Patrick Chamoiseau
Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows
Trans. and with an afterword by Linda Coverdale
Foreword by Edouard Glissant
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Pp. 226. $ 25.00
Reviewed by Catherine Parayre

In this brilliant narrative (published in France in 1986), an evocative precursor to Texaco (Prix Goncourt 1992), the moribund vegetable market of Fort-de-France, Martinique, rises to a new life—this time a literary one—through the words of an old “djobber” (7). The djobbers are the “doctors of wheelbarrowing” (62) who help vendors to carry their goods from one place to another. However, the old djobber’s story makes it clear that the “doctors of wheelbarrowing” transport many more treasures than just luscious fruit and vegetables. Their function at the marketplace, one that facilitates exchanges between vendors and customers, gives them a privileged role as storytellers. As it turns out, the old djobber’s narration sustains almost to the end the belief that “one should never underestimate the power of words” (139). At the marketplace, the djobbers make handling everyday business easier while they are also handing down stories. Therefore, they ensure the smooth operation of the marketplace while participating actively in the cohesive structuring of their community.

Nevertheless, the novel marks the decline of the djobbers’ role. After the départementalisation in 1946 (a new status for French colonies that, as shown in Chamoiseau’s novel, makes them even more dependent on the central power), the djobbers gradually lose their jobs because the local vendors at the marketplace cannot compete with French supermarkets. The closely knit community falls apart, as exemplified by the master-djobber’s fate. A formerly resourceful and ebullient djobber, Pipi withdraws little by little from his public role, away from friends and acquaintances. Obsessed with the past, where he finds a refuge, he attempts to unearth an elusive treasure, is lured by a seductive yet threatening female spirit, and finally disappears in mysterious circumstances from the face of the earth. In interpreting this story, the narrator concludes in a defeated tone: “This much is known now. History only counts through what remains when the story’s done. There’s nothing left at the end of this one, and that’s not much” (173).

The narrator’s account develops neatly along a twofold agenda. His wonder-filled story is an intense testimony-generating history. However, it is also a farewell song for a community struggling to survive, yet finally engulfed by a ruthless society. In his distinctive way, Chamoiseau blends his political reflection into an impressive work of art. Throughout the djobber’s narration, the reader becomes aware of the intricate repercussions of colonial power on the island: the economic disparities they intensify, the pernicious burden of the former slave population’s stolen past, but also the magic community-building traditions maintained by a vivid language born of complex interactions between various idioms. The story grows out of the narrator’s two tightly connected desires, one to recount the death of an economically endangered community and the other to celebrate a unique Creole heritage with a rich creative potential.

Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows is a delight to read, perhaps even more so than Texaco, mostly because of the old djobber’s book-length discourse on the artistic and political power of words, on what stories can and cannot do. The English translation, engagingly annotated and postfaced, enhances this meditation on storytelling and language and shows how each word in any language creates its own enigmatic universe.