A language still alive
It's moving to realize that we use words from a dead language on a daily basis, without even thinking about it: the language spoken by the Taïnos whom Christopher Columbus met on his arrival on the island - which he nicknamed Hispaniola when he landed there in 1492 - and who gave him a warm welcome, as revealed in his logbook published by La Découverte. Victims of Western diseases brought by sea, of slavery - already - and of the terrible anthropophagous Caribbean Indians, the Taïnos were rapidly decimated. To the best of our knowledge, they have left no significant written records, although words as common as "canoe", "potato" and "barbecue" remain, directly inherited from their language after a transition to Spanish, a crossbreeding that can also be seen in their populations. This period of colonization was the subject of chronicles, notably those by the Spaniard Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdès - La Historia general de las Indias (Seville, 1535) - which, while not entirely objective on the actions and motivations of his people, are interesting from an ethnological point of view. Thus invested, Santo Domingo became the rallying point for Western culture on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, and the starting point for its spread, as confirmed by the building of a cathedral and the fact that Spanish power was based there. This New World under construction obviously inspired aspiring colonial writers, but the literary quality of their writings didn't always make their mark on history, so it wasn't until the 18th century that a real name emerged, that of Antonio Sánchez de Valverde, a Catholic priest born on the island. His description of the territory, its geography, its inhabitants and its economy remain invaluable. Deploring the neglect suffered by Santo Domingo, he wrote Idea del valor de la Isla Española y utilidades, que de ella puede sacar su monarquía (1785). A brilliant mind, his reflections, his "solutions" and his relationship with slavery, which had intensified since the 16th century with the sad trade in Africans, must nevertheless be seen in the light of an era and the fact that his own mixed race may have led him to question his relationship with the powerful. In any case, his freedom of tone in his sermons earned him the wrath of the Church, which condemned him to what very well resembled exile.
The long emancipation
In 1791, the slave revolt began, leading to French control of the entire island following the peace agreement signed between the French and Toussaint Louverture. A text by Jean-Paul Pillet, whose real name we doubt, evokes this pivotal period: Mon Odyssée, published by the Société française d'étude du dix-huitième siècle and available as a print-on-demand edition. The early nineteenth century was marred by power struggles. Haiti declared independence in 1804, and the Dominican Republic exactly 40 years later. The spirit of patriotism - the affirmation of one's own identity after years of struggle - resonated with the Romantic movement.
One of the most famous exponents of this movement was Félix María del Monte (1819-1899), author of the first Dominican anthem, co-founder of the literary journal El Dominicano and a distinguished poet(Las Virgenes de Galindo, 1885) whose reputation was echoed as far away as Paris. As a playwright, he also wrote a zarzuela (sung play), Ozema o la Joven Indiana, symbolizing a trend then in full effervescence, indianism or indigenism. This desire to build a historical and collective memory based on the figure of the Indian, who then embodies a fantasized freedom, may seem astonishing in a country where Indians disappeared from the very first hours of colonization, but it certainly doesn't help to take into account the reality of the ethnic differences of those who make up society. Nevertheless, a typical novel of this trend is Enriquillo - published in its complete version by Manuel de Jesús Galván in 1882 - which portrays the courage of a Taino chief opposing the Spanish conquest. This classic work is unfortunately not available in French.
Literature grew and diversified, following in the modernist footsteps of Fabio Fiallo, Altagracia Saviñon, who met a sad end, and Osvaldo Bazil Leiva, a close friend of Chile's Rubén Darío. However, the publication in 1921 of the Manifiesto Postumista, written by Andrés Avelino, heralded a poetic revolution mainly driven by Domingo Moreno Jimenes (1894-1985). It asserted the desire to break away from foreign models, as well as from an overly restrictive metric, and to devote itself to Dominican social and cultural exploration. Would this have an impact on the vocation of Manuel del Cabral (1907-1999)? History doesn't say, but he did explore different avenues, notably that of Afro-Caribbean poetry in Trópico negro (1942).
In another style, closer to the popular epic, his Compadre Mon, published in 1943, is still on everyone's lips. The same year saw the launch of a magazine, La Poesía sorprendida, which again followed European sources in terms of aesthetic concerns. While surrealist experimentation inspired contributors such as Franklin Mieses Burgos and Mariano Lebrón Saviñón, commitment remained measured, as the country had already been under the yoke of Trujillo's dictatorship for several years, and the century promised to be complex long after its fall. However, it was from this political milieu that Juan Bosch (1909-2001) emerged as an important novelist, who twice held the presidential office in 1962 and 1963. His work was also dedicated to his country, his essays, biographies, short stories and plays influencing even Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize. Despite the seemingly pervasive instability, the Dominican Republic is witnessing a true democratization of literature, sometimes in musical forms that seduce the crowds. The generations that have succeeded one another since the 1960s have developed and refined their style: Arambilet, Aurora Arias, Rita Indiana, Jael Uribe, Junot Diaz, Pedro Antonio Valdez..
