ENGLISH :
Aimé Césaire
I.
You came to us from
the eternal sea of the Kali’nas,
You, Aimé of our
hearts, child of the pure clear sky,
You who gave us
dreams
That make us equal
to the gods!
You, two eyes of
fire
Which fill with their
immortal flames
The space of this
happy day,
And the crippled
bank with indecipherable joys
And my filial
memory with confusion and tenderness!
You, the
apocrisiarius of the playful waves
Which deliver your
soul to our dazzled souls
With the new deliberate
elegance of your words
And the blithe
smiling courage
Of this blessèd
isle!
II.
A soul complicit
with the melodious splendour of imperial waters,
Gifted with this
green gaiety, light and effortless
Which the generous
souls of the captivating
People of the Caribbean carry within!
Sublime sea,
radiant enamel on a blue background,
Hymnal sea, object
of so much fervent devotion,
Eternal emblem of
pure liberty,
Adorned with flower
garlands of ships and sails!
III.
In your well-read
household, the streams of lofty knowledge
Enhanced the fresh
beauty of the half-light
And the mauve
silence that quivered with a loving presence!
In the modest
streets,
The mellow peppery
song of the air matched
The carefree
threnodies of the breeze.
Thus from your
life’s delicate foundation of friendly anxiety
Surged radiant hope
And dreams hemmed
with light!
You, the curious
child with hoop and butterfly net
Who gave himself up
with passion, modesty and delicacy
To the games of
your sea –fringed country!
Around you paled, yearned,
softened
The mischievous
trees of the forests
And the golden
paths of the valleys!
And your evenings,
vases of garnet crystal, wove in you
The small blue
ribbons,
The red banners of
your generous thoughts!
IV.
O you island of
iguanas, Jouanacaera,
Matinino, Madinina,
island of flowers, O Matinite of the fairies,
Martinique – Matinik of pure
souls,
Martinique – Matinik of
people with the beauty of the cheetah
When it rushes
forward like a streak of lightning through the savannah!
You Aimé Césaire
Who united in a
posy of scented verse
All the heroic
moments of a majestic life!
You, island with
the radiant face, whose masterly fleetingness
Abolishes on your
lips, like a warm hearth, the vertigo of passing time!
You, incomparable
cheerfulness,
Bronzed sister of
the clear consonance
Between men!
Our love. Aimé,
So large for our
hearts,
Exceeds us!
So, let us stay in
the dark half-shadow
Of the warm
tenderness of our ancestors!
You live, you
breathe, you dance, Martinique,
You beat, you
throb, you sing in our flesh,
Radiant Martinique, you,
Land of high
mountains,
Emerald mountain in
the amber sea!
You, dreamy pearl
of the Greater Antilles,
Pliant earth of a
people of eagles
With an indomitable
pride!
You, island, clot
of blood and dream!
What more can I
say? I don’t know!
Comes the storm
which establishes itself as
An avenger in the
name of silence!
Go, leave, don’t
look back,
Don’t listen to the
frightful oracles,
Ah, I long so
passionately this evening
For the warm
presence of my own people!
V.
Aimé, friend of the
sun, you who cherished so much
This your own Créolie,
you who loved it to the brink of tears,
You made the sorrow
frozen in your veins melt,
You brought back
the dawn into your eyes,
Its smile by turns
violent and hospitable,
Its strength sacred
and victorious!
You resurrected
creole grace and mercy,
Its powerful
fervour, its goodness and its confidence!
Thereafter it was
free, agile, exuberant,
Greedy for your
diamond words,
Words of green
algae and sapphires,
For your poems of
sparkling hallucinated flint,
For the quiet gleam
of your ancient wisdom.
O precocious
jubilation of summer,
Spring exalted by
the song of thousand upon thousand birds!
Wherever you were,
you carried, Aimé, in your sighs,
The steep mountains
of your homeland,
Pleasant places
where murmur, limpid with happiness,
Vigorous springs
and alert streams,
Nourishing the
country flowers and the virgin branches,
Living waters
where, at night, beneath the flowered garden of the great stars,
Naiads, nymphs and
dryads run through the woods!
VI.
Everywhere there
followed you,
In your adolescent
insomnias, the canticles
Of the cheerful
plains of joyful Martinique
And the solemn
hymns of the rivers
With waters of
bright amber and amethyst.
And your throat
tightened with gnarled sadness
In the teeming
streets of Paris
When you heard, in
your adolescent soul,
The trembling
voices of your homeland
In the north:
The high Mount Pelée, Morne Macouba,
The Piton du
Carbet,
Morne Piquet, Piton
Marcel
In the south:
Mount Vauclin, Morne Larcher,
Morne Bigot,
Morne Gardier…
VII.
O paths soaked by
rain,
Exalted voices in
the great night,
Motionless dreams,
unfulfilled dreams,
Dreams hanging on
the modest windows of the humble dwellings,
Luxuriant seashells
from the deep sea,
Radiant grandmothers,
overwhelmed by too much sorrow,
Women whose life
passed like a ship
Who fly on the
moonlight
To flood with
tenderness the small beds of the children
Covered with an
openwork cotton blanket,
Women who knew the
knots of the stars
On the rope of the
heavenly Axis!
Grandfathers who
watched over the sleep of the children
As a lighthouse
watches over and protecst boats
From the consuming
darkness of the seas!
O flowers, O
grasses, O towns full of night heat!
Mothers, protect
your children
Keeping them within
the pink timbre of your voices,
Take their sorrows
away
With your sobbing.
VIII.
You hear the fury
of the rains brought by the trade winds,
The gentleness of
the plains in the centre of the island and on the coastal edge,
And this coast with
a wind caressed by the Atlantic ocean,
The Caravelle
peninsula,
The song of the
fishermen on their small makeshift boats,
The hymns of the
cays, the Loups Bordelais, the Loups Ministres,
The pleasant
murmurs of the Caribbean coast,
The whispers of the
beach of black sand of the Anse Céron!
Caribbean
sea, ceremonious sea, incantatory sea,
How the Poet loved
the silky clamour of your waters,
How he adored
wandering in the dense thickets of stars
That watched
over the countless tribes of fish!
You Aimé, who knew
the universality of the true,
The supple
prolixity of languages in their precise movement,
You who delivered
the words of time’s dust
And the still
burning lava of history!
You, whose heart
was attentive to the filiations of men
And the
transfigurations of beings.
IX.
And, like
Aristotle, you took pleasure in saying that
‘The beginning of
all the sciences,
Is astonishment
That things are as
they are.’
I am proud of you,
working people,
People who knew how
to build, in the middle of
The cruellest
adversities,
Empires of joy and
love!
How I love the
fragrance
Of the new day
which announces itself.
O time, our deaths
are everywhere
Where we love them!
Women with eyes
always blazing
Hearts that beat
without being rent apart,
Grass skirts of the
dawn on your fertile flanks,
Your laughter and
the rain alone sow the earth with life!
X.
Divine sea where
there will for ever reason
The sublime heroes
of sensuous Négritude:
Léon Gontran Damas,
Guy Tirolien,
Léopold Sédar
Senghor and Birago Diop!
You know, O sea for
ever moved,
That all poetry
begins
Ex abrupto
On the first page!
How we love your
breathing against our cheeks!
How each of us
wants to sleep and dream
In the sumptuous
alcove of your lap, O sea!
Sea, your murmurs
Which drink our
eyes with an extreme joy
Make words of love
grow and multiply
In our passionate
bodies!
O voice of Hesiod,
voice of the Muses,
Voices which will
pass to a young poet of genius
Whom we shall never
know!
O dithyrambic
evenings!
Dense nights,
seasons and sorrowful moons!
Rainbows of
embraces!
O inalienable
humanity at the heart of every being!
Sea, how we cherish
your gentleness, the most delicate of all,
How we love your
shivers of convulsive velvet,
The scents of your
currents which persist!
We, the poets, perpetually
furious,
We are devoured by
the salt of tenderness!
XI.
Poet and Friend,
Césaire of our tormented hearts,
You who loved to
sleep with the Milky Way in your white bed
With the lucky
breeze in your limpid utterances
And your pillow
full of the fragrances of thyme and sunlight,
You who knew how to
cover with lilac kisses
The generous
breasts of a woman beautiful as Africa,
While the moon
played outside
With the glittering
anchors in the bright bays.
You, who loved
these nights quiet as fresh bread
With the dazzling
images of Candido Portinari beneath your eyelids
And the unreal
azure blue of dreams: life, distance, perpetual game of the spheres,
You who loved the
ladybirds walking guided by the constellations,
The tender and
frail perfection of discreet existences,
The translucent
airborne smile of great innocents.
You, Aimé Césaire!
XII.
You, Aimé Césaire
of the tempests,
You who watched
with a Christ-like friendliness
And with a devoted
gratitude
Every thing and
every being on Earth!
Pleased with the
screeching of the crickets on the hills
Which never leave
our childhood admiration
Until the funerary
proprieties are observed.
You adored, Aimé,
strong friendships
Spontaneous
attachments,
Turned your back on
indelible indiscretions
And pernicious
trivia!
O man who says:
‘I am!
I’m waiting!
It’s a long time
for one heart…!’
The sun was a ring
of love on your finger!
O Epiclesis, O
Eucharist, O Chrism Mass!
XIII.
Now, let us leave,
The bright sun is
waiting for us,
All will be well
there!
Pure, intact,
glorious,
We have no need of
shamanic rites
To placate our
spirits sleeping in celestial hope!
It is in the peace
of loving souls
That we will know
what the air and the leaf are saying to each other
And why their song
is exactly true!
My friend Aimé, let
us sleep beneath the flowering willows,
Companions of
beings dead or living!
XIV.
You, Aimé,
wandering trace of a luminous path,
Febrile anxiety
will no longer come tapping on our hearts
When peace descends
on the laughing countryside of Martinique
And plants on the
sweet rippling grasses
The perpetuation of
ecstasy.
We will listen to
the fresh murmur of new waters
Frolicking beneath
the teasing brambles
To delight the
honeyed tones of our brown skins!
O you, Friend of
the humble, who pardoned readily
Thoughtlessness
stemming from ignorance
And hated cowardly
venality!
My friend Césaire,
Your memory returns
to me like a precious gift from life,
Like a deliciously
touching breath!
One thought brings
another
Just as one ripple
on the water brings another!
No, they never go
away completely
Those who depart:
They always leave,
however paltry, however small it may be,
A deep scar
On the lustful body
of time!
O banners of acacias,
Float like dreams
Beneath the
invigorating breath of the breeze,
So that through the
kisses of those who love one another
The leaves of the
trees may become one with the evening,
So that the happy
air surrounds its gracious body
With a belt of
young figs!
O life, mysterious
music
Of paths and roads!
Translated from the
French of Athanase Vantchev de Thracy July 2013 by Norton Hodges
Notes :
Aimé
Césaire (1913
–2008): Francophone poet,
author and politician from Martinique. He was one
of the founders of the négritude movement
in Francophone literature.
Kali’nas: also
known as the Karib, Kaliña, Galibi, Kalina, Karina, Carina, Kalinha, Kariña,
Kari’ña, or Karinya people, are an Indigenous ethnic group
found in several countries on the Caribbean coast of South America. They speak
a Cariban language and
are culturally Cariban as well.
Apocrisiarius:
a high diplomatic representative
during Late Antiquity and the early Middle
Ages. The closest
modern equivalent is a papal nuncio.
Jouanacaëra,
Matinino, Madinina, Matinite, Matinik: former names of Martinique
Créolie: a literary
preceding Négritude and asserting a common cultural heritage.
Mount Pelée, Morne Macouba, Le Piton
du Carbet, Morne Piquet, Piton Marcel, Mount Vauclin, Morne Larcher, Morne
Bigot, Morne Gardier:
mountain peaks in Martinique
Caravelle Peninsula, Loups
Bordelais, Loups Ministre, Anse Céron: geographical features of Martinique and its coast
Négritude is
a literary and ideological movement, developed by francophone black
intellectuals, writers, and politicians in France in the 1930s. Its proponents
included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar
Senghor, Guy Trolien, Léon Gontran Damas
and Birago Diap.. The Négritude writers found solidarity in a
common black identity
as a rejection of perceived French colonial racism. They
believed that the shared black heritage of members of the African diaspora was
the best tool in fighting against French political
and intellectual hegemony and
domination.
Ex abrupto: brusquely, without preparation
Dithyrambic A
frenzied, impassioned choric hymn and dance of ancient Greece in
honour of Dionysus.
Cândido
Portinari (December
29, 1903 - February 6, 1962) was one of the most important Brazilian painters and
also a prominent and influential practitioner of the neo-realism style
in painting.
Epiclesis:
that part of the Anaphora (Eucharistic
Prayer) by which the priest invokes
theHoly Spirit (or
the power of His blessing) upon the Eucharistic bread and wine in some Christian churches.[1]
In most Eastern Christian traditions,
the Epiclesis comes after the Anamnesis (remembrance
of Jesus' words and deeds); in the Western Rite it
usually precedes.
Chrism
Mass: Chrism is
holy anointing oil,
or "consecrated oil used in the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, Oriental Orthodox Church,
and by Old Catholics,
as well as some other traditions, including the Assyrian Church of the East,
and Nordic-style Lutheran churches,
in the administration of certain sacraments and
ecclesiastical functions.
