country, or a society more specifically, and at the same time, it is completely autonomous of it. Jan used today’s street language to describe in the same violent and aggressive way some of today’s capitalist conditions. The focus is very tight, and the limits set to today’s Copenhagen. How to translate such conditions and languages? In French the academy is still impregnating minds with an idea of extreme reverence to French. To the point that in such a way, French is a dead language. French writers are also respecting the language very much. Jonas is inventing expressions creating verbs from words, imagining a new language to stick to a character who is a writer born in Sweden, but from a Tunisian father speaking French, and of course globe trotter in the world where English is the new lingua franca.
Language seems to be the country for Le Clézio, in all his travels, and also for Jonas, who is extending the limits of language beyond the borders. Jan, in a different way, limits even more the language to fake internal limits, in order to better denounce them in a violent super-realism. Still, it is very difficult to find proper ways to communicate such new ways, since translations work inside the nationalist paradigm, and intend to interpret for a supposed “national” audience, pieces of work which are transnational, supranationa, or infranational. The solution would be the creation of a succesful literary theory to transcend these problems. A cosmopolitan literary theory?
frankejbypoulsen.net 
Cher ami,
Ton écrit me suggère beaucoup d’idées, et c’est l’exemple de Khemiri qui va me servir pour essayer de te les présenter; c’est en effet une part essentielle de l’art que l’on explore aujourd’hui qu’épuiser la richesse de ce sujet contemporain, nous-mêmes, cet énonciateur-je qui passe d’une langue à une autre, les mélange, dans une dynamique découlant du cosmopolitisme. Cinéma, littérature, partout le moment de changement de conscience politique altermondialiste fait émerger cette voix-là, de Khemiri ou d’un autre, qui ne s’explique plus seulement comme francophonie, immigration, deuxième ou troisième génération, mais comme cosmopolitisme, à partager pleinement avec une nouvelle identité commune aussi pour les européens.
Les dychotomies possibles des discriminations sociales n’ont pas disparu, mais elles s’effacent devant la prise de pouvoir d’une autre multiplicité, en Amérique Latine, dans le monde arabe, en Inde, Chine. Le prix Booker décerné cette année à un jeune écrivain Indien pour une première oeuvre fait aussi état d’une mondialisation culturelle beaucoup plus consistante que les prémices des années 80 du siècle passé.
Face à tout cela, le risque est de se laisser aller dans une complaisance qui confondrait exotisme et métaphore. La littérature du soupçon, chère à Camille de Toledo, doit nous ouvrir les yeux, discrètement, quand les projecteurs nous aveuglent par de trop insistantes invitations au voyage.
Tu as lu Le procès-verbal de Le Clézio. Je t’envie, car je crois comprendre que c’est un livre excellent. Pourtant ce prix Nobel montrerait une route, celle de la découverte de la magie, mexicaine, africaine, maghrébine, qui nous éloigne du vrai défi de la culture: surmonter le vertige du vide spectaculaire, sans spectacles de substitution: la recherche du temps inventaire.
Salutations,
Salut Abdullah,
Cela me fait toujours très plaisir les dialogues que tu engages sur mon blog. Effectivement, tu soulèves d’intéressantes réflexions. Je me permets la remarque que le danger de l’exotisme pour le seul but de « l’exotisme », et le « vertige du vide spectaculaire » qu’il engage, ne sont pas des questions nouvelles. Rien de nouveau sous le cocotier, comme je m’en suis rendu compte en me plongeant dans des écrits français du dix-huitième siècle. Ce que tu dis envisage en fait deux éléments je pense. D’une part, l’acception que le cosmopolitisme entraîne nécessairement un voyage, un déplacement dans l’espace vers un « autre » culturel et social. D’autre part, l’acception que l’identité doit être liée à un référent culturel et social. J’aimerais ici approfondir surtout la première part.
Il s’agit de questions inhérentes à la problématique cosmopolite. Je n’ai pas eu le temps de mettre sous forme d’articles de blog les éléments de mon mémoire. Peut-être qu’un simple copier/coller… mais j’aimerais organiser cela un peu mieux.
En fait, je vais rédiger tout cela dans un nouveau post, cela sera beaucoup plus simple car je me rends compte qu’il y a beaucoup de choses à dire. Je m’explique : l’apparition et l’usage du mot « cosmopolite » contient et exprime bien cette problématique que tu soulèves. Vois donc ma réponse dans mon nouveau post.
A bientôt,