Abandoning the documentary objectivity of Toussaint Louverture: la révolution française et le problème colonial, his history of the Haitian Revolution, Césaire brings to his play [La Tragédie du Roi Christophe] an altogether new attitude toward fact and fiction. He omits certain unflattering details about Christophe's past … in order to create an exemplary revolutionary hero at the outset. On the other hand, he leaves unmentioned the king's very positive achievements … while stressing only the destructive consequences of his acts and states of mind. This moral decline from absolute virtue to monstrosity furnishes the abruptness and excess typical of tragic theatre. Certain adjustments of historical fact and chronology permit Césaire to motivate his protagonist's early, critical choices simply and plausibly, while letting those choices develop under the pressures of particular fears infuses them with disastrous potential. Selecting episodes from history and legend with little...