Quotes from Aimé Césaire

et surtout mon corps aussi bien que mon âme, gardez-vous de vous croiser les bras en l'attitude stérile du spectateur, car la vie n'est pas un spectacle, car une mer de douleurs n'est pas un proscenium, car un homme qui crie n'est pas un ours qui danse.

Alas, there is no one in hell... All the devils are here!

It is not a dead society that we want to revive. We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. Nor is it the present colonial society that we wish to prolong, the most putrid carrion that ever rotted under the sun. It is a new society that we must create.

Je parle de millions d'hommes à qui on a inculqué savamment la peur, le complexe d'infériorité, le tremblement, l'agenouillement, le désespoir, le larbinisme.

Écoutez le monde blanc horriblement las de son effort immense ses articulations rebelles craquer sous les étoiles dures ses raideurs d'acier bleu transperçant la chair mystique écoute ses victoires proditoires trompeter ses défaites écoute aux alibis grandioses son piètre trébuchement Pitié pour nos vainquers omniscients et naïfs !

Et ce ne sont pas seulement les bouches qui chantent, mais les mains, mais les pieds, mais les fesses, mais les sexes, et la créature tout entière qui se liquéfie en sons, voix et rythme.

Il y a encore une mer à traverser oh encore une mer à traverser pour que j'invente mes poumons pour que le prince se taise pour que la reine me baise encore un vieillard à assassiner un fou à délivrer pour que mon âme luise aboie luise aboie aboie aboie et que hulule la chouette mon bel ange curieux.

There are people, even today, who thought and still think that it is all simply a matter of the left taking power in France, that with a change in the economic conditions the black question will disappear. I think that the economic question is important, but it is not the only thing.

it is the colonized man who wants to move forward, and the colonizer who holds things back.

Alas! There's no one in hell ... all the devils are here!

In fact, you could say that I became a poet by renouncing poetry.

the thick stream of air hauled toward the summits first the great horses of noise reared against the sky then sluggishly the great limp octopus of smoke a derisory spitter injecting the night with the insolent perfume of a citronella lamp and a wind swept down on the islands to be riddled by the suspect violence of the locusts . . .

Serpent heart of ancient terrors.

It is no use painting the foot of the tree white, the strength of the bark cries out from beneath the paint.

Cada dia que passa, cada denegação de justiça, cada repressão policial, cada reivindicação operária afogada em sangue, Cada escândalo sufocado, cada expedição punitiva, cada ônibus da Compañia Republicana de Seguridad, cada policial e cada miliciano, nos fazem sentir o preço de nossas ancestrais sociedades.

your face like a village asleep at the bottom of a lake which is reborn to daylight from the grass and from the year germinates

measured by the clock click of the serpent-minute the explosion after which it is proper to appreciate that the brutal fist of the terrorist crack of dawn has just planted at the top of the most forgotten poui its adornment of fire its dolmen of blood its flag of rage and renewal

Colonization and civilization? In dealing with this subject, the commonest curse is to be the dupe in good faith of a collective hypocrisy that cleverly misrepresents problems, the better to legitimize the hateful solutions provided for them.

Où veux-je en venir ? A cette idée : que nul ne colonise innocemment, que nul non plus ne colonise impunément ; qu'une nation qui colonise, qu'une civilisation qui justifie la colonisation - donc la force - est une civilisation malade, une civilisation moralement atteinte, qui, irrésistiblement, de conséquence à conséquence, de reniement en reniement, appelle son Hitler, je veux dire son châtiment.

At the end of the small hours: life flat on its face, miscarried dreams and nowhere to put them, the river of life listless in its hopeless bed, not rising or falling, unsure of its flow, lamentably empty, the heavy impartial shadow of boredom creeping over the quality of all things, the air stagnant, unbroken by the brightness of a single bird.

and no race has a monopoly on beauty, on intelligence, on strength

And I say that between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial expeditions that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by all the ministries, there could not come a single human value.

Embrace me; embrace me: in my eyes worlds are made and unmade;

Vampire flowers, honey, soul poison.