French-English bilingual edition. Andre Breton called Cesaire's Cahier 'nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time'. It is a seminal text in Surrealist, French and Black literatures - published in full in English for the first time in Bloodaxe's bilingual Contemporary French Poets series. Aime Cesaire (1913-2008) was born in in Basse-Pointe, a village on the north coast of Martinique, a former French colony in the Caribbean (now an overseas departement of France). His book Discourse on Colonialism (1950) is a classic of French political literature. Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1956) is the foundation stone of francophone Black literature: it is here that the word Negritude appeared for the first time. Negritude has come to mean the cultural, philosophical and political movement co-founded in Paris in the 1930s by three Black students from French colonies: the poets Leon-Gontran Damas from French Guiana; Leopold Senghor, later President of Senegal; and Aime Cesaire, who became a deputy in the French National Assembly for the Revolutionary Party of Martinique and was repeatedly elected Mayor of Fort-de-France. As a poet, Cesaire believed in the revolutionary power of language, and in the Notebook he combined high literary French with Martinican colloquialisms, and archaic turns of phrase with dazzling new coinages. The result is a challenging and deeply moving poem on the theme of the future of the negro race which presents and enacts the poignant search for a Martinican identity. The Notebook opposes the ideology of colonialism by inventing a language that refuses assimilation to a dominant cultural norm, a language that teaches resistance and liberation.

Return to My Native

Literature & Fiction

Césaire, Aimé

Poetry

Penguin Classics

AimE CEsaire Return to My Native Land (Penguin Modern Classics) /anglais

Genre Fiction

Penguin Uk

The Tragedy of King Christophe (1963, revised 1970) is recognized as the Martiniquan writer and activist Aime Cesaire’s greatest play. Set in the period of upheaval in Haiti after the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1806, it follows the historical figure of Henri Christophe, a slave who rose to become a general in Toussaint Louverture’s army. Christophe declared himself king in 1811 and ruled the northern part of Haiti until 1820. Cesaire employs Shakespearean plotting and revels in the inexhaustible possibilities of language to convey the tragedy of Christophe’s transformation from a charismatic leader sensitive to the oppression of his people to an oppressor himself. Paul Breslin and Rachel Ney’s nimble, accurate translation includes an introduction and explanatory notes to guide students, scholars, and general readers alike.

The Tragedy of King Christophe: A Play.

Random House Trade Paperbacks

This edition, containing an extensive introduction, notes, the French original, and a new translation of Césaire's poetry--the complex and challenging later works as well as the famous Notebook--will remain the definitive Césaire in English.

Aime Cesaire: The Collected Poetry

History & Criticism

University of California Press

This edition, containing an extensive introduction, notes, the French original, and a new translation of Césaire's poetry―the complex and challenging later works as well as the famous Notebook―will remain the definitive Césaire in English.

Aime Cesaire, The Collected Poetry

Eshleman, Clayton

Smith, Annette J.

A collection of ten poems Cesaire published in 1949, in an edition including thirty-two etchings by Picasso.

Lost Body

George Braziller

The Tragedy of King Christophe (1963, revised 1970) is recognized as the Martiniquan writer and activist Aime Cesaire’s greatest play. Set in the period of upheaval in Haiti after the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1806, it follows the historical figure of Henri Christophe, a slave who rose to become a general in Toussaint Louverture’s army. Christophe declared himself king in 1811 and ruled the northern part of Haiti until 1820. Cesaire employs Shakespearean plotting and revels in the inexhaustible possibilities of language to convey the tragedy of Christophe’s transformation from a charismatic leader sensitive to the oppression of his people to an oppressor himself. Paul Breslin and Rachel Ney’s nimble, accurate translation includes an introduction and explanatory notes to guide students, scholars, and general readers alike.

LaTragedie du Roi Christophe

AIME, CESAIRE

French & European Pubns

Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal

Non-Vicious Circle: Twenty Poems of Aime Cesaire

Stanford University Press

A collection of ten poems Césaire published in 1949, in an edition including thirty-two etchings by Picasso.

Lost body

G. Braziller

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