Author: Belance, René (1915-2004)
Title: In Celebration of Absence. . First Edition of the Broadside
Description: Washington, DC: The Black Sun Press, 1947. Letterpress on paper. 2pp. 40.5 x 30.2cm. As published in Portfolio V , edited by Caresse Crosby.. A Note on René Bélance Haun Saussy : René Bélance was born in 1915 in Corail, Haiti, not far from the coastal town (and homeland of poets) Jérémie. His mother made a meager living by selling candies in the marketplace. After winning a scholarship to the Lycée Pétion of Port-au-Prince, considered the best secondary school in the country, Bélance went on to Haiti’s Ecole Normale. At twenty-five he published a first collection of poetry, Rythme de mon Coeur (1940); this was soon followed by Luminaires (1941) and a war poem in many sections, Pour Célébrer l’Absence (1943). As Bélance later observed, his name was quickly pinned to a party label, quite independently of his own wishes: “I was classified as a surrealist right away because I had published a book [Luminaires] that was difficult to read.”1 Pour Célébrer l’Absence in particular became the pretext for polemics about difficulty, illogicality, preciosity and the respect due the lay reader. “Mr. Bélance compromises his work, his influence, his mission, by a greater number of awkward flaws than is tolerable in so short a book: useless preciosities, naive and unfortunate obscurities,” complained Roger Dorsinville. “Neither images nor ideas are approached in a simple, direct, intelligible manner. One would be relieved to learn that he calls himself a surrealist and rejects conventional clarity in the name of surrealism.”.. When surrealism (in its European form) came to Haiti, late in 1945, in the persons of André Breton, Aimé Césaire, Wifredo Lam, Michel Leiris, and Alfred Métraux, Bélance was immediately received into their company. Several of Bélance’s poems appear in important left-leaning anthologies of the postwar period, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre3 and Présence Africaine’s Haïti: Poètes noirs.4 Some scholars of Caribbean literature have mistakenly attributed to Bélance a Parisian residence, while he was, in fact, pursuing rural education projects in Mexico and Haiti: the misjudgement amounts, perhaps, to disbelief that a homegrown voice could command such poetic authority.5. .
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See more books from our catalog: Ephemera
Title: In Celebration of Absence. . First Edition of the Broadside
Description: Washington, DC: The Black Sun Press, 1947. Letterpress on paper. 2pp. 40.5 x 30.2cm. As published in Portfolio V , edited by Caresse Crosby.. A Note on René Bélance Haun Saussy : René Bélance was born in 1915 in Corail, Haiti, not far from the coastal town (and homeland of poets) Jérémie. His mother made a meager living by selling candies in the marketplace. After winning a scholarship to the Lycée Pétion of Port-au-Prince, considered the best secondary school in the country, Bélance went on to Haiti’s Ecole Normale. At twenty-five he published a first collection of poetry, Rythme de mon Coeur (1940); this was soon followed by Luminaires (1941) and a war poem in many sections, Pour Célébrer l’Absence (1943). As Bélance later observed, his name was quickly pinned to a party label, quite independently of his own wishes: “I was classified as a surrealist right away because I had published a book [Luminaires] that was difficult to read.”1 Pour Célébrer l’Absence in particular became the pretext for polemics about difficulty, illogicality, preciosity and the respect due the lay reader. “Mr. Bélance compromises his work, his influence, his mission, by a greater number of awkward flaws than is tolerable in so short a book: useless preciosities, naive and unfortunate obscurities,” complained Roger Dorsinville. “Neither images nor ideas are approached in a simple, direct, intelligible manner. One would be relieved to learn that he calls himself a surrealist and rejects conventional clarity in the name of surrealism.”.. When surrealism (in its European form) came to Haiti, late in 1945, in the persons of André Breton, Aimé Césaire, Wifredo Lam, Michel Leiris, and Alfred Métraux, Bélance was immediately received into their company. Several of Bélance’s poems appear in important left-leaning anthologies of the postwar period, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre3 and Présence Africaine’s Haïti: Poètes noirs.4 Some scholars of Caribbean literature have mistakenly attributed to Bélance a Parisian residence, while he was, in fact, pursuing rural education projects in Mexico and Haiti: the misjudgement amounts, perhaps, to disbelief that a homegrown voice could command such poetic authority.5. .
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Price: US$ 100.00 Seller: Wittenborn Art Books
- Book number: 16-5905
- Book number: 16-5905
See more books from our catalog: Ephemera