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The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire

Page 63

by Césaire, Aimé; Eshleman, Clayton; Arnold, A. James


  lambeau par lambeau

  à la déchéance des sables

  puis vint pour la montagne

  le temps de s’installer à l’horizon

  lion décapité harnaché de toutes nos blessures

  Rock Of The Sleeping Woman

  or Beautiful as the Exasperation of Secession

  Rocher de la femme endormie

  ou Belle comme l’exaspération de la sécession

  Survivor survivor

  It is you the fallen one

  Of a festival of volcanoes

  Of a whirlwind of fireflies

  Of a flare of flowers of a furor of dreams

  Rescapée rescapée

  C’est toi la retombée

  D’un festin de volcans

  D’un tourbillon de lucioles

  D’une fusée de fleurs d’une fureur de rêves

  Very pure far from all that jungle

  The train of your revived hair

  To the base of the solar barque

  Exasperation of secession

  Très pure loin de toute cette jungle

  La traîne de tes cheveux ravivée

  Jusqu’au fond de la barque solaire

  Exaspération de la sécession

  From time to time through the brightening

  Sandy mist

  Through the scarified games of the sky

  I see her batting her eyelids

  By way of letting me know she understands my signals

  Which moreover are of distress over the very ancient

  Sunfalls

  De temps en temps à travers la brume de sable

  Qui s’éclaircit

  À travers les jeux cicatriciels du ciel

  Je la vois qui bat des paupières

  Histoire de m’avertir qu’elle comprend mes signaux

  Qui sont d’ailleurs en détresse des chutes de soleil

  Très ancien

  Hers I do believe are alone in capturing them still

  More than once I emboldened the wave

  To cross the line that separates us always

  But the dragon governs the cape of this prohibited water

  Even if it is often as a harmless diving loggerhead

  That comes up to breathe on the cursed surface

  Les siens je crois bien être le seul à les capter encore

  Plus d’une fois j’ai enhardi la vague

  À franchir la limite qui nous sépare toujours

  Mais le dragon gouverne le cap de cette eau interdite

  Même si c’est souvent en inoffensif caret-plongeur

  Qu’il survient respirer à la surface maudite

  So what sacrificial bird today

  To send you

  Alors quel oiseau sacrificiel aujourd’hui

  Te dépêcher

  Survivor survivor

  You my own exile and queen of the rubble

  Phantom forever inapt at perfecting her realm

  Rescapée rescapée

  Toi exil mien et reine des décombres

  Fantôme toujours inapte à parfaire son royaume

  Favor of the Trade Winds

  (prose for the sun)

  Faveur des alizés

  (prose pour le soleil)

  It does not suffice.

  Losing his head can make him nothing more than a morbid crab, while comfortably examining himself in the muted neighing of his rays. In that event it’s the wind that animates him, the wind, which also keeps him from becoming complacent to the heaviness of peoples.

  Il ne suffit pas.

  Il lui arrive perdant la tête de n’être qu’un crabe morbide, s’étudiant à son aise dans le hennissement sourd de ses rayons. Dans ce cas c’est le vent qui l’anime, le vent, et qui l’empêche de se complaire dans la lourdeur des peuples.

  Of flowers, I shall declare that they concentrate on what no one suspects as being their scent.

  That’s the trap.

  The sun, weighs, poses.

  The wind decomposes, disconcerts him, freedom.

  Des fleurs, je dirai qu’elles se concentrent sur ce que personne ne soupçonne être leur parfum.

  C’est le piège.

  Le soleil, pèse, pose.

  Le vent se décompose, le déconcerte, liberté.

  For a Fiftieth Anniversary

  Pour un cinquantenaire

  for Lilyan Kesteloot

  à Lilyan Kesteloot

  Exceed exude exult Elan

  Presence we must build your self-evidence

  on pachira buttresses

  on obelisks

  on menfenil* craters

  on sun rays

  Excède exsude exulte Élan

  il nous faut Présence construire ton évidence

  en contreforts de pachira

  en obélisque

  en cratère pour menfenil

  en rayon de soleil

  on copaiba oil

  little matter

  on a caravel stern

  on almadia* flotillas

  on favelas

  en parfum de copahu

  peu importe

  en poupe de caravelle

  en flottille d’almadies

  en favelles

  on citadelles

  on andesite ramparts

  on piton entanglements

  no matter

  the wind a novice at memorializing meanders

  en citadelles

  en rempart d’andésite

  en emmêlement de pitons

  il n’importe

  le vent novice de la mémoire de méandres

  takes offense

  that opened by my breath

  of my breath it is sufficient

  to signify to all

  present and to come

  that a man was there

  s’offense

  à vif que par mon souffle

  de mon souffle il suffise

  pour à tous signifier

  présent et à venir

  qu’un homme était là

  and that he cried out

  torch in the heart of nights

  oriflamme in the heart of days

  standard

  simple extended hand

  an unforgettable wound.

  et qu’il a crié

  en flambeau au cœur des nuits

  en oriflamme au cœur du jour

  en étendard

  en simple main tendue

  une blessure inoubliable.

  Configurations

  Configurations

  for Jacqueline Leiner

  à Jacqueline Leiner

  1

  murmur

  of mangrove mustiness

  of shredded shells

  of flying seeds

  rumeur

  de remugle de mangles

  de coques déchirées

  de graines volantes

  murmur of anchored seeds that know so well

  how to invent the torture of a land

  rumeur de graines ancreuses qui savent si bien

  s’inventer le supplice d’une terre

  (and too bad for those who do not understand

  the ever to be rewound gravity of this game of

  driftings and groundings)

  (et tant pis pour ceux qui ne comprennent pas

  la gravité toujours à remonter de ce jeu de

  dérives et d’échouages)

  predicted condescension of the buoys

  hasty gallop from the depths of time

  of all the startled beasts

  condescendance du balisage annoncée

  galop précipité du fond des âges

  de toutes bêtes effarouchées

  tongue of fire

  the spoken word

  the good exasperated viper of the tender milk of humanity

  la langue de feu

  le dire

  la bonne vipère exaspérée du tendre lait des hommes

  2

  When I wake and feel myself a
ll mountain

  no need to search. It’s understood.

  More Pelée than time can explain.

  Quand je me réveille et me sens tout montagne

  pas besoin de chercher. On a compris.

  Plus Pelée que le temps ne l’explique.

  Other times I touch myself tatou, I attach myself

  manifestly to the Caravelle peninsula, hugging

  without beacon all lights extinguished

  an ocean of false oil and of freebooting

  D’autres fois à me tâter tatou, je m’insiste

  de toute évidence en Caravelle, étreignant

  sans phare tous feux éteints

  un océan d’huile fausse et de flibuste

  Sometimes a flowering canefield improvises me

  head plumed.

  Libra is not the right sign.

  That’s because I expect the imminent arrival of a stunting

  mildew.

  Parfois c’est une cannaie en fleurs qui m’improvise

  plumet en tête.

  Balance ce n’est pas le bon signe.

  C’est que j’attends l’imminente arrivée d’un mildiou

  rabougrisseur.

  My fine days are when,

  without scrupules, a cynical furious whirlwind,

  sneering from all the prey trapped in the talons of my eddies,

  Mes beaux jours, c’est quand,

  sans scrupule, furibond tourbillon cynique,

  ricanant de toute proie enfermée dans la serre de mes remous,

  I dash forward

  blindly

  mortally

  amok.

  je m’élance

  aveugle

  à mort

  amok.

  Now those are my glorious days

  enraged

  vengeful

  Ça c’est mes jours glorieux

  rageur

  vengeur

  3

  Nothing ever frees but the obscurity of the word

  The word of modesty and immodesty

  The word of hard speech.

  Rien ne délivre jamais que l’obscurité du dire

  Dire de pudeur et d’impudeur

  Dire de la parole dure.

  Encoilment of the great thirst for being

  spiral of the great need and the great return of being

  knot of algae and entrails

  knot of the flow and the ebb tide of being.

  I almost forgot: the word of becalming too:

  it is knotted the fury of not speaking.

  Enroulement de la grande soif d’être

  spirale du grand besoin et du grand retour d’être

  nœud d’algues et d’entrailles

  nœud du flot et du jusant d’être.

  J’oubliais : le dire aussi d’étale :

  c’est nouée la fureur de ne pas dire.

  Torpor does not speak.

  Thick. Heavy. Gross.

  Rushed. Who dared?

  in the end: engulfment.

  At the bottom of the muck.

  La torpeur ne dit pas.

  Épaisse. Lourde. Crasse.

  Précipité. Qui a osé ?

  l’enlisement est au bout.

  Au bout de la boue.

  ah!

  the only word is a burst of energy.

  Break the muck.

  Break.

  To speak of a delirium allying the entire universe

  to the uplift of a boulder!

  ah !

  il n’est parole que de sursaut.

  Briser la boue.

  Briser.

  Dire d’un délire alliant l’univers tout entier

  à la surrection d’un rocher !

  4

  This space scribbled on by too hasty lava

  I give it over to Time

  (Time which is nothing other than the

  slowness of speech)

  Cet espace griffonné de laves trop hâtives

  je le livre au Temps.

  (le Temps qui n’est pas autre chose que la

  lenteur du dire)

  the fissure

  all wound

  right to the bite of the inflicted moment

  by the innocent insect

  la fissure

  toute blessure

  jusqu’à la morsure de l’instant infligée

  par l’insecte innocent

  The very interstice that life did not fill in

  everything will meet there

  accumulated for the generous sand

  L’interstice même que la vie ne combla

  tout se retrouvera là

  cumulé pour le sable généreux

  Please recognize at the edge of the cave

  a block of red jasper

  assassinated by day

  clot

  Prière reconnaître à l’orée de la caverne

  un bloc de jaspe rouge

  assassiné de jour

  caillot

  NOTES ON THE POEMS

  Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939)

  We have numbered the stanzas so as to permit easy comparison with their position in the revised editions of Césaire’s long poem. Notes, signaled by a superscript ampersand (&) in the text, are identified by stanza number.

  [4] the volcanoes will explode: In May 1902, Mt. Pelée exploded pyroclastically, burying the old colonial capital of Martinique, St. Pierre, which was never rebuilt. Metaphorically, volcanoes and explosions set up a network of apocalyptic images that run throughout the poem.

  [8] Josephine . . . conquistador: Marie-Josephe-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie (1763-1814) was born into the planter class in Trois-Islets, Martinique. Her second husband, Napoleon Bonaparte, called her Josephine. Martinicans blame her for the reinstitution of slavery in 1802. Her statue, erected by Emperor Napoleon III in 1859, has frequently been decapitated in recent years. The “liberator” is Victor Schoelcher (1804-93), who championed the second abolition of slavery in the French empire by the revolutionary government in 1848. The “conquistador” is Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc (1585-1636), who claimed Martinique for France in 1635.

  [10] morne: Lafcadio Hearn defined the term as “used throughout the French West Indian colonies to designate certain altitudes of volcanic origin. . .” (HTY, 254-55). The French word was derived from Spanish morro, a hillock.

  [14] Capot River: The Capot empties into the Atlantic Ocean in Basse-Pointe, Martinique, where Césaire was born. Its course runs southeast of the plantation his father managed before entering the colonial tax department.

  [15] Queen-Blanche-of-Castille: Daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Louis VIII of France and mother of Louis IX, Blanche (1188-1252) figured prominently in school history books. In the poem, she is a privileged figure of whiteness. See also [87].

  [21] from Trinité to Grand-Rivière: From Césaire’s childhood home, Basse-Pointe, La Trinité lies to the South, Grand-Rivière to the North, facing Africa along the wild Atlantic coast.

  [26] MERCI: THANK YOU; an ex-voto for an answered prayer.

  [27] rue Paille: Literally, Straw Street; the poorest shacks in the colony lacked the solid roof of more prosperous houses.

  [28] sand so black: The sand is black because of its volcanic origin; images of blackness reinforce the poverty of the population.

  [31] the three-souled Carib: An allusion to the three aspects of being in Carib belief: anigi (vital force); iuani (immaterial being); afurugu (astral body). The astral body is an exact copy of the physical body, located midway between materiality and spirituality.

  [32] this little ellipsoidal nothing: A derisive designation for Martinique, which is finger-like in shape. At only 1,128 sq. km., it is approximately six times the size of Washington, D.C. Located at 14.40 degrees North Latitude, it would appear to lie four fingers above the equator on a medium-sized wall map.

  [34] where Death scythes widely: The image evokes the invasion of Spain from Africa by Franco’s tanks. The Spa
nish Civil War was ongoing during the composition of the “Cahier. . .,” and the threat of fascism reinforced the probability of renewed racial violence in the United States. Haiti, the beacon of negritude, had been occupied by the USA between 1915 and 1934.

  [35] Bordeaux . . . San Francisco: All but the last city participated in the triangle trade: goods from French and British ports were traded for slaves on the African coast; slave ships traded their human cargo in the West Indies and the plantation economies of Atlantic America; rum and sugar were sent back to Europe from American and Caribbean ports. San Francisco seems to have been added for euphony and rhythm.

  [36] a little cell in the Jura: Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803) was the foremost military hero of the Haitian revolution, which inflicted its worst defeat on France’s imperial army prior to the retreat from Russia in 1812. In the poem, Césaire focuses on Toussaint as a tragic hero, a black man tricked by his adversaries and imprisoned in the wintry whiteness of the Jura Mountains.

 

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