Death of Etzer Vilaire, poet of the Dix Hommes Noirs

Etzer Vilaire was born at Jeremie on 7 April 1872. He was a lawyer and a judge, a teacher of French, and Georges Sylvain pulled him into poetry and into the circle La Ronde. His Nouveaux Poemes won the Prix Jules-Davaine from the Academie francaise in 1912, and he went to Paris with Jean Price-Mars to collect it. That same Price-Mars then lit the indigeniste fire, and the young turned on Vilaire for writing himself into French literary history instead of Haitian. He died in Port-au-Prince on 22 May 1951, aged 79. His Dix Hommes Noirs is still the poem Haitians quote when they talk about despair.