Famous poet and politician Aimé Césaire passed away this week. It’s fair to say most French people knew who he was, mainly for his long-lasting friendship with Léopold Sédar Senghor, who was a minister under de Gaulle, the first president of Senegal, and a member of Académie Française. Césaire himself was mayor in Fort-de-France, and a Member of Parliament for 48 years, to represent Martinique, and is known in metropolitan France, mainly for his discourses on négritude (literally, niggerhood), a term by which he meant to rehabilitate blacks, not in the eyes of colonizers, but also and mostly in their own eyes, after witnessing the living conditions and low self-esteem of his fellowmen in Martinique.

In spite of being aware of these trivia facts, and having listened with keen interest to his speeches (such as the famous Dakar discourse) when they were aired, I wasn’t acquainted with his writings. Until tonight. To honor his memory, TV channel France 3 aired an excellent program, a scenario enacting and symbolizing excerpts of his first published work, Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal, in which he shared his impressions upon his return to Martinique after having participated in WW1. An impressionistic, gutsy, shrewd, determined and positive outlook on slavery, its effects, its madness, its transmutation. A writing that resembles that of a saga, metaphors and catachreses that tell the tale of the blood of slaves, spilled across continents. Powerful.

Links:

• Wikipedia’s page on Aimé Césaire (French / English)
• The pages on Aimé Césaire on Radio France Outre-Mer