Meditations on Ernest Breleur by Patrick Chamoiseau

Key words: Remarkable work, Open work, Tout-Monde, Poetics of Relation, complicity

Résumé

Patrick Chamoiseau revealed this text himself at the Reconstitution d’Ernest Breleur exhibition in Fort-de-France in 2006. It was then published in Artheme No. 16 in April 2006. It is part of the literary genre of Meditations, which consists in the poetical expression of emotions.

Patrick Chamoiseau outlines the qualities of remarkable works. They are works that are open, constantly renewed, and endlessly interpretable. In addition to being bold and liberated from all norms, they inspire, question the lines of the real, stimulate meditation, open up new pathways and dare utopia.

It is better to feel complicity with the work than to try to explain or interpret it; erudite words are impotent to describe it because a remarkable work expresses everything it has to say all by itself.

The relationship of Breleur’s work with death and the slave trade is subsequently evoked, with the author examining the components of the work: horsehair line, neon lights, the void, the modules which are both united and solitary, the fragmentation of the structure, the diversity and individuation of each form which puts the work at the centre of the poetics of Relation.

Patrick Chamoiseau

Patrick Chamoiseau, born in Fort-de-France on 3 December 1953, is a French author from Martinique. He has written novels, tales and essays. He is a theorist of Créolité, a movement he founded in Martinique in the 1980s. He co-authored and published, with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant, L’éloge de la créolité in 1989.

He was awarded the Goncourt Prize in 1992 for his novel Texaco, a masterpiece that presents life in Martinique over three generations. He has also written for theatre and cinema. He is the author of the scenarios for the films Biguine (2004), Aliker (2007), Nord-Plage (2004) and Le Passage du Milieu (2009)

His most recent works include Un dimanche au cachot (2007), L’empreinte à Crusoé (2009), Le papillon et la lumière (2011) and Hypérion victimaire (2013).

He is currently director of the Mission Martinique 2020, a vast urban redevelopment and culture valorisation programme in two attractiveness zones in Martinique, Le Grand Saint–Pierre and L’Embellie des Trois-Ilets.

     

Read the full text on the site of AICA:
http://aica-sc.net/2014/07/16/meditations-on-ernest-breleur-patrick-chamoiseau/

Articulos en espanol :
http://aica-sc.net/2014/07/23/meditaciones-acerca-de-ernest-breleur/

Full text in French