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Yanick Lahens. © Zebe

French language, Francophonie and Haiti's history were on the agenda of "Urgency (s) to write, dream (s) to live", the inaugural lesson of the Haitian writer, March 21. Yanick Lahens has named the chair "Mondes francophones", recently created by the Collège de France precisely in order to encourage reflection around the Francophonie and its cultural expressions.

Yanick Lahens is convinced that we need to know the history of Haiti to understand his literature. A literature that accompanies the first steps of the young Republic resulting from the slave revolt in 1804. " Literature in the French language is primarily that of a tiny minority, summoned to write to say we are able to found a community of slaves. citizens, "she recalls.

" The exaltation of the epic of independence and the warning against a possible return of the French characterize all this poetry, the first years, " says the 65-year-old novelist, quoting Antoine Dupré [Haitian poet and playwright the end of the 18th century NLDR]: " If, some day on your banks, our tyrants reappear, let their fugitive hordes serve as fertilizer for our fields ."

A literature with multiple identities

In an hour, in front of hundreds of listeners, the writer paints a portrait of a literature that has sprung up on the edge of the old Western world. But who today is the very face of a globalization made of multiple identities, with young authors who no longer write only in French or Creole: " The Haitian literature, thanks to migration, is being made today in two other languages ​​of America, English and Spanish ".

Thanks, in particular, to the women writers since " if the question of the more open identity was posed by the first-generation writers of exile, it was women who first made the leap by writing in these two unofficial languages. . Edwidge Danticat in English and Micheline Dusseck in Spanish ".

This literature in four languages, concludes Yanick Lahens, invites the French language to a " cohabitation with other idioms ". The Haitian writer believes that the French-speaking world must learn to no longer think " the national language according to the criteria of the 19th century ."

Recorded, this inaugural lesson is broadcast today from 13:30 UTC on the antennas of RFI.

It is a great responsibility and a privilege to be able to talk about these worlds - in the plural, because it is a diversity of worlds - and to make them known from Haiti. It should not stop at the Haitian story, for me it is to show how there is a potential unused around the knowledge of these French-speaking worlds. Because there are lots of archives slumbering in France, [...] but that we do not know. So, it takes a little off-center and that would really be the essential thing to do.

Yanick Lahens on his work at the Collège de France 22/03/2019 - by Achim Lippold