Article produced with the collaboration of Bamba Siaka Doh Ouattara
Do you like baobabs? These large gigantic trees of Africa that can live up to 3000 years and whose woody fruits are called “monkey bread”. O masts of my ancestors! That I would have loved to be a baobab! What could a big blue baobab look like? To find out, take a tour in a bookstore to offer you “The Great Blue Baobab”, Daniel Schick’s first novel. Daniel Schick is a French media man. He started as a producer in 1986 at RFI. He has worked for radio and TV in the cultural field. He has worked for several services, including France Musique, TF1,… He wrote several books.
This work is the most perfect translation of the immanence and transcendence of art. What does this mean in easy French? Art makes it possible to include in the same interaction, in the same exchange, a work, its creator and the receiver(s). This work seeks to establish an unlikely alliance. Without worrying about religious and other conceptions, the author shows that by overcoming cultural, linguistic, religious and other stereotypes, art makes it possible to amalgamate contrasts so as to bring out a new idea. Daniel Schick’s work is characterized by the unitary message it carries. Also, “Mathieu puts Demba on a drip of stories that are foreign to him. These are for Demba exotic, exhilarating, entertaining, nourishing: dressings.”
This book, disconcerting, asks about a tragedy experienced by immigrants and natives: how to escape the fear of loneliness, the trauma of exile? In the work, one of the protagonists, Demba, sketches an attempt to answer: “Make me dream”. A human drama underlines this powerful work: that of loneliness on the one hand and exile on the other. Tragedies that stalk us and pursue us. This book appeared to me patinated with a bright light where, here and there, an ink spot makes vibrate the “black-white” parts.
In this book, the theme of exile and loneliness coincide with that of art: Demba, raped by her uncle, takes the dessert road to arrive in Europe. A road full of pitfalls: exploitation, kidnappings, murder, drowning in the Mediterranean. A refugee in Paris, he happens to meet a Parisian 50-year-old, pure juice as seen on the terraces in summer. Despite their great difference, a history of friendship was born between Mathieu and Demba. We have the impression that the two characters have sealed, in a secret sheath, a pact. Something unites them: a painting of Picasso. A beacon in the darkness. This friendship awakens dormant hopes.
This book is a nod to art and artists. Picasso is the main thread of the work. Such a luminous work must cling to a dazzling figure.
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