Celebrations and disturbances in the work of Milton Hatoum

Abstract

The feast - whether religious, national, family or individual - places the being within a community more or less reduced. It can be its own familial and friendly nucleus in this case of a quasi-enlargement of individuality; It may also be the whole society which in its common history celebrates events which have contributed to the formation of its identity-the identity of the nation and of the individual belonging to that same nation. The celebrations will then be so-called "profane" festivals: family meals, birthdays, new year, commemoration ... These religious celebrations are not however devoid of any religiosity. Thus, "the majority of men" without religion "still share pseudo-religions and degraded mythologies. This is not surprising to us, since the profane man is the descendant of homo religiosus and can not annul his own history, that is, the behavior of his religious ancestors, who Have constituted what it is today. "2 The founding acts of individuality and of society seem to be renewed through these different types of celebrations. Marriages and funerals are located on the border between the sacred and the profane, between the individual and the community because they bear witness to a personal commitment of being and faith. In marriage, one surrenders to the other through God; In death, one surrenders totally to God. The work of Milton Hatoum is far from being devoid of religiosity. Indeed, religion and belief hold an important place in the various novels, short stories and tales of the author amazonense. Thus, it offers the reader passages relating festive episodes mixing Amerindian beliefs and Catholic practices - and sometimes Muslim by the Lebanese origin of the protagonists of his Narrative of a certain Orient and Two Brothers. The syncretism formed by this entanglement of beliefs and rites is therefore omnipresent.