Aime Cesaire's Funeral

One thing the black poet and politician Aimé Césaire did very well: he had a knack for turning the oppressor’s weapons against him. Sometimes I think it was a useful knack, but a limited one: Césaire celebrated Africanness in a French as fine as Racine’s; as Mayor of Fort-de-France he helped to give Martinique the worst traffic jams in the Caribbean; and today, if you go to the bookstore he co-founded in Paris, Présence Africaine, you’ll find it rather quiet, while just down the street there’s another publisher, l’Harmattan, whose shop is crowded every day with people from all over the African Diaspora, carrying on.

De mortuis nihil. Today, once more, Césaire and friends and family turned the oppressor – a very short man by the name of Nicolas Sarkozy – out of his smug position of power. A few years back Césaire had refused to meet with Sarko to protest the then-Interior Minister’s defense of French colonialism. Today he had no say since the occasion was his own State funeral. Césaire was 94 years old.

We carry on. Césaire’s family refused to let Sarko speak; instead, the President was guided to a chair that read: Liberté, Identité, Responsabilité, Fraternité. Fair enough, since Égalité’s the last thing one would associate with Sarkozy.

The address was given by Pierre Aliker, the son of a communist journalist murdered in Martinique by descendants of white settlers in 1934. Aliker is 101 years old; Halfway through his speech he faltered, and looking up, quoted from memory: “Our actions...were guided by a phrase, an idea of Karl Marx: The common interest must not be drowned in the icy waters of private interests.

Sarko smiled. No doubt Césaire would have remembered the poem by the great Latin poet Catullus, about the politician who smiles at a funeral, and his smile looks strangely as if he’d brushed his teeth with piss.

Source: http://miltondassier.over-blog.com/article-18918238.html

Monday, April 21, 2008 5:36 pm