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Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.

Aime Cesaire

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Aime Cesaire
Age: 95 †
Born: 1913
Born: January 1
Died: 2008
Died: April 17
Author
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Aime Cesaire
Aimé Fernand David Césaire
Aime Fernand Cesaire
Aimé Cesaire
Aime Fernand David Cesaire
Life
Grief
Crossing
Sea
Crossings
Bears
Spectacle
Arms
Spectators
Proscenium
Attitude
Beware
Wails
Body
Assuming
Griefs
Soul
Bear
Sterile
Men
Dancing
Spectator

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In the whole world no poor devil is lynched, no wretch is tortured, in whom I too am not degraded and murdered.
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Communism has served us ill in having us swap a living brotherhood for what looks to have the features of the coldest of all chill abstractions.
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Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.
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A man screaming is not a dancing bear. Life is not a spectacle.
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Out of the sky, the birds, the parrots, the bells, silk, cloth, and drums, out of Sundays dancing, children's words and love words, out of love for the little fists of children, I will build a world, my world with round shoulders.
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It is no use painting the foot of the tree white, the strength of the bark cries out from beneath the paint.
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There's room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory.
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I have a different idea of a universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all.
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The weakness of most men they do not know how to become a stone or tree.
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And let me die suddenly, to be born again in the revelation of beauty....And the revelation of beauty is the wisdom of the ancestors.
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Africa, help me to go home, carry me like an aged child in your arms. Undress me and wash me. Strip me of all of these garments, strip me as a man strips off dreams when the dawn comes. . . .
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Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze.
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I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out.
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Culture is everything. Culture is the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties - it is not only the fact of writing books or building houses.
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