Albert Cohen, polyglossia and polyphony

Albert Cohen was born in Corfou, as a jewish subject of the Ottoman Empire. Émigré in Marseille when he was five, he was granted Swiss citizenship later. His polyphonic novels show a loving, brilliant, uninhibited relationship with french language. They mix many sociolects, archaisms, neologisms, dialects from Marseille, Switzerland or Belgium. This protean language voices an ethic and literary project whose aim is a critical drama of discourses.