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Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo (1901/1902?-1904?-1937) |
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One of Africa's most important French-language poets, a prominent figure in the literary revival known as the Mitady ny Very, which swept Madagascar in the 1930s. Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo wrote both in Malagasy and in his own unique version of imperfect French. He was passionate and restless, drifted from one job to another, and suffered from drug addiction and depression. Rabéarivelo took his own life at the age of 36. And you witness of his daily suffering Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo was born in Antananarivo (Tananarive), the capital of Madagascar, into a relatively poor family. His mother, who married a tailor, was an aristocrat, related to the royalty of the largest Malagasy ethnic group, the Merina people. In 1895 Malagasy armed forces had been defeated by the French, and the new administration led to the pauperization of most of the Merina royalty. The loss of her family's property was also partly caused by the abolition of slavery. Rabéarivelo was educated by his uncle, who sent him to the
Ecole des Fréres des Ecoles Chrétiennes at Andohalo, then to the
Collége Saint-Michel in Amparibe. He left school at the age of
thirteen, but continued to read widely, gaining familiarity with
Western classics, and mastering both Spanish and French. For some years
he was a secretary and interpreter of the head of the Canton of
Ambatolampy, and then returned to Tananarive. Until 1923 Rabéarivelo worked in odd jobs, and eventually ended as a proof-reader at the printing press of the Imerina, keeping the poorly paid job until his death. In 1926 he married Mary Razafitrimo, a photographer's daughter; they had five children. The death of his youngest daughter was a terrible blow for him. In Un conte de la nuit, a short story, Rabéarivelo recounts the family tragedy. Rabéarivelo's mother encouraged him to write and at the age of
20 Rabéarivelo published his first poems in a journal. In 1923 the Austrian review Anthropos accepted an essay on Malagasy poetry. He started to contribute articles to journals
in his own country, in the neighboring Mauritius, and in Europe. Among
his friends was the poet Pierre Camo, who worked as a civil servant,
and included some of Rabéarivelo's poems in his review 18° Latitude
Sud.
Rabéarivelo's early pieces, written in strictly metered verse, were
influenced by 19th-century
French Symbolism. He corresponded with Gide and a number of poets in
France, Belgium, and Tunisia, who stimulated his own creation of
poetry. At the beginning of his career, Rabéarivelo
asked a doctor to inject him with the type of tuberculosis bacilli that had
killed Albert Samain, a poet and writer of the Symbolists school, at the age of 42. (Against the Postcolonial: "francophone" Writers at the Ends of French Empire by Richard Serrano, 2007, p. 45) In 1931 Rabéarivelo was accepted into the Académie Malgache,
founded after the model of Académie Française. He never got
the higher-paid job, which he always hoped for, from the administration.
The oppressive colonial rule set the boundaries to Rabéarivelo's work
more or less visibly. Several nationally prominent writers had been
imprisoned in the 1910s, Malagasy-language writing was restricted, but
memories of independence were still fresh. Unable to pay his taxes, Rabéarivelo
was imprisoned for a brief time. In spite of being treated badly by the
colonial government, he refused to give up his faith in French culture.
Rabéarivelo remained an unapologetic royalist and admired the anti-democratic writer Charles Maurras. A recurring theme
Rabéarivelo's collections was exile, the journey away from the native
land, referring to the loss of independence. When all texts written in
French were considered to belong to French literature, Rabéarivelo
supported bilingual works and proposed that "Malagasy literature" would
recognize French-language texts composed by the Malagasy. To underline
his point about the dual nature of the colonial culture, he wore
Westernstyle clothes under his traditional long robe. Any spare money
he spent on books. Once he received 30 kilos of books abroad. In the 1930s Rabéarivelo launched his own journal,
Capricorne. Like Baudelaire,
one of his role models, Rabéarivelo was too much of an unpractical dreamer to join the
cadres of militant poets. Many of his friends opposed French
rule. Rabéarivelo's own private goal was to get to France, to be
assimilated into a whole greater culture. He also produced several
translations of French poems. The dream never realized. Sharing
Baudelaire's disgust of mediocre life, Rabéarivelo replaced the reality
of a colonized civilization with his own images, and created a new
mythical world, shadowed by visions of suffering and death. This
cosmos, which was populated by wandering tribes, was full of bitter-sweet beauty. "You who left at dawn / and
who thus entered a doubly walled night, / human words can no longer
reach you, / nor can these floral stalks be a crown for you / having
turned into bursting buds around the trees of Imerina / The very
morning you departed from us." ('French-Language Poetry' by Edris Makward, in A History of Twentieth-century African Literatures, edited by Oyekan Owomoyela, 1993, pp. 200-201) La Coupe de cendres (1924), Rabéarivelo's first collection of poems, was followed by Sylves (1927), which included 'Nobles dédains,' 'Fleurs mêlées,' 'Destinée,', 'Dixains,' and 'Sonnets et poèmes d'Iarive'. The third collection, Volumes (1928), contained 'Vers le bonheur,' 'La guirlande à l'amitié,' 'Interlude rythmique.' 'Sept quatrains.' 'Arbres,' 'Au soleil estival,' ' and 'Coeur et ciel d'Iarive'. Volumes (1928) contained 11 poems about trees, "your murmur relates the soul of my ancestors to me". Presque Songes (1934) was originally written in French and then translated into Malagasy, but Rabéarivelo wrote the French poems as if they were translations. This collection was his first venture into free verse. Rabéarivelo's plays, Imaitsoanala, Fille d'oiseau (1935) and Aux portes de la ville (1936), focused on rituals and folklore and carefully avoided any reference to politically inflammable issues. On the other hand, none of his critical works were published in his lifetime. Rabéarivelo's love poems, a translation from traditional Malagasy poetic form known as hain-teny, were collected in Vieilles chansons des pays d'Imerina (1974). Hain-teny is often proverbial, linked to the oral tradition. His compatriot Flavien Ranaivo also drew from this resource of dialogue poetry. Rabéarivelo committed suicide on June 22, 1937, by poisoning
himself with cyanide. Various reasons have been given
for his suicide, including the colonial administration's decision to
send a group of basket-weavers instead of him to France to represent
the colony. It was also known that he had a melancholic temperament and
was addicted to drugs. He had seriously considered suicide as early as 1934, and even wrote a farewell letter for his children. I know a child, a prince in God's kingdom Several of Rabéarivelo's poems was published in Léopold Senghor's famous Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache (1948), the seminal anthology embodying the aspirations of the Negritude movement. However, Rabéarivelo wrote outside the framework of the movement. A selection of Rabéarivelo's poems translated into English, 24 Songs, came out in 1963. Translations from the Night, edited by John Reed and Clive Wake, was issued by Heinemann a few years later. Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier called Rabéarivelo "a poet of genius" in Modern Poetry from Africa (1963). For further reading: Malagasy Ecopoetics: The Hybrid Poetry of Parny, Rabearivelo and Mahaleo by Christie Margrave (2022); Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo: une biographie by Claire Riffard (2022); Refractive Africa by Will Alexander (2021); La double culture de Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo: entre Latins et Scythes by Gavin Bowd (2017); Against the Postcolonial: "francophone" Writers at the Ends of French Empire by Richard Serrano (2007); 'Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo' by Moradewun A. Adejunmobi, in Postcolonial African Writers, edited Pushpa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne (1998); Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Literature, and Lingua Franca in Colonial Madagascar by Moradewun Adejunmobi (1996); Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, cet inconnu (1989); European Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. by A. Gérard (1986); Introduction to African Prose Narrative, edited by L. Losambe (1979); The Critical Evaluation of African Literature, edited by by Edgar Wright (1973); Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo Paul Valette (1967) Selected works:
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