| Aimé Fernand David Césaire | |
 Cadastre (1961) and Moi, laminaire (1982)
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| Born | Claude Pierre 26 June 1913 Basse-Pointe, Martinique |
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| Died | 17 April 2008 (aged 94) Fort-de-France, Martinique |
| Residence | Martinique |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | Poet, Politician |
| Political party | French Communist Party, Parti Progressiste Martiniquais |
| Spouse(s) | Suzanne Roussi |
| Website http://www.cesaire.org/ |
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Aimé Fernand David Césaire (26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was an Afro-Martinican francophone poet, author and politician.
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Student, Educator, and Poet
Aimé Césaire was born in Basse-Pointe, Martinique in 1913. He traveled to Paris to attend the Lycée Louis-le-Grand on an educational scholarship. In Paris, Césaire, who in 1935 passed an entrance exam for the École normale supérieure, created, with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas, the literary review L'Étudiant Noir (The Black Student) which was a forerunner of the Négritude movement. In 1936, Césaire began work on his book-length poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal - Notebook of a Return to My Native Land - (1939), a vivid and powerful depiction of the ambiguities of Caribbean life and culture in the New World and this upon returning home to Martinique.
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 and served as an inspiration for, but did not teach, Édouard Glissant. He would become a heavy influence for Fanon as both a mentor and a contemporary throughout Fanon's short life.
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 like René Ménil and Aristide Maugée, in order to challenge the cultural status quo and alienation that then characterized Martinican identity. Many run-ins with censorship did not deter Césaire from being an outspoken defendant of Martinican identity. He also became close to French surrealist poet André Breton, who spent time in Martinique during the war.
In 1947 he was finally able to publish his book Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to My Native Land), which he had actually finished in 1940. The book mixes poetry and prose to express his thoughts on the cultural identity of black Africans in a colonial setting. Breton contributed a laudatory introduction to the 1947 edition of Cahier..., saying that "this poem is nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time." ("ce poème [n'est] rien moins que le plus grand monument lyrique de ce temps").
Political career
In 1945, with the support of the French Communist Party, Césaire was elected mayor of Fort-de-France and député to the French National Assembly for Martinique. He was one of the principal drafters of the 1946 law on departmentalizing former colonies, a role for which independentist politicians have often criticized him.
Like many left intellectuals in France, Césaire looked in the 1930s and 1940s toward the Soviet Union as a source of human progress, virtue, and human rights, but Césaire later grew disillusioned with Communism. In 1956, after the Soviet Union's suppression of the Hungarian revolution, Aimé Césaire announced his resignation from the French Communist Party in a text entitled Lettre à Maurice Thorez. In 1958 he founded the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais.
His writings during this period reflect his passion for civic and social engagement. He wrote Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism) (1950; English translation 1953), a denunciation of European colonial racism, decadence, and hypocrisy that was republished in the French review Présence Africaine in 1955. In 1960, he published Toussaint Louverture, based upon the life of the Haitian revolutionary. In 1968, he published the first version of Une Tempête, a radical adaptation of Shakespeare's play The Tempest for a black audience.
He served as President of the Regional Council of Martinique from 1983 to 1988. He retired from politics in 2001.
Later life
In 2006, he refused to meet the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), Nicolas Sarkozy, then a probable contender for the 2007 presidential election, because the UMP had voted for the February 23, 2005 law asking teachers and textbooks to "acknowledge and recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence abroad, especially in North Africa", a law considered by many as a eulogy to colonialism and French actions during the Algerian War. President Jacques Chirac finally had the controversial law repealed.
On April 9 2008, he had serious heart troubles and was admitted to Pierre Zobda Quitman hospital in Fort-de-France. He died on April 17 2008.[1]
Césaire was given the honour of a state funeral, held at the Stade de Dillon in Fort-de-France on April 20. President Nicolas Sarkozy was present but did not make a speech. Pierre Aliker, who served for many years as deputy mayor under Césaire, gave the funeral oration.
Legacy
Martinique's airport at Le Lamentin was renamed Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport on January 15 2007.
Works
Poetry
- Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939), Return to my native land (bilingual edition), Paris: Présence Africaine 1968
- Armes miraculeuses (1946)
- Soleil cou coupé (1948)
- Corps perdu (1950)
- Ferrements (1960)
- Cadastre (1961)
- Moi, laminaire (1982)
- Collected Poetry, University of California Press (1983)
Theatre
- Et les Chiens se taisaient, tragédie: arrangement théâtral. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1958, 1997.
- La Tragédie du roi Christophe. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1963, 1993. The tragedy of King Christophe, New York: Grove 1969
- Une Tempête, adapted from The Tempest by William Shakespeare: adaptation pour un théâtre nègre. Paris: Seuil, 1969, 1997. A Tempest, New York: Ubu repertory 1986
- Une Saison au Congo. Paris: Seuil, 1966, 2001. A season in the Congo, New York 1968, A play about Patrice Lumumba
Other writings
- Discours sur le colonialisme, Paris: Présence Africaine, 1953.
- Toussaint Louverture; La Révolution française et le problème colonial. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1960.
See also
References
- ^ "Caribbean poet Cesaire dies at 94". BBC. 2008-04-17. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7352717.stm. Retrieved on 2008-04-17.
- Césaire, Aimé (1957). Letter to Maurice Thorez. Paris: Présence africaine. p. 7.
- Christian Filostrat, La Négritude et la "Conscience raciale et révolutionaire sociale" d'Aimé Césaire. Présence Francophone No 21, Automne 1980. pp 119 – 130.
- Joubert, Jean-Louis. "Césaire, Aimé." In Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la littérature française. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1999.
External links
- Obituary from the International Herald Tribune
- 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.
- Aimé Césaire, biography and bibliography, Pegasos literature related resources, 2002.
- Khalid Chraibi, an interview with Aimé Césaire, (in French) on occasion of the Paris première of "La Tragédie du Roi Christophe" in 1965.
- Expo Photo consacrée à Aimé Césaire, Collection of photos from a retrospective of Cesaire's literary and political career.
- Tribute site to Aimé Césaire, Official site,
- Out of Defeat: Aimé Césaire's Miraculous Wordsbiography and tribute by Colin Dayan
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