Content area
Full Text
Rene Depestre. Le metier a metisser. Paris. Stock. 1998. 265 pages. 120 F. ISBN 2-234-04961-X.
Metier a metisser means "weaving loom," metisser means "to crossbreed," metier by itself means on one hand "frame" or "framework" and on the other "task" or "profession." The book is thus, eponymously, a framework for crossbreeding, and through the title Rene Depestre also signifies that his task as a poet is to give witness to, and to propagate the spirit of, cultural crossbreeding.
A resident of Lezignan-Corbieres since 1986, where he was finally able to unbox his 7,000-book library, and a French citizen since 1991 although Haitian-born with African and probably Belgian forebears, Depestre is certainly a racial metis, but that is only the tip of the iceberg as regards his understanding of metissage, for basically he means cultural crossbreeding. Self-descriptive passages like "Tcheque a Prague, Italien a Milan, Bresilien a Sao Paolo, Cubain a La Havane" pullulate significantly in this hotchpotch of a volume. Apropos of Depestre, many cross-- breedings come to mind, only beginning with his Creole upbringing and language. He cites of course many less particular or more general sorts, such as the mixed cultures the world over, the multiple universes of individual poets (he often speaks of Rimbaud), surrealism's dual countries of the conscious and unconscious. His favorite symbol for crossbreeding is the banyan tree, whose roots surface in one place only to descend into the ground somewhere else. (Outside of Asia, one may...