Ernest Pignon-Ernest Ha茂ti: Le Secret Cheminement Du Sang
After Saint-Malo, where in 2011 I spoke in public with Jean Rouaud, the Etonnants Voyageurs festival and Michel Le Bris responded to a request from Haitian authors and invited me to Port-au-Prince. The festival included film screenings, discussions and encounters with Caribbean writers. Thanks to Pascale Monnin and James No毛l, I was able to discover the city, the incredible bustling life that reigns there, the tragic consequences of the 2010 earthquake that linger, the ruined cathedral, the vitality of creativity and the religious syncretism that runs through it all.
The meeting with Lyonel Trouillot, our obvious affinities and the discovery of his work allowed me to get closer to the Haitian reality and its poetry, which are inseparable, and led me to the work and the person of Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922-1961). I discovered his writing and his destiny, which combine to make him one of those figures, like Mahmoud Darwhich, Neruda or Pasolini, who embody their era, their community, their people, its history and their aspirations. It is what he said about himself that made me understand why I felt an intensity in Haiti similar to that experienced when arriving in Naples:
鈥淔irst and foremost a son of Africa, I am nevertheless a descendent of the Caribbean and of Native Americans as a result of a secret movement of blood and the prolonged survival of cultures after their death鈥� In many ways, I am also a descendant of the Old Europe, Spain and France in particular鈥� I have unhesitatingly chosen the human families which seem the closest to me, the Negro family and the Latin-American family
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After Saint-Malo, where in 2011 I spoke in public with Jean Rouaud, the Etonnants Voyageurs festival and Michel Le Bris responded to a request from Haitian authors and invited me to Port-au-Prince. The festival included film screenings, discussions and encounters with Caribbean writers. Thanks to Pascale Monnin and James No毛l, I was able to discover the city, the incredible bustling life that reigns there, the tragic consequences of the 2010 earthquake that linger, the ruined cathedral, the vitality of creativity and the religious syncretism that runs through it all.
The meeting with Lyonel Trouillot, our obvious affinities and the discovery of his work allowed me to get closer to the Haitian reality and its poetry, which are inseparable, and led me to the work and the person of Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922-1961). I discovered his writing and his destiny, which combine to make him one of those figures, like Mahmoud Darwhich, Neruda or Pasolini, who embody their era, their community, their people, its history and their aspirations. It is what he said about himself that made me understand why I felt an intensity in Haiti similar to that experienced when arriving in Naples:
鈥淔irst and foremost a son of Africa, I am nevertheless a descendent of the Caribbean and of Native Americans as a result of a secret movement of blood and the prolonged survival of cultures after their death鈥� In many ways, I am also a descendant of the Old Europe, Spain and France in particular鈥� I have unhesitatingly chosen the human families which seem the closest to me, the Negro family and the Latin-American family
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For those in Paris during FIAC (21鈥�24 October 2021), explore some of the stand-out exhibitions currently on view at galleries and museums across the French capital.
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