Il Tolomeo (Dec 2016)
Ritta parmi les bombes et Parler étrangement
Abstract
Between 1910 and 1975, Francophone Lebanese authors witness an evolution in their relation with French language that shows the necessity to ‘get out’ of their mother tongue in order to seize their identity in a better way. Despite a certain nationalist suspicion, this literature demonstrates all its relevance and authenticity. Lately, the generation of writers born in Lebanon during the Civil War puts itself in the continuity of this approach by means of a writing emerging from the memories of the ruins and corpses that inhabited their childhood. So, what is at stake when childhood and war cohabit in the same page some decades after the end of the war? How is the mother tongue perceived? And which characteristics does the linguistic ‘exile’ take in the poetic writing? Ritta Baddoura, Lebanese poet born in 1980 at Deir-el-Kamar and laureate of the Prix Max Jacob découverte 2015 for Parler étrangement, continuously explores this inextricable link among childhood, war and language in her collections. In this sense, we intend to analyse some texts of Ritta parmi le bombes and the path of tongue’s ‘shapes’ in Parler étrangement. We will do this in order to find new stakes in the poetic experience that could reveal original approaches and dynamics in the relation to a theme that never ceases to haunt the Francophone Lebanese poem.
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