Alibée Féry's Short Stories

Although he seems to be a key writer of fiction in Haiti between Ignace Nau in the 1830s and the later short stories and novels produced from 1890-1915, it is difficult to find much information about Alibée Féry's literary writings. As a contemporary of Nau and the 1830s romanticists, Féry's short stories, published in Essais littéraires in 1876, seem to resemble the short stories of Nau and others published in journals like L'Union. Indeed, their brevity makes one think some of them were originally published in newspapers, presumably aimed at a similar audience as the works of of Nau and other anonymous contributors to Haitian journals. Intriguingly, Féry's collected works includes a glossary of Creole terms, suggesting he might have been addressing a non-Haitian audience to some undetermined extent.

Nonetheless, Féry avoids the lodyans style and deserves the distinction of being the first Haitian writer to compose a Bouqui et Malice tale, presumably based on oral tradition. Indeed, Féry's nouvelles often have a fairy-tale structure and bareness with minimal detail, supernatural events and creatures, and miraculous events. Indeed, with the exception of the Bouqui and Malice trickster tale, which is almost more focused on the fathers of the two figures, each story involves magical events, spirits, anthropomorphized animals, curses, or monsters. In that respect, Féry seems more interested in the "superstition" and folklore of the Haitian countryside than historic tales of Ignace Nau. 

Although it is probably misguided, it is interesting to think about Féry's tales as a precursor of sorts to early works of Black speculative fiction. Indeed, the number of ouangas, zombies, simbi spirits, monsters, and magical characters populating these short stories, often fragments, really, contain a wholly speculative character where the impossible and the implausible are everyday occurrences. For instance, a "ouangataire" curses a woman who chooses another man instead of him. His curse is passed on to her child, who turns out to be a serpent that eventually devours the ouangataire. Hidden messages in dreams assist our characters, as well as a friendly simbi spirit who transforms Monrose into an eel and takes him to his wondrous underwater palace in the river. Or, in the case of the beast without equal, angels bring an enchanted sword to an unnamed hero who must slay a monster. 

While one must admit the use of magic and elements of fantasy in Nau's Isalina, the tales of Féry are completely immersed in that world of zombies, charms, angels, monsters, and aid from the supernatural. Most have a happy ending as many fairy tales do, while the trickster tale ends with Petit Malice and his father playing a joke on the buffoonish Guiannacou and Bouqui. Each tale also imparts something of the values and beliefs of the Haitian people, from a positive perspective. One wonders how Féry actually felt about Vodou and "superstition" in his political life (and what of the connection between Romanticism and the irrational), but in the fairy-tales and snippets of of the fantastic here, a moral can always be found. One wonders how the nouvelles of Brun, Marcelin, Hibbert, and others in the late 19th century and early 20th century continue or deviate from this pattern. Finally, one wonders to what extent the Bouqui and Petit Malice tale of Féry has shaped the canon of Bouqui and Malice tales in the oral and written tradition.

Jazz (Laleau)

Jazz

Le trombone vient d'Honolulu,

De la Barbade, le saxophone,

Et le grand mulâtre au nez poilu

Qui grimace une chanson bouffonne,

Un soir, s'est enfui de Port-de-Paix.

"Mais avec qui des trois, se demande,

(Tous les trois ont de crépus toupets!)

Se demande la putaine flamande,

Avec qui passerai-je ma nuit,

Pour n'avoir pas une nuit d'ennui"?

Jazz Numero 2

Toque marron, gourmette en or à la cheville,

Tu disculpes l'amour où ton cœur s'ennuyait.

Et, comme au bout d'un vers trop fait, quelque cheville

Orgueilleuse, un rubis rutile à ton poignet.

Au cendrier, ton Abdulah s'épuise, Hortense,

Bleuissant de parfum ton rêve, ou ton ennui.

Et le nègre du Jazz décuple d'importance

Quand jusqu'à lui, tes yeux élargissent leur nuit.

Son rire alors, bordé de sang, fendu de nacre,

Vous griffe l'air qu'il hurle, en le scandant des reins.

Sanglots gluants du saxophone... Fumée âcre...

Et meurt le blues, parmi des lambeaux de refrains.

The above poems, from Leon Laleau's Musique nègre, published in 1931, provide an interesting example of jazz's influence on Haitian poetry at the time. An English translation of the first poem can be found here.

La montagne ensorcelée

Jacques Roumain's first peasant novel, La montagne ensorcelée, was published in 1931. Several years separate this from his most famous work, translated in English as Masters of the Dew. While this is certainly not as successful of a literary work or as entertaining (possibly due to the very stark and desperate conditions of life for this peasant community in the Nord or Plateau Central region of the country), it provides a fascinating example of the evolution of the peasant novel in the Haitian literary corpus. It also features an interesting example of the "Francocreolophone" nature of Haitian literary works as it combines French narration with character dialogues in French and Creole, sometimes leaving untranslated the Creole dialogue. For example, t'en prie, or tanpri in standardized Haitian Creole, means please, but Roumain leaves untranslated some Creole words, presumably due to this novel originally being published in serial forms in a Haitian newspaper. Consequently, most of his readers were Haitians who knew Creole.

However, despite crafting a hauntingly real peasant community during the US Occupation, the tragic love story of Aurel and Grace is less successful because the reader does not receive enough information about Placinette and her daughter. Perhaps if those characters were developed a little more, at least Grace, one could see the utter depravity of the chef de section's actions as more tragic. Grace, described as beautiful and clearly in love with Aurel, meets him for nightly trysts and they plan to marry, with Aurel even giving her a proposal letter his uncle and godfather wrote for him. It's endearing and Roumain has a poetic way with words to describe their love, but I couldn't help but wonder about the relationship between Placinette and her daughter. Surely, Grace was less isolated from the community than her mother, and would have heard the rumors of sorcery against her family.

And Baptiste, the grand don who represents greed, or Balletroy, the chef de section who abuses his authority, they provide the bases for a critique of social inequality in the novel, but mostly remain character sketches. There is undeniably a hint of Roumain's nascent Marxism, but here the social bonds are torn apart by superstition and misery without a hint of class struggle or solidarity. Dorneval, driven by a lust for vengeance, as is Dorilas, lose themselves in the mob while Desilus, an elder, ends up ginning bloodlust by feeding the magico-religious worldview of the community. Through these character sketches we see the breakdown of the family, social trust, and concerted efforts to escape their shared destruction. There is no konbit here to bring together the village, nor does Vodou seem capable of acting as a unifying force. 

Yet, within the Haitian novel tradition, one can easily see the innovative prose and descriptive language of La montagne ensorcelée. Reading this after Antoine Innocent's Mimola demonstrates a sympathetic yet critical approach to the religion of Vodou, although Innocent's novel is far more detailed of the actual process of Vodou spirit possession and beliefs. In the case of Roumain, this early novel seems to suggest both Vodou and Catholicism are part of the superstitious worldview of the peasant masses, which cause them to leap to mystical conclusions about the decaying rural world around them and its natural calamities of droughts, storms, sickness, and death. However, if Albert in Mimola represents the thoughts of Innocent, one can see a trajectory in Haitian social thought on the religion as being part of Haitian culture and identity but not necessarily something that is permanent or necessary in the future. The nonfiction of Roumain seems to encapsulate that perspective by calling for an anti-misery campaign instead of anti-superstitious campaigns during the 1940s. Regardless of the influence of Mimola on this particular novel, Roumain subsequently developed a more complex approach to the question of superstition and religious fatalism versus human agency.

Marilisse

Marilisse is one of the important early novels of Haitian literature, thus L'Harmattan's critical re-edition is significant. Focusing on several years in the life of a woman in Port-au-Prince, it tells the story of urban working-class women who experience the pain and suffering of life in politically unstable Haiti while their male partners often fail them or come up short in terms of material support or fidelity. However, the author, Frederic Marcelin, has created a beautiful, selfless mother whose self-sacrifice for her daughter and granddaughter exemplifies a positive image of the Haitian woman. One can see why some have described Marcelin as an early feminist novelist in terms of his non-judgmental depiction of a lower-class woman struggling to support her family. Indeed, aspects of this undoubtedly resonate today with working-class unattached mothers being a poto mitan for their families and communities.

Like Mimola or Zoune, the important social bonds between lower-class women are the bedrock of stability for the urban lower classes. This is especially evident in terms of Marilisse's close friendship with her neighbors Cessé and Zézé who rent homes in the same courtyard. These two women, despite experiencing their own difficulties with unloyal males (in plasaj relationships), declining health, and uncertain earnings as marchandes or seamstresses, often assist Marilisse in raising her child and establishing her laundry service. Joseph, a cymbalier and the father of her daughter, meanwhile, does nothing and eventually abandons his family after being caught sleeping with Tiyette.

Philo to Marilisse, page 120.

While still betraying Marcelin's own bourgeois background (for example, mockery of the superstitions of the urban poor and their willingness to support Modestin because he and his wife become godparents to several children, thereby bequeathing gifts to their families), the novel also shows the negative impact of Haitian political strife on the artisans and urban poor of the city. Marilisse's son-in-law, Philo, for instance, inherits from his father an ébénisterie which was praised for producing for Haitian consumers. However, under the son's lazy management, the workshop declined and Philo bought into the revolutionary rhetoric of Hercule Valdemar, a politically ambitious businessman who exploits the real need for protecting l'industrie nationale for his own purposes. 

Considering Marcelin's own views on Haiti's economic and social ills, he too likely wanted to promote national industry, but without revolutionary means or coups. Artisans and workers should focus on their labor, thereby improving production and serving Haiti through subsequent economic growth. Philo, however internalizes this through a satirical portrait of the wealthy businessman, Valdemar, who later takes advantage of him to ensure his coup succeeds. Thus, the artisans are drawn into the cycle of political conflicts and demagoguery, in spite of Philo's words to Marilisse hinting at class consciousness, a warning to those in power about the awakening of the artisans.

Nonetheless, artisans and reformers of the period (late 19th century or early 20th century) were correct about the government's failure to support the development of national industries or to provide support for artisans. In newspapers and pamphlets, some issued addresses to the national government or had their case pleaded by members of the political class. Historians such as Roger Gaillard have also drawn attention to the fear of class warfare among the Haitian elite, despite the small numbers of proletarians in Haiti. Indeed, even a mutual aid society for workers in the early 1900s sparked fears of socialism and anarchism. Other changes in Port-au-Prince of the era also hint toward starker class divisions and regulations, including the impersonal use of legal authorities to evict tenants and the importance of legal marriage as a social marker of status, suggestive of some degree of greater class stratification as the capital expanded.

However, can one speak of a working-class consciousness for Marilisse? She works with her own hands, cleaning and ironing clothes for her clients. She may be, at least in her early years, more of a small business owner since she employed an apprentice, Tiyette, as well as Zoune, to assist in the everyday operations. And, through her daughter's godparents and husband, she hopes for upward social mobility. However, her ties to the upper-class, which led to her enjoying lavish baptism ceremonies and the exquisite wedding of her daughter, financed by Valdemar, are not sustained. She's left supporting her progeny after the latter's shiftless husband quits working, and by the novel's end, is supporting Joseph again. She avoids politics, focusing on survival. But, there is a degree of social solidarity binding her with her women neighbors and the male workers and artisans living in the courtyard, as they're the socially excluded who suffer the adverse effects of insecurity, cheating men, or misery. They are the ones excluded from the political world, who have to experience physical pain and suffering through their years of hard labor in the sun, storms, or streets.

Her tragic tale seems to indicate more the oppressive conditions of life for the working people of the city, which develops through the author's sometimes satirical or humorous prose. What steps could Marilisse and the other women around her take to solve their problems? Hence, the tragedy. These women are trapped. In Mimola, Vodou provides, in part, an answer as a component of ancestral identity and women's religious or spiritual power. Catholicism, in Marilisse, clearly an important aspect of the titular character's public identity in terms of status, does not appear to offer any alternative. The men around them, who in a patriarchal society should be their caretakers, cannot do so. Much like the Haitian man of the elite, who could not compete with foreigners for the hearts of women of their class, the Haitian man of the working classes is not reliable, either.

Thus, Marilisse is useful for a historical overview of the working peoples of Port-au-Prince, as well as the tragic experiences women of the urban poor endured. While hinting at working-class angst and, in an attenuated form, rebellion, the lower classes here are subdued, yet, simultaneously, resilient. Marilisse herself, struggles onward, as the Haiti of her time continues its path down the road to destruction. As an early novel centered on a woman protagonist, Marcelin delivers a pioneering work which brings to life the concerns, experiences, and conflicts of the people who make Port-au-Prince work. Indeed, Marilisse is Haiti, leaving the reader to ponder the future of such a nation.