Thelja, a young
Algerian researcher living in Paris, agrees to spend “nine nights” in
Strasbourg visiting François, some 20 years her senior, whom she has met only a
few times but to whom, in her mind, she tells “Ce que je devrais vous dire, ce
que je vous dirai, ce que je n’oserai pas, au dernier moment, laisser échapper,
ce que vous répondrez, à mes aveux, à mes silences.”
(What I should say to you, what I will say to you, what I
won’t dare, at the last moment, to let slip, what you will say in reply, to my
confessions, to my silences.)
Assia Djebar's 1997 novel Les Nuits de
Strasbourg is full of confessions and silences. The spoken word takes on an
immense significance in varying contexts; Thelja and François’ nights are as
much about intimate conversation as they are about lovemaking, and the two are
frequently inseparable: “j’aime ce
dialogue à la fois de nos corps, et la façon dont je peux délier enfin ma
parole”. (I love this dialogue between our bodies, and at the same time the way
I can finally release my words.)
Words are the means at once to unite people and to divide
them; characters in the novel speak French, German, Alsatian, English, Arabic,
and Moroccan and Algerian dialects, and the characters’ choice of language is
full of significance. Thelja speaks the language of her country’s oppressors,
but she is afraid of her feelings for her French lover, a representative, in
some deep-seated sense, of the enemy. Thelja’s friend Eve, an Algerian Jew, has
to face similar feelings regarding her German lover Hans. Having refused ever
to speak German, she eventually makes Hans exchange ‘Le Serment (vow) de
Strasbourg’ with her. This vow was originally exchanged in the 9th
century by two sons of Louis the Pious; the two agreed to support each other,
and, symbolically, each took the vow in the language of the other. This is
Eve’s reason for appropriating it. Afterwards, she tells herself that “toute
guerre, entre nous, est finie” (all war, between us, is over). This is a novel
that wears its issues on its sleeve.
This piling up of layer upon layer of language-related
imagery and symbolism becomes a little heavy-handed at times, as does Djebar’s
style when writing about sex, of which there is certainly a lot in this book.
It isn’t gratuitous in itself, as these scenes form a vital part of the novel’s
exploration of language, foreignness and physical and psychological barriers;
but the breathless phrases and lexical choices feel a little overwrought, at
least to an English reader (I counted five different words for penis – one of
them was ‘sword’! – which in Britain would consign the novel to a realm well
outside that of literary fiction).
However, the inner monologues of Thelja and Eve, addressing
each other or their respective lovers, are frequently touching in their portrayal of the characters’ need for contact with another, the search for a home,
whether it be found in a place or in another person. Both feel a desire for finality, an end point: Eve the photographer wants to photograph her home town
of Tébessa “pour ne plus en rêver”
(so as not to dream of it any more); Thelja puzzles François by referring
several times to the “nine nights” after which she will leave Strasbourg, for
unspecified reasons.
But Thelja knows that endings are not so easily come by. Her
country’s history haunts her, along with her historical passions – a 12th-century
abbess from Strasbourg, the 1870 siege of the city, and, later, the 1939 exodus
recalled by François and evoked in the novel’s opening pages. Several times,
imagining the events of 1870, she says to herself it was “only yesterday!” Past
and present are equally real here – only the future remains entirely
unglimpsed, with no indication of what will happen when the nine nights draw to
a close.
(Betsy Wing’s translation Strasbourg
Nights was published in 2003, but it doesn’t seem to be available from any
of the usual online suspects. All translations in this article are mine.)
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