The metaphor of the body as staged/ Sufi practice’s textual presentation in the book from the blood of A. Khatibi

Abstract

The Book of blood (“Le Livre Du Sang”) is of a rather difficult access for people who are not initiated with the reading of the modern texts. In fact, the writing of Khatibi borrows, by mixture of genres, its processes at the same time from the Occident, more precisely with the French literature, and from the Arab-Islamic and Maghrebian world. The plural cultural references (myth of the Androgyny
and mysticism Sufi), with a particular impact on writing, will be the environment of an elaborate stage production of a problematic Maghrebian identity. This article “revisits” this work from a stylistic point of view. Through the exploration of the corporal metaphor and by highlighting some isotopes, this is an attempt to explain how Khatibi, while immersing the reader in a quasimystic
environment, uses images from universal symbolism to transcend the identity issue in a poetic and harmonious way.