Monday, July 13, 2015
Week Seven Discussion
Like last week, I won't be providing specific questions for you to
respond to. Feel free to write about anything in the reading that you
find compelling or curious. Also, remember that, in addition to Césaire's Notebook, you can also discuss Michael Dash's analysis in your response.--Stephen
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Aime Cesaire vision of the black people returning to a state of nature and grace is a Romantic notion that takes an almost science-fiction turn in his vision of a return to a time before “all the pasts and all the futures” as Michael Dash quotes in his article “Orphic Explanations” (65). Cesaire’s vision as an “orphic” vision is interesting given that once Orpheus has attained what he searched for, his wife, in Hades, he once again loses it. So is it understood that even if the peoples of the Caribbean could achieve this “verrition” (verticity in the English translation) which Cesaire explained meant to “sweep away” by the eruption of the “volcano” that Dash claims was Cesaire’s ideal way to sweep clean the history of the Caribbean that they would lose it again? Orpheus is told not to look back else he loses his wife to the Underworld again, and he is unable to keep this command because of his fear that she has not followed. In a way this story explains the strong imagery in Notebook and the apocalyptic imagery that appears throughout the poem. It is this “primal innocence” (Dash 64) that Cesaire is trying to resurrect since his “memory is encircled with blood. My memory has a belt of corpses!” (40). The “splendor of this blood” as is bursts from the Earth will leave “Europe utterly twisted with screams/ silent currents of despair” (40). It seems that with is burst of poetry and the enumeration of the wrongs that have been borne by the Caribbean and the African-American population in general, Cesaire is opening that floodgate for both the Europeans AND the African-Americans to recognize what they have done/have had done to them and to begin to come to terms with the atrocities because without this recognition and acceptance the peoples of the Caribbean will be much like Orpheus. The will have much to look back upon and will not be able to move forward into modern times on their own terms without coming to terms with the past.
ReplyDeleteI especially liked these lines:
Delete"grant me the courage of the martyr/ grant me the savage faith of the sorcerer/ grant my hands the power to mold"
He follows this with a request that I believe is a great representation of his ideas in comparison to Marcus Garvey's ideas.
"But in doing so, my heart, preserve me from all hatred/ do not make me into that man of hatred for whom I feel only hatred/ for entrenched as I am in this unique race/ you still know my tyrannical love/ you know that it is not from hatred of other races/ that I demand of myself to become a hoer for this unique race/ that what I want/ is for universal hunger/ for universal thirst"
Cesaire is not asking that his people and others who have been subjected to colonization divide themselves and carry anger in their hearts. He is asking that they empower themselves by "coming to terms with the past" and their present.
In his poem, Aime Cesaire is saying that people need to embrace their history and culture no matter how deeming or shameful it may have been, and wear it with pride. Where we all came from, our roots, make up a part of who we are, and we cannot fully define ourselves if we do not allow ourselves to own our people’s pasts.
ReplyDeleteIn Notebook of a Return to the Native Land the speaker returns to his home after years of being away to discover that his people have become complacent in their destitute and impoverished lives. Although, they are alive, they are dead inside, not willing to speak up for the betterment of themselves, “…this throng, that does not know how to throng, this throng, so perfectly alone under the sun” (3). Thus, the speaker struggles to answer the question, “Who and what are we?” (18), and create his own identity, away from whiteness and the poison of colonialization. It is only once that the speaker is able to understand his own identity by acknowledging the struggles of those who came before him that he feels able to ignite his people to speak up. He wants his people to stop allowing themselves to “believe that being a nigger is like being a second-class clerk; waiting for a better deal and upward mobility...” (45). Rather, he wants them to unite and rise.
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DeleteI agree, Marcy. Cesaire is putting the ugly truth of his people for the world to see, bit most importantly, for them to see it in order for them to unite to erase it and create a new reality.
DeleteI agree, Marcy. Cesaire is putting the ugly truth of his people for the world to see, bit most importantly, for them to see it in order for them to unite to erase it and create a new reality.
DeleteMelissa Segovia response to Diego's blog
ReplyDeleteI agree, Diego. To consider this piece as part of the Harlem Renaissance only because of it's Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean heritage would be to undermine the beauty and form of the text as a work of art. Cesaire's poem not only represents the heritage and culture of the time, but further contributes to American literature as a form of art. No longer was art, such as Jazz as you mentioned, a nuance that was to be tucked away. Now, this form of art, was to be a different voice of the people.
Melissa Segovia response to Ruby's blog
ReplyDeleteSeveral of the devices found within this poem were interesting, but I think you're right. The immensity of the richness in the diction built the poetry to be understood at a much higher intensity than most poetry. However, I believe that this was done on purpose. Since Cesaire carefully built the imagery to prove the power of nature, I think that captured the reader to feel this poem more than most. At the same time, I wondered, how much of this was as Cesaire wrote it and how difficult it must have been to transcribe or translate the words from the French language into English. And at the same time, did this add to embellish Cesaire's writing or did it dilute it, if any?
On Michael Dash, "The Other America"
ReplyDeleteMichael Dash’s article, “The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context” affirms Aimee Césaire’s poetics to reveal much of the idea of wiping away the injustices of politics and its current state within the Caribbean. Dash argues that Cesaire’s “destruction is more than a change, it is a renewal” (68). “In Cesaire’s poetry, however, the force of change is closely associated with the forces of nature.” As in his poem, it would be the volcanic destruction that would bring about a new age, a new time, and a new people. Only nature could set into the early hours and wipe away the ugly of the politics and bring forth a new beginning all around. The imagery he presents is a cataclysmic one in nature, where power, destruction, and immense forces would wipe the slate clean, so to speak.
However, how much more powerful is this poem without its translation? How much of the poem are truly the words of Cesaire and how much of it was influenced by the translator? Unfortunately, my French is limited to less than a 100 words and I could not in any way shape or fashion, begin to grasp the poetry at Cesaire set out to write it. In earlier discussions with Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse, we realized that much of the writing was enhanced by her own style and fiction when it came to the anthropological study and therefore, as much as she attempted to make it a true account of her findings, they were skewed. How much of this poem was skewed to fit the same poetic style, syntax, or rhythm as Cesaire wrote it? Language is difficult alone when presenting the same meanings or words and phrases from one region to the next, much less over two entirely different tongues.
Regardless, Cesaire presents a beautiful and ardently rich poem filled with powerful imagery, creative fluency, and innate ideas of the new world he so longed for in this piece. Or as Michael Dash states, “Cesaire stoically awaits the explosive liberation of the volcano, and in his later poems this trust in the forces of nature, in what he terms the “calendar of the lagoon” remains implicit.”
I agree that the poem is beautiful and powerful. It is believed that the poem itself was intended to be a spring board for a much larger work, and this is why Cesaire title the work "Notebook of a Return to My Native Land." Do you think this is correct? Do you think the poem seems unfinished? I am not so sure that I do? I think the Notebook aspect stems from a desire to capture a black man's emotions and insights as he comes to a new understanding of himself, his people, his place in the world, and his journey toward a new identity.
DeleteI was thinking of this as I was reading. The fact that something is always lost in translation makes me wonder how much more this poem is when read in french as it was written. My rudimentary understanding of the language did not do it justice when I attempted to read it in French.
DeleteYou raise a good question, Mel. It is hard to find the correct way to express something from one language to another. Sometimes, words in one language carry such a negative connotation that cannot be expressed in other languages. The best thing to do when reading translated work is to keep in mind that what we are reading will not be exactly the same as the original piece. Think of all the different translations of the Bible. For example, in the King James version, Mathew 5:44 says, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." If we take a look at the NIV the same passage reads, "...Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." One passage has a deeper message than the other and that's because they are both English versions. So it's understandable that a piece of literature translated from one language to another would have even more differences.
DeleteI was thinking of this as I was reading. The fact that something is always lost in translation makes me wonder how much more this poem is when read in french as it was written. My rudimentary understanding of the language did not do it justice when I attempted to read it in French.
DeleteI was thinking of this as I was reading. The fact that something is always lost in translation makes me wonder how much more this poem is when read in french as it was written. My rudimentary understanding of the language did not do it justice when I attempted to read it in French.
DeleteAimé Césaire’s “Notebook of a Return to my Native Land” is a 1055 line poem that shifts from prose and free verse. The anti-colonial poem was originally written in French. As I read the poem, I wondered at the huge task the translators of the poem must have had as they translated the poem from French to English. In one of our earlier courses, we discussed the limitations of translation. We talked about how the act of translating is not merely a rewriting of words into another language, but it is the process of capturing meaning and nuances within the translation. Simply by entering a couple of the poems lines written in French into a tool such as Google translate the difficulty of translating poetry is highlighted.
ReplyDeleteI entered the following lines:
Embrasse- moi jusqu'au nous furieux
Emrasse, embrasse nous
Mais nous ayant également mordus!
Jusqu'au sang de notre sang mordus!
This is what I got from Google:
Kiss me until we furious
Emrasse, embraces us
But we have also bitten!
To the blood of our blood buffs
This is how Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith translated these lines:
Embrace me unto furious us
Embrace, embrace us
But having also bitten us!
To the blood of our blood bitten us!
Of course the lines are still complex and require close reading, but Eshleman and Smith’s translation preserves meaning whereas Google translate corrupts it.
The English translation of the poem is beautiful and powerful. Its imagery and rhythmic patterns rise and fall as the speaker comes to a realization of his identity, an awakened sense of what it means to be black. I did some research and stumbled upon a lecture by Clayton Eshleman, one of the poem’s translators, about the process of translating the poem. An interesting thing that he explained about the process of translating was the translation of the word neg. He explains that what Césaire intended with the word neg was to illustrate what Césaire thought was “the most insulting way to refer to a black” (Eshelman). Thus, the English translation had to include the most insulting word for blacks in the English language, nigger. Césaire’s intent was to illustrate racial self-hatred due to colonization. Therefore, words like black or Negro were unsuitable for the translation. The seemingly small variations between words end up being a major part of translation and the construction of meaning within a new language.
I also found it interesting that several lines of the 2001 translation of the poem have been omitted from the 2013 translation. It seems that the omission of these lines change the overall effect of the poem. Besides the omission of lines, words and phrases were also changed.
In regards to the poem itself, it reminded me of one of our discussions early on in the semester in which we discussed the concept or notion of dual identity. The idea that the black man carries two identities: his identification of himself and the identity imposed upon him by whites. We see this in the scene in which he laughs at a black man that he describes as “ugly and comical” (Césaire). As he laughs at the black man, he comes to a realization and states, “My cowardice rediscovered!” He now understands that his ridicule of the man stems from the colonization and imperialism that he has been subjected to as a black man in Martinique, which he indicates with the lines, “This town fits me to a t. And my soul is lying down” (Césaire).
I found it interesting that when a poem gets translated, connotations of words need to be considered in order to capture the same tone intended by the author. You pointed out that," the English translation had to include the most insulting word for blacks in the English language, nigger." I wonder if there are ever instances when the connotation of a specific word changes through time (such as queer), prompting a piece of work to be translated again in order to express the tone the author intended once again.
ReplyDelete