Aimé Césaire, another African giant, has left us to join the ancestors

Biography of Aimé Cesaire

 http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Cesaire.html

French black identity poet Aime Cesaire dies at 94

by Dominique Chabrol
Thu Apr 17, 2008

French poet Aime Cesaire, a leading voice of black cultural identity whose struggle against colonialism resonated in Africa and the United States, died Thursday in Martinique. He was 94.

With fellow writers such as Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, Cesaire invented the term "negritude" which he defined as an "affirmation that one is black and proud of it." Cesaire, a cult figure on his native island Martinique and elsewhere in the French-speaking Caribbean, died in hospital in Fort-de-France. He had been admitted on April 9 with heart problems. He will receive a state funeral here Sunday, to be attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who described the poet as a "symbol of hope for oppressed peoples."

French Culture Minister Christine Albanel and Socialist opposition leader Segolene Royal, who will also fly to Martinique for the funeral, have both suggested the poet's remains should have a last resting place in the Paris Pantheon, where French luminaries are interred. "Papa Cesaire," as he was affectionately known during his long tenure as mayor of Fort-de-France between 1945 and 2001, served as a deputy in the French National Assembly between 1945 and 1993. The island of Martinique is a department, or region integrated into France.

Describing himself as "negro, negro from the bottom of the sky immemorial," Cesaire fought against colonialism through political activism and poetry.

His flamboyant and demanding works are standard texts in universities and are also celebrated in top French theatres.Former Senegalese president Abdou Diouf described Cesaire as a great figure of 20th-century literature, saying he was a "poet who had a world stature while remaining deeply attached to the cultural values of the black world." "I pay tribute to a man who devoted his life to the many struggles being waged on several battlefronts for the cultural and political destiny of his brothers, a noble struggle that was free from hate, which he abhorred," said Diouf.

President Sarkozy said the French nation mourned Cesaire's passing."A free and independent spirit, he embodied during his entire life the struggle for identity and the richness of his African roots," Sarkozy said.

"Through his universal appeal for the respect of human dignity, consciousness-raising and responsibility, he will remain a symbol of hope for all oppressed people." Born on June 25, 1913 in Martinique, Cesaire was educated in Paris, where he attended the Lycee Louis-le-Grand on a scholarship before passing an entrance exam for the elite Ecole Normale Superieure. In his student days he and Senghor created the literary review "L'Etudiant Noir" ("The Black Student"). With his "negritude," Cesaire was a forerunner of the later "black is beautiful" movement in the United States.

His ideas were first fully expressed in his long poem "Return to My Native Land," a powerful depiction of the ambiguities of Caribbean life and culture.As a playwright he is best known for two plays, "The Tragedy of King Christophe" and an original adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

Aimé Césaire, Martinique Poet and Politician, Dies at 94

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

April 18, 2008

FORT-DE-FRANCE, Martinique (AP) — Aimé Césaire, an anticolonialist poet and politician who was honored throughout the French-speaking world and who was an early proponent of black pride, died here on Thursday. He was 94.

A government spokeswoman, Marie Michèle Darsières, said he died at a hospital where he was being treated for heart problems and other ailments.Mr. Césaire was one of the Caribbean’s most celebrated cultural figures. He was especially revered in his native Martinique, which sent him to the French parliament for nearly half a century and where he was repeatedly elected mayor of Fort-de-France, the capital city. In Paris in the 1930s he helped found the journal Black Student, which gave birth to the idea of “negritude,” a call to blacks to cultivate pride in their heritage. His 1950 book “Discourse on Colonialism” was considered a classic of French political literature.

Mr. Césaire’s ideas were honored and his death mourned in Africa and France as well as the Caribbean. The office of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said Mr. Sarkozy would attend Mr. Césaire’s funeral, scheduled for Sunday in Fort-de-France. Students at Lycée Scoelcher, a Martinique high school where Mr. Césaire once taught, honored him in a spontaneous ceremony Thursday. Mr. Césaire’s best-known works included the essay “Negro I Am, Negro I Will Remain” and the poem “Notes From a Return to the Native Land.”

Born on June 26, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, Martinique, Mr. Césaire attended high school and college in France. In 1937 he married another student from Martinique, Suzanne Roussi, with whom he eventually had four sons and two daughters. He returned to Martinique during World War II and was mayor of Fort-de-France from 1945 to 2001, except for a break from 1983 to 1984. Mr. Césaire helped Martinique shed its colonial status in 1946 to become an overseas department of France.  He was affiliated with the French Communist Party early in his career but became disillusioned in the 1950s and founded the Martinique Progressive Party in 1958. He later allied with the Socialist Party in France’s National Assembly, where he served from 1946 to 1956 and from 1958 to 1993.

As the years passed, he remained firm in his views. In 2005 he refused to meet with Mr. Sarkozy, who was then minister of the interior, because of Mr. Sarkozy’s endorsement of a bill citing the “positive role” of colonialism. “I remain faithful to my beliefs and remain inflexibly anticolonialist,” Mr. Césaire said at the time. The offending language was struck from the bill. Despite the snub, Mr. Sarkozy last year successfully led a campaign to rename Martinique’s airport in honor of Mr. Césaire. Mr. Césaire eventually met with Mr. Sarkozy in March 2006 but endorsed his Socialist rival, Segolene Royal, in the 2007 French elections.