Open Last Stanza

R.I.P.

Aimé Césaire

Aimé Césaire was born June 25, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, a small town on the northeast coast of Martinique in the French Caribbean. He attended the Lycée Schoelcher in Martinique, and the Parisian schools Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. His books of poetry include Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry (University of California Press, 1983); Putting in Fetters (1960); Lost Bodies (1950), with illustrations by Pablo Picasso; Decapitated Sun (1948); Miraculous Arms (1946); and Notebook of a Return to the Homeland (1939). He is also a playwright, and has written Moi, Laminaire (1982); The Tempest (1968), based on Shakespeare's play; A Season at Congo (1966); and The Tragedy of King Cristophe (1963). As a student he and his friend, Léopold Senghor of Sénégal created L'Etudiant noir, a publication that brought together students of Africa and the West Indies. Later Césaire founded Tropiques, a journal dedicated to American black poetry. Both journals were a stronghold for the ideas of negritude. He is also the author of Discourse on Colonialism (1950), a book of essays.

Césaire is a recipient of the International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the second winner in its history. He served as Mayor of Fort-de-France as a member of the Communist Party, and later quit the party to establish his Martinique Independent Revolution Party. He also served as the deputy to the French National Assembly. He retired from politics in 1993.

that poets make terrible politicians. Known in the world of letters as the progenitor of Negritude (the first diasporic "black pride" movement), a major voice of Surrealism, and one of the great French poets, Césaire is also revered for his role in modern anticolonial and Pan-African movements. While it might appear that the poet and politician operated in separate spheres, Césaire's life and work demonstrate that poetry can be the motor of political imagination, a potent weapon in any movement that claims freedom as its primary goal.
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