Theatre and Resistance: Depersonalisation & Identity
June 22, 2009
Report by Robert Pouderou
Hello, Odette!
Hi, Moussa!
I don’t know the number of your cloud, but I am sending you this letter on the broad wings of Memory.
Many of us answered “present” to the call of the great family of “Les Enfants et Amis Abadi” and its president, Andrée Poch-Karsenti – a call to meet on June 22 at the home of Lucien Attoun, who opened his theatre to us. Lucien, a radio man like you, Moussa, led the day with his warm talent and his humour.
We had a master of ceremonies in the person of a writer, Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat; he played his role of moderator perfectly – though he had no need to moderate us in our recollections of your couple, who fascinate him; he handled the transitions between the various speakers particularly well.
The first talk fell to Catherine Jourdan, a member of the association and a philosophy teacher: she brilliantly evoked life in Nice during the Occupation and let us imagine what yours was like at that time.
Andrée Poch-Karsenti took over happily; she drew us, dear Moussa, in the wake of your journey through culture and theatre, weaving links and building bridges between your passion for the stage and your acts of resistance – that “drôle de jeu” (strange game), as Roger Vailland called it.
And then came the time for surprises, which Lucien orchestrated perfectly: two interviews – one on screen, the other by telephone – with Ariane Mnouchkine and Patrice Chéreau, both gratefully acknowledging that you had cast a generous and penetrating eye on their beginnings and their originality.
After such stage beacons, Jean-Claude (Grumberg), Victor (Haïm) and I had trouble shining with our candles in the tribute we wanted to pay you. But if shining was not our main concern, those present in the hall were moved – with a delicate, decent emotion – by the detailed description of our relationships with you and by what we recalled: your constant and unrestrained support for the works of living authors in “La Comédie du Théâtre”, and how lavish you were with signs of encouragement towards them. And then, with a smile, we told a few anecdotes, and Lucien and Victor recalled – still laughing about it – two lasting “quarrels” you had had with them. Oh yes, Moussa, you were a man of character. But sometimes – “what a character!” Come on, if you are reading over my shoulder, don’t sulk!
After the buffet – there was Bordeaux – Helen Solterer, whom you knew, dear Odette, reminded us of your forays into medieval theatre and wondered how you may have used dramatic play in the Resistance. Our American friend’s brilliant talk won us over.
After a poem by Charlotte Delbo, spoken with fine sensitivity by Natacha Karsenti, Maria Landau, neuropsychiatrist and psychoanalyst, raised the question of the depersonalisation of the hidden children, prefacing her talk with this remark by Jouvet – whom you knew well, Moussa – who said in 1940: “The first quality of the actor is to depersonalise himself.” Maria Landau stressed the trauma of the girls and boys whose names and personal histories had to be changed, with many “rehearsals”.
Apart from that, Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat invited the testimonies of the “hidden children” who were in the hall, and in those moments, when the voice of their memory made itself heard with great reserve, we were all deeply but discreetly touched.
Later, we smiled as we listened to the subtle and mischievous Charif Kiwan when he asked this incongruous question:
Did Moussa Abadi exist?
By raising the question of your existence, Moussa, he made you, for a few moments, a God – whereas we all knew that your ethic of modesty had led you only to aspire to be always a man useful to others, at the level of the heart. Charif Kiwan, your exegete, tried to answer the question of your existence without reaching a conclusion, but leaving us in the company of the exceptional storyteller you were. By reading “La Malédiction” (from “La Reine et le Calligraphe”) with verve and conviction, Victor Haïm paid fine tribute to your talent for opening our imagination to the benefits of dreams.
Ah, Moussa, you certainly took up a lot of room during that day – and Odette was always there listening to us, an indulgent and admiring wife, as she was throughout your long life together.
It was in your footsteps, Odette, that we walked at the end of the day, on the path of light you had traced in us: you, Odette, so strong, so courageous in the distress and misery of a camp where you constantly supported and cared for your companions. And what greatness in the long forty-year silence you kept before publishing “Terre de Détresse” with L’Harmattan (Moussa told me he had pushed you to publish it…)
Maria Landau insisted that you wrote the finest book on deportation – well, one of the finest.
Allow me a personal memory. I wrote to you that “Terre de Détresse” was a necessary book, and that if, generally, man is in History and woman is in life, you were one of those good people who, tirelessly and discreetly at once, preserve the traces of Life amid the chaos of History.
Your book, whose qualities Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat described so well, carries hope and brotherhood: we must never forget to share it with the younger generations.
Yes, Odette, thanks to women like you, we can be convinced that on this earth, too often an earth of distress, tenderness and hope will always have the last word.
Odette, Moussa, you formed a rare couple whom we all loved watching live, and whom we will always remember with emotion. Moussa, you said at the Senate, to the young people: “You owe us nothing.” Well, yes, we owe you the essential thing: that humble and magnificent way of restoring dignity to human beings.
Robert Pouderou