Ballerinas Dance with Machine Guns

» Antillean French//black French//new language «

“I don’t deny French influences myself. Whether I want to or not, as a poet I express myself in French, and clearly French literature has influenced me. But I want to emphasize very strongly that - while using as a point of departure the elements that French literature gave me - at the same time I have always strived to create a new language, one capable of communicating the African heritage. In other words, for me French was a tool that I wanted to use in developing a new means of expression. I wanted to create an Antillean French, a black French that, while still being French, had a black character.”

—Interview with Aimé Césaire, conducted by Haitian poet and militant René Depestre at the Cultural Congress of Havana in 1967

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