Having been measured for too long in the vice of Duvalierian nights, Frankétienne expressed himself in excess, in a creative madness that led him to write, paint, sing, dance and to melt into the skin of an actor to play his own character.
On the stage of UNESCO, in Paris, a packed house reveled in a show on the scale of a brilliant megalomaniac whom God himself chose to be a fundamentally impulsive creator and organically linked to Haiti.
The Permanent Delegation of Haiti to UNESCO, the Embassy of Haiti, and the Consulate General of Haiti in Paris paid a vibrant tribute to Frankétienne, this man of art, on Monday, June 16. Speaking before a packed audience at the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization, Ambassador Lilas Desquiron declared that "this co-organized tribute is the fruit of a shared commitment to memory and the singular voice of a man who alone embodies the creative force of Haiti."
Permanent Delegate of the Republic of Haiti to UNESCO, Ms. Desquiron wondered what Frankétienne wanted to share with his people.
This writer, poet, playwright, painter, actor, dancer, and singer, who had his eyes wide open to the world, was a fine flower of human sensitivity. He listened "in the wind to the whispers of ancestors, to voices lost in the dust of centuries." » In The Throes of a Challenge, his words rumbled: "And I am this wind, a breath in oblivion, carried by the sea, on the roads of revolt. But does the wind know where it's going? Does the sea know its shore? No. Yet I continue, like a challenge thrown to the horizon. We, the children of this soil, have a taste for challenge in our blood."
Standing behind her lectern, at the microphone, Lilas Desquiron meanders through the lines of her speech while posing questions. The audience listens. Attentively. "When Frankétienne writes in his novel Mur à crever (The Wall to Die), no one will be able to say much more than he has experienced. Is he thus inviting us to consider his work as an autobiography?" she asks. The ambassador portrays Frankétienne, a monument of Haitian literature, to whom the daily newspaper Le Nouvelliste will pay tribute during the 31st edition of Livres en folie, scheduled for June 19, 2025, as a creator who emerged "unscathed from the terrible Duvalierian night."
The Face of a Tradition-Bearer at UNESCO
After Madame Desquiron, other voices took to the stage. The spokesperson for the Director-General of UNESCO, Madame Audrey Azoulay, paid tribute to the memory of this giant of Haitian literature, a master of spiralism, an incandescent poet of the Caribbean soul, and a true transmitter of light.
"Frankétienne was a fundamentally impulsive creator, who drew his aesthetic from spiralism and his inspiration from the ordered chaos of Haitian life." » But he was also much more than an artist: a committed teacher, a man of learning, deeply convinced of the transformative power of education. The founder of a school, he believed in the enlightenment that school can bring to young people. It was for this reason that in 2010, UNESCO named him an Artist for Peace.
For the spokesperson, "Frankétienne was able to express, with abundant creativity and incredible strength, the genius of the Haitian people."
"Mr. Haiti," as Aimé Césaire nicknamed him, also carried within him, the UNESCO spokesperson emphasizes, the rare gift of premonition. In December 2009, he wrote Mélovivi or The Trap, a play in which he anticipated, with disturbing lucidity, the earthquake of January 12, 2010, that would strike Haiti. A prophetic work, written in ink of intuition and the pain to come.
In the current emergency context, with thousands of Haitian children deprived of schooling, the UNESCO spokesperson was keen to reiterate the organization's unwavering commitment: "UNESCO remains at the side of the Haitian people. It will mobilize resources to ensure educational continuity in the country."
A Breath of Total Art to Honor Frankétienne
After the solemn speeches, the stage was ablaze with an artistic fire worthy of the man being celebrated. A host of artists illuminated the evening as if in a waking dream—a dream that Frankétienne, even in his wildest creative frenzy, would not have dared to imagine coming to life.
James Germain's voice rose like a sacred song. Beyond the frame, beyond time, he carried the very breath of Frankétienne. He sang the songs that Frank himself loved to intone at the end of his impassioned performances, like poetic sighs. The young people adored these suspended moments. That evening, Germain's voice soared, resonating in their veins, filling the space with a song rooted in Vodou and the earth. A song of the land, a song of the people.
At his side were the greatest: Mario Canonge, Caribbean piano master; Jowee Omicil—"Jojo Missile"—on the fiery saxophone; Claude Saturne on percussion, a magician of rhythms. Together, they wove a breath of fresh air, a sonic fabric charged with raw emotion and vivid memory.
Then came the turn of Turgo Théodat, an incandescent saxophonist, who made the room vibrate with powerful Vodou jazz. He played the saxophone, but also the conch, summoning the ancestral, the sacred. With Grégoire Chéry, Alton Rara, and other virtuos
