Écrire avec « un fleuve dans le ventre » : Des rythmes de rumba dans La Danse du Vilain de Fiston Mwanza

Abstract

This paper points out the link between language and music as being an essential writing strategy in the novels of Fiston Mwanza Muijla. The compositions of this sub-Saharan artist, whose main source of inspiration are Jazz and the Congolese Rumba, surprise and captivate the music-loving reader. In order to describe the melodic adventure and to emphasize the rhythmic and stylistic parallels between music and text, the analysis is based on Rolf Klöpfer’s assumption of a Sympraxis-dimension in literary works as well as on Gernot Böhme’s Neue Ästhetik. The premise of Werner Wolf’s theory of intermediality and his distinction between explicit references and implicit analogies reveals that La Danse du Vilain, the second novel of Mwanza Mujila, shares his impulsivity and liberty with a rushing stream of water carrying away aesthetic and formal conventions with repetitions, variations, improvisation and a virtuoso language.