I’ve “discovered” most of the contemporary francophone poets I’ve translated through reading their poems in anthologies, and feeling that I absolutely had to bring their work to the attention of an English-speaking audience . . . that their words were just too important to be heard only by French speakers. I felt this way when I was introduced to the Djiboutian writer Abdourahman A. Waberi while reading a wonderful anthology of poets from French-speaking Africa and the Arab world, edited by Patrick Williamson. But in the case of the author featured here, I was literally introduced to Louis-Philippe Dalembert by way of Waberi! It’s really not such a big world at all, as the pandemic reminds us.
Dalembert was born in 1962 in Port-au-Prince. He spent his early years living in a Haiti still under the totalitarian control of François Duvalier (“Papa Doc”), and was raised by his mother’s female relatives, including his no-nonsense, Bible-thumping maternal grandmother. His mother had to travel during the week to teach in the countryside, and his father, a school principal, died shortly after Dalembert’s birth. Dalembert’s childhood—especially his religious upbringing—infuses much of his writing: Old Testament references abound. One can also see in his work his literary influences, which include René Char, Paul Éluard, Nâzim Hikmet, and Pablo Neruda.
In 1986, Dalembert left for France, after studying literature and journalism and working as a journalist in Haiti, and he later completed his doctoral studies in comparative literature at the Sorbonne. A self-proclaimed nomad, he speaks seven different languages, and has lived and taught in such varied cities as Brazzaville, Kinshasa, Nancy, Berlin, Munich, Bern, Rome, Florence, and Jerusalem, with extended stays in South America and Africa. In addition, he served as a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he taught Caribbean literature, French film, and creative writing, as well as a Visiting Professor at Scripps College.
To date, Dalembert has authored six poetry collections, ten novels, three short story collections, and two essay collections. He is no stranger to the international stage, as his work has been translated into many different languages, including Danish, German, Portuguese, Romanian, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. Edwidge Danticat, in her foreword to Dalembert’s first novel to be published in English, The Other Side of the Sea (2014), expressed surprise that it had taken so long for Dalembert’s prose to be translated into English. I’m surprised it has taken so long for Dalembert’s poems to be translated into English, and delighted to be the one to do so!
- Nancy Naomi Carlson
100 Refutations | French | Haiti | Poetry
May, 2018Amédée Brun (1868-1896) published his first poems when he was only seventeen, and later studied law in Paris. His poetry is usually categorized under the Romantic period, and, despite his short life, he managed to publish prolifically. His works include novels, poetry, and short stories inspired by his observations of quotidian Haitian life.
100 Refutations | French | Haiti | Poetry
May, 2018Regnor Charles Bernard (1915-1981) was a Haitian-born poet, essayist, literary critic, and journalist who taught both in the Congo and in Canada. He published three books of poetry in his lifetime: Le Souvenir (1940), Pêche d’étoiles (1943), and Négre (1945).
100 Refutations | French | Haiti | Poetry
May, 2018Clément Magloire-Saint-Aude (1912-1971) was a surrealist poet who published several volumes, including Dialogue de mes lampes y Tabou (1941), Déchu (1956), and Dimanche (1973). He was also a member of the black nationalist movement Noirisme, and one of the founders of Les Griots, a quarterly scientific and literary journal.
100 Refutations | French | Haiti | Poetry
May, 2018Carl Brouard (1902-1965) was an influential figure in Haitian literature despite having published just one book in his lifetime, Écrit sur du ruban rose. Brouard practiced Vodou and belonged to Les Griots, a group whose goal was to reclaim the value of Haitian folklore.
100 Refutations | French | Haiti | Poetry
April, 2018The identity of Serge St. Jean is unknown. This poem was previously published in Collection Hounguénikon and later anthologized in Ayiti Cheri: Poésie Haïtienne (1800-2015).
100 Refutations | French | Haiti | Poetry
April, 2018Marie-Ange Jolicoeur (1947-1976) died at the age of 29 in Lille, France, having already authored four volumes of poetry, Guitare de vers (1967), Violon d’espoir (1970), Oiseaux de mémoire (1972), and Transparence en bleu d’oubli (published posthumously in 1979). According to Saint-John Kauss in La poésie féminine haïtienne, “She was, to the best of our knowledge, after Queen Anacaona, the second ‘cursed’ poetess in Haitian literary history.”
Drama | Haiti | Haitian Creole
September, 2017*
“Everywhere and always there could be a young Antigone who says no. A King Creon who doesn’t want to hear advice.”
Antigone in Haiti, trans. Edith Gold
Felix Morisseau-Leroy wrote Antigòn in the late 1940s and early ’50s, a period just following the United States’ occupation of Haiti (1914-1934) and just prior to the rise of the Duvalier regime (1957). Haiti at the time of Antigòn’s composition was grappling with both immediate and centuries-long colonial legacies and also with its legacy as the first sovereign nation to emerge from a slave uprising. Morisseau-Leroy brought Antigone into Creole and into the Haitian national context to process the struggles and potentials of these legacies. The Greek gods become the Haitian loa, a pantheon of deities whose “horses” are “ridden,” and who each bring out (god in man, man in god) various potentials. The exacting rhetorical jostle of Antigone yields in Antigòn to sudden incantation--men and gods calling up power through rhythm as well as rhetoric to achieve their aims. True to its source, the play maintains a correspondence between familial and societal dysfunction, while casting Antigone as the figure of uncompromising revolution and absolute fidelity. It is noteworthy that, in an effort to raise political and philosophical questions about oppression and its overcoming in Haiti, Morisseau-Leroy chose to adopt a canonical Western text rather than disavowing Western reference points along with his abandonment of the French. As Moira Fradinger says, “The Greek Antigone thus became a Haitian ancestor–not because she was born in Haiti, but because she could speak the language of the radical difference that gave birth to Haiti.” Antigòn was first performed in 1953 in Port-au-Prince. In 1959, newly in exile during the Duvalier regime’s ascendance, Morisseau-Leroy staged a performance at the Théâtre des Nations, Paris, an event that made him a key figure of the Haitian Renaissance.
Antigòn posed some challenges to us as translators. Because Morisseau-Leroy wrote Antigòn before Creole was made an official language, the text’s orthography and vocabulary is not entirely consistent with Creole dictionaries and grammars. Additionally, our primary text was a 1970 reprint based on a photocopy of a 1954 typescript; spelling was not always consistent or trustworthy. After we drafted our translation, we found Edith Gold’s English translation, titled Antigone in Haiti. We know that it was published in Pétion-Ville, Haiti, but we have not determined the year. We noticed differences between the Gold translation and our reprint of the 1954 script. Our epigraph, for instance, appears in the prologue to the Gold translation but not the prologue to our Creole text. We had read about a 1963 English translation by Mary Dorkonou, which was commissioned by Morisseau-Leroy for a performance in Ghana, where he lived out part of his exile as “National Organizer of Drama and Literature,” but we have not located a copy of the Dorkonou version. It looks as if Antigòn has a rich textual history, replete with variants spurred by new stagings and new translations. Ultimately, we hope to produce an edition of Antigòn that gathers these variants for performance as well as study. Our translation of Antigòn is partly motivated by our desire to see more of his work in circulation. More than that, we stand with scholars of Morisseau-Leroy and Caribbean literature in our belief that Antigòn is a unique work of political theatre.
– Blake Bronson-Bartlett and Robert Fernandez
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).