Poetic Defiance

FéLIX MORISSEAU-LEROY (1912–98) WAS ONE OF THE most prolific Haitian writers, populist intellectuals and Haitian Creole language activists of the twentieth century. The legendary performance on 23 July 1953, at the Rex Theatre in Port-au-Prince, of Antigòn,1 his cultural adaptation of Sophocles’s Antigone into Haitian Creole, is considered a watershed moment in language and theatre history. Yet there were other significant literary accomplishments in MorisseauLeroy’s corpus that have thus far not received the scholarly attention that they warrant. Chief among these is his poem (penned in 1951) entitled “Simon Sireneyen” (Simon of Cyrene)2 in which he dismantles and recasts one of the Bible’s most acclaimed stories, that of the Passion Narrative. In it, as he did throughout his literary career, Morisseau-Leroy displays, in a particularly inventive manner, Haitian Creole as an instrument of empowerment. In this article, I will first discuss some aspects of his biography that include an overview of the Indigenist and Négritude movements that shaped Morisseau-Leroy’s optic, the multiple efforts he undertook to promote Haitian Creole in Haiti as well as abroad, and the conditions under which he went into exile. Second, I will provide the context for my analysis of his poetic narrative “Simon Sireneyen”.3 This specific poem was selected for its concept, depth of scope and vibrancy, and the ways in which it crystallises Morisseau-Leroy’s capacity to take on universal cultural suppositions about one of the most emblematic figures of Western history, Jesus Christ, and subvert traditional interpretations about the manner of his death. In so doing, Morisseau-Leroy alluded to the universality of the struggle for social, racial and economic equity, and he imagined and proposed an alternative social order, imbued tragedy with humour, and created a literary