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Césaire at the Crossroads in Haiti: Correspondence with Henri Seyrig

2013; Penn State University Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/complitstudies.50.3.0430

1528-4212

Kora Véron,

Caribbean and African Literature and Culture

When Aimé Césaire returned to Fort-de-France in August 1939, after having finished his studies at the Ecole normale supérieure on the rue d'Ulm in Paris, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in France, he was not entirely unknown—he had published poems in several journals. Two years after his return, he encountered the leader of the surrealist movement, André Breton, who was forced to stop for three weeks in Martinique from 24 April to 16 May during his circuitous voyage from Nazi-controlled Paris to New York via Marseilles and Fort-de-France.1 He found Césaire thanks to the discovery of a copy of the first issue of Tropiques, the just-launched cultural journal edited by the young lycée teacher, his wife Suzanne, and a small group of friends—Georges Gratiant, Aristide Maugée, René Ménil, and Lucie Thésée. The encounter with Breton and his fellow traveler, the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, expanded the publishing horizon of the Martinican poet. Poems from Tropiques, as well as others not published in the journal, now began to appear in New York in the journals VVV and Hémisphères; in Havana, with the Spanish translation of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal; in Santiago in Leitmotiv; in Buenos Aires in Lettres françaises; and in Algiers in Fontaine, before the collection Les armes miraculeuses was published by Gallimard in Paris in 1946.2 Breton's discovery of Césaire, whom he praised in an article titled "Martinique, charmeuse de serpents," published in Hémisphères in 1943, gave an enormous boost to the career of the young poet. It is generally assumed, then, that it was Breton who launched Césaire onto the global literary scene.3 But as I show, new evidence reveals that Césaire's development as a writer and his increasing visibility come from a far more complex confluence of events and people during this turbulent period. In addition to Breton, who maintained his network of surrealists from his apartment in New York, two other networks contributed to Césaire's higher profile in the world of letters. The first was based on his ties with alumni from the Ecole normale supérieure. The second was his involvement in strengthening the links of the Free French with other countries. In the course of research on Césaire at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, I came across the collection of correspondence between Césaire and Henri Seyrig, the cultural attaché at the Free French consulate in New York.4 In those letters emerges a Césaire in flux, concerned about his own development as a writer. Information about the three interrelated networks contributes to a far more nuanced portrait of Césaire in the 1940s. It allows one to understand how, beginning with the appearance of Tropiques in an international context that led to the isolation of Martinique, Césaire was able, paradoxically, to develop a much higher profile in the world before major presses in Paris published his work.The key to understanding that picture is Seyrig. The crossroads is Haiti, where Césaire spent seven months, from 17 May to 15 December 1944, accompanied by his wife Suzanne, who remained with him until 27 October.In an article titled "Henri Seyrig (10 novembre 1895–21 janvier 1973): Nécrologie" that appeared in the journal Syria, Ernest Will offers insights into the life of the man who played such a key role in Césaire's life during the war.5 From Will we learn that Seyrig was a brilliant archaeologist. He was also a very generous and open-minded man. Born in 1895 into a cultivated and well-off family, he studied at Oxford, served in World War I, and then enrolled at the Sorbonne, where he earned the coveted agrégation de grammaire in 1922. He was admitted the same year to the Ecole française d'Athènes, where he remained for seven years. Named director general of antiquities in Syria and in Lebanon, two states under French control, he married Hermine de Saussure, the niece of Ferdinand de Saussure, in 1930. The actress Delphine Seyrig was born from this union. When his work in the Levant was interrupted by the war, he quickly sided with Charles de Gaulle and undertook several missions to London, South America, and New York, where he was named cultural attaché and assigned to the Free French consulate. Seyrig finished his career in 1967 as the director of the Institut français in Beirut.An examination of the letters in chronological order reveals the nature and evolution of the relationship between Seyrig and Césaire.There are two important pieces of information conveyed in this letter. First, it confirms that an edition of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land) was scheduled for publication at the beginning of 1944 by Hémisphères. Seyrig, who had visited Martinique in November 1943 while on a mission to examine the situation of instruction in the French Caribbean, met Breton in New York and notes that Breton is "ravi" ("delighted") to receive "la nouvelle version corrigée du Cahier" ("the new, corrected version of the Notebook").6 Seyrig adds that it "est venue à point" ("arrived at just the right time") because a new version, printed by Yvan Goll (born Isaac Lang), founder of the journal and the publisher of Hémisphères, "est très avancée" ("is far along"). We know that the long poem was first published in issue number 20 of the journal Volontés in Paris in August 1939, just before the departure of Aimé and Suzanne Césaire for Fort-de-France. It appeared thanks to a network of alumni of the Ecole normale supérieure where Césaire had been admitted in July 1935.It is in large part thanks to that alumni network, and in particular to a tutor named Pierre Petibon, whose task was to help students preparing to take the difficult examination for the agrégation, that Césaire was able to find an outlet for his explosive poem. Petibon encouraged Césaire to submit the manuscript to Georges Pelorson, a former student at the Ecole normale supérieure who had quit school in an untimely manner and then founded Volontés. Compromised by his support for the Vichy regime of Marshall Pétain during the war, he would later take the name of Georges Belmont.7 We know from Breton's article "Martinique, charmeuse de serpents" that Césaire had offered him an offprint of the Volontés version of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal during his stay in Fort-de-France. Breton would write in his article that "ce poème n'était rien de moins que le plus grand monument lyrique de ce temps" ("this poem was nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time").8The article by Breton was accompanied by a note indicating that "cette étude constitue la Préface, qu'André Breton vient d'écrire pour l'édition bilingue du Cahier du Retour au Pays Natal [sic] d'Aimé Césaire, à paraître prochainement aux Editions Hémisphères" ("this study constitutes the preface that André Breton has just written for the bilingual edition of Cahier du retour au pays natal [sic] by Aimé Césaire, forthcoming from Hémisphère Editions").9 The note raises a fundamental question. Why was this edition abandoned? We do know from correspondence between Breton and Goll that there were translation problems and that there was a rift between the two men that went back to the prewar period. But above all, we learn that Goll doesn't have any more paper.10 For this reason, Brentano's proposes to take over the editorial activities of Hémisphères. The sending of a second manuscript of the volume to Breton confirms moreover that Césaire continued to rewrite the poem. This work leads to two different editions published in 1947. The first is the bilingual edition published by Brentano's on 7 January; the second one is the first French edition in book format published by Bordas on 25 March.11The second interesting bit of information in the letter is that Seyrig was making arrangements for the poet to go to Haiti, where the cultural attaché had stopped on his return to New York."Cette île brûle de vous voir" ("This island is burning to see you"). He adds, "Le gouvernement haïtien a décidé d'organiser un congrès de philosophie et invite des personnalités des pays voisins" ("The Haitian government has decided to organize a philosophy conference and has invited important people from neighboring countries").12 Seyrig indicates that the Haitian president and his son, minister of foreign affairs, had read and appreciated Cahier d'un retour au pays natal.He also comments that "M. Lhérisson, qui est chargé d'organiser cela, m'a prié officiellement de demander qu'on vous délègue. J'ai écrit à Alger et j'écris par ce courrier à M. Ponton. J'espère donc que ça s'arrangera, car je pense que la France ne doit pas seulement être représentée là par notre Ecole libre de New York, mais par ses Antilles" ("M. Lhérisson, who has been asked to organize everything, has requested officially that I ask that you be sent as a delegate. I have written to Algiers and I am writing a letter to M. Ponton. I hope that that can be arranged, because I think that France must not be represented there only by the Ecole libre of New York, but also by its Caribbean").13The conference, however important, was only a pretext. Césaire would be sent to Haiti on a mission of cultural diplomacy aimed at restoring French influence in the world. Seyrig explains the nature of the mission in the following way. "Les Haïtiens se regardent à bon droit comme les représentants de la civilisation française dans leur région; ils souhaitent que nous les soutenions dans ce rôle, non pas en créant chez eux des institutions françaises, mais en les aidant eux-mêmes. Cela me semble juste, et je m'y emploierai tant que je pourrai" ("The Haitiens see themselves with good reason as representatives of French civilization in their region; they want us to support them in this role, not by creating French institutions, but by helping them to help themselves. This seems right and I will work toward this goal as much as I am able").Césaire expresses his gratitude to Seyrig: Tout d'abord merci pour mon "voyage haïtien" décidé maintenant. Il ne reste plus qu'à en fixer la date (je la souhaite proche). Merci de m'avoir choisi. Pour la cure d'évasion, merci. Et pour la bouffée d'air que nous a apportée votre venue parmi nous. Une des rares bonnes choses que cette visite aient occasionnée: que certains hommes, qu'une certaine espèce d'hommes, qu'une certaine catégorie d'esprits, ait pu faire trou dans le vieux mur colonial. Je tiens pour très précieux (pour nous) que des hommes tels que Breton, Mabille, vous, aient connu nos Antilles, nos hommes, nos choses, nos espoirs, nos désespoirs.(First of all thanks for my "Haitian voyage" that is now set. All that remains is to choose the date (I hope soon). Thanks for having chosen me. For this getaway cure, thanks. And for the breath of fresh air that your stay here has brought to us. One of the rare positive things that your visit has produced: certain men, a certain kind of men, a certain category of minds, have been able to break open a hole in the old colonial wall. It is a precious thing for us that men such as Breton, Mabille, and you have learned about our Caribbean, our men, our things, our hopes, our despairs.)He reports that he is working very much. He is teaching courses every day at the University of Haiti and gives weekly lectures on "poésie moderne" ("modern poetry"). He meets often with Haitian intellectuals and the French ambassador, known as the "ministre de France" ("minister of France").14 The stay is going well and the Haitians want him to extend his visit.But his wife Suzanne is ill and he would like her to have some medical tests done in the United States.He sends news of René Etiemble, a student who was three years ahead of Césaire at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand and who then enrolled at the Ecole normale supérieure in 1929. It is probable that he met Césaire before the war. In any case, their paths had crossed a few months prior to this letter. Etiemble was serving with the Free French Office of War Information in New York. En route from New York to Alexandria in Egypt, where he was assigned to teach at a new university, Etiemble gave a talk in Fort-de-France on 6 March 1944. Titled "L'idéologie de Vichy contre la pensée française" ("Vichy Ideology Against French Thought"), his presentation generated a sharp response from the bishop of Martinique who had had good relations with the Vichy regime. Césaire published both a summary of the talk and his own response to Bishop Varin de la Brunelière.15 During his stay in Martinique, Etiemble became a close friend of Césaire and of his relatives. When he arrived in Alexandria, he reported on Tropiques in his own journal, Valeurs.16Etiemble reported to Seyrig that Césaire was much appreciated by the Commissariat aux colonies et à l'instruction publique (Commission for Colonies and Public Instruction) in Algiers, then the seat of the Free French government. Another supporter of Césaire was George Gorse, a classmate at both Louis-le-Grand and at the Ecole normale supérieure. He had become a member of the cabinet of General de Gaulle in Algiers. Given the growing interest in the poet on the part of the Free French government, and at the suggestion of Etiemble, Seyrig proposed to Césaire that he make a trip to Africa.The most surprising news conveyed by Seyrig was that, according to Etiemble, André Gide wanted to publish a text by Césaire titled Toussaint Louverture in L'Arche. It was a monthly journal founded under the aegis of Gide in February 1944 in Algiers. The editor-in-chief was the Algerian writer Jean Amrouche. His editorial board included Maurice Blanchot, Albert Camus, and Jacques Lassaigne. It was in this journal that Etiemble published another article on Tropiques shortly after his stop in Martinique. From the evidence, it is clear that Gide was not referring to Césaire's detailed historical study of Toussaint Louverture, the hero of Haitian independence, titled Toussaint Louverture: La révolution française et le problème colonial, that appeared in 1960.17 Gide was doubtless referring to the play on which Césaire was working at the time. After many changes, it was published in 1947 as Et les chiens se taisaient, a work to which I return.Césaire raises the matter of the proposed trip to North Africa. He reports that his wife is still ill, that he would like to send her to Algiers for treatment, in spite of the difficulty of such a trip (and how expensive it would be). She is suffering, writes Césaire, from a case of "pneumothorax qui ne marche plus" ("a pneumothorax that no longer works"), an expression that, in medical terms, means almost nothing. He adds that she is also bothered by a "coeur dévié" ("deflected heart"). With a pulmonary lesion and the marital problems that she and Césaire were experiencing, she was in fragile condition. Suzanne had written to Breton on 20 May 1944, three days after the arrival of the couple in Haiti: Jamais vous n'avez été si présent que ces deux derniers mois où nous avons joué—vous ne le savez pas encore—la plus terrible partie de notre vie. Et comme il faut que les signes les plus éclatants viennent de vous, au moment où dans l'angoisse nous cherchions à voir le nouveau visage de l'amour, vous avez écrit en parlant du prochain numéro de VVV: "l'amour, la liberté."18(You have never been so present as during these last two months when we have experienced—you don't know about it yet—the most terrible time of our lives. And since it is essential that the most striking signs come from you, at a time when in our anguish we search for a new face of love, you wrote, speaking of the next issue of VVV: "love, freedom.")The trip to Haiti, then, took place at a time of a marital crisis in the course of which Césaire was tormented by a "coeur dévié," in several senses of this ambiguous term. As for the idea of traveling to Algiers by himself, Césaire was not interested. "Une foule de considérations—dont certaines familiales—me retiennent dans cette partie du monde" ("Numerous considerations—some of which concern the family—keep me in this part of the world").He would have preferred "un quelconque boulot vaguement culturel dans la sphère des Amériques" ("some kind of vaguely cultural job in the Americas"). He considered with disdain the idea of returning to the Lycée Schoelcher, "ce qui signifierait un tête-à-tête assez lugubre avec des cocos que vous avez pu apprécier" ("which would mean a lugubrious tête-à-tête with the guys with whom you had the pleasure of meeting").He then reports on his literary activities, in particular on his drama: J'avoue que je le considère d'un oeil très ennemi. 1e Il s'est beaucoup modifié depuis que vous en avez vu une version. 2e Il me gêne encore pas mal. Beaucoup. Je crois qu'il ne verra pas le jour. J'ai fait fausse route. Malgré les nombreuses modifications, ma tentative reste encore trop d'ordre historique. Et c'est stupide. Dans mon esprit, elle ne peut être valable que si je la situe hardiment sur le plan du mythe. J'ai vraiment honte de vous avoir confié ma petite machine … Maintenant avec le recul … Oh! je n'ai pas encore tout à fait renoncé, mais enfin je ne compte pas en parler avant plusieurs années. En attendant, quelques poèmes.(I must admit that I view it with a rather jaundiced eye. First, I've modified it quite a bit since you saw the last version. Second, it still bothers me quite me a lot. Very much. I don't think that it will ever see the light of day. I've taken the wrong road. In spite of numerous modifications my attempt remains too historic. And that's stupid. In my mind, it can't be worthwhile unless I situate it boldly in the context of myth. I'm really ashamed to have entrusted to you my little machine … Now, in retrospect … Oh, I'm not quite ready to give up but I really don't plan to talk about it again for several years. Meanwhile, a few poems).We know that this drama had been preoccupying Césaire for months because he had written several letters about it to Breton. In one dated 4 April 1944, he writes: "Né sous Vichy, écrit contre Vichy, au plus fort du racisme blanc et du cléricalisme, au plus fort de la démission nègre, cette oeuvre n'est pas sans porter assez désagréablement la marque des circonstances" ("Born under Vichy, written against Vichy, at the height of white racism and clericalism, at the height of the black surrender, this work bears rather disagreeably the mark of the moment"). The basic structure sent to Breton "doit donc être complété et modifié. Corrigé dans le sens d'une plus grande liberté. En particulier, la part de l'histoire, ou de l'historicité déjà passablement réduite, doit être éliminée à peu près complètement" ("must therefore be completed and modified. Corrected in the direction of greater freedom. In particular, the historical dimension, or the historicity already sufficiently reduced, must be completely eliminated").19Césaire was still dissatisfied with the version of the play he had given to Seyrig during the cultural attaché's stop in Martinique nine months earlier. He reports that the stay in Haiti is now going better for all concerned. Suzanne's health has improved. The Haitian authorities are prolonging his stay. The French ambassador has set in motion a process to have Césaire named cultural attaché in Port-au-Prince. Césaire's family would remain in Martinique. But he was worried. The Free French government in Algiers had reduced the funding for his mission to Haiti, and he would have to return to Martinique without participating in the philosophy conference. "J'ai un peu l'impression qu'Alger a perdu cette question de vue, car le motif officiel de mon voyage ici c'est ma participation à ce congrès" ("I have a little bit the impression that Algiers no longer has this question in mind because the official motive for my trip here is my participation in the conference"). He therefore asks Seyrig to intervene in order to resolve the problem.Césaire thanks him for his efforts. The mission of the Martinican visitor has been extended until 15 December. Suzanne had returned to Martinique the day before in order to take care of the children. Césaire also gives news of Et les chiens se taisaient: "Ce jour-ci, j'ai pas mal avancé mon drame. Métamorphosé presque complètement. Beaucoup d'illusions perdues. Encore du travail en perspective. Mais la chose me paraît viable maintenant" ("Today, I've made quite a bit of progress on the play. Almost completely metamorphosed. Lots of lost illusions. Still more work to do. But the thing seems viable to me now").Césaire concludes that the results of his stay in Haiti have been mixed. He suffers from his relationships with "la petite bourgeoisie de couleur" ("the lower-middle class mulattoes"), whom he judges as mediocre and subject to prejudice. As for the lower classes, Césaire adds: Mais brave et malheureux peuple. Réserve extraordinaire en marge de la civilisation, des frénésies, des nostalgies, des communions insolites. Tout cela de nature à compléter ma vision antillaise. Je crois qu'il y a un génie antillais, un style antillais. Pour fixer mes idées à ce sujet, il me tarde de connaître une Antille de langue espagnole—Cuba—une Antille de langue anglaise: la Jamaïque. Pour le moment Martinique, Martinique.(But the good and unfortunate people. Extraordinary reserve on the margins of civilization, of frenetics, of nostalgias, of bizarre communions. All this tends to complete my Caribbean vision. I believe that there is a Caribbean genius, a Caribbean style. To clarify my ideas on this subject, I need to learn about the Spanish Caribbean—Cuba—and the Anglophone Caribbean, Jamaica. For the moment, Martinique, Martinique.)He was writing poems. "Je prépare un recueil que j'aimerais publier à Paris dès la reprise des éditions françaises et je mets la dernière main au drame" ("I am preparing a collection that I would like to publish in Paris as soon as French publishing revives and I'm putting the final touches on the play").Seyrig explains that during a trip to France he undertook a campaign at the Ministry of Colonies to have Césaire and his family brought to Paris. He also says that he has sent copies of Tropiques to the Parisian journal Lettres françaises.In his last letter to Seyrig, Césaire reveals, with a note of embarrassment, that he has become involved in the political life of Martinique. The ticket he led won the municipal elections in Fort-de-France on 27 May 1945. He speaks again of his trip to Haiti, "suprêmement intéressant et décevant" ("supremely interesting and disappointing"): Et puis après, ça a été de nouveau 6 mois à Cochon-sur-Marne, à Cafouillis-les-oies, dans la gadoue de Fort-de-France. Perspectives d'élections. Le retour offensif des vieux politicards. Une coalition immonde qui se noua contre le peuple martiniquais, du clérical vichyste au socialiste en rupture de doctrine.Le petit gangstérisme, le cynisme, la dégueulasserie. Bref, pour empêcher cela, j'accepte de faire corps aux résistants … Donc me voilà maire de Fort-de-France. Enfin, il le fallait. Moralement, j'étais tenu d'agir. Sous peine de me désolidariser avec ce que je n'avais cessé de dénoncer. Enfin! Bien entendu je n'ai pas abandonné pour cela la poésie.(And then afterward, there were six months of "Pig-on-the-Marne," "Goose shambles" in the slurry of Fort-de-France. Elections coming. The return on the offensive of the old politicos. A filthy coalition that unites against the Martinican people, from Vichy clericalism to lapsed socialism.The small time gangsterism, the cynicisms, the swinishness. In sum, to prevent that, I agreed to become one with the resistants. Thus here I am mayor of Fort-de-France. In the end I had to do it. I was morally obliged to act. Under pain of the need to break with what I never stopped denouncing. Finally! Of course, for that I have not abandoned poetry.)He does not explain that it was at the request of the Martinican Federation of the French Communist Party that he became involved in politics. He gives some news of his new play: Il n'a plus grand chose de commun avec ce que vous avez connu: quelque chose de sûrement mythique et magique; pas d'intrigue; la vision; le spectacle jaillissant, non pas sous les yeux, mais des yeux d'un choeur dont s'est emparé l'esprit dionysiaque.(It doesn't have much in common with what you've seen so far: something certainly mythic and magic. No plot. Vision, spectacle bursting forth, not before the eyes, but the eyes of a choir taken by a dionysian spirit.)He still wants to leave Martinique and has accepted an offer from the Ministry of Colonies: "J'ai répondu un oui enthousiaste, mais pas de nouvelles" ("I replied by an enthusiastic yes, but no news so far"). He closes: "Pour le moment je vais tâcher de déblayer mon horizon poétique de toutes les productions faites car il me devient nécessaire—hygiène mentale—de commencer autre chose" ("For the moment, I'm going to try to clear my poetic horizon of everything done so far because it is necessary for me—mental hygiene—to begin something else").On 4 October 1945, Césaire was elected as one of Martinique's députés, or representatives, to the first constituent assembly in Paris, whose purpose was to write a new constitution for France. Accompanied by his wife, Suzanne, he left for Paris on 19 November stopping in Port-au-Prince, Washington, and New York where the couple was warmly received by Breton and the community of French exiles.Les armes miraculeuses, including twenty-six poems, the play Et les chiens se taisaient, and a prose postface titled Mythe, is the first collection of Césaire's work to appear as a book in France. It was published on 19 April 1946 by Gallimard. We know thanks to Katerina Seigmann and Alex Gil that it was not Breton who took the initiative to have the collection published, but Raymond Queneau, a friend of Georges Pelorson before the war and a member of the Volontés team. He wrote to Césaire: Après la libération, lorsque j'au pu reprendre contact avec ce qui s'était publié hors de France[,] j'ai pu voir que vous réalisiez les espérances que pouvait donner votre premier ouvrage, et j'ai lu avec le même intérêt vos Poèmes publiés dans Confluences et dans Fontaine. Je serais heureux de pouvoir proposer à Monsieur Gaston GALLIMARD une édition complète de vos oeuvres poétiques.20(After the liberation, when I was able to reestablish contact with what was being published outside of France[,] I was able to see that you were fulfilling the hopes announced by our first work, and I read with the same interest your Poems published in Confluences and Fontaine. I would be happy to be able to propose to Mr. Gaston GALLIMARD an edition of your complete poems.)The correspondence between Césaire and Seyrig, as thin as it is, yields a variety of fascinating details connected with a long and ambiguous Haitian season for Césaire. In his function as a cultural attaché and through his friendship with Césaire and his family, Seyrig promised to heighten the influence of Free France by sending the young graduate of the Ecole normale supérieure, courageous editor of a journal, and poet recognized by his peers, along with his wife, to an island that was still recovering from a nineteen-year American occupation.In Haiti, Césaire encountered a people he admired, a middle class that unsettled him, and Haitian intellectuals, some of whom remained deeply marked by his teaching about poetry.21 He was to confront his island alter ego in a way that would nourish his thinking about Caribbean cultural identity and his own literary oeuvre for a long time. The stay there was marked by a spurt of creativity, experienced in both doubt and pain. These letters also give us rare information about the origin of the different versions of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal and above all the "drama" that would lead to Et les chiens se taisaient in 1946. The correspondence reveals a writing that is in perpetual evolution. The poet entrusts his manuscripts to friends, regrets his gesture, then complicates the editorial process by last-minute concerns. He lives through literary, existential, and marital crises, as he did once before and as he would do again in the future. They are crises that involve not only his poetry but also, more deeply, his self.We can also read in those letters about the ties among those in America who were part of the intelligentsia connected to the Ecole normale supérieure of the rue d'Ulm, others who were resolutely engaged in the resistance to Nazism, and those who found themselves in a surrealist exile in New York City. These people, both the refugees and Seyrig, constituted a force that launched Césaire into the "république des lettres" thanks to admiration for his work and their friendship with the man and his wife.Césaire's entrance into the political life of Martinique came as quite a surprise, even for a man who agreed in May 1945 to lead the municipal election ticket and, as a result of the victory, therefore assume the position of mayor and who then, in October of the same year, agreed to present himself as a candidate for the constituent assembly on the Communist side. Césaire wanted to leave his native land, as evidenced in his correspondence with Seyrig. He manages to do so, paradoxically, by becoming the representative of the first district of Martinique, a position that until he retired in 1993 would require him to spend most of his time in Paris so that he could be present during parliamentary sessions.Another irony is that the fervent adversary of cultural assimilation, beginning with his first articles in the student newspaper L'étudiant noir in 1935, became, paradoxically, the spokesman for supporters of the departmentalization law, known also as the assimilation law, a project of political integration that would transform the old colonies of Guadeloupe, Guiana, Martinique, and Réunion into overseas departments of France.22 All of this occurred a few weeks before the publication in Paris of Les armes miraculeuses.