SOURCE: "The Liberating Power of Words," in The Unesco Courier, May, 1997, pp. 4-7.

In the following interview, Césaire discusses his political and poetic ideology.

MELSAN: The usual way of trying to place you is by reference to various things such as time and place, writing, poetry and its different categories, political action and so on, but how would you place yourself?

CÉSAIRE: That's a terribly difficult question to answer but, well, I'm a man, a man from Martinique, a coloured man, a black, someone from a particular country, from a particular geographical background, someone with a history who has fought for a specific cause. It's not very original but, broadly speaking, my answer would be that history will say who I am.

You are from the north of Martinique. …

I've always had the feeling that I was on a quest to reconquer something, my name, my...