The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

AIMÉ CÉSAIRE

Inside the avid lips of the wind.
Only language
Is lasting bronze.
—martin sorrell

Aimé Césaire 1913–

martinique

A

poet and a politician, Césaire gave up on European claims of univer-

salism early on and instead chose to redefine the relationship between

colonized and colonizer. He left Martinique for Paris in 1931 to prepare

for the École normale supérieure at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. There he met the

future president of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor; together with Césaire’s

childhood friend Léon-Gontran Damas they founded the student journal L’Étu-

diant noir. Césaire contributed an article against assimilation that incorporated

his term négritude, which would come to describe a movement of black writers

and intellectuals interested in preserving a positive racial identity. He was a

member of the French Communist Party until he founded the Parti progressiste

martiniquais. Greatly revered, he also served as mayor of Fort-de-France. His

poetic work, imbued with strongly Surrealist overtones, has an unusual power. In

particular, his Cahier d’un retour au pays natal has inspired a major current of

Francophone expression in poetry and prose. Principal works: Cahier d’un retour

au pays natal, 1939; Tropiques, 1941; Les Armes miraculeuses, 1946; Ferrements,

1960; Cadastre, 1961; Moi laminaire, 1982.

The Automatic Crystal

hello hello night again don’t worry about it this is your caveman speaking grass-
hoppers whose life is as dizzy as their death green lagoon water even drowned
that will never be my colour thinking of you I have to pawn all my words a