{"id":216,"date":"2014-06-10T00:31:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T00:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/?p=216"},"modified":"2019-10-02T16:27:13","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T16:27:13","slug":"cesaire-aime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/2014\/06\/10\/cesaire-aime\/","title":{"rendered":"C\u00e9saire, Aim\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biography<\/h3>\n
\"Image<\/a>
Image by Parti socialiste\/CC Licensed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aim\u00e9\u00a0C\u00e9saire was born in 1913 in Martinique in the French Caribbean. He left for Paris in 1931 at the age of 18 with a scholarship for school. During his time at the Lycee Louis-le Grand, he helped found a student publication,\u00a0Etudiant Noir<\/em>.\u00a0 In 1936, C\u00e9saire started working on his famed piece\u00a0Cahier,<\/em>\u00a0which was not published until 1939. He married fellow student Suzanne Roussi in 1937, and the couple moved back to Martinique with their son in 1939. Both Aim\u00e9 and Suzanne got jobs at the Lycee Schoelcher. In 1945, C\u00e9saire began his political career when he was elected mayor of Fort-de-France and deputy in the Constituent Assembly on the French Communist Party<\/a> ticket. During the 1940s, C\u00e9saire was busy writing and publishing many collections of his work. He seemed to be influenced by art because he wrote a tribute to a painter named Wilfredo Lam and one of his collections has illustrations by Pablo Picasso. In 1956, Aime C\u00e9saire resigned from the French Communist Party and two years later he began the \u201cParti Progressiste Martiniquais.\u201d During these years, C\u00e9saire attended two conferences for Negro Writers and Artists in Paris. In 1968 he published the first version of\u00a0Une Tempete<\/em>,\u00a0 an adaptation of Shakespeare\u2019s play\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>. He continued writing poetry and plays and retired from politics in 1993. He passed away in April of 2008 and was given a state funeral. All of C\u00e9saire\u2019s writings are in French with a limited number having English translations. Associated thinkers include\u00a0Derek Walcott<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Frantz Fanon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Poetry<\/h3>\n

C\u00e9saire\u2019s poetry has been described as a style between \u201cartistic \u2018modernism\u2019 and black consciousness\u201d (14). His writing can also be characterized as surreal. C\u00e9saire is associated with \u201cnegritude,\u201d which signifies the black youth\u2019s attempt to maintain a positive racial identity (3). Many of his works combine the two ideas of negritude and surrealism, which is an aesthetic movement that combines materials from an artist\u2019s unconscious to create dream-like and fantastic aesthetic forms.<\/p>\n

Drama<\/h3>\n

C\u00e9saire began to focus on drama with the use of the poem \u201cChiens.\u201d In 1968 he published\u00a0Une Tempete<\/em>, a version of Shakespeare\u2019s\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>. He wanted to reflect black America in this play but the setting is the Caribbean (see African American Studies and Postcolonialism<\/a>). Davis argues that \u201cThe central paradigm of the colonizer\/colonized relation, as it is constructed in\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>, embraces the totality of the black experience in the New World\u201d (157). Many critics believe Cesaire\u2019s version of\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>\u00a0is about the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and the struggle for absolute power. In the play, Prospero is the master of the two men, Caliban and Ariel. Prospero is the colonizer and both Caliban and Ariel attempt to gain their freedom from him. Caliban\u2019s approach to freedom is through rebellion while Ariel tries \u201cto appeal to his [Prospero’s] moral conscience\u201d(161). In the end, Caliban\u2019s rebellion fails. In his final speech, Caliban charges Prospero with lying to him and holding him inferior. It is a classic example of the colonized rejecting the colonizer.\u00a0 This is a quote taken from this final speech by Caliban:<\/p>\n

Prospero, you are the master of illusion.
\nLying is your trademark.
\nAnd you have lied so much to me
\n(lied about the world, lied about me)
\nthat you have ended by imposing on me
\nan image of myself.
\nunderdeveloped, you brand me, inferior,
\nThat is the way you have forced me to see myself
\nI detest that image!\u00a0 What\u2019s more, it\u2019s a lie!
\nBut now I know you, you old cancer,
\nand I know myself as well. (162)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Works by Aim\u00e9\u00a0C\u00e9saire<\/h3>\n

Collected Works<\/h4>\n
    \n
  • C\u00e9saire, Aim\u00e9.\u00a0Euvres Completes<\/em>. Vol.1 (Poesie), Vol. 2 (Theatre), Vol. 3 (Euvre historique et politique).\u00a0 Fort-de-France: Editions Desormeaux, 1976.<\/li>\n
  • Eshleman, Clayton and Smith, Annette, trans.\u00a0 Aim\u00e9\u00a0C\u00e9saire: The Collected Poetry<\/em>. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.<\/li>\n
  • Maximin, Daniel and Carpentier, Gilles, eds.\u00a0\u00a0La Poesie<\/em>. Paris: Seuil, 1994.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Poetry<\/h4>\n
      \n
    • C\u00e9saire, Aim\u00e9.\u00a0Cadastre<\/em>.\u00a0 Paris: Seuil, 1961.<\/li>\n
    • \u2014.\u00a0<\/em>Cahier d\u00edun retour au pays natal<\/em>. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1956.<\/li>\n
    • \u2014.\u00a0<\/em>Corps perdu<\/em>. Paris: Fragrance, 1950.<\/li>\n
    • \u2014.\u00a0<\/em>Ferrements<\/em>. Paris: Seuil, 1960.<\/li>\n
    • \u2014.\u00a0<\/em>Les Armes miraculeuses<\/em>. Paris: Gallimard, 1946.<\/li>\n
    • \u2014.\u00a0<\/em>Moi, laminaire . . .<\/em>\u00a0Paris: Seuil, 1982.<\/li>\n
    • \u2014.\u00a0<\/em>Soliel cou coupe<\/em>. Paris: Editions K, 1948.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Drama<\/h4>\n
        \n
      • C\u00e9saire, Aim\u00e9.\u00a0Et les chiens se taisaient<\/em>.\u00a0 Paris: Presence Africaine, 1956.<\/li>\n
      • \u2014. La Tragedie du roi Christophe<\/em>. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1970.<\/li>\n
      • \u2014.\u00a0<\/em>Une Saison au Congo<\/em>. Paris: Seuil, 1974.<\/li>\n
      • \u2014.\u00a0<\/em>Une Tempete<\/em>. Paris: Seuil, 1969.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Works Cited<\/h3>\n
          \n
        • C\u00e9saire, Aim\u00e9.\u00a0Lyric and Dramatic Poetry 1946-82<\/em>. Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith, trans. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990.<\/li>\n
        • Davis, Gregson. C\u00e9saire, Aim\u00e9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          Author: Brooke Ritz, Spring 1999
          \nLast edited:\u00a0May 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Biography Aim\u00e9\u00a0C\u00e9saire was born in 1913 in Martinique in the French Caribbean. He left for Paris in 1931 at the age of 18 with a scholarship for school. During his time at the Lycee Louis-le Grand, he helped found a student publication,\u00a0Etudiant Noir.\u00a0 In 1936, C\u00e9saire started working on his famed piece\u00a0Cahier,\u00a0which was not published<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":326,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[84,66,127,77,12,52,53,45,41,54,15,88,42,55,97],"class_list":{"0":"post-216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-authors-and-artists","7":"tag-aesthetics","8":"tag-caribbean","9":"tag-colonization","10":"tag-communism","11":"tag-diaspora","12":"tag-drama","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-hybridity","15":"tag-identity","16":"tag-martinique","17":"tag-poetry","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-race","20":"tag-violence","21":"tag-west-indies"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paWL6U-3u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/326"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2728,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/2728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}