Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature: Alexis, Depestre, Ollivier, Laferrière, Danticat by Martin Munro

Abstract

MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 55 I once more a time of need, the kind of thinking this collection brings within reach nevertheless turns thenecessity toendure it into a kind of good fortune. QUEENS' COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE MARTIN CROWLEY Provisionality and thePoem: Transition in the Work ofDu Bouchet, Jaccottet and Noell. By EMMAWAGSTAFF. (Faux Titre, 278) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2006. 244 pp. E48. ISBN 978-90-420-I939-3. In his recently republished Eclisse, Jacques Dupin recalls the solitariness of the emergent post-war poetic voices of his own generation, who, unlike Char, Artaud, Michaux, or Ponge, had littleprospect of being published, doggedly pursuing their artwithout public recognition, in the shadow of the already verymuch moribund formsofResistance and Surrealist writing. Far removed from the limelight, forming no identifiable group, these poets developed highly individual practices shot through with a shared and far-reaching awareness of poetry's inherent unfixedness and pre cariousness, itsdrifts and deferrals, itspassingness and itsporousness, its incessant opening upon absence and otherness. In choosing to focus on provisionality in the work of threepoets of this generation, Emma Wagstaff gives precedence in a timely and lucid manner towhat Dupin himself-referred to a number of times in her study-identifies at the core of contemporary poetic endeavour: the question of be ing's place in theworld, and of the other in language. Andre Du Bouchet, Philippe Jaccottet, and Bernard Noel can be compared, she argues, 'because their texts always proffer instants and then leave thembehind' (p. 2 I4). Theirs is a poetry ofmovement and transition in time and space, caught up in an endless making and remaking, in a difficultbringing into being, that counters mimetic representation while defying the constraints of selfhood and identity.However, Wagstaff also takes care to signal the differences between these poets, which she pinpoints byway ofwhat theirwork repeatedly favours: Jaccottet's hesitant images that hover and are leftbehind; Du Bouchet's insistence on gaps, intervals, and disruption; thedynamics ofNoel's 'elan' that imposes a sense of acceleration and self-generating language. This study has thegreatmerit of engaging thoughtfully and meticulously with the texts themselves, examining new kinds of rhythms generated therein through various formal devices, before proceeding to a very fruitfuland intriguing comparative analysis of evocations of air featured in all practices. The remaining three chapters extend discussion of provisionality by singling out crucial transitions between poetic language and that which stands as other to it,namely the visual arts, translation, and silence, sites of crossover and incursion essential to a proper understanding of thesewriters' creati vity.The result is an eminently accessible, rounded, and deft assessment of post-war poetry concerned with opening up word toworld, and thehuman subject to its myriad other, inan onward, earthbound movement which, as theauthor amply demonstrates, 'creates itsown times and depths of reading' (p. 220). UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN MICHAEL BROPHY Exile and Post-I946 Haitian Literature: Alexis, Depestre, Ollivier, Laferriere, Danti cat. By MARTIN MUNRO. (Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures, 7) Liverpool:LiverpoolUniversityPress. 2007. viii+310pp. ?36.50. ISBN978 I-8463I-079-9. Martin Munro's introduction, 'Inhabiting Haiti', isworth reading and rereading for its rapid, far-ranging considerations of important events inHaitian history and the 552 Reviews development of theproblems of living in or outside ofHaiti. Munro espouses Anto nio Benitez-Rojo's view of the transportation of slaves toNew World colonies as 'the big bang of theCaribbean universe' (cited p. 26). The importation of slaves into the Caribbean resulted in themetissage of languages, religions, and biological strains. The phrase 'Post-1946 Haitian Literature' in the titleofMunro's study creates a slightly erroneous expectation. The date I946 is an allusion to the historic sequence of events leading up to theousting ofwartime president Elie Lescot, inearly January I946. Because Alexis and Depestre were leaders of the student-worker protests of late 1945, theywere given scholarships to study in France in the autumn of 1946. Munro's title alludes to the historical event, and not to a specifically literary date. Secondly, Munro's principal focus is narrowed to the thematic analysis of exile in novels published between I955 (Alexis, General Compere Soleil) and 2004 (Danticat, The Dew Breaker). Important short fictionbymost of thenamed authors isexcluded from Munro...