Translating the Untranslated: Djebar's Le blanc de l'Algerie

Abstract

Two nouns often meet in tandem in Assia Djebar's recent writings, particularly those writings profoundly concerned with bloodletting that has plagued recent-day Algeria and that finds it roots in Algerian War of Liberation. Those nouns are le blanc (the white, the blank, etc.) and la voix (voice)?the former signifying among other things death, unfulfillment, absence, and unwrittenness, latter often silenced voice of innumerable victims of repression and recrimination occurring in years since revolution. The work central to this essay is Djebar's Le blanc de VAlgerie, a perplexing memoir published in 1995. The problematic I address is that of Djebar's impelling motive to lend voice to sufferings of her fellow Algerians and to those who have struggled to bring about a just and integrated society. Her deep solicitude in regard to individual tragedies of those of whom she writes projects ultimately onto question of nationhood. Djebar seeks to bring forth power of voice incarned in words of Albert Camus that serve as one of two epigraphs to Le blanc de VAlgerie. Sij'avais le pouvoir de donner une voix a la solitude et a l'angoisse de chacun d'entre nous, c'est avec cette voix que je m'adresserais a vous Tf I had power to give voice to solitude and anguish of each of us, it is with that voice that I would speak to you.' The noun blanc carries multiple connotations in Djebar's memoir. The Grand Robert dictionary offers a profusion of meanings: that which reflects light, symbolizes purity and innocence, is exsangue (emptied of blood), an interval, an empty space as on a written page, center ofa target (a bull'seye) or target itself, to name but a few. Djebar rings a refrain on these multiple meanings: le blanc for her suggests paleness of a nation that has seen blood of so many of its people shed, but above all perhaps it suggests unwrittenness of blank page yet to be marked, story of