“Pocahontas in Wonderland” (Der Pocahontas Komplex. 1. PO. Pocahontas in Wonderland. Shakespeare on Tour), by Klaus Theweleit, translated from the German by Christophe Lucchese, preface by Claro, L’Arche, “Tête-à -head”, 764 p., €27.
For many readers today, the name Pocahontas remains associated with a 1995 cartoon celebrating the romantic love of an Algonquin princess and an adventurous British captain named John Smith in the late 17th century.my century, when the colonization of Virginia begins, named in honor of the virginity of Queen Elizabeth IDwith imperial ambitions.
But the German sociologist and writer Klaus Theweleit aims to show that the story of the young Indian girl (real name Matoaka-Amonute, 1595-1617) constitutes above all one of the great founding myths of the modern and pre-modern West. Thus, the most remarkable episode of the story, the last-minute rescue of a captive Smith from his tribe, Pocahontas obtaining forgiveness from her English father, Chief Powhatan, can never happen.
A prolific author, Theweleit devotes no less than four volumes to this quasi-legend, the first of which, Pocahontas in WonderlandPublished in German in 1999, it has now been translated in an updated form. The work synthesizes, interprets and dissects the smallest vein of an anecdote full of promises of peaceful coexistence between indigenous peoples and settlers. A promise that, by dint of being fulfilled, would have migrated, from century to century, in literature and in a dense iconography, which we find on every page of the book.
Awesome writing
Because the author mobilizes waves of erudition without ever shying away from digressions or repetitions, they are often valuable to those unfamiliar with the reign of James VI of Scotland and I.Ahem of England (1566-1625), under whose sceptre the British settlement in North America began. From this dazzling writing, which brings together dissimilar universes and eras, emerges a thesis, which is based on the marriage of the real Pocahontas, not with Smith, but with a certain John Rolfe, pioneer of the exploitation of Virginian tobacco, whose effects, according to Theweleit, prefigured our digital intoxications at that time.
These marriages, as well as the conversion of the Algonquin, followed by a visit to England, where she will end her days, would be symbols of a path not taken, that of mestizaje. The brief encounter of the Native American with Smith, because it does not lead to a love affair, shows that the colonization of the New World is immediately condemned to violence and the rejection of diversity. On the contrary, Rolfe’s union with Pocahontas shows that ethnic cleansing was avoidable. The persistence of the myth attests that this second option has not been eliminated, at least in the minds and aesthetic sensibilities.
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