Ce qu'ici nous sommes par Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ce qu'ici nous sommes par Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès Alain Ranwez Blas de Roblès, Jean-Marie. Ce qu'ici nous sommes. Zulma, 2020. ISBN 978-2-84304-971-2. Pp. 288. Invited to spend several weeks at a luxurious clinic on the shore of majestic Lake Calafquén, Chile, Augustin Harbour relates the extraordinary voyage he had experienced in the desert of southern Libya forty years earlier. His psychiatrist and host hopes that recounting this sojourn will enable Augustin to put some meaning in the most chaotic and fantastic images he had retained from that experience. This unique novel recounts in the first person a detailed adventure that might have been [End Page 226] invented or imagined, however, since so many of the particulars recalled often do not truly exist. Consequently, Augustin's depiction could be an "Histoire mensongère" (11) and/or a phantasmagoric adventure. After six days in a storm-ridden desert the explorer/adventurer Augustin comes across an unknown oasis inside of which he discovers a village called Zindān. Now protected from the heat and sun and accepted by the village, Augustin begins to explore. The village is divided in four semi-independent tribes: "Ceux du jujubier […] Les Amazones […] Les Mangeurs de crevettes […] Trayeurs de chiennes" (23–24). It is led by one god, Haij Hassan but Haij, however, cannot be consulted through prayer: "L'invoquer pour corriger nos misères humaines, c'est insulter sa propre nature" (89). As Augustin's ethnographical descriptions of Zindān's people, traditions, animals, and objects unfold, the narrative becomes a new literary experience in that it involves reinterpreted traditional and mythological references, incongruous inventions, unconnected memories, unusual sexual and culinary practices, and numerous other activities that guide the reader into an incongruent world of imagination or perhaps the subconscious. In order to better enlighten the reader, Blas de Roblès offers original drawings in the margins throughout the novel. Many of the chapters are also divided into two parts, one being the narration itself and the other entitled "Ricordi," which present discussions Augustin has with the other guests at the Chilean villa consequently keeping the reader in check between two questionable realities. The novel offers an acute originality, which might reside within the confines of Augustin's folly. The novel also represents a sort of encyclopedia conjugated by perhaps a madman and thereby cautioning the reader not to believe everything. The novel, however, contains much humor and tongue in cheek references to our modernity. Obscure apparitions appear throughout the novel: talking hyenas, the use of weight of books as currency instead of content, the absence of telling time creating a sort of perpetual moment, the use of a toilet as a royal throne, the levitation of cheeses, giants named Gog and Magog, and decorative tattoos used as the jocose "signes parleurs" among many other references and illustrations. To enjoy this novel the reader must accept the disquieting aspect of the presentation and the unique virtuosity of the author's esoteric erudition; ergo this mesmerizing novel is not perhaps for everyone. Alain Ranwez Metropolitan State University of Denver, emeritus Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French