In the afternoon of Saturday, April 12, 2025, I had the pleasure of presenting and dedicating my book “Mini-Relatures” at the French Institute of Oujda. I now have another pleasure which consists in sharing with the broad audience the content of this event by publishing it on my Facebook page.
Zaid Tayeb
I- Acknowledgments
-I first would like to thank Mr. Stéphane Leclerc, president of the French Institute of Oujda for having opened this cultural space where we are at the time it is.
– Babacar Diop, head of the media library who put everything he could to make this meeting succeed …
-Madame Derouichi, French teacher and moderator for having agreed to put some order in this event and balance between an old man tired by the weight of years and a young audience eager to know.
“Lord, explain to me my chest 24, and I am pleased with me 25, and I will dissolve a knot of my tongue 26.
II professional
I am Zaid Tayeb, I am 72 years old. That’s it !!!!
I started my career as a teaching career as a alternate lecturer or teacher in 1974 and I finished it in 2013 with a retirement for age limit. Between 1974 and 2013, a modern letters baccalaureate, a 2 -year training at the CPR of Oujda and another at the Ille et Vilaine normal school and at the University of Villejean, in Rennes, in France.
Nothing special. It’s flat like a street sidewalk. That’s it for me.
III- Publications
I wrote 2 novels that I published in France ” The mouth of winter and el gasir of shame ” and 2 didactic books published in Morocco on account of author ” mini-readers ” and ” literary writing- language and style ”
IV- Genesis of ” mini-reading ”
The content of the 3 books on the first year program of the qualifying cycle is mainly addressed to French teachers and their students regional examination classes.
The different chapters that compose it were published one by one on my face book page and on the Oujda City portal. I assembled and published them for the first time in 2009 under the title ” Reading guide ” then reissued in 2013 and 2017 sou the same title.
The 2025 edition was reviewed, corrected and enriched by other chapters and took as “mini-reading.
V- Works on the program
A- Wonder box
The wonders, for some, is an autobiography, for others an autobiographical novel. This reminds me of the quarrel of the ancients and modern, classics and romantics. Goethe has decided by qualifying both of literary currents ” Classicism is health, romanticism ”. I will submit this point of discord to the public debate before giving my point of view.
The wonders is not only and simply the story of a small child of six in the 1920s of the 20th century, it is above all the story of two families carried out in parallel and almost identical way.
1-Prime family: Lalla Zoubida A woman of good birth, a saint, who says he has the papers which prove that she descends from the prophet is married to Maalem Abdeslam, Master Abdeslam, Le Tisserand. He works wool, noble material.
2-two family: Lalla Aicha, also a woman of good birth, a Chérifa, a saint, married to Moulay Larbi, Lord Larbi, he works the leather, a noble material which enters the leather goods.
The history of the two families obeys the narrative scheme.
1-The Moulay Larbi/ Lalla Aicha couple:
-Arrative equity of the initial situation: they had mattresses, cushions, carpets, a shelf loaded with bowls and plates, a wall clock … It was not the great luxury but …
-Rupture caused by the loss of his workshop following his argument with his partner
-Return to narrative balance: Moulay Larbi opens a new workshop thanks to his wife who sold his nous and his gold.
-Second rupture: Moulay Larbi remarries with the hairdresser’s daughter
– Back to narrative balance: Moulay Larbi returns to his first wife
2- Ell Couple Maalem Abdeslam/ Lalla Zoubida:
-A narrative balance situation where the couple could eat meat three to four times a week and had oil, coal and flour for a whole month.
– Transformer force: Maalem Abdeslam loses its capital. He leaves his family to go to work in the fields.
– Narrative balance: Maalem Abdeslam returns to his family with a little money allowing him to open a new workshop
3-Director in Sidi Mohammed, he is a six-year-old child on the first page and children from six to the last; It does not evolve neither on the social level nor psycho-firm.
A form of narration specific to autobiography
Three ” I ” deserve their share of analysis:
1- Un’Je ” narrator with narration in the story mode (simple past as basic time): its role is to tell
2- A character character with a narration in the mode of discourse (here direct speech with return to the line, dash, change of words …): past compound, present, future and imperative or one of them; Its function is to play the role of a small six -year -old child.
3- Un’Je ” author with a narration in the mode of discourse (narrativized discourse without dash or return to the line): its role is to make value judgments.
B-Antigone
I have two remarks to share with my audience:
1- The first is that the story of Antigone is the story of a conflict between a king and a girl and what each of them embodies.
A-Créon embodies the law he states at the end of the prologue: “Whoever dares to give him back the funeral duties will be mercilessly punished with death ” ‘
B- Antigone on its side, embodies the duty: the family duty which consists in burying a brother and the religious duty which, if it does not do so, the soul of this brother will wander forever without ever knowing rest.
This conflict will develop by the refusal of Antigone to submit to Creon’s law by burying the corpse of his brother once the night and another in broad daylight.
Consider this reading track:
A-law of Creon: ” Anyone will dare to give him the funeral duties will be mercilessly punished with death ” ‘
B-Infraction to the law: ” and that night, the first time, was you too?
Yes, it was me.
C-proposition: So listen, you will go home, go to bed, say that you are sick, that you have not been out since yesterday. Your nanny will do like you. I will make the guards’ disappear ”
D-Refus of the proposal: ” Why? Since you know that I will start again ”
E-Menace: ” You do not understand that if someone other than these three brutes knows what you tried to do, I will be forced to kill you ”
E-execution of the threat: ” Guards! Take the ”
I cannot close this window without lifting the problem of inserting a drama in a tragedy.
In the scene of grades and antigone Jean Anouilh delegates his author’s powers to the choir to make us a distinction between tragedy and drama.
1-Tragedy is a noble genre:
-Sonnages of the high sphere of society: king, queen, prince, princesses …
-Pre occupations: enforce the law, fulfill the duty, obtain a promise from your nurse to take care of his sweet dog in his absence, obtain an admission of Hémon’s love before dying ..
-Langue: neutral, not marked or common
2-The drama is a low genre:
-Personnages of the people, guards (hairdresser, weaver, baboe…. Argousins, prisoners, convicts….
-Pre occupations: drink, eat, go with girls of bad mores
-langue: vulgar (whores, pissing, ass ….), popular (mouth, mustards, a chique, stall it in the cheek …)
C- The last day of a convicted
All the rhetoric of Victor Hugo’s speech on the abolition of the death penalty is based on this duality: to suppress the sufferings of the body, the guillotine was invented. So, to suppress the sufferings of the mind, you must abolish the death penalty.
What characterizes the last day of a condemned day is:
– Many alterations in the chronology of events: analepses, retrospections, backwards, flash back …
-History of 49 -year -old friuache told in three pages and inserted in the history of the condemned 6 weeks told in a hundred pages. (chap.xxiii)
-The last day of a condemned is the book of books
– The story of the fruration grafted into the history of the condemned (1829) will be taken up by Balzac in Father Goriot (1835: Jean Calin, dit Vautrin, says trompe la mort.
– Hugo will develop the history of friuche (chap.xxiii) in the miserable (1862) to whom he gives the name of Jean Valjean, known as the mayor, known as Mr. Madeleine, known as mow the wind.
– The evocation of Robespierre and Louis XVIII in Chapter XXXIX sends us back to novel 93 (1874) and the years of terror which led the two characters to the guillotine with Marat, Saint Just and Danton.
– Chapter XXXVI which evokes a childhood memory at the top of the towers of Notre Dame de Paris, devotes a novel of the same name to it: Notre Dame de Paris 1831 with Quasimodo and Esmeralda.
The last day of a condemned is a mismatched novel: throughout the 49 chapters, Victor Hugo manipulated by defending a criminal and ignoring the victim. ” I leave a woman, I leave a mother, I leave a girl ” and the victim, he has no family? No wife? No children? No mother?
He designates the victim by “the other”, “the blood of the other and mine”
Zaid Tayeb
