Literary Portraits of World War I Tirailleurs sénégalais: Lucie Cousturier’s Des Inconnus chez moi (1920), and Raymond Escholier’s Mahmadou Fofana (1928)

Neophilologus https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-024-09824-w Literary Portraits of World War I Tirailleurs sénégalais: Lucie Cousturier’s Des Inconnus chez moi (1920), and Raymond Escholier’s Mahmadou Fofana (1928) Kathy Comfort1 Accepted: 23 October 2024 © The Author(s) 2025 Abstract The literary depictions of the tirailleurs sénégalais, the West African French colonial troops who fought in World War I, in novels published during the conflict and in the interwar years were often little more than racist caricatures. Two works from the interwar period, Lucie Cousturier’s Des Inconnus chez moi (1920) and Raymond Escholier’s Mahmadou Fofana (1928), based on the friendships the respective authors established with West African troops during the Great War, provide a counterpoint to the degrading portrayals of the tirailleurs. Cousturier, a painter, taught French to soldiers at the hivernage camp next to her villa in Fréjus while Escholier, the former curator of la Maison de Victor Hugo and le Petit Palais, led units of tirailleurs in battle on the Western Front and in Macedonia. Cousturier and Escholier build on their knowledge of art and literature to construct nuanced portraits of West African troops to restore the men’s humanity. Making use of metaphors from the natural world and allusions to literature and/or art, these two writers create characters that challenge the racist tropes associated with the tirailleurs sénégalais. Keywords 20th-Century french literature · World War I literature · Nature metaphors · Literary allusion · Tirailleurs sénégalais The one-hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I in 2018 inspired several new books and films, such as David Diop’s novel, Frère d’âme (Diop, 2018) and the major motion picture Tirailleurs (Tirailleurs, 2023), starring Omar Sy, which brought the tirailleurs sénégalais, the West African colonial troops that fought for France, much-deserved recognition. Overwhelmingly positive, these recent portrayals of the tirailleurs are vastly different from the often racist, caricatural depictions * Kathy Comfort 1 Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures, KIMP 425, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA Vol.:(0123456789) K. Comfort that appeared in literature and in the popular press during and immediately after the Great War. Two works published in the 1920s, Lucie Cousturier’s Des Inconnus chez moi (1920) and Raymond Escholier’s Mahmadou Fofana (1928), provide a counterpoint to the bigoted tropes associated with the tirailleurs sénégalais. Through their use of nature metaphors on the one hand and literary and artistic allusions on the other, Cousturier and Escholier challenge the all-too-common demeaning representations of the West African troops. For both authors, the choice of nature metaphors is at once a function of their sensibilities and a response to the way the West African troops, many of whom were from rural backgrounds, saw the world. Melissa Burkley points out that metaphors in general “connect something that is less understood with something that is more understood. As a result, good metaphors help the reader understand something they otherwise might not have” (Burkley, 2017, n.p.). Backing her assertions up with scientific data, Burkley concludes that “metaphors go beyond just comprehension and demonstration—they actually change the way we think of a concept on an unconscious level” (Burkley, 2017, n.p.). This is key to the present discussion because it suggests that metaphor and allusion in Des Inconnus and Mahmadou Fofana change the readers’ perceptions of the West African colonial troops. Allan Pasco’s essay “The Allusive Complex of Balzac’s Pierrette” provides the framework for my examination, in particular his use of the term “allusion,” which he defines as “the metaphorical relationship that may be created when the text being read establishes a relationship with another, previous, literary experience, if, that is, the reader has the knowledge to grasp the allusion and allow it to expand the reading” (Pasco, 2001, p. 29). As we read, Pasco asserts, we “make images or intricate, mental complexes of themes, feelings, and traits. When skillful writers like Balzac introduce allusions, the references to other works … stimulate the recollection of a previous experience, and the memory comes back to join metaphorically with the current experience” (Pasco, 2001, p. 39). If the reader has a positive association with the work, that is, the source of the allusion—what Gérard Genette calls the “hypotext”—the reader would be favorably disposed to the “hypertext” (Genette’s term for the new version) (Genette, 1997, p. 5). Pasco cautions, however, that “although the alluding text must have salient similarities, it need not be identical to the text referenced. The reader has no difficulty making meaningful applications and ignoring those elements and relationships that are inappropriate and unevocative, rather as readers suppress secondary and tertiary meanings of words that have nothing to do with the current context” (Pasco, 2001, p. 40). Cousturier and Escholier follow the pattern Pasco sets forth, because their allusions both directly and indirectly reference characters and artists that the French reading public in the early twentieth century would likely recognize. A protégée of Paul Signac and a friend of Georges Seurat, Cousturier presented her paintings at several exhibitions in France and Belgium. Her memoir Des Inconnus chez moi is, as Charles Forsdick puts it, “a direct témoignage albeit from a French perspective, of the sub-Saharan contribution to the First World War” (Forsdick, 1998, p. 259). Cousturier recalls the two years that she spent teaching French to dozens of tirailleurs posted at the hivernage camp next to her country home in Fréjus, a project she undertook to help them earn the respect of Literary Portraits of World War I Tirailleurs sénégalais those with whom they interacted but above all to give them the tools they needed to voice more complex ideas in their adopted language: “je me sens consultée comme un médecin par des malades angoissés, et je sais que, s’il est des remèdes à de tels maux, que personne n’a reconnus, il me faudra les inventer” (Cousturier, 1920, pp. 100–01). The medical metaphor captures the emotional suffering the men endure while also underscoring the potential cure for their linguistic infirmity, namely, higher-level proficiency in French. Inspired by the natural world, Cousturier creates metaphors which add nuance to her portrayal of the tirailleurs. Because she enjoyed working in the garden of her villa, it is only fitting that she should introduce her subjects through arboreal imagery. Recalling her first interaction with her new neighbors, she muses: “Aurais-je pu croire, ce jour-là, que … ces tirailleurs noirs seraient assez peu soldats, assez vivants, pour remplacer des arbres? qu’ils le seraient au point que leur départ p (...truncated)