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Assia Djebar’s Poetics of Subversion Anne Donadey A LGERIAN NOVELIST Assia Djebar’s œuvre spans four decades and is usually divided into two periods separated by an approxi­ mate ten-year publishing hiatus (during the 1970s). Works from the second period show a maturity in style best exemplified in her 1985 L ’Amour, la fantasia, which was announced as the first novel of a pro­ jected quartet. The second volume, Ombre sultane, appeared in 1987.1In Ombre sultane, Djebar has in no way created a sequel to her 1985 text which brought together history and autobiography. In L ’Amour, lafan­ tasia, the unnamed female narrator returns to a double past, individual and collective. The personal story is constructed in counterpoint to the history of the Algerian people erased under French colonization. Ombre sultane explores the complex issue of women’s situation in contemporary Algeria, by centering on the characters of two co-wives, the “liberated” Isma (cast as narrator) and the more “ traditional” Hajila (addressed by Isma). The unity between the two novels is thus not to be found at the level of the plot, but rather at the structural and thematic levels, as exem­ plified in Djebar’s use of epigraphs. Both of Djebar’s novels follow a tripartite structure, and are framed by a complex system of epigraphs and short, lyrical passages in italics. Each novel opens with a general epigraph, in both cases a quotation from a painter (Eugène Fromentin in L ’ Amour, lafantasia, Pierre Bonnard in Ombre sultane). Each of the three parts is in turn preceded by one or two quotations: in parts one and three, Djebar uses Western authors; in part two, Arabic ones (the famous historian Ibn Khaldoun in the first book of the quartet, and the archtext of Arabic literary tradition, The Arabian Nights, in the second one). By thus moving from Western (French) to Arabic and seemingly back to Western sources, Djebar is establishing a pattern of dichotomization which she immediately subverts at several levels. For instance, in the first parts of both novels, she alternates chapters in counterpoint: in L ’Amour, la fantasia, historical and personal chapters; in Ombre sul­ tane, chapters on Hajila and on Isma, the former written in the dialogic “ tu,” the latter in the personal “je.” However, this strict compartmentalization is subverted in both novels through the recurrence of Vol. XXXIII, NO. 2 107 L ’E s pr it C réa te u r similar vocabulary in the paired chapters, and in Ombre sultane by the meeting of second and first persons at the end of chapter 6, repeated in chapter 13. The lives of the seemingly radically different women come to mingle. Similarly, the opposition established between Western and Arabic quotations is destabilized in the third part of both books. In L ’ Amour, la fantasia, one of the two epigraphs opening part three is by Saint Augustine, who can be said to belong to both traditions: he was a Father of the (Catholic) Church and he founded the tradition of Western auto­ biography. As Djebar herself points out in L ’Amour, lafantasia, he was also an Algerian who wrote his autobiography in a language other than his own, the language of the dominant power of the time (241-42). In the third part of Ombre sultane, the excerpt from Victor Hugo’s Les Orien­ tales reminds the reader of the tale of The Arabian Nights: “ La sultane regarde” (Ombre 151). Fromentin’s quotation (from his Algerian travelogue Une année dans le Sahel) provides the opening as well as the conclusion of L\Amour, la fantasia: “ Il y eut un cri déchirant—je l’entends encore au moment où je t’écris—, puis des clameurs, puis un tumulte...” (Amour 7).2At the end of Ombre sultane, a post-scriptum identifies a quotation used in italics in the text a few pages earlier: the same quotation by Fromentin that was used to open L ‘Amour, lafantasia is now used to close Ombre sultane. However, the quotation (as well as the title of Fromentin’s book) is slightly altered. Through the repeated use of Fromentin’s sentence, Djebar creates a common thread, a...

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