Abstract
Review of Christian Hogsbjerg, ed., C.L.R. James, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History Until recently, one little-known fact about C.L.R. James's famous Haitian revolution-based The Black Jacobins project was that it both began and ended life as a play, bookending the first and last editions of his classic history. It would be hard to overstate the importance of Christian Hogsbjerg's new critical edition of C.L.R. James's Toussaint Louverture because it makes widely available in published form for the first time the script of the elusive first play. For want of this playtext util 2013, James's completely different 1967 second play The Black Jacobins had been read as the 1936 play, and even billed as such when published. Inspired by the critical edition of Toussaint Louverture, I comment on a set of fascinating variants made in James's own distinctive hand to one script of the first play.
Highlights
James’s famous Haitian revolution-based The Black Jacobins project was that it both began and ended life as a play, bookending the first and last editions of his classic history: the 1936 performance of the first play Toussaint Louverture antedates the initial 1938 publication of The Black Jacobins history by two years, while the second 1967 play The Black Jacobins comes more than four years after the revisions of the history for its second edition in 1963
For want of this playtext until 2013, James’s quite different 1967 second play The Black Jacobins had been read as the 1936 play, and even billed as such when published in The C.L.R
Unfurled for the reader are the circumstances of its two 1936 performances, James’s conception of Toussaint Louverture, his formative journey “From imperial Britishness to militant Pan-Africanism,” the “plot and politics” of the playscript, clashes of fiction and reality with respect to radical and black drama, counter-cultures of modernity, and the backdrop of Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia
Summary
Rachel (2016) "Dramatic Beginnings of The Black Jacobins," Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal: Vol 13 : Iss. 1 , Article 9. Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, Vol 13, Iss. 1 [2016], Art. 9 already inscribed in the 1930s play as a “tragic hero of the colonial enlightenment” (13) This edition must be highly commended for providing all readers with a wealth of essentials in the appendices, including a facsimile of the original 1936 programme, copies of contemporary reviews of the 1936 performances, as well as of the 1931 article “On the Intelligence of the Negro” in which James first invoked the greatness of Toussaint Louverture. In The Black Jacobins 1967 play, this sentencing to death/execution of Moïse scene forms the centrepiece of the entire play Handwritten annotations in this script of the Toussaint Louverture play are, clearly working towards this dénouement, even if the narrative/story thread is left hanging unresolved precisely at that point where family-type bonds could not be any tighter. What is certain with the publication of Toussaint Louverture more than seventy-five years after it was first performed is that Høgsbjerg has generously opened the way for others to compare the play versions of not just Toussaint Louverture and The Black Jacobins, and those of other classic plays about the Haitian revolution
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