The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire

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

  Kolikombo: Probably a homophonic play on Kolikongbo, either the distant village of the dead (RMB, 100, 108) or a mischievous hairless dwarf, legendary among the Banda people (RMB, 146-50). The “papaw trees of the shadow” suggest the realm of the dead.

  Lailaps (Laelaps): Word transliterated from the Greek λαι῁λαψ, λαίλαπος (lailaps, lailapos), meaning storm, vortex, or whirlwind (PTSD, 1762); in Greek mythology, Laelaps was one of Acteon’s dogs who devoured his master, metamorphosed as a stag.

  Lamido: In the Fula language, a ruler over vassal states; the title of Usuman dan Fodio. (See also Sokoto.)

  Lampornis: The white-necked jacobin (Florisuga melivora), native to Martinique, is listed under the genus Lampornis in Lesson’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux-mouches (HNO, xxiii).

  Levee, The: A cemetery in Fort-de-France, Martinique; founded in the 17th century, it is still known as the cemetery of the wealthy.

  Lwa (loas): The forces or spirits of vodou. The poteau-mitan (center pole) in a vodou temple (oumfò or houmfor) is the passage between the visible and the invisible worlds; the lwa descend via the center pole to mount their servants. The vever (q.v.) serves to invoke the lwa.

  Macumba: A syncretic Afro-American religion of Brazil; by extension, a ritual ceremony analogous to vodou.

  Malfini: See Menfinil.

  Malicorne: Presumably a neologism for the bête à cornes, an insect of the cerambycidae family whose antennae are called horns (cornes) in French; mali derives from French mal (evil), as in maléfique (maleficent) (RH, 84-85).

  Maroon: The noun Maroon (fr. marron, sp. cimmarón) designates those runaways who set up autonomous communities in the Antilles and Suriname. In his “Reply to Depestre,” Césaire extends the verb to signify escape from constraints imposed by European poetic forms.

  Martenot waves: An ancestor of the electronic keyboard, invented by Maurice Martenot in 1918 and perfected a decade later. The 1946 edition of Miraculous Weapons mistakenly printed Mortenot; the 1970 edition deleted the allusion to Martenot waves entirely.

  Mea-culpa-crab: The fiddler crab (Uca pugilator) is called in Martinican French “crabe-c’est-ma- faute” because of the male’s apparent gesture of contrition in striking itself with its one outsized pincer. Apart from its mating behavior, it is a timid creature of the mangrove.

  Menfenil (also Malfini): A raptor, analogous to the North American “chicken hawk,” that has an evil reputation. Césaire informed his German translator J. Jahn that its fat was used in casting spells (PTED, 1763).

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

  Moudang: A tribal group in Chad; in Martinique, slaves of this ethnicity were reputed to be especially formidable; as an adjective, and by extension, terrifying.

  Mumbo-Jumbo: A Mandingo deity noted by Mungo Park (PSD, 429); Frazer interpreted its role to be the sacrifice of children prior to the substitution of animal sacrifice (FDM, 152).

  Murderesses: In French, meurtrières denote arrow slits or loopholes in medieval defensive architecture; Césaire extends their poetic signification to the feminine plural of murderer.

  Nenia: An archaic Roman goddess of funerary lamentation; term used by Apollinaire in two poems (RHG, 94).

  Ogou: See Ogun-Ferraille.

  Ogun-Ferraille: Warrior, first orisha to descend to earth (in Yorubaland), patron of smiths (in Dahomey), and powerful political leader (in Haiti). In Cuban santeria, he is said to live deep in the woods as a hunter. Ogun-Ferraille is the Haitian French spelling of his name.

  Olorun: In Yoruba tradition, Olorun is the supreme orisha, associated with the sun. In Cuban santeria, he is one of three manifestations of the godhead, the other two being Olodumare and Olofi.

  Omphale: The verb is a neologism formed on the Greek ὀμφαλός (omphalos), the navel of the universe at Delphi; secondarily, the name of the Lydian queen who enslaved Hercules.

  Ophir: The biblical land where King Solomon acquired gold, ivory and precious woods (PSD, 445-46).

  Pachira: Pachira aquatica, a tree, the Malabar or Guiana chestnut, whose red-tipped flowers resemble plumes.

  Parakimomene: Defined by Césaire as the Grand Vizir in the Byzantine or Ottoman court; frequently a eunuch, he slept on the floor at the entrance to the chamber of the emperor (IML, 88).

  Paraschist(s): In ancient Egypt, paraschists removed the viscera, before another category of priests called taricheutes washed the abdominal cavity of the cadaver to be embalmed, then filled it with myrrh and aromatic herbs. Introduced into French by Champollion, these terms are found in archeological treatises and specialized dictionaries.

  Petal of fire: The red petal of Hibiscus sabdariffa, called groseiller pays in Martinique, is reduced to a syrup mixed with rum in the Christmas season.

  Plumaria: Possibly the sickle-beard (Plumaria falcata), one of several coralline polyps.

  Poto-poto: A Wolof word for mud (RHG, 107).

  Poui: See Tabebuia.

  Prester John: A legendary medieval figure said to rule a Christian kingdom surrounded by Moslem states somewhere in Asia or Africa. Portuguese explorers convinced themselves that the legend referred to Ethiopia; another version made him the hero of the battle of Ecbatana.

  Pringamosa vine: The fuzz of the malignant Liana pringamosa blinds animals and inflames the skin.

  Recado: In French récade, from Portuguese recado, a message; in colonial Dahomey, the ceremonial scepter of the king and the message it signified.

  Rhagades: A medical term dating from the XIVth century; designates a split at the angles of the mouth (RHG, 113).

  Rhamphorhynchi: Long-tailed pterosaurs of the Jurassic period.

  Rhizulate: A homophonic play on rhizule, which designates the rootlet of a mushroom (PSD, 487).

  Roto: In Latin America, the word designates, sometimes pejoratively, a member of the lowest social class; “ahí” specifies “there.”

  Roucou: The achiote tree (Bixa orellana), whose reddish pigment the Caribs used to paint their bodies.

  Samory (Almamy): The imam (“Almamy” in Arabic) Samory Touré (c. 1837-1900) governed the Upper Niger region in 1880. For nearly twenty years, he opposed French colonial troops in the region, gradually losing ground to their superior armament. Captured by the French in 1898, he was deported to Gabon where he died (PSD, 206).

  Shabeen: A person of mixed African and European ancestry with brown skin, reddish hair, sometimes with freckles and greyish eyes. We have used the St. Lucia spelling (DCE, 145).

  Shaka: A great Zulu king (1787-1828), military strategist and consolidator of power in South-East Africa.

  Shango: The Yoruba thunder god who is found throughout the Caribbean and Brazil in several syncretic religions.

  Sikasso: A city in southeastern Mali founded in the late 19th century; its name increases the phonemic resonance of the series of African names in Dogs. . .

  Siloam: A possible reference to Hezekiah’s tunnel (8th century BCE), which brought water from the Shiloah spring to the city of David; the images of violence suggest the role of the tunnel in ancient Hebrew ritual sacrifice or its role in Hezekiah’s war against the Assyrians.

  Simarouba: In Martinique, where the Bursera simaruba is used to construct border fences, it is known as the gommier rouge. A red-barked variety is called gommier sang, “blood gum tree” (DCE, 262).

  Sokoto: Capital of the caliphate founded by the Lamido Usuman dan Fodio in the 19th century; southwest of the empire of Bornu, q.v.

  Soldier ant: In French, fourmi magnan (Annoma nigricans) is an equatorial ant of the Dorylus family that is known to attack in organized columns to kill small animals and occasionally sleeping humans.

  Soukala: A grouping of round huts forming a patriarchal family unit among the Kabye people of Togo, called the Losso in colonial Dahomey. They cultivate
the dry, rocky soil of the Sahel region, which is famous for its traditional blacksmiths. Vodou is their traditional religion.

  Tabebuia(s): Tabebuia heterophylla is known locally as “pink trumpet tree” for the shape and color of its flower. Tabebuia pallida is endemic in the Lesser Antilles; in Martinique, it is known in Creole as the poïer (Fr. poirier), for the pea-like seeds in its pod. The Trinidad variety (T. pentaphylla) is called poui.

  Tambocha ant: A venomous red-headed ant of tropical South America.

  Tambourine player: Frazer mentions the tambourine players who accompanied the procession that closed the Roman Festival of Joy (Hilaria), which celebrated the resurrection of Attis (AAO, 170). (See also Violets below.)

  Tammuz: The Sumerian name for the vegetation god called Adonis by the Greeks. Frazer relates that “every year his divine mistress journeyed in quest of him ‘to the land from which there is no returning, to the Descent of Ishtar to the nether world to recover Tammus’” (AAO, 6). See also Isis (above).

  Three hundred years (also three centuries and three-hundred-year war): See 306 years above.

  Tiaulé: A Creole word used familiarly to designate a great number, a swarm (IML, 91).

  Tipoyeur: A bearer of the tipoye—a sort of sedan chair supported by two bamboo rods—in which notables rode in the West African colonies (PTED, 1766).

  Touaou: The bridled tern (Onychoprion anaethetus) of the French West Indies.

  Tower(s) of silence: An allusion to the Zoroastrian burial ritual in which bodies were exposed on isolated towers constructed above an ossuary; the vultures stripped the bones clean. With the identity of “the prey and the vulture” in the next line of “Batuque,” Césaire suggests that we are our own executioners. (See Baudelaire’s poem “L’Héautontimorouménos.”)

  Trochilidae: The Linnaean name of the family that includes hummingbirds.

  Turbation: Old French (from turbacion) signifying trouble, confusion, obstacle (RHG, 135).

  Tur-ra-ma: A throwing stick used in New Holland, i.e., Australia; a boomerang (GDU. vol. 15, 608).

  Vatapa: A sauce that is made with fresh ginger, peanuts, onion, and garlic; it is served with shrimp in northeastern Brazil.

  Vever (vèvè): Analogous to the Tibetan mandala, the vever in vodou is a symbolic design formed on the ground by sprinkling cornmeal or some other powder from the hand at the beginning of a ceremony. It represents a lwa (q.v.).

  Violets and anemones: Frazer associates these two flowers with the dying gods Adonis (anemones) and Attis (violets) (AAO, 166, 204; FGB, 272, 301). The death and resurrection of these divinities, like Osiris’s, assured the renewal of the cycle of vegetation. The Rebel’s soliloquy beginning “Ho ho / Their power is well anchored. . .” concludes in a paroxysm of blood-red images that suggest the Roman Day of Blood on which the sacrifice of the “blood of Attis” was celebrated (AAO, 166-68).

  Vocero: A Corsican funeral dirge calling for vendetta.

  Vomito Negro: A Spanish name for yellow fever, which originated in Africa and spread to the Americas aboard slave ships; literally “black vomit.”

  Yema(n)ja: In the Yoruba religion, this female orisha is the supreme mother, protectress of mothers and children, guardian of the seas and, for some practitioners, of rivers and lakes as well. In Cuban santeria, she is thought by many to be the mother of Shango.

  WORKS CITED

  Alsopp, Richard. 1996. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press. (DCE)

  Arnold, A.[lbert] James. 1981. Modernism and Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of Aimé Césaire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (AMN)

  —. 2008. “Beyond Postcolonial Césaire: Reading Cahier d’un retour au pays natal Historically.” Forum for Modern Language Studies. 44.3: 258-75. The article details cuts of an erotic and racially antagonistic nature, as well as the spiritual references cited here. (AFM)

  —. 2009. “Césaire is Dead: Long Live Césaire! Recuperations and Reparations.” French Politics, Culture and Society 27.3: 9-18. (ALL)

  Bédouin, Jean-Louis, ed. 1964. La Poésie surréaliste. Paris: Seghers. (BPS)

  Brazza, Pierre Savorgnan de. 1886. Exposé présenté par. . . dans la séance générale extraordinaire [de la Société de géographie] tenue au Cirque d'hiver, le 21 janvier 1886. Paris: Société de géographie. (SBE)

  Breton, André and André Masson. 1948. Martinique charmeuse de serpents. Paris: Sagittaire. (BMC)

  —. 2008. Martinique: Snake Charmer. Trans. David W. Seaman. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. (BMS)

  Cahen, Jeanine. 1960. “Aimé Césaire et les nègres sauvages.” Afrique Action 21 November: p. 23. (CAA)

  Calmet, Augustin, O.S.B. 1742 (1718). Histoire de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament, et des Juifs. 5 Vols. Paris: Martin, Coignard. (CHA)

  Césaire, Aimé. 1960 (1956). Cahier d’un retour au pays natal – deuxième édition. Preface by Petar Guberina. Paris: Présence Africaine. Printed on 15 December 1960, this was the 29th printing since 1956 but the first to constitute a new second edition. (CCR)

  —. 1962. Le Armi miracolose. Trans. by A. Vizioli and F. de Poli. Parma: Guanda. (CAM)

  —. 1968. An Afrika: Gedichte. Trans. by J. Jahn. Munich: Hanser. (An important bilingual edition.) (CAA)

  —. 1976. Oeuvres complètes. Ed. by Jean-Paul Césaire. Fort-de-France; Paris: Désormeaux. Vol. 1: Poèmes; vol. 2: Théâtre; vol. 3: Oeuvre historique et politique. (COC)

  —. 1979. “La Martinique telle qu’elle est.” The French Review 53.2: 183-89. (CMT)

  —. 1982. Annonciation: Dix Poèmes d’Aimé Césaire et sept eaux-fortes et aquatintes de Wifredo Lam. Milan: Grafica Uno. (155 unpaginated copies, 610 x 805 mm.) (CDP)

  —. 1983. The Collected Poetry. Trans. by C. Eshleman and A. Smith. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press. (CCP)

  —. 1984. Non-Vicious Circle: Twenty Poems of Aimé Césaire. Trans. and ed. by Gregson Davis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (DNV)

  —. 1986. Lost Body. Trans. by C. Eshleman and A. Smith. New York: George Braziller, Inc. (CLB)

  —. 1990. Lyric and Dramatic Poetry, 1946-82. Trans. by C. Eshleman and A. Smith. CARAF Books. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. (LDP)

  —. 1994. Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Ed. by A. Irele. Ibadan, Nigeria: New Horn Press. 2nd ed. by Ohio State University Press, 2000. (ICR)

  —. 2011. Solar Throat Slashed. Trans. by A. J. Arnold and C. Eshleman. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. (CST)

  —. 2012. Du fond d’un pays de silence. . . Ferrements. Ed. by L. Kesteloot, R. Hénane, and M. Souley Ba. Paris: Orizons. (DFPS)

  —. 2012. Introduction à Moi, laminaire. . .: édition critique. Ed. by M. S. Ba, R. Hénane, and L. Kesteloot. Paris: L’Harmattan. (IML)

  —. 2013. The Original 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. Trans. by A. J. Arnold and C. Eshleman. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. (CNR)

  —. 2014. Poésie, théâtre, essais et discours. Ed. by A. J. Arnold et al. Planète Libre. Paris: CNRS-Éditions. (PTED)

  —. 2015. The Tragedy of King Christophe. Trans. by P. Breslin and R. Ney. Evanston, IL : Northwestern University Press. (CTC)

  Césaire, Suzanne. 2012. The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent (1941-1945). Ed. by D. Maximin, trans. by K. L. Walker. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. (GCD)

  Diop, Papa Samba. 2010. La Poésie d’Aimé Césaire. . . Paris: Champion. (Contains an extensive lexicon of Césaire’s poetic œuvre, pp. 187-565.) (PSD)

  Durozoi, Gérard. 1997. Histoire du mouvement surréaliste. Paris: Hazan. (HMS)

  Eliade, Mircea. 1937. Mythes, rêves et mystères. Paris: Gallimard. (EMR)

  Eshleman, Clayton and Denis Kelly, trans. 1966. State of the Union. New York: Caterpillar Book 1. (ESU)

  —. 2001. “At the Locks of the Void,” Companion Spider, 131-46. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. (ELV)

  Faulkner, Raymond O. et a
l., eds. 2008. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. . . San Francisco: Chronicle Books. (EBD)

  Fonkoua, Romuald. 2010. Aimé Césaire (1913-2008). Paris: Perrin. Reprinted in Tempus coll., 2013. (AC)

  Frazer, James George. 1894. The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion. Vol. 1. London; New York: MacMillan and Co. (FGB)

  —. Le Cycle du rameau d’or. 4 vols. Librairie Orientaliste. Paris: P. Guethner.

  1935. Vol. 1: Le Roi magicien dans la société primitive, 1, Trans. by P. Sayn. (FRM1);

  1935. Vol. 2: Le Roi magicien dans la société primitive, 2, Trans. by P. Sayn. (FRM2)

  1927. Vol. 3: Tabou et les périls de l’âme, Trans. by H. Peyre. (FTP)

  1931. Vol. 4, Le Dieu qui meurt, Trans. by P. Sayn. (FDM)

  —. 1906. Adonis, Attis, Osiris: Studies in the History of Oriental Religion. London; New York: Macmillan and Co. (AAO)

  Harris, Rodney E. 1973. L’Humanisme dans le théâtre d’Aimé Césaire. Ottawa: Naaman. (HHT)

  Hearn, Lafcadio. 1903 (1890). Two Years in the French West Indies. New York; London: Harper and Brothers. (HTY)

  —. 1937 (1923). Youma. Trans. by M. Logé. Paris: Mercure de France. (HY)

  Hénane, René. 2004. Glossaire des termes rares dans l’œuvre d’Aimé Césaire. Paris: J.-M. Place. (RHG)

  —. 2006. Césaire et Lautréamont: Bestiaire et métamorphose. Paris: L’Harmattan. (CLB)

  —. 2013. Cavalier du temps et de l’écume: Étude thématique et critique de Comme un malentendu de salut—Noria. Paris: L’Harmattan. (CTE)

  Herskovits, Melville J. 1937. Life in a Haitian Valley. New York; London: Knopf. (HLV)

  Joinville, Jehan sire de. 1761. Histoire de Saint Louis. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. (HSL)

  Juminer, Bertène. 1960. Les Bâtards. Preface by Aimé Césaire. Paris: Présence Africaine. (CBB)

  Kaufman, Janice Horner. 2003. “Tracing the Paideuma in Aimé Césaire’s Poetry: From Solar Throat Slashed (Soleil cou coupé) to Cadaster (Cadastre).” New West Indian Guide 77.1 & 2: 85-104. (KTP)