Poetry
La Nymphe dorée ou Fleur d'Andraikiba
Not translated into English
Synopsis
The poem puts into French verse a legendary story attached to Lake Andraikiba, in the highlands. In the version still told today, a man in love with a young woman wants to take her as a second wife and makes his wife, already old, and her rival swim across the lake, the faster one to become his favourite; other versions make a prince the judge of a contest between two suitors. The sources do not say which one the poet followed.
Context
Printed in Antananarivo in 1958, the thirty-nine-page booklet presents itself as a legendary Malagasy story adapted and transcribed into French verse, with a portrait of the author. Lake Andraikiba occupies an old crater, nine kilometres from Antsirabe, and local tradition links the origin of its name to it. The author, who wrote most of his work in Malagasy, had devoted a book entitled Andraikiba to the same landscapes, and a history of the neighbouring Lake Tritriva, published under another pen name.
Who it is for
In French and in verse, a libretto of some forty pages; the legend it takes up is still told around Antsirabe.
Prizes and reception
French text by an author whose works held by the BnF are mostly in Malagasy: poems, traditional speeches, proverbs.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.