The Chantal Chawaf Newsletter, Volume I, Number 2-3 (Summer-Fall 1997)

Photo

Interview

"Chawaf Discusses Her Influences,"

by Kristin Switala, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA

Question: Which literary texts have influenced your writing the most?

Answer: These are multiple and often unconscious influences and above all for me, what has the most influence on my language overflows the limits of books and literature, even if the reading has nourished me like mother's milk. Among the books which have counted so much for me are:

But in order for this list to be natural, not artificial, I could not neglect all the names which constitute my basic literature: the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, the Sumerian tablets, Claudel, Rimbaud, Charles Peguy, Colette, Poe, Malraux, Aeschylus, Charlotte Brontë, Madame d'Aulnoy, Madame d'Epinay, Racine, the tales of Grimm, and the stories of Andersen.


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