Perspectives critiques: L’oeuvre d’Hédi Bouraoui (review)

The texts assembled in this book originated from the International Colloquium that took place at York University and that was entitled “Transculturel-Transpoétique: L’oeuvre d’Hédi Bouraoui.” The aim of the volume is to shed light on the literary contribution of the critic and author for the past forty years, and to analyze Bouraoui’s transcultural vision that calls for the construction of bridges among diverse cultures, religions, and traditions. In the introduction, Elizabeth Sabiston presents an overview of Bouraoui’s work as a poet and literary critic. She examines the author’s aspiration to deconstruct borders and oppositions such as East/West, ancient/modern, and male/female. She proposes that the dominant metaphor of his work is the rainbow, the “arc-en-ciel,” and the “arc-en-terre” (20), the latter referring to one of his poetic works and to his hope for a fraternal world.

The volume is organized in four parts. In the first one entitled “Le transculturel en question” (The Transcultural in Question), Denise Brahimi investigates ten years of Bouraoui’s career, from 1995 to 2005, by focusing on the term “nomadisme” in three texts, Nomadaime, Retour à Thyna, and La francophonie à l’estomac. The contributions that follow explore Bouraoui’s transcultural themes from a variety of perspectives: the multicultural and multilingual Toronto in Ainsi parle la tour CN, the possible link between “transprophétie,” transcendence, and mysticism in Rose des sables and Bangkok Blues, and a geographic viewpoint, the exile and wandering of the mind from Canada to Haiti, the marginalization of migrants, and the interrelation of Jews and Muslims in Tunisia.

In the second part entitled “Poétique de l’avenir” (Poetics of the Future), the concept of transculture is approached through a metaphoric and poetic interpretation of the francophone world, the creativity of poetic language and of the “parole inspirée” (232). In “Approches diverses” (Diverse Approaches), the third part, Christiane Ndiaye analyzes the reception of Bouraoui’s work. She suggests that the historians of literature have difficulties categorizing a Canadian author originally from the Maghreb whose purpose in writing is to transgress borders and barriers. According to Noureddine Slimani, Bouraoui’s poetic of the imaginary brings forth what he names a subversion of the genre, writing taking a multiplicity of forms and becoming fragmentary and interstitial. For his part, Sergio Villani examines the traditional and the experimental aspects of the poet and critic’s work whereby “le modernisme [. . .] s’inscrit toujours dans la tradition” ‘modernism [. . .] is always inscribed in tradition’ (312).

Entitled “Poétique du féminin” (Poetics of the Feminine), the last section explores the place of women in Bouraoui’s novels through the questions of identity, culture, and symbolic construction in the Maghreb, Egypt, and Europe. From another angle, Cécile Cloutier and Jean-Max Tixier examine, in La femme entre les lignes, the theme of love as a metaphor of literature and the creative process. The last study, by Suzanne Crosta, brings to a conclusion a book that is worthy of attention in the field of francophone studies. It analyzes with depth and subtlety the last forty years of Bouraoui’s literary, poetic, and critical work that is rooted in several continents, from Africa to Europe and North America.