Aimé Césaire

Aimé Fernand David Césaire (

His works include the book-length poem

Student, educator and poet

Aimé Césaire was born in

Césaire married fellow Martinican student Suzanne Roussi in 1937. Together they moved back to Martinique in 1939 with their young son. Césaire became a teacher at the Lycée Schoelcher in Fort-de-France, where he taught Frantz Fanon, becoming a great influence for Fanon as both a mentor and contemporary.^[10] Césaire also served as an inspiration for, but did not teach, writer Édouard Glissant.

World War II

The years of World War II were ones of great intellectual activity for the Césaires. In 1941, Aimé Césaire and Suzanne Roussi founded the literary review Tropiques, with the help of other Martinican intellectuals such as René Ménil and Aristide Maugée, in order to challenge the cultural status quo and alienation that characterized Martinican identity at the time. In this sense, according to Ursula Heise, the publications of the French botanist Henri Stehlé in Tropiques in the early 1940's, concerning the Martinican flora,^[11] and "the invocations of Césaire to the Antillean ecology operate as indices of a racial and cultural authenticity which is distinguished from European identity...".^[12] During an interview granted in 1978, Césaire explains that his aim for including these articles in Tropiques was "to allow Martinique to refocus" and "to lead Martinicans to reflect" on their close environment.^[13] Césaire's many run-ins with censorship did not deter him, however, from being an outspoken defendant of Martinican identity.^[14] He also became close to French surrealist poet André Breton, who spent time in Martinique during the war. The two had met in 1940, and Breton later would champion Cesaire's work.^[15]

In 1947, his book-length poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, which had first appeared in the Parisian periodical Volontés in 1939 after rejection by a French book publisher,^[16] was published.^[17] The book mixes poetry and prose to express Césaire's thoughts on the cultural identity of black Africans in a colonial setting. Breton contributed a laudatory introduction to this 1947 edition, saying that the "poem is nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of our times."^[18] When asked by René Depestre about his writing style, Césaire replied by saying that "Surrealism provided me with what I had been confusedly searching for."^[19]

Political career

In 1945, with the support of the

Like many left-wing intellectuals in 1930s and 1940s France, Césaire looked toward the Soviet Union as a source of progress, virtue, and human rights. He later grew disillusioned with the Soviet Union after the 1956 suppression of the Hungarian revolution. He announced his resignation from the PCF in a text entitled Lettre à Maurice Thorez (Letter to Maurice Thorez).^[21] In 1958 Césaire founded the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais. With the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais, he dominated the island’s political scene for the last half of the century. Césaire declined to renew his mandate as deputy in the National Assembly in 1993, after a 47-year continuous term.^[20]

His writings during this period reflect his passion for civic and social engagement. He wrote

Césaire served as

Later life

In 2006, he refused to meet the leader of the

On 9 April 2008, Césaire had serious heart troubles and was admitted to Pierre Zobda Quitman hospital in Fort-de-France. He died on 17 April 2008.[23]

Césaire was accorded the honor of a

Martinique's airport at Le Lamentin was renamed Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport on 15 January 2007. A national commemoration ceremony was held on 6 April 2011, as a plaque in Césaire's name was inaugurated in the Panthéon in Paris.^[25] He was also proclaimed as a national hero in Martinique.^[26]

Poetically, Césaire's legacy is far-reaching in poetry both from his time and beyond. Most notably, his relation to Frantz Fanon, famed author of Black Skin, White Masks, as mentor and inspiration is tangible. Fanon's personal testimony in Black Skin, White Masks explains the "liberating effect of Césaire’s word and action" that he felt in traversing the changing colonial landscape.^[27] More generally, Césaire's works conceptualized African unity and black culture in ways that allowed for the creation of black spaces where there previously were none, from the establishment of several literary journals to his reworking of Caliban's speech from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Césaire’s works were foundational for postcolonial literature across France, its then colonies, and much of the Caribbean.^[26] In 2021, the

Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in poetry" article for poetry, or "[year] in literature" article for other works:

Poetry

• OCLC 213466273
  .
• OCLC 248258485
  .
• OCLC 369684638
  .
• OCLC 4325153
  .
• OCLC 245836847
  .
• OCLC 59034113
  .
• OCLC 252242086
  .
• ISBN 978-2-02-006268-8
  .
• ISBN 2-02-021232-3

• 1958: Et les Chiens se taisaient, tragédie: arrangement théâtral. Paris: Présence Africaine; reprint: 1997.
• 1963: La Tragédie du roi Christophe. Paris: Présence Africaine; reprint: 1993; The Tragedy of King Christophe, New York: Grove, 1969.
• 1966: Une saison au Congo. Paris: Seuil; reprint: 2001; A Season in the Congo, New York, 1968 (a play about Patrice Lumumba).
• 1969: Une Tempête, adapted from The Tempest by William Shakespeare: adaptation pour un théâtre nègre. Paris: Seuil; reprint: 1997; A Tempest, New York: Ubu repertory, 1986.

Other writings

• "Poésie et connaissance", Tropiques (12): 158–70, January 1945.
• OCLC 8230845
  .
• Lettre à Maurice Thorez, Paris: Présence Africaine, 24 October 1956.[29]
• Toussaint Louverture: La Révolution française et le problème colonial, Paris: Club français du livre, 1960,
  OCLC 263448333
  .

Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism challenges the narrative of the colonizer and the colonized. This text criticizes the hypocrisy of justifying colonization with the equation "Christianity=civilized, paganism=savagery" comparing white colonizers to "savages". Césaire writes that "no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either" concluding that "a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization - and therefore force - is already a sick civilization". He condemns the colonizers, saying that though the men may not be inherently bad, the practice of colonization ruins them.

Césaire's text intertwines slavery, imperialism, capitalism, republicanism, and modernism, stating that they were linked together and influenced one another in undeniable ways. Importantly, all of those oppressive forces came together to hurt the colonized and empower the colonizer. This position was considered radical at the time.

Césaire continues to deconstruct the colonizer, and ultimately concludes that by colonizing those white men often lose touch with who they were, and become brutalized into hidden instincts that result in the rape, torture, and race hatred that they put onto the people they colonize. He also examines the effects colonialism has on the colonized, stating that "colonization = 'thing-ification'", where because the colonizers are able to "other" the colonized, they can justify the means by which they colonize.

The text also continuously references Nazism, blaming the barbarism of colonialism and how whitewashed and accepted the tradition, for Hitler's rise to power. He says that Hitler lives within and is the demon of "the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century." Particularly, Césaire argues that Nazism was not an exception or singular event in European history; rather, the natural progression of a civilization that justified colonization without "perceiving the dangers involved in proceeding towards savagery."^[30] Césaire compared colonial violence to Nazism, arguing: "they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples."^[31]

Césaire's wishes for post-war Europe centered around decolonization, arguing that decolonization was the way forward for Europe out of "the binarism of capitalism/communism."^[32] Césaire believed that the only possible redemption for Europe’s dark path which had led to Nazism was through interactions with the "Third World". Decolonization offered an alternative to the dual negatives of capitalism and communism, employing pluralism as a way to usher in a new, more tolerant Europe. He was critical of neo-imperialism and US capitalism, and in many ways his fearful vision of the future has come to fruition today.^{[neutrality is disputed]} Critiques of French universalism were also apparent in the text, particularly citing the issues that universalism caused for the departmentalization of Martinique of which Césaire was the main propagator. Departmentalization was an important goal for Césaire both in his texts and in his political career.^{[citation needed]}

Césaire originally wrote his text in French in 1950, but later worked with Joan Pinkham to translate it to English. The translated version was published in 1972.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Créolité
• Antillanité
• Octave Mannoni

Notes

References

Relevant literature

• Dukats, Mara L. "The hybrid terrain of literary imagination: Maryse Conde's Black Witch of Salem, Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hester Prynne, and Aime Cesaire's heroic poetic voice." College Literature 22, no. 1 (1995): 51-61.

Bibliography

Books

News articles & web sources

• "Aimé Césaire, Martinique Poet and Politician, Dies at 94". The New York Times. Associated Press. 18 April 2008. Archived from the original on 4 November 2011.
• "Caribbean poet Cesaire dies at 94". BBC News. 17 April 2008. Archived from the original on 2 March 2021.
• "Le document qui a lancé le mouvement de la négritude - Conscience Raciale et Révolution Sociale d'Aimé Césaire" [The document that launched the Négritude movement - Racial Consciousness and Social Revolution by Aimé Césaire.]. l'Etudiant Noir (in French). Archived from the original on 16 October 2021. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
• Ferguson, James (20 April 2008). "Obituary: Aimé Césaire". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 June 2022. Césaire was born at Basse-Pointe, a small town on Martinique's north coast [. . .] His family was part of the island's small, black middle class, with his father employed as a tax inspector.
• Lanzi, Carla Bucero (4 December 2021). "Portraits de France: une exposition rend hommage aux grandes figures des Outre-mer et de l'immigration" [Portraits of France: an exhibition pays tribute to the great figures of the Overseas Territories and immigration]. Portail des Outre-mer La 1ère (in French). La Première. Archived from the original on 3 April 2022.
• Lotem, Itay (25 January 2016). "A decade after the riots, France has rewritten its colonial history". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 6 May 2022.
• Micklin, Anna (23 May 2008). "Aimé Césaire (1913-2008)". BlackPast.org. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022.
• Storey, Thomas (5 November 2013). "Some Thoughts on Aimé Césaire: The Father of Négritude". Culture Trip. Archived from the original on 9 October 2021.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Aimé Césaire.

• Aime Cesaire, biography, by Brooke Ritz, Postcolonial Studies website, English Department, Emory University, 1999.
• Aimé Césaire, bibliography, biography, and links (in French), "île en île", City University of New York, 1998–2004.
• Petri Liukkonen. "Aimé Césaire". Books and Writers.
• Khalid Chraibi, an interview with Aimé Césaire, (in French) on occasion of the Paris première of "La Tragédie du Roi Christophe" in 1965.
• Official tribute site to Aimé Césaire. Archived 8 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine
• "Out of Defeat: Aimé Césaire's Miraculous Words". Tribute by Colin Dayan, September/October 2008.
• Aime Cesaire, 1913-2008: Remembering the Life and Legacy - video report by Democracy Now!, 21 April 2008.
• Aimé Césaire, by Mabogo Percy More, May 2008.