Alexis, Jacques-Stephen (1922-61). One of the most admired of Haiti's novelists, deeply influenced by the work of his predecessor Jacques Roumain. He was one of the generation that challenged the ideas of négritude by refusing to locate Haiti's identity exclusively in the African past and emphasizing the creolized nature of Haitian culture.
The son of a writer, born during the American Occupation of Haiti (1915-34), Alexis was shaped by the Marxism of Roumain as well as Breton's Surrealism and the Surrealist-derived ideas of Alejo Carpentier. He rose to prominence as a leader of the student group La Ruche, which helped overthrow President Lescot in 1946. After studying neurology in Paris, he returned to Haiti, where he wrote his major works. In 1956 he presented his famous essay on the réalisme merveilleux of Haiti, to the first Congress of Black Writers in 1956. His leftwing Parti d'Entente Populaire challenged Duvalier in the early years of his presidency. Alexis was later killed by Duvalier's militia in an attempt to land clandestinely in Haiti.
Lyrical and dense, Alexis's novels focus on Haiti's urban poor. His first novel, Compère Général Soleil (1955), begins in the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince and contains extravagantly lyrical descriptions of the natural world that were to become a hallmark of Alexis's style. The plot turns on the massacre of Haitian cane-cutters in the Dominican Republic in 1937 by Trujillo's troops. Despite the sombre events depicted, Alexis concentrates on Hilarius Hilarion's capacity to survive both ideologically and emotionally. The same human potential appears in Alexis's second novel, Les Arbres musiciens (1957), which was inspired by the anti-superstition campaign in the early 1940s. Within the context of the Catholic Church's drive to eradicate voodoo, Alexis traces the fortunes of the Osmin family. This sprawling novel is as much about the emergence of a black middle class in a corrupt Haiti as it is about the changes taking place through an impoverished community's struggle to survive.
Alexis's later novels take even greater liberties with the novel form. L'Espace d'un cillement (1959) is a symbolic novel in which a prostitute, La Niña Estrellita, and a mechanic, El Caucho, represent a microcosm of the Caribbean's experiences. Again it is the protagonists' capacity to survive the humiliating world of the brothel that is highlighted. Alexis's last work, his Romancéro aux étoiles (1960), most fully illustrates his concept of the marvellous world of the popular imagination. These stories are not a gratuitious display of Haiti's rich folk culture but a demonstration of an inner recreative response to the horror of conquest, colonization, and repressive government. As in his novels, the poor are not seen simply as victims but as a part of a dynamic counter-culture that ensures their survival.
[Michael Dash]
Bibliography
- M. Dash, Jacques-Stephen Alexis (1975)
