La poésie d'Aimé Césaire: propositions de lecture accompagnées d'un lexique de l'œuvre by Papa Samba Diop (review)

DIOP, PAPA SAMBA. La poésie d’Aimé Césaire: propositions de lecture accompagnées d’un lexique de l’œuvre. Paris: Champion, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7453-2173-2. Pp. 625. 115 a. In his introduction and accompanying glossary of Césaire’s works, Diop reveals , through an analysis that takes into account “l’épopée des mots” (12), how the particular becomes the universal in Césaire’s monumental œuvre. Interestingly, Diop’s readings, like Césaire’s texts, are organized in a similarly expansive fashion, from close textual studies of specific passages to extensive notes regarding the etymology of particular words in those passages, as well as historical, biographical, and intertextual references. In many instances, the explanatory notes take up more space on each page than Diop’s study, leading the reader to ever-widening circles of interpretation, as is the case when one reads Césaire’s dense and opaque poetry. Diop’s effort to unpack words and phrases in order to uncover new and unexpected meanings is both helpful and strangely revelatory of the difficulty of such a project. It should be emphasized that Diop’s notes are not mere appendages, but rather essential and enlightening, even though they may seem to meander off course. Diop’s study is divided into chapters A, B, and C, each with many subdivisions and the aforementioned notes. Chapter A provides information regarding Césaire’s life, chronology of (and circumstances surrounding) the publication of his works, and a general history of the African diaspora. Here Diop studies the influence of Surrealism, the Harlem Renaissance, the Négritude movement, as well as historical and global mythologies and religions. In his analysis of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, Diop points out the ascensional quality of Césaire’s poetry, which seeks to elevate those who are downtrodden (hence the persistent metaphor of mud), as well as the anger impulse that initiates the quest to break free from the established western view of History. Césaire’s ultimate goal, suggests Diop, is to underscore the poet’s exalted role in the quest for human salvation. Chapter B takes up this notion and shows the epic, indeed apocalyptic, nature of Césaire’s message. Employing both marine and celestial images, for example in the Cahier and Moi, laminaire..., Césaire moves the personalized ‘je’ of the poems to a universalized self, clinging to the rocks, like algae or kelp, despite destructive forces around him, and rising to the stars in an apocalyptic gesture of defiance and freedom (110–11). A study of images, symbols, and metaphors regarding destruction and ultimate purification, fall and redemption, dominates chapter C wherein Diop discusses the hero and rebel figure in Césaire’s poetry and theatrical texts. While the opening chapters are best understood by readers more familiar with Césaire’s work, the glossary section is useful to a wider audience. In most entries, Diop provides an example of a word’s use in a text and then goes on to detailed analyses. If one were to concentrate on the glossary alone, one would notice that it begins to read like a catalog of the flora and fauna scattered throughout Césaire’s texts, and which are found mainly in Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. This cataloging is precisely what occurs in Césaire’s texts, where animals, birds, plants, and fish figure prominently. When taken as a whole, these images serve both to explore a geography often missing from western stories and maps, and as densely and personally symbolic features of Césaire’s “espace mental ” (189). Finally, Diop provides extensive information related to proper names, gods and goddesses from various religions and mythologies, places, neologisms, foreign words, and unusual word use in Césaire’s texts. Rider University (PA) Mary L. Poteau-Tralie 384 FRENCH REVIEW 86.2 ...