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Ready
to burst / Frankétienne ; translated from the French by
Kaiama L. Glover. - Brooklyn (N.Y.) : Archipelago books, 2014. -
162 p. ; 16x16 cm.
ISBN 978-1-935744-78-8
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DESCRIPTION : Ready to Burst tells
the tale of a young man's efforts to navigate the challenges of a
deeply troubled society. The novel moves fluidly between his
experiences and those of his alter ego, opening a window onto the
absurd realities of a dictatorship. First published in 1968, Ready to Burst presents
a sensitive critique of François Duvalier's suffocating regime
and its consequences for a generation of young people in Haiti. The
novel offers at once an exquisite verbal painting of life within a
specific context of terror and a vivid exploration of love, hope, and
the delicate membrane between reality and dream.
| ❙ | Born
in 1936 in Ravine-Sèche, Haiti, Frankétienne is a
prolific poet, novelist, visual artist, playwright and musician. He has
devoted much of his life to fighting political oppression and, in 2009,
was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2010, the French
government nmed him a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Internationally renowned as an advocate for diversity and cultural
dialogue, he has a unique writing style, often juggling French and
Haitian Creole simultaneously. “ I am not afraid of
chaos ”, Frankétienne explains, “ because
chaos is the womb of light and life ”. | | ❙ | Kaiama
L. Glover received a B.A. in French History and Literature and
Afro-American Studies from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in French and
Romance Philology from Columbia University. She is now an associate
professor in French at Barnard College. Her book, Haiti Unbound : A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon (Liverpool UP, 2010), explores the Haitian Spiralist movement. She is currently translating Frankétienne's Ultravocal (Archipelago) and René Depestre's Hadriana dans tous mes rêves. |
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| EXCERPT |
Every day, I employ the dialect of untamed hurricanes. I speak the madness of opposing winds.
Every evening, I use the patois of furious rains. I speak the rage of overflowing waters.
Every
night, I speak to the islands of the Caribbean in the language of
hysterical storms. I speak the madness of the sea in heat.
Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. Unfolding of life in a spiral.
In
its essence, life is tension. Towards something. Towards someone.
Towards oneself. Towards the point of maturation where the ancient and
the new unravel. Death and birth. And every being finds itself
— in part — in pursuit of its double. A pursuit
that might even seem to bear the intensity of need, of desire, of
infinite quest.☐ p. 8
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| COMPLÉMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE |
- « Mûr à
crever », Port-au-Prince : Presses Port-au-princiennes
(Spirale), 1968 ; Ed. Mémoire [avec une préface
de Rodney Saint-Eloi], 1994
- « Mûr à crever », Bordeaux : Ana Éditions, 2004
- « Mûr à crever », Paris : Hoëbeke, 2013
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- « Dézafi »,
Port-au-Prince : Ed. Fardin, 1975 ;
Châteauneuf-le-Rouge : Vents d'ailleurs, 2002
- « Pèlen tèt »,
Port-au-Prince : Éd. du Soleil, 1978
- « Les affres d'un
défi » (trad.
française de Dézafi),
Port-au-Prince : Ed. Henri Deschamps, 1979 ;
Paris : Jean-Michel Place, 2000 ; La
Roque-d'Anthéron : Vents d'ailleurs, 2010
- « L'oiseau schizophone », Port-au-Prince : Éd. des Antilles, 1994
- « L'oiseau schizophone », Paris : Éd. Jean-Michel Place, 1998
- « Haïti
chaos, Haïti Babel ... »
in : Bernard Magnier (éd.), A peine plus qu'un cyclone
aux Antilles, Cognac : Le Temps qu'il
fait, 1998
- « D'un pur silence inextinguible,
premier mouvement des Métamorphoses
de l'oiseau schizophone », La
Roque d'Anthéron : Vents d'ailleurs, 2004
- « Ultravocal »,
Paris : Hoëbeke, 2004
- « Anthologie secrète »
préface et photographies de Rodney Saint-Eloi,
Montréal : Mémoire d'encrier, 2005
- « Ma
ville est dans mon ventre », in Une
journée haïtienne,
textes réunis et présentés par Thomas
C. Spear,
Montréal : Mémoire d'encrier ;
Paris :
Présence africaine, 2007
- « Melovivi, ou Le piège (suivi de) Brèche ardente », Paris : Riveneuve, 2010
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- Kaiama
L. Glover, « Haiti unbound : a spiralist challenge to
the postcolonial canon », Liverpool : Liverpool
university press (Contemporary French and francophone cultures, 15), 2010
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| Sur
le site « île
en île » : dossier Frankétienne |
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| mise-à-jour : 29 septembre 2014 |
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|  | | Cover art : Frankétienne |
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