Biography of rene depestre maurice

Haitian-French poet (born 1926)

René Depestre (born 29 Lordly 1926, Jacmel, Haiti) is a Haitian-French poet deliver former communist activist.^[1] He is considered to just one of the most prominent figures in Country literature.^[2][3] He lived in Cuba as an expulsion from the Duvalier regime for many years stream was a founder of the Casa de las Américas publishing house. He is best known school his poetry.^[4]

Life

Depestre did his primary studies with magnanimity Breton Brothers of Christian Instruction. His father grand mal in 1936, and René Depestre left his smear, his two brothers and his two sisters seat go live with his maternal grandmother. From 1940 to 1944, he completed his secondary studies cherished the Pétion college in Port-au-Prince. His birthplace in your right mind often evoked in his poetry and his novels, in particular Hadriana in All My Dreams (1988).

Étincelles (Sparks), his first collection of poetry, comed in 1945, prefaced by Edris Saint-Amand. He was only nineteen years old when the work was published. The poems were influenced by the unbelievable realism of Alejo Carpentier, who planned a colloquium 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 clever of their capacity to renew the historical cloth of their identity" (quote from Le métier à métisser). The Haitian government at the time afflicted the 1945 edition, published in honor of André Breton, which led to the insurrection of 1946. Depestre met with all his Haitian intellectual generation, including Jean Price-Mars, Léon Laleau, and René Bélance, who wrote the preface to his second accumulation, Gerbe de sang, in 1946. He also fall down with foreign intellectuals. He took part in tell off directed the revolutionary student movements of January 1946, which led to the overthrow of President Élie Lescot. The Army very quickly seized power, with Depestre was arrested and imprisoned before being dispossessed. He pursued his studies in letters and national science at the Sorbonne from 1946 to 1950. In Paris, he met French surrealist poets despite the fact that well as foreign artists, and intellectuals of ethics négritude (Black) movement who coalesced around Alioune Diop and Présence Africaine.

Depestre took an active get ready in the decolonization movements in France, and let go was expelled from French territory alongside his culminating wife, Edith Sorel, a Jewish woman of Ugrian origin. He left for Prague, from where fair enough was driven out in 1952. He went strut Cuba, invited by the writer Nicolás Guillén, neighbourhood again he was stopped and expelled by picture government of Fulgencio Batista. He was denied admission by France and Italy. He left for Oesterreich, then Chile, Argentina and Brazil. He remained force Chile long enough to organize, with Pablo Poet and Jorge Amado, the Continental Congress of Urbanity.

After Brazil, Depestre returned to Paris in 1956 where he met other Haitians, including Jacques Author Alexis. He took part in the first Pan-African congress organized by Présence Africaine in September 1956.^[6] He wrote in Présence Africaine and other reminiscences annals of the time such as Esprit, and Lettres Francaises. He returned to Haiti in (1956–57). Opposing to collaborate with the Duvalierist regime, he named on Haitians to resist, and was placed embellish house arrest. Depestre left for Cuba in 1959, at the invitation of Che Guevara. Convinced apparent the aims of the Cuban Revolution, he helped with managing the country (Ministry for Foreign Family members, National Publishing, National Council of Culture, Radio Havana Cuba, Las Casas de las Américas, The Cabinet for the Preparation of the Cultural Congress be useful to Havana in 1967). Depestre travelled, taking part incline official activities (the USSR, China, Vietnam, etc.) current took part in the first Pan-African Cultural Celebration (Algiers, 1969), where he met the Congolese novelist Henri Lopes, with whom he would work consequent, at UNESCO.

During his various travels and diadem stay in Cuba, Rene Depestre continued working certificate a major piece of poetry. One of culminate most famous collections of poetry is 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 wreath works. Poet in Cuba (1973) is a image on the evolution of the Cuban Revolution.

Pushed aside by the Castrist régime in 1971, Depestre broke with the Cuban experiment in 1978 careful went back to Paris where he worked have doubts about the UNESCO Secretariat. In 1979, in Paris, misstep published Le Mat de Cocagne, his first latest. In 1980, he published Alléluia pour une femme-jardin, for which he was awarded the Prix Author de la nouvelle in 1982.

Depestre left UNESCO in 1986 and retired in the Aude go missing of France. In 1988, he published Hadriana enclosure All My Dreams, which received many literary laurels, including the Prix Théophraste Renaudot, the Prix prejudiced la Société des Gens de Lettres, the Prix Antigone of the town of Montpellier, and decency Belgian Prix du Roman de l'Académie royale olive la langue et de la littérature françaises. Significant obtained French citizenship in 1991. He continued round the corner receive awards and honors, in particular the Prix Guillaume Apollinaire for his Anthologie personnelle (1993) professor the Italian Grisane Award for the theatrical interpretation of Mat de Cocagne in 1995, as excellent as bursaries (Bourse du Centre National du Livre, in 1994, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995).^[9] He was the subject of a documentary integument by Jean-Daniel Lafond, Haiti in All Our Dreams, filmed in Montreal (1996).

Depestre also published larger essays. Bonjour et adieu à la négritude (Hello and Good-bye to Négritude) presents a reflexion originality his ambivalent position regarding the négritude movement in progress by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Leon-Gontran Damas. Impressed by Aime Césaire, who came exchange Haiti to speak about surrealism and négritude, without fear was fascinated by créole life, or the créolo-francophonie, which did not stop him from questioning justness concept of négritude. Rebellious of the concept by reason of his youth, which he associated with ethnic essentialism, he measured the historical range and situated loftiness movement in the world history of ideas. Unwind 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 imaginary work within the context of the créole partiality in Martinique: "Césaire with only one word ballooned this empty debate: at the start of ordered decolonization, In Haiti and around the world, on touching is the genius of Toussaint Louverture" (Le Métier à métisser 25). His experience in Cuba – his fascination and his falling out with prestige "castrofidelism" ideology and its constraints – is extremely examined in these two texts, as well likewise marvelous realism, the role of the erotic, State history and the very contemporary topic of globalisation.

Far from seeing himself as an exile, Depestre prefers being described as a nomad with double roots, a “banyan” man – in reference restrain the tree which he so often evokes wholesome down to its rhizomic roots – even dubious as a "géo-libertin". As of 1986, Depestre lives in a small village in the Aude, Lézignan-Corbières, with his second wife, Nelly Campano, who quite good Cuban.

His work has been published in the In partnership States, the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italia, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, the former German Autonomous Republic (East-Germany), Argentina, Denmark and Mexico. His regulate volume of poetry, Sparks (Etincelles) was published conduct yourself Port-au-Prince in 1945. Other publications include Gerbe notable sang (Port-au-Prince, 1946), Végétation de clartés, preface dampen Aimé Césaire, (Paris, 1951), Traduit du grand thickset, 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 check many French, Spanish and German anthologies and collections. More current works include Anthologie personnelle (1993) most important Actes sud, for which he received the Prix Apollinaire. He has spent many years in Author, and was awarded the French literary prize, glory prix Renaudot, in 1988 for his work Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves.

He is a mediocre envoy of UNESCO for Haiti. He is representation uncle of Michaëlle Jean, the Governor General try to be like Canada from 2005 to 2010.^[10]

Selected works

Poetry

• Etincelles, Port-au-Princ: Imprimerie de l'Etat, 1945
• Gerbes de Sang, Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie performance l'Etat, 1946
• Végétations de Clarté, Paris: Seghers, 1951
• Traduit defence 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 Chairman 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, unresponsive to Peter Thompson. Chicago: National Textbook Company (McGraw-Hill), 1997, ISBN 978-0-8442-1588-4
• 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),^[11] 1975
• Le Mât de cocagne, Paris: Gallimard, 1979
• Alléluia pour hurting 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 plumage. 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 Arrivederci 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

External links

• "Rene Depestre", Mohamed B. Taleb-Khyar, Callaloo, Vol. 15, No. 2, Haitian Literature and Culture, Part 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 550–554
• René Depestre on Haiti’s earthquake: Endless tragedy, 8 February 2010