Lucie Thésée

Lucie Thésée was a surrealist poet from the Antilles, who settled in Martinique and participated in the group around the Martinican cultural review Tropiques.

Life

Little is known of Thésée's life.[1] She appears to have originally come from the Antilles,[2] and worked in Martinique as a schoolteacher.[1] Her first poem for Tropiques, 'Beautiful As...', took Lautréamont's famous line "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella" as its point of departure: "beautiful as a high frothing wave spurting into a crystal globe".[3]

After the Vichy official Lieutenant Bayle refused to provide paper to Tropiques, accusing the review of being "revolutionary, racial and sectarian", Thésée was amongst the six signatories to the magazine's reply.[4]

Legacy

Léon Damas praised the "abundance and excellence of images" in Thésée's poetry in his 1947 Poètes d'expression française.[1] Her poems have been repeatedly anthologised, and translated into English by Myrna Bell Rochester and Robert Archambeau. Christiane Taubira's 2018 book on literature, Baroque sarabande, recommended her work,[5] and the reference to 'sarabande' in the title of Taubira's book may refer to the subject of a poem by Thésée.[6]

Works
  • 'Beau comme...' [Beautiful As], Tropiques 5 (April 1942), pp.31-32. Translated by Robert Archambeau as Poem.
  • 'Où va tomber la terre?' [Where Will the Earth Fall?], Tropiques 6-7 (February 1943), pp.34-36
  • 'Poème' [Poem], Tropiques 8-9 (October 1943), pp.45-46.
  • 'Preference' [Preference], Tropiques 10 (February 1944), pp. 37–38.[7]
  • 'Poème' [Poem], Tropiques 12 (January 1945), pp. 209-10
  • ' Profonde allégresse' [Deep Joy], Tropiques 12 (January 1045), pp.211-213

References
  1. Penelope Rosemont, ed. (1998). Surrealist Women. London: The Athlone Press. pp. 146–149. ISBN 9780567171283.
  2. Liliane Fardin, ed. (2008). "Lucie Thésée". 12 poètes antillais contemporains. Perséides. pp. 35–52.
  3. Michael Richardson (February 2019). "Tropiques". In Michael Richardson; Dawn Ades; Krzysztof Fijałkowski; Steven Harris; Georges Sebbag (eds.). The International Encyclopedia of Surrealism. pp. 485–6. ISBN 9781474226868.
  4. T. Dencan Sharpley-Whiting (2003). "Tropiques: revue culturelle: The Remedy for the Martinican Cultural Void". In Robert Bernasconi; Sybol Cook (eds.). Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy. Indiana University Press. p. 118. ISBN 0253215900.
  5. Claire Devarrieux (15 June 2018). "Pourquoi ça marche: La langue bien vendue de Christiane Taubira". Libération.
  6. Anny-Dominique Curtius (2020). Suzanne Césaire: Archéologie littéraire et artistique d'une mémoire empêchée. Karthala Editions. p. 68. ISBN 9782811127947.
  7. Translated by Myrna Bell Rochester in Franklin Rosemont; Robin D.G. Kelley, eds. (2009). Black, Brown, & Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora. University of Texas Press. pp. 86–87. ISBN 9780292719972.
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