It has been theorized that when William Shakespeare wrote
“The Tempest” in 1610, his portrayal of colonialism was tempered by Michel de
Montaigne’s essay “Of Cannibals”, written in 1603. Montaigne extolled the virtues of unspoiled,
primitive living:
The laws of nature, however,
govern them still, not as yet much vitiated with any mixture of ours: but ’tis
in such purity, that I am sometimes troubled we were not sooner acquainted with
these people, and that they were not discovered in those better times, when
there were men much more able to judge of them than we are. I am sorry that
Lycurgus and Plato had no knowledge of them; for to my apprehension, what we
now see in those nations, does not only surpass all the pictures with which the
poets have adorned the golden age, and all their inventions in feigning a happy
state of man, but, moreover, the fancy and even the wish and desire of
philosophy itself; so native and so pure a simplicity, as we by experience see
to be in them, could never enter into their imagination, nor could they ever
believe that human society could have been maintained with so little artifice
and human patchwork. I should tell Plato that it is a nation wherein there is
no manner of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name
of magistrate or political superiority; no use of service, riches or poverty,
no contracts, no successions, no dividends, no properties, no employments, but
those of leisure, no respect of kindred, but common, no clothing, no
agriculture, no metal, no use of corn or wine; the very words that signify
lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, detraction, pardon, never heard
of.
Montaigne’s apparent affection for the characteristics of
indigenous people may have influenced Shakespeare’s character Caliban (an
anagram for canibal), but not necessarily in a positive way. Shakespeare’s
Caliban is essentially a brutish lout, maligned by his oppressor Prospero while
he bumbles resentfully about on the island. Fellow slave Ariel fares a little
better in “The Tempest,” but only through acquiescence to his master, and
because he has marketable magical skills that Prospero enthusiastically employs
in his political intrigues.
Aimé Césaire returned to the island and the issues in his adaptation
of Shakespeare’s play, Une Tempête, published
in 1969. Césaire’s adaptation was performed in France, the Middle East, Africa
and the West Indies before Richard Miller’s English translation of it premiered
in New York’s Ubu Repertory Theater in 1991. Une Tempête was part of a trilogy of plays written by Césaire to
decry the injustices of colonialist oppression, and followed La Tragedie du roi Christophe (1963),
about Haiti, and Un Saison au Congo (1965),
about the struggle for independence in the Congo. In contrast to its issue specific
predecessors, Une Tempête explored
the injustices of colonialist oppression in a more general sense, while at the
same time militantly expressing both outrage and frustration over the exploitation
of people and lands for the purposes of European invaders. Shakespeare’s
indigenous characters, Caliban and Ariel, are strengthened and become eloquent
voices for the oppressed, although in starkly contrasting ways. Ariel is
portrayed as an ethereal and optimistic mulatto, striving to create peace among
the members of the colony, through enlightened non-violence:
Ariel: …I’ve often had this
inspiring dream that one day Prospero, you, me we would all three set out, like
brothers, to build a wonderful world, each one contributing his own special
thing: patience, vitality, love, willpower too, and rigor, not to mention the
dreams without which mankind would perish. (27)
Prospero doesn’t really take Ariel very seriously.
Prospero: Oh, so you’re upset, are
you! It’s always like that with you intellectuals! Who cares! (16)
Instead, Prospero skillfully manipulates his sorcerer Ariel
to get the magic he needs from him with the elusive promise of freedom. But the
master does worry about his other slave, Caliban.
Prospero [to Ariel, who has been
wistfully considering trees]: Stuff it! I don’t like talking trees! As for your
freedom, you’ll have it when I’m good and ready. In the meantime, see to the
ship. I’m going to have a few words with Master Caliban. I’ve been keeping my
eye on him, and he’s getting a little too emancipated. (16)
In contrast to Ariel, Caliban is a dark, brooding, militant
rebel, who responds in opposition to comrade’s plea, “Better death than
humiliation and injustice (28),” and greets his master Prospero (whose anagram
is oppresor) impudently, with the Swahili word for freedom:
Caliban: Uhuru!
Prospero: What did you say?
Prospero: I said, Uhuru!
Prospero: Mumbling your native language again! I’ve already told
you, I don’t like
it. You could be polite, at least; a simple
“hello”
wouldn’t kill you.
Caliban: Oh, I forgot….But make that as froggy, waspish, pustular
and a dung-filled
“hello” as possible. May today hasten by
a
decade the day when all the birds of the sky and beasts of
the earth will feast
upon your corpse! (17)
Caliban brims with rage at his oppressors, angry at his loss
of freedom, the imposition of a non-native tongue, “You didn’t teach me a
thing! Except to jabber in your own language so I could understand your orders
(17);” the disrespect for the environment, “you think the earth itself is
dead…you walk on it, pollute it, you can tread upon it with the steps of a
conqueror. I respect the earth (18); and the exploitation of his knowledge, “I
taught you the trees, fruits, birds, the seasons, and now you don’t give a
damn…Caliban the animal, Caliban the slave! I know that story! Once you’ve
squeezed the juice from the orange, you toss the rind away (19)!” Caliban even
rejects the name Prospero has given him, in terms that echo with the American
Civil Rights movement happening at the time Césaire wrote the play, and one of
its heroes, Malcom X.
Caliban: Well, because Caliban isn’t my name. It’s as simple as
that.
Prospero: Oh, I suppose it’s mine!
Caliban: It’s the name given to me by your hatred, and every time
it’s spoken it’s
an insult.
Prospero: My, aren’t we getting sensitive! All right, suggest
something
else…
Caliban: Call me X. That would be best. Like a man without a name. Or, to be
more precise, a man whose name has been stolen. (20)
more precise, a man whose name has been stolen. (20)
In stark contrast to the Shakespearean Caliban, contrite and
reformed by his fumbling, drunken attempt to rebel with the help of fellow sots
and exploitive fools Trinculo and Stephano:
Caliban: Ay, that I will; and I’ll be wise thereafter,
And
seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass
Was
I, to take this drunkard for a god,
And
worship this dull fool. (Kermode, 131)
Césaire’s Caliban rails at his master in a soliloquy that
could be a resistance manifesto:
For years I bowed my head
For years I took it, all of it –
Your insults, your ingratitude…
And worst of all your
condescension.
But now, it’s over!
Over, do you hear!
Of course, at the moment
You’re still stronger than I am.
But I don’t give a damn for your
power
Or for your dogs or your police or
your inventions!
And do you know why?
It’s because I know I’ll get you.
I’ll impale you! And on a stake
that you’ve
Sharpened yourself!
You’ll have impaled yourself!
Prospero, you’re a great magician:
You’re an old hand at deception.
And you lied to me so much,
About the world, about myself,
That you ended up imposing on me
An image of myself:
Underdeveloped, in your words,
undercompetent
That’s how you made me see myself!
And I hate that image…and it’s
false!
But I now know you, you old
cancer,
And I also know myself!
And I know that one day
My bare fist, just that, will be
enough to crush your world!
The old world is crumbling down!
Isn’t it true? Just look!
It even bores you to death.
And by the way…you have a chance
to get it over with:
You can pick up and leave.
You can go back to Europe.
But the hell you will!
I’m sure you won’t leave.
You make me laugh with your
“mission”!
Your “vocation”!
Your vocation is to hassle me.
And that’s why you’ll stay,
Just like those guys who founded
the colonies
And now can’t live anywhere else.
You’re just an old addict, that’s
what you are!
Shakespeare’s Caliban is chased away in disgrace, “Prospero:
Go to; away (Kermode, 131)!” But Césaire’s Caliban gets the last laugh on an
aging and inadequate Prospero, who has threatened earlier that, “you have
always answered me with wrath and venom, like the opossum who pulls itself up
by its own tail/the better to bite the hand that tears it from the darkness” and
now finds himself, years later, surrounded by them, “Odd, but for some time now
we seem to be overrun with opossums. They’re everywhere (65)!” Prospero totters
uncertainly as the final curtain closes, “Well, Caliban, old fellow, it’s just
the two of us now, here on this island…only you and me. You and me.
You-me…me-you! What in the hell is he up to? (shouting) Caliban (66)!” while Caliban shouts triumphantly,
“FREEDOM HI-DAY! FREEDOM HI-DAY (66)!” as the curtain closes.
Césaire’s motivation in choosing a Shakespearean play to
essentially parody is a source of historical controversy. The timing of its
release and the strongly political language caused the play to be viewed by
civil rights activists in the United States as a racial allegory. Others call
it simply a modern version of The Tempest
with mere racial overtones. James Arnold states that the producer of the two
earlier plays in the trilogy wanted a fairly straight adaptation of the play,
but Césaire took it in a more complex direction:
Césaire has adopted
a strategy of systematic selectivity and reordering of priorities;
considerations of a more technical nature are subordinated to a basic shift in vision. In
stating that his Tempest is an adaptation for a black theater Césaire has suggested his
governing principle: the master/slave relationship, incidental and justified in Shakespeare,
is made preeminent by the Martinican. Césaire’s island is not the theatrum mundi; it is a
model of a Caribbean society in which human relations are determined by a dialectic of
opposites grounded in "master/slave" and extending to "sadism/masochism." (237)
considerations of a more technical nature are subordinated to a basic shift in vision. In
stating that his Tempest is an adaptation for a black theater Césaire has suggested his
governing principle: the master/slave relationship, incidental and justified in Shakespeare,
is made preeminent by the Martinican. Césaire’s island is not the theatrum mundi; it is a
model of a Caribbean society in which human relations are determined by a dialectic of
opposites grounded in "master/slave" and extending to "sadism/masochism." (237)
This plays out very
definitively in Une Tempête, and Césaire certainly makes his point.
Works Cited
Césaire, Aime. A
Tempest. Trans. Richard Miller. New York, NY: TCG Translations, 2002.
Print.
Shakespeare, William. The
Tempest. Ed. Frank Kermode. London, England: Metheun & Company Ltd.
1972. Print.
Arnold, James A.
“Césaire and Shakespeare: Two Tempests”. Comparative Literature,
Vol. 30, No. 3 (Summer, 1978), pp. 236-248. Web. 22 Feb. 2013
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