At the Living Heart: Translating Aimé Césaire
July 21, 2018 11:54 AM   Subscribe

we sing of poisonous flowers
bursting in meadows of fury;
skies of love struck by clots of blood;
epileptic mornings; the white
burning of abyssal sands, the sinking of wrecked ships in the middle of nights rent by
the smell of wild beasts.

What can I do?

I must begin.

Begin what?

The only thing in the world that’s worth beginning:
The End of the World, no less.
Since 2013, three English translations of this book-length poem have become widely available. Initially published in the aftermath of the explosive protests and unrest in France in May 1968, John Berger and Anna Bostock’s version was the first English translation of Césaire to appear in the United Kingdom; it was reissued by Archipelago Books shortly after Césaire’s centenary. In September 2017, Clayton Eshleman and A. James Arnold released their bilingual volume The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire, based on Arnold’s definitive French editions and drawing on Eshleman’s experience of translating Césaire for more than 50 years. Shortly thereafter, in November 2017, a new translation appeared from N. Gregson Davis, a professor of ancient Greek and Latin poetry at Duke University who grew up in Antigua.

The appearance of so much Césaire at the same time is significant—the opportunity for a wider American appreciation of the poet seems to have finally arrived. Which translation of Cahier shapes that appreciation, however, will depend on the way it speaks to our present as much as it accurately reflects Césaire’s past.
posted by standardasparagus (4 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Cahier d'un retour au pays natal was originally published in 1939, then in revised form in 1947.
posted by homerica at 2:02 PM on July 21, 2018


This is very good, thank you. I have only read his Discourse on Colonialism so this is eye-opening.
posted by ocular shenanigans at 11:07 PM on July 21, 2018


Thanks for this!
posted by haemanu at 9:48 AM on July 22, 2018


Longtime fan, ever since I came across his work in Mary Ann Caws' brief but delicious volume, Surrealist Love Poems (his poem was "Automatic Crystal"). People might be interested to know he did a postcolonial reworking of Shakespeare's Tempest
posted by Perko at 9:07 AM on July 23, 2018


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