In 1941, a ship carrying a group of writers and artists fleeing occupied France docked on the island. "We are walking compost hideously promising tender cane and silky cotton," he wrote. Césaire, then only 26, returned to Martinique to teach literature, shortly after the publication of "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land." The anti-colonialist surrealist scream of a poem put the idea of négritude into action, exposing the horrors of slavery and its legacy. Césaire spent his formative years in the 1930s studying in Paris, where, with the help of other prominent black intellectuals, he established the concept of négritude, the conscious act of acceptance and pride in one's own African background and a rejection of colonial racism and oppression. In the waves, along the windy slopes of the volcano, in the banana fields, his voice unearthed for me the human tales hidden under the beauty of the island.īorn in 1913 on what was then a French colony, Mr. So when I heard that this year marked the 100th anniversary of his birth (he died in 2008), I planned a voyage through Martinique and its history, with its favorite son as my guide. Though raw, enraged even, his poetry is anchored in his love of his native land: "My beautiful country with its high sesame shores," he called it. They gave me new insights into the painful history of Martinique. I hiked the menacing volcano Mount Pelée I explored the rain forest I discovered the people. As an adult, after a move to New York, I began to venture beyond the bougainvillea and the beaches. I first visited Martinique at age 15, on a tropical interlude with my Swiss parents, and was instantly engulfed in the Caribbean breath.
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"He would suddenly spot a tree and ask me to stop and climb in the back so we could look it up together," Mr. Houcou would ferry the poet as he crisscrossed the 45-mile-long island armed with his beloved botanic treatise (its title seems to be lost to history).
Kg beneath your beautiful chunk drivers#
Take, for instance, Daniel Houcou, one of two drivers assigned to Mr.
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Everyone I met on Martinique harbored at least one intimate memory of Aimé Césaire - a quiet encounter or speech etched forever in their consciousness - but they all agreed: this poet, playwright and politician, who achieved an almost monumental status on the Caribbean island, was the most humble man they had ever known. As the stories poured out, eyes sparkled, smiles widened, hands danced.