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Table of Contents
Aimé Césaire & René Depestre, "On Negritude"
Graffiti of Aimé Césaire
by jehpuh,CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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“There were things to tell the world. We were not dazzled by European civilization. We bore the imprint of European civilization but we thought that Africa could make a contribution to Europe,” (54) |
Key ideas & commentary
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Biography of Aimé Césaire
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Biography of René Depestre
René Depestre is a currently living (aged 98) Haitian-French poet. He was born in 1926, and from the age of 10 was raised by his maternal grandmother. He was a communist and an activist against French colonialism. Although Haiti and the Caribbean is a central focus of his work, he lived in exile in Cuba and settled in France. According to his biography on Wikipedia, “One of his most famous collections of poetry is Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident chrétien (Rainbow for the Christian Occident) (1967), a mix of politics, eroticism, and Voudoo, topics that are found in all of his works.” These themes can be seen in works that are available online, including the political in Mère Caraïbe / Caribbean Mother, and Hàïti a la dérive / Haiti Adrift; the erotic in The Enchantment of a Rainy Hour, and a fusion of all three in Hadriana in all my dreams : a novel.
References on Negritude:
- 1994 interview with Aimé Césaire (in French) "La Négritude" Archive INA (Use YouTube auto-translation to watch with captions in English)
