De "L’île parfumée" aux porteurs de patrimoine dans la littérature polynésienne

Resumo

On arrival in Tahiti in the Eighteenth Century, the navigators brought a Western dualist point of view of the world which correspondingly placed the Polynesian Islands ata ‘dead end’ in terms of identity. To make amends for the discrimination caused bythe distinctions between the people labelled ‘the civilised’ or’ savages’, with ‘writing’or ‘without writing’, Flora Devatine traces the first Tahitian writer, Ernest Salmon, and his manuscript of ‘The Perfumed Isle’, rediscovered in 2012. In her writing sheuses traditional forms of Tahitian thought. On one hand, with the Tifaifai, she unitesthese opposing elements. It resembles a patchwork that reassembles that which wasdivided by the West. On the other hand, the Huri returns the question in every senseto create meaning, a moving meaning, unstoppable, renovated with circumstances; ameaning which gives space to the living, without negating its paradoxes, in contrast torational thought. Principally two of his works are analysed: Tergiversations et Rêveriesde l’Écriture Orale (1998) et Au vent de la piroguière (2016), Heredia prize, FrenchAcademy 2017).