Although Martinique was far removed from Europe, as a French territory it suffered economically from a German blockade, then later from censorship imposed by a representative of the Vichy government. The initial conflict between the two characters staged in act 1 concludes with Caliban’s renunciation of his colonial identity and claiming the radical identity of Black nationalism: “Appelle-moi X ... l’homme dont on a. It soon emerges that Christophe, despite his desire for Black freedom, is deeply invested in the logic and rhetoric of slavery. Moving the scene to a colonial prison, Césaire re-creates the appropriation of the island by the French, the horrors of the slave trade, and the arrival of white colonial bureaucrats, all through the exchange of voices among two narrators (one male and one female), madwomen, bishops, and a colonial administrator. Césaire turned his attention to the African diaspora in his poetry collection Corps perdu (1950; translated as Lost Body, 1986). As he forcibly marries a group of men and women, his language begins to resemble that of a slave master as he praises the bodies of the women and their potential for work. The life of Martinican author Aimé Césaire spans the 20th century and its anticolonial movements. Autor de unos 16 libros de poesía, teatro, ensayo e historia; su obra completa en tres volúmenes se publicó en 1976. Césaire was born in Basse-Pointe, in the north of the island of Martinique, the second of the six children of Fernand Césaire, a minor government official, and his wife, Eléonore, a seamstress. Aimé Césaire was born June 25, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, a small town on the northeast coast of Martinique in the French Caribbean. In caricatures of a series of bankers, the dialogue moves into sustained rhymed couplets; in their speeches, the bankers make it clear that avarice and economic corruption will cause the downfall of the free Congo’s leaders. However, his refusal to be a slave was realized through violent means, and he accepts responsibility for joining—despite his denial of racial hatred—the cry of “Mort aux Blancs” (death to the whites). Aimé Césaire was born June 25, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, a small town on the northeast coast of Martinique in the French Caribbean. Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry, edited and translated by Eshleman and Annette Smith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). The first of these plays, La Tragédie du roi Christophe, is also the first of Césaire’s plays to be written expressly for the theater. He attended the Lycée Schoelcher in Martinique, and the Parisian schools Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He claims to have bought them from a slave ship and purchased their freedom. Additionally, the title associates the Congo with hell through its allusion to, The original edition of the play ends on a slightly optimistic note: the final moments take place at the Independence Day celebrations in Kinshasa. Back in Martinique in 1939, Césaire taught literature. He attended the Lycée Schoelcher in Martinique, and the Parisian schools Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. In 1957 Césaire founded the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais (Martinique Progressive Party), and in 1959 he participated in the Second Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in Rome. During the Feast of the Assumption, which celebrates the ascension of the Virgin Mary into heaven, the ghost of Brelle appears in the church and curses Christophe, who collapses, paralyzed. The tone of the play—and of the Rebel’s monologues in particular—becomes increasingly apocalyptic and hallucinatory. Césaire makes it clear that Christophe’s drives, imitative of white oppression, are part of his undoing. In 1939 Césaire published his first version of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal in the journal Volontés (Intentions). In what Césaire describes as his “triptych” of plays, La Tragédie du roi Christophe (published 1963, produced 1964; translated as The Tragedy of King Christophe, 1970), Une Saison au Congo (published 1965; translated as A Season in the Congo, 1968; produced 1976), and Une Tempête (published and produced 1969; translated as A Tempest, 1985), he explores a series of related themes, especially the efforts of Blacks—whether in Africa, the United States, or the Caribbean—to resist the powers of colonial domination.