Marnatha I. TERNIER’s very first book has just been published by Éditions C3. It is entitled: La Transe des Masques. It contains nearly 410 pages. It is a collection of short stories with a preface by Pradel Henriquez, former Minister of Culture and Communication, and a postface by Professor Jean Elie Gilles, Doctor of Letters and university professor in the United States of America.
In order to allow readers to breathe, the book is divided into “chapters”. Between its preface called PRE – TEXTS, its acknowledgements which are part of the work as an entire thematic and literary body, its fourteen (14) short stories including titles like
– At my house
– The masked ball
– The bastards
– Professional
– The great discovery
– A dull ceremony
– Innocence saves from despair
– The Soul of Pain
– The rooster refuses to crow
– The diaspora
– The session
– Ayibobo
– Violence against women
– Beyond Good and Evil, it is a work open to various literary genres and other arts, notably music, or musicians. In his preface, the journalist and critic PH. Insists among other things on the notion of physical suffering that sometimes gives birth to a great work…: “following an atrocious pain and which was to precede a benign surgical operation, certainly, but absolutely fragile, the author (Marnatha Irène Ternier) of this work of literary fiction on the double problem of trances and masks in our society, had to face the unique experience of a lifetime”….
The preface writer PH. (Out of modesty or critical prudence) still does not know how to categorize this work by Marnatha Ternier, which is very complex and which, as I said above, borrows sometimes from philosophy, from literary history and criticism, from the history of religions and the damage caused by the latter, at least from the arrival of Christopher Columbus, from our current little “pastors” who are increasingly selling religion today like hot pie.
In fact, I would say right away that it is a collection of short stories. A collection of stories. Fictional. Fiction. The whole thing is peppered with poetry so present that one would believe, as one reads the book, that one is also dealing with a long poem in the manner of a René Philoctetes in whom poetry always flows in abundance, from the first to the last word of the book.
I was talking about fiction. But everything is so true. Everything is lived. Everything is said and identifiable in a society where everyone knows everyone. Everyone knows the lesbians, the homosexuals, the murderers, the criminals, the corrupt, the thieves, the dislocated, lanky civil servants, the geniuses, the stars, the idiots, the madmen, the priests, the pastors, the houngans. Here, everything is known. Yet we choose to live in the fashion of “kase fèy kouvri sa”.
In his postface to Marnatha Ternier’s work, Doctor Jean-Elie Gilles already attacks these trances and masks of Marnatha Irène Ternier in the title “as an existential dictation of the soul in search of the sublime, for current times.”
Doctor Jean-Elie Gilles, who lives in New Jersey in the United States, continues and I quote: “The author touches on three important literary concepts in this collection that concern us all today: otherness, the temporality of our earthly existences and trance.
And this otherness, Doctor Jean-Elie Gilles will say later, not only targets the pain of women in a cruel world still clinging to machismo, which translates into the feminization and bisexuality of many men, it also becomes the standard-bearer of homosexuals and any other group subject to discrimination…”
(End of quote).
Other comments at the turn of the book allow us to better understand it. They come from two (2) artists/musicians like Yole Dérose and Jean Belony Murat (Belot). For Jean Belony Murat (Belot): “this new text by Marnatha Ternier opens almost on a masked ball during which the masks that often have difficulty managing their trances fall”.
According to the musician, the final goal of this work is indeed to arrive at a “lakou trankil”. While for her part, the immortal artist, Yole Dérose sees this new work by Marnatha Ternier as a “poignant call of the need to look beyond appearances, to break the chains of ignorance, and to find the strength to reinvent oneself in a world that is so merciless”.
Port au Prince
June 29, 2024
Pradel Henriquez
(PH)
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