Guest of the ilb 2006
Édouard Glissant was born in
rural Sainte-Marie on the island of Martinique. He attended high school
in the capital, Fort-de-France, and in 1946 he moved to Paris on a
French government scholarship and studied Philosophy and History at the
Sorbonne and Ethnology at the Musée de l'Homme. He wrote for the
journals »Présence africaine« and »Les Lettres nouvelles« and five
years after he made his literary debut – a volume of poetry entitled
»Un champ d'îles« (1953; t: A field of islands) – his first novel, »La
Lézarde« (1958; Eng. »The Ripening«, 1959), won the renowned Prix
Renaudot. In 1959 Glissant founded the »Front Antillo-Guyanais«, which
championed the independence of the French Antilles from the motherland
and was later banned by Charles de Gaulle in 1961. Only after
imprisonment and house arrest was Glissant allowed to return to
Martinique, in 1965. There he founded the educational and cultural
centre »L'Institut martiniquais d'études« and the humanities quarterly
»Acoma«. Back in Paris in 1981, he worked as a leading UNESCO official
and later as chief editor of the »Courrier de l'UNESCO«. Since the late
eighties he has been a professor of literature both at Louisiana State
University and City University New York.
Glissant is considered one of the most significant contemporary
francophone authors within Latin American literature and an
intellectual mentor in the field of post-colonial cultural theory. His
work traces a counterconcept to closed eurocentric ways of thinking,
using the Antilles and its culture of »creolization« as an example. In
a heterogeneous, cross genre style, using »baroque« and »opaque«
language as well as hybrid models of organisation, Glissant describes
the complex and dynamic coexistence of the island's inhabitants – in
contrast to Western models of static systems and linear development.
His »Traité du Tout-Monde« (1997; t: Treatise on the world), is far
from being a classical tract, and indeed brings together story, essay,
poetry and ethnological critique. »Le discours antillais« (1981; t: The
Antillean discourse), a collection of lectures, compositions and prose
sketches, exerted considerable influence on Third World literatures as
an aesthetics of cultural diversity. In his intertextually
linked novels, Glissant depicts the conditions of »creolization« over
several generations by focusing on the story of two black families. The
publication of his latest novel, »Ormerod« (2003), was closely followed
by an essay entitled »La Cohée du Lamentin« (2005). In Germany, the
collection of lectures »Kultur und Identität« (2005; OT: »Introduction
a une poétique du divers«, 1996) has recently been published.
Glissant has been awarded numerous literary prizes. He has received
honorary doctorates from the universities of York (Toronto), the West
Indies (Trinidad) and Bologna (Italy) and is a member of the Ordre des
Francophones d'Amériques (Québec). The author now lives in New York and
Martinique.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
Edourd Glissant online: www.edouardglissant.com
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Un champ d'îles
Editions du Seuil
Paris, 1965
La Cohée du Lamentin
Gallimard
Paris, 2005 | 
