French Poet Aimé Césaire

Aimé Césaire came from a solid background which made him a huge participant in the annals of colonial and postcolonial francophone literature. Francophone means French-speaking Poem. Cesaire played a huge role in politics. He held several elected offices such as city mayor of the capital of Martinique and a representative in the National Assembly of France. He was also a political actor. He played a huge role in creating the legislation that changed France's “Old Colonies” in the West Indies and Indian Ocean into full French states.

Aimé Césaire was born on June 26, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, a small town on the northeast coast of Martinique in the French Caribbean. The schools that he attended were the Lycée Schoelcher in Martinique, and the Parisian schools Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. 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 was deeply involved in the struggle for French West Indian rights and served as the deputy to the French National Assembly. He retired from politics in 1993. Césaire died on April 17, 2008 in Martinique. The reason why Cesaire established himself as the political voice in Martinique is because during the war he became increasingly critical of the Vichy government. Césaire and his wife returned to the Caribbean as World War II began. Although Martinique was far removed from Europe, as a French territory it suffered economically from a German blockade, then later from censorship imposed by a representative of the Vichy government.

Cesaire intentionally named his poem Mississipi. “Mississipi” was published in 2011 by Wesleyan University Press in A. James Arnold’s and Clayton Eshleman’s bilingual edition of Césaire’s Solar Throat Slashed. A. James Arnold is the author of Modernism and Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of Aimé Césaire and the editor of the Paris edition of Césaire’s complete literary works. He was a juror of the Casa de las Américas English-language prize (Havana) in 1998. In the poem "Mississipi," Cesaire is discussing the racism that went on in the state of Mississippi. He repeats the line "To bad for you men" in each stanza, emphasizing who he is directly talking to. He uses the reference of eyes many times throughout the poem, which also correlates with the imagery he is providing in this poem.

“Lost Body” is the title piece of a collection of ten poems Césaire published in 1949 (in an edition including thirty-two etchings by Picasso). As Arnold, who regards “Lost Body” as one of Césaire’s most powerful poems and the finest example of his demiurgic manner, has written: “‘Lost Body’ is located at the watershed that slopes in one direction toward the origins of negritude and in the other toward the modifications necessitated by a hostile political and economic situation." The poem "Lost Body" is not the easiest poems to read. A reader must carefully intake each word to understand it fully. There are also words used that I believe are French terms. The use of "I" is very prevalent throughout the poem. Even the Author that translated this poem, said he had to go to Cesaire for help in translating some of his text, because it did not translate smoothly with English.

"Mississipi"

Too bad for you men who don’t notice that my eyes remember slings and black flags which murder with each blink of my Mississipi lashes

Too bad for you men who do not see who do not see anything not even the gorgeous railway signals formed under my eyelids by the black and red discs of the coral snake that my munificence coils in my Mississipi tears

Too bad for you men who do not see that in the depth of the reticule where chance has deposited our Mississipi eyes there waits a buffalo sunk to the very hilt of the swamp’s eyes

Too bad for you men who do not see that you cannot stop me from building to his fill egg-headed islands of flagrant sky under the calm ferocity of the immense geranium of our sun.

"Lost Body"

I who Krakatoa I who everthing better than a monsoon I who open shest I who Laelaps I who bleat better than a cloaca I who outside the musical scale

I who Zambezi or frantic or rhombos or cannibal I would like to be more and more humble and more lowly always more serious without vertigo or vestige to the point of losing myself falling into the live semolina of a well-opened earth

Outside in lieu of atmosphere there'd be a beautiful haze no dirt in it each drop of water forming a sun there whose name the same for all things would be

DELICIOUS TOTAL ENCOUNTER so that one would no longer know what goes by

-a star or a hope or a petal from the flamboyant tree or an underwater retreat raced across by the flaming torches of aurelian jellyfish

Then I imagine life would flood my whole being better still I would feel it touching me or biting me lying down I would see the finally free odors come to me like merciful hands finding their way to sway their long hair in me longer than this past that I cannot reach.

Things stand back make room among you room for my repose carrying in waves my frightening crest of anchor-like roots looking for a place to take hold

Things I probe I probe me the street-porter I am root-porter and I bear down and I force and I arcane I omphale

Ah who leads me back toward the harpoons I am very weak I hiss yes I hiss very ancient things I whoa lie down wind and against my unstable and fresh muzzle against my eroded face press you cold face of ravaged laughter

The wind alas I will continue to hear it nigger nigger nigger from the depths of the timeless sky a little less loud than today but still too loud and this crazed howling of dogs and horses which it thrusts at our forever fugitive heels but I in turn in the air shall rise a scream so violent that I shall splatter the whole sky and with my branches torn to shreds and with the insolent jet of my wounded and solemn bole I shall command the islands to be