Women Authors From France

"surrealists had questioned technology, "progress," and the dominant Euro-American attitude toward nature long before 1940. However, it was this young Black woman, Suzanne Césaire, and her surrealist friends on a tiny island in the Caribbean during a time of imperialist world war who, more than anyone else, made these issues paramount concerns of surrealists everywhere. In Tropiques the need for radical change in the relations between humankind and nature was presented with special urgency, as an inseparable component of poetic activity and revolutionary struggle. Interestingly, the first appearance of the word ecology in a surrealist publication turns up in this journal."

"The theorist should not let us forget the poet."

"Such is surrealist activity, a total activity: the only one capable of liberating humankind by revealing the unconscious, an activity that will help free the peoples of the world as it illuminates the blind myths that have led them up till now...far from contradicting, diluting, or diverting our revolutionary attitude toward life, surrealism strengthens it. It nourishes an impatient strength within us, endlessly reinforcing the massive army of refusals. And I am also thinking of tomorrow. Millions of black hands will hoist their terror across the furious skies of world war. Freed from a long benumbing slumber, the most disinherited of all peoples will rise up from plains of ashes. Our surrealism will supply this rising people with a punch from its very depths. Our surrealism will enable us to finally transcend the sordid antinomies of the present: whites/Blacks, Europeans/Africans, civilized/savages-at last rediscovering the magic power of the mahoulis, drawn directly from living sources. Colonial idiocy will be purified in the welder's blue flame. We shall recover our value as metal, our cutting edge of steel, our unprecedented communions... Surrealism, tightrope of our hope."

"No important figure in the history of surrealism has been so overshadowed by a spouse as Suzanne Césaire, wife of poet/playwright Aimé Césaire. In view of her undeniably crucial role in the development of surrealism as well as of Négritude, it is astonishing how rarely she is mentioned in the voluminous critical literature on these movements."

"No longer is it a matter of the narrow roads where traditional beauty is offered in its clarity and obviousness to the admiration of the crowds. The crowds were taught the victory of intelligence over the world and the submission of the forces of nature to man. Now it is a question of seizing and admiring a new art which leaves humankind in its true condition, fragile and dependent, and which nevertheless, in the very spectacle of things ignored or silenced, opens unsuspected possibilities to the artist. And this is the domain of the strange, the Marvelous, and the fantastic, a domain scorned by people of certain inclinations. Here is the freed image, dazzling and beautiful, with a beauty that could not be more unexpected and overwhelming. Here are the poet, the painter, and the artist, presiding over the metamorphoses and the inversions of the world under the sign of hallucination and madness....Here at last the world of nature and things makes direct contact with the human being who is again in the fullest sense spontaneous and natural. Here at last is the true communion and the true knowledge, chance mastered and recognized, the mystery now a friend and helpful."

"Surrealism lives! And it is young, ardent, and revolutionary. In 1943 surrealism surely remains, as always, an activity whose aim is to explore and express systematically--and thus, neutralize--the forbidden zones of the human mind, an activity which desperately tries to give humankind the means of reducing the old antinomies, those "true alembics of suffering," and the only force enabling us to recover "this unique, original faculty, traces of which are retained by the primitive and the child, and which lifts the curse of the insurmountable barrier between inner and outer worlds." But surrealism, further proving its vitality, has evolved-or, rather, blossomed. When Breton created surrealism, the most urgent task was to free the mind from the shackles of absurd logic and of so-called reason. But in 1943, when freedom herself is threatened throughout the world, surrealism, which has never for one instant ceased to remain in the service of the largest and most thoroughgoing human emancipation, can now be summed up completely in one single, magic word: freedom."

"Our problem now is to determine whether the Ethiopian attitude that we discovered was the very essence of our whole way of living can be the point of departure for a viable cultural style, however grandiose this may seem. It is exalting to imagine on these tropical islands, restored finally to their inner truth, a lasting and fertile harmony between humankind and the earth--under the sign of the plant. We are at last called on to know who we are. Splendors and hopes await us. Surrealism has restored to us some of our chances. Now it is up to us to find others. In its light. Understand me well: It is not at all a question of going back, to resurrect an African past which we have learned to know and respect. It is rather a question of mobilizing all the mingled living forces on this soil where race is the result of an endless mixing, of becoming conscious of the formidable mass of diverse energies that we have heretofore locked up within ourselves. We must now put them to use in all their fullness, unswervingly, and without falsification. So much for those who think we are mere dreamers! The most troubling reality is ours. We shall act. This land of ours can only become what we want it to be."

"A great name without merit is like an epitaph on a coffin."

"It is the merit of those who praise that makes the value of the commendation."

"Would you know how to give? Put yourself in the place of him who receives."

"A woman would be in despair if nature had formed her as fashion makes her appear."

"Besides, I had found a secret pleasure, during my confinement, from the perusal of good books, to which I had given myself up with a delight I never before experienced. I consider this as an obligation I owe to fortune, or, rather, to Divine Providence, in order to prepare me, by such efficacious means, to bear up against the misfortunes and calamities that awaited me. By tracing nature in the universal book which is opened to all mankind, I was led to the knowledge of the Divine Author. Science conducts us, step by step, through the whole range of creation, until we arrive, at length, at God. Misfortune prompts us to summon our utmost strength to oppose grief and recover tranquillity, until at length we find a powerful aid in the knowledge and love of God, whilst prosperity hurries us away until we are overwhelmed by our passions. My captivity and its consequent solitude afforded me the double advantage of exciting a passion for study, and an inclination for devotion, advantages I had never experienced during the vanities and splendour of my prosperity."

"Homeliness is the best guardian of a young girl's virtue."

"To envy anybody is to confess ourselves his inferior."

"Jealousy is the homage that inferiority pays to merit."

"Benevolence rejuvenates the heart, exercise, the memory, and remembrance, life."

"Men call physicians only when they suffer; women, when they are merely afflicted with ennui."

"If you would succeed in the world, it is necessary that, when entering a salon, your vanity should bow to that of others."

"In love, great pleasures come very near great sorrows."

"One seeks new friends only when too well known by old ones."

"To love is to make a compact with sorrow."

"Men are so unjust that to be unhappy is to be wrong."

"Calumny spreads like an oil-spot: we endeavor to cleanse it, but the mark remains."

"In a tête-à-tête we are never more interrupted than when we say nothing."

"For my part, I remained a close prisoner, without a visit from a single person, none of my most intimate friends daring to come near me, through the apprehension that such a step might prove injurious to their interests. Thus it is ever in Courts. Adversity is solitary, while prosperity dwells in a crowd; the object of persecution being sure to be shunned by his nearest friends and dearest connections."

"I have seen more than one woman drown her honor in the clear water of diamonds."

"To weep is not always to suffer."

"Virtue and Love are two ogres: one must eat the other."

"In retailing slander, we name the originator, in order to enjoy a pleasure without danger."

"Very few people know what love is, and very few of those that do, tell of it."

"The energies of the soul slumber in the vague reveries of hope."

"Her husband had slipped a gold ring set with a fine ruby onto her finger, and her mother-in-law had given her a birthing bag which, in her time, she herself had tied to her thigh for the duration of her pregnancy. “It contains a parchment recounting the birth of Margaret of Antioch. It will protect you from a brutal death, as it protected me.” Swallowed by a dragon, Margaret of Antioch had escaped from the beast's belly by piercing its spine with her cross. My son, Hades had thought, will not have to resort to violence to come into the world. When the time is right, I will open myself wide and he will slide out without pain. He will be born with rosy skin and a healthy complexion. (chap. 19)"

"Unclassifiable, defying any definition, they (the beguines) rejected both marriage and the cloister. They prayed, worked, studied, moved around the city without restrictions, travelled and received friends, owned property, and could pass it on to their sisters. Independent and free. A freedom that no woman had ever enjoyed before, nor would enjoy for centuries to come. Not all of them were aware of this. But some fought to preserve that freedom. (introduction)"

"There are many ways to live one's faith outside the Church. Not all beguines are fortunate enough – or have the opportunity – to be welcomed into large institutions such as the one in Paris. Many live in large groups in small houses in the city centre and work. Others prefer to live alone. Some, the so-called wandering beguines, beg and preach in the streets. (chapter 10)"

"She had prayed and made offerings to Mary, who had given birth to Jesus; to Saint Anne, Mary's mother, who, having been barren for twenty years, had been told by an angel that she would give birth to a daughter; to Saint Cunegonda who, despite having taken a vow of chastity with her husband, Emperor Henry, prepared miraculous potions to help women conceive. (chap. 19)"

"On the one hand, then, in the reproductive functions proper—menstruation, defloration, pregnancy, and parturition—woman is biologically doomed to suffer. Nature seems to have no hesitation in administering to her strong doses of pain, and she can do nothing but submit passively to the regimen prescribed. On the other hand, as regards sexual attraction, which is necessary for the act of impregnation, and as regards the erotic pleasure experienced during the act itself, the woman may be on equal footing with the man."

"I speak French, English and an Arabic dialect. This is something that is very natural for me and that I don’t think about."

"Abroad, French often has the reputation of being a difficult, highly literary language. A rarified language that belongs to intellectuals. However, it is important to show young people that it is also a language of modernity, a language of rap and slam poetry, for thinking about the world of tomorrow and inventing. And also that French is also a useful language through which you can find work."

"It is a fascinating and very rewarding job on a human level. French is a global language, which lives and flourishes on all the continents, with accents, turns of phrase and metaphors which belong to each landscape. It is quite extraordinary to see the flexibility of this language and to understand its constant creolisation and transformation."

"My first mission will be to de-age the very notion of Francophonie, to restore its luster, its youth, its dynamism."

"You only have to travel around the world, especially in Africa for example or in the Maghreb, to see how much of an appetite there is for French."

"( Emmanuel Macron)The President of the Republic has decided to entrust, as of today, the function of Personal Representative of the Head of State for the Francophonie to Ms. Leïla Slimani. According to the mission letter she received from the President of the Republic, Ms. Slimani will represent France on the Permanent Council of the Francophonie"

"Love makes mutes of those who habitually speak most fluently."

"How many people assume boldly the mask of virtue!"

"Women should despise slander, and fear to provoke it."

"Love is a capricious creature which desires everything and can be contented with almost nothing."

"The head, however strong it may be, can accomplish nothing against the heart."

"Love is — I know not what; which comes — I know not whence; which is formed — I know not how; which enchants — I know not by what; and which ends — I know not when or why."

"This controversial scholar, the first translator of Darwin and by extension the first promoter of “social Darwinism” in France, stated in her preface to the Origine des espèces that the most courageous “races” had overcome the others since “man, having become the stronger, could impose himself on the mate that pleased him most; and hence woman, who had nothing to do but please and submit, became more and more beautiful, in accordance with man’s ideal, man who himself became even stronger, having only to fight, command, and protect.” Thus we see the “reckless and blind” error of Christianity and democracy which scorned natural selection: “while all care, all devotions of love and pity are considered to be owed to the deposed and degenerate representatives of the species, there is nothing to encourage the development of the emerging force or to propagate merit, talent and virtue.”"

"There is a degree of coherence when, in the context of the Indo-European question, such robust biological racism is associated with a thesis that is both Euro-centrist and migrationist; this is in contrast to Broca’s “entrenched” anti-linguistic autochtonism. In the opinion of Clémence Royer, “a race that is powerful enough to overrun all of Europe and all of western Asia cannot have had its origins in a Pamirian valley; mountain peoples are peoples who have retreated and defend themselves; they are never conquering peoples.” Yet “the blond European race, as a whole, appears to have always been a race of travelers, a race that is essentially war-like and conquering.” “In the end, these high plateaus of Asia can be discounted; once we wanted to believe that these plateaus were the birthplace of everything but all they have ever given rise to are avalanches.”"