Isabelle Eberhardt: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Nomad

Abstract

Even before her strange death at twenty-seven in a flash flood in Ain Sefra, an oasis in the Algerian Sahara, Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) was a legend. This Rimbaud-type woman repudiated Europe and its civilization, converted to Islam, dressed as a man, assumed a male identity, and roamed the Sahara, untrammeled by the constraints of her youth and sex. 1 This self-willed nomad also had unbounded literary ambitions. In the course of her brief existence, she wrote more than two thousand pages of notes, articles, and fiction, travelling tirelessly in the nomadic fashion, on foot, on horseback, alone, and with caravans. Her vagabondage (one of the many reference terms to her errance and nomadic way of life) was concomitant with her vocation