Dany Laferrière and the Pendulum of Exile

Faced with the unenviable choice of death at the hands of the Tonton Macoutes or at the age of twenty-three, Dany Laferriere chose the latter, fleeing Baby Doc-controlled Haiti for the province of Quebec in 1976. A semi-autobiographical account of his first year in Montreal serves as the backdrop for 1994's Chronique de la a collection of 366 poetic prose segments that depicts the first year in Quebec for Laferriere's literary doppelganger, a Haitian immigrant known simply as Vieux, short for Vieux Os, or Bones. Six years later, in 2000, Laferriere published Le Cri des oiseaux fous, the prequel to Chronique de la in which the same protagonist recounts his unexpectedly final day and night in Port-au-Prince. In theory, only the flight between Haiti and Quebec separates the intrigue of the two novels, since L· Cri des oiseaux fous ends at Port-auPrince's airport and Chronique de la douce begins in Montreal's; however, the two novels offer surprisingly opposing portraits of exile. And yet, these seemingly contrasting novels work in tandem to render as, on the one hand, lonely, precarious and forced; and, on the other hand, as freeing, spontaneous and hopeful. In this article I will examine how Laferriere creates and recreates a complete experience within these two works. Anticipating in one and living it as derive, or in the other, I theorize that the author manipulates time in Chronique de la douce and L· Cri des oiseaux fous to generate and sustain a pendulum of extremes, the goal of which is to illustrate how a forced departure from one's country can be at once and derive. Chronique de la douce and Le Cri des oiseaux fous are the sixth and tenth novels in Laferriere's dense American autobiography, a ten-volume collection of auto-fiction set within the Americas, the majority of which centers on the Old Bones character. Chronique de la douce comprises 366 petites proses, poetic first-person musings that document and reflect on Old Bones's first year in Quebec and range in length between six and 138 words. While the only divisions between these musings are the typographical spaces between them, one notes emergent patterns within the book, which highlight such eclectic themes as relationships, poverty, racism, and literature, among others. Although the book offers a linear account of an immigrant's first year in a new country, the chronicle often intersperses smaller stories from Old Bones's daily life with independent reflections that read like proverbs. Despite the reason behind his emigration from Haiti, the protagonist insists in several passages in Chronique de la douce that he is not an arguing that he left Haiti of his own accord. In the forty-ninth prose segment he affirms: Je n'ai pas ete exile. J'ai fui avant d'etre tue. / C'est different (27). In the next prose segment, he elaborates why he does not use the term exile, explaining that to call himself an would be to lie, which he refuses to do. It is not until a third of the way into the story that the reader discovers the reason behind Old Bones's flight from Haiti. In the 129th prose segment, which is meant to commemorate his birthday, we read: J'ai quitte Port-au-Prince parce qu'un de mes amis a ete trouve sur une plage la tete dans un sac et l'autre croupit a Fort Dimanche. Nous sommes tous les trois de la meme fournee: 1953. Bilan: un mort, un prison et le dernier fuite. (55) By choosing the descriptive en fuite he avoids the term exile and opts instead for an adjective that highlights his control of and choice in the matter. Reframing his experience as derive or drifting, which he characterizes as douce, he inscribes a peaceful image within his North American epic, an image that will contrast sharply with the one that he will project in Le Cri des oiseaux fous. …

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