Poetry · A way to begin
Translated from the Night
Traduit de la nuit
Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo · 1935
Synopsis
Thirty short poems, written simultaneously in Malagasy and in French between 1931 and 1932, and presented as “transcribed from the Hova by the author”. Rural, everyday images of the highlands mingle with unusual dream visions, in a new mode that revives Malagasy oral poetry; the poems seem to translate themselves before the reader's eyes, from one inner language to the other.
Context
The collection appeared in Tunis in 1935, from the Éditions de Mirages, in the Cahiers de Barbarie edited by Armand Guibert and Jean Amrouche, with two plates by Émile Perrin, far from Tananarive where its author lived. It forms a pair with a twin collection published the previous year in Tananarive; a bilingual edition came only in 2007, the very year in which Robert Ziller's complete English translation appeared.
Who it is for
Short poems, in French, readable today in a bilingual edition; they call for slow reading, attentive to the images.
Prizes and reception
Often regarded as the high point of the work of the man said to be the first modern poet of Africa; included in his complete works in 2012.