A relatively recent history
It is said that Reunion had been known to navigators for many centuries, that it was a stopover for Arabs, Portuguese, Dutch and English. However, it was the French who decided to seize it in 1642 and who then named it Bourbon Island in homage to the royal family. Louis Payen's attempt to settle there in 1663 was written by Urbain Souchu de Rennefort in his Relation du premier voyage de la Compagnie des Indes orientales en l'isle de Madagascar ou Dauphine, which can be read in a free digital version on the Gallica library website. After many ups and downs, Payen gave up two years later, giving way to twenty settlers who had embarked in Nantes a few months earlier, as Georges Azéma, a native writer and historian born in 1821, will not fail to recount in his famous Histoire de l'île Bourbon (History of Bourbon Island
). But for the time being, the territory, until then almost deserted, is booming, all the more so since 1715 under the patronage of the famous Compagnie des Indes, which endeavours to develop the cultivation of coffee, an exploitation that will unfortunately rhyme with that of men. This 18th century is nuanced by trial and error, the vote for the abolition of slavery does not materialize, for the first time the name of Reunion Island resounds before being abandoned, and yet a literary legend takes shape, through two poets, which is just waiting to be written. Born a few months apart, respectively in 1752 and 1753, Antoine Bertin and Évariste de Parny have in common that they left their native island at the age of nine. Bertin studied in Paris and Évariste de Parny in Rennes, and the two embarked on a military career, met at court, and formed a friendship enriched by their respective appetites for poetry. Antoine Bertin suffered from precarious health and died at the age of 37, after having loved and written a lot. His work, including his most famous elegies, Les Amours, is still available from the éditions Classiques Garnier and L'Harmattan, as is the denser work of Évariste de Parny, who had the time to build a long and fine career that led him, in 1803, to the Académie française. He remains known for his Poésies érotiques (1778), praised by Pushkin, and for his Chansons madécasses (1787), a prose adaptation of songs he called Malagasy and which also illustrated his rejection of colonialism. Certainly, Bertin and Parny assert themselves as the first poets of Reunion Island, even though they lived there for only a short time, unlike Etienne Azéma, father of the aforementioned historian, who was born there in 1776, died there in 1851, and in the meantime praised the beauty of his native country in his various works, fables, plays and poems. So it was at the time, the island was a French province, although geographically distant, and its literature was written both inside and outside its natural boundaries, enjoying the influence of the capital, which it in turn influenced.Round trips between the island and France
It is more or less in line with this logic that the story of the text, which is considered to be the first Reunionese novel, fits in. Thus, Les Marrons takes place in the Indian Ocean, was written by a half-breed but is published in Paris. However, if Louis Timagène Houat (1809-1883) chose the French capital in 1844 to publish his book, it was hardly by choice, but because he was expelled from the island where he was born, suspected of having hatched a conspiracy against the government in power, guilty above all of having openly taken a stand against slavery, which would not be definitively abolished until four years later. His novel is an ode to freedom and crossbreeding, its title directly refers to the nickname given to runaway slaves. Indeed, it is about the love between a young black man who was a victim of the slave trade and the young girl to whom he had been "given as a gift", the lovebirds would prefer to run away into the woods rather than suffer the popular opprobrium. Voluntarily forgotten for too long, this text was republished in 2019 by the beautiful editions of the Avenging Tree. As for Louis-Émile Héry, he was born in Brittany in 1808. His life was in some ways a response to that of Houat, since he went backwards, settled in Reunion Island and opened a school there, a pious wish that had troubled his contemporary. The role of the teacher in the literary culture of the island is important since he was the first to have fixed to the written word a language which until then was only spoken, Reunionese Creole, a filter through which he passed Les Fables de La Fontaine to give birth to his Creole Fables dedicated to the ladies of Bourbon Island in 1828. The process is undoubtedly intended to be more humorous than scientific, but it can still be considered an initiatory step in linguistics. In addition, Héry frequented Antoine-Louis Roussin, also born in France, who had moved to Saint-Denis for military reasons and settled there for sentimental reasons. The chance to buy a lithographic press in 1846 will influence his destiny, he will put his art at the service of collaborative projects, albums then newspapers, in which local authors such as Héry will participate. It was also through the press that Eugène Dayot (1810-1852) took the floor, making his poem Le Mutilé - a terrible title because it illustrates the multiple after-effects of the leprosy he had suffered since his adolescence - his inaugural cry, which already had a political impact because it advocated freedom. Soon, Dayot will assert himself in favour of human rights, but his abolitionist commitment will bring him such problems that he will lose the newspaper he founded, Le Créole. His love of his country and his mistrust of the colonists would spill over into other columns, and the series destined to become a novel, Bourbon pittoresque, would be published in Le Courrier de Saint-Paul
. Broken by an early death before he could finish, his masterpiece will remain unfinished. As these precursors illustrate, the link between the island and France goes beyond the simple rivalry between a province and the capital, since there is a relationship of domination between one part of the population and another. If the bloods are mixed, the time has not yet come for the reconciliation offered by crossbreeding as Houat dreamed, but still for the discrimination such as Auguste Lacaussade (1815-1897), who was refused by the Royal College because of his mixed origins. Whatever the case, his studies in Nantes reinforced his early intelligence, which was to be demonstrated by his future successes and the publications he obtained in the Revue des deux mondes and then in the Revue de Paris, which was highly prized by the Romantics. Crowned in 1850 by the Maillé-Latour prize awarded by the Académie française and then, twelve years later, by the Bordin prize awarded by the Institut de France, he was the acclaimed author of Les Salaziennes and Poèmes et paysages. Weary, if his career is brilliant, it nevertheless remains in the shadow of that of a man who is on the way to becoming the most famous of Reunion's poets, Leconte de Lisle, born in 1818 in Saint-Paul. His work is protean since he tried his hand at translating ancient authors as well as at writing for the theatre, yet it is three collections - Poèmes antiques (1852), Poèmes barbares (1862) and Poèmes tragiques (1884) - that earned him the reputation, perhaps excessively so, of being the figurehead of a literary movement, that of the Parnassians. Without questioning his talent, let us admit that his poems did indeed appear in the three publications (from 1866 to 1876) that would serve as a showcase, or even as a manifesto, for the Parnassians who advocated "art for art's sake", to use Théophile Gautier's good word. The description of beauty and mythological references thus took precedence over his political ambitions. Influenced by romantic themes, the designer was praised by his peers, and was praised by his compatriot, Léon Dierx (1838-1912), also a Parnassian. Leconte de Lisle went so far as to conquer chair no. 14 of the Académie française in 1886, a few months after the death of Victor Hugo had left it vacant, and with the blessing, he thought, of the great man. The 19th century ended with this ultimate recognition, and the 20th century opened with a stroke of brilliance: a Reunionese novel written by four hands, but signed by a single pseudonym, won the Prix Goncourt in 1909.Twentieth and twenty-first centuries
They were two to hide under the name Marius-Ary Leblond, two cousins born in Saint-Denis and Saint-Pierre, Georges Athénas (1877-1953) called Marius and Alexandre (Aimé) Merlot (1880-1958) called Ary. Their story, En France, follows in the footsteps of a young student, Claude, who leaves Reunion Island to join the Parisian Sorbonne. Their finesse of observation - and wit! - will win them over Jean Giraudoux when the prestigious award is presented. Although their novel seems to have completely disappeared from the bookshop shelves, there is still an essay - Écrits sur la littérature coloniale - that L'Harmattan publishers still offer for sale. At the beginning of this century, Réunionese literature was still influenced by the colonial empire, but no doubt thanks to the influence of the departmentalisation law supported by Aimé Césaire and adopted in 1946, a turning point, or even a claim to local specificities, was asserted. It is so true that a literary movement was born, first of all led by Jean Albany (1917-1984), who gave it his name: "créolie". The man oscillated between the metropolis and his native island, just as he oscillated between French and Creole, between writing and oral tradition. His collection Zamal in 1951 remains a fundamental step in this process, which Axel Gauvin, born in 1946, followed in his footsteps, becoming president of the Office of the Creole Language and initiating in 1996 the translation of his novel Faims d'enfance, published in 1987, under the title Bayalina. If the question of spelling has arisen - different codes have been successively adopted, Lékritir 77, KWZ and then Tangol -, there is no doubt about the literary quality, as confirmed by the creation in 2004 of the LanKRéol prize, which rewards works written in Creole. Whatever the language, this 20th century is fertile, a new generation of authors, native or imbued with their love for Reunion Island, are contributing to this new breath of life, and if we had to mention just a few of them, the names of Jean-François Samlong, Alain Gili, Monique Agénor, Moniri M'Baé, Solen Coeffic... come immediately to mind
