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“A Thousand Bamboo Fangs down My Throat”: Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Mireille Rosello
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Extract

Before Undertaking This Essay, I was Afraid That I had Nothing New to Say About Aimé Césaire's Work. I WAS RIGHT AND WRONG. What can I tell you that you have not heard a thousand times? That Césaire was born in Martinique in 1913? That he studied in Paris with Léopold Sédar Senghor? That his return to his island, just before World War II, is celebrated in Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to My Native Land)? That he is one of the founders of negritude? Either you already know all this and much more about Césaire's work, or such facts and figures (i.e., stories that have produced an effect of truth) are so readily available to trained scholars that my intervention is pointless. Since the poet's death, in 2008, all the facets of his life and work are being reread and reexamined. The flow of information about them ranges from illuminating presentations (Scharfman; Irele; Smith) to the most sophisticated analyses of his literary and political work (Arnold, “Forty Years”; Eshleman; Brent; Wilder).

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 750 - 755
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

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References

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