Aimé Césaire World Literature Analysis
While Léopold Senghor, Léon-Gontran Damas, and Aimé Césaire were studying in French colonial schools, they read textbooks that affirmed the superiority of French culture over the native civilizations of the colonized peoples. French colonial authorities arrogantly spoke of “the civilizing mission of France” and of their desire “to assimilate” those in their colonies into the supposedly superior French culture. In Paris, Senghor, Damas, and Césaire met numerous black students and writers from Africa and from various regions of the African diaspora. The term “African diaspora” refers to black people who now live in exile far from Africa as a result of the slave trade that transported their ancestors into slavery in the New World. Senghor, Damas, and Césaire took courses in Paris on African civilizations and learned a great deal about the rich cultures of Africa before the slave trade and the European colonial exploitation of the continent. They also came to realize that colonial powers had created negative images of black people as a means of justifying racism. As well-educated people who had learned to express themselves in fluent French, Senghor, Damas, and Césaire came to believe that it was their responsibility to speak for ordinary black people who needed to appreciate their profound dignity as human beings.
Both Senghor and Damas readily admitted that it was their friend Césaire who invented the term “Négritude.” Césaire argued that “Négritude” meant describing the experience of what it meant to be a black person in literary works that would appeal to readers of all races. Senghor and Césaire had a white friend, Georges Pompidou, who studied with them in Paris and later served as the president of France from 1969 to 1974. Césaire and Senghor would read their poems to each other in order to make sure that these works authentically captured aspects of black culture, and then they would read their poems to Pompidou in order to find out if their poems were of universal appeal. Pompidou was not just an ordinary friend. He also possessed a deep appreciation of French poetry. He introduced Senghor and Césaire to the poetry of Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire and helped his friends realize that great poetry had to have universal appeal to readers. Pompidou’s own acumen as a fine judge of French poetry was shown in his excellent Anthologie de la poésie française (1961), an anthology that is still used in introductory courses on French poetry.
In Return to My Native Land, Césaire illustrates how he combined Négritude with what Senghor later called la civilisation de l’universel (the civilization of the universal). In this long and exquisite poem, Césaire describes how his extended stay in France gave him the time to appreciate the values of his own culture and to realize that he could not be anything other than a proud black man from rural Martinique. He presents this highly autobiographical poem as an illustration of the voyage of self-discovery that all people experience in their lives. This poem helps readers understand the essential difference between what they do and who they are. Although Césaire achieved international fame as a statesman and a writer, he never forgot that he was raised in the impoverished village of Basse-Pointe, where his moral values were formed in his childhood. As a black man, Césaire knew that he could authentically describe the world only from his perspective of a black man. For Senghor, Damas, and Césaire, Négritude enabled them to present positive and authentic images of black culture, while at the same time depicting readers’ universal search for their own values.
Cadastre
First published: 1961...
(This entire section contains 2363 words.)
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(English translation, 1973)
Type of work: Poetry
A very personal collection of poems, in which Césaire explores the meaning of black culture from different countries in his understanding of the world.
The very title of this book of poems will send readers to a French dictionary because cadastre is an obscure legal term that means a register of land possessions. The French word cadastre translates into English as the equally rare word “cadastre,” which can also be spelled “cadaster.” Once readers have understood the meaning of the title, they begin to realize that Césaire strives to evoke many different places that were important in his life.
He naturally mentions his native island of Martinique in the poem “Ton portrait” (“Your Portrait”), addressed to Martinique. He evokes not the title of “the flower island” that is designed to attract tourists but rather the 1902 cauchemar (nightmare), when the Mount Pelée volcano exploded and killed more than thirty thousand people in the former capital of Saint-Pierre, leaving only one survivor. Martiniquais are still traumatized by this volcanic explosion, and the area around Mount Pelée remains largely abandoned more than a century after this natural disaster. Each afternoon there is a report on Martinique television designed to assure Martiniquais that they do not have to evacuate their homeland within twenty-four hours. During his fifty-six years as the mayor of Fort-de-France, Césaire had to make sure that the city’s emergency services were always prepared for another explosion of this active volcano.
In another poem, “Ode à la Guinée” (“Ode to Guinea”), he evokes the West African country from which so many slaves were taken in chains to Martinique. Césaire “salutes” Guinea, whose screams of suffering still “strike” him. The horrors of slavery were so terrible that they can never disappear from Césaire’s understanding of the world. In a powerful poem, “Lynch” (“Lynching”), Césaire mentions this extreme crime of violence committed against African Americans by the Ku Klux Klan and other racists. In Cadastre, Césaire describes very powerfully the unity of suffering that tragically links blacks in Africa with blacks in the African diaspora.
The Tragedy of King Christophe
First produced: La Tragédie du Roi Christophe, 1964 (first published, 1963; English translation, 1969)
Type of work: Play
This powerful tragedy explores the abuse of power by a Haitian leader who places his own interests over those of his people, who are fighting to maintain their newly acquired freedom.
In both The Tragedy of King Christophe and in Une Saison au Congo (pb. 1966, pr. 1967; A Season in the Congo, 1968), Césaire explores the abuse of power by black politicians. Although Césaire recognized that there were many superb black leaders, such as his friend, President Léopold Senghor of Senegal, and Toussaint-Louverture, the founder of the Haitian Republic and the subject of a biography written by Césaire, Toussaint Louverture: La Révolution française et le problème coloniale (1960), Césaire knew all too well that many black leaders in Haiti and in various African countries betrayed and exploited their people by transforming democracies into dictatorships. In The Tragedy of King Christophe, Césaire contrasts the simple honesty of Pétion, a successor to the heroic Toussaint-Louverture, with the demagogue and megalomaniac General Christophe.
As this play begins, the Haitians realize there is a very real threat that the forces of Napoleon I will invade Haiti in order to overthrow this new democracy and reestablish slavery. Pétion understands clearly that Napoleon I, who had reestablished slavery in the French Empire after it had been abolished during the French Revolution, wants to destroy the new democracy in Haiti. In order to resist the expected French invasion, Haitians must all cooperate in order to maintain their freedom. Pétion does not want power for himself; rather he desires to serve the Haitian people, so they can enjoy real freedom themselves.
Christophe, however, believes that he alone knows what the Haitian people truly need, and he needs to become their king so he can impose his will on them. In his mind, his vanity is more important than the survival of the fragile Haitian democracy. As a manipulator, Christophe lies quite effectively to the naïve people by telling them what they want to hear. He presents the specious claim that he alone understands the horrors of slavery that they experienced before Toussaint-Louverture’s slave revolt, and then he argues that Haitians need a monarchy with all its trappings and impressive traditions.
He has himself crowned king and hopes that the peasants to whom he grants empty titles of nobility will feel as much loyalty as sycophantic nobles did to King Louis XIV at Versailles. King Christophe deludes himself into thinking that the Haitian people will find their dignity not in resisting the French forces intent on destroying Haitian freedom but rather in the theatrical ceremonies and performances that he creates for their amusement. He is so egotistical that he affirms near the end of the first of this play’s three acts that Haitians will owe their true heritage to him alone.
King Christophe, however, remains an ambiguous tragic hero because theatergoers and readers can never fully decide whether he is delusional because of a mental illness or if he deliberately intends to impose himself as Haiti’s absolute ruler in an effort to destroy its new and fragile democracy. Although Christophe gives several eloquent speeches that well describe the intense suffering of black people as a result of slavery, he nevertheless takes unreasonable actions that endanger Haitian freedom in the face of an invasion by the French, who aim to end Haitian independence and reestablish slavery.
Although readers and theatergoers may choose to view Christophe as an evil despot, there is another possible explanation for his bizarre behavior. In his 1952 book, Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks, 1967), the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, who studied under Césaire at Victor Schoelcher High School, argues persuasively that the experience of racism is so traumatic that it can cause serious psychological problems. The Tragedy of King Chrsitophe was written and performed shortly after Fanon’s death from leukemia in 1961. Like many great dramatic works, The Tragedy of King Christophe permits radically different interpretations. Its title character can be seen as a petty despot, or as a victim of racism and slavery, or perhaps as both simultaneously.
A Season in the Congo
First produced: Une Saison au Congo, 1967 (first published, 1966; English translation, 1968)
Type of work: Play
This political play describes how a European country manages to maintain its economic exploitation even during the postcolonial period.
A Season in the Congo deals with an extremely obvious exploitation of an African country during the early postcolonial period. In 1960, Belgium very grudgingly granted independence to its colony, the Belgian Congo, in which between three million and twenty million Congolese were either executed or worked to death while toiling on Belgian rubber plantations in the colony, known as the Congo Free State until 1980 and the Belgian Congo from 1908 until 1960. After independence, the country was first named the Congo and then Zaire. In his novel Heart of Darkness (1899, serial; 1902, book) Joseph Conrad portrays the horrendous human suffering in the Congo Free State that modern historians have frequently compared to the Nazi Holocaust and to Joseph Stalin’s mass murder of Soviet citizens.
In the late 1950’s and the early 1960’s, France and England began committing themselves to granting independence to their many African colonies. The crimes against humanity committed against the black Congolese by Belgium were so awful and well known that few blacks in Africa and throughout the black diaspora trusted Belgium to act properly toward the newly independent Congo. Congolese blacks became even more suspicious when Belgian colonial authorities had Patrice Lumumba arrested because of his opposition to long-term mining leases designed to enable Belgium to continue exploiting the Congo’s mineral riches after independence. Strong international criticism forced Belgium to release Lumumba so he could participate in discussions aimed at transferring power from Belgium to the Congo.
In A Season in the Congo, Césaire contrasts the idealism of Lumumba, who wants to end completely Belgian influence in the Congo, with the overt cynicism and corruption of General Mokutu, who sells out his country for his personal enrichment. It does not take much imagination for readers and theatergoers to understand that Mokutu represents Mobutu Sese Seko, who helped overthrow the elected government of Lumumba with Belgian military assistance. Belgian businesses rewarded Mobutu generously for his betrayal of his homeland. Mobutu allowed Belgian mining interests to continue stealing the Congo’s mineral resources for decades, while helping none of the Congolese except himself and his thugs.
In A Season in the Congo, Césaire portrays how Belgians, with the covert support of Mokutu, fund a civil war in the Congo in order to overthrow Lumumba’s government. When the United Nations, represented in this play by its then Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, refuses to intervene because this is allegedly a civil war not involving any foreign country, Lumumba flies to Moscow and Soviet military planes restore him to power. Césaire shows quite powerfully how the Congo became a pawn in the larger conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States for political influence in Africa. In this play, Lumumba refuses to meet with the United Nations’ diplomat, Ralph Bunche, because Lumumba understands all too clearly that although Bunche was a distinguished African American, Bunche’s loyalty was to the United States and not to newly independent African countries.
Once the United Nations abandons the Congo, the die is cast for Lumumba. Theatergoers and readers realize that it is only a question of when and how Lumumba will die. Mokutu makes arrangements for killers to execute Lumumba; when the Congolese demonstrate openly in support of the martyred leader, Mokutu instructs his soldiers to use machine guns against the demonstrators. Just to make sure that theatergoers and readers identify Mokutu as Mobutu, Césaire specifies that Mokutu wears “a leopard-skin outfit,” similar to the one Mobutu liked to wear when he became the dictator of the country that he renamed Zaire.
When Césaire completed this play in the mid-1960’s, he could not imagine that Mobutu would allow Belgian mining interests to continue stealing wealth from Zaire, while at the same time destroying Zaire’s infrastructure, until 1997, when Mobutu was finally driven into exile in Morocco.
