The lines “The Antilles pitted with smallpox/the Antilles dynamited by alcohol/stranded in the mud of this bay/in the dust of this town sinisterly stranded” employ strong visual imagery to convey a sense of deep isolation. The image of smallpox is one that conjures thoughts of disease. A disease is essentially an abnormal malfunction, and this image illustrates how the islands are malfunctioning under colonialism. The image of the islands stranded in dust brings the image of a ghost town to mind and portrays the sense of isolation the colonized feel under colonial rule. From the author's biography, we can gather that the poem is a response to the French colonization of the Carribean, as the poet was born in Basse-Pointe, a town in French held Martinique.
At the end of daybreak, on this very fragile earth thickness exceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future--the vol- canoes will explode, the naked water will bear away the ripe sun stains and nothing will be left but a tepid bubbling pecked at by sea birds--the beach of dreams and the insane awakening.
I liked this image. Like Brit mentioned, Cesaire’s personal history involved the French Caribbean. The setting of his poem seems to be an Island in the Caribbean. He conjures an image of a “fragile earth” that will be destroyed by the explosion of volcanoes. It speaks of the precariousness of life that is “exceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future”. We project for ourselves and the earth a brilliant future of development and of progress that exceeds the earth itself. After the volcanoes explode and the water washes everything away, possible because the setting is an island surrounded by water, “Nothing will be left but a tepid bubbling pecked at by sea birds--the beach of dreams and the insane awakening”. The beach of dreams may refer to the unfulfilled “grandiose future”. I couldn’t figure out what “insane awakening” meant. Any ideas?
I was just looking at the image again, and it could also be describing the colonization of the Island. The volcanoes exploding could be colonization, and then the water bears away everything that was there. All that's left is a tepid bubbling pecked at by sea birds- maybe the colonizers pecking at the colonized island. maybe?
Wow, what a powerful image…After reading the excerpt one can determine that the Antilles island is under great distress. Just imagine yourself stranded on an island in and unfamiliar deserted island? “Antilles is stranded in the mud of this bay.” The choice of words the author uses such as “smallpox,” an illness that is deadly, “Hungry, alcohol, stranded”… are depressing words even if they are used alone. These words give off a negative vibe. The image that comes to mind are people suffering, those that are suppressed by the destructive elements of nature. However, the visual image of hope comes to mind when the volcanoe is introduced,. “The volcanoe will explode, the naked water will bear away the ripe sun stains…the beach of dreams…”After the explosion, the atmosphere appears to be different, an island that perhaps recovered from the evilness.
The line that gives us a strong visual image is "At the end of daybreak burgeoning with frail coves, the hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dyn- amited by alcohol, stranded in the mud of this bay, in the dust of this town sinisterly stranded." When we hear this word smallpox, the first word that comes to our mind is that it is a disease. I strongly agree with what Britt said that, "A disease is essentially an abnormal malfunction, and this image illustrates how the islands are malfunctioning under colonialism." It is an aillness that is quite deadly that can eventually cause death. Also when it talks about island filled with dust also gives us the portrayal that colonized are simply isolated under this ruling of colonial power. When I read poet's biography, I learned that his history has to do with French caribbean and this what I think is the setting of this paricular poem.
Another image that I found intersting is in line, "At the end of daybreak, on this very fragile earth thickness exceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future--the vol- canoes will explode..." He is showing us this visual image of "fragile earth" whose destruction will cause with the explosion of volcanoes. Also, “volcano” appears in this poem I think in thi spoem the volcano is a metaphor for colonization as well as a comment to natural disaster.
Aime Cesaire’s imagery in this excerpt from “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” is at times intensely beautiful, and at others almost grotesque. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker introduces us to “paradises,” claiming that “rivers of turtledoves and savanna clover” are images he will “carry forever in [his] depths.” Their beauty therefore becomes a “guard against the putrefying force of crepuscular surroundings, surveyed night and day by a cursed venereal sun.” In these lines Cesaire demonstrates that even amidst an environment of disease and decay, the image of turtledoves and savanna clover can provide the speaker with a form of comfort, allowing him to attain an internal peace despite harsh realities. However, by juxtaposing images of the beautiful and the grotesque Cesaire also enables us to recognize the colonizer’s brutality of and visualize the effects of their conquest on his native land. When he speaks of “the hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited by alcohol, stranded in the mud of this bay,” he reveals how the land has been assaulted, transformed and devastated by outsiders. The repetition of Antilles in each of these phrases along with different modes of destruction illustrates how smallpox and alcohol are afflictions that seem to have been absorbed into the land itself. Nature appears to be in pain with the “wound on the waters,” and the “flowers of blood that fade and scatter into the empty wind” suggesting that something beautiful has been lost only to be replaced by death and disease.
In this excerpt from “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” Aime Cesaire presents what first appears to be an almost apocalyptic image of the Antilles. He describes the town as being infested with disease and “dynamited by alcohol.” As the poem continues, however, these images become more ambiguous in their intensity, possessing a kind of grotesque beauty. Cesaire emphasizes, for example, “the extreme, deceptive desolate eschar on the wound of the waters.” The choice of “deceptive” is interesting because it can mean that the disgusting “eschar” is only deceptively desolate, that perhaps once the dark, dry scab peals away something far more attractive will emerge from that healed wound. The image of “flowers of blood” scattering through the wind is also hauntingly beautiful and like the scabbing wound there is connotation of new emerging from old, life blossoming from death. The truly apocalyptic image comes in the fourth stanza with the great volcanic explosion. But the excerpt ends with a very strong rejection of the Christian faith and its religious tenets, its “insane awakening.” Cesaire emphasizes that while the Antilles is “winded under its geometric weight of an eternally renewed cross,” under the constant threat of religious colonization, Christianity is “incapable of growing with the juice of this earth, self-conscious clipped, reduced, in breach of fauna and flora.” He asserts that this oppressive religion will never be able to root itself to the land and grow there as long as the people are “self-conscious” of its foreign origins and not allow Christianity to subsist with the indigenous “fauna and flora.”
Cesaire excerpt from "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land" begins with,"At the end of daybreak". Every first line of the poem starts with this phrase. The image at the end of a day break is a dark image. After the sun goes down darkness takes place and this seems to be the case in Cesaire's poem. With this darkness comes disaster. The speaker is trying to get rid of all the nasty and harmful things his town faces. The town's atmosphere also changes Cesaire says, "surveyed night and day by a cursed venereal sun". The sun also seems to be cursed, flowers and homes are also affected from all of the sickness that has been brought to the town. Poverty and sickness becomes an issue, according to Cesaire the earth becomes fragile.
In Aimé Césaire’s ‘Return to the Native Land,’ the end of daybreak casts light upon a landscape that is diseased, scabbing, and pus-filled. He detests the “cockchafers of hope…. evil grigri… bedbug of a petty monk,” identifying the religion of the colonizers as a main culprit for all the horrors he sees. He strings together a series of images that expound on what he shows us is a diseased and corrupted land, and the “paradises lost for him and his kin” is what is at stake, what has ultimately been betrayed; and the anger with which Cesaire describes, in the last paragraph, the “town sprawled-flat, toppled from its common sense,” seems to inform a sense of the irretrievable.
Aime Cesaire uses imagery throughout his poem "Return of the Natie Land" to stress and emphasize on the grotesque beauty of her surrounding. The images of nature is expressed in depth; she describes "the volcanoes will explode...nothing will be left but a teid bubbbleing pecked at by sea birds". These images that are portrayed "at the end of daybreak" have very detailed images that are tragic and disastrous. However, there seems to be subtle beauty in the midst of these disasters for he writes things such as “flowers of blood”. Cesaire intentionally does this throughout his poem to show the beauty in his culture in the midst of his gruesome post colonial struggle.
The poem is melancholy and that’s an understatement. There are people with smallpox who are dying. There is hunger. There are martyrs in the poem that are compared to “flowers of blood.” This is really sad. There is beauty in the devastation; but both seem futile in its existent because they “fade and scatter in the wind.” The poem ends with a cross in the last stanza, a heavy one that is “eternally renewed.”
Cesaire's depiction of "the flunkies of order" paints a picture of hypocritical police officers. Rather than maintaining fairness, these "cockchafers of hope" maintain "order," the status quo. The discussion of "the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited with alcohol" portrays an image of a smashed and pock-marked culture. The smallpox and alcohol work well with the earlier mention of the "flunkies of order" who subvert a positive thing (upholding order or gifts) through a bastardization (abuses of power or hidden agendas behind gifts).
Césaire’s “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” is rich in imagery and portrays a dark picture of corruption with a prophesized fate of inevitable destruction. In the first verse, the speaker is not just bashing policemen, but the institutionalized, deceptive, immorality of colonization which they stand for. With “…evil grigri, you bedbug of a petty monk,” the speaker uses an African metaphor for the evil practices of the colonizers and reveals the actuality of their low standing as they hide under the false pretense of religion. The line “a river of turtledoves and savanna clover which I carry forever in my depths” reveals the conflicting effects of colonization on a person’s psyche with its European and African symbols (turtle doves and savanna clover) as the marked opposing ends in colonization. The second and third verses speak of plague in its tangible forms of disease, unethical behavior, despair, and agony. The fourth and fifth verses speak prophetically of destruction with the eruption of a volcano as a metaphor for the eventual social awakening and upheaval that will occur: “the beach of dreams and the insane awakening.” Another symbol of Christianity is presented by mention of the “cross” and reaffirms the speaker’s sentiments are directed toward European colonizers who use religion as an excuse for conquering land.
At the end of the daybreak infliction with pain as that of “cursed venereal sun” there are no good memories to recall. At the end of the daybreak with “exhausted thought”, “duty town”, “toppled from common sense”, “mute”, “vexed” , “clipped” and “reduced” leaves nothing for people to reflect upon. At the end of the day with the tormented soul and shackled hopes the colonized people can’t really say much. At the end of the day after every disaster it is tough to state exactly what happened. At the end of the day to gain back consciousness to discover what had happened there is not much except queer silence and helplessness which does not even let one recall at the end of the day what has taken place. At the end of the day all one can say is that it is the end. With the end of the day the silence, the muteness reminds one of only helplessness. At the end of the day to remember anything is to ask for too much. At the end of the day broken wings like that of the caged bird really asks for nothing much but escape, but to say that in the open requires courage to first remember what is happening to find one’s way. Isn’t it said that at the end of the day people are lost in muteness via silence. Is that too much to ask at the end of the day? "Beat it" is that the word one may state and ponder upon to beat the pain, the agony, the entrapment.
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ReplyDeleteThe lines “The Antilles pitted with smallpox/the Antilles dynamited by alcohol/stranded in the mud of this bay/in the dust of this town sinisterly stranded” employ strong visual imagery to convey a sense of deep isolation. The image of smallpox is one that conjures thoughts of disease. A disease is essentially an abnormal malfunction, and this image illustrates how the islands are malfunctioning under colonialism. The image of the islands stranded in dust brings the image of a ghost town to mind and portrays the sense of isolation the colonized feel under colonial rule. From the author's biography, we can gather that the poem is a response to the French colonization of the Carribean, as the poet was born in Basse-Pointe, a town in French held Martinique.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of daybreak, on this very fragile earth thickness
ReplyDeleteexceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future--the vol-
canoes will explode, the naked water will bear away the ripe
sun stains and nothing will be left but a tepid bubbling pecked
at by sea birds--the beach of dreams and the insane awakening.
I liked this image. Like Brit mentioned, Cesaire’s personal history involved the French Caribbean. The setting of his poem seems to be an Island in the Caribbean. He conjures an image of a “fragile earth” that will be destroyed by the explosion of volcanoes. It speaks of the precariousness of life that is “exceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future”. We project for ourselves and the earth a brilliant future of development and of progress that exceeds the earth itself. After the volcanoes explode and the water washes everything away, possible because the setting is an island surrounded by water, “Nothing will be left but a tepid bubbling pecked at by sea birds--the beach of dreams and the insane awakening”. The beach of dreams may refer to the unfulfilled “grandiose future”. I couldn’t figure out what “insane awakening” meant. Any ideas?
I was just looking at the image again, and it could also be describing the colonization of the Island. The volcanoes exploding could be colonization, and then the water bears away everything that was there. All that's left is a tepid bubbling pecked at by sea birds- maybe the colonizers pecking at the colonized island. maybe?
ReplyDeleteWow, what a powerful image…After reading the excerpt one can determine that the Antilles island is under great distress. Just imagine yourself stranded on an island in and unfamiliar deserted island? “Antilles is stranded in the mud of this bay.” The choice of words the author uses such as “smallpox,” an illness that is deadly, “Hungry, alcohol, stranded”… are depressing words even if they are used alone. These words give off a negative vibe. The image that comes to mind are people suffering, those that are suppressed by the destructive elements of nature. However, the visual image of hope comes to mind when the volcanoe is introduced,. “The volcanoe will explode, the naked water will bear away the ripe sun stains…the beach of dreams…”After the explosion, the atmosphere appears to be different, an island that perhaps recovered from the evilness.
ReplyDeleteThe line that gives us a strong visual image is "At the end of daybreak burgeoning with frail coves, the hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dyn- amited by alcohol, stranded in the mud of this bay, in the dust of this town sinisterly stranded." When we hear this word smallpox, the first word that comes to our mind is that it is a disease. I strongly agree with what Britt said that, "A disease is essentially an abnormal malfunction, and this image illustrates how the islands are malfunctioning under colonialism." It is an aillness that is quite deadly that can eventually cause death. Also when it talks about island filled with dust also gives us the portrayal that colonized are simply isolated under this ruling of colonial power. When I read poet's biography, I learned that his history has to do with French caribbean and this what I think is the setting of this paricular poem.
ReplyDeleteAnother image that I found intersting is in line, "At the end of daybreak, on this very fragile earth thickness exceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future--the vol- canoes will explode..." He is showing us this visual image of "fragile earth" whose destruction will cause with the explosion of volcanoes. Also, “volcano” appears in this poem I think in thi spoem the volcano is a metaphor for colonization as well as a comment to natural disaster.
Aime Cesaire’s imagery in this excerpt from “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” is at times intensely beautiful, and at others almost grotesque. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker introduces us to “paradises,” claiming that “rivers of turtledoves and savanna clover” are images he will “carry forever in [his] depths.” Their beauty therefore becomes a “guard against the putrefying force of crepuscular surroundings, surveyed night and day by a cursed venereal sun.” In these lines Cesaire demonstrates that even amidst an environment of disease and decay, the image of turtledoves and savanna clover can provide the speaker with a form of comfort, allowing him to attain an internal peace despite harsh realities. However, by juxtaposing images of the beautiful and the grotesque Cesaire also enables us to recognize the colonizer’s brutality of and visualize the effects of their conquest on his native land. When he speaks of “the hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited by alcohol, stranded in the mud of this bay,” he reveals how the land has been assaulted, transformed and devastated by outsiders. The repetition of Antilles in each of these phrases along with different modes of destruction illustrates how smallpox and alcohol are afflictions that seem to have been absorbed into the land itself. Nature appears to be in pain with the “wound on the waters,” and the “flowers of blood that fade and scatter into the empty wind” suggesting that something beautiful has been lost only to be replaced by death and disease.
ReplyDeleteIn this excerpt from “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” Aime Cesaire presents what first appears to be an almost apocalyptic image of the Antilles. He describes the town as being infested with disease and “dynamited by alcohol.” As the poem continues, however, these images become more ambiguous in their intensity, possessing a kind of grotesque beauty. Cesaire emphasizes, for example, “the extreme, deceptive desolate eschar on the wound of the waters.” The choice of “deceptive” is interesting because it can mean that the disgusting “eschar” is only deceptively desolate, that perhaps once the dark, dry scab peals away something far more attractive will emerge from that healed wound. The image of “flowers of blood” scattering through the wind is also hauntingly beautiful and like the scabbing wound there is connotation of new emerging from old, life blossoming from death. The truly apocalyptic image comes in the fourth stanza with the great volcanic explosion. But the excerpt ends with a very strong rejection of the Christian faith and its religious tenets, its “insane awakening.” Cesaire emphasizes that while the Antilles is “winded under its geometric weight of an eternally renewed cross,” under the constant threat of religious colonization, Christianity is “incapable of growing with the juice of this earth, self-conscious clipped, reduced, in breach of fauna and flora.” He asserts that this oppressive religion will never be able to root itself to the land and grow there as long as the people are “self-conscious” of its foreign origins and not allow Christianity to subsist with the indigenous “fauna and flora.”
ReplyDeleteCesaire excerpt from "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land" begins with,"At the end of daybreak". Every first line of the poem starts with this phrase. The image at the end of a day break is a dark image. After the sun goes down darkness takes place and this seems to be the case in Cesaire's poem. With this darkness comes disaster. The speaker is trying to get rid of all the nasty and harmful things his town faces. The town's atmosphere also changes Cesaire says, "surveyed night and day by a cursed venereal sun". The sun also seems to be cursed, flowers and homes are also affected from all of the sickness that has been brought to the town. Poverty and sickness becomes an issue, according to Cesaire the earth becomes fragile.
ReplyDeleteIn Aimé Césaire’s ‘Return to the Native Land,’ the end of daybreak casts light upon a landscape that is diseased, scabbing, and pus-filled. He detests the “cockchafers of hope…. evil grigri… bedbug of a petty monk,” identifying the religion of the colonizers as a main culprit for all the horrors he sees. He strings together a series of images that expound on what he shows us is a diseased and corrupted land, and the “paradises lost for him and his kin” is what is at stake, what has ultimately been betrayed; and the anger with which Cesaire describes, in the last paragraph, the “town sprawled-flat, toppled from its common sense,” seems to inform a sense of the irretrievable.
ReplyDeleteAime Cesaire uses imagery throughout his poem "Return of the Natie Land" to stress and emphasize on the grotesque beauty of her surrounding. The images of nature is expressed in depth; she describes "the volcanoes will explode...nothing will be left but a teid bubbbleing pecked at by sea birds". These images that are portrayed "at the end of daybreak" have very detailed images that are tragic and disastrous. However, there seems to be subtle beauty in the midst of these disasters for he writes things such as “flowers of blood”. Cesaire intentionally does this throughout his poem to show the beauty in his culture in the midst of his gruesome post colonial struggle.
ReplyDeleteThe poem is melancholy and that’s an understatement. There are people with smallpox who are dying. There is hunger. There are martyrs in the poem that are compared to “flowers of blood.” This is really sad. There is beauty in the devastation; but both seem futile in its existent because they “fade and scatter in the wind.” The poem ends with a cross in the last stanza, a heavy one that is “eternally renewed.”
ReplyDeleteCesaire's depiction of "the flunkies of order" paints a picture of hypocritical police officers. Rather than maintaining fairness, these "cockchafers of hope" maintain "order," the status quo. The discussion of "the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited with alcohol" portrays an image of a smashed and pock-marked culture. The smallpox and alcohol work well with the earlier mention of the "flunkies of order" who subvert a positive thing (upholding order or gifts) through a bastardization (abuses of power or hidden agendas behind gifts).
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCésaire’s “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” is rich in imagery and portrays a dark picture of corruption with a prophesized fate of inevitable destruction. In the first verse, the speaker is not just bashing policemen, but the institutionalized, deceptive, immorality of colonization which they stand for. With “…evil grigri, you bedbug of a petty monk,” the speaker uses an African metaphor for the evil practices of the colonizers and reveals the actuality of their low standing as they hide under the false pretense of religion. The line “a river of turtledoves and savanna clover which I carry forever
ReplyDeletein my depths” reveals the conflicting effects of colonization on a person’s psyche with its European and African symbols (turtle doves and savanna clover) as the marked opposing ends in colonization. The second and third verses speak of plague in its tangible forms of disease, unethical behavior, despair, and agony. The fourth and fifth verses speak prophetically of destruction with the eruption of a volcano as a metaphor for the eventual social awakening and upheaval that will occur: “the beach of dreams and the insane awakening.” Another symbol of Christianity is presented by mention of the “cross” and reaffirms the speaker’s sentiments are directed toward European colonizers who use religion as an excuse for conquering land.
At the end of the daybreak infliction with pain as that of “cursed venereal sun” there are no good memories to recall. At the end of the daybreak with “exhausted thought”, “duty town”, “toppled from common sense”, “mute”, “vexed” , “clipped” and “reduced” leaves nothing for people to reflect upon. At the end of the day with the tormented soul and shackled hopes the colonized people can’t really say much. At the end of the day after every disaster it is tough to state exactly what happened. At the end of the day to gain back consciousness to discover what had happened there is not much except queer silence and helplessness which does not even let one recall at the end of the day what has taken place. At the end of the day all one can say is that it is the end. With the end of the day the silence, the muteness reminds one of only helplessness. At the end of the day to remember anything is to ask for too much. At the end of the day broken wings like that of the caged bird really asks for nothing much but escape, but to say that in the open requires courage to first remember what is happening to find one’s way. Isn’t it said that at the end of the day people are lost in muteness via silence. Is that too much to ask at the end of the day? "Beat it" is that the word one may state and ponder upon to beat the pain, the agony, the entrapment.
ReplyDelete