Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 1, 2016
Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (1903?–1937) is Madagascar's national poet. He grew up impoverished and failed to complete secondary education, but taught himself the traditions of French literature and Malagasy poetry, and gained work in a publishing house as a proofreader and editor of its literary journals. He produced numerous poetry anthologies in French and Malagasy, as well as literary critiques, an opera, and two novels. After an early period of modernist-inspired poetry, the originality of his surrealist poetry garnered strong praise and drew attention in international poetry reviews. Nevertheless, Rabearivelo never gained support from colonial Madagascar's high society. He suffered personally and professionally: his three-year-old daughter died, the French authorities excluded him from the list of exhibitors at the Universal Exposition in Paris, and philandering and opium addiction worsened his debt. After his suicide by cyanide poisoning, he was hailed by literary figures including Léopold Sédar Senghor as Africa's first modern poet. A room has been dedicated to him in the National Library of Madagascar. (Full article...)