Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Schopenhauer’s laughter!
The wretched can pass beyond a dead, senile pair of lips,
can grant weight to peals of laughter,
can search for a joy dried out and cured, and that’s enough.
But with a tear they draw the coffin of language closer to the meaning carried on the shoulders of the namer.
Plato says to his teacher Socrates: why did you never tell life, I love you?
Why do the shadows loiter, incomplete?
Why does your face always claim its features are finished?
That the spring of the ideal has run dry?
That beauty has no identity?
That Kant is still in his bed for some purpose,
sleeping awake to decipher the grave?
Why did the child who read him grow up without knowing journalism?
Why did the informant steal Nietzsche’s fingerprint and alter the substance of the meanings?
Why doesn’t the hammer mean: let us destroy everything?
Why did the ontologist forget the plan of reconciliation
and leave the text wounded?
Why did Gadamer leave consciousness impoverished?
Why does the self not grieve for itself?
Why does it find comfort in its own anxiety,
in essences butting horns against each other?
Why does Sartre return without his ancient dread?
And why did we laugh in the very moment the wolf devoured the conscience?
The biography
Latifa Harbaoui is an Algerian poet, writer, journalist, and media personality. She graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bouzaréah and continued her studies at the University of Mohamed Khider in Biskra. She is widely recognized as one of Algeria’s distinguished contemporary literary voices, having published extensively in leading Algerian and Arab newspapers and magazines, where she authored influential literary and cultural columns.
Her published works include the poetry collections A Sun Tailored to My Size, Fragments of Anxiety, and Close to the Front with a Kick, winner of the Dar Motoun Prize for Creativity (2023), while her forthcoming collection, Proof, is currently in press. She also published the literary epistolary collection Letters of the Blond Bat, wrote for children’s theatre, and authored the children’s book My Golden Steps in Smart Reading, published under the supervision of the Algerian Ministry of Culture and Arts in 2025. She is also working on her debut novel, Yet He Sees Me.
Harbaoui has served as Algeria’s representative of the Arab Writers League, President of the House of Poetry – Biskra Branch, and a member of the Cultural Advisory Council of Biskra Province. She founded the children’s artistic troupe Shadou El Djazaïr in 1995 and produced several literary and radio programs.
Her writings have been the subject of extensive academic research at Algerian universities and translated into English, Turkish, Albanian, and other languages. She has received numerous national, Arab, and international distinctions, including the First of November Medal, two honorary doctorates, recognition among the 100 Most Influential Personalities for three consecutive years, and recent honors from the Governor of Biskra Province and Barcelona Magazine, reflecting her outstanding contribution to contemporary Arabic literature.
