SOURCE: Smith, Robert P., Jr. “Aimé Césaire Playwright Portrays Patrice Lumumba Man of Africa.” CLA Journal 14, no. 4 (June 1971): 371-79.

In the following essay, Smith considers the portrait of Patrice Lumumba, the late Congolese Prime Minister and nationalist hero, in Césaire's plays.

Before examining the panegyrical portrait which is presented to us of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's most influential nationalist hero, its first Prime Minister and most famous martyr, it will be useful to look briefly at a lesser known phase of Césaire's literary career, that of the playwright. In fact it is from this writer's third play, Une saison au Congo,¹ which Mercer Cook rightfully calls a eulogy,² that I shall extract the vivid word picture of the late Patrice Lumumba, who has come to be considered as a hero and martyr in much the same way as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and...