Childhood and Education
Aimé Césaire is certainly the best-known Martinican personality in the world. The many battles led by The Cantor of Negritude (nickname given to Aimé Césaire) throughout his life had made him the voice of the lower ones against injustice and racism. Today, his writings are international in scope and are taught on all continents of the world.
Aimé Césaire was born on June 26, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, a town in northern Martinique. His father Fernand Césaire was then a tax controller.
In 1919, he joined the primary school of Basse-Pointe before continuing his studies at Lycée Schoelcher in Fort-de-France, where he met Léon-Gontran Damas.
Graduate and early writings in Paris
In 1932, he flew to Paris, where he was a student at Lycée Louis-le-Grand. There he met his future comrade Leopold Sedar Senghor. The two men, joined by Léon-Gontran Damas, participated in the creation of the journal Légitime défense (Self Defense) with Caribbean students. The writings of Aimé Césaire were then published.
In 1934, he founded L'Étudiant Noir (The Black Student) with his cronies and Suzanne Roussi, a Martinican writer, who became his wife. The word "blackness" (négritude in French) is used for the first time.
In 1935, after passing the entrance examination for the École Normale Supérieure, he went on summer vacation in Yugoslavia with his friend Petar Guberina and began writing Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to My Native Land).
In 1936, he read the History of African Civilization written by Frobenius, which reveals the historical past of Africa and the black world.
The following year, he married Suzanne Roussi, who gave birth in 1938 to Jacques Cesaire, their first child. He also currently finalized Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to My Native Land). Then he left the École Normale Supérieure with a thesis on the Negro-African Writers: South theme in Black-African literature of the USA.
Come back to Martinique and debut as a politician
In 1939, he returned to Martinique and became a professor of French and classical literature at the Lycée Schoelcher in Fort-de-France with one of his students, Édouard Glissant and Frantz Fanon.
His wife, Suzanne Césaire, taught at Lycée Technique of Bellevue in Schoelcher and gave birth to John Paul, their second son.
In 1940, Admiral Robert became the governor of Martinique. This was the beginning of the Vichy repression in Martinique. The following year, Césaire founded the magazine Tropiques with Suzanne Césaire, René Ménil, Georges Aristide Maugée and Georges Gratiant. He met André Breton (1896-1966), writer, poet, essayist, and theorist of surrealism.
1941 will also be the year of birth of his third son, Francis. In 1942, he welcomed her fourth child, a girl named Ina.
In June 1943, Martinique rallied the France Libre (opponents to Vichy).
In May 1944, he published an open letter from Césaire to Mgr Varin La Brunelière, then bishop of Saint Pierre and Fort-de-France. Césaire stayed in Haiti, where he lectured. "The Magic Island" will exert a strong influence on his work (The Tragedy of King Christophe and Toussaint Louverture). His Cahier d'un retour au pays natal was released in English in a bilingual edition by the Fountain magazine in New York and was prefaced by André Breton.
In March 1945, Aimé Césaire was elected mayor of Fort-de-France, under the banner of the French Communist Party and a few months later, general counsel (he kept this mandate until 1949).
In November of the same year, Césaire was elected Deputy of Martinique. He moved to Paris in the Latin Quarter.
In 1946, Césaire's rapporteur for the law of 19 March 1946, called "departmentalization" to transform the colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyana and Reunion into French departments. He published the miraculous Weapons Gallimard, some poems were already published in various issues of Tropiques.
In 1947, he participated in the creation of the journal Presence Africaine with Alioune Diop.
In 1948, he published "Soleil cou coupé" published by K. Leopold Sedar Senghor published his Anthology of New Poetry negro and Malagasy with Presses Universitaires de France. The same year, Marc, the fifth son of Aimé Césaire and Suzanne born.
He went to Poland for the World Conference of Intellectuals for Peace.
In 1949, he published "Corps perdu", Editions du Seuil, resumed later and partly in "Cadastre". He travels to Romania to give lectures.
1950 is marked by the publication of "Discourse on Colonialism".
In 1951, Michele, the sixth and last child of Aimé Césaire and Suzanne, was born in Paris.
In 1953, Césaire went to Moscow on the occasion of Stalin's death. Two years later, he participated in Debates on national poetry as part of the journal "Presence Africaine".
In 1956, he participated in the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris, where there was a "culture and colonization" communication. The same year, the publication of the Letter to Maurice Thorez, a letter in which Césaire resigned from the Communist Party. He wrote the foreword to the book "The West Indies Decolonized" by Daniel Guerin.
In 1957, Césaire founded the Parti Progressite Martiniquais. Two years later, he participated in the 2nd Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Rome and met Pope John XXIII.
In 1960, he published "Ferrements" (Ironworks) and traveled for the first time in Africa, where he met Sekou Toure, President of the Republic of Guinea.
In 1963, Aimé Césaire and Suzanne Roussy divorced. He testified at the trial of members of the Organisation de la jeunesse anticolonialiste Martiniquaise (Martinican Anticolonial Youth Organization).
In 1964, The Tragedy of King Christophe is played in different cities of France and Europe successfully. The staging is signed Jean-Marie Serreau with Douta Seck in the role of King Christophe.
A year later, he published "Une saison au Congo" Editions du Seuil, which was played in Brussels and Paris in 1967 with again a staging of Jean-Marie Serreau.
In 1966, Césaire participates in the First Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar. Suzanne Roussi, his ex-wife and mother of his children, died.
Three years later, he published "Une tempête" (A Storm) by Seuil. The play will be performed in Tunisia and Martinique.
In 1976, Leopold Sedar Senghor, then president of the Republic of Senegal, visited him in Martinique. Following the election of François Mitterrand as President of the French Republic in 1981, Césaire muted its autonomist claims to not hinder politically the new president.
End of political career
In 1982, he published "Publication de Moi, laminaire" (Publishing of Me, laminar), Editions du Seuil, which will be his last book of poems. Five years later, Césaire participated in the First Hemispheric Conference of black people in the diaspora, in February in Miami, where he delivered his Discours sur la négritude (Sermon on the blackness).
In 1990, the Festival of Avignon paid tribute to him. The following year, The Tragédie du Roi Christophe (Tragedy of King Christophe) is played at the Comédie-Française.
In 1993, Césaire waives his deputy. The following year, he published "Poetry", which covers his major poems.
In 2001, Césaire waived his term as mayor of Fort-de-France after 56 years in the same job.
In 2003, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic, sent him a message.
In 2005, he participated in a parliamentary and public debate on the recognition of "positive aspects" of colonialism. He published a long interview with Françoise Vergès, entitled "Negro I am, I will remain negro" by Albin Michel. This interview is highly successful in bookstores.
In 2007, he argued for Ségolène Royal in the presidential election.
On 10 March 2008, Aimé Césaire was admitted to the emergency department of C.H.U. Meynard at Fort-de-France for heart failure.
A week later, on April 17, 2008, Aimé Césaire died at the age of 93, and was buried in Martinique in accordance with his wishes, in the presence of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and several heads of state or representatives of foreign heads of state.
