Jacmel
Jacmel (; ht, Jakmèl) is a commune in southern Haiti founded by the Spanish in 1504 and repopulated by the French in 1698. It is the capital of the department of Sud-Est, 24 miles (39 km) southwest of Port-au-Prince across the Tiburon Peninsu ...
,
Haiti
Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...
) is a Haitian poet and former
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a ...
activist. He is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in
Haitian literature
Haitian literature has been closely intertwined with the political life of Haiti. Haitian intellectuals turned successively or simultaneously to African traditions, France, Latin America, the UK, and the United States. At the same time, Haitian h ...
. He lived in
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
as an exile from the Duvalier regime for many years and was a founder of the
Casa de las Américas
Casa de las Américas is an organization that was founded by the Cuban Government in April 1959, four months after the Cuban Revolution, for the purpose of developing and extending the socio-cultural relations with the countries of Latin America, ...
publishing house. He is best known for his poetry.
Life
He did his primary studies with the
Breton Brothers of Christian Instruction
Breton most often refers to:
*anything associated with Brittany, and generally
**Breton people
**Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany
**Breton (horse), a breed
**Galet ...
. His father died in 1936, and René Depestre left his mother, his two brothers and his two sisters to go live with his maternal grandmother. From 1940 to 1944, he completed his secondary studies at the Pétion college in
Port-au-Prince
Port-au-Prince ( , ; ht, Pòtoprens ) is the capital and most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 987,311 in 2015 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The metropolitan area is defin ...
. His birthplace is often evoked in his poetry and his novels, in particular ''
Hadriana in All My Dreams
Hadriana in All My Dreams (french: Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves) is a 1988 magical realism novel by Haitian author René Depestre. It is considered a major work of 20th century Haitian literature, and possibly Depestre's most successful work.
...
'' (1988).
''Étincelles'' (Sparks), his first collection of poetry, appeared in 1945, prefaced by
Edris Saint-Amand Edris Saint-Amand (born 26 March 1918; died 9 february 2004) was a Haiti
Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater ...
. He was only nineteen years old when the work was published. The poems were influenced by the marvelous realism of
Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (, ; December 26, 1904 – April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, of French a ...
, who planned a conference on this subject in Haiti in 1942. Depestre created a weekly magazine with three friends: Baker, Alexis, and Gérald Bloncourt: The Hive (1945–46). “One wanted to help the Haitians to become aware of their capacity to renew the historical foundations of their identity” (quote from ''Le métier à métisser''). The Haitian government at the time seized the 1945 edition which was published in honor of
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...
, which led to the insurrection of 1946. Depestre met with all his Haitian intellectual contemporaries, including
Jean Price-Mars
Jean Price-Mars (15 October 1876 – 1 March 1969) was a Haitian doctor, teacher, politician, diplomat, writer, and ethnographer.Léon Laleau, and René Bélance, who wrote the preface to his second collection, ''Gerbe de sang'', in 1946. He also met with foreign intellectuals. He took part in and directed the revolutionary student movements of January 1946, which led to the overthrow of President
Élie Lescot
Antoine Louis Léocardie Élie Lescot (December 9, 1883 – October 20, 1974) was the President of Haiti from May 15, 1941 to January 11, 1946. He was a member of the country's mixed-race elite. He used the political climate of World War II to s ...
. The Army very quickly seized power, and Depestre was arrested and imprisoned before being exiled. He pursued his studies in letters and political science at the Sorbonne from 1946 - 1950. In Paris, he met French
surrealist
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
poets as well as foreign artists, and intellectuals of the ''
négritude
''Négritude'' (from French "Nègre" and "-itude" to denote a condition that can be translated as "Blackness") is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African ...
'' (Black) movement who coalesced around Alioune Diop and ''
Présence Africaine
''Présence Africaine'' is a pan-African quarterly cultural, political, and literary magazine, published in Paris, France, and founded by Alioune Diop in 1947. In 1949, ''Présence Africaine'' expanded to include a publishing house and a bookstore ...
''.
Depestre took an active part in the decolonization movements in France, and he was expelled from French territory. He left for
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
, from where he was driven out in 1952. He went to Cuba, invited by the writer
Nicolás Guillén
Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (10 July 1902 – 17 July 1989) was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba.
, where again he was stopped and expelled by the government of
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (; ; born Rubén Zaldívar, January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as its U.S.-backed military dictator ...
. He was denied entry by France and Italy. He left for Austria, then
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...
,
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, t ...
and
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. He remained in Chile long enough to organize, with Pablo Neruda and Jorge Amado, the Continental Congress of Culture.
After Brazil, Depestre returned to Paris in 1956 where he met other Haitians, including Jacques Stephen Alexis. He took part in the first Pan-African congress organized by Présence Africaine in September 1956. He wrote in ''Présence Africaine'' and other journals of the time such as ''Esprit'', and ''Lettres Francaises''. He returned to Haiti in (1956–57). Refusing to collaborate with the Duvalierist regime, he called on Haitians to resist, and was placed under house arrest. Depestre left for Cuba in 1959, at the invitation of
. Convinced of the aims of the Cuban Revolution, he helped with managing the country (Ministry for Foreign Relations, National Publishing, National Council of Culture, Radio Havana-Cuba, ''Las Casas de las Américas'', The Committee for the Preparation of the Cultural Congress of Havana in 1967). Depestre travelled, taking part in official activities (the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
, China,
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making it ...
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. I ...
.
During his various travels and his stay in Cuba, Rene Depestre continued working on a major piece of poetry. His most famous collection of poetry is undoubtedly ''Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident chrétien'' (Rainbow for the Christian Occident) (1967), a mix of politics, eroticism, and Voudoo, topics that are found in all of his works. Poet in Cuba (1973) is a reflection on the evolution of the
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cour ...
.
Pushed aside by the Castrist régime in 1971, Depestre broke with the Cuban experiment in 1978 and went back to Paris where he worked at the UNESCO Secretariat. In 1979, in Paris, he published ''Le Mat de Cocagne'', his first novel. In 1980, he published ''Alléluia pour une femme-jardin'', for which he was awarded the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle in 1982.
Depestre left UNESCO in 1986 and retired in the
Aude
Aude (; ) is a department in Southern France, located in the Occitanie region and named after the river Aude. The departmental council also calls it " Cathar Country" (French: ''Pays cathare'') after a group of religious dissidents active i ...
region of France. In 1988, he published ''Hadriana in All My Dreams'', which received many literary awards, including the Prix Théophraste Renaudot, the Prix de la Société des Gens de Lettres, the Prix Antigone of the town of Montpellier, and the Belgian
Prix du Roman de l'Académie royale de la langue et de la littérature françaises
Prix was an American power pop band formed in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1975 by Tommy Hoehn and Jon Tiven. The group ended up primarily as a studio project. Its recordings were produced by Tiven along with former Big Star member Chris Bell, wh ...
. He obtained French citizenship in 1991. He continued to receive awards and honors, in particular the Prix Apollinaire de poésie for his personal Anthology (1993) and the Italian Grisane Award for the theatrical adaptation of ''Mat de Cocagne'' in 1995, as well as bursaries (Bourse du Centre National du Livre, in 1994, and a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in 1995). He was the subject of a documentary film by Jean-Daniel Lafond, ''Haiti in All Our Dreams'', filmed in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...
(1996).
Depestre also published major essays. ''Bonjour et adieu à la négritude'' (Hello and Good-bye to Négritude) presents a reflexion on his ambivalent position regarding the négritude movement started by
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor (; ; 9 October 1906 – 20 December 2001) was a Senegalese poet, politician and cultural theorist who was the first president of Senegal (1960–80).
Ideologically an African socialist, he was the major theoretician of ...
,
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Fernand David Césaire (; ; 26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was a French poet, author, and politician. He was "one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature" and coined the word in French. He founded the Pa ...
and Leon-Gontran Damas. Impressed by Aime Césaire, who came to Haiti to speak about surrealism and négritude, he was fascinated by créole life, or the créolo-francophonie, which did not stop him from questioning the concept of négritude. Rebellious of the concept since his youth, which he associated with ethnic essentialism, he measured the historical range and situated the movement in the world history of ideas. He revisited this topic (critical re-situation of the movement) in his two collections, ''Ainsi parle le fleuve noir'' (1998) and ''Le Métier à métisser'' (1998). He paid homage to Césaire and his visionary work within the context of the créole movement in Martinique: “Césaire with only one word ended this empty debate: at the start of historical decolonization, In Haiti and around the world, there is the genius of Toussaint Louverture” (''Le Métier à métisser'' 25). His experience in Cuba - his fascination and his falling out with the “castrofidelism” ideology and its constraints - is also examined in these two texts, as well as marvelous realism, the role of the erotic, Haitian history and the very contemporary topic of globalization.
Far from seeing himself as an exile, Depestre prefers being described as a nomad with multiple roots, a “
banyan
A banyan, also spelled "banian", is a fig that develops accessory trunks from adventitious prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. This distinguishes banyans from other trees with a strangler habit that begin life as a ...
” man - in reference to the tree which he so often evokes right down to its rhizomic roots - even described as a “géo-libertin”. Rene Depestre lives today in a small village in the Aude, Lézignan-Corbières, with his second wife, who is Cuban. He writes every morning, looking at the vineyards, just as he used to devour the view of Jacmel Bay from his grandmother's veranda.
His work has been published in the United States, the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italy, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, the former German Democratic Republic (East-Germany), Argentina, Denmark and Mexico. His first volume of poetry, ''Sparks'' (Etincelles) was published in Port-au-Prince in 1945. Other publications include ''Gerbe de sang'' (Port-au-Prince, 1946), ''Végétation de clartés'', preface by Aimé Césaire, (Paris, 1951), ''Traduit du grand large, poème de ma patrie enchainée'', (Paris, 1952), ''Minerai noir'', (Paris, 1957), ''Journal d'un animal marin'' (Paris, 1964), ''Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien poeme mystère vaudou'', (Paris, 1966). His poetry has appeared in many French, Spanish and German anthologies and collections. More current works include ''Anthologie personnelle'' (1993) and ''Actes sud'', for which he received the Prix Apollinaire. He has spent many years in France, and was awarded the French literary prize, the
prix Renaudot
The Prix Théophraste-Renaudot or Prix Renaudot () is a French literary award.
History
The prize was created in 1926 by ten art critics awaiting the results of deliberation of the jury of the Prix Goncourt. While not officially related to the ...
, in 1988 for his work ''Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves''.
He lives in Lézignan-Corbières.
He is a special envoy of UNESCO for Haiti.
He is the uncle of
Michaëlle Jean
Michaëlle Jean (; born September 6, 1957) is a Canadian stateswoman and former journalist who served from 2005 to 2010 as governor general of Canada, the 27th since Canadian Confederation. She is the first Haitian Canadian and black person ...
, the
Governor General
Governor-general (plural ''governors-general''), or governor general (plural ''governors general''), is the title of an office-holder. In the context of governors-general and former British colonies, governors-general are appointed as viceroy ...
of Canada from 2005 to 2010.
Selected works
Poetry
* ''Etincelles'', Port-au-Princ: Imprimerie de l'Etat, 1945
* ''Gerbes de Sang'', Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l'Etat, 1946
* ''Végétations de Clarté'', Paris: Seghers, 1951
* ''Traduit du Grand Large, poème de ma patrie enchainée'', Paris: Seghers, 1952
* ''Minerai noir'', Paris: Présence Africaine, 1956
* ''Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien, poème mystère vaudou, 1966
* ''Journal d'un animal marin'', Paris: Présence Africaine, 1967
* ''Cantate d'Octobre à la Vie et à la Mort du Commandant Ernesto Che Guevara'', Havana: Institudo del Libro, 1968
* ''Poète à Cuba", Paris: Pierre Jean Oswald, 1976
* ''En etat de poésie'', Paris: Les Editeurs français réunis, 1980
* ''Lettre à un poète du marronnage'', Bois Pluriel, 1988
* ''Au Matin de la négritude'', Paris: Euroeditor, 1990
* ''Anthologie personelle'', Arles: Actes Sud, 1993
* "Ode à Malcolm X: Grande Brigitte", in ''Literature Moderne du Monde Francophone'', by Peter Thompson. Chicago: National Textbook Company (McGraw-Hill), 1997,
* ''Un Eté indien de la parole'', Double Cloche, 2001
* ''Non-assistance à poète en danger'', Paris: Seghers, 2005
* ''Rage de vivre. Oeuvres poétiques complètes'', Paris: Seghers, 2007
Novels and short stories
* ''El Paso Ensebado'' (in Spanish),Keith A. P. Sandiford, ''A Black Studies Primer: Heroes and Heroines of the African Diaspora'', Hansib Publications, 2008, p. 147. 1975
* ''Le Mât de cocagne'', Paris: Gallimard, 1979
* ''Alléluia pour une femme jardin'', Paris: Gallimard, 1981
* '' Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves'', Paris: Gallimard, 1988 - Prix Renaudot
* ''Eros dans un train chinois'', Paris: Gallimard, 1990
* "La mort coupée sur mesure", in ''Noir des îles'', Paris: Gallimard, 1995
* "Un rêve japonais", in ''Le Serpent à plumes. Récits et fictions courtes'', Paris: Le Serpent à plumes, 1993
* ''L'oeillet ensorcelé'', Paris: Gallimard, 2006
Essays
* ''Pour la révolution pour la poésie'', Paris: Leméac, 1974
* ''Bonjour et Adieu à la Négritude'', Paris: Robert Laffont, 1980
* ''Le Métier à métisser'', Paris: Stock, 1998
* ''Ainsi parle le fleuve noir'', Paroles de l'Aube, 1998
References
Sources
*
* (In French)
* http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/depestre.html (Original in French)