The Odyssey Of Bibolé: Preface - The Origins

The goal of this preface is to introduce the term “bibolé” and its origins. While we discuss about the essence of bibolé, we also identify when, how and why the term “bibolé” is introduced to the world.

First, we would like to thank Madame Lougarou, our French teacher, who was very influential in our interest for French literature of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th century. We learned a lot as far as literature and poetry from these eras, and everything we gained was prominent to the existence of bibolé.

To define bibolé we use past research and compare it to other similar terms, such as the French term “morgane.”

The history behind “morgane” goes back to the 19th century. At that time, “morgane” was associated with “biting” (eating), “take a bite of a food, or a meat.”

Then, from the term “morgane” came out a French slang “to be morgane of someone,” which meant the same as “to be bitten by someone.” Basically, once you were bitten, you were hooked to that person, you were crazy in love with that person or you fell deeply in love with that person, and you lost all your senses. A similar American slang term is “love jones.”

Thus, being bibolé of someone is to be morgane of someone, to be bitten by someone, having a love jones for someone, being crazy in love with someone.

As mentioned earlier, back in school, the literature we were exposed to included lots of poetry and passionate love stories. The chapters in The Odyssey of Bibolé discuss further some of the influential literature.

We understand that the literature from the 16th through 19th century usually depicts passionate love that ends with deaths, but bibolé is the crazy in love feeling without the violent and tragic ending. Being bibolé is indeed losing yourself into some intense feelings for someone (crazy in love or love jones), which could be considered an addiction, but bibolé is more like a mutual love. It feeds of the love of someone else.