Interface: Aimé Césaire’s “Poésie et connaissance” and Lorand Gaspar’s Approche de la parole Revisited

Bernadette Cailler

Enroule-toi, vent, autour de ma nouvelle croissance

pose-toi sur mes doigts mesurés

je te livre ma conscience, et son rythme de chair.

(Coil, wind, around my new growth

light on my cadenced fingers

to you I surrender my consciousness, and its flesh-made rhythm.)

—Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal

Pensées poèmes scalpel

Et glaise

Pour opérer un art de vivre

À l’usage d’une vie finie—

Un peu d’air qui traverse les poumons de la vie.

(Thoughts poems scalpel

And clay

To operate an art of living

for use in a finite life—

A little air crossing the lungs of life.)

—Lorand Gaspar, from Derrière le dos de Dieu

Introduction: Shifting from “Francophone” to Comparative Literature

If the term “interface” indicates effective communication between systems, networks, concepts, or circumstances that may, in some ways, be incompatible with one another, then it seems to be a useful term on which to base a study of two major twentieth- and twenty-first century French-language poets, Aimé Césaire and Lorand Gaspar. I do not deal extensively with poetic texts as such but base my analysis mainly on prose texts that engage both writers in vital meditations on science, poetry, language, and the poet.

While Césaire, Martinican poet, playwright, essayist, and politician, was born in 1913 and passed away in 2008, Gaspar is still with us. Originally from Marosvásárhely, in eastern Transylvania, now Târgu-Mures, Romania, he was born in 1925 to a family of Hungarian, German, and Armenian descent. Events associated with World War II led Gaspar to become a French citizen. He eventually adopted the French language as his writing idiom. A most proficient polyglot with strong ties to the Middle East, Greece, and Tunisia, a medical doctor and a surgeon by profession, highly interested in neuroscience, Gaspar is also a translator and an accomplished photographer.¹ While Césaire’s and Gaspar’s writings have elicited numerous scholarly responses over the years, to the best of my knowledge, no other critic has explored the connection envisaged here.

In the first place, let me note that, due largely to well known historical circumstances which there is no need to comment on here, and with several European colonial and postcolonial languages in mind, nowadays, it should not appear extraordinary to explore comparative literature topics within one single language. To do so is quite different from listing together in a course potentially and recklessly titled “Francophone Literature” such authors as, let us say, Phạm Duy Khiêm, Ferdinand Oyono, Tchicaya U Tam’si, Maryse Condé, Rachid Boudjedra, Linda Lê. Suffice it to say that, a priori, there is no compelling reason why a corpus of miscellaneous texts expressed in “a French voice” (“franco-phone”) should provide a cogent academic course of study. Not only does such an approach risk giving poor credit to individual talents and styles but, of course, it may also lead one to disregard complex issues linked to specific histories, cultures, politics, religions, or other matters of great importance. As a matter of fact, a common language is not always what creates the strongest bond between writers. Years ago, Edouard Glissant remarked that although historical circumstances had put the French language on his path, he actually felt much closer to non-French-speaking Caribbean writers than he did to many other French-speaking authors.

In addition, much could be said about the facile French/francophone dichotomy, especially since, in university circles, the term “francophone” is most of the time assigned to writers whose foreparents were, at one point or the other, colonized by France or Belgium. Within such logic, where should we place “overseas” French citizens, French-speaking Canadian authors, or numerous contemporary French-speaking African, Asian and other writers whose creativities, incidentally, often navigate over several continents, languages, and countries (including France), whatever citizenship(s) they may hold? Of course, I am quite aware that writers from the DOM-ROM, POM...