To Sweep, To Scan
AimŽ CŽsaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, trans. Clayton Eshleman and Annette
Smith. Wesleyan, 2001. $14.95.
Since its appearance in AimŽ CŽsaire: The Collected Poetry
(University of California) in 1983, Clayton Eshleman and Annette SmithÕs
translation of AimŽ CŽsaireÕs Notebook
of a Return to the Native Land has earned the honor of being the
authoritative, definitive English version of this 20th century
masterpiece. Now, revised and reissued as a single volume, Wesleyan has made
the poem widely available (especially for students) at a reasonable price. The
new version also includes the inspiring and inspired introduction to the first
bilingual edition by AndrŽ Breton (1941), a tribute that acknowledges the impact
of French Surrealism on CŽsaire. In addition, a commentary on the poem and
chronology of the poet help the reader locate the work culturally and
historically. This extended lyric marks the beginning of CŽsaireÕs search for Negritude and assertion of poetryÕs
visionary import. The first of three movements is especially stunning Ð a
psychic and geographical topography of Martinique with telegraphic shifts that
link social terror with the violence of sudden natural growth. This section
sets the stage for CŽsaireÕs dialectical plays; here notably setting a dense,
rich paradise of language against the confrontation of brutality and suffering
in Martinique.Ê
The poem ends on the fixed/exploding
juxtaposition of Òmotionless verritionÓ Ð Òimmobile verritionÓ in the original
French Ð a phrase that goes unnoted in the Collected, but the
note in the new Wesleyan edition, is typically of the changes made overall Ð
expanded, wildly helpful, and concise.Ê
Previous translators have used the words ÒflickÓ and ÒswirlÓ for
Òverrition,Ó words that completely obscure the fact that CŽsaire, according to
the new editionÕs notes, coined the word from Òverri,Ó the Latin for Òto sweep,
to scrape a surface, to scan.Ó ÒVerritionÓ also, the notes reveal, Òattempts to
preserve the ÔveerÕ or turning motion (set against the oxymoronic modifier
ÔmotionlessÕ).Ó Juxtaposition enacts the poemÕs politics on a structural,
almost molecular level.
Ê
CŽsaire manipulates a multitude of
political tensions into linguistic forms. The sheer force and momentum of the
poemÕs language Òbreaks into the forbidden.Ó CŽsaireÕs political interest in
creating a very material language world is manifest in the poemÕs condensed
lyricism, extended syntax, and especially in the wealth of rare and technical
words. African and Creole words rub up against botanical and geographical
words. Slang sits beside archaic usages and neologisms.Ê CŽsaire makes powerful use of the friction
between native and colonizer tongues when they are in fact the same tongue. In
a kind of sur-French, CŽsaireÕs supped up, super-electrified lexiconÊ ÒmastersÓ and reinvents the language.Ê In its subversion of French, the poem enacts
the rebellion and resistance the poem calls for. The poem represents one mind,
and many minds, united by a civic emergency, by illimitable anger, and by the
urgent and disquietingly search for metamorphosis. If as The New York Times reported last October, Òin
the weeks since the terrorist attacks, people have been consoling themselves Ð
and one another Ð with poetry in an almost unprecedented way,Ó and readers are
in fact hungry for moving and outraged political poetry, then CŽsaireÕs poem,
as it moves from alienation to revolt to integration, will, especially now,
feed us and feed on us.Ê
Christine
HumeÕs Musca Domestica (Beacon Press, 2000).
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