Paule Constant Q&A

White Spirit translator Betsy Wing was kind enough to direct a few questions from Anne Fernham to author Paule Constant.  Not only did Wing send off the questions, but she was graciously offered a down-and-dirty English translation for Constant's responses.

How conscious an influence was Heart of Darkness?

To my great regret I have never been able to get into any of Conrad’s books. I’ve frequently been told that I reminded readers of him but I don’t know to what extent. However, I believe that landscapes dictate their own laws to literature. That’s how all novels, American, Japanese or African are written.

This one is harder to word but one that I'd like to hear more about. I'm wondering about the *cultural* translation of the book's theme of skin lightening. It's my sense that, in the current cultural climate, talking about differences in skin tone is pretty taboo, underground--not absent, but cautious. Certainly, I would suspect that white American writers would face some pretty loud objections from all corners if they wrote a novel about blacks wanting to lighten their skin. It's easy to find literature in the states by African Americans from the twenties (Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer) about the significance of various skin tones, but since "black is beautiful" in the seventies, the conversation about skin tones seems to have gone underground. How is the topic of skin color and race treated in France and postcolonial French Africa?

I spent almost all my life in Africa which is like a motherland to me. My entire formation is African. It’s natural that like any writer I return to the sources of myself. If I have no tabous in respect to Africa it’s because in my first novel, Ouregano, published in 1980, I forcefully denounced colonialism. Though, taking into account sociologists and philosophers, I was not the first to do so, I was certainly one of the first novelists who did. Consequently, when White Spirit came out nobody thought to criticize me. All literature transgresses (otherwise it is called journalism), but the transgression in White Spirit isn’t the fact that a Black woman (actually mulatto) wants to lighten her skin, always a widespread practice (see, for example, the dermatologists’ repeated cautions about the dangers of the products used). The White Spirit in this book is a symbolic product; it represents a false Holy Spirit given to humanity to make up for its hardships. As in most of my novels the real transgression takes place on a religious plane. What I find most troubling in the novel is the erasure of the borders between human and animal. The White Spirit, which destroys the young woman’s skin and kills an entire village, symbolizes western evil imposed on a natural world. If taken in that way my novel is very “politically correct.”

But your question concerns censoring and self-censoring. As you know we, particularly in France, have had to fight religious censorship. In libraries there was always a “hell” composed of forbidden books, in which you’d find great writers such as Francois Mauriac and Julien Green. Writers have also had to fight erotic censorship (Proust, Julien Green). One begins to realize that in every period the writer has been accused of immorality by society, which means that he or she has not gone along with the morality of that period. Is political correctness, perhaps, the new morality of the contemporary world which believes its freedom is demonstrated in relation to religious or sexual issues? Here too, of course, one feels the pressure to be politically correct, but I believe it necessary to refuse to do this and not write communal literature. The novelist’s freedom has to be the ability to talk about everything, even about things he doesn’t know. I even believe that one becomes a writer when one dares talk about things one doesn’t know on the basis of what one is not. White Spirit marks an important stage for me; it represents the moment in which I am no longer recounting the Africa I experienced (as I did in Ouregano and Balta), but begin to invent it. And this, of course, is where (this is the novelist’s secret)—

Thank you, Paule and Betsy, for taking the time out to respond and translate, respectively!

Stay tuned this weekend, when we offer our podcast interview with Betsy Wing.  Even Betsy's dog makes a brief barking cameo.

Incidentally, you can find Betsy's translation work in the following books:

The Book of Promethea/Le Livre De Promethea by Helene Cixous (University of Nebraska Press, 1991)
Outwitting the Gestapo by Lucie Aubrac (University of Nebraska Press, 1994)
Poetics of Relation by Edouard Glissant (University of Michigan Press, 1997)
So Vast the Prison by Assia Djebar (Seven Stories Press, 1999)

As to more Constant-Wing adaptations, the University of Nebraska Press has the following novels available:

The Governor's Daughter (1998)
Trading Secrets (2001)

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

Very interesting - thanks again to both Betsy for her quick translating excercises, and to Paule, for replying to the questions.

[Betsy Wing]

Somehow I posted a comment that was supposed to pertain to this posting at Aug 06 2006 (The Brillian Michael O!). I can't figure out how to move it so, if you're interested, check it out there!

[Dan Wickett]

The following are Betsy's comments which were misplaced:

A propos the posting of Paule Constant's replies:

There are a couple of things that came to mind when I sent the questions off to her.

First: all the authors mentioned who dealt with the problems of skin tones (dark to light) were black. I think it was a non-issue for white writers in the 20s when black was just black. There is, however, earlier work, especially from New Orleans where racial mixing has gone on for centuries, in which the issue is crucial to the novel. Creoles in 19th century N.O. were people of "some color" and were highly literate (though more famous for their music). These days I think of Toni Morrison (THE BLUEST EYE, a beautiful novel) and Spike Lee as the people who treat the issue most powerfully. I hate to think of "political correctness" as our bete noir (no no--no pun intended!) but, when it prevents our expressing who we are and where we come from as well as--as Paule puts it--what we are not, but imagine, it seems to me that the damage it does may be greater than the protections it offers.

Also, thanks, Ed for mentioning some of my other work. I'd also, however, like to plug another of my translations published by Nebraska in their wonderful series: Edouard Glissant's THE FOURTH CENTURY. It's a lot tougher going than Constant but a wonderful tale of a French Afro-Caribbean search for a place in history for people who lost their history in the Middle Crossing.

[Anne]

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Wow.

Even in this time of email and instant technology, it's still pretty amazing and cool to me to get to hear Paule Constant's answer--and to think about the complex chain--me to Dan to Betsy to Paule and back, across languages--that made it possible.

Many many thanks to all the links in the chain!! You totally made my day.

[merry]

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