René Depestre
Encyclopedia
René Depestre is a Haitian poet
and communist. He lived in Cuba
as an exile from the Duvalier
regime for many years and was a founder of the Casa de las Americas publishing house. He is best known for his poetry.
. His birthplace is often evoked in his poetry and his novels, in particular Hadriana In All My Dreams (1988).
Étincelles (Sparks), his first collection of poetry, appeared in 1945, prefaced by Edris Saint-Amand
. He was only nineteen years old when the work was published. The poems were influenced by the marvelous realism of Alejo Carpentier
, who planned a conference on this subject in Haiti in 1942. Depestre created a weekly magazine with three friends: Baker, Alexis, and Gerald Bloncourt
: The Hive (1945–46). “One wanted to help the Haitians to become aware of their capacity to renew the historical foundations of their identity” (quote from Le métier à métisser). The Haitian government at the time seized the 1945 edition which was published in honor of André Breton
, which led to the insurrection of 1946. Depestre met with all his Haitian intellectual contemporaries, including Jean Price-Mars
, Léon Laleau
, and René Bélance, who wrote the preface to his second collection, Gerbe de sang, in 1946. He also met with foreign intellectuals. He took part in and directed the revolutionary student movements of January 1946, which led to the overthrow of President Élie Lescot
. The Army very quickly seized power, and Depestre was arrested and imprisoned before being exiled. He pursued his studies in letters and political science at the Sorbonne
from 1946 - 1950. In Paris, he met French surrealist
poets as well as foreign artists, and intellectuals of the négritude
(Black) movement who coalesced around Alioune Diop
and Présence Africaine
.
Depestre took an active part in the decolonization movements in France, and he was expelled from French territory. He left for Prague
, from where he was driven out in 1952. He went to Cuba, invited by the writer Nicolás Guillén
, where again he was stopped and expelled by the government of Fulgencio Batista
. He was denied entry by France and Italy
. He left for Austria
, then Chile
, Argentina
and Brazil
. He remained in Chile long enough to organize, with Pablo Neruda and Jorge Amado, the Continental Congress of Culture.
After Brazil, Depestre returned to Paris in 1956 where he met other Haitians, including Jacques-Stephen Alexis. He took part in the first Pan-African congress organized by Présence Africaine in September 1956. He wrote in Présence Africaine and other journals of the time such as Esprit, and Lettres Francaises. He returned to Haiti in (1956–57). Refusing to collaborate with the Duvalierist regime, he called on Haitians to resist, and was placed under house arrest. Depestre left for Cuba in 1959, at the invitation of Che Guevara
. Convinced of the aims of the Cuban Revolution, he helped with managing the country (Ministry for Foreign Relations, National Publishing, National Council of Culture, Radio Havana-Cuba, Las Casas de las Américas, The Committee for the Preparation of the Cultural Congress of Havana in 1967). Depestre travelled, taking part in official activities (the USSR, China
, Vietnam
, etc.) and took part in the first Pan-African Cultural Festival (Algiers
, 1969), where he met the Congo
lese writer Henri Lopes
, with whom he would work later, at UNESCO
.
During his various travels and his stay in Cuba, Rene Depestre continued working on a major piece of poetry. His most famous collection of poetry is undoubtedly Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident chrétien (Rainbow for the Christian Occident) (1967), a mix of politics, eroticism, and Voudoo, topics that are found in all of his works. Poet in Cuba (1973) is a reflection on the evolution of the Cuban revolution
.
Pushed aside by the Castrist régime in 1971, Depestre broke with the Cuban experiment in 1978 and went back to Paris where he worked at the UNESCO Secretariat. In 1979, in Paris, he published Le Mat de Cocagne, his first novel. In 1980, he published Alléluia pour une femme-jardin, for which he was awarded the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle in 1982.
Depestre left UNESCO in 1986 and retired in the Aude
region of France. In 1988, he published Hadriana in All My Dreams, which received many literary awards, including the Prix Théophraste Renaudot, the Prix de la Société des Gens de Lettres, the Prix Antigone of the town of Montpellier, and the Belgian Prix du Roman de l'Académie royale de la langue et de la littérature françaises. He obtained French citizenship in 1991. He continued to receive awards and honors, in particular the Prix Apollinaire de poésie for his personal Anthology (1993) and the Italian Grisane Award for the theatrical adaptation of Mat de Cocagne in 1995, as well as bursaries (Bourse du Centre National du Livre, in 1994, and a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 1995 ). He was the subject of a documentary film by Jean-Daniel Lafond
, Haiti in All Our Dreams, filmed in Montreal
(1996).
Depestre also published major essays. Bonjour et adieu à la négritude (Hello and Good-bye to Négritude) presents a reflexion on his ambivalent position regarding the négritude movement started by Léopold Sédar Senghor
, Aimé Césaire
and Leon-Gontran Damas. Impressed by Aime Césaire, who came to Haiti to speak about surrealism and négritude, he was fascinated by créole
life, or the créolo-francophonie, which did not stop him from questioning the concept of négritude. Rebellious of the concept since his youth, which he associated with ethnic essentialism, he measured the historical range and situated the movement in the world history of ideas. He revisited this topic (critical re-situation of the movement) in his two collections, Ainsi parle le fleuve noir (1998) and Le Métier à métisser (1998). He paid homage to Césaire and his visionary work within the context of the créole movement in Martinique: “Césaire with only one word ended this empty debate: at the start of historical decolonization, In Haiti and around the world, there is the genius of Toussaint Louverture” (Le Métier à métisser 25). His experience in Cuba - his fascination and his falling out with the “castrofidelism” ideology and its constraints - is also examined in these two texts, as well as marvelous realism, the role of the erotic, Haitian history and the very contemporary topic of globalization.
Far from seeing himself as an exile, Depestre prefers being described as a nomad with multiple roots, a “banyan
” man - in reference to the tree which he so often evokes right down to its rhizomic
roots - even described as a “géo-libertin”. Rene Depestre lives today in a small village in the Aude, Lézignan-Corbières
, with his second wife, who is Cuban. He writes every morning, looking at the vineyards, just as he used to devour the view of Jacmel Bay from his grandmother's veranda.
His work has been published in the United States, the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italy, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, the former German Democratic Republic (East-Germany), Argentina, and Mexico
. His first volume of poetry, Sparks (Etincelles) was published in Port-au-Prince in 1945. Other publications include Gerbe de sang (Port-au-Prince, 1946), Végétation de clartés, preface by Aimé Césaire, (Paris, 1951), Traduit du grand large, poème de ma patrie enchainée, (Paris, 1952), Minerai noir, (Paris, 1957), Journal d'un animal marin (Paris, 1964), Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien poeme mystère vaudou, (Paris, 1966). His poetry has appeared in many French, Spanish and German anthologies and collections. More current works include Anthologie personnelle (1993) and Actes sud, for which he received the Prix Apollinaire. He has spent many years in France
, and was awarded the French literary prize, the prix Renaudot
, in 1988 for his work Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves.
He lives in Lézignan-Corbières
.
He is a special envoy of UNESCO for Haiti.
He is the uncle of Michaëlle Jean
, the current Governor General
of Canada
.
Novels and short stories
Essays
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and communist. He lived in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
as an exile from the Duvalier
Duvalier
Duvalier is a surname, and may refer to:* François Duvalier , nicknamed "Papa Doc", President of Haiti * Jean-Claude Duvalier , nicknamed "Baby Doc", son of François Duvalier and President of Haiti...
regime for many years and was a founder of the Casa de las Americas publishing house. He is best known for his poetry.
Life
He did his primary studies with the Breton Brothers of Christian Instruction. His father died in 1936, and Rene Depestre left his mother, his two brothers and his two sisters to go live with his maternal grandmother. From 1940 to 1944, he completed his secondary studies at the Pétion college in Port-au-PrincePort-au-Prince
Port-au-Prince is the capital and largest city of the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The city's population was 704,776 as of the 2003 census, and was officially estimated to have reached 897,859 in 2009....
. His birthplace is often evoked in his poetry and his novels, in particular Hadriana In All My Dreams (1988).
Étincelles (Sparks), his first collection of poetry, appeared in 1945, prefaced by Edris Saint-Amand
Edris Saint-Amand
Edris Saint-Amand was a Haitian novelist. Born in Gonaïves, one of Saint-Amand's most notable novels is Bon Dieu Rit .-References:...
. He was only nineteen years old when the work was published. The poems were influenced by the marvelous realism of Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Carpentier grew up in Havana, Cuba; and despite his European birthplace, Carpentier strongly self-identified...
, who planned a conference on this subject in Haiti in 1942. Depestre created a weekly magazine with three friends: Baker, Alexis, and Gerald Bloncourt
Gerald Bloncourt
Gérald Bloncourt , also known as Gérard Bloncourt, is a Haitian painter and photographer resident in the suburbs of Paris, France. Born in the small city of Bainet, in Haiti's Southeast Department, Bloncourt is a founding member of the Centre d'Art. Besides painting watercolors and frescoes, he...
: The Hive (1945–46). “One wanted to help the Haitians to become aware of their capacity to renew the historical foundations of their identity” (quote from Le métier à métisser). The Haitian government at the time seized the 1945 edition which was published in honor of André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, which led to the insurrection of 1946. Depestre met with all his Haitian intellectual contemporaries, including Jean Price-Mars
Jean Price-Mars
Jean Price-Mars was a Haitian writer. Born in Grande Rivière du Nord, Price-Mars obtained a degree in medicine and worked as a diplomat.-Negritude movement:...
, Léon Laleau
Leon Laleau
Leon Laleau was a Haitian writer, politician, and diplomat. Laleau is recognized "as one of the most brilliant writers of his time" He received several international awards, such as the Edgar Allan Poe Prize in 1962...
, and René Bélance, who wrote the preface to his second collection, Gerbe de sang, in 1946. He also met with foreign intellectuals. He took part in and directed the revolutionary student movements of January 1946, which led to the overthrow of President Élie Lescot
Élie Lescot
Louis Élie Lescot was the President of Haiti from May 15, 1941 to January 11, 1946. He was a member of the country's light-skinned elite and used the political climate of World War II to sustain his power and ties to the United States, Haiti's powerful northern neighbor...
. The Army very quickly seized power, and Depestre was arrested and imprisoned before being exiled. He pursued his studies in letters and political science at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
from 1946 - 1950. In Paris, he met French surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
poets as well as foreign artists, and intellectuals of the négritude
Négritude
Négritude is a literary and ideological movement, developed by francophone black intellectuals, writers, and politiciansin France in the 1930s by a group that included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, and the Guianan Léon Damas.The Négritude...
(Black) movement who coalesced around Alioune Diop
Alioune Diop
Alioune Diop was a Senagalese politician who was elected to the French Senate in 1946 .- References :...
and Présence Africaine
Présence Africaine
Présence africaine is a panafrican quarterly cultural, political, and literary magazine, published in Paris and founded by Alioune Diop in 1947. In 1949, Présence africaine expanded to include a publishing house and a bookstore on the rue des Écoles in the Latin Quarter of Paris...
.
Depestre took an active part in the decolonization movements in France, and he was expelled from French territory. He left for Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, from where he was driven out in 1952. He went to Cuba, invited by the writer Nicolás Guillén
Nicolás Guillén
Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba.Guillén was born in Camagüey, Cuba...
, where again he was stopped and expelled by the government of Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution....
. He was denied entry by France and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. He left for Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, then Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
and Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. He remained in Chile long enough to organize, with Pablo Neruda and Jorge Amado, the Continental Congress of Culture.
After Brazil, Depestre returned to Paris in 1956 where he met other Haitians, including Jacques-Stephen Alexis. He took part in the first Pan-African congress organized by Présence Africaine in September 1956. He wrote in Présence Africaine and other journals of the time such as Esprit, and Lettres Francaises. He returned to Haiti in (1956–57). Refusing to collaborate with the Duvalierist regime, he called on Haitians to resist, and was placed under house arrest. Depestre left for Cuba in 1959, at the invitation of Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
. Convinced of the aims of the Cuban Revolution, he helped with managing the country (Ministry for Foreign Relations, National Publishing, National Council of Culture, Radio Havana-Cuba, Las Casas de las Américas, The Committee for the Preparation of the Cultural Congress of Havana in 1967). Depestre travelled, taking part in official activities (the USSR, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, etc.) and took part in the first Pan-African Cultural Festival (Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
, 1969), where he met the Congo
Republic of the Congo
The Republic of the Congo , sometimes known locally as Congo-Brazzaville, is a state in Central Africa. It is bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , the Angolan exclave province of Cabinda, and the Gulf of Guinea.The region was dominated by...
lese writer Henri Lopes
Henri Lopès
Henri Lopès is a Congolese writer, diplomat, and political figure. He was Prime Minister of Congo-Brazzaville from 1973 to 1975, and since 1998 he has been Congo-Brazzaville's Ambassador to France.-Political and diplomatic career:...
, with whom he would work later, at UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
.
During his various travels and his stay in Cuba, Rene Depestre continued working on a major piece of poetry. His most famous collection of poetry is undoubtedly Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident chrétien (Rainbow for the Christian Occident) (1967), a mix of politics, eroticism, and Voudoo, topics that are found in all of his works. Poet in Cuba (1973) is a reflection on the evolution of the Cuban revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
.
Pushed aside by the Castrist régime in 1971, Depestre broke with the Cuban experiment in 1978 and went back to Paris where he worked at the UNESCO Secretariat. In 1979, in Paris, he published Le Mat de Cocagne, his first novel. In 1980, he published Alléluia pour une femme-jardin, for which he was awarded the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle in 1982.
Depestre left UNESCO in 1986 and retired in the Aude
Aude
Aude is a department in south-central France named after the river Aude. The local council also calls the department "Cathar Country".Aude is also a frequent feminine French given name in Francophone countries, deriving initially from Aude or Oda, a wife of Bertrand, Duke of Aquitaine, and mother...
region of France. In 1988, he published Hadriana in All My Dreams, which received many literary awards, including the Prix Théophraste Renaudot, the Prix de la Société des Gens de Lettres, the Prix Antigone of the town of Montpellier, and the Belgian Prix du Roman de l'Académie royale de la langue et de la littérature françaises. He obtained French citizenship in 1991. He continued to receive awards and honors, in particular the Prix Apollinaire de poésie for his personal Anthology (1993) and the Italian Grisane Award for the theatrical adaptation of Mat de Cocagne in 1995, as well as bursaries (Bourse du Centre National du Livre, in 1994, and a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 1995 ). He was the subject of a documentary film by Jean-Daniel Lafond
Jean-Daniel Lafond
Jean-Daniel Lafond CC is a French-born Canadian filmmaker, and the husband to the former Governor General Michaëlle Jean, making him the Viceregal Consort of Canada during her service.-Biography:...
, Haiti in All Our Dreams, filmed in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
(1996).
Depestre also published major essays. Bonjour et adieu à la négritude (Hello and Good-bye to Négritude) presents a reflexion on his ambivalent position regarding the négritude movement started by Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two decades served as the first president of Senegal . Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française. Before independence, he founded the political party called the Senegalese...
, Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
and Leon-Gontran Damas. Impressed by Aime Césaire, who came to Haiti to speak about surrealism and négritude, he was fascinated by créole
Creole peoples
The term Creole and its cognates in other languages — such as crioulo, criollo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kreol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc. — have been applied to people in different countries and epochs, with rather different meanings...
life, or the créolo-francophonie, which did not stop him from questioning the concept of négritude. Rebellious of the concept since his youth, which he associated with ethnic essentialism, he measured the historical range and situated the movement in the world history of ideas. He revisited this topic (critical re-situation of the movement) in his two collections, Ainsi parle le fleuve noir (1998) and Le Métier à métisser (1998). He paid homage to Césaire and his visionary work within the context of the créole movement in Martinique: “Césaire with only one word ended this empty debate: at the start of historical decolonization, In Haiti and around the world, there is the genius of Toussaint Louverture” (Le Métier à métisser 25). His experience in Cuba - his fascination and his falling out with the “castrofidelism” ideology and its constraints - is also examined in these two texts, as well as marvelous realism, the role of the erotic, Haitian history and the very contemporary topic of globalization.
Far from seeing himself as an exile, Depestre prefers being described as a nomad with multiple roots, a “banyan
Banyan
A banyan is a fig that starts its life as an epiphyte when its seeds germinate in the cracks and crevices on a host tree...
” man - in reference to the tree which he so often evokes right down to its rhizomic
Rhizome
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes...
roots - even described as a “géo-libertin”. Rene Depestre lives today in a small village in the Aude, Lézignan-Corbières
Lézignan-Corbières
Lézignan-Corbières is a commune in the Aude department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. Situated in the Corbières wine region not far from Narbonne, it has a Vine and Wine Museum .-Geography:...
, with his second wife, who is Cuban. He writes every morning, looking at the vineyards, just as he used to devour the view of Jacmel Bay from his grandmother's veranda.
His work has been published in the United States, the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italy, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, the former German Democratic Republic (East-Germany), Argentina, and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. His first volume of poetry, Sparks (Etincelles) was published in Port-au-Prince in 1945. Other publications include Gerbe de sang (Port-au-Prince, 1946), Végétation de clartés, preface by Aimé Césaire, (Paris, 1951), Traduit du grand large, poème de ma patrie enchainée, (Paris, 1952), Minerai noir, (Paris, 1957), Journal d'un animal marin (Paris, 1964), Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien poeme mystère vaudou, (Paris, 1966). His poetry has appeared in many French, Spanish and German anthologies and collections. More current works include Anthologie personnelle (1993) and Actes sud, for which he received the Prix Apollinaire. He has spent many years in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and was awarded the French literary prize, the prix Renaudot
Prix Renaudot
The Prix Théophraste-Renaudot or Prix Renaudot is a French literary award which was created in 1926 by ten art critics awaiting the results of the deliberation of the jury of the Prix Goncourt....
, in 1988 for his work Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves.
He lives in Lézignan-Corbières
Lézignan-Corbières
Lézignan-Corbières is a commune in the Aude department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. Situated in the Corbières wine region not far from Narbonne, it has a Vine and Wine Museum .-Geography:...
.
He is a special envoy of UNESCO for Haiti.
He is the uncle of Michaëlle Jean
Michaëlle Jean
Michaëlle Jean is a Canadian journalist and stateswoman who served as Governor General of Canada, the 27th since Canadian Confederation, from 2005 to 2010....
, the current Governor General
Governor General of Canada
The Governor General of Canada is the federal viceregal representative of the Canadian monarch, Queen Elizabeth II...
of Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
Selected works
Poetry- Etincelles, Port-au-Princ: Imprimerie de l'Etat, 1945
- Gerbes de Sang, Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l'Etat, 1946
- Végétations de Clarté, Paris: Seghers, 1951
- Traduit du Grand Large Paris: Seghers, 1952
- Minerai noir, Paris: Présence Africaine, 1956
- Journal d'un animal marin, Paris: Présence Africaine, 1967
- Cantate d'Octobre à la Vie et à la Mort du Commandant Ernesto Che Guevara, Havanna: Institudo del Libro, 1968
- Poète à Cuba" Paris: Pierre Jean Oswald, 1976
- En etat de poésie Paris: Les Editeurs français réunis, 1980
- Lettre à un poète du marronnage Bois Pluriel, 1988
- Au Matin de la négritude Paris: Euroeditor, 1990
- Anthologie personelle Arles: Actes Sud, 1993
- Ode à Malcolm X: Grande Brigitte, in: Litterature Moderne du Monde Francophone, by Peter Thompson. Chicago: National Textbook Company (McGraw-Hill), 1997, ISBN: 9780844215884
- Un Eté indien de la parole Double Cloche, 2001
- Non-assistance à poète en danger Paris: Seghers, 2005
- Rage de vivre. Oeuvres poétiques complètes Paris: Seghers, 2007
Novels and short stories
- Le Mât de cocagne Paris: Gallimard, 1979
- Alléluia pour une femme jardin Paris: Gallimard, 1981
- Hadriana dans Tous mes Rêves Paris: Gallimard, 1988
- Eros dans un train chinois Paris: Gallimard, 1990
- La mort coupée sur mesure, in: Noir des îles Paris: Gallimard 1995
- Un rêve japonais, in: Le Serpent à plumes. Récits et fictions courtes, Paris: Le Serpent à plumes, 1993
- L'oeillet ensorcelé, Paris: Gallimard, 2006
Essays
- Pour la révolution pour la poésie Paris: Leméac 1974
- Bonjour et Adieu à la Négritude Paris: Robert Laffont 1980
- Le Métier à métisser Paris: Stock, 1998
- Ainsi parle le fleuve noir Paroles de l'Aube, 1998
Sources
(In French)- http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/depestre.html (Original, in French)
External links
- "Rene Depestre", Mohamed B. Taleb-Khyar, Callaloo, Vol. 15, No. 2, Haitian Literature and Culture, Part 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 550-554
- René Depestre on Haiti’s earthquake: Endless tragedy, 8 February 2010