SOURCE: "Post-Colonial Negritude: The Political Plays of Aimé Césaire," in West Africa, January 27, 1968, pp. 100-01.

In the following essay, Irele discusses Césaire's preoccupation with post-colonial politics in The Tragedy of King Christophe and A Season in the Congo.

For some time Aimé Césaire's work has been devoted entirely to a cause; it represents in fact the most sustained effort so far to explore in literary terms the realities of the black man's experience in modern times as well as his intimate responses to his historical condition. The colonial situation has imposed a certain limitation upon Césaire's angle of vision upon the world, resulting in a simplification of his themes which obscured the less immediate but more profound significance of the issues with which he is concerned—the moral and spiritual implications of the Negro's collective experience, and their universal relevance.

The ending of the...