Elissa Rhaïs,
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
: אליסה ראיס, born Rosine Boumendil (12 December 1876 – 18 August 1940) was a
Jewish-Algerian writer, who adopted the persona of a Muslim woman who had escaped from a harem to further her literary career. Her novels were popular in her lifetime, but declined; interest in her life was revived in the 1980s by a claim that all her publications had been
ghost-written and that she was illiterate.
Biography
Early life
Rosine Boumendil was born on 12 December 1876 in
Blida
Blida ( ar, البليدة; Berber languages, Tamazight: Leblida) is a city in Algeria. It is the capital of Blida Province, and it is located about 45 km south-west of Algiers, the national capital. The name ''Blida'', i.e. ''bulaydah'' ...
to a Jewish family of modest means.
Her father, Jacob, was a baker and her mother, Mazaltov (born Seror) was a housewife.
She went to a local school until she were placed as domestic in a Jewish family at the age of twelve.
Later, she claimed she had attended the "École des Religieuses de la Doctrine Chrétienne", although it did not open until her 20s.
At 18 yers old, she married à Rabii named Moïse Amar. The couple had three children: a daughter, who died at eleven years old; a son, Jacob-Raymond (1902-1987); another daughter Mireille (1908-1930).
Jacob-Raymond became also a writer and a journalist better known as Roland Rhaïs. He was one of the few Algerian Jews to obtain Algerian nationality after the independence.
Rosine Boumendil and Amar divorced when she was 38 and she remarried a merchant, Mordecai Chemouil.
They lived in a villa called the ''Villa des Fleurs'' in Algiers, where she opened a literary salon.
She became known as a storyteller, claiming that her stories were passed down to her by her mother and grandmother, and therefore part of the rich folk heritage of her native region.
She was encouraged by literary critics, such as
Louis Bertrand, to send her stories to literary magazines.
Literary career
![Elissa_Rhais-_Eleazar](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Elissa_Rhais-_Eleazar.jpg)
In 1919 Boumendil moved to Paris to pursue a literary career. The novelist and critic
Louis Bertrand had written a letter of introduction for her to
René Doumic
René Doumic (7 March 1860, in Paris – 2 December 1937), French critic and man of letters, was born in Paris, and after a distinguished career at the École Normale began to teach rhetoric at the Collège Stanislas de Paris.
Life
Doumic att ...
, the editor of the ''Revue des Deux Mondes,'' who shortly after published five of her short stories.
Subsequently, her first novel, ''Saada the Moroccan'' was published by
Plon, a Parisian publishing house, using for the first time her pseudonym, Elissa Rhaïs.
''Saada the Moroccan'' was a bestseller, eventually running to twenty-six editions.
From this time, Rhaïs began to present herself as a Muslim woman who had escaped from a harem, but how instrumental she was in this new persona's construction, or indeed whether she wrote the book and the others that followed at all, has been questioned.
It has been suggested that her new identity was created as marketing ploy orchestrated by Louis Bertrand and René Doumic; alternatively that it was an invention of Rhaïs herself.
From 1919 to 1930, numerous novels, novellas and short stories were published under Elissa Rhaïs' name, mostly romances that are set in an exotic north African settings featuring female heroines and Muslim culture in the period surrounding the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
Some of her work reflected current affairs: for example ''La riffaine'' (1929) was a novel set in the
Rif War
The Rif War () was an armed conflict fought from 1921 to 1926 between Spain (joined by History of France, France in 1924) and the Berbers, Berber tribes of the mountainous Rif region of northern Morocco.
Led by Abd el-Krim, the Riffians at ...
.
They were translated into Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish and Russian.
Rhaïs did establish a literary salon in Paris, which was frequented by writers such as
Colette
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known mononymously as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her ...
,
Paul Morand
Paul Morand (13 March 1888 – 24 July 1976) was a French author whose short stories and novellas were lauded for their style, wit and descriptive power. His most productive literary period was the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. He was mu ...
,
Jean Amrouche
Jean el Mouhouv Amrouche (7 February 1906 in Ighil Ali, Algeria – 16 April 1962 in Paris, France) was an Algerian francophone writer, poet and journalist.
Biography
Jean el Mouhouv Amrouche was born February 7, 1906, in Ighil Ali, in the val ...
, as well as the actress
Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt (; born Henriette-Rosine Bernard; 22 or 23 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including '' La Dame Aux Camel ...
.
There, Rhaïs dressed in combinations of
Berber and Muslim clothing, suggesting an exotic background which was popularised with a cultural fascination at the time for all things "
Oriental
The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of ''Occident'', the Western World. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the ...
".
She spoke out against the emancipation of Arab women, noting in Turkey it had led to "widespread immorality".
Her popularity in France waned from around 1930, which coincided with the death of her daughter and increasing criticism of the persona in Algeria.
Rhaïs retired from public life.
Later life
During the 1930s, Rhaïs' as popularity waned and she returned to live in
Blida
Blida ( ar, البليدة; Berber languages, Tamazight: Leblida) is a city in Algeria. It is the capital of Blida Province, and it is located about 45 km south-west of Algiers, the national capital. The name ''Blida'', i.e. ''bulaydah'' ...
and she died there on 18 August 1940.
Selected works
Novels
*''Saâda la Marocaine'' (Paris: 1919)
* ''Le Café chantant'' (Paris: 1920)
* ''Les Juifs ou la fille d’Eléazar'' (Paris: 1921)
* ''La Fille des pachas'' (Paris: 1922)
* ''La Fille du douar'' (Paris: 1924)
* ''La Chemise qui porte bonheur'' (Paris: 1925)
* ''L'Andalouse'' (Paris: 1925)
* ''Le Mariage de Hanifa'' (Paris: 1926)
* ''Le Sein blanc'' (Paris: 1928)
* ''Par la voix de la musique'' (Paris: 1927)
* ''La Riffaine'' (Paris: 1929)
*''Petits Pachas en exil'' (Paris: 1929)
* ''La Convertie'' (Paris: 1930)
Theatre
* ''Le parfum, la femme et la prière'' (1933)
Short stories
* ''Enfants de Palestine'' in the ''Weekly Review'' (August 1931)
*''Judith'' in ''Le Journal'' du 15 April 1939 at 24 April 1939
Reception
Whilst popular at the time, her novels were not critically acclaimed.
They have been accused of perpetuating stereotypes of Muslim sexuality.
Her works were more popular in France than Algeria, but she did have support there from Robert Randau (
fr), a leading literary figure there.
At the time there was some doubt about her authenticity, with the novelist
Lucienne Favre, writing:
“It seems that in France, we love the Moors in all conditions. This is why there is an old Jewess, a former rabbi's wife, who masquerades as an Arab, and falsely tells stories about our race and our traditions. She thus earns a lot of money, she says."
Legacy
Regardless of the situation that the novels were produced in, Rhaïs has an important place in
Judeo-Maghrebian literature, as an early female Jewish-Algerian writer. However her life has continued to be a source of intrigue and fantasy in the media, due to the publication of the novel ''Elissa Rhaïs, un roman'' and the subsequent television production.
The Tabet Affair
In 1982, Paul Tabet, the son of Raoul Tabet, who was both the nephew and the lover of Rhaïs, published at Grasset a book in which he affirmed that his father confessed to him that he was the real author of the novels attributed to Rhaïs. This book caused a sensation in the media and Paul Tabet was interviewed by
Bernard Pivot
Bernard Pivot (; born 5 May 1935) is a French journalist, interviewer and host of cultural television programmes. He was chairman of the Académie Goncourt from 2014 to 2020.
Biography
Pivot was born in Lyon, the son of two grocers. During Worl ...
on ''Apostrophes'' on 7 May 1982. However, the majority of academic critics specializing in French-speaking Maghreb literature, consider Tabet's allegations to be unlikely. Denise Brahimi, writing in the introduction entitled ''Lire Elissa Rhaïs'' speaks of "a poor scandal".
The TV movie ''Le secret d'Elissa Rhaïs'' was filmed in 1993 by the director Jacques Otmezguine (
fr), based on the book by Paul Tabet but in a romanticized way.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rhais, Elissa
1876 births
1940 deaths
Algerian-Jewish culture in France
People from Blida
Women writers (modern period)
Algerian novelists
Jewish novelists