A "Singular" Case of Francophony: Clement Lepidis in Greek Francophone Litterature

Abstract

A naturalized French citizen, Clément Lépidis perfectly incarnates the virtues of both educational and cultural integration. Being a child of a bi-national couple, i.e. a French mother and a Greek father, who left his homeland in the Orient in 1910 because he refused to enroll in the Turkish army, Clément Lépidis remained a writer significantly marked by his multiple identities: “Frenchness” and “Greekness” interacting with a Spanish element, that constitute three aspects of his work which are written in the French language. Lépidis did not suffer from linguistic trauma as many bilingual Francophone writers did. Having been the only language he learned, French would function as his unique tool – weapon – of expression towards his identities.Considering the aforementioned aspects, the main object of the present paper is to investigate the peaceful assimilation of the writer into the French language in Bellville and the exile of the paternal language which Lépidis only hears from the immigrants of his town district. Being a second generation immigrant himself, he perceives his father’s migration as an uprooting. Based on this term, the mode in which Clément Lépidis constructs his identities is revealed. The fact of belonging to Greece, to the Orient and to France obliges him to think of many worlds at the same time. Conscious of the richness of multiple cultures and being merged in Bellville, Lépidis is not capable of choosing between one or the other. He gets used to having many points of view and his pursuit of identity is constructed not so much in relation to himself but in relation to the Other.