Martinique : snake charmer /

In Martinique: Charmeuse des serpents (1948), Breton, the master of French surrealism, celebrates the Caribbean island of Martinique. Against the backdrop of cowardice (Vichy France), Martinique stands as a landscape enlightened by a vigorous negritude poetic celebration with Aime Cesaire at the helm of the journal Tropique, which opened a window to human creativity away from Europe's stale conformism. The book demystifies the sensuous exotic label by discovering in this island a heightened sense for life, dignity, and human solidarity. In his translation of this poetic and surrealist text, Seaman successfully renders Breton's linguistically flowery style, preserving--in this dialogue between Breton and surrealist artist Andre Masson--the spontaneity and the associative power that surrealism requires. As a result, the Anglophone reader will have a new vista into the nature of the link between surrealism and negritude. Rosemont's introduction prepares the reader to explore the text head-on, and abundant notes provide extra layers of compensation. This important primary resource joins James Arnold's Modernism and Negritude (1981) and Lourdes Teodoro's Negritude et modernisme (1997). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. K. M. Kapanga University of Richmond