Oral tradition
While the region we're interested in has had a history that has often differed from that of Morocco, its literature has followed the more traditional path from oral tradition to writing. According to Greek mythology, Tangier was founded by Antaeus - son of Poseidon and Gaia - who used the skulls of the travellers he attacked to build a temple to his father's glory More tenderly, he offered his wife, Tinga, the gardens of the Hesperides where golden fruits grew, objects of covetousness for a certain Heracles - Hercules for the Romans - which aroused the owner's anger. It is from their struggle that the Strait of Gibraltar is said to have arisen, from an ill-advised sabre stroke... Tangier is also mentioned in the story of Ulysses, in the voice of the poet Homer, since it was here that the Cyclops Polyphemus lived, also a son of Poseidon, who was defeated by losing his sight. Finally, Plato located Atlantis just a stone's throw away, a possibility that some archaeologists still do not rule out..
But the people of Tangier developed their own mythology, linking the creation of their city to Noah. As Noah sailed resignedly through the endless post-flood sea, a dove landed on the ark. The dove's feet were covered in earth, awakening hope and prompting the captain to call out "Tin jâa! This legend plays with languages, as it doesn't say that Noah mastered Arabic, but "Tanja" means "swamp" in Berber, which would suggest a very ancient occupation of the land by the Libyans (or Libyques), their ancestors. In fact, it was in another Berber language, Rifain - which, as its name suggests, is affiliated to the Rif - that the oral tradition was propagated for centuries. Proof of its enduring appeal is the fact that a major event - albeit relatively recent, since it took place in 1921 - served as the inspiration for an essential work: Dhar Ubarran, a sung poem of over 160 verses composed to recount the battle of the same name. Never transcribed, it was transmitted by word of mouth, usually to music, and always galvanized by the talent of itinerant imedyazen. Like the rest of Amazigh heritage, this practice is tending to disappear, although some are trying to keep it alive by organizing festivals. It has to be said that the role of these artists has been preponderant for centuries, since they occupied a fundamental social function, ensuring through their repertoire several roles, from pedagogy to entertainment, politics and, why not, philosophy. Anyone interested in this subject should read La Littérature rifaine: de la tradition orale à aujourd' hui, published in 2019 by Hassan Banhakeia (L'Harmattan).
The first visitors
Although the oral tradition remained the preferred medium for Tangiers until the 20th century, this did not prevent foreign writers from beginning to write about their city, at least two centuries earlier! - earlier. Thus, the Pole Jan Potocki (1761-1815) - not yet the author of the famous Manuscrit à Saragosse written in French - sharpened his pen in sumptuous travel narratives, including a trip around the Mediterranean. Of course, he stopped off in Tangier, which he recounted in La Cour du Maroc, published in 1792 (Magellan & Cie). Barely a century later, in 1862, Hans Christian Andersen, who is best known for his fairy tales although he was also a playwright, embarked on his second trip to this part of the world: the first had taken him to Constantinople twenty years earlier, guided, it is said, by his fascination with The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, which his father had told him as a child. This time, he travelled to Tangiers, where he stayed with Danish Consul Drummond Hay, and was even invited to meet the Pasha. He spent a week there, captivated by the ballet of the caravans and the beauty of the orange groves, bringing back a porcupine quill as a souvenir, which he used as a penholder to record a few anecdotes that were bound to be enchanting. In the 19th century, the pace of visits accelerated. Whether British, like George Borrow (1803-1881), American (Mark Twain), Russian (Vassili Botkine), Italian (Edmondo De Amicis), Swiss (Charles Didier) or French - Alexandre Dumas and Pierre Loti(Au Maroc, éditions Omnia), to name but two - they all made a welcome stopover at a place that had already become a must-see. Some stay longer than others, like the family of Elisa Chimenti, born in Naples in 1883, who settled here at the very end of the century. Her father became the physician to Sultan Hassan I, while she became a teacher, journalist and author, constantly involved with and inspired by her adopted city, which she cherished until her last breath in 1969. Her work is available in French - her preferred writing language - from Editions du Sirocco(Anthologie : légendes marocaines) and in digital format from Editions du Scorpion(Au cœur du Harem).
Pio Baroja, Rubén Darío, Samuel Beckett, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Henri Amic, Henry de Montherlant... The new century is not yet thirty years old, but it has already seen many distinguished visitors and witnessed the birth of a future great Spanish-speaking author, Ángel Vázquez (1929-1980). Although he won the Planeta Prize for his first novel(Se enciende y se apaga una luz, 1962), he published very little: a forced exile in Spain, the country of his origins where he never found his place and deplored having left the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Tangier, plunged him into alcoholism and poverty. He didn't survive the night he decided to burn his manuscripts; a heart attack put an end to his sufferings and gave him his reputation as a cursed writer.
From the Beat Generation to today
While Vázquez never recovered from leaving Tangier, the city became a refuge for little Mohamed Choukri (1935-2008), who had fled his small Rif village and his father's violence to embark on a no less dangerous life as a street child. This turpitude led him to prison at the age of 20, where he learned to read and write, and where - unbeknownst to him at the time - his future career as a writer took shape. The work for which he is best known is drawn from this unusual background: Le Pain nu (Naked Bread) has been in constant publication since 1982 - although the government tried to have it censored shortly after publication because of its references to sexuality and drug use - and is now available in French translation from Points as Le Temps des erreurs (The Time of Mistakes). One year his junior, Mohammed Mrabet was also intimately acquainted with Tangier, but it was for the oral tradition that he developed his passion, while cultivating his pictorial talents. His books(L'Amour pour quelques cheveux published by Gallimard, M'Hashish by City Lights, the legendary San Francisco publisher) and other collections of folk tales would probably not have existed without the intervention of Paul Bowles, who served as his translator, a mission he also accomplished for Mohamed Choukri. Indeed, since 1947, the American had been living full-time in Tangier, a city he had visited regularly since the 1930s - on the good advice of Gertrude Stein - and where his wife, Jane Auer, also an author, joined him two years later. The couple didn't go unnoticed in Tangier, and they soon established a regular clientele at the Café Hafa and the Madame Porte tea room. Above all, they entertained a lot, even if their lodgings behind the American consulate were far less inviting than the house on the cliff where Bowles wrote The Red Jungle. Their prestigious guests included Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal, who never missed an opportunity to break away from his native America and its Puritanism, as he recounts in Palimpseste (Points). Above all, the almost mythical couple paved the way in Tangiers for members of the Beat Generation, including William Burroughs, who was not exactly at his best in the mid-50s. After a month spent staring at his shoes, he decided to give up drugs - indeed, he began his first detox in 1956 - but above all he began to write. Room No. 9 at the Muniria saw him embark on a crazy project that was to become Le Festin nu (The Naked Feast), the definitive title found in 1957 by Jack Kerouac, who in turn stayed at the hotel, before Allen Ginsberg and his friend Peter Orlovsky eventually joined them there.
Tangier certainly knew some scandalous times, but it was a less sulphurous Jean Genet who arrived in the early 70s. At over sixty, the author of Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, Querelle de Brest and Journal d'un voleur was no longer writing, nor did he seem inclined to be persuaded to get back to it, following in the footsteps of his fellow countrymen who had gone before him, whether Paul Morand(Hécate et ses chiens) or Joseph Kessel(Au Grand Socco). To tell the truth, Genet slept a lot, stupefied by sleeping pills, and hardly ever left El Minzah, where he stayed, except to go to the Librairie des Colonnes... Tahar Ben Jelloun - who won the Prix Goncourt for La Nuit sacrée - nevertheless summoned him in at least two of his texts - Beckett et Genet, un thé à Tanger and Jean Genet, menteur sublime. The Franco-Moroccan author also wrote Jour de silence à Tanger (Day of Silence in Tangier ) because, although he was not a native, he lived in the city during his high school years before leaving for France. Although the magic had somewhat evaporated - an impression that this novel can only confirm - literature had nevertheless taken root, carried by native writers such as Lotfi Akalay (1943-2019) who, after working as a journalist for Al Bayane and Femmes du Maroc, published Les Nuits d'Azed with Seuil in 1996. A great success translated into several languages, it will soon be followed by Ibn Battouta, Prince des Voyageurs (éditions Le Fennec), a biography of the famous Berber explorer, also born in Tangier in the early 14th century.
