The Significance of Space in Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest

In 1969, Aimé Césaire, the Caribbean poet, dramatist, and essayist, shared with the world his rewriting of one of Shakespeare’s comedies, The Tempest. From a postcolonial perspective, the rewriting serves as a tool for challenging colonial narratives and reclaiming marginalized voices, focusing on themes of identity, power, resistance, and representation. The playwright’s chosen title for his play is A Tempest. Comparing it to the original, the only change that can be seen is the substitution of the article ‘The’ with ‘A’, and this signifies that the former represents the original as the mainstream, the dominant, and the grand narrative, while the latter is just ‘A’, a version, a copy, a periphery, and for little voices and a little narrative.

Aimé Césaire is the one who coined the term “Negritude” and, along with other prominent French-speaking African and Caribbean writers, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas, founded the Negritude movement. The Harlem Renaissance values influenced and shaped the movement. While both movements shared a common goal of uplifting black people and affirming their cultural, intellectual, and artistic contributions to the world, Negritude tends to dive into politics, confronting colonialism and its impact on Africans and African societies. All these activities find a way to be present in all of Césaire’s writings.

One of the crucial elements of any writing, especially rewritings, is space. For theatre, the notion of space is more profoundly embedded in the dramatic text. In Michael Issacharoff’s words, “space in drama is not one-dimensional and it is best classified in accordance with its mode of transmission by the encoder and perception by the decoder.” In essence, the notion of space in drama is a layered concept that requires an understanding of both its tangible and intangible elements.

Unlike Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where Caliban’s island is situated in the Mediterranean Sea, Aimé Césaire, in his rewriting of the play, A Tempest, opts to change the place to the Caribbean Sea, as indicated in Act III, scene 2, when Stephano sees Caliban for the first time as “An authentic Nindian from the Caribbean!” Césaire, as is the case with any good playwright, never chooses the space or any other theatrical element at random, and he is far from foolish in doing so. Moving from a space that is ruled by Europeans and surrounded by European countries and the lands they have colonized to a space amidst only colonized countries alerts the mind of the reader. This, along with the fact that Aimé Cesaire himself is from that geographical space—he was born in Basse-Pointe, a small town on Martinique’s north coast—reflects the playwright’s intention to emphasize the significance of space in his play.

The Caribbean island, Caliban’s island, is employed to dismantle the colonial powers. This space serves as a metaphor for resistance, reflecting colonial territory and the struggle for decolonization. This island functions as a place for indigenous characters to reconnect with their cultural heritage, which was lost under colonial rule. With this deep connection with the land, resistance is inevitable. Within this familiar space and the intrusion of the stranger, Caliban confronts his identity and the roles assigned by his ruler, reclaiming his own culture and language. As the native utters, “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.” Referring to the African American civil rights activist Malcolm X, whose speeches are described as powerful, passionate, and uncompromising. Thus, by deconstructing the idyllic island image and using the setting as a place of resistance and cultural memory, Césaire challenges the power structures of colonialism in A Tempest.

The entire play takes place solely on an island, a confined space that represents the colonized world. The island’s isolation mirrors the segregation and alienation experienced by colonized people, while the boundaries reflect the limits imposed on them by colonial powers. Surrounded by water, the oppressed characters are left without hope of escaping their reality, resulting in the dilemma of either accepting the invader and living in full submission or resisting and never seeing a day of peace. The characters’ interactions within this space are determined and charged with the tension of power dynamics. Césaire’s island, per se, is a miniaturization of the world and how it works. In other words, Césaire squeezed the world onto one island to facilitate, highlighting the issues of control, resistance, and liberation.

Space extends beyond the physical, encompassing other dimensions. The interaction of cultures is one of space’s most multifaceted aspects. The interaction between Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban illustrates the clash and blending of cultures, resulting in a heterogenetic milieu, as Bhabha calls it ‘hybridity’. Ariel, who seeks freedom through submission, subservience, and silently following orders, and Caliban, who aggressively resists dominance and fights for his freedom, represent two different responses to colonization. Césaire’s creation of this new hybrid space, which is not that clearly present in the Shakespearean version, echoes the playwright’s emphasis on the interstitial space as an existing space where incommensurable reactions, readings, and interpretations are allowed.

Although Shakespeare gives Caliban a space to talk and express himself, Césaire’s setting bestows the native with space that guarantees his agency, enabling him to subvert and enunciate his enmity to Prospero. Caliban’s familiarity and deep-rootedness with the place are translated into an aggressive and challenging tone when he addresses the intruder. Perhaps it is best shown in this line: “With that big hooked nose, you look just like some old vulture. (Laughing) An old vulture with a scrawny neck!” Here, the native’s transition from a simple quest for freedom to launching a counterattack with despise demonstrates his equality, if not superiority. As for Prospero, he finds himself in the new space much less powerful than in the original work, which has a huge impact on the power dynamics in the play, especially between him and Caliban. In his words, “I’m going to have a few words with Master Caliban.” This sarcastic expression from the intruder’s angle indicates that the native is too liberated to the extent that he thinks of himself as a master. Thus, Césaire’s new space blurs the boundaries between the colonized and colonizers, allowing a new space of agency and reaction.

The Shakespearean ending where Prospero leaves the island for good and goes back to Milan mirrors the history of the civilizing mission, pointing to the end of colonialism through the physical departure of the colonizer from the colonized land. Here, Césaire brilliantly, in his play, crafts a fresh ending that fits the contemporary situation of the colonizer/colonized, in which Prospero stays on the island: “Well, Caliban, old fellow, it’s just us two now, here on the island.” This ending underlines the fact that military withdrawal does not signal the end of colonialism. In other words, the aftermath of Western colonialism leads to a situation where the colonized country is sovereign but still economically and culturally dependent on the colonizer. In essence, looking through the lens of postcolonialism provided by Aimé Césaire, one comes to the conclusion that even though the colonizer hands the physical space to its owner, he still occupies or is at least present in the psychological, social, and cultural spaces.

 A Tempest is considered a rewriting play par excellence, for it is not only a retelling of a classic work but also an original creation that stands on its own merits, providing insightful critiques relevant to its time. Césaire’s adaptation is embedded in an incisive critique of colonialism and its exploration of themes such as power, freedom, and identity. Perhaps one of the pivotal elements that enables the playwright to create such an atmosphere is space. The concept of space is intricately woven into the play, reflecting its crucial role in translating Césaire’s view, criticism, and brilliance, as it encompasses the physical, psychological, and political sides, employing them all in crafting a coherent anti-colonial discourse in order to shed light on the uneven power between the colonizer and the colonized based on space occupied by the two extremities and their interaction within the shared space. Essentially, the concept of space in drama is multifaceted and necessitates comprehension of both its evident and hidden dimensions.

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