Aimé Césaire: a warrior in search of beauty

This essay examines several tributes that appeared following Césaire's death on 17 April 2008, namely, those expressed by three major Martinican creative writers and thinkers, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edouard Glissant, and Raphaël Confiant. References to Guadeloupean writers Ernest Pépin's and Daniel Maximin's homages are also included. Reminding the reader that the legacy of Césaire the poet is immense, notwithstanding the disagreements their authors may have had with Césaire the politician, these tributes offer a sharp contrast with, for instance, an article published by Boukhalfa Amazit in the Algerian journal El Watan, on 15 May 2008. While Chamoiseau's text follows a lyrical vein steeped in emotion, Glissant's development seems to be more pedagogically oriented, tracing the historical, sociopolitical, even biographical landscapes in which Césaire's work is rooted. Both Glissant and Chamoiseau, however, succeed in placing the struggles of Césaire, "le guerrier" (Chamoiseau's term-"the warrior"), within the poetic process itself. Indeed, the task of the warrior-poet, not only is, but can only function as, a constant search for the unreachable, the impossible. In his development, Chamoiseau takes the reader along a subtle journey linking combat to life and beauty and, ultimately, to language. Aware of the fact that the term "beauty" is neither philosophically, culturally, nor aesthetically innocent, and that the dialectic suggested by Chamoiseau between life and beauty is not evident, and may even seem problematic, this essay attempts to follow such an itinerary through a close reading of carefully selected excerpts from Césaire's texts. In so doing, the author of this essay is led to include a reassessment of some translated pieces, as well as references to major interviews (with Lilyan Kesteloot, Jacqueline Leiner, Maryse Condé) and scholarly works (Aliko Songolo, René Hénane). Along the way the author invites the participation of several other writers and thinkers, namely, Baudelaire, Lorand Gaspar, W. E. Du Bois, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Abdourahman Waberi, and Colleen Smith-Brown.