Edouard Maunick, That Poet Whom Maurice Gave To The French Language

he poems were animated by a deep love for his native country: Mauritius. An anchor that led him to understand “the island” in its universality. Around exile, interbreeding and quite simply its relationship to the cosmos. Of his poems, one and the same observation, the Power of words. “Within each word, there is a universe,” he said. With him, poetry resumed all its letters of nobility. Edouard Maunick had an art of his own, that to evoke the most vivid sensations, impressions, emotions through the intense union of sounds, rhythms, harmonies. Because Edouard Maunick’s texts are texts that one listens to to penetrate their insular and universal quintessence.

A rooted Creole who served the French language

He had chosen the French language without ever straying from Creole. He made Creole orality, the source and the horizon of his poetry, always in “An artisanal concern for the texture of the language, the flavor of words, the grain of memory, the music of the voice” according to Jean Louis Joubert, a great specialist in Mauritian Letters and the poet.

His invaluable work for the language of Voltaire has earned him numerous awards including that of the French Academy in 1990 for having contributed to the “influence of the French language and literature” but also that of the Grand Prix de la francophonie in 2003. A Mauritius Poetry Prize has also been named after him since 2016.

An inspired Métis

It is also from his Métis origins that the poet drew his inspirations. “I prophesy mixed blood like a tongue of fire”. Through the crossbreeding grid, the poet renewed the thought of negritude. A linguistic and literary crossbreeding which is part of the lineage of Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor who were key encounters in his life. How not to remember the preface by Léopold Senghor to his work “Ensoleillé vive” released in 1976. The poet presides over the y described him as a “second generation negro poet”. “I am preferably a Negro,” he liked to say, recalling the insular interbreeding which he inherited from Europe, Africa and India.

Poet but also journalist and diplomat

Edouard Manick was considered an apostle of the Francophonie. Poet, but also journalist at RFI and diplomat at UNESCO, he was appreciated by his African peers for his activism as well. The meeting with Nelson Mandela in the last years of his life threw him into a universe where he was able to make his humanism speak. The two poignant collections: “Soweto. The Cape of Despair”, in 1985, and “Mandela dead or alive”, in 1987, are two powerful tributes paid to Madiba and to the struggle of the South Africans.

A man deeply attached to Mauritius

Despite her exile, her obsession with Maurice has never left her. MEven far from his island, the poet always remained close to the sea. Did he not say: “L’exorcised exile / the sea is not here / and yet I do not know / why I hear waves / assaulting sleeps ». Edouard Maunick had a deep passion for Port Louis, his hometown, the one that saw him grow up. “He anchored in a thousand ports but his heart, his soul remained in Port Louis. Goodbye Big brother, continue sailing, Port Louis will be waiting for you in front of “the salt doors”, Jérome Boulle, the former mayor of Port Louis, told him in tribute. As an ultimate collection, Edouard Maunick left us “La hatise de la mort” published in 2019 by Immedia editions of Rama Poonasamy, ex-Minister of Arts and Culture of Mauritius. An elegant nod from the poet to the inevitable?