Reading Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle as a ‘Legend of the Just’

Abstract

This article offers a reading of Simone Schwarz-Bart’s novel Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle (1972) in the light of André Schwarz-Bart’s novel Le Dernier des Justes (1959). Through the exalted poetic language of Simone Schwarz-Bart, Télumée is elevated to the rank of a Just woman of the Caribbean, as is Ernie in the Jewish European community, for their stories are exemplary of the greatness of a whole generation of people, who are oftentimes seen as victims of antisemitic persecution or transatlantic slavery. Narrating the living memory of these characters in both a realist and mythic language and honoring the nobility of their hearts without explicit political discourse, both novels provide a subversive perspective, as it questions the borders between the ancient generations and the younger ones, the living and the dead. It calls for a positive representation of ancestral, religious, and traditional values, and purports a common ethical vision transcending the social, gender and racial categories imposed by a colonial history. It is in this ethical vision that resides the political significance of the two novels, as they can speak to us universally today.