Aimé Césaire

From Freepedia

Aimé Fernand David Césaire (born June 20, 1913) is a Martinican author and politician.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 2.1 Poetry 2.2 Plays 2.3 Other writings 3 Film about Césaire 4 References 5 See also 6 External links

Biography

Aimé Césaire was born in Basse-Pointe, Martinique. In 1931, he traveled to Paris to attend the Lycée Louis-le Grand on an educational scholarship. In Paris, Césaire, along with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas, created the literary review L'Étudiant Noir 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 African life and culture in the New World.

Césaire married fellow student Martinican 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 both Frantz Fanon and Édouard Glissant.

The years of World War Two 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. Breton contributed a laudatory introduction to the 1947 edition of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, saying that "this poem is nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of our times." ("ce poème [n'est] rien moins que le plus grand monument lyrique de ce temps").

In 1945, Césaire was elected French National Assembly member from Martinique, as a member of the French Communist Party. Later that year he was elected mayor of Fort-de-France. However, in the following years, Césaire gradually became disillusioned by the French Communist Party's perceived lack of action on issues surrounding race. In 1956, in a letter to party leader Maurice Thorez, Aimé Césaire announced his resignation from the French Communist Party and two years later he founded the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais. He retired from politics in 1993.

Aimé Césaire remains one of the most famous black contemporary writers. His writings reflect his passion for civic and social engagement. He is the author of Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism) (1950), a denunciation of European colonial racism which was published in the French review Présence Africaine. In 1968, he published the first version of Une Tempête, a radical adaptation of Shakespeare's play The Tempest for a black audience.

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 (1947)
• Corps perdu (1950)
• Ferrements (1960)
• Cadastre (1961)
• Moi, laminaire (1982)
• Collected Poetry, University of California Press (1983)

Plays

• 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, 1955.
• Toussaint Louverture; La Révolution française et le problème colonial. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1961/62.

Film about Césaire

Aimé Césaire - une voix pour l'histoire, (1994). French with English subtitles, Director: Euzhan Palcy

References

• Césaire, Aimé (1957). Letter to Maurice Thorez. Paris: Présence africaine. p. 7.

See also

• Négritude
• Créolité

External links

• Aimé Césaire, 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.