Caribbean poet Amie Cesaire was born in the French colony of
Martinique on June 26, 1913 (poets.org). Growing up on the island of
Martinique, Cesaire was surrounded by poverty, hunger, and filth. He attributed
these shortcomings to the colonizing power. In his poem “Notebook of a Return
to the Native Land” he describes the French policemen as “the flunkies of order
and the cockchafers of hope” because he attributes all of the hunger, sickness,
and poverty that the Antilles are plagued with to the French who brought all of
these plights with them. In the aforementioned poem, Cesaire uses his writing
as a tool to convey the effects of colonialism through a surrealist lens. Cesaire says in one particular passage “What
is mine, these few thousand deathbearers who mill in the calabash of an island
and mine too, the archipelago arched with an anguished desire to negate itself,
as if from maternal anxiety to protect this impossibility delicate tenuity separating
one America from another; and these loins which secrete for Europe the hearty liquor
of a Gulf Stream, and one of the two slopes of incandescence between which the
Equator tightropewalks toward Europe.” (p. 47) Here he refers to the colonizers
as “deathbearers” who have come to HIS island because it “secrete[s] for Europe
the hearty liquor of a Gulf Stream” He is letting his unconscious thoughts
speak in this instance by personifying his country. He again uses
personification to make a point in the following sentence “And my nonfence
island, its brave audacity standing at the stern of this Polynesia, before it,
Guadeloupe, split in two down its dorsal line and equal in poverty to us, Haiti
where negritude rose for the first time and stated that it believed in its
humanity and the funny little tail of Florida where the strangulation of a
nigger is being completed, and Africa gigantically caterpillaring up to the
Hispanic foot of Europe it nakedness where Death scythes widely”(p.47). He
presents his island as this being that stands with “Brave audacity” at the
center of this prosperous triangular trade route but is not able to see any of
the profits from this trade. Instead the countries that provide all of the
treasures to the Europeans like Martinique, Haiti, and Guadeloupe are face with
poverty and racism where the people of these countries are purely a means to
end and are not seen as the same type of humans as the colonizers. You can see
a surrealist influence in Ceasaire’s passage through his use of personification
to demonstrate what colonialism is actually doing to these countries and all of
the adverse effects of the colonialists in his home. The vivid images he
creates provide a clear picture of what is going on in his nation yet the
pictures he creates do not necessarily follow all rules of “real life.” For example,
Guadeloupe does not have a dorsal and Africa cannot literally caterpillar up
the Hispanic foot of Europe. Surrealist
influences are quite clear in Ceasaire’s works and help him create vivid
pictures to convey his message.
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