The liberating power of words

On top of that there has been political irresponsibility, and the whole gamut of cynicism has been run through! Fortunately, however, there have also been shining examples of the greatness of Africa, such as Nelson Mandela. Africa is experiencing the human adventure, and I am prepared to wager that the vital force of eternal Africa will once more inspire the song of the griot.

* What about the Marxist Utopia to which you subscribed in 1946 and which you condemned before the Budapest crisis in your Letter to Maurice Thorez, in which you set out your reasons for breaking with the Communist Party?

A.C.: It is true that, like so many of my contemporaries, I believed in what turned out to be a false Utopia. I am not at all ashamed about this. In the postwar context it expressed a heartfelt enthusiasm, a spiritual yearning.

But it was very soon followed by disappointment, a feeling of being manipulated, a conviction that one was being lied to and, as I said at the time, an unbearable awareness of "the collapse of an ideal and the poignant illustration of the failure of a whole generation". I felt an irresistible need not to keep silent and, regardless of the prevailing conformism, to break away at whatever risk to myself from the then all-powerful framework of the Marxist apparatus. It was part of my ontological choice as a human being aware of the non-negotiable responsibility that goes with a consciously accepted identity.

* In Discours sur le colonialisme (1950), you said that "nobody can colonize with impunity, there is no innocent colonization. There will be a heavy price to pay for reducing humanity to a monologue".

A.C.: Yes, I am deeply convinced that universal civilization has a great deal to lose by reducing whole civilizations to silence.

I think it would greatly impoverish human civilization if the voices of African, Indian and other Asian cultures were to fall silent. If the globalization we are now being offered were to reduce the dialogue of cultures to a monologue, it would create a civilization doomed to languish and decline. I believe in the importance of exchange, and exchange can only take place on the basis of mutual respect.

* Is it still relevant, in 1997, to think in terms of combat?

A.C.: We are always, all of us, warriors. The war takes different forms at different times, but there are always things to rebel against. One is always in rebellion against something, things that are unacceptable, things I will never accept. That is the inevitable way of the world, probably for everyone. There are things with which I cannot come to terms. I cannot accept that a people be stifled or that Africa be obliterated, I cannot resign myself to such things.

I desire - passionately - that peoples should exist as peoples, that they should prosper and make their contribution to universal civilization, because the world of colonization and its modern manifestations is a world that crushes, a world of awful silence.

* At the age of eighty-four, Aime Cesaire, well over half a century after Retour au pays natal, are you still faithful to your belief in the urgent relevance of poetry?