born June 25, 1913, Basse-Pointe, Mart.
Martinican poet and playwright.
Educated in Paris, Césaire returned to Martinique to be elected to the National Assembly as a Communist. A cofounder with Léopold Senghor of the Negritude movement, he ardently supported the decolonization of French colonies of Africa, a view expressed in the fiery poems of Return to My Native Land (1939) and Soleil cou-coupé (1948, "Sun's Slashed Throat"). Discarding Negritude for black militancy, he turned to the theatre and wrote the political dramas The Tragedy of King Christophe (1963) and A Season in the Congo (1966).