Starting from Talismano: Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Nomadic Writing

Starting from Talismano: Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Nomadic Writing Ronnie Scharfman Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had; the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places. —Italo Calvino C’est parce qu’elle est inaugurable, au sens jeune de ce mot, que l’écriture est dangereuse et angoissante. Elle ne sait pas où elle va, aucune sagesse ne la garde de cette précipitation essentielle vers le sens qu’elle constitute, et qui est d’abord son avenir. —Jacques Derrida T O BEGIN THIS STUDY of the novel Talismano, let us immedi­ ately set aside that definition of “ nomadic writing” which only encompasses the theme of the voyage, deriving from an identity quest of some so-called “ alienated subject.” In its place, let us examine the textual functioning of a specific nomadic writing, the novel Talismano, and the complementary process which it provokes, namely, that of nomadic reading. Far from trying to “m’habiller chirugien du text” (p. 50), as the author would say, I seek rather to approach it, to approximate it, in such a way that it can speak to and through the reader.1But in order to start out on such a reading, will we not need a key, a talisman? For before us opens the first in a series of dizzying gaps, warning against any method claiming to be univocal. As Khatibi notes in a beautiful essay on Talismano, its title is Italian, less strange a language than that of the name of its author, but which nonetheless seems to chal­ lenge us, saying, “ Be careful, I’m written in a foreign language.”2But which one? Surely not in Italian, although the Italian presence makes itself felt throughout the text as joy, as Khatibi remarks: “L’italien ici, langue de la jouissance pure, langue paradisiaque et du jeu hédonique, loin de la violence contradiction du français et de l’arabe” (ibid., p. 171). 1. Abdelwahab Meddeb, Talismano (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1979). AU pages in paren­ theses refer to this edition. 2. Abdelkébir Khatibi, “ Incipits,” in Du bilinguisme (Paris: Denoël, 1984), pp. 171-203. 40 Spring 1986 SCHARFMAN If the Italian of the title marks at once a resemblance and an alterity, what can be said of the “ prologue” and the “epilogue,” presented in allographical typography, that is to say, in Italics, deriving from that same Italian land? Everything having to do with that country, situated geographically between the author’s native Tunisia and France, func­ tions like a transitional object, in the sense that the psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott understands it, that is, a playful and creative space between mother and world.3Italy is also the country of a certain kind of painting, that of the Virgin and Child, that is, the happy absence of the Father. Such painting, frequently the subject of the narrator’s meditations during his Italian wanderings, serves as a figure where the impossible relationship between Islamic calligraphy and writing in/of French is continually being essayed and transformed. Already we can see that writing and reading deepen each other in a place in-between where we risk being disoriented. In perusing the text, our eyes fall on the promised Talisman of the title, in the form of a calligraphied illustration, on p. 153. But if it illustrates an “ipséité du sûfi et de l’idéogramme tao” (p. 152), does it not remain illegible all the same for all non-Arabic readers? The fiction claims that this talisman is revealed to the author without his understanding its entire meaning. For us the talisman is offered and refused simultaneously. We might say that the text itself is such an untranslatable talisman, structured in the abyss by its author who, in the very act of its writing, also articulates the impossible distance we must cross to its reading. The epilogue supports such an approach, which we can see as a challenge to the reader: A nous livrer par l’écrit sans vous donner prise, à vous fatiguer l’œil par l’arabesque des...