The founder of French surrealism, André Breton (1896-1966), praised the Haitian poet Clément Magloire-St.-Aude (1912-1971) with the highest compliments. He linked him to Mallarmé, Apollinaire, and Nerval as among the most important poets of all time. Breton writes that, like the Sphinx, Magloire St. Aude succeeds in arresting the passerby by touching on ecstasy in a higher manner than any of the French poets.
Breton’s fascination with Haiti went deep. In the 1940s, Pierre Mabille, an important member of the surrealist entourage, was appointed as a diplomat to the island. Breton visited, and in 1946 gave a speech that ignited a revolution leading to the ouster of President Elie Lescot. The extreme instability that this caused may have led indirectly to the rise of dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who began in 1957 a reign which lasted till his death in 1971. In his interviews, Breton plays down his cardinal importance, saying that in Haiti at the time a solid day of work in the cane fields earned the worker less than one penny as a wage.
Breton also praised Hector Hyppolite (1894-1948) as one of the finest painters of the age. Hippolyte was a self-taught Haitian painter, whose canvasses have steadily risen in value. Breton himself purchased five canvasses.
For a small island with a population of 7 million, and an annual income of $1,300 per capita, Haiti has had more than its share of great poets and writers. They remain in obscurity.
Breton’s brief essay on Magloire St. Aude quotes an entire poem “Silence”, with the opening lines:
Le tuf aux dents, aux chances, aux chocs auburns
Sur neuf villes.
[The fanged bedrock, with chances, auburn shocks,
On nine cities.]
The rest is about as obscure. This poet’s single volume remains in print in French. He often spent 24 hours walking about to only come up with two lines.
This brief encounter with Haiti’s link to surrealism is the tip of an enormous history. This is charming, but hasn’t led to happiness for the millions of Haitians with no access to running water.
Rather than surrealism, which didn’t have a missionary arm, it might be better to have a Christian church’s presence. At present there are 14,000 Lutherans in Haiti, with143 congregations, 2 clinics and 61 schools.
Most of Haitian religion is based on Voodoo with an overlay of Catholicism.
The population is due to double every fifty years. The topsoil is eroding at a massive rate due to poor farming practices. Sugar and tourism are the top sources of income. Tourism is down due to the current instability in the country. The US State Department counsels against any visits. Sugar cane is developed all over the country but since it is not a source of nutrition, most food must be brought in.
If anything could create a lasting improvement in Haitian conditions, it remains a mystery what it might be. The US has doubled the amount of aid the country receives. Most development money is siphoned off by corruption. Every possible “institution”—family, education, religious life, government—is failing. After the devastating earthquake of 2010, the Clintons were suspected to have made off with a vast sum of what the world’s countries had provided in aid.
What Haiti needs short of the Second Coming is a miracle. Other than that, the only real hope a Haitian has is the open sea—to try to get to a place with a functioning superstructure. Brooklyn and Miami house the two largest Haitian communities in America.
A loyal opposition and a dynamic politics of tension, an honest and secure police force, an honest press—most democracies take these for granted. But in Haiti almost every attempt at an improvement causes further erosion. As I read about contemporary unrest in the island, I cannot see any place to begin a reformation, and so I turn away. Haiti is a failed state: it has neither a president nor elected officials. The country is now almost totally in the hands of barbaric gangs run by creeps like “Barbecue”, a nickname based on the fact that this gang leader burns his enemies to death after first necklacing them with rubber tires. A group of Kenyans sent by the UN is trying to restore order. They are being gunned down by the superior firepower of the gangs. Small slivers of Port-au-Prince still belong to the former elite, who once had swimming pools and Bentleys while the rest of the country tried to live on 1,300 calories a day. Haiti has been in a feverish state ever since their initial “Jacobin” revolution (1791-1804), led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, which led to the country’s independence, and the mass killings of the white masters that followed. Reparations were sought by the former colonists’ families, but none were forthcoming. Americans have invaded and made things worse. The rising fever can break in many different directions, but none of them seem to point towards a robust legal, economic and political system with liberty and justice for all. Is this where Bretonian surrealism leads? Voodoo and gangs and precious little else. They need a Protestant Revolution in which an influx of the Ten Commandments, freedom of conscience, and a free market mark a turn toward sanity. The alternative appears to be self-extinction.
