Memmi, Albert 1920–

views updated

Albert Memmi 1920–

Author

Eminent North African writer Albert Memmi is best known for his two autobiographical novels from the 1950s, Pillar of Salt and Strangers. Each examines the quandary of being a Jew in a predominantly Muslim land, and a North African in Europe, and are known in English translation. A highly respected sociologist, Memmi has also written a number of nonfiction works on racism and the legacy of colonialism in Africa.

Memmi was born in 1920 in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. His father was a saddle maker with a workshop that Memmi liked to visit as a boy. The family lived near to, but not directly within, Tunis’s Jewish ghetto, known as the Hara. Tunisia was a predominantly Arab Muslim country, but at the time of Memmi’s childhood there was a thriving Jewish minority of about 50,000. Tunisia was also home to a similar number of French, who came from Europe after the small country, wedged between Algeria and Libya, became a French protectorate in 1881; some Italians and Maltese also made the city their home. There were long-simmering tensions between Tunis’s Muslims and Jews, however, and one of Memmi’s novels, La Terre intérieure (The Interior Land), relates a notorious incident from 1857 when a Jewish man named Samuel Sfez had a heated argument with a Muslim, and was sentenced to death.

Studied in Tunis and Paris

During Memmi’s younger years, Tunis’s Jews were quietly assimilating into its French colonial culture. Memmi was sent to a Hebrew school at the age of four, but at seven began classes at a school run by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Paris-based organization that aimed to merge Jewish traditions with modern European educational principles. At 12, Memmi began studies at a French lycée in Tunis, from which he graduated in 1939 with the top philosophy prize. He then enrolled in the University of Algiers, but his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. The anti-Semitic laws carried out by the Vichy collaborationist government in France also applied to French North Africa, and Jews there were imperiled. Memmi was expelled from the university and sent to a forced labor camp in the eastern part of Tunisia.

Memmi had already begun writing for Jewish newspapers, and following the war he moved to Paris for further university study in 1946. He began writing his first novel during this time, and married a French Catholic woman, Marie-Germaine Dubach. They returned to Tunis in 1951, where he taught at his former lycée. His first novel, La Statue du sel, appeared in 1953 and in English translation two years later as Pillar of Salt. The title of Memmi’s novel is a reference to the biblical tale of Lot’s wife, who turns into a pillar of salt when she looks back as her family is fleeing from Sodom. Its plot centers around Alexandre Mordekhai Benillouche, who grows up in Tunis’s Hara district, part of a loving family and a close-knit community. His dilemma begins when he enrolls in the esteemed French lycée and begins to harbor ambitions for the larger world. He comes to believe his family’s Judaism is not authentic, and sees the great distance between himself and his French classmates. “Little by little, Mordecai discovers that his native culture, inbred con-

At a Glance…

Born on December 15,1920, in Tunis, Tunisia; son of Francois (an artisan) and Marguerite (Sarfati) Memmi; married Marie-Germaine Dubach, 1946; children; Daniel, Dominique, Nicolas Education: University of Algiers, licence des philosophie, 1943; Sorbonne, University of Paris, Dr. es lettres, 1970

Career; High school teacher of philosophy in Tunis, Tunisia, 1953-56; Center of Educational Research, Tunis, director, 1953-57; National Center of Scientific Research, Paris, France, researcher, 1958-60; University of Paris, Sorbonne, École practique des hautes etudes, assistant professor, 1959-66, professor of social psychology, 1966-70; University of Paris, Nanterre, France, professor of sociology, 1970-; School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences, conference director, 1958, director of department of social sciences, 1975-78; Walker Ames Professor, University of Seattle, 1972.

Member: Societe des Gens de Lettres; International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists, vice-president of French chapter, 1977-80; Academie des Sciences d’Outremer.

Awards: Commander of Ordre de Nichan Iftikhar (Tunisia); Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur; Officier of Tunisian Republic; Officier des Arts et des Lettres; Officier des Palmes Academiques; Prix Carthage (Tunis), 1953; Prix Fénéon (Paris), 1954; Prix Simba (Rome).

Address: Home —Paris, France. Office —University of Paris, 92 Nanterre, France.

ditioning, basic way of life, and humble ghetto dialect have all created a gulf between himself and the world he strives to enter,” noted an essay by Guy Dugas in African Writers.

Pillar of Salt took two prestigious prizes when it first appeared: the Carthage Prize in 1953 and the Fénéon Prize in 1954. Nearly forty years later, the book was still earning critical praise: a Publishers Weekly review of a 1992 English-language edition asserted that it was a work that “powerfully distinguishes itself through its unblinking examination of the contradictions that thwart even Alexandre’s most altruistic ambitions.” Memmi’s second novel, Agar, was published in 1955 and translated into English in 1958 as Strangers. Its protagonist is anonymous, but seems to be Alexandre at a later age. Like Memmi, the hero has married a French Christian woman, and their union is tested—along with the husband’s sense of self—when they move to Tunis and she questions her husband’s criticisms of his culture. The novel was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary honor.

Settled in France

In both of these books, Memmi was attacked by some for his portrayal of Tunisian Jews. When he wrote an article advocating the destruction of the Hara, he was further slandered. Many Jews in Tunisia, however, began emigrating when the country was granted its independence in 1956, fearful of the secular, though predominantly Muslim, new order coming into power. Many, like Memmi and his wife, settled in France. He published his first nonfiction work, Portrait du colonise precede du portrait du colinisateur, in 1957, and it appeared in English translation eight years later as The Colonizer and the Colonized. The book caused a stir in both North Africa and France for its provocative essays, because France was engaged in a bitter war with Algeria over independence, and questions of French domination and Arab sovereignty were hotly debated at the time by politicians, in the press, and among the public. In his book, Memmi dismissed the leftist dogma, then in vogue, that such independence struggles followed a Marxist model. He argued instead that the oppressed and the oppressor, regardless of place, “were indissolubly linked within a system that took the shape of a pyramid of petty tyranny,” according to Dugas in the African Writers essay. “Within that pyramidal structure, the oppressor and the oppressed enjoy small advantages, minor privileges that result in each participant dominating someone else.”

Memmi’s work also attracted controversy over his assertions about Jews in Tunisia. He reflected in The Colonizer and the Colonized that, “unlike the Muslims, they passionately endeavored to identify themselves with the French. To them the West was the paragon of all civilization, all culture. The Jew turned his back happily on the East. They chose the French language, dressed in the Italian style, and joyfully adopted every idiosyncrasy of the Europeans.” The author and his book also earned the enmity of writer Albert Camus, with whom he was sometimes compared; the French writer, born in Algeria, wrote extensively on North African-French culture, and had penned the introduction to a second edition of Memmi’s debut novel. Camus was reportedly angered over a chapter in The Colonizer and the Colonized titled “The Well-Meaning Colonialist” that he felt was a veiled portrait of himself, but he was killed in an automobile accident in 1960 before his friendship with Memmi could be restored.

In France Memmi enjoyed an impressive academic career as a sociology researcher. Over the years he was affiliated with the National Center of Scientific Research, the Sorbonne, and the university in Nanterre. His increasing scholarship, especially on the topic of the sociology of literature in a colonial and post-colonial time-frame, brought invitations from French publishers to write introductions for books by African-American writers. He did so for the French translation of The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, as well as subsequent works. “In these texts he drew parallels between the conditions of Jews, African Americans, and colonized peoples,” noted Dugas, “for all were classifiable as oppressed minorities.”

Lectured in the United States

Memmi made a lecture tour of the United States in 1966, during a time when the post-civil rights quiet had evaporated in favor of a more politicized climate among American blacks. He also wrote another work of nonfiction, L’Homme dominé, published in France in 1968 and in the United States as Dominated Man: Notes Toward a Portrait. A New York Times article by Richard Locke described it as “a collection of essays that sketched a generalized portrait of victims of social and psychological oppression.”

After a long absence, Memmi also returned to writing fiction with the publication of Le Scorpion ou la confession imaginaire in 1969. It appeared in English two years later as The Scorpion or the Imaginary Confession. The work takes place during the time of Tunisia’s move toward independence in the mid-1950s and centers on two brothers, Emile and Marcel. Emile has disappeared, and when his brother begins sorting through the papers he left behind, he realizes that his brother was writing a novel about a disturbed Tunisian Jew who has killed his authoritarian saddle-maker father. Emile has apparently uncovered—or perhaps fabricated—a fascinating genealogical portrait of his family’s ancestry, going back several centuries to the Roman era. Both novel and life begin to blur for Marcel, as political developments make him begin to question his identity as well.

In his review of The Scorpion or the Imaginari; Confession for the Neu; York Times, Locke described the complex work as a novel-within-a-novel with several other narrative digressions, and concluded: “But ultimately it is Memmi’s heart, not his skill, that moves you: the sights and sounds of Tunis, the childhood memories, the brothers’ sympathetic and contrasting voices, their all-too-human feelings, have a resonance that re-awakens for a while the ghost of European humanism.”

Memmi has been a professor of sociology and is active in France’s chapter of the International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists (PEN). He published another seminal work in 1982, La Racisme: Description, définition, traitement, which appeared in English translation as Racism. The work delves into the underlying issues behind both subtle and overt forms of prejudice, and the author asserted that “the temptation of racism is the most commonly shared thing in the world.” Memmi has also written about Islamic fundamentalism in his 1993 work Λ contre-courants (Against the Tide), in which he observed, “We are witnessing the return in insolent strength of fascism and fundamentalism. Against such demons there is only one untainted banner for us to march under, and that is the banner of secular humanism.”

Memmi is the recipient of numerous honors, including Tunisia’s Commander of Ordre de Nichan Iftikhar and Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. His brother, Georges Memmi, is also a novelist.

Selected writings

La Statue du sel (novel), introduction by Albert Camus, Correa, 1953, translation by Edouard Roditi published as Pillar of Salt, Criterion, 1955, reprinted, O’Hara, 1975.

Agar (novel), Correa, 1955, translation by Brian Rhys published as Strangers, 1958, Orion Press, 1960.

Portrait du colonise precede du portrait du colini-sateur, introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre, Buchet/Chastel, 1957, translation by Howard Greenfield published as The Colonizer and the Colonized, Orion Press, 1965, reprinted, Beacon Press, 1984.

Portrait d’un Juif, Gallimard, 1962, translation by Elisabeth Abbott published as Portrait of a Jew, Orion Press, 1962.

La Liberation d’un Juif, Gallimard, 1962, translation by Judy Hyun published as The Liberation of a Jew, Orion Press, 1966.

L’Homme dominé (essays), Gallimard, 1968, new edition, Payot, 1973, translation published as Dominated Man: Notes Towards a Portrait, Orion Press, 1968.

Le Scorpion ou la confession imaginaire (novel), Gallimard, 1969, translation by Eleanor Levieux published as The Scorpion or the Imaginary Confession, Grossman, 1971, 2nd edition, J. Philip O’Hara, 1975.

Juifs et Arabes, Gallimard, 1974, translation by Levieux published as Jews and Arabs, J. Philip O’Hara, 1975.

La Terre intérieure (title means The Interior Land), Gallimard, 1976.

La dependance: esquisse pour un portrait du dependant, Gallimard, 1979, translation published as Dependence, Beacon Press, 1983.

La Racisme: Description, définition, traitement, Gallimard, 1982, revised edition translated by Steve Martinot as Racism, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis), 2000.

À contre-courants (title means Against the Tide), Nouvel Objet, 1993.