1 - Staring at the Sea: Nicolle and the Pasteur Institute of Tunis

Summary

The heaviness of the warm air hung over the sea. The fishermen's lanterns made furrows in the gulf's steamy haze, like living reflections of the fires lit in the sky.And my thoughts, in search of their chimerical and nomadic prey, glided among these moving lights, and went astray on the dark and distant horizon.

Every now and then a rustling of life—the noise of their nets falling upon the water, or the tardy silhouettes of silent passers-by—ruptured the spell I was under, and my reason, awakened, ran up in haste, as would a dog with the slightest encouragement… .

And I dreamed of Apuleius, before the sleeping sea of Carthage, by the light of a lamp made of clay.

—Charles Nicolle, “La Naissance des Muses,” 1915

Outre-Mer

For historical reasons, Charles Nicolle was captivated by the town of Carthage in his newly adopted country of Tunisia. Its faded glory, its cultural heritage, came to inform his ideas about civilization and to animate his works of fiction. For more visually aesthetic reasons, though, he loved the village of Sidi Bou Saïd. “Sidi Bou” lay (as it does today) about 20 kilometers northeast of Tunis, on a hill overlooking the sea. There, drinking mint tea at a café, Nicolle would hold court, discussing the composition of the country's many ancient mosaics with archeologist friend Père Delattre, lamenting the perils of war with novelist friend Georges Duhamel, or composing articles on bacteriological research with his collaborators at the Pasteur Institute of Tunis. The sea was always in view. Nicolle was fond of the sea, not only as an object of visual beauty but also as a highly personal metaphor, a symbol of both treachery and salvation. Geographically, it acted at once as barrier and gateway between Europe and its “less civilized” neighbors. The Mediterranean Sea had been Nicolle's means of escape from what he considered the narrow-minded conservatism of his native Normandy; yet, at the same time, it was a most immediate source of his isolation from France. The eminently logical Nicolle was perched atop a sea of ambiguity, even of outright contradiction.