THE ORIGINS AND MEANING OF COOLITUDE
The poetry of Coolitude – the concept defined and worked out by Khal – is embodied chiefly in two volumes, Cale d’Etoiles and Chair Corail, Fragment Coolies, and expanded in Palabres à Parole, in a reappraisal of the poet’s réservoir of signs. In Dialogue de l’eau et du sel, Torabully reinvests meditative poetry through the birth of the sea, while Roulis sur le Malecon, is a forceful encounter with the metissage of Cuba, and L’Ombre rouge des gazelles, is a text on Algeria in the great tradition of Arab poetry.
Cale d’Etoiles, the founding text of coolitude, has been described by Jean-Georges Prosper as “ An odyssey, an epic of openness which exorcised the unhappy memory of immigration, of indenture, in Mauritius, and of the Indian as coolie. From this derives the hallucinatory, disjointed Mauritian writing of the late 19th century, the texts replete with tragic references and reminiscences, stressing the tribulations of the Indians. Unhappy memories which have been reclaimed by the poet in a new form of creative thinking called Coolitude, a sort of Indian version of Negritude.”
Whilst Négritude and Coolitude have much in common, Cale d’Etoiles devises an original language blending different visions of the world, moulded into poetry. Khal Torabully never lapses into an essentialist philosophy. Indeed, he does away with exile, and clearly reveals in Cale d’Etoiles that the key-text is the Book of the Voyage, giving the sea voyage an essential function in his poetry. It is to be understood as a place of destruction and creation of the self, which is a preliminary to the ‘enracinement’ in the host country, itself comprehended as a dynamic space of the diversity of perceptions and cultures. This nodal point has been explained by Véronique Bragard, a Belgian researcher: «Coolitude is not based on Coolie as such but relies on the nightmare transoceanic journey of Coolies, as both a historical migration and a metonymy of cultural encounters. The crossing of the Kala Pani constitutes the first movement of a series of abusive and culturally stifling situations. By making the crossing central, Coolitude avoids any essentialism and connection with an idealized Mother India, which is clearly left behind. It discloses the Coolie’s story which has been shipwrecked (« erased ») in the ocean of a western-made historical discourse as well as a world of publication and criticism».
No doubt, Coolitude is the song of a forgotten voyage. But it is also more : the coolie odyssey is the ultimate voyage: the essence of journeys and the essence of Man. The struggles of the coolie, his disappointments and his hopes, are the echoes of a universal human experience. The inclusiveness of the créolie of Réunion and the créolité of the Caribbean reach their apogée in the all-embracing mantle of coolitude.
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