Write. Write poetry, - write in rhyme, - if it is only "One, two, Buckle my shoe, Three, four, Open the door." Form the habit. It is often convenient. It is a refuge from ennui. It may do good. Any one of you who refrains from writing for fear of ridicule, is a coward. Don't be a coward ... If your heart is stirred within you to write, write!(1)
I have been avoiding this blog since I came back to Guadeloupe after a summer in New York. I had come back with a new determination to succeed...
You see, I have no intrinsic need to write. I have not filled notebooks with first poems or scraps of a novel. It took me over a decade to fill half the pages of a journal. Instead, I write to satisfy a need. As I wrote some months ago, "Blogging is a way of saying, I exist! ... It is an outlet for my creative and intellectual energies, which otherwise would surely wither and die inside of me, making me very sick." In that same post, even as I was affirming my need to write, I foretold its end: a more complete and satisfying life would eventually supplant that need.
Not writing, then, became a proxy for that more complete and satisfying life. Eager to succeed in that goal, I got ahead of myself and choose not to pick up writing again. Its a distraction, I told myself. Truthfully, not to write was a blunt demonstration of will. But, who was I fooling? I would have gone on fooling myself if I had not come across Hamilton's words in Elaine Showalter's book "A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx" (2), a literary history of American women writers. It is difficult not to feel moved by womens' early struggles to express themselves through writing. I may enjoy privileges and rights that were only imaginable to Hamilton and her fellow women writers, but I find myself in a situation where I am bound by similar constraints and where 'emotional needs and frustrations drive me to the pen'.
I am still determined. Really, I have no choice. But there is a place for writing in my life and I do myself a disservice to hasten its obsolescence.
This is so serious for my simple posts on my tarts and my hikes. Dickensen and Brontë it is not. But such is the power of writing, where quality nor longevity determines the value to the author herself. And so, I begin again...
(1) Hamilton, Gail. Country Living and Country Thinking. Montana: Kessinger Publishing Ticknor and Fields, 1863.
(2) Showalter, Elaine. A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
Le soleil s'était levé tout content, généreux. Le ciel était du bleu des promesses qui vont être tenues(1).
It was with great pleasure that I plunged into the intrigue of Maryse Condé's Traversée de la Mangrove. Set in the small community of Rivière au Sel in Basse Terre, Francis Sancher is a foreigner with unknown origins and uncertain intentions. The story actually begins with Sancher's death, and during the wake each inhabitant reflects on his or her own life. There is a aspect of a polar (or detective novel) in Traversée de la Mangrove, since the reader is obliged to discover the identity and the story of Francis Sancher through the testimonies of the other characters. Each character reveals only what they know and so, even at the very end of the book, much remains unanswered. Ultimately, however, the real identity of Francis Sancher is of minor importance. What is important is that his arrival, and subsequent death, rouse the inhabitants out of their torpor.
The story is wonderfully dense, and the characters live and breath on each page. Condé is generous in details and each character seems substantial enough to be protagonists in books of their very own. There is a real risk for a story to unravel and fray when an author employs multiple narrators, especially when each has such complicated histories. Condé's deft writing keeps the storyline tight, and the stories makes constant progress. There are no leisurely tangents and then a race to the finish.
Only those who have lived within the four walls of a small community know its meanness and its fear of the stranger (3).
If the relationships between characters provoke a sense of claustrophobia, it is not unintentional. The difficulties of relating, concentrated through isolation, seem ready to destroy the characters. This isolation is two-fold. As in all Caribbean writing, there is the isolation of living on an island. But, more immediate is the isolation of the small village, bordered by the dense vegetation of Basse Terre. Therefore as a group, the characters are isolated from the rest of the world. There is also racial/cultural isolation. There are the Lameaulenes, descendants of white plantation owners, or the Ramsarans, descendants of Indian indentured laborers, and the rest, various métis of black white, brown and yellow. Sancher embodies the stranger physically (he is assumed to come from some Spanish-speaking country), but also culturally. His appearance in Rivière au Sel disturbs the isolation. His life in Rivière au Sel brings agitation; his death becomes the catalyst for change.
It really is a wonderful book, and Condé is one of the few Antillais authors to be translated into English.
(1)The sun rose, happy, generous. The sky was blue of promises that would be kept.
(2) Condé, Maryse. Traversée de la Mangrove. Paris: Mercure de France, 1989.
(3) Seul celui qui a vécu entre les quatre murs d'une petite communauté connaît sa mechanceté et sa peur de l'étranger.
I have not given up on my pursuit of Caribbean litterature. Rather, I settled on a stylistically difficult book, and I got stuck. I allowed it to collect dust on my nightstand, while I philandered with economic magazines and books in English. Months after having begun, I've finally finished Daniel Maximin's L’Ile et Une Nuit(1). Though, when I write finished, I don’t mean it in the literal and usual sense of having read the entire book cover to cover, but instead I mean having read all the parts that I was able to read. I’ll explain.
The book details one night in the life of Marie-Gabriel. Not any ordinary night, but the night during which Hurricane Hugo, one of Guadeloupe's most devastating hurricanes, cuts across the entire width of both wings, unleashing its fury of wind and water. Each chapter describes each hour Marie-Gabriel is boarded up in her house, Les Flamboyants, where she is hostage to the hurricane, her memories, her past, her solitude, her hopes, her dreams. The special relationship that Guadeloupeans have with disaster is fascinating. People live with the specter of the earthquake, the eruption and the hurricane. But earthquakes pass before the fear has the time to take hold, and there is simply no choice but to flee an eruption. Guadeloupeans meet the hurricane, each barricaded in his own home, individual defiance forming a collective resistance. The only way I have experienced hurricanes has been through television. The image on the cover of the book is similar to what I've seen: palm trees blown sideways, fronds waving wildly, facing a threatening sky. I admit that I had devoured the first chapter of its details in provisions and preparation, reading it almost like some survival guide. This is what I would need to do should a hurricane arrive. Otherwise, I was surprised by the wondrous descriptions of quiet beauty in the midst of a hurricane. An entire garden of roses and anthuriums, cut and brought inside to wither and die gracefully. The sweet smell of cantaloupes permeating a bedroom, the entire crop kept safe underneath the master bed. The writing is straight forward in the beginning, but quickly morphs into poetic prose, rhythmic and abstract. Moreover, the narration and point of view changes from chapter to chapter. I had great difficulty and I believe I failed to grasp the meaning for much of the book. The words passed through my eyes, my head and dissipated into a gray fog. Maximin first published as a poet, and his prose style makes clear his preference for language over narration. I do not think I will attempt another of his novels, but I may look into his poems.
(1) Maximin, Daniel. L’Ile et une nuit. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1995.
In the evening the port became beautiful for perhaps five minutes. The laterite roads that were so ugly and clay heavy by day became a delicate flower-like pink. It was the hour of content. Men who had left the port for ever would sometimes remember on a grew wet London evening the bloom and glow that faded as soon as it was seen: they would wonder why they had hated the coast and for a space of a drink they would long to return(1).
Every day is almost perfect during carême, but one recent Saturday the skies were particularly clear, and from the national road the ocean sparkled like a million diamonds. I could even see the individual houses on les Saintes islands facing Guadeloupe, the islands themselves made up of pleasing green and brown slopes surrounded by blue. And this scene framed by the lush vegetation of volcanic Basse Terre.
I am not blind to the beauty of Guadeloupe. But, having been somewhat obliged to move here, I have been somewhat resistant to the island's charms. During my first few days, I would look bitterly out the balcony towards the ocean, and considered the view unequal compensation for family and friends left behind.
But, if limestone cliffs can be worn down by the Atlantic over time, so too can a heart momentarily hardened by sacrifice. How could I ignore the charms of island paradise forever? There are even moments now, when my family and friends absent themselves from my thoughts, that I feel lucky to live in Guadeloupe. What an opportunity it is to live here.
It makes me wonder how I will feel if I ever leave Guadeloupe and make my life elsewhere. Will I regret the beautiful island days and long to return?
(1) Greene, Graham. The Heart of the Matter. New York: Penguin Books, 2004.
I decided a while back that I ought to read more about Guadeloupe and, in general, the Caribbean. I’ve read the history and culture bits found in the various French tourist guidebooks we have at the house. These passages are obviously very short and brief, but often offer a surprisingly insightful and honest interpretation of life here. But, these books can only offer so much. Much more useful and engaging is literature. I ambitiously began with La Case à Chine, by Raphaël Confiant, a Martinican with some Chinese ancestry. Therein lay the interest for me. But, I quickly discovered that Confiant writes with a French that requires intensive reading, or at least not the kind I could manage sitting on my terrace, or before going to bed. So, I abandoned Case à Chine, regrettably.
M. recommended something with much more classical style of narration: La Rue Cases Nègres by Joseph Zobel (1). The book is semi-autobiographical, and recounts the early life of a young boy named Joseph Hassam in Martinique. José - as he is called - lives with his grandmother, Ma’Tine, on a sugar cane plantation in the early 1900’s, during a time when Blacks were free, but kept extremely poor working on the sugar cane plantations of Whites (called békés). The title of the book - black shack alley - comes from the row of ‘houses’ where all the black laborers live. The early part of the book is mostly a description of José’s world, as well as a narration of his adventures, as seen from the point of view of a child.
In this following passage, José has discovered he can fish for little shrimps in a nearby creek while Ma’Tine works in the fields:
It was marvelous. The breathless attention which I watched my line, the acute emotion that started in my heart by the smallest movement of the buoy ... Even more wonderful, the world of the shrimps as I imagined: hills, paths and trails, fields, shacks. All of it in fresh water. Here lived translucent shrimps, the papa-shrimps, the mamas, the children, who spoke in the language of water. When I got a large shrimp, it was maybe a papa-shrimp, or a mama-shrimp returning from work. And I thought about the grief of the children, who cried inconsolably, and whose tears maybe swelled the river. When it was a little shrimp, I imagined the desolation of the its parents ... and I regretted even more those that got away, whom I feared would advise the others to stay away from the appetizing earth worm hiding my suspended hook (2).
But underneath lies the history of the miserable existence of Blacks during this time period. Ma’Tine struggles to send José to school, which she sees as the only escape from the sugar cane fields for both her grandson, and for Blacks in general. Below, José has just asked Ma’Tine why he does not go to work in the fields like the other children of Rue Cases Nègres:
Miserable boy! cried my grandmother; you would have me put you into the small bands, you too! ... Well! I should, send you to gather para (3), or spread guano, for good, like the others have done! That's what you need to know the misery and to teach you how to behave...Hum! How can it end if fathers stick their sons there in it, in the same misery (4).
The second half of the story tells of José's struggles in school, and his new life in Fort-de-France.
Its a wonderful story, and the characters are incredibly memorable. José is precocious and the reader is quickly charmed by his intelligence and sincerity. Ma' Tine is an impressive force and the reader, like José, treats her with equal parts affection and fear.
The book was adapted to film in 1983 by Euzhan Palcy. The film follows the overall plot of the book, but diverges in the details. Asked during an interview, whether or not he liked the film, Zobel answered, “I’m not sorry about the adaptation that Miss Palcy made, it’s another thing than my book, it doesn’t matter how the two were received by the public...” (5). I believe the film captures the essence of Zobel’s book. The principal actors, Garry Cadenat as José, and Darling Légitimus as Ma’ Tine are marvelous.
I was not able to find a clip of the film online, except the one below, which is not actually a clip, but a video essay by an American- or Canadian-born Taiwanese. He uses the clip to explore his own relationship with his grandparents. The clip is rather interesting on its own. The clip shows M. Médouze, an elderly laborer whom José has befriended, and who is his mentor.
(1) Zobel, Joseph. La Rue Cases-Nègres. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1974.
(2) “C'était merveilleux. L'attention haletante avec laquelle je surveillais la ligne, l'émotion aiguë lancée au coeur par le plus insensible mouvement du flotteur...Plus merveilleux encore, le monde des crevettes tel que j'imaginais: des mornes, des sentiers et des traces, des champs, des cases. Le tout en eau claire. Là vivaient les crevettes translucides, les papas-crevettes, les mamans, les enfants, qui parlaient en langage d'eau. Quand j'en avais pris une grosse, c'était peut-être un papa, ou une maman qui revenait du travail. Et je songeais au chagrin de leurs enfants qui pleureraient inconsolablement, et dont les larmes feraient peut-être grossir la rivière. Quand c'était une petite, je me représentais la désolation de ses parents ... et je regrettais d'autant plus celles que je manquais, que je redoutais qu'elles n'aillent conseiller aux autres de se méfier de mon hameçon suspendu sous l'apparence d'un appétissant ver de terre.”- p84 Éditions Présence Africaine, 1974.
(3) I am not sure what para is, and so cannot translate it. It is maybe creole. If I find out, I will edit this.
(4) "Petit misérable! s'écria ma grand-mère; tu voudrais que je te fiche dans les petites-bandes, toi aussi! ... Eh bé! j'aurais dû, pour de bon, t'envoyer ramasser du para, ou mettre du guano, comme ont fait les autres! C'est ce quíl faudrait pour connaitre la misère et apprendre à te comporter...Hein! comment cela pourrait-il finir si les pères y foutent leurs fils là-dedans, dans la même malheur?" - p79 Editions Présence Africaine, 1974.
(5) "Je ne regrette pas l'adaptation qu'en a fait mademoiselle Palcy, c'est autre chose que mon livre, peu m'importe la manière dont les deux ont été reçus par le public..." Interview with Simone DUMAS
