Daniel Maximin [ France ]

Daniel Maximin was born in 1947 in Saint-Claude, Guadeloupe. In 1960 he moved to France with his family, and studied Literature and Anthropology at the Sorbonne, Paris. He became professor of Literature at the Centre culturel d’Orly, and from 1980 to 1989 was the head of programming for the publisher Présence Africaine. He also produced a culture show for television and subsequently worked for eight years in Guadeloupe as head of cultural affairs. In 1998, after returning to the French capital, he was assigned responsibility for planning the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the French abolition of slavery in 1848. Since 2000 he has worked as cultural commissioner for the Ministry of Education and currently heads the literature and education section of the »francofffonies!« literature festival (2006).
Maximin’s literary work – which includes novels, poems and essays – distinguishes itself through lyrical expressivity, and is marked by the influence of Caribbean music and rhythm. His first novel, the family saga »L’Isolé soleil« (1981; Eng. »Lone Sun«, 1989) details 200 years of colonial history in Guadeloupe. The story is documented in letters in which the young protagonist writes of her family and forebears, stretching back to the time of the French Revolution, when the Antilles briefly achieved freedom. Through the use of various genres – such as third person narration, monologue, verse, diary entry, letters and reports – Maximin depicts the history both of the family and the group of islands up to the present day. In doing so he also bestows special emphasis on the various forms of resistance that emerged in the musical, cultural and artistic spheres, showing a special respect for the »Négritude« movement founded by Aimé Césaire. With »Soufrières« (1987; t: Brimstone mines) and »L’lle et une nuit« (1995; t: The island and one night) Maximin expanded his first novel into a trilogy.
The fifty or so poems which make up the collection »L’Invention des désirades« (2000; t: The invention of desires) were described by one French critic as »Hymns to resistance«. Following the publication of his autobiographical novel »Tu, c’est l’enfance« (2004; t: You are the childhood), Maximin’s most recent publication is »Les Fruits du cyclone« (2006; t: The fruit of the cyclone), a »Geopoetics of the Caribbean«, with which he again celebrates the local fusion of traditions and cultures. »Four centuries after the Flood from which the Caribbean emerged it is making itself heard through the voices of its storytellers and dancers, countrymen and architects, musicians and poets: We will accept degradation, in order to use it to create diamonds not just for ourselves but for the world as a whole.«
The author was awarded the Prix Maurice Genevoix of the Académie française and the Prix Tropiques. He is Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Maximin lives in Paris.

© internationales literaturfestival berlin

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Soufrières
Ed. du Seuil
Paris, 1995

L’Ile et une nuit
Ed. du Seuil
Paris, 1995

L’Invention des désirades
Présence Africaine
Paris, 2000

Tu, c’est l’enfance
Gallimard
Paris, 2004

Sonnenschwarz
Rotpunktverlag
Zürich, 2004
[T: Klaus Laabs]

Les Fruits du cyclone
Ed. du Seuil
Paris, 2006