Aimé Césaire and The Divine Comedy: Self-enlightenment and the dialectic of relation in And the Dogs Were Silent

This article offers a close reading of the lyrical drama And the Dogs Were Silent, and Aimé Césaire’s unique deployment of a Dantean imaginary. It argues, specifically, that Dante’s “symbolic process” in the Commedia provides a metaphorical structure for the hero’s initiation in this work and for the poet’s articulation of a philosophy of postcolonial relationality. Showing how Dante’s katabasis is used to analogize the creative power of Césaire’s hellish abyss, it offers Édouard Glissant’s theory of Relation as a guiding framework to emphasize fluid connectivity in Césaire’s poetic project.