Poetic (Re)Turn in Dany Laferrière's L'Énigme du retour

Abstract

Dany Laferrière's 2009 novel, L'Énigme du retour, enacts a poetic turn that is also, however, a return (both to the genre of poetry and to a 'temps perdu', which is superimposed on the emigrant writer's 'pays perdu'). As such, this work inflects a personal narrative with collective, political resonance and with added literary and aesthetic value. Formally, structurally and discursively, it mediates a historically resonant, proto-bardic ethos, connecting across time with a universal tradition of poetically addressing politically and culturally significant questions, including those related to human engagement with place and displacement.