Meet Franketienne

OBMICA mourns the death of the illustrious Haitian author Franketienne on February 20 at his home in Port-au-Prince. Dying at the age of 89, he left behind a legacy of monumental works and an unavoidable imprint on the cultural history of Haiti and the Caribbean. As a multidisciplinary artist, he was a poet, playwright, painter, musician, singer, and teacher. He is recognized as the creator of the spiralist movement, a literary aesthetic that reflects the instability of the world and explores the complexity of postcolonial societies through a cyclical and non-linear vision of time.

Literary figure: Among his works, the play Pelen Tet stands out as an important testimony toward a better understanding of the complexity of Haitian society. He made art into a powerful tool of reflection and resistance. His novel Dezafi, literally cockfight, the first novel written entirely in Haitian Creole, demonstrates his role in the valorization of language and national identity. Audiences were able to enjoy the presentation of his novel "Angustia en la gallera," translated from Creole into Spanish in 2016 by the Chilean publisher AMBOS in association with Isla Negra. Written in 1975 under the title Dezafi, literary critics recognize it as a masterpiece that uses the alienating atmosphere of an agricultural estate during the Duvalier dictatorship as its backdrop.

Franketienne belonged to that insular dimension; he spoke Spanish wonderfully and did so with respect for otherness, so that his language could reach Dominicans, reinforcing his meter and rhythm with the cadence of Spanish. In 2017, he read us his symbolic poetry, born of his pains and joys amid the frenetic pain of Haiti, because for this man:

"Life is a great island
That pitches and turns,
Upon a sea of illusions
A runaway horse that carries me
Toward a fictitious country
My restless love
My derisory fiction
My cinema of noises."

Never, however, did this poet abandon his land, nor did he accept belonging to the diaspora or becoming an exile from the other shore. He preferred to confront dictatorships and remain, as he says, with "his people," accompanying them, like a flag respected by the people, who always knew they had in this poet a voice without compromise.

"Raising my cries
Up to the vermilion of my wound
Untying the knots of my anguish
To flee their mysteries
To return to them fresh clarity
I dress myself in ultra-earth and outrage
All the sea drunk in sacrifice
All the sand swallowed in penitence
To extinguish my deserts."

The international literary sector recognized in him a singular and exceptional author, which enabled him to receive international honors throughout his career in Europe, Canada, and the United States.

• In the Netherlands he received the highest literary distinction, the Prince Claus Award of the Netherlands, for his body of work in 2006.
• In 2008, the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic honored him with the title 'Quisqueyan Writer'.
• In 2010, he was selected as a UNESCO Artist for Peace. That same year in Paris he became Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of France.
• Among his many recognitions, in 2005 he received the Grand Prix du Livre Insulaire, Ouessant, Islands of Ponant Prize, for his "Anthologie Secrete".
• Among many prizes of major importance was the Latin Union International Prize for Romance Literatures in Rome, awarded for his body of work.

Archive photo: A sample of 'Vibraciones', a journey through small-format works made between 1987 and 2017, Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Santo Domingo, May 2017

Visual artist: Although Franketienne had visited the Dominican Republic on 17 occasions, in 2017 it was the first time he did so in order to present to the public his facet as a painter. At the Museum of Modern Art he exhibited his solo show "Vibraciones", with 24 oil paintings on canvas measuring 16 by 12 inches. Most of the paintings were made especially for this exhibition, Franketienne told us. But, he added, it was a pity that the Dominican public could not appreciate "the essential" of his work. He continued: "My essential work was executed in plaster, in a paste, and on large dimensions; those paintings are more intense and stronger than these small ones."