Colonization and first writings
If the expedition orchestrated by James Cook arrived in New Caledonia in 1774 - the time for him to name the island in homage to Scotland, his father's native country, with which he discerned a resemblance - it is only in 1853 that colonization began by the French who dreamed of a prison at the edge of the world (where the militant writer Louise Michel would be deported after the insurrection of the Paris Commune). Until then, the island was populated by Kanaks whose culture was based on oral tradition, so the first exchanges with Europe coincided with the first writings. Initially epistolary or autobiographical - we could cite Voyage à pied en Nouvelle-Calédonie by Charles Lemire (1839-1912) or Voyage autour du monde (éditions L'Harmattan) by Jules Garnier (1839-1904) -, these took on a real ethnographic turn thanks to the curiosity of certain missionaries, the best known being certainly Maurice Leenhardt, born in Montauban in 1878, who died in Paris in 1954. The beginning of the 20th century was indeed marked by the desire to evangelize the colony but, in addition to bringing the good word, Leenhardt struggled to gather the word of a people that he quickly understood was on the decline. The words then flowed in both directions: if he had the New Testament translated into the Houaïlou language, he also insisted that his students write their myths and traditions in this language, going so far as to have them published under their real names. On the lay side, we should not fail to mention the ethnologist Pierre Métais (1906-1998) who was a schoolteacher in New Caledonia, the linguist André-Georges Haudricourt (1911-1996), Maurice Lenormand (1913-2006) who put his passion for the territory at the service of a political career, or the anthropologist Jean Guiart (1925-2019) whose initial field studies in Ouvéa were initiated by Leenhardt himself.
The first generation of authors was thus not native to New Caledonia, but the trend will eventually be reversed after a period of transition. This is also the case in literature, where Georges Baudoux, one of the precursors of Caledonian letters, serves as a sort of link between the colonial heritage and Kanak culture. Born in Paris in 1870, he arrived on the island in his early youth, when his father was appointed as a prison warden. At the age of 12 he was apprenticed as a printer, at 17 as a fisherman, as a horse trainer, as a miner and then as a concessionaire (which he eventually sold, not wishing to participate in the destruction of the landscape). His many experiences linked him intimately to New Caledonia, so much so that his attempts to return to the metropolis were brief and futile. He had begun to write poems at the dawn of his thirties, but it is rather his Chronicles, inspired by local legends, which assured him a certain posterity (if not a real fame, at least in his time): it is still possible to obtain them today from the Lampion editions.
In a strange play of mirrors, Francis Carco was born in Nouméa in 1886 but returned to France as a teenager. Until his death in Paris in 1958, he dedicated his work(Jésus-la-Caille, L'Homme traqué, L'Equipe, published by Albin Michel) to the underworld and those who haunt it, drawing his inspiration more from the French capital than from his native island, although he never forgot the image of the convicts marching past his childhood windows. Finally, Jean Mariotti also oscillated between New Caledonia - where he was born in 1901 - and Paris - where he died in 1975. His father, of Corsican origin, was one of the prisoners who had to "double" their sentence on the island, so he was raised in Farino, which he eventually left in his twenties, going into exile for the French capital where he worked for Hachette. Published by Flammarion in 1929 with Au Fil des jours, Takata d'Aïmos the following year and Remords in 1931, resistant during the Second World War, named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 1957, his writings - which largely took New Caledonia as a setting - have nevertheless sunk into oblivion: only his Contes de Poindi are now offered in digital version by the Stock publishing house
From the 20th to the 21st century
In fact, the lack of information on Apollinaire Anova (1929-1966), a priest-poet who is said to have been the first French-speaking Kanak author, tends to corroborate the fact that Caledonian literature has had difficulty resonating internationally. In the same way, it is difficult to find the text of the play Kanaké that the pro-independence Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936-1989) wrote in 1975 for the Melanesia 2000 festival, even though it undoubtedly has national epic value. Finally, what can be said about the lack of knowledge of the work of Déwé Gorodé (1949-2022), who devoted her life to making Kanak culture known, using both orality - she was a traditional storyteller - and the written word - her publications were numerous and of all styles, from poetry(Se donner le pays, published by Bruno Doucey, written in the form of dialogues with another Caledonian woman, Imasango) to short stories(L'Agenda, Utê Mûrûnû, petite fleur de cocotier, Grain de Sable éditeur), via tales (Tâdo, Tâdo, wéé ! published by Aux Vents des îles) and theater(Kënâké 2000). Active on the political scene and militant for independence, she was also committed to women's rights, notably with a first novel, L'Épave, in 2005, which did not ignore the sad fate reserved for her fellow women, mentally and physically. Déwé Gorodé also worked for the development of New Caledonian literature by spearheading the creation of the Salon International du livre océanien (SILO) and its associated prizes.
Frédéric Ohlen, born in Nouméa in 1959, took up the torch by creating the TranspaSci-Fique science fiction contest in 1989 and by founding, barely ten years later, the publishing house L'Herbier de Feu, where he welcomed the rising voices of Pierre Gope - a poet(S'ouvrir, 1999) who has since turned to theater (from Wamirat, le fils du chef de Pénélo in 1992, to Convergence in 2020) - and of Paul Wamo who declines his bibliography(Le Pleurnicheur, L'Herbier de Feu, 2006) in discography, since he launched himself into slam in 2014 with SOL, his first EP. Notwithstanding Frédéric Ohlen's humility as an editor, let's not forget the literary awards he received for his work published mainly by Gallimard(Quintet in 2014 and Les Mains d'Isis in 2016) and by Au Vent des îles(Le Monde flottant, 2023). Still discreet, New Caledonian literature seems to have decided to take on a new lease of life, as confirmed by the inauguration in 1997 of the Association of New Caledonian Writers, which was joined by, among others, the comic artist Bernard Berger and the poet Nicolas Kurtovitch.
From Bernard Berger, let us quote La Brousse en folie, the most famous comic strip of New Caledonia. It is a hilarious satire of the island's communities, an excellent way to immerse oneself in Caledonian culture. The daily adventures of Tonton Marcel and his friends, through their peregrinations of hunting, fishing and their famous blows of gueule. Our favorite album : Welcome to Oukontienban! Go and familiarize yourself with the characters on the website www.brousse-en-folie.com
