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Thunder
from the sea / Willowdean Chatterson Handy ; foreword by H. E.
Maude. - Canberra : ANU press, 1973. -
XX-336 p. :
ill. ; 22 cm.
ISBN
0-7081-0262-X
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… I
have written what may have been the life of Pakoko,
whom we know to have been the chief warrior, or
« Ironwood », of Nuku Hiva.
☐ Willowdean Chatterson Handy, Preface, p. XI |
En
1595, une expédition espagnole fait une brève
escale dans
un archipel inconnu auquel elle donne le nom d'îles
Marquises ; cette première incursion
européenne est empreinte de violence. En 1774,
le capitaine Cook s'arrête quelques jours dans ces
îles,
non sans user à son tour de violence. Mais c'est tout au
long du XIXe
siècle que les insulaires vont expérimenter,
durablement,
le « contact » avec l'occident
— principalement les Etats-Unis
d'Amérique, la
Grande-Bretagne et la France. La documentation portant sur cette
tranche d'histoire est abondante (récits de navigateurs, de
missionnaires, de beachcombers, …)
mais elle ne consigne qu'un unique point de vue, celui des nouveaux
venus. Rien ne permet de connaître l'état de la
société marquisienne avant l'irruption des
occidentaux,
ni la manière dont les Marquisiens ont vécu cette
expérience ; mais on
peut évaluer les
conséquences de cette confrontation : effondrement
d'une civilisation et d'une
culture, chute de la démographie au point que de nombreux
observateurs ont annoncé comme inéluctable la
disparition du peuple marquisien.
Pour
évoquer ce pan occulté de l'histoire, Willowdean
Chatterson Handy a construit une trame romanesque qui couvre la
première moitié du XIXe
siècle,
quand se joue l'avenir des Marquisiens : du passage du
commandant
américain David Porter jusqu'à la prise de
possession par
le contre-amiral français Dupetit-Thouars. Les principaux
personnages mis en scène ont existé
— en
premier lieu Pakoko,
un homme déterminé à forcer
son destin qui deviendra la grande figure de la résistance
aux
forces venues de l'extérieur. En relatant les
événements du seul point de vue des insulaires,
Mrs. Handy fait entendre la stupeur d'un peuple brutalement
confronté à l'irruption de nouveaux venus dont
l'apparence, la langue, les usages et les croyances sont absolument
déroutants et qui utilisent des armes d'une
terrible
efficacité. Les premières
« rencontres », telles qu'elles
sont ici
décrites, dessinent en négatif les
événements exaltants qui abondent dans les
récits
des voyageurs occidentaux ; le bien et le mal sont
inversés ; de part et d'autre règne
l'incompréhension.
Le
roman est adossé sur l'abondante documentation disponible,
mais
sa valeur repose essentiellement sur la
crédibilité
attribuable au changement de point de vue revendiqué par
l'auteur. Or, pour avoir participé aux travaux de la mission
Bayard-Dominick du Bishop Museum d'Honolulu, Willowdean Chatterson
Handy disposait de connaissances recueillies à la source sur
la
société marquisienne et sa culture ;
elle pouvait
surtout se prévaloir des relations étroites et
amicales
nouées à cette occasion dans la population de
l'archipel.
Peu d'occidentaux se sont autant qu'elle approchés de la
société marquisienne et de son âme.
Histoire d'un
temps révolu, Thunder
from the sea est un témoignage de
fraternité adressé aux descendants des
protagonistes du roman.
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HAROLD
E. MAUDE :
How often has one wished for a really convincing interpretation of the
traumatic changes in island life and thought brought about by the
advent of the European on the Pacific scene ? Such an
interpretation, if it is to be meaningful to more than a few
specialists must, I believe, be written as a novel (or at least in
partly fictional, partly biographical form) and by one who through
temperament and training is able to get beneath the surface of island
life and visualise the attitudes, motivations, and values of the
islanders through their own eyes. (…) Many have essayed such
a
task ; and among them will be found most of the great masters
of
South Sea literatures who have touched the islands with genius. But no
one of them was able to depict characters who thought and behave like
islanders rather than Europeans, for to do so requires a degree of
participation in another society which few have attempted and fewer
still achieved.
(…)
Some time
ago I found that
there was indeed such an unpublished manuscript in existence ;
that it had been written by Willowdean Chatterson Handy, a versatile
and sympathetic American anthropologist who had lived for twelve years
among the Polynesians, notably in the Marquesas (…), and had
been five more writing her quasi-historical account of all that our
coming must have meant to their world. I suppose that the writing
provided the catharsis which the author was in need of after her long
and intimate association with one of the most attractive, most
misunderstood and mistreated of all the Polynesian peoples, for she had
done little to secure its publication.
(…)
Anything
less confortable to the stereotype of escapist Paradise literature than
Thunder from
the Sea would
be hard to imagine. Lacking even the apparently essential
« white man, brown man » motif,
it has the
authenticity of a modern field study, with its characters and main
events drawn from historical sources ; and yet once launched
into
the narrative the reader is carried through without a break to its
dramatic culmination by the sheer vitality of the plot and the
sensitivity of its denouement.
Willowdean
Chatterson Handy is no longer with us, but her Thunder from the Sea has
found the perceptive publisher its author wished for, and I predict
will become an imperishable memorial to the gifted woman who has
written the only South Sea novel which successfully transcends cultural
boundaries.
☐ Foreword, pp. V-VII
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| EXCERPT |
From
the black shade of hibiscus tree, the eyes of the people of Taiohae
gleamed, wide and fixed, as they clung to an enormous canoe which
covered their sky and their sea. The thing was like a mountain with
man-eating precipices, with great forests on the uplands.
« It is the wonder canoe of the old-time
people, » whispered Chief Hiatai, looking up at his
father
who stood shading his eyes with his fan. « The
grandfathers-far-below have sent it to me, » he said.
« Perhaps, »
murmured Pakoko doubtfully. Then, seeing his son's swelling lips, he
consoled him. « We will ask for it.
Come. »
(…)
The Chief of Haavao forgot his son when a small
canoe came
sliding down the cliffs of the father ship. All his force went into his
eyes as the clumsy craft walked backwards towards him on curiously
rolling paddles. Absorbed in examining every line of the boat, every
movement of the paddlers, every feature of the only man who faced him,
he forgot speech and movement, even breath. He was like a tree, rooted
in the land, one of hundreds of trees that stood rigidly all along the
crescent of Taiohae's sands. They all had heard of people from the
clouds who had visited the other islands, but words had not made known
to them their splendor or their strangeness.
As
five men drew near in the boat and all turned their faces towards the
land, their difference was shocking. These were not natural men, with
their skin white as coconut flesh and their sky-clear-eyes. Were they
the dead returning from the skies ? Even their shouts were
empty
as the cries of birds. A pity that Priest Kohu had not come down from
his sky-piercing house, for he understood the talk of birds. The Teiis
struck the points of their eyes deep into the pale ones that stared at
them, hoping to find something to catch and tie to. Not until those
faded eyes wavered and those bleached heads turned away could the
landsmen discover anything familiar. Then they saw that those fellows
were ashamed and angry as they jerked their boat about. The watchers
could move now, enough to sit down, enough to whisper back and forth.
☐ pp. 145-146 |
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| COMPLÉMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE |
- « Thunder
from the sea », Honolulu : University press
of Hawaii,
1973 ; Auckland : Longman Paul, 1973
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| mise-à-jour : 29
mars 2017 |
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