L’histoire au service de la littérature et vice versa : Ngum a Jemea de David Mbanga Eyombwan et Une saison blanche et sèche d’André Brink, deux fictions historico-testimoniales
History at the Service of Literature and vice versa: David Mbanga Eyombwan’s Ngum a Jemea and André Brink’s A Dry White Season, two historical-testimonial fictions

Summary/Abstract: The historical fact lived individually or collectively and (in)directly is mostoften at the origin of artistic creations. Some literary productions, in particular, are inspired by major historical events. This is the case of David Mbanga Eyombwan’s Ngum a Jemea and André Brink’s Une saison blanche et sèche (A Dry White Season). These two literary texts serve historical and testimonial purposes. The first is set in the colonial context, precisely in Cameroon, in the German era. The second is a photographic depiction of the sociopolitical atmosphere of the apartheid era in South Africa. David Eyombwan, as an indirect witness, was inspired to write his testimonial theater by an emblematic pioneer figure of Cameroonian nationalism, Rudolf Dualla Manga Bell, while André Brink reports, as a direct witness, the individual experience of his character-hero, Ben du Toit, one of the victims of the sociopolitical segregationist system of his society. The present article questions the fictionalization or the staging/narrative of history by each of the two authors. It appears that the alliance of historical and literary facts contributes, in the case of the two texts, to the expression of an act of memory or a duty to testify with a satirical, philosophical and ethical aim.

• Details
• Contents