A Tempest

Une Tempête, or A Tempest, is Aimé Césaire’s modern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The play was first published in French in 1969 by Éditions de Seuil (Paris). A Tempest was performed in France, as well as in different countries in Africa and the Middle East and in the West Indies. Richard Miller translated the play into English in 1985, and the play premiered in America in 1991, at the Ubu Repertory Theater in New York City.

Aimé Césaire was a poet, playwright, author, and politician who lived from 1913 to 2008. Born and raised in Martinique, Césaire left his hometown in 1935 to study in Europe for several years before returning to Martinique with his wife, Suzanne Roussi, and their infant son in 1939. He is best remembered for his work of political non-fiction Discours sur le colonialisme, or Discourse on Colonialism, as well as for his role as a founder of the Négritude movement. This literary movement originated in Paris during the 1930s, when Césaire and other black intellectuals banded together to write in their native French about black identity.

Led by Césaire and Léopold Sédar, a poet who became the first president of Senegal, the artists of the Négritude movement sought to celebrate black heritage. From an artistic point of view, jazz music and works by American Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes and Claude McKay first inspired the Négritude movement, and they continue to do so. From a political point of view, the original Négritude writers asserted their anti-colonialist stance in their art, affecting the way in which people who have been colonized perceive themselves and their experience. The Négritude movement is still alive today as young artists and writers seek to celebrate and honor black heritage in art.

The cast of Césaire’s A Tempest is nearly identical to the cast of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and much of the plot draws from the original play. Both plays begin with a shipwreck, and both examine the ways in which the survivors of the shipwreck interact with the residents of the island on which they find themselves. The differences between the two plays, however, are stark, as Césaire directly confronts matters of racism, exploitation, and violence in A Tempest through the vehicle of metadrama. Césaire’s adaptation departs from the original with its focus on the conflict between the characters of Ariel and Caliban and their white master, Prospero. Ariel and Caliban approach the issue of their freedom from slavery from vastly different perspectives; Ariel lives by nonviolence, while Caliban seeks to start a revolution. Their mindsets contain clear allusions to the legacies of the civil rights activists and leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, respectively.

Throughout the play, Césaire weaves politics and anti-colonial commentary into the familiar story of The Tempest, which was Shakespeare’s last play and final contribution to the Western literary canon. In this way, Césaire transforms the narrative of the shipwreck and the aftermath into a cautionary tale of a colonizer and his immoral exploitation of the island residents he encounters.

When Césaire died in April 2008, his funeral in Fort-de-France, Martinique, was broadcasted live on French television, affirming his contributions to French culture and art. In contemporary France, Négritude is enjoying an artistic revival as young people originally from the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, and other parts of the world come together to share their experiences by writing literature and making music. Young blacks in France rap about their immigration experience and their pride in their identities, for example, sharing their heritage with a wide audience and carrying Césaire’s legacy into the future.