Aime Césaire

Aimé Fernand David Césaire (born with Low-Point, Martinique, the June 26th 1913) is a Poète and politician French. It is one of the founders of the literary movement the Négritude.

Born in a family from seven children, his father is teaching and his mother dressmaker. His/her grandfather was the first teaching black in Martinique and his/her grandmother, contrary to much of women of her generation, could read and to write very early learned it with her grandchildren. From 1919 to 1924 he attends the elementary school of Low-Point, where his/her father is controller of the contributions, then obtains a purse for the college Victor Schoelcher with Fort-de-France. In September 1931 it arrives at Paris as a stock-broker of the French government to return in class of hypokhâgne to the Louis-the-Large Lycée where, as of the first day, it meets Léopold Sédar Senghor, with which it ties a friendship which will last until the death of this last.

Emergence of the concept of négritude

In contact with young African student to Paris, Aime Césaire and his friend Guianese Leon Gontran Damas, which he knows from Martinique, gradually discovers a driven back share of their identity, the African component, victim of cultural alienation characterizing the colonial companies of Martinique and Guyana.

In September 1934, Césaire founds, with other antillo-Guianese and African students (among which Leon Gontran Damas, the Inhabitant of Guadeloupe Guy Tirolien, the Senegaleses Léopold Sédar Senghor and Birago Diop), the newspaper the black student . It is in the pages of this review that for the first time the term of “Négritude will appear”. This concept, forged by Aime Césaire in reaction to the cultural oppression of the French colonial system, aims rejecting on the one hand the French project of cultural assimilation and at promoting Africa and its culture, devalued by racism resulting from the ideology colonialist.

Built against the French colonial ideology of the time, the project of Négritude is more cultural than political. It acts, beyond a vision partisane and racial of the world, of an active and concrete humanism, bound for all oppressed planet. Césaire declares indeed: “I am race of those which one oppresses”.

Having succeeded in 1935 the entrance examination to the National university, Césaire spends the summer in Dalmatie in his/her friend Petar Guberina and starts to write there the Cahier of a return to the native land , (“evocation on the Dalmatian coast of my island”, will say it), that it will complete in 1938. It reads in 1936 the translation of the” History of the African civilization” of Frobenius. It prepares its exit in 1938 of the National university with a report, “the Topic of the South in the négro-American literature of the USA”. Marrying in 1937 a coed inhabitant of Martinique, Suzanne Turned russet, Aime Césaire, incorporated letters, returns to Martinique in 1939, to teach, just like his wife, with the Schœlcher college.

The cultural combat under the mode of Vichy

The situation inhabitant of Martinique at the end of the Thirties is that of a country in prey with a major cultural alienation, the elites privileging before all the references arriving of France, colonial metropolis. As regards literature, the rare works inhabitant of Martinique of the time go until taking on an exoticism of good quality, pastichant the external glance expresses in the few French books mentioning Martinique. This Doudouisme, whose authors such as Mayotte Capécia are holding them, was going clearly to feed the stereotypes striking the population inhabitant of Martinique.

It is in reaction against this situation that the Césaire couple, shouldered by other intellectuals inhabitant of Martinique like Rene Ménil and Aristide Maugée, founds in 1941 the Revue Tropics. Whereas the Second world war causes the blockade of Martinique by the United States (which does not make confidence with the mode of collaboration of Vichy), the living conditions on the spot are degraded. The mode founded by the Admiral Robert, special correspondent of the Vichy government, is racist and repressive. In the communes, the elected officials of color are deposited and replaced by representatives of békés (downward of the colonists). In this context, the censure aims directly the Tropiques review, which will appear, with difficulty, until in 1943.

The world war also marks the passage in Martinique of the surrealist poet André Breton (which reports her adventures in a short work, Martinique, charming lady of snakes ). Breton discovers the poetry of Césaire through the Cahier of a return to the native land and meets it in 1941. In 1943 it writes the foreword of the bilingual edition of the “Cahier of a return to the native land”, published in the review “Fountain” (n° 35) directed by Max-pol. Fouchet and in 1944 that of the collection the miraculous weapons , which marks the rallying of Césaire to the Surréalisme. Called " the negro fondamental" , it will influence authors such as Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant (who were pupils of Césaire to the Schoelcher college), the inhabitant of Guadeloupe Daniel Maximin and well of others. Its thought and its poetry also clearly marked the intellectuals African and black American fights about it against colonization and acculturation.

After war, the political combat

In 1945, Aime Césaire, co-opted by the communist elites which see in him the symbol of a revival, is elected mayor of Fort-de-France. In the tread, he is also elected appointed, mandate which he will preserve without interruption until in 1993. Its mandate, taking into account the economic situation and social of bloodless Martinique after years of blockade and the collapse of the sugar industry, is to obtain the departmentalization of Martinique in 1946.

It is a claim which goes back to the last years of the 19th century and which had shaped in 1935, year of tercentenary of the fastening of Martinique in France by Belain d' Esnambuc. Little included/understood by many movements on the left in Martinique already close to the independantism, at counter-current of the liberation movements occurring already in Indo-China, India or with the the Maghreb, this measurement aims, according to Césaire, to fight against the influence béké on the policy inhabitant of Martinique, his clientelism, its corruption and the structural conservatism which sticks to it. It is, according to Césaire, by measurement of cleansing, modernization, and to allow the economic development and social of Martinique, that the young deputy makes this decision.

In 1947 Césaire creates with Alioune Diop the review African Présence . In 1948 appears the Anthologie of the new negro poetry and Madagascan , prefaced by Jean-Paul Sartre, which devotes the movement of the “négritude”.

Being opposed to the French Communist party on the question of the Hungary, Aimé Cesaire leaves the PC in 1956, to found later two years the Parti progressist inhabitant of Martinique (PPM), in which it will assert the autonomy of Martinique. Sitting at the National Assembly like not registered of 1958 to 1978, then like Socialist of 1978 to 1993. Césaire will remain mayor of Fort-de-France until in 2001. The development of the capital of Martinique since the Second world war is characterized by a massive Rural migration, caused by the decline of the sugar industry and the demographic explosion created by the improvement of the sanitary arrangements of the population. The emergence of popular quarters constituting a stable electoral base for the PPM, and job creation plethoric with the town hall of Fort-de-France were the solutions found to avoid the social urgency of the time in the short run. The cultural policy of Aime Césaire is incarnated by the creation of the Municipal service of Cultural activity (SERMAC), which through popular workshops of arts (dance, craft industry, music) and prestigious Festival of Fort-de-France, puts forward the shares hitherto scorned of the culture inhabitant of Martinique.

Its " speech of the colonialisme" was for the first time at the program of the French baccalaureat in 1998.

Today Aimé Césaire withdrew itself from the political life (and in particular from the town hall of Fort-de-France, with the profit of Serge Letchimy), but remains a character impossible to circumvent of the Histoire inhabitant of Martinique. After the death of his comrade Senghor, there remains one of the last founders of the thought negritudist.

In spite of his great age, Aimé Césaire is always solicited and influential. One will note his reaction in articles 3 and 4 of the law of February 23rd, 2005, of which the goal is to make say to the historians who colonization was a positive thing:

AFP Dispatch of December 6th, 2005

the poet and politician Aimé Césaire for its part announced Monday that it would not receive the Minister of Interior Department. Nicolas Sarkozy had envisaged a maintenance Thursday morning with the cantor of the " négritude" - concept born in the Thirties, in reaction to the French colonial system.

the author of " All Saints' day Louverture" denounce a " piège" in which " it will not fall pas".

" I do not agree to receive the Minister of Interior Department, Nicolas Sarkozy for two reasons. First reason: personal reasons. Second reason: because, author of the' Speech on colonialism', I remain faithful to my doctrines and solved anticolonialist. I could not appear to rejoin me with the spirit and the letter of the law of February 23rd, 2005 " , writing Aime Césaire in a communiqué."

In March 2006, Aimé Césaire reconsiders his decision and receives Nicolas Sarkozy. He comments on his meeting thus:

It is a new man. One feels in him a force, a will, ideas. It is on this basis that we will judge it.

During the program of the présidentelle election of 2007, it supports Ségolène Royal actively, including by accompanying it at the time of a meeting.

You bring confidence to us and allow me to also tell you the hope.

Its political course

Of 1945 to 2001: Mayor of Fort de France (during 56 years)
Of 1945 to 1993: Deputy of Martinique
Of 1983 to 1986: President of the District council of Martinique
Of 1945 to 1949 and 1955 to 1970: General adviser of Fort de France

The Martinique airport - Aime Césaire

By decree of the Minister for transport, equipment, tourism and sea, Dominique Perben, dated January 15th, 2007, the airport of Fort-de-France - Lamentin is called Aéroport Martinique - Aime Césaire.

Works

complete Works (three volumes), Fort-de-France, Desormeaux, 1976.

; Poetry

Book of a return to the native land , Paris, African Presence, (1939; 1960)
miraculous Weapons (1946; Paris, Gallimard, 1970)
Sun cuckoo-roller (1947; Paris, Editions K., 1948)
Body lost (engravings of Picasso), Paris, Editions Fragrance, (1950)
Line fittings , Paris, Threshold, (1960; 1991)
Land register , Paris, Threshold, (1961)
Me, laminar , Paris, Threshold, (1982)
Poetry , Paris, Threshold, (1994)

; Theater

And the dogs keep silent , Paris, Présence African, 1958; 1997
the Tragedy of the king Christophe , Paris, African Presence, (1963; 1993)
One season in Congo , Paris, Threshold, (1966, 2001)
a storm, according to the Storm of William Shakespeare: adaptation for a negro theater ), Paris, Threshold, (1969; 1997)

; Tests

Slavery and colonization , Paris, University Presses of France, 1948. Republication: Victor Schoelcher and the abolition of slavery , Lectoure, Editions the Capuchin, 2004.
Speech on colonialism , Paris, editions Advertisements, 1950; editions African Presence, 1955.
Speech on the négritude , (1950).

; History

All Saints' day Louverture, the French revolution and the colonial problem , Paris, African Presence, (1962.

; Talks

Meeting with a fundamental negro, Discussions with Patrice Louis , Paris, Arléa, 2004.
Nègre I am, negro I will remain, Entretiens with Françoise Vergès , Paris, Albin Michel, 2005.

; Audio recording

Aime Césaire , Paris, Hatier, " Voices of the écriture" , 1994.

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