Cessaire - Matt Tsang

I do think that the passages Cessaire writes is influenced by surrealism. Instead of blurring the lines of illusion and reality, Cessaire seems to intertwine emotions and history to express the amount of injustice, pain, torture, and vulnerability of colonialism. On the middle of page 55, he uses the imagery of physical objects and experiences to comment on the history and oppression of colonialism.

He writes "But who misleads my voice? who gates my voice?" comparing his inability to be heard to how colonists in history very often hear the concerns of the slaves, but often disregards them. He uses his own body as a physical representation of the absurd oppression of the slaves over many years. He blames the colonists for the "one hundred years of whip lashes...one hundred years of my patience...one hundred years of my effort simply to stay alive." The surrealist aspect of this part of the passage is that it takes a specific physical action of being whipped and barely surviving and  encompasses the whole experience of colonialism and slavery as such. 

He then goes into more sensory surrealism, saying "we sing of venomous flowers flaring in fury-filled prairies;". This has such a strong imagery. To sing is to speak of the deathly quality of a flower. Typically flowers are beautiful, so it is strange that Cessaire is comparing this suffering as beautiful, because it is part of nature, part of the course of life. Flowers are born the way they are, just like slaves are born into their status. It is tough to properly understand this analogy, why the suffering is compared to a poisonous flower. Maybe it is a comment on how cruel nature can be, both mother nature and human nature. A person's life is precious, no matter who it is. The difference is the inside, the character and intent of the person that makes the person deadly.

He also says "the skies of love cut with bloodclots" which is such a strange juxtaposition of physical imagery and bodily pain of a cut. He is describing the beautiful sky has lost it's appeal in almost all of it's association. When the sky is orange and yellow from sunsets and sunrise, it can be remind Cessaire of the color of blood, reminding him that the world has amounted to this amount of pain. It is as if the world is in pain with him. In addition, the sky has a hopeful connotation; people look to the sky to look for something more, to feel something bigger than themselves. But with the skies reminding him of bloodclots it again forces him to be unable to escape this pain and suffering. He must accept that he is limited. 

Cessaire takes associations of nature, physical bodies, history, and geography and thoroughly mixes them together to the point where it creates a kind of its own nonsense. The reader is overwhelmed by all of the mix and matched words and descriptions to describe nature and pain. Cessaire blurs the associations of senses, emotions, and reality, which is why I find his writing to be powerfully intense.