Les Simulacres

Fernand Hibbert's final novel, Les Simulacres, is a short text satirizing the author's own social class in the context of the US Occupation (1915-1934). Published in 1923, when the author could not have foreseen exactly how the Occupation would conclude, it is often ambivalent about the American presence. This is not an anti-Occupation work like the novels of the 1930s, but more akin to Hibbert's earlier works satirizing the Haitian bourgeoisie for their vanity, corruption, venality, and mismanagement of Haitian political, social, and economic life. As a far shorter text than, say, Les Thazar, and a smaller cast at that, it does not quite succeed in satirizing every social type among the Haitian upper-class, though it does reintroduce past characters such as Brion and Gérard Delhi. Brion, as one would expect from events in Les Thazar, has not married, is perhaps bitter, and seems to be amused by the various foibles of his social class.

By reviving past characters, Hibbert's former mouthpieces from the ancien regime can return as the this tale mocks the foolish and arrogant Hellénus Caton. Caton, a former politician who became wealthy through graft and corruption before the Occupation, is now ardently opposed to the Americans (but only due to their refusal to consider him for the post of president). Being a Simulacre means one who uses "mensonges derrière lesquels les hommes masquent la vérité, ou leur intérêts et leurs appétits." He falls prey to a Cuban swindler who proceeds to conjure a story of occult knowledge and miracles so that he has an excuse to get close to Cephise, Caton's beautiful wife. Needless to say, Pablo Alcantara makes a fool of Caton, having him wait outside in the middle of the night, nude, looking at the moon, while he proceeds to make love to his wife for seven consecutive nights. In short, this is the basic plot of the text, a Cuban foreigner swindling a Haitian bourgeois male of wealth and women. Brion, as perhaps the only redeeming bourgeois, intervenes to ensure a (somewhat) happy ending in which Cephise stays with her husband, but Caton never recovers.

Like Brion in Les Thazar, Caton cannot compete with the foreign male, although in this case Pablo Alcantara is not a successful German but another faker, from a country also under the tutelage of the US. Since Hibbert was the Haitian consul in Cuba, one can presume his use of a Cuban Simulacre is itself part of the text's anti-imperialist critique, as Pablo Alcantara knows very well how Cuba, like Haiti, is a pawn in the US Empire. Hibbert, stationed in Santiago de Cuba, would have known very well the degree to which US influence was paramount in the neighboring Caribbean nation, and may have possessed solidarity for Cubans based on past alliances against imperialism before Cuban independence. Perhaps Hibbert was trying to suggest, much like Naipaul several decades later, how the people of the Caribbean have become mimic men, lacking in proper comportment as befits independent people of independent nations. Pablo Alcantara, much like Caton, is another such case, exploiting the ignorance and credulity of others in much the same way Caton and his ilk have done similar actions in Haiti before the US Occupation. Thus, Pablo Alcantara is an interesting type of foreigner in the works of Hibbert, possibly a callback to the various Caribbean peoples represented on the ship en route to France in Séna. He likewise represents a change in the Haitian elite perception of Cubans as positive immigrants in Haiti, since he does not produce, teach, apprentice, or employ anyone.

As is the case with Les Thazar, most of the plot advances through the dialogue of these aforementioned characters (plus their domestics and a few additional acquaintances). So it is often through their exchanges that much of the novel's humor derives. These conversations entail Cato the Younger, ancient Rome's rise and fall, Creole and French in Haitian literature, the Cuban passion for love and duels, education and literacy campaigns, the motivations of the Occupation (to build a naval base?), the lack of unity among Haitians, and the lack of rain in Port-au-Prince. The novel's final chapter addresses the reader, specifically the Haitian mother, to raise their children to obey and never lie, to produce a better generation of citizens and ensure the survival of the nation. Using Rome, imperial Germany, tsarist Russia, and the "Orient" as examples of what happens when the lack of liberty takes hold and injustice prevails, leading to social decay or ruin, the novel adopts a direct moralizing tone. While this detracts from the bitterly satirical tone of the rest of the text, it makes it clear how the US Occupation, in the eyes of Hibbert, has not uprooted the Simulacres and fakers, and a return to ancien regime ways will lead down a path toward destruction.

Needless to say, Hibbert's account does not include the caco resistance or nascent unrest from the peasantry or lower classes. The Haitian workers in Cuba, with whom Hibbert was fully aware, do not enter into the picture despite Cuban emigration being a key aspect of the US Occupation's influence. A communist revolution or "Grand Soir" of Delhi are only mentioned humorously, suggestive of the venal and ignorant nature of Caton and the fear of popular revolt. So one presumes that Haiti's salvation will be found among the non-Simulacre of the elite. They alone will be able to direct the nation progressively during and after the occupation and ensure a return to full liberty of the press and other rights. They, and only they, can ensure expanded primary education and adult literacy, with the recent example of Lunarchsky in the Soviet Union cited positively. Unsurprisingly, Hibbert's Simulacres is thus a continuation of the same class and gender politics of his early novels, but accompanied by a heightened sense of alarm at the prospects of national survival if the Simulacres are not held at bay after the Americans leave. Unfortunately, the Simulacres never left after 1934...

Les Thazar

Fernand Hibbert's Les Thazar is an endlessly entertaining social satire of the Port-au-prince upper classes. Written over a century ago, it depicts the long-lost Haiti Thomas of our forebears, focusing on the corrupt and venal upper-classes in the capital. The Thazar family, once rich, have lost their fortune. Madame Thazar pushes for the marriage of her daughter, Cecile, to a wealthy German so the family can maintain their status and rank in Port-au-Prince society. In order to accomplish this, the materialistic wife  is willing to sacrifice anything and everything to keep up appearances and ensure her two children will not descend the social ladder. Needless to say, the Thazar home in Turgeau also attracts a number of suitors for the hand of Cecile (as well as family friends, mostly from the Haitians of their social rank), providing the narrator an excuse to satirize various types of the Haitian bourgeoisie and corrupt politicians. This is very much a dialogue-driven narrative, with a tragic conclusion to its satirical content. One cannot help but wonder if Haitian elites a century ago had such dim hopes for Haiti then, what are they thinking today?

Foreigners, particularly Germans and French, also provide cannon fodder for the satire as their outsider view of Haiti provides great comedic relief. Ravet, for instance, has the most difficult experience trying to get his landlord, Madame Thazar, to fix his leaky roof. During his long discourse with Madame Thazar, we learn about his disobedient domestic, who is also a part-time tailor, and the various ways in which life in Haiti is upside down. Or, for that matter, the constant questions from Cresson, who is following Ravet around Port-au-Prince on the streetcar one day. In the end, Ravet agrees to pay for the repairs to the roof, but it is another instance of Haiti as a an aberrant place to the foreign mind. The question of race is often part of this, with Haitians speaking of news of lynchings in the US, Booker T. Washington (perhaps a message of vocational schools and practicality for the Haitian educational system, instead of effete and useless bourgeois like those in the novel?), the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa and British imperialism's positive impact on the "natives") and a naturalized Haitian who renounces citizenship, Alphonse Laubepin. Alphonse Laubepin, who is presumably of mixed racial origins from the French Antilles, refuses to see himself as one of the black race, and is constantly reminded of his racial origins by Cresson. This amusing episode is likely an allusion to the pattern of some mixed-race immigrants of the French Antilles refusing to take Haitian citizenship and using their status as French subjects for additional privileges in Haiti.  Of course, the iniquitous color question also rears its ugly head among Haitians themselves, a "political" issue which shapes how the bourgeois characters relate to each other and their non-elite compatriots in matters of love, class, language, and culture. 

Impressively, Hibbert transports the reader to the Port-au-Prince of the early 20th century. The German commercial and financial dominance of Haiti was palpable, and foreigners were protected from the excesses and corruption of the Haitian government better than Haitian citizens. Unsurprisingly, Madame Thazar prefers to marry her daughter to the German Schlieden than any Haitian suitor, reasoning that they will be unable to look after her material interests with the utmost security. Lamertume, a darker-hued Haitian "nephew" of Monsieur Thazar, is ambitious but utterly lacking in honor, wealth, and merit, so he is quickly rejected. Lionel Brion, who descends from a great family and was educated in France, also wishes to marry her, but is similarly rejected for not being wealthy. The "bourgeois" of Haiti are, in short, vain, corrupt, materialistic, and concerned only for themselves or their primal instincts. And, while Madame Thazar, Titus Baudouin, Cresson, Madame Apice, and a plethora of the characters in the novel exemplify all the aforementioned flaws, counter-examples such as Lionel Brion and Dr. Remo prove the exception to the rule. Unfortunately, in Haiti mediocrity and corruption reign supreme, so exceptional men of the upper-classes, who would and could transform and place Haiti on the path to progress, are unable to achieve their goals or find happiness. Lionel Brion never recovers from his love and loss of Cecile, Delhi has isolated himself at Mariani with a lower-class woman he abuses as his lover and servant. 

Perhaps like the case of Romulus, another novel by Hibbert but set in Miragoane during the "disturbances" of 1883, Hibbert was driven by exploring the theme of the frustrated bourgeois reformers, whose hopes are dashed by Haitian reality. Trevier or the proponents of Bazelais, in that novel, and Brion, in Les Thazar, are both ruined by their experiences, seemingly common to anyone who endeavors to go against the grain of materialism and mediocrity. Hibbert appears to infuse both novels with a pervasive pessimism as the Haitian bourgeois male has proven himself unable to save Haiti or those who should be theirs (their families, and wives). Another contemporary writer of Hibbert's, Justin Lherisson, also explored this theme even more humorously in La Famille Des Pitite Caille, where the rise and fall of a bourgeois family demonstrates the vacuity, corruption and  avarice of the bourgeois paterfamilias. It would take another generation before Haitian writers would look to the masses, with Jacques Roumain being part of that transition through the peasant novel. Perhaps not coincidentally, Roumain married the daughter of Hibbert, and it took Roumain's generation to begin the shift from the elite-focus of Hibbert. 

Ce matin, un parfum de kénépier

Read by Roger Gaillard, this is another beautiful poem from Carl Brouard.

Isalina, ou une scène créole

Ignace Nau's Isalina, ou Une scène creole is a frustrating story. Written in the 1830s, it's a literary precursor for Innocent's Mimola or the roman paysan of 20th century Haitian indigénisme. Like his brother, Emile, Nau's Romanticism sought local inspiration and a distinctly Haitian literary expression. Naturally, it is not altogether shocking that Nau incorporated Haitian Creole proverbs and references peasant belief, Vodou, and dance. However, the actual narrative structure of the nouvelle was less convincing. Jean-Julien, the rival of Paul for the affection of Isalina, supposedly used Marie Robin to bewitch Isalina. However, Marie Robin does not appear in the novel and it's not clearly established how the sorcery worked. For instance, we know Isalina suffered hallucinations, and her condition is the gossip of the community around Digneron.  But in the case of Mimola, her malady is described in greater detail by Innocent. Innocent's narrative, perhaps because of its longer length, almost made it more plausible.

Nau makes up for this by highlighting Galba, the caplata or papa-loi who helps Paul restore Isalina. In vivid detail, Galba's consultation is described, as well as the importance of a serpent who is like a guardian angel or deity to him (is this a reference to Damballah?). Later, after Isalina recovers, a dance is held on a Sunday, with clear references to Vodou "sects" (Congo, Poulard, l'Arada) and instruments. The tale ends with Isalina and Paul planning to form a plaçage union, which was common at the time among peasants. Furthermore, Paul plans to have Isalina assist him on his own plot of land, instead of working on the Digneron moulin. As a writer from the Haitian upper class, it is interesting to note the lack of any implied judgment for these customs, although at times the narrator adopts a negative outlook with regard to sorcery and ritual beliefs.

One cannot help but wonder what was the larger ideological motivation for this story. Surely, for a Romantic writer to develop a greater interest in the folkloric and popular beliefs, as well as extolling the beauty of the Cul-de-Sac plain, Isalina's significance in the Haitian and Caribbean literary canon can be understood. However, the Naus were also landowners with extensive interests in the Cul-de-Sac plain, sugar, and, one would think, restoring plantation agriculture. The first section of the story dwells intimately on the functioning of the roulaison, the ateliers of workers, their conductors, and the samba singer. There is, despite the mechanized nature of sugar production and the mills, an almost romanticized communal nature of the labor that perhaps met the interests of Nau and his class rather than the workers and peasants of Digneron. Moreover, despite its extensive use of Vodou and rural beliefs and practice, the narrator also refers to the rural police's attempts to suppress Vodou, since Galba has to avoid their surveillance. Undoubtedly, this is a reference to Boyer's anti-sorcery laws and attempts to criminalize Vodou, yet the author seems to possess a kind of ambivalence. Perhaps his Romanticism sought a middleground between the burgeoning Haitian peasantry and the planter class.

J'ai peur

Beautiful.

A History of Haiti from Gilles Gougeon

This short video material on the historical roots of Haiti's economic and political crises is, while over simplifying the history of a nation, is one I agree with. Gougeon should have known better than to perpetuate the notion of a "mulatto" elite, but other than that (and perhaps the legacy of Aristide), this is useful introduction for those who know nothing about Haiti's history. I came across the video from an article.