A Meeting with Aimé Césaire

On January 9, 2008, I had the honor of meeting one of the founding fathers of Negritude, Aimé Césaire. With their joint participation as students of the journal L’Étudiant noir in 1935 and Césaire's publication of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal in 1939, Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon-Gontran Damas launched this pan-African cultural movement. As I walked the hot, downtown streets of Fort-De-France, Martinique in search of the old city hall building, I took a moment to consciously inhale the fresh Caribbean air. It was warm, humid, and flavored with pleasant scents that can only be found a world away from the frigid winter winds of State College, PA. When I found myself standing in front of Martinique’s Hôtel de Ville, I proceeded beyond the newer building to the rear. There, covered in chipped-white paint and free of any air-conditioners, stood the older structure where Aimé Césaire maintained his office—a stance against relocating to the modern city hall building. These feelings reminded me of lines from Césaire’s “Pour saluer le Tiers-Monde” (“Greetings to the Third World”):

Ecoutez:	Listen:
de mon ile lointaine	from my distant island
de mon ile veilleuse	from my watchful island
je vous dis Hoo!	I call out to you: Ho!

At 9:50 am, ten minutes early, I proceeded inside and walked up the winding staircase to the second floor. Césaire’s office was covered with magnificent artwork, including wooden crafts and oil paintings. I was able to tell the receptionist, in halting, heavily accented French that I was there for a ten o’clock meeting. I wrote my full name, occupation, and reason for the visit on a notepad which the receptionist took to a back room. Upon her return, she asked my Martinican fiancé, Thierry, and me to follow her to the back room.

My amazing encounter with Aimé Césaire began when the door opened. I saw the small, bright-eyed, handsomely dark Césaire sitting behind a huge oak desk. He greeted us with a friendly smile while his personal assistant asked us to sit next to him. I was amazed! In my mind, I asked her if she was serious, and if she really meant that I could sit beside Césaire. However, I said nothing and excitedly took my place next to him. In the forty-five minutes I spent in the chair beside Aimé Césaire, I never stopped smiling. After learning that I, too, was a poet, he asked me to recite a poem for him. With Thierry translating, Césaire listened attentively to my poem and then we all began conversing.

During the almost hour long meeting, Césaire learned that college students, like myself, could publicly study African American literature, African American history, and black diasporic studies in the classroom. He asked more than once, “Who pays for that?” finding it hard to believe that the predominately white country of America would support (on any level) the study of black literatures. Equally surprising to him was the knowledge that his work is still widely read in academic institutions, forums, and conferences. Upon hearing this, he turned and looked into my eyes. I nodded “Yes,” relying heavily on my non-verbal skills to assert my sincerity. And to my amazement, he said, in English, “You need to learn French.” Laughter saturated the room. There I was pulling together all the coherent French I had, which was not much, and he not only understood English, but spoke it as well. I guess the joke was on me. He proceeded to speak in English, telling me that he learned English as a young boy in school. Césaire said that it was very unfortunate that Americans did not learn other languages and advised me to become fluent in both French and Spanish. That triangle of languages, he explained, would allow me to speak to the majority of the blacks throughout the world.

With pleasure, Césaire agreed to autograph my copy...