‘Traduttore Traditore’? Alexis Kagame's transposition of Kinyarwanda poetry into French

Abstract

Alexis Kagame (1912–1981) wrote on African philosophy, linguistics, poetry, religion, ethnology and oral literatures. His literary production in the national language of his country, Rwanda, the Kinyarwanda, includes works of poetry that he claimed to have conceived by his own imagination and in other cases texts collected from oral sources and transposed into the written form. This transcription of stories collected from storytellers of Rwandan oral tradition passed through some transformations and linguistic adaptations of the initial esoteric language. Alexis Kagame translated some of his works into French, thus adding other transformations to initial literary forms, images, aesthetics, rhythms, ethno‐historical representations, and of course languages. His poetical practice was motivated by his nationalist project to represent Rwanda as one ‘Nation’ consolidated by politico‐historical, ethnological, philosophical, religious, linguistic and literary elements. How is this aesthetic ideology reflected in Alexis Kagame's translations of genres, of narratives, and of languages?