Can`t Stand Up for Falling Down: Haiti, Its Revolutions, and

"
"
era, it still offered a few possible adventures to a person of Imagination. One only has
to scan the many sun and sex narratives of unattached
though, to realize
that a
draw of a Haitian vacation would have been a local romance or sex romp.
However, what makes Kathy's adventures less than common is the lack of pretense
and the extensive amount of space rendered to the qUickly repetitive details of sexual
acts. No doubt this was meant to satisfy the specific reqUirements of the porn press,
which had commissioned this work Still Acker does not miss the opportunity to poke
fun at these types of treks, which can hastily slip from totally libidinous encounters
to passionate affairs of the hean, The heart that is hardest to conquer though is that
of Haiti itself. For there is no one Haiti, as Kathy quickly
but several And
when she stops seeing "combinations of things she's never seen before" and begins
to take in fragments of ordinary life, can she recognize them: "Sometimes there's a
bottomless hole in a sidewalk Sometimes a sidewalk disappears ,. Children
and yell Women sit.. ." The renowned Haitian painter and Vodou priest An­
dre Pierre is reported to have said that Haiti is like an accordion, Sometimes it's big
Sometimes it's small. One can also add that sometimes it plays (or plays along) and
sometimes it doesn't. In the year of the bicentennial of its independence, once
Haiti, or the folks who rule it and others who want to rule It, are not playing
either. So that on 1 January 2004, one was more likely to read about tear gas in Haitian
streets than about the great feat performed by a nation of enslaved and freed men and
women who wrenched their liberty from the grip of the world's most powerful army
of their time, But like Pierre's accordion, Haiti will continue to play its music, even
if it's sometimes discordant. And it will continue to fascinate nomadic scribes like
Acker who recognize in Haiti's beauty and ugliness, struggles and triumphs, endless
creative possibilities, as well as the brilliant writers you'll read in this special issue of
Research in African Literatures.
enjoy the
Can't Stand Up for Falling Down:
Haiti, Its Revolutions, and
Twentieth-Century Negritudes
MARTIN MUNRO University of the West Indies ABSTRACT
The repercussions of the Haitian Revolution have been the sullect of much
historical, economic, and political scholarship, Less attention
been paid to the cultural after-effects of Haiti's anticolonial
essay calls for a more thorough critical re-evaluation of how t
impacted cultures in the Caribbean, in the New World. and
contribution to this process, the essay revisits and
the three central figures of the Negritude movement-SenghorHDamas, and
Cesaire-and considers how Haiti shaped their respective visions of "black­
ness," !n tracing references to Haiti in Negritude poetry, prose, and theater, it
argues that the Revolution is of only marginal importance to the African Sen­
while for the Caribbeans Damas and Cesaire, the first black republic in
the New World is a persistent, if often ambiguous and contradictory, Doint of
reference,
n a well-known formulation, Antonio Benltez-Rojo describes the colonial planta­
tion system as "the big bang of the Caribbean universe, whose slow exploslOn
throughout modern history threw out billions and billions of cultural fragments in
all directions-fragments of diverse kinds that, in their endless voyage, come together
in an instant to form a dance step, a linguistic trope, the line of a poem, and afterward
each other to re-form and pull apart once more, and so on" (55) If the
moment in the Caribbean, it was certainly not the
last "big bang" in the region. A seemingly endless series of historical upheavals-for
instance, the Cuban Revolution, the Duvalier years in Haiti, depanmentahzatlon in
the French territories, the 19605 independences in the former British colonies-have
subsequently "thrown out" further cultural "fragments" across the Caribbean and
beyond, into what Edouard Glissant calls the "chaos-monde" 'chaos world: the "choc
I
*
RESEARCH I N AFRICAN LITERATURES, VoL 35, No 2 (Summer 2004)
I(J
2004
*
z
I( ftL
f/L.
~~~!~~!)
0/0
, -)
Ie,
EDWIDGE DANTICAT
shapes all
the riva of time.
or
runs human blood
KATHY ACKER, EMPIRE Of THE SENSELESS
To order a subscrption or a sin&fe issue this journa( ,(ease carf:
if
1-800-842-6796 or visit our website at:
www.iul.journa(s.or8
.~~~~.
INDIANA UNIVERSiTY PRESS 601 NORTH MORTON STREET BLOOMINGTON,
IN
47404 PHONE: 1-800-842-6796 FAX: 1-812-855-8507 EMAIL: /[email protected] WEBSITE: WWW,IUPJOURNALS,ORG n the late 19705, the postmodern novelist and self-proclaimed
rapher Kathy Acker was offered eight hundred dollars to v.qite a
twenty-page porn novel. She complied with Kathy
Haiti, one of the mos
linear and conventionally narrated of her many eclectic wo I s of fiction. "For her i
was an experiment in blandness," wrote British novelist a
Acker friend
Winterson in the 14 May 1989 London Times. According t
Goes to Haiti, Acker wanted to see Just how much one could"
basI( components and still have something to say." Acker he
in a 1989 stage interview with Winterson that she wrote Kat
for money, but also to "stick a knife, a little one, up the ass 0
a fictional travelogue in which we Journey through Haiti wit~!a
New York-based artist who, like the author, is named Kathy, As soon as Kathy arrive
in Haiti, landing at what she terms "Jean-Claude Duvaher Airport," she's
bombarded by men who want to be her lover. Of all the fellows, includmg cahclrivers
students, and businessmen, who take great pains to convince her that "women (1
Haiti don't go around alone," Kathy falls for Roger, the youngest in a fanuly of norther!
mulatto robber barons. Kathy nevertheless becomes extremely attached to Roger, wHl
whom she has most of the sex in the book. When Roger leaves Kathy, at both tllS wile':
and father's request, she ends up visiting a Vodou pnest who "shows Kathy to herself
As cliche.d as all this sounds, it's certainly not as bland and reductive as Ackel
have intended. EspeCially smce Acker's explorauon of Hail! isn't
novel. Based on her other writmgs, It's obvious that Acker had
(or several) to Haiti or at least had an affinity [or the place In her 1988
of the Senseless, in which terrorists roam through a postapocalyptic Paris, one of Ih,
narrators pays tribute to Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture for
Vodou "to defeat Western hegemony" Louverture is also quoted, saymg
worth pondering now, at this commemorative yet difficult moment in Haitian
"1£ self-interest alone prevails with nations and their masters, there is another powel
Nature speaks in louder tones than philosophy or self interest"
the time Kathy arrives in Haiti in the late 19705, pre-AlDS and
Doc, she's already trailing a number of notable ambient scribes who have made the is
land nation their
As Graham Greene's Brown confesses to one of his gUfsts il
The Comedians, even though Haiti was no longer a tourist paradise during the Duvalic
I
GoeSi
MARTIN MUNRO
y
actuel de tant de cultures qui s'embrasent, se repoussent, disparaissent, subsistent,
s'endorment ou se transforment, lentement ou a vites5e foudroyante" 'the current
clash of 50 many cultures which flare up, repel each other, disappear, subsist, die, or
transform each other, slowly, or at lightning speed' (Traite du Tout-Monde 22)
There could scarcely be a ll'l:0re sYrrlb.0Iic;~11y_irnp<2~t.ant,':r)igJ?oar,tg:~~l}"Car,ibbei1,n
htstorytnanTne HiiltlanRev(;iution, an epic act of insubordination whose cataclys­
mic sc~Te'and antica~ni;1 sig nif1cance remain difficult to fully appreciate even now,
two hundred years after Dessalines's final proclamation of independence, This was,
let us remind ourselves, an event that sent shockwaves across commodity markets,
shudders through the European merchant classes, and ripples of encouragement to
other New World slave communities, In his recent re-evaluation of the revolution, the
histonan David p, Geggus cuts a broad sweep across time and place in an attempt to
communicate a sense of the revolution's manifold, and often amblguous and contra­
d ictory, repercussions:
y From the Mississippi Valley to the streets of Rio and the council chambers of the
, European capitals, the Haillan Revolution had a multifarious impact. The fifteen­
year struggle for racial equality, slave emancipation, and colonial tndependence
alarmed and excited public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic It shaped great
power politiCS, generated migration movements, and opened new economic fron e
tlerSe It stimulated slave resistance and new expansions of slavery, while embltter­
ing the debates developing about race and abolition The revolution also
one of William Wordsworth's greatest sonnets, Victor Hugo's first novel, works
by Heinrich von Kleist, Alphonse de Lamartine, and John Greenleaf Whittier, and
in the twentieth century, the new literary genre of marvelous realism It made an
imprint, too, on the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Hegel (247)
Haitlanist historians such as Geggus, Seymour Drescher, and Robin Blackburn have
aSSiduously mapped out the political, economic, and social repercussions of the revo­
but have tended to give less attentlon to its wltural aftereffects, Perhaps this IS
because cultural change IS less tangible, more difficult to quantify than, say, the ways
in which refugees from Saint-Domingue influenced the nascent sugar productior
industry in Louisiana, Historical records of the revolutionary period tend to register
numbers and statistics, and generally overlook changes in language, religion, folklore,
music, art, and other cultural manifestations, Culture, however, runs deep, and is
elusive, aUld, and ever-evolVing, Therefore, in the absence of any conscious attempt
to record it, cultural change occurs almost
Gauging changes in the human imagination is, if anything, an even more dif­
ficult task, as events impact on individuals and groups in idiosyncratic,
able ways, "Concrete" factors such as social class, race, and gender play
roles m determining the effects on individuals of any historical or social event. In
the case of the Haitian Revolution, this truth was brought into sharp
a broad
continuum of reactions, ranging from joy and hope to terror and despair, filtered
into imaginations in Saint-Domingue, the wider Caribbean, the New World, and
Europe. The destruction of apparently unassailable truths-the indefattgabHity of
" the "natural" subhuman status of "blacks"-sent shockwaves through
collective and individual imaginations. The scholarly neglect of how the revolution
reshaped cultures and imaginations needs to be addressed. As the sociologist Nikos
Papastergiadis says, "Imagination has become central to all forms of social n>"~rlir"
*
of human experience mus
as such, any attempt to understand the
and decisive working~
negotiate the invisible, intangible, yet all the more
of human culture and imagination,
This essay is essentially a subchapter in the tome that demands to be (re)wntten
the grand work which will reconsider theaftereffects ofthe Hanian Revolution
the perspective of culture and theimagl~ailO'i;~My interest H~s ~pecifican)'
ingoli:e more:;;Bigbang" momentira:~'a;:{'t;b';;-a'Il c,1llture-the Negntude movementunderstanding tn€ ' waysin which the Haitian'Revolution shaped the "grand en
negre" 'great black cry,' which emanated almost a century and a half after 1804 from
the voices of Senghor, Damas, and Cesaire, Given the differing backgrounds of the
three figureheads-the Senegalese Senghor naturally had a more intimate connec­
tion with Africanity and "blackness" than did the Guyanese Damas or the Martimcan
Cesaire-it is no surprise that their VIsions of Negritude should also vary. Indeed, the
ways in wluch each figure relates to HaitI and the revolution exemolifv their
emphases, their idiosyncratic Ncgritudes
Senghor, for example, perhaps not surpnsmgly, makes little reference to Halt]
in his poetry. His poem "Priere de PalX" ("Prayer for Peace") from the 1948 collectlOn
Hastie:; noires ("Black
contains one of his very rare mentions of Haiti. Thls
poem is a long prayer of supplication, a plea for deliverance from war and colOnIal­
ism. In it, he suggests that it is the experience of colonialism which unites Africa
and the New World, and these are presented as parts of Cl single transatlantic
suffering and crucified:
Toi l'arbre de douleur, mats au­
au pied de cette croix-et ce n'est
crucinee
dessus de l'Ancien et du Nouveau Monde
ombre l'Amerique
Et son bras droit s'etend sur mon pays, ct son cote
l'Homme en face du Tyran
Et son coeur est Haiti cher, Hairi qui osa
Lord, at the foot of this cross-and You are no longer the tree of pain, but above
the Old and the New World, Africa crucified
And its right arm stretches out across my country, and its left side shades
America
And its heart is beloved Haiti, Haiti which dared to Drodann Humankind in the
face of the Tyrant. (92)
In this passage, Hain is the symbolic heart of the colonized, pan-African worlCl, a
natIon that, despite, or indeed because of its historical daring, IS still "crUCIfIed,"
at the mercy of the Western world. Senghor acknowledges here the importance of
Haiti as a symbol of anticolonial revolt, and yet his work in general carnes very few
references to the "first black republic" in the New World, and remains very much
Africa-centered,
Haiti is, by contrast, of far greater importance to the Carfubeans Damas and
Usaire, who identify racially with Senghor, but whose NegriLUj'es are mevitably
plOduct of what Henry. Louis Gates,JI ,c,llls the "veritable seethi: cauldron of cross­
cultural contact" created by Atlantic slavery and the plantatIon 5 tern, the
of exchange and reviSIon among numerous previously isolated Bl k African cultures"
As such, Caribl:l,~5I,!:LtJ.,S:,gI.tt:.!l.des express it far more
......
and loss than that of$enghor.i';:;ev(tal;ly,loo,
Senghor to seek out New World models of revolt and identity, an
MARTIN MUNRO
r
prormnently in their works, And yet, when
evoke Haiti, Damas and Cesaire
highlight different figures, different eras,
For example, in a fairly long eulogistic essay from 1960, Damas declares Jean
Price-Mars "the father of Haitianism," In that essay,\I)~~~~~_£~~~~>..l~_~~!~
le~~~!!~L~,ory fr£!£,lh e tIal!i'!,11?:,1900, re~~ir:g_a~§ecti(n~,()ft,lIe sc;ienti5c pac;Js.m,
'Of Gustavel:~1Jo!:",. thr()l!gh JheJ9J5-34 i\me[i<:'i'lr.\QFcllP;'IJ.\()f.\,illJd,thecpns;;',Cj,lj,mt
fo~ndingofthe Inciigenist moyemem 111 Haiti, and finally asserts Price, Mars as one
tht!orem()sti~~plr~ti~~'sfor- the Negritude groupTAITnough~he'Goesn6t6vertly
deCllm;; rCDamas"cfearlY seesPiice:Mars
ihet"wentieth-century inheritor of the
revolUtionary legacy, In the essay, Damas cites Price-Mars's challenge to Lebon and
shows how the Haitian evokes the memory of the revolution as a counter to French
racism:
-- of
as
Pretendre que les HaHiens ont herite de la ciVIlisation de Saint-Domingue ct
l'ont reduite a Uhe miserable decadence, pretendre en un tour de passe'passe
qu'une guerre atroce qui a dure quatorze ans, que de sanglantes batailles et de mas­
sives obstructions a la suite desquelles une agglomeration humame, traitee eb bete
de somme, a reconquis par sa volonte de puissance la dignite de soi erie droit de se
gouverner e11e-meme, pretehdre que tout ce processus n'est qu'un effet dll hasard,
et bafouer ainsi les efforts de (ette communaute qui a longtemps lutte contre Ie
monde entier pour defendre SOh droit a la vie internationale, n'est-ce pas accutnu­
ler les sophismes et les aberrations pour justHier une these a-prioristique?
To claim that Haitians have inherited a clvihzation from Samt-Domingue and that
they have reduced It to a state of miserable decadence, to claim by a sleight of hand
that a terrible war that lasted fourteen years, that in the wake of bloody battles and
massive obstructions a great mass of humans, treated as beasts of burden, by their
own will for power reconquered their self-digmty and the right to govern itself. to
claim that this whole process is but a chance event, and to thus hold up to ridicule
the efforts of this people which has for a long time fought against the whole world
to defend its right to exist internationally, is tbis not to pile up sophisms and aber­
rations to justify an a prioristic thesis l (qtd, in Damas 167-68)
More than one hundred years after the proclamation of independence, therefore,
Price-Mars still had to defend and justify the revolution in a world that was, and argu­
..--. ably still is, slow to acknowledge Haiti as a legitimate nation, For Damas, Price-Mars is
the ideological and symbolic heir to the revolutionary figureheads; he is, Damas says,
"de ceux qUi se dressent comre les idees toutes faites dont son pays et les siens sont les
seuls a faire les frais" 'one of those who rlse up against fixed ideas, prejudices for which
his country and his people are the only ones who pay the price' (Damas 168)
-..-"".
Damas further argues that Price-Ma~s was one of the first tocriticize postrevoIuti ontliltTail-HteratiJi7s""sierlte'TinltaIlcin"
met ropolitan F;e~ch'models.· As Jack
- observed,";;Haltl:-m:aiglTson~in-&pendance, s'etait aU;lrClee dans une
plutot sterile de 1a France et de sa culture. Lam de favoriser une quel­
conque rupture, les difficultes economiques et sociales du jeune Etat encouragerent
tout au cours du XIXe siecle la bourgeOisie cultivee a se griser de culture fram;aise"
in spite of its independence, had hung onto a rather sterile vision of France and
its culture. Far from favorine any kind of split, the economic and social problems of
>'i'
5
the young State throughout the nineteenth century encouraeed theieducated ITIlddle
class to become intoxicated by French culture'
Perhaps i!9.n~<:al!>::,it.,:,:,a.~the Ileocolonial period of the Arne 'c3l!0ccupation ­
that shociKHaltian WrIting out of its mimetic mode: and led to.
tion's first genu,
flowering, as Damas indicatj':s: "Loccupation americai provoqua chez
un ebranlement dans l'ordre psychologique Cette crise pr fonde determina
dans les diverses couches de la nation une revolution dans l'ordre oral qui donna
lieu ala creation de
de resistance" 'The American Occupatio really shook up
the Hanian psychologically, This deep crisis brought about a moral evolution across
all levels of Haitlan SOCiety, one which gave rtse to new centers of esistance' (173)
Damas suggests here that the Haillan Revolution did not truly liberate the nation
and that the 1920s and 1930$ witnessed a necessary second
a radICal shake-up of complacent (elite) moral and cultural values. As the pIoneer of
this new generation, Price-Mars develops, in Damas's essay, an aura eqUivalent to the
of the original revolution: Toussall1t, DessaiiJ:1j':s, and Christophe, If those three
effected the initial vlOlent revolution.' Price-Mars ushers in a revolutlOnary re-evalu­
andn~valorization of Haitian culture, For Damas, Price-Mars's "revolullon" is
every bit as important as the wars of independence.'
This cultural revolution essentially involved a re-aHgnment of Hainan culture
with that of Africa. Counter to many popular and persistent beliefs about Haiti, the
"fmt black nation" in the New World was never conceived of by its leaders as an
isolated, culturally ll1troverted nallon but as a modern, SOCially progressive state
Consequently, before the lndigenist period, Haitian elite attitudes towards Afnca
were at best ambivalent, and at worst echoed European racist prejudlCes, even among
those, such as Vastey, who had fought during the revolution" [L'AfriqueJ nEe peut
etre civilisee que par la conquete faite en vue de civilisation, ! , j it f;Jut des moyens
puissants pour changer les mc:eurs, [. ,1 on ne peut persuader des hommes qm ne
peuvent pas etre persuades, il faut avoir re~u des lumieres pour cela" , [Africal can only
be ctvilized by being conquered, a conquest which brings civilization, [ .1 power­
ful means are required to change manners and customs, [ J one cannot persuade
people who are unable to be persuaded; that requires a degree of enlightenment'
in Hoffmann 133),
Popular images of Haiti as a place of untamed, premodern Africanity or, as in
Cesaire's classic formulation, the place where "fa negritude se mit debout pour la
premiere fois" 'negritude first stood up: have tended to obscure the reality that the
revolution envisioned a state which, as Michael Dash points out, "would neither be
relegated to the periphery of the world nor would it succumb to atavistic longings
for a racial past. The Impulse was toward the future and not dwelling in
origins, If anything, Haiti was seen as the avant-garde that would rehabihtate the
black race" (The Other America 44-45) As the postrevolutionary period developed,
and the United States became the major threat to Haitian independence, the island's
intellectuals often aligned themselves culturally and SOCIally wuh the former colonial
power, a point made above by Corzani, and underlined by Dash when he says that
"[aJ constant theme of the anti-American sentiment in Haillan writing is the frequent
reference to the refinement and generoSity of France. The HaItian elite, blindly euro,
centric in their attitudes to taste, culture and social mores, rejected the United States
as grasping and coarse" (Haiti and the United States 16-17).)
The: shock of the American Occupation dealt a blow to complacently held im­
ages of Haiti as morally and culturally superior to the "uncivilized" peoples of Africa.
Once more subjugated, Haitian culture increasingly identified itself with the colo­
nized peoples of Africa, as Uon-Frani,;ois Hoffmann points out: "De.sormais
en indigenes sous-developpes, les Haitiens durent se rendre a I'evidence: leur combat
pour l'independance et la dignite nationale rejoignait celui de leurs freres afncains"
'As of then treated as underdeveloped natives, Haitians had to face the fact that their
fight for independence and national dignity had much in common with that of their
African brothers' (144)
As Damas sees it, the pivotal role played by Price-Mars in this radical re-align­
ment of Haitian culture makes him not only "the father of Haitianism" but also "Ie
de depart de notre engagement de pOetes, de conteurs, de romanoers, d'hls­
toriens" 'the starting point for our engagement as poets, storytellers, novelists, and
histonans' (177), The collectivity evoked by Damas ("our engagement") is the broad
Negritude group, as he subsequently makes clear "Lero, Gratiant, Cesalre pour la
Tirohen et Paul Niger pour la Guadeloupe, Senghor et Birago Dtop pour
Ie Senegal, Rabemanjara pour Madagascar et moi-meme pour la Guyane [ J s'en­
gageaient a jouer Ie jeu
consistait a s'mterroger et a regarder la realite en face"
'Lero, Gratiant, and Cesalfe for Martil1lque, Tirolien and Paul Niger for Guadeloupe,
Senghor and Birago Diop for Senegal, Rabemanjara for Madagascar and myself for
Guyana [, , ,J engaged ourselves in the game which conSisted in self-interrogation and
in looking reality straight in the face' (177)~~s..E~~1.tl9~~,that Negr"!tude is not an
int~~e"E!..eEL.ra.:c:JalJye.?,clus.iY~_l2:0v~~~ns)but .has essentIally un.lvers~lis_t~aims,
t_~~~1t o",:,e~ this fundamental aspect of its vision ultimately to Price-Mars
f
Exploiter les valeurs negres, c'est travailler au rapprochement des races.
stons-nous-c'est apporter notre contribution a ['edification de j'humanite, dans
meme du message de..D)~,e-Mars, it qui la negritude [. doit etre ce
est, un moment de ]a conscience universe lie.
To exploit black values is to work towards the coming together of the races. For, we thought, we were bringing our contribution to the edification of the very spirit of the message of Price-Mars, without whom be what it is, a moment in universal conSCiOusness. (178) ." .
­
in that essay, Damas largely neglects to mention the Haitian
and­
or unconsciously-does not draw on it as a source of
for Ne­
gritude. Far more sigmficant to him is the cultural revolution
and developed by figures such as Jacques Roumain, Maurice Lubin, and PhilippeMarcelin, It is as if 1804 marked the conclusion of the first stage of emanci­
pation, and that a true liberation, thiS time of the Haitian cultural mindset, did not
come until the residual Eurocentrism of Haiti's literate elite was called into
by Price-Mars and the Indigenists, ImpliCItly, the Haitian Revolution to Damas was
an imperfect coup, and it is significant that his poetry, like Senghor's, makes very few
direct references to the revolution.'
evokes the memoryoLt \le revolution in
~,~,~~~~J:.~l ,by -":::.~"":'
and
main Negritude figures, it seems that Ce­
sense of alienation and deracination that are the legacies
r
of slavery and colol1lalism, the dual hIstorical processes that, as Gltssant says, have
created a quite parttcular conception of history in the Canbbean:
Les Annlles sont Ie lieu d'une his!Oire faite de ruptures et don! Ie commencemenr
est un arrachement brutal, la Traite, Notre conscience histonque ne pouvait pas
'sedimenter', si on peut ainsi dne, de maniere progressive et contmue, comme chez
les peup\es qui On! engendre une philosophic souvent totalitaire de I'llistoire, leo
europeens, mais s'ngn!gait sous les auspIces du choc, de In contraction,
negation douloureuse et de
The Antilles are the place of history formed through rupture, and whose
nings lie in a brutal splitting, the slave trade. Our historical consciousness could
not settle into "sedIments", 50 to speak, in a progressive, continuous way, as it did
for those who have created an ohen generalizing idea of
but was aggregated under the auspices of shock, contraction,
and exo\osion (Le disCDurs antillais 223)
In a similar vein, speaking of why he founded the review Tropiques, Usaire
describes the pre-Negritude cultural scene in Martinique in terms of emptmess and
paSSIve consumption. Tai touJours ete frappe par Ie fait que les Antilles souffrent
d'un manque II y a aux Antilles un vide culture!' Non que nous nous desmteressons
de la culture, rna is les Antilles sont trop exclusivement une societe de consommation
culturelle" 'I have always been struck by the fact that the Antilles suffered from a lack
There is a cultural void in the Anttlles. It is not that we have no interest in culture, but
the Antilles are too exclUSively a
which consumes culture' (qtd in Leiner v)
m a more elliptlcal1944 piece, Cesaire suggests that Martmique suffers
because it has not had its own revolution, "Ce pays souffre d'une revolution reioulee
On nous a vole notre revolution" 'This country suffers from a repressed revolution
Our revolution has been stolen from us' ("Panorama" 7) It lSi'ssentialiy this acute
sense of historical and cultural emptiness, this deeply-felt "lac of a revolution" that
drives Cesaire's poetic explorations of the collective and per onal sel{ in hIS epic
1939 work Cahier d'un retour au pays natal and which creates i the poem its
almost frenetic energy.
Although traumatic emptiness, lifelessness, and VOlcelJsness dominate the mitial evocations of Antillean reality in the
dans tce vtlle mette, cette foule criarde si etonnamment passe.e a cote
son cn comme c . te ville a cote de son mouvement, de son sens, sans inquietude, a cote de son vrai cr' (Cesaire, Cahler / "And in this inert town, this squabbling crowd so strangely sw yed from its own cry as the town is swayed from its own movement and meal1lng, without concern, from itS true cry" (Rosello and Pritchard 7S)--Cesaire seeks to fill thIS void by en· visioning a wider sense of himself beyond Martinique 6 As IS well known, the wider identity he draws on is essentially a dlasporic, racial se~se ~r restore the "cordon'omhi!lcaf" (Cesaire;' Cahier 13) with mother Africa, to re-instate the ancestral bond so brutally ruptured by slavery Although identification with Africa is the to restore a more sat'isfact ory sense of ~volutionary heritage as a source oflgentltyand as '! symb()19.f~ntlcolontal resis­
tance"."In'il-serle's of'evocalions introduced by the refrain "Ce qui est a moi" I "What is mine," Cesaire expresses his sense of historical belonging, and lD probably the
most famous of these passages, he draws on the memory of the suffering of Toussaint
L'Ouverture:
~'.,
Ce qUi est a moi aussi : une petite cellule dans !eJura,
une petite cellule, 13 neige la double de barreaux blancs
la neige est un geolier blanc qui monte la garde devant une pnson
Ce qui esra mol
c'est un homme seu! emprisonne de blanc
c'est un homme seul qUi de fie, les eris blanes de la mort blanche
(TOUSSAINT, TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE)
e'est un hom me seu! qui fascine !'epervier blanc de l~ mort blanche
c'est un homme seu! dans la mer infeconde de sable blanc
c'est un moricaud vieux dress!: contre leseaux du cleL (Cesaire, Cohier 25-26)
What is mine too a small cell in the Jura,
the snow lines it with white 'bars
the snow is a white gaoler who mounts guard in front of a prison
What is mine a man alone, imprisoned by whiteness a man alone who defies the white screams of a white death (TOUSSAINT, TOUSSAlNT LOlJVERTURE) a man alone who fascinates the white hawk of white death a man alone in the infertile sea of white sand an old wog rising against the waters of the sky, (Rosello and Pritchard 91) As Abiola lrele points out, these "stanzas are a factual recall of the tragic fate of
thls Significant figure in black history as well as a symbolic presentation of the histo­
rical passion of the black race which he embodies" (73), And as A. James Arnold says
of the effects of the passage's reversal of conventional, Christian color imagery, "The
reader, if he is white or an alienated black, has been brought [0 the antipodes of his
cultural starting point" (157) While it is undeniably true that Usaire is identifying
raCially with Toussaint, there is also a more subtle sense of a direct, persona! ldenti.
fication with his Caribbean forefather. In presenting Toussaint as lsolated, defiant,
and surrounded by the deadening effects of "whiteness," Cesaire is, in a certain way,
presenting his own situation, almost one hundred and forty years later, as an aliena,
ted Martintcan, involved in a similar turbulent, violent struggle; only this time the
violence and resistance exists more on a poetic or psychological, rather than physical
leveL Usaire's personal identification with Toussaint is further evident in his histori­
cal essay Toussaint Louverture: La revolution Jran~ai5e et Ie probleme colonial (Toussaint
Louverture : The French Revolution and the colonial problem), For Cesaire, as for the ;X
Haitian people in general, Toussaint is "le Precurseur" 'the Prec'illso?;aCarlbhe-an
who "imagina Ie my the [ld\m rOi pere de ses peuples" 'imagined the myth 1.. 1
of a king, the father of his peoples.' T0tls.~~int,q~<1i~\ saY2, isl1o.tpl11y "Ie centre de
l'histoire haltienne" 'the center of Haitian hlstory,' but also "Ie centre
'doute de
l'histoireantillaise" 'no doubt the center of Caribbe;m history' (Tous~aint 345, 197,
331) As Charles-Andre Julien says in his preface to the essay, Cesaire's personal
identification with Toussaint is deliberate, and the Haitian in many ways acts as
role model for Cesaire, "Toussaint-Louvenure n'est·il pas 'l'executeur de ces ceuvres
hautes' que Ie poete a voulu devenir 7 Car Cesaire est aussi un homme d'alutude, Il
a jamais de bassesse en lui. Quelle que soit la vehemence de sa passion, il cherche
touJours la verite et respecte l'homme" 'Is Toussaint-Louverture not the 'executor 01
these lofty works' which the poet wanted to become 7 For Cesaire is also a man of
ideals and standards, which he never lowers However vehement hls passion,
he always seeks the truth and respects humankind' (8) The epic scale of
and Haiti's, revolt is highly seductive to Cesaire the poet, all the more so in that Hail!
offers a concrete example of anti-colonial resistance far closer to home, geographically
and historically, than do the more distant, abstract idealizations of Africa.
Indeed, i.t would not be an exaggeration to say that Cahier d'¥n retour au pays
natal itself enacts a kmd of violent revolution, one that inheres essentf.lly in an interior
upheaval, and that attempts nothing less than a metamorphosis of, e mind. As Ce·
saire says, "La Revolution martiniquaise se fera au nom du pain, bie sur; mais aUSSl
au nom de l'air et de la poesie" 'The Martinican Revolution will be rried out in the
name of bread, of course; but also in the name of air and of poetry ("Panorama"
Again, in embarking on this kind of project, Usaire seems to ech Toussaint
Usaire says, effected "Ie passage a l'esprit" 'the interiorization' ( ussaint 343) of
the revolutionary ideals of equality and the right to self-determina on, The by now
somewhat cliched phrase "decolonizing the mind" barely does justi. e to the psycho.
logical revolution that Cahier d'un retour au pays natal plays out. Th ,.poem imagines,
and perhaps even brings about, the end of an old order, and suggests ~ new
as in the follOWing self· interrogatory passage.
Qu'y puis-je ?
II faut bien commencer
Commencer quoi i
La seule chose au monde qu'il vailte la peine de cornmencer :
La fin du monde Darbleu. (Cahier 32)
How can I help if ?
We do have to start.
Start what?
The only thing in the world worth starting'
The end of the world, for Heaven's sake. (Rosello and Pritchard 99)
In the poem, images of violent destruction are often juxtaposed with those of
out of death, upheaval, and annihilation, something new is created, as in this intense
passage:
J •
balles dans la bouche salive epaisse notre c~ur de quotidienne bassesse eclate les continents rompent Ie frele attache des isthmes des terres sautent sUlvanl la division fatale des fleuves et Ie morne qUi depuis des sieeles retient son cri au dedans de lui-m~me, c'est lui qUi a son tour e.cartele Ie silence et ce peuple vaillanee rebondissante et nos membres vainement disjoints vainement par les plus raffines supplices et la vie plus impetueuse jaillissant de ce fumier-comme Ie corossolier lmprevu parmi la decomposition des fruits du iacquier!) (Cahler 42) And now we are standing, my country and I, hair in the Wind, my hand small now
in Its enormous nst and strength is not within us, but above us in a voice piercing
the night and the audience like the penetrance of an apocalyptic wasp, (Rosello
and Pritchard 125)
..... '0..-' i
"
1 '-'--'
la negra iIle assise inatrendument debout depout dans la cale debout dans les cabll1es deboltt sur Ie pont debout dans Ie vent deb out sous Ie soleil debout dans Ie sang debout et hbre (Usaire, Cc1hlcr 61--62) (Bullets m the mouth thick saliva
our heart with daily meanness bursts
continents break the frail mooring of isthmuses lands pop along the fatal divisIOn
of rivers and the morne which for centuries has stifled Its cry, it is now its turn 10
draw and quarter the silence
and this people rebounding valour
and our limbs disjointed in vain by the most exquisite tortures
and a more impetuous life sprouting from this manure-·like an unexpected sweet­
sop among decomposing bread-fruit l ) (Rosello and Pritchard 109)
El nous sommes deboltt maintenant, mon pays et mOl, les cheveux dans Ie vent,
rna main petite maintenant dans son pomg e.norme et la force n'est pas en nous,
mats au-dessus de nous, dans une voix qui vnlle la nun et l'audlence comme la
penNrance d'une guepe apocalyptique (Canier 57)
., "
Later, too, when the poem enacts a symbolic revisitatlon to the Middle
and, in the face of Cesaire's newly purged historical consciousness, "Ie negrier craque
de toute part" (Cahler 61) J "the slave ship cracks everywhere" (Rosello and Pritchard
129), the state of "standmg up" recurs, and once more signifies the victory of Ce.saire's
internal revolution
(Us
Such imagery, and Its suggestion that beauty can grow from the "manure" of traumatic
history, makes the poem a kind of Caribbean Lesjleurs du ma!' Moreover, the associ­
ated implication of collective and personal catharsis indicates that the violent, apoca­
lyptic imagery also has purgative effects, The "revolution" that the poem plays out, Its
surreally epic tenor and heroic register echo, it seems, those of the Haitian Revolu­
tion, not just through the previously analyzed evocation of and subtle identification
with Toussaint Louverture, but also through Cesaire's much-quoted presentation of
Haiti as the place "OU la negritude se mit debout pour la premiere fois et dit qU'elle
croyait a son humanite" (Cahier 24) / "'Alhere negritude stood up for the first time and
said it believed in its humanity" (Ros~no ana1'fitchard 91) WhIte most critlCsnave­
rightly interpreted this line as a sign of Haiti's symbolic importance to Cesaire, few,
if any, have picked up on the importance of Haiti-like "standing up" as a recurnng,
affirmative motif in Cahier (turi'~eioii.r au pays natal's gradual movement towards ltS
of victory
.
poem's "victory" is repeatedly framed in terms of standing up, a state first
, the fleeting reference to Haiti. A considerable "battle" in Usaire's psycho­
logical revolution involves moving towards acceptance of all that history has inflicted
on the Antilles and on him personally, and when this acceptance is finally achieved,
a highly charged passage describes a euphoric, postapocalyptic sensation of
up alongside the pays nata!
~, , ~ '- I
unforeseenly standing standing in the hold in the cabins standing on deck standing 1n the wind standing under the sun mding in the blood standing and free, (Rosello and Pritchard 131) i
r
The triumphant, upright return to the slave ship represeis a historical and
mnemonic reclamation, a moment of releasing the Antillean fro the bonds of hiS­
tory and traumatized memory. For Glissant, the Canbbean histo .cal expenence is a I
"combat sans temoins, l'impossibilite de la datation meme inconsciente, consequence
du raturage de la memoire en tous. Car l'histoire n'est pas seulernent pour nous une ;
absence, c'est un vertige Ce temps que nous n'avons jamais eu, rl nous faut Ie reconquerir" 'combat without witnesses, the impossibility of dating, even unconsciously;!
the consequence of the erasure of memory in us all. For history is not only for us an
absence, it's a kind of fever. ThiS time which was never ours, we must reconquer it'
(Le disours antillais 70),7 Cahier d'un retour au. pays natal plays out just such a proce. S5 \
of "reconquering" history, and its final victory, represented in the Antillean subject's ,
movement from state of passive, repressed sltting to one of active, liberated standmg I
carries a clear, if subtle reference to Haiti's own histoncal movement into agency In
his understated, though insistent repetitions of the metaphor of standing, Cesalre
seems to invite the reader to view his victory as a twentieth-century reworkinl1. or
continuation of Haiti's achievement, and as such, the triumphant passages of
d'un retour au pays natal represent new revolutionary moments in Canbbean and
dlasporic conSCIousness,
In this sense, Haiti functions in a very similar way to Africa in Cesaire's work, in that bOth re'present a more satisfying, insDiring sense of historv and "black" reststance !
than is available to him in alienated, coloma I Martinique. Nowhere in Usalre's work
isCthl!; i1ieijing~orblurringofATi1c'a~arun{llti more apparent than in his 1963 play,
La tragedie du roi Christophe. Where his poetry is often elusive, obscure, and esoteric,
Cesalre's theater is more accessible, and more alive to political and social realities.
Accordingly, La tragedie du roi Chnstophe is shaped around a prolonged mvestigation
into the workings of political power in a newly postcolonial state The play examines
the post independence connict between Petion, the leader of Haiu's petit-bourgeois
mulatto class, who seeks to maintain and develop commercial links with France,
and Christophe, the tragic hero, and increasingly despotic megalomaniac who es­
sentially replaces the colonial regime with an equally authontarian, repressively
austere system.
The drama is presented through a two-way mirror, whereby the dilemmas of the
Haitian Revolution are reflected across the temporal and spatial divide towards the
African in dependences of the 19505 and 1960s, and, conversely, contemporary events
in Africa reflect back on the tragedy of Christophe, and indeed, of Haiti It is, as Chris­
tophe says in the play, as if Haiti and Africa are one and the same: "J,'~uvre Afriquel
Pauvre HaIti! C'est la meme chose d'ailleurs" (Poor Africa! Poor Haitt'l Tr'sthe same
thi~g-'~~y;';';~y" (Cesaire, Christophe 49)<;;t~a.!:r:L~t[!:':s.s.~s the similarities be\,~een the
two postcolomal situations and exposes the problems of self-government in the shad­
QiY.::QLne..9:c..Qio~i~Iis.til1n!l~[lce.AsLnyan Kesteloot says, La tragedie duroi Ch;istophe
is "Ia piece emblematique des grandeurs et miseres des independances negres" ("the
symbolic play of the triumphs and tragedies of the black independences")
174) Also, as Thomas Hale suggests, theatre is a medium through which Cesaire
attempts to connect with Africa and Africans: "Ie theatre, pour Cesaire, represente
un lieu de rencontre entre lui et I'Afrique. C'est la nature interactive du theatre de
Cesaire qui contribue beaucoup au sentiment, chez les Africains, que Ie dramaturge
est, au fond, plus qu'un lointain cousin" ("the theatre represents to Cesaire a place of
encounter between himself and Africa. It is the interactive nature of theatre which
contributes so much to the feeling amongst Africans that the playwright is, essentially,
more than a distant cousin") (Hale 196). Although this is undoubtedly true, La tragedie
du rot Christophe is also, more directly, an attempt to identify with some Caribbean
"cousins", and to revisit the events of the immediate postrevolutionary period in Haiti
as a means of understanding unfolding events in Africa.
As Clement Mbom says of independence-era Africa, "A I'aube des indepen­
dances, les pays concernes se trouvent en face de problemes cruciaux: ce sont des
annees de choix, de fondation, de rdonte des mentalites, en un mot, les annees de
la Renaissance africaine en particulier et du tiers monde en general. La tache est
penible, complexe, lourde de consequences. Lheure est capitale" 'At the dawning of
the independences, the countries concerned find themselves faced with some crucial
problems: these are years of choices, of foundations, of refiguring mentalities, in a
word, the years of renaissance, of Africa in particular, and of the Third World in gen­
eral. The task is difficult, complex, heavy with consequences. It is a crucial moment'
In this sense, Haiti acts as a warning to Africa of the dangers of perpetuatlI"g
colonially-inherited race and class divisicmsin thepostc610riial penod
'In the play, die newly free Haiti is at the mercy of its colonial legacy of division
and conflict, and of politics which, as Jacqueline Leiner says are the "forme moderne
du destin" 'the modem form of destiny' (92). The play's tragic movement, and the
obliteration of initial hopes in the face of the inescapable forces of division, seems to
suggest that there 15 a futility in Haiti's (and Africa's) struggle, an overridmg sense that
failure is inevitable and predestined. In this way, the tragic movement of La
du
is a sign of Cesaire's confuslOn over how post independence Africa might
and overcome the obstacles of tribal rivalries and neocolonialist
Intervention. The memory of Haiti clouds the contemporary African picture, further
strengthens the sense of tragic destiny and, faced with such confusion, Cesaire seeks
the reassurance of myth.
Accordingly, Christophe becomes a Caribbean CEdipus, and embarks on a
final return to mother Africa: "Afrique l Aide-moi a rentrer, porte,ll1oi comme un
vieil enfant dans tes bras et puis tu me deveuras, me laveras I . ] Et lave-mOIl Oh
lave-moi, de leur fard, de leurs baisers, de mon royaume" 'Africa I Help me to get
back, carry me in your arms like an old child and then you will undress me, cleanse
me [ . j And cleanse mel Oh cleanse me, of their make-up, of their kisses, of my
kingdom' (Christophe 147)B As he often does in his poetry, Usaire here evokes the
myth of mother Africa as a palliative, a comfort for Chnstophe, and, by extension,
for Haiti/Africa, as they confront the full complexity of then postindependence reali­
ties, By invoking myth, Cesaire steps back from the immediacy and particularitv of
history, and, as he says, attempts to give the Haitian/African situation a
universal resonance:
La vente, c'est que je suls parti de l'histoire, parfois de la donner a cWe histoire la dimension du mythe, l'e1argir )usql/au mythe [.. J langage par [altement comprehensible pour tous les hommes,
que! que soit leur pays, queUe que soit leur eouleur 1.1 Ccst ~a, Ie mythe, un
depassement de I'anecdote historique pour arriver a une volonu! plus large, aune volonte
universelle et comprehensible par tous les hommes
The truth is that I have departed from history, sometimes [rom chronology, but J
wanted to give this story a mythical dimension, to give it the breadth of myth, the
of myth t... J a language perfectly comprehenSible for all humankind, whatever
their country or race I... J. That's what myth is, something which goes beyond the his­
torical anecdote to arrive at a broader will, a more universal will, which all humankind
can understand, (qtd. in Le1l1er 140)9
It is as if the particularities, the details, and the realities of Haitian history com- \\
plicate Cesaire's desire to see III the revolution some kind of enduring exemplar for the 1\,
"black world" of the 1960s. Personal failings and individual vagaries are recuperated '
into the mythical scheme, as the Haitian story is in a sense de-Haitianized and re- il
framed into a more global, universal context. Ultimately, Cesaire's play resonates deep
into the darkest corners of postcolonial tealities, into the dilemmas and paradoxes
faced by peoples who can no longer base their sense of themselves around
master/slave models, as Cesaire himself indicates:
I
Le cadre a la fois mystique, historique et politique parait favorable a i'mtroduction
du probleme qui se pose a l'Afrique aujourd'hui. la decolonisation. En effet, apres
la revolution, Ie roi Christophe a pris la charge du pays et ses echers demontrent
est plus facile d'arracher son independance que de bath un monde sur de
nouvelles bases, Les qualites requises sont tout autres el dIes sont rares, nous Ie
voyons matntenant. Le temps de la decolonisation sera plus difficile pour Ie monde
noir paree que nous n'avons plus a nous dresser contre un ennemi commun aise­
mais a lutter en nous-memes contre nous-memes tl
ne fait que commencer
d'un
The frame, at once mystical, historical, and political seems to favor the mtroduc­
tion of the problem which Africa is posing itself
that of decolonization, In
effect, after the revolution, ChrIstophe took control of the country, and his failures
demonstrate that it is easier to win independence than to build a world on new
foundations, The qualities required are quire different and are rare, we can see that
now. The decolonization period will be more difficult for the black world because
we no longer have to stand up to an eaSily recognizable common enemy, but to
fight within ourselves against ourselves. It is an internal, spiritual struggle which
is onlv just beginning. (qtd. in Mbom 70)
The various ways, and the differing degrees to which Haiti influences the works
of Negritude's trinity of figureheads reveals much about the
of Senghor, Damas, and Cesaire. Senghor's very fleeting, solitary poetic reference to
Haiti as the "heart" of an African diaspora, united in its suffering, suggests a sensitiv­
to the revolutionary legacy, but Senghor and his work naturally remain very much
",-' rooted in the Old World. Damas and
by contrast, are beset by the claSSIC Ca­
ribbean sense of rootlessness and, as much as they look to Africa to fill the void, Haiti
offers more immediate, more real historical and cultural examples, whether these
provide inspiration or act as cautionary models for emerging postcolonial states.
As Damas sees it, the Haitlan Revolution did little to change elite cultural
mindsets, and the work of Price-Mars instigated a necessary new revolution, one that
shattered complacently held affections for French culture, and which valorized the
more ethnically liVing and "authentlC," Africanized culture of the Haitian peasantry.
Whereas Damas sees Price-Mars as "the father of Haitianism," Cesaire is drawn to
the almost superhuman, mythical figures of the original revolution. Toussaint, in
particular, is seen by CesaHe as the great "Precursor," and the Martinican, conSciously,
and perhaps at times unconsciously, taps into the still-potent memory and symbolism
attached to Toussaint. In Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, Cesaire's revolt is played out
III an epic register, an elevated, heroIC key, which prepares the way for the apocalyptic,
revolutionary changes in collective and individual consciousness which the poem
ultimately generates. The magnetic pull of the Haitian Revolution for Cesaire is once
more apparent in La tragedie du roi Christophe. The tone of the historical play is mark­
edly more sober, however, as Cesaire engages more directly with political realities,
and looks, Janus-like, back at New World experience in order to look forward and to
better understand the postcolonial paradoxes of independence-era Africa.
/
The fact that Haiti has a long, complex, multi-layered history seems
to contradict Glissant's argument that Caribbean historical consciousness has not in
\\ any way been able to "sediment," ~espite the nation's ongoing turbulent, uncertain
r<:"~!.llY, .it.Js farfrorn.uhistoryless." Culturally, too, Haiti continues to produce artists
,and thinkers of considerable merit, both inside the nation and in what has been
called the "tenth department" of the diaspora. Moreover, as the Negritude movement
demonstrates, the repercussions of Haitian history and culture are felt in the other
Caribbean islands, in Africa, and beyond. As stated at the beginning of this essay,
this is just one subchapter in the story of the cultural repercussions of the Haitian
Revolution. In 2004, the grand narrative that would relate just how Haiti and its
if
1\
have shaped diverse cultures over the past two hundred years remains
unWrltten. One day. the world mIght catch up WIth Haiti.
NOTES
1 It is an enduring irony of the Negritude movement that Cesaire's and Senghor's
ideas of "blackness" were informed, to some extent, by the racist wotk of Gobineau, that
15, by the very kllld of European supremacist thinking that Price-M,rs rails against See
my Shaping and Reshaping the Canbbean 70-71
.1
2. Jack Corzani Similarly suggests that the Amencan OCCUP3tf' n brought about a
secondary revolutionary moment in Haitian culture "Petit a petit al it naltre une hostl­
lite instinctive envers l'Amerique, .nee de I'oppression mais aussi d'u e riva[ite cuhurelle
n'etait point sans rappeler I'ancienne lutte d'independance" 'Slo ly there grew up an
instinctive hostility towards Amenca, one born out of oppression but Iso out of a cultural
which recalled the previous fight for independence' (3, 155)
3. Haitian Eurocentnsm was not simply a question of identifiCa!n with France, but
also involved a significant degree of anglophiha, as Dash states" en if the prevalent
tendency was to compare the United Stares un favourably with Eur, e, the pragmatism
assoClated with Anglo-Saxon culture did appeal to some Haitians. 'For instance, Henri
in his rejection of French colomalism was deCidedly pro-Anglo-Saxon in at­
titUde. He not only inSisted that hIS name be spelt wah a 'y' but felt that Emdish should
be made the official language of his Northern Kingdom" (Hait! 16)
4. Indigenism has, however, been cnticised by many for its cultural and
conservatism. As Corzani says, "[l)l est une forme d'indigenisme-somme toute assez
du fehbrige-qui, se contentant de magnifier les traditions
fatalement a tout changement, a tout progres, et contribue en toute obJectivite au maintien
de l'ordre existant, quand ce n'est pas a son aggravation" '{tlhere is a form of
that IS ultimately fairly close to the Proven;;;al felibriges, and that,
folk traditions, is inevitably opposed to all change and progress, and
contributes to the preservation of the eXlsting order, or even makes It worse' (3: 170), See
also Michael Dash's critique of Roumain's Gouverneurs de la rosee in The Other America
76-80.
5. Cesaire's interest in and enthusiasm for Haiti and ItS culture Illtensified during
his 1944 visIt there. As A. James Arnold says, "Despite the vicissitudes of ItS
as a republic, Haiti represented for the colonized Martmican the possibility of cultural
autonomy for blacks in the Caribbean, a central feature. of hiS own concept of negritude,"
and "There he found a people who shared much of his own hlstory but who were inde­
and had evolved a living, dynamiC Creole culture" (14, 254)
6. All translations from Cahier d'un retour au pays natal are Rosello and Pritchard's.
7 Jeannie Suk analyzes in depth themes of crOSSings and returns III her studv o[
Cesaire's Canier d'un retour au pays natal (Postcolonial Paradoxes 24-55). Paul
interested on ships and journeys as symbols of "Black Atlantic" cultures, because, he
says, "ships immediately focus attention on the mlddle passage, on the various projects
for redemptive return to an African homeland, on the circulation of ideas and activists as
well as the movement of key cultural and political artefacts" (4)
8. Speaking of cesaire's Christ-lIke dramatIC heroes, Alain Moreau argues that
also share some of the characteristics of CEdipus: "A l'image du Christ toutefolS
ou se superpose une autre image, celie d'!
l CEdipe CEdipe possede avec le Christ Ii!
royaute (dans son cas reelle et non symbolique au derisoire), la solitude, la souffrance. 1a
voyance [ J. Mais il presente aussi des traits qullUl sont propres ses cnmes, Ie
Nlr.K I! l'l IYIUI'l KU
l'inceste. Ce sont des crimes equivalents dont sont accuses les heros de Cesaire" 'To the
image of Christ however is added or superimposed another image, that of [ .1 CEdlpUS.
CEdipus shares with Christ royalty (in his case real and not symbolic or derisory), solitude,
sufferihg, clairvoyance [. , .1. But he also presents some traits that are his own: his crimes,
patricide and incest. These crimes are equivalent to those of which Cesaire's heroes are
accused' (272)
9. Daniel-Henri Pageaux arrives at similar conclusions about C<'saire's mythmaking
in La tragedie du roi Christophe: "La mort de Christophe, son ensevelissement origmal ont
permis que I'homme suicide, Ie roi dechu se change en statue, en temoin, en uh monu­
ment qui conserve et temoigne. Par sa mon et surtout par les gloses qui
sa mort (processus de mythification immediat) Christophe a change son destin tragique
(echec individuel) en une histoire mythique, parce qU'elle s'adresse collectivement a tout
homme noir, parce qU'elle renferme a la [ms une histoire a raconter, un savoir qui a valeur
d'explication (ce qu'il faut faire etlou ne pas faire), une histoire a dimension collective et
une histoire a valeur ethique quatrecaraC.teristiques que nous tenons pour des elements
de definition du my the" 'Chris-iophe's death and idiosyncratic burial have allowed the
suicide, the dethroned king, to transform himself into a statue, a Witness, a monument
which conserves and bears witness. By his death and especially by the glosses that ac­
company his death [a process of immediate mythologizing] Christophe transformed
his tragic destiny fa personal failurel into a mythical story, because it addresses itself
collectively to every black man, because it contams at once a story to be retold, a piece
of knowledge with explicatory functions (what should/should not be done), a story with
colleClive dimensions, and a story with ethica I value four characteristics that are taken
as defining elements of myth' (255-56)
WORKS CrTED
Arnold, A. James. Modernism and Negntude: The Poetry and Poetics oj Aime cesaire. Cam­
Harvard UP, 1981.
Benltez-Rojo, Antonio. "Three Words toward CreoltzatlOn." Trans James Maraniss Ca­
ribbean Creolization: Rejlections on the Cultural Dynamics oj
Identity Ed. Kathleen M. Balutansky and Marie-Agnes Sourieau
Florida, 1998.53-61.
Cesaire, Aime. Cahler d'un retour au pays natal. 1939. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1983.
- - - . "Panorama." Tropiques 10 (1944): 7-10.
- - - . Toussaint lou\lerture: la revolution Jran~aise et Ie probleme colonia1. 1961. Pans:
Presence Africaine, 1981.
- - - . La tragedie du roi Christophe. Paris: Presence Africalne, 1963.
Corzani, Jack. La litterature des Antilles-Guyane Jran<;aises. 6 vols. Fort-de-France: Desor­
meaux, 1978.
Damas, Leon G. "Price-Mars, Ie pere du haltianisme." Presence AJricaine 32-33 (1960):
166-78.
Dash,]. Michael. Haiti and the United States: National Stereotypes and the Literary
2nd ed. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1997.
- - - . The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context. Charlottesville
UP of Virginia, 1998.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The
Monkey. London: Oxford UP, 1988.
Geggus, David P "Epilogue." The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World.
Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2001. 247-52.
~
II
Paul. The Black Atlantic Modernity and Double ConSCtousness. London Verso,
1993.
Glissant, Edouard. Le discours antWais. 1981. Paris Gallimard Folio, 1997.
- - - . Traitt du Tout-Monde. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
Hale, Thomas. "Dramaturge et pUblic: la nature interactive du theatre d'AlIne Cesaire."
Aime Cesaire ou I'athanor d'un alchimiste: Actes du premier colloque internatIOnal sur
l'ceuvre IWeraire d'Aime cesaire. Ed. Jacqueline Leiner. Pans: Editions Caribeennes,
1987. 195-200.
Hoffmann, Leon-Fran~ojs. Haiti.·lettres et l'Ure. Toronto: Editions du GRH, 1992.
lrele, AblOla. "Notes to Cahier d'un retour au pays nata\." Columbus Ohio State UP, 2000.
Charles-Andre. "Preface." Toussaint Louverture.la revolution Jran~aise et Ie
colonial. Alme Cesaire. 1961. Paris' Presence Africaine, 1981. 7-19.
Kesteloot, Lilyan. "Cesaire, compagnon de route de l'Afrique." Europe, 832-33 (1998):
170-76.
collection comvlete. 1941-1945
Leiner, Jacquelme. "Entretien avec Aime Cesaire"
Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1978: \I-XXIV.
Gunter Narr, 1993.
- - - . Aime cesaire, Ie terreau primordIa
de l'universaillt humaine. Pans
Clement Le theatre d'Alme Cesaire ou la
Femand Nathan, 1979.
Moreau, Alain. "Le bouc emissaire dans Ie theatre de Cesaire." Aim!' Cesaire ou {'alhanol
d'un a1chimiste: actes du premier colloque international sur l'reuvre litteraire d'Alme C<'­
saire. Ed. jacquehne Leiner. Paris Editions Caribeennes, 1987. 269-82.
Munro, Martin. Shaping and Reshaping the Caribbean: The Work oj Aim!' cesaire and Rene
Depestre. Leeds: Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Associ a
[ion, 2000.
au my the." Aime
Pageaux, Daniel-Henri. "La tragedie du roi Christophe de 1a
internatio/lal sur l'reuvTe
Cesaire ou /'athanor d'un alchimiste. aetes du premier
Caribeennes, 1987.
litteraire d'Aime Usaire Ed. jacqueline Leiner. Paris:
251-57.
Papastergiadis, Nikos. The Turbulence oj Migration Globalization, Deterritorializarion, and
Hybridity. Cambridge: Polity, 2000.
Rosello, Mireille, and Annie Pritchard, trans. Notebook oj a Return to my Native Land.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1995.
Senghor, Lepold Sedar. CEuvre poetique Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1990
Suk, jeannie. Postcolonial Paradoxes in French Caribbean Writmg: Cesaire, Glissant, Conde.
Oxford U P, 2001
.lli:.t::;t.;.r.~
.1
'I