Non­fic­tion

Rever­ies of the Wild Woman: Pri­mal Scenes

Hélène Cixous; Bev­er­ley Bie Brahic, trans.
  • Review
By – April 2, 2012

Hélène Cixous, a French writer of Ger­man- Jew­ish her­itage, is fas­ci­nat­ed by pow­er, psy­cho­analy­sis, and lan­guage. In her poet­ic prose the abuse of the first leads to the neces­si­ty of the sec­ond and if thor­ough­ly accom­plished, pro­duces a new way of see­ing and describ­ing the world, indeed a new lan­guage since one’s exis­tence is so altered through this process. So in Rever­ies of the Wild Woman, the author explores what it was like to be born in a beloved, though for­eign, land and to live through the process of becom­ing a pari­ah because of one’s Jew­ish ances­try and because of Algeria’s civ­il war. Her Muse in this col­lec­tion is the Com­er” who inspires and then removes the mem­o­ry of a total­i­ty of text, instead explor­ing remem­bered seg­ments that cre­ate a new con­text for her mem­o­ries of this child­hood time. Exem­pli­fy­ing this state, the author recounts and ana­lyzes the advent of a yel­low dog with a cat-like face who arrives dur­ing her father’s dying days. We lock up our own broth­er, for the Dog it is hell…the world is top­sy-turvy and the Dog has been betrayed. Am I Jew­ish, the Dog won­dered I say…But what does Jew­ish mean won­dered the Dog, and Arab, and dog, friend, broth­er, ene­my, Papa, lib­er­ty noth­ing exists save injus­tice and bru­tal­i­ty…” Her moth­er admits to their Jew­ish back­ground but that is anoth­er Jew­ish history…and not to be repeat­ed in front of strangers, she says.” There­fore the secret earns her an empow­er­ing edu­ca­tion where she learns to do bat­tle from a Mus­lim per­spec­tive, “…mak­ing it incum­bent upon me to take up a crit­i­cal space con­sid­er­ably larg­er than my dreamy inner space…” But the affect­ed wild woman” can nev­er deny the true iden­ti­ty that has shaped the very rebel­lious essence of the poet seek­ing mean­ing in a world that would anni­hi­late her reli­gious and polit­i­cal reality. 

An even more haunt­ing qual­i­ty per­me­ates the entire mem­oir-nov­el, The Day I Wasn’t There, about a child born with Down syn­drome and then aban­doned to a clin­ic where his grand­moth­er will be his only famil­ial con­tact. The aban­don­ment par­al­lels the grandmother’s sta­tus as a refugee from Nazi Ger­many. The moth­er nev­er accepts the lack” of this child, per­haps relat­ed to nev­er acknowl­edg­ing her own Jew­ish back­ground. In both sit­u­a­tions, the moth­er hides a defect,” defy­ing atten­tive def­i­n­i­tion or love. A mad con­fi­dence is man­i­fest. Next to the face of her son all the new­born faces project a sour lit­tle some­thing, a lit­tle line of defense, a scrib­ble, a gri­mace. He is smooth, abstract. As if he hadn’t risen. Pale, as if he hadn’t fin­ished bak­ing.” Anoth­er par­al­lel is made with the three-legged dog her par­ents gave her, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ever-present loom­ing attempt to under­stand Jews, All these dis­tinc­tions, says my moth­er, Jews too, they make distinctions…but they thought only Pol­ish Jews were deport­ed as if they were more Jew­ish for being Pol­ish and they more Ger­man albeit Jew­ish thus both more and less Jew­ish at once…But all this depends on how you look at it and is sec­ond­hand.” Is there any need to say more? The author’s rage is obvious. 

These pages by Cixous are packed with the hon­esty and forth­right satire of reli­gious, polit­i­cal, and lin­guis­tic prej­u­dice per­me­at­ing Euro­pean and Mid­dle East­ern cul­ture to this day. The lan­guage is intense; the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­i­cal, lit­er­ary, and jour­nal­is­tic approach­es are fas­ci­nat­ing in address­ing what real­ly mat­ters about the val­ue of life, whether one is try­ing to live an obser­vant or non-obser­vant Jew­ish life any­where in the 21st cen­tu­ry world.

Deb­o­rah Schoen­e­man, is a for­mer Eng­lish teacher/​Writing Across the Cur­ricu­lum Cen­ter Coor­di­na­tor at North Shore Hebrew Acad­e­my High School and coed­i­tor of Mod­ern Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture: A Library of Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism, Vol. VI, pub­lished in 1997.

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