Kateb Yacine

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Kateb Yacine (1929 - 1989) was an Algerian writer notable for his novels and plays, both in French and Algerian Arabic language, and his advocacy of the Algerian national cause.

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[edit] Biography

Kateb Yacine was born on the August 26, but more probably on the August 2, 1929 in Constantine, Algeria, but is registered in Condé Smendou (presently Zirout Youcef). He came from a scholarly maraboutic berber family from eastern Algeria (Nadhor), called Kheltiya (or Keblout), which had been arabised, then dispersed during the colonial period. His maternal gradfather was 'bach adel', deputy judge of the qadi in Condé Smendou (Zirout Youcef), his father a lawyer, ad the family follows him through his various assignments in different parts of the country. Young Kateb (which means 'writer'), enters in 1937 the Sedrata Quran school, in 1938 the French school in Lafayette (Bougaa) in Little Kabylie, where the family had moved, then in 1941, as a boarder, the colonial 'collège' of Setif.

Kateb Yacine is attending the 'troisième' when the May 8, 1945 demonstrations occur, to which he takes part and which end on a massacre of fifty thousand Algerians by the French army and police. Three days later, he is placed under arrest and imprisoned during two months. He espouses the national cause, while he witnesses his mother 'becoming mad'. After being expelled from the 'lycée', as he is passing through a period of depression, and reading Lautréamont and Baudelaire, his father sends him at the Bône (Annaba) lycée. There he meets 'Nedjma' ('the star'), an 'already married cousin', with whom he lives 'maybe eight months', he will later acknowledge, and publishes his first collection of poetry in 1946. He is already 'politised' and starts 'making lectures under the wing of the PPA, the great mass nationalist party of the time'. In 1947, Kateb comes to Paris, 'in the wolf's throat' and performs in May, in the 'Salle des Sociétés savantes', a lecture on emir Abd al-Qadir, adheres to the Communist party. During a second visit to France he publishes the following year 'Nedjma ou le Poème du Couteau' ('an embryo of what was to follow') in the periodic 'Le Mercure de France'. He is a journalist at the daily 'Alger républicain' between 1949 and 1951, his first great reportage being from Saudi Arabia and Sudan (Khartoum). After coming back, he publishes notably, with the pseudonym Said Lamri, an article denouncing 'swindling' at the Holy Place of Mecca.

After the death in 1950 of his father, Kateb Yacine works as a docker in Algiers. He then moves to Paris until 1959, where he works with Malek Haddad, develops a relationship with M'hamed Issiakhem, and, in 1954, has a long interview with Bertold Brecht. In 1954, the journal Esprit publishes 'Le cadavre encerclé', which is staged by Jean-Marie Serreau, but is forbidden in France. 'Nedjma' is published in 1956 (and Kateb will remember 'the thought of the editor…"This is too complicated. In Algeria you've got such pretty sheep, why don't you talk about your sheep?"'). During the liberation war, Kateb Yacine, facing harassment from the DST, is forced to travel during a long time, and is invited as a writer, or lives thanks to various odd job, in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia and USSR.

In 1962, after a stay in Cairo, Kateb Yacine comes back to Algeria shortly after the celebrations of Independence, begins his contributions to 'L'Alger républicain' anew, but makes between 1963 and 1967 many stays in Moscow, in France, and in Germany, while 'La Femme sauvage', which he had written between 1954 and 1959 is performed in Paris in 1963, 'Les Ancêtres redoublent de férocité' in 1967, 'La Poudre d'intelligence' in 1968 (in dialectal Arab in Algier in 1969). He publishes in 1964 On 'Alger républicain' six texts on 'Our brothers the Indians' and talks in 'Jeune Afrique' of his meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, while his mother is interned int the psychiatric hospital in Blida ('La Rose de Blida', in 'Révolution Africaine', July 1965). In 1967, he leaves for Vietnam, completely abandons novels and writes 'L'Homme aux pieds de caoutchouc', a controversial play celebrating Ho Chi Minh published, performed and translated into Arabic in 1970.

The same year, establishing himself more durably in Algeria, and refusing to write in French, Kateb enters 'a great turning point', working towards a popular theatre, epical and satirical, performed in dialectal Arab. Beginning this work with the company of the 'Théatre de la Mer' from Bab El Oued in 1971, patronised by the 'Ministère du Travail et des Affaires Sociales', Kateb travels the whole of Algeria during five years, for an audience of workers, farmers and students. His main shows are titled 'Mohamed prends ta valise' (1971), 'la Voix des femmes' (1972), '(La Guerre de deux mille ans' (1974) (where the ancestral heroin Kahina makes surface), 'Le Roi de l'Ouest'(1975) (against Hassan II), 'Palestine trahie' (1977). Between 1972 and 1975 Kateb follows the tournées for 'Mohamed prends ta valise' and 'La Guerre de deux mille ans' in France and in the German Democratic Republic. He becomes 'exhiled' in 1978 by the Algerian government in Sidi-Bel-Abbes to direct the city's regional theatre. Having been forbidden to appear on television, he performs his plays inside schools or companies. His evocation of the berber tradition and of 'tamazight' language, his libertarian positions, notably in favour of gender equality, against the return of the headscarf, attract many critics.

In 1986, Kateb Yacine reveals an excerpt of a play about Nelson Mandela, and receives in 1987 in France the Grand prix National des Lettres. In 1988 the Avignon Festival creates 'Le Bourgeois gentilhomme ou le spectre du parc Monceau' written at the request of the Centre culturel of Arras. He settles in Verscheny in Drôme, and travels to the United States, but he continues making frequent stays in Algeria. At his death he leaves an unfinished work on the Algerian riots of October 1988. In 2003 his work is added to the programme of the Comédie-Française.

Instructed of the language of the coloniser, Kateb Yacine considered French as the Algerians' 'war loot'. 'Francophony is a neocolonial political machine, which only perpetuates our alienation, but the usage of French language does not mean that one is an agent of a foreign power, and I write in French to tell the French that I am not French', he declared in 1966. Trilingual, Kateb Yacine also wrote and overviewed the translation of his texts in the Berber language. His work translates the search for identity of a country endowed with multiple cultures and the aspirations of a people.

Kateb Yacine is the father of Nadia, Hans and Amazigh Kateb, singer of the Gnawa Diffusion music group.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books by Kateb

  • Soliloques, poèmes, Bône, Ancienne imprimerie Thomas, 1946. Réédition (avec une introduction de Kateb Yacine), Alger, Bouchène, 1991, 64 pages.
  • Abdelkader et l'indépendance algérienne, Alger, En Nahda, 1948, 47 pages.
  • Nedjma, roman, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1956, 256 pages.
  • Le Cercle des représailles, théâtre, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1959, 169 pages [contient Le Cadavre encerclé, La Poudre d'intelligence, Les Ancêtres redoublent de férocité, Le Vautour, introduction d'Edouard Glissant : Le Chant profond de Kateb Yacine].
  • Le Polygone étoilé, roman, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1966, 182 pages.
  • Les Ancêtres redoublent de férocité, [avec la fin modifiée], Paris, collection TNP, 1967.
  • L'Homme aux sandales de caoutchouc [[hommages au Vietnam et à Ho Chi Minh], théâtre, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1970, 288 pages.
  • Boucherie de l'espérance,oeuvres théâtrales, [quatre pièces, contient notamment Mohammed prends ta valise, 1971, et Le Bourgeois sans culotte], Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1999, 570 pages .
  • L'Œuvre en fragments, Inédits littéraires et textes retrouvés, rassemblés et présentés par Jacqueline Arnaud, Paris, Sindbad 1986, 448 pages (ISBN 2-7274-0129-9).
  • Le Poète comme un boxeur, entretiens 1958-1989, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1994.
  • Minuit passé de douze heures, écrits journalistiques 1947-1989, textes réunis par Amazigh Kateb, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1999, 360 pages.
  • Parce que c'est une femme, introduction de Zebeïda Chergui, théâtre, [contient un entretien avec Kateb Yacine avec El Hanar Benali, 1972, La Kahina ou Dilhya; Saout Ennissa, 1972; La Voix des femmes et Louise Michel et la Nouvelle Calédonie], Paris, Editions des Femmes, 2004, 174 pages.

[edit] Introductions and Prefaces

  • Les Fruits de la colère, préface à Aît Djaffar, Complainte de la petite Yasmina
  • Les mille et une nuit de la révolution, préface à Abdelhamid Benzine, La Plaine et la montagne
  • Les Ancêtres redoublent de férocité, préface à Tassadit Yacine, "Lounis Aït Menguellet chante…", textes berbères et français, Paris, La Découverte, 1989; Alger Bouchène/Awal, 1990 [dernier texte de Kateb Yacine, adressé à Tassadit Yacine le 29 septembre 1989, un mois avant sa mort].
  • Kateb Yacine also wrote many prefaces for his painter friends, M'hamed Issiakhem (Œil-de-lynx et les américains, trente-cinq années de l'enfer d'un peintre) et Mohammed Khadda.

[edit] On Kateb Yacine

  • Hommage à Kateb Yacine [with a detailed bibliography by Jacqueline Arnaud], Kalim n° 7, Alger, Office des Publications Universitaires, 1987, 264 pages.
  • Ghania Khelifi, Kateb Yacine, Eclats et poèmes, [chronology and many documents], Alger, Enag Editions, 1990, 136 pages.
  • Kateb Yacine, Eclats de mémoire, documents réunis par Olivier Corpet, Albert Dichy et Mireille Djaider, Editions de l'IMEC, 1994, 80 pages (ISBN 2-908295-20-2).

[edit] Links in other wikipedias

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kateb_Yacine French article of which the preceding is mostly a translation.

[edit] External links

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In other languages