Mazaltob: A Novel de Blanche Bendahan

Mazaltob: A Novel: The Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry

Autor Blanche Bendahan Traducere de Yaëlle Azagury, Frances Malino

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 12 mar 2024

Găsim în ediția de față a romanului Mazaltob nu doar o operă de ficțiune recuperată, ci un proiect editorial de anvergură academică. Structura volumului este riguros organizată pentru a facilita înțelegerea unui context cultural complex: materialul debutează cu o prefață și o introducere istorică semnate de Frances Malino, urmate de o notă asupra traducerii și o hartă a Africii de Nord din 1910. Textul propriu-zis, împărțit în 15 capitole, este succedat de un eseu critic substanțial despre ascensiunea romanului sefard modern, oferind cititorului instrumentele necesare pentru a decoda nuanțele sociale ale epocii. Notăm cu interes cum această metodologie transformă lectura dintr-o simplă experiență narativă într-un studiu aprofundat al emancipării feminine într-o comunitate tradițională. Premisa este centrată pe Mazaltob, o tânără de șaisprezece ani din Tetouan, prinsă între datoria față de comunitatea sa (reprezentată de logodnicul José) și aspirația către libertatea individuală simbolizată de Jean. Stilul autoarei Blanche Bendahan se distinge printr-o fuziune rară între observația etnografică detaliată a obiceiurilor cotidiene și tehnicile moderniste de explorare a interiorității. Mazaltob completează perspectiva oferită de The Fiancée Rode in on a Donkey de Vénus Khoury-Ghata, adăugând o dimensiune critică și sociologică asupra constrângerilor religioase specifice comunității sefarde, dincolo de lirismul pur al deșertului. În timp ce alte lucrări se concentrează pe folclor, Blanche Bendahan construiește un manifest literar despre tensiunea dintre tradiție și decolonizare, validat istoric prin premiul acordat de Academia Franceză încă din 1930.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781684582051
ISBN-10: 1684582059
Pagini: 176
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 18 mm
Greutate: 0.31 kg
Editura: Brandeis University Press
Colecția Brandeis University Press
Seria The Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm Mazaltob cercetătorilor și cititorilor pasionați de istoria culturală a Magrebului și de literatura feministă timpurie. Este o oportunitate rară de a accesa, în premieră în limba engleză, o operă care a definit genul romanului sefard modern. Cititorul câștigă o înțelegere profundă a vieții femeilor evreice din Marocul începutului de secol XX, beneficiind de un aparat critic ce clarifică termenii culturali și contextul istoric al emancipării.

Despre autor

Blanche Bendahan (1893–1975) a fost o scriitoare de origine sefardă, recunoscută ca o precursoare a literaturii feministe moderne din Africa de Nord. Născută într-o familie cu rădăcini în comunitatea din Tetouan, ea a reușit să surprindă în opera sa tensiunile dintre mediul intelectual francez în care s-a format și tradițiile rigide ale cartierelor evreiești marocane. Romanul Mazaltob rămâne cea mai importantă contribuție a sa, fiind distins cu un premiu din partea Academiei Franceze în 1930, o realizare remarcabilă pentru o autoare care explora teme atât de specifice identității sefarde și condiției feminine într-o eră a transformărilor coloniale.

Descriere scurtă

A first-ever English translation of a compelling work by a forerunner of modern Sephardi feminist literature.

Raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José, an uncouth man from her own community who has returned from Argentina to take a wife. Mazaltob, however, is in love with Jean, who is French, half-Jewish, and a free spirit. In this classic of North African Jewish fiction, Blanche Bendahan evokes the two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart in her body and soul: her loyalty to the Judería and her powerful desire to follow her own voice and find true love. Bendahan’s nuanced and moving novel is a masterly exploration of the language, religion, and quotidian customs constraining North African Jewish women on the cusp of emancipation and decolonization. Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino provide the first English translation of this modern coming-of-age tale, awarded a prize by the Académie Française in 1930, and analyze the ways in which Mazaltob, with its disconcerting blend of ethnographic details and modernist experimentation, is the first of its genre—that of the feminist Sephardi novel. A historical introduction, a literary analysis, and annotations elucidate historical and cultural terms for readers, supplementing the author’s original notes.

Notă biografică

Blanche Bendahan (1893–1975) was born in Algeria to a Jewish family of Moroccan descent and moved to France shortly after she was born. She was a writer of poetry as well as fiction. Mazaltob, which won an award from the Académie Française, was her first novel. Yaëlle Azagury is a writer, literary scholar, and critic. She was a lecturer in French and Francophone studies at Barnard College and a lecturer in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is a native of Tangier, Morocco. Frances Malino is the Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and History Emerita at Wellesley College. In 2012 she was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Ministry of Education.

Cuprins

Preface
by Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino
Acknowledgements
Introduction
by Frances Malino
A Note on the Translation
Map of the North of Africa and the Mediterranean (1910)
Mazaltob
by Blanche Bendahan
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Mazaltob and the Rise of the Modern Sephardi Novel
by Yaëlle Azagury
Endnotes
Further Reading

Recenzii

“This is a poignant coming-of-age novel which explores themes of feminism, decolonization, diaspora, orientalism and the struggle between modernity and tradition. The text is rich and lush in its descriptions of North African Jewish life and customs; it’s also slippery in its point of view, meandering between narrators and voices in a way reminiscent of fellow modernist feminist writer Virginia Woolf.”

“Mazaltob is psychologically astute, highlighting clashes—of traditions and of values—that are incredibly modern. The history of this little-known corner of the Jewish world where ‘the Sephardim view themselves as aristocrats’ is fascinating and moving. Bendahan was ahead of her time as a feminist yet of the moment as a novelist. She had one foot in twentieth-century European culture and another in the rituals and rhythms of ancient Sephardic Jewry.”

“During the past few decades, scholars and feminists has been recovering work written by Jewish women during the first half of the twentieth century. The majority of these books are from the Ashkenazic world, which makes the new edition of the novel Mazaltob by Bendahan, translated and edited by Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino, even more welcome since it offers a view of Sephardic culture.”

“With this edition, we are able to appreciate fully how unique the novel was for its time, and why it is relevant for anyone interested in understanding how the awakening of a feminist sensibility took shape in this distinct cultural and historical climate.”

“Azagury and Malino have translated Bendahan’s text beautifully, and their footnotes, introductions, and explanations supply necessary context. . . . A brilliant and ambivalent piece of feminist fiction.”

“Azagury and Malino have done us a tremendous service by making this seminal novel by Bendahan accessible in English translation, thereby helping us to build a canon of Sephardic novelistic creativity by women writers in French.”

“The English translation of Mazaltob is the result of a collaboration between scholars Azagury and Malino, who offer a keen historical introduction, annotated text and insightful literary analysis. Their efforts help us to appreciate how unique Mazaltob was for its time and why it is relevant for anyone interested in understanding the emergence of a Jewish feminist sensibility taking shape in this distinct cultural and historical climate.”

“It is a little gem of a book, not a historical curiosity but something to be read for all the good reasons you read a novel.”

“Those who . . . use this text . . . to learn about Moroccan Jewish life in the early part of the twentieth century will be rewarded. . . . With this new edition, readers and scholars can judge anew its place in the literary canon.”

“A significant contribution to the scholarly world of Jewish studies and to North African studies, as well as to women’s and gender studies. And, while its publication by a university press suggests an academic readership, aficionados of historical novels will surely find it a treat.”

“A fascinating portrait of a young Moroccan Sephardi woman as she navigates the ever-shifting ground between tradition and modernity, East and West, self and other, obligation and desire. Stylistically bold, culturally rich, by turns comic and wrenching, this polyphonic novel is both historically important and, in its new translation, a gift for our current times.”

“English-language readers will rejoice at this translation of Bendahan’s coming-of-age story, set in northern Morocco at the turn of the century and following the dreams and travails of a Jewish young woman who chafes at the constraints that society places upon her. This marvelous annotated translation restores to us the forgotten words of an award-winning Jewish woman writer—and introduces us to a young, female Jewish protagonist whose sexual and spiritual desires are evocative and timely. With artful, informed introductory words by Azagury and Malino, Mazaltob is a crucial compliment and counterpoint to Albert Memmi’s The Pillar of Salt: it is what students of French, North African, and Jewish culture have been thirsting for.”

“Bendahan’s masterpiece—a stunning exploration of Jewishness, feminism, and modernity in Morocco—deserves to be read far and wide. Malino’s excellent biographical introduction and Azagury’s fascinating literary analysis beautifully frame their translation. A delight and a triumph!”

“A beautiful, poetic novel, Mazaltob offers rich description of the lives of Jewish women in early twentieth-century Tetouan, while also reflecting upon the early twentieth-century French intellectual milieu of its author, Bendahan. The fluid translation makes the work of this important but long-overlooked Sephardic writer a pleasure to read in English.”