New Caledonia (France) / All works
Tale
Légendes canaques
Not translated into English
Georges Baudoux · 1928
Synopsis
Georges Baudoux gathers stories set in the north of Grande Terre, before or at the time of the arrival of the Whites. In “Kaavo”, transcribed from porters from Gomen, the warrior Navaé, jealous of the glory of his rival Winda, secretly approaches the enemy tribe of Témala, where the chief's daughter goes out at dawn. Then come the amorous manoeuvres of N'Doui and Malalou, the tale of a man of dangerous corpulence, old Tchiao who saw the first Whites arrive, and two legends of the dugong told aboard a cutter.
Context
The collection appeared in Paris from Rieder in 1928, with a foreword by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, three years after a first book printed in Nouméa; “Kaavo” had been published as early as 1919 in Le Messager. Lévy-Bruhl praised an author who “does not write novels” and portrays the Kanak as he saw them. Karin Speedy, who has translated Baudoux into English, reads in it on the contrary colonial sensationalism and racist stereotypes, violence and cannibalism serving to justify colonisation, while noting moments of empathy. The 1928 text is freely available on Project Gutenberg.
Who it is for
For reading the Kanak Caledonia of before colonisation through the gaze, attentive but colonial, of one of the island's first writers.
Prizes and reception
Lévy-Bruhl praised its accuracy, but sales in Paris were disappointing, according to Karin Speedy.
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