Césaire and the Challenge of Translation: The Example of “Strong Men” by Sterling Brown
2013; Penn State University Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5325/complitstudies.50.3.0445
ISSN1528-4212
Autores Tópico(s)African history and culture studies
ResumoAimé Césaire's place in world literature today is due in large part to the many translators who have struggled to render his often hermetic writing into other languages, including English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, and Japanese. Some of the best translations into English, those by the team of Eshleman and Smith, now appear in large collections of world literature used in courses around the world, most notably his long and explosive poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land), first published in the journal Volontés in August 1939.1 Matching these efforts to make Césaire's writing available to a global audience, beginning with the first translation of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal in 1947 by Ivan Goll and Lionel Abel, are Césaire's own attempts on a micro scale to bring two poems by African American poets to the readership of the French-speaking world.2 But Césaire, like those who translated his own works, encountered great difficulty. His problems were, however, quite different from those confronting translators working on his writings. For them, little-used terms, neologisms, and words designating the tropical flora and fauna of Martinique were the obstacles. For Césaire, the challenge was African American “dialect” poetry.Césaire became interested in African American poetry in the early 1930s. Given that he wrote his thesis for the diplôme d'études supérieures at the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris on “le theme du sud dans la poésie (or littérature) négro-americaine,” one might suppose that he would have translated the poems by African American authors that appeared under the title “Introduction to African American Poetry” in the second issue of Tropiques, the journal he and friends launched in Martinique in 1941.3 However, the translations of these three poems are in fact the work of other people. “The Creation of the World” (“La création du monde”), by James Weldon Johnson, was translated by J. Roux-Delimal. Eugène Jolas, the editor of Le nègre qui chant (The Negro Who Sings), was the translator of “Harvest Song” (“Chant de la moisson”), a poem that appeared originally in Jean Toomer's novel Cane.4 The third poem, “To America” (“A l'Amérique”), by Claude McKay, had already appeared in a bilingual format in the short-lived journal La revue du monde noir and was probably translated by Jane or Paulette Nardal, leaders of the group that founded the journal.5 As for the translations of poems that appeared in Césaire's thesis, we may never know who did them because no one has ever found a copy of it.The translations of “I Have Seen Black Hands” (“Mains noires”) by Richard Wright and “Strong Men” (“Hommes forts”) by Sterling Brown appeared in 1935 in the student newspaper L'étudiant noir, a joint project of Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Léon Damas, and other students of African and Caribbean origin who were in Paris during the mid-thirties.6 The translation of “I Have Seen Black Hands” by Richard Wright was signed by Césaire. The version of “Strong Men” by Sterling Brown was signed “A. Mauger,” a typo for “Maugée.” Aristide Maugée was one of the L'étudiant noir writers from Martinique. A modified translation of this poem signed by Césaire appeared four years later in the journal Charpentes.7These two translations by Césaire are the only examples of the genre that have come to light in the course of research for Les écrits d'Aimé Césaire: Biobibliogaphie commentée (1913–2008), a listing with excerpts and commentary on 1,025 published texts by him—speeches, interviews, declarations, prefaces, articles, poems, plays, books, letters, telegrams, manifestos, announcements, audio and visual recordings and one film review.8We don't know why he started and ended his foray into the field of translation in the 1930s, but a study of one of those poems, “Hommes forts,” reveals the difficulties he faced. The complete translation, as well as the original poem, appears in the appendix to this article.Sterling Brown was known as one of the pillars of African American literature. He was the contemporary of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer. Today, he is considered to be a “dialect” poet who tried to convey to readers the way African American slaves spoke. Brown taught for forty years at Howard University, the most prestigious of what is known today in academia as the historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). There were 105 of them, most founded after the Civil War. They allowed African Americans to obtain a college education without putting up with the racial discrimination that marked American universities at the time and well into the 1960s, especially in the South, and that continues to some extent even today.Senghor cited Brown's poetry as early as 1937 in a speech he gave at the Foyer France-Senegal in Dakar. It was, in fact, the use of the dialect by some African American poets that attracted his attention.Charpentes, the Parisian journal that published “Hommes forts,” was edited by Gaston Diehl and Roger Hallot. One could describe the journal as colonialist and concerned with the French-speaking world of France's empire—today one might use the term “francophonisant” to describe its goal of promoting links between French-speaking peoples. The purpose was to serve as a “lien entre les provinces [de France], pays d'expression française et les centres étrangers qui acceuil notre culture (“a link between the provinces [of France], countries of French expression, and the foreign centers that welcome our culture”).The translation appears in a section titled “Afrique noire” along with a poem by Senghor, (“Neige sur Paris” [“Snow in Paris”]) and a short story by Damas (“Aux premiers âges” [“In Earliest Times”]). It might seem strange that two of the three colonies listed were not in Africa. Martinique and Guiana were lumped with Senegal together for several reasons. First, Martinique in the Caribbean and French Guiana, on the northeast coast of Latin America, were populated to a large extent by descendants of African slaves. Second, in the 1930s they, like their African counterparts, were still colonies of France, though a decade later they would become, along with Guadeloupe and Réunion, overseas departments of France, thanks to the efforts of Césaire, other legislators, and the enthusiastic support of the people of these four colonies. But it was a change, Césaire often argued in the years after its implementation, that did little to eliminate traces of colonialism in those former colonies. Third, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin American students such as Césaire and Damas had banded together with students from Africa to reject the French policy of cultural assimilation and to focus instead on their African heritage under the banner of negritude.The itinerary of the poem by Brown begins in 1931 with its appearance in an anthology titled The Book of American Negro Poetry, edited by James Weldon Johnson. A year later, the poem appeared again, this time in Southern Road, a collection of poems by Brown.10 In the 1974 reprint of the collection, one finds the following note: “Acknowledgment is here made to the editors of … the European publication Color for permission to reprint poems first published in their pages.”11 We have not found any traces of this journal but assume that it was published after 1939.Edward A. Jones, an African American student in Paris in 1935, recounts in his article “Afro-French Writers of the 1930s and the Creation of the Negritude School,” published in CLA Journal, that his Martinican friend was a connoisseur of African American poetry well before their meeting. But he adds that Césaire borrowed his copy of Southern Road. Before turning to the anecdote by Jones, it is worth noting that CLA Journal was founded in 1957 by African American professors, most of whom taught in HBCUs. The journal constituted thus another way of responding to what they saw as racial discrimination in academia.Jones writes: It was in the fall of 1935 that I went to Paris and entered the Sorbonne, carrying with me, among other things, both necessary and superfluous, an autographed copy of Sterling Brown's recently published collection of poems titled Southern Road. This small literary gem of the Black experience in the United States was to be one of several links that cemented a friendship between Aimé Césaire, who borrowed it and devoured its contents, and me.12We don't know if Césaire was already in possession of a copy of “Strong Men” before the arrival of Jones in 1935. But it is clear from the comments of his American friend that the Martinican student was well along in his study of the subject, a conclusion reinforced by his thesis submitted in 1938.In “Strong Men,” Brown writes on themes similar to those that one finds in the works of Césaire—on the life of people of African descent during the time of slavery, on discrimination, and on revolt. One finds in the poem the same militant tone that emerges in so many of Césaire's writings, especially the drama Et les chiens se taisaient (And the Dogs Were Silent), the polemic Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism), and his speeches in the French parliament.13 Above all, these themes dominate his most famous work, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, where he describes the treatment of slaves. For example, “Ils vous ont fouettés,/Ils vous ont marqués au fer rouge” (“They scourged you,/They branded you”), lines from Césaire's translation of Brown's poem, are amplified by Césaire in Cahier d'un retour au pays natal: et les vingt-neuf coups de fouet légalet le cachot de quatre pieds de hautet le carcan à brancheset le jarret coupé à mon audace marronneet le fleur de lys qui flue du fer rouge sur le gras de mon épaule.(and the twenty nine legal blows of the whipand the four-feet-high celland the spiked iron collarand the hamstringing of my runaway audacityand the fleur de lys flowing from the red iron into the fat of my shoulder.)14In what follows in Césaire's translation of Brown's poem, the slaves seek solace and express their strength in songs: Vous chantiez:Continuez à avancer d'un pouceComme un pauvre ver d'un pouceVous chantiez:Un de ses joursJe vais déposer ce pesant fardeau.…Les hommes forts continuent d'avancerLes hommes forts deviennent plus forts.(You sang:Keep a-inchin' alongLak a po' inch worm …You sang:Bye and byeI'm going to lay down this heaby load…The strong men keep a-comin' onThe strong men git stronger.)The poem ends on something of a warning. After the description of the miserable life that the slaves endure, the reader discovers the laughs of the men, a symbol of their interior strength. They alarm the slave owners.Ils entendirent vos rires et s'étonnèrentIls se sentirent mal à l'aiseProfondément inquiets sans se l'avouerLes hommes forts deviennent plus forts.Les hommes forts continuent d'avancerLes hommes forts deviennent plus forts.(They heard the laugh and wondered;Uncomfortable;Unadmitting a deeper terror …The strong men keep a-comin' onGittin' stronger.)Brent Hayes Edwards suggests in an article on Césaire that the refrain comes from the line “The strong men keep coming on,” a verse in the poem “Upstream” in the collection Slabs of the Sunburnt West by the American poet Carl Sandburg.15 It is possible that Brown had read Sandburg's collection, which was published in 1922. Edwards also argues convincingly that the power of the poem comes more from the content than from the elements of form, or more specifically, from the French words that Césaire chooses to translate African American speech patterns. For example, notes Edwards, Césaire translates “Keep a-inchin' along/Lak a po' inch worm” (“Keep inching along/Like a poor inch worm”) with “Continuez à avancer d'un pouce/Comme un pauvre ver d'un pouce,” “I'm gonna lay down dis heaby load” (“I'm going to lay down this heavy load” with “Un de ses jours je vais déposer ce pesant fardeau,” “Walk togedder, chillen” (“Walk together, children”) with “Marchez ensemble, enfants,” and “Dontcha git weary” (“Don't you get weary”) with “Ne soyez pas fatigués.” From the comparisons, it is clear, as Edwards suggests, that the French terms do not convey quite the same power or particular qualities of speech by African Americans as transcribed in the original English.In studying the use of African American dialect by Brown, it is important to keep in mind that many features of it are not limited to African Americans. Although it is outside of the scope of this study to undertake a complete linguistic history of each term, one example reveals that the African American dialect has deep and complex roots not limited to African Americans.16 For example, the prefixing of the “a” that we see in in the line “Keep a-inchin' along” is a common a feature of Appalachian English. It has been traced by Laura Wright to English prison vernacular in the period from 1500 to 1700, a form of speech that was carried to the British colonies, in particular Virginia, by people of Scots-Irish origin. It then spread southward to populations of both African and European origin.17 This feature, then, is part of a form of speech that African Americans shared with southerners of European origin.A few examples from other lines illustrate further the cross-ethnic usage of some of the terms. “Git” (“get”) and “lak” (“like”) are forms heard widely in the South among all populations. “ain't” in the line “Ain't no hammah” is a common colloquial form of “am not,” “are not,” and “is not” found throughout the United States, especially in the South. But it is what the linguists call “prescriptively incorrect.” “Dontcha” is a faithful transcription of a colloquial contraction spoken by many Americans. The transcription of many of the words, however, does convey the pronunciation attributed to African Americans: “togedder,” “chillen,” and “hammah,” for “together,” “children,” and “hammer.”These examples of African American vernacular English reflect the complex linguistic map of the United States; There is often overlap between the speech of different groups, and it is often not clear what the source is of a particular term, whether it was transmitted from African Americans to white southerners or vice versa. One does not need to know the etymology of a word to undertake the task of translating it. But knowing the origins might help a professional translator to find counterparts in the target language more easily. Césaire's decision to translate the lines into standard French was motivated, quite possibly, by his desire to avoid altogether the difficulty of translating dialect.Césaire does choose to preserve one word that would be easily understood in French. In the difficult strophe that follows, Césaire keeps the word “bebby.” Here are the verses of Brown: HammahAin't no hammahIn dis lan',Strikes lak mine, bebbyStrikes lak mine. In Césaire's translation we read: Il n'y a pas de marteauSur cette terreQui frappe comme le mien, bebby,Qui frappe comme le mien.Césaire's translation of “Strong Men” raise a series of questions for which there are not always clear answers. Could he have done a better job of translating this dialect poetry? Did he make a conscious decision not to try to translate dialect? Could he have used “petit nègre,” the French dialect spoken by African soldiers based on a simplified form of French taught to them by French military instructors beginning in 1914? “Petit nègre” is a term loaded with pejorative and particular racist connotations. What about creole, Césaire's first language? It is likely that there is no French equivalent of the language used by Brown in his poetry. In any case, the stereotype that the French do not appreciate anyone tampering with their language may have influenced his decision to steer clear of dialect. One thinks of Les soleils des indépendances, the classic African novel by Ahmadou Kourouma that is still in print forty-five years after it was first published.18 French publishers did not appreciate his inclusion of proverbs, speech patterns, and unusual terms used in what has been described as a Mandified form of French—French that conveys particularities of a Mande language, in this case Malinké.If we will never have definitive answers to these questions, it is nevertheless clear that Césaire does succeed in communicating to his readers the essence of Brown's message about the hard life of slaves and their mounting anger, even if he did not attempt to render the African American dialect into an equivalent in French. Two decades after Césaire's translation had appeared, a French editor, Renaud Jouvenel, reported he did not include poetry by Brown in an anthology of American literature he had edited because Brown was “une poète noire qu'on ne peut pas bien traduire parce qu'il ecrit dans une sorte de dialecte noir” (“a black poet whose work cannot be translated because he writes in a kind of black dialect”).19Césaire's translation offers many insights. First, one sees in the poem the affinities between the concerns of African American writers and the francophone writers of African origin in Paris who launched the negritude movement. The translation of “Strong Men” that appeared in Charpentes offers proof, if necessary, that the translation signed by Maugée in L'étudiant noir was in fact done by Césaire. It also illustrates the enormous challenge that faced the young student. Finally, the poem adds to our understanding of the development of Césaire as a writer because it prefigures the themes that will appear in Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, among other of his texts.They dragged you from homeland,They chained you in coffles,They huddled you spoon-fashion in filthy hatches,They sold you to give a few gentlemen ease.They broke you in like oxenThey scourged you,They branded you,They made your women breeders,They swelled your numbers with bastards …They taught you the religion they disgraced.You sang:Keep a-inchin' alongLak a po' inch worm …You sang:Bye and byeI'm going to lay down this heaby load …You sang:Walk togedder, chillen,Dontcha git weary …The strong men keep a-comin' onThe strong men git stronger.They point with pride to the roads you built for them,They ride in comfort over the rails you laid for them.They put hammers in your handAnd said—Drive so much before sundown.You sang:Ain't no hammahIn dis lan',Strikes lak mine, bebby,Strikes lak mine.They cooped you in their kitchens,They penned you in their factories,They gave you the jobs that they were too good for,They tried to guarantee happiness to themselvesBy shunting dirt and misery to you.You sang:Me an' muh baby gonna shine, shineMe an' muh baby gonna shine.The strong men keep a-comin' onThe strong men git stronger …They bought off some of your leadersYou stumbled, as blind men will …They coaxed you, unwontedly soft-voiced …You followed a way.Then laughed as usual.They heard the laugh and wondered;Uncomfortable;Unadmitting a deeper terror …The strong men keep a-comin' onGittin' stronger …What, from the slumsWhere they have hemmed you,What, from the tiny hutsThey could not keep from you-What reaches themMaking them ill at ease, fearful?Today they shout prohibition at you“Thous shalt not this”“Thou shalt not that”“Reserved for whites only”You laughOne thing they cannot prohibit—The strong men …, coming onThe strong men gittin' strongerStrong men …Stronger …Les hommes fortsIls vous ont arrachés de votre terre natale,Ils vous ont enchaînés en un troupeau d'esclaves,Pêle-mêle, comme des cuillers, ils vous ont entassé dans des cales pleines d'ordures,Ils vous ont vendus pour enrichir une poignée de “Messieurs.”Ils vous ont dressés comme des bœufs,Ils vous ont fouettés,Ils vous ont marqués au fer rouge,Ils ont fait de vos femmes, des machines à faire des enfants,Ils ont grossi votre nombre avec des bâtards …Ils vous ont enseigné la religion qu'ils déshonoraient.Vous chantiez:Continuez à avancer d'un pouceComme un pauvre ver d'un pouceVous chantiez:Un de ces joursJe vais déposer ce pesant fardeau.Vous chantiez:Marchez ensemble, enfantsNe soyez pas fatigués …Les hommes forts continuent d'avancerLes hommes forts deviennent plus forts.Ils montrent avec orgeuil, les routes que vous avez construites pour eux,Ils roulent avec confort sur les rails que vous avez posés pour eux,Ils vous mettaient des marteaux dans les mainsEt vous disaient : “Faites tant d'ouvrage, avant la fin du jour.”Vous chantiez:Il n'y a pas de marteauSur cette terreQui frappe comme le mien, bebby,Qui frappe comme le mien.Ils vous ont foutus dans leurs cuisinesIls vous ont parqués dans leurs factoreriesIls vous ont imposé des corvées qu'ils dédaignaientIls ont cherché à garantir leur bonheur à euxEn vous réservant les ordures et la misère.Vous chantiez:Ma femme et moi, nous nous amuserons bien,Ma femme et moi, nous nous amuserons bien.Les hommes fort continuent d'avancerLes hommes forts deviennent plus forts.Ils ont acheté quelques-uns de vos chefs,Vous trébuchiez, comme font les aveugles …Ils vous amadouaient, vous parlant avec une douceur inusitée.Vous les avez suivis un peuPuis vous avez éclaté de rire selon votre habitudeIls entendirent vos rires et s'étonnèrentEt se sentirent mal à l'aiseProfondément inquiets sans se l'avouer.Les hommes forts continuent d'avancerLes hommes forts deviennent plus forts.Mais qu'est-ce qui, s'élevant des bougesOù ils vous ont parqués,Des misérables cabanesQu'ils ne pouvaient pas vous ôter,Qui est-ce qui leur donneCette obsession, cette épouvante? …“Ceci n'est point pour vous.”“Cela n'est pas point pour vous.”“C'est réservé aux Blancs, seulement.”Vous riez …Il n'y a qu'une chose qu'ils ne peuvent pas vous interdireLes hommes forts … en avançantLes hommes forts deviennent plus fortsLes hommes forts …Plus forts …"Strong Men" from the collected poems of sterling a. brown, selected by michael s. harper.Copyright © 1980 by Sterling A. Brown. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Sterling A. Brown.
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