From Pigments
--Léon Gontran Damas, 1937
(Along with Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sedar Senghor, Léon Gontran Damas founded the Négritude movement - its first monument being the magazine L'Etudiant Noir, published in Paris beginning in 1928. In an editorial Damas claim that Black students from the French colonies (he was born in French Guyana in 1912) suffered common feelings of alienation, exile, and nostalgia for Africa. In 1937 Damas published Pigments, often said to be the first volume of Négritude poetry [it preceded Césaire's Notebook by two years], which was almost immediately translated into a variety of African languages and became very popular on that continent. As an ethnologist, he collected folktales in his native country; he also edited the first anthology of poetry by French African writers. By 1948, he was a deputy from Guyana to the French National Assembly and worked as a technical advisor to French Oversees Radio. He visited countries in Africa frequently, on diplomatic and educational missions. After a stint with UNESCO - and the publication of major works of poetry such as Black Label, 1956 - Damas began a new career as an academician, culminating in being appointed Distinguished Professor in African Literature at Washington D.C.'s Howard University, a post he held until he died in 1978.)
Give my black dolls back to me
So that I can play with them
The naïve games of my instinct
In the darkness of its laws
Once I have recovered
My courage
And my audacity
And become myself once more
Myself again
Out of what I was in the past
In the past
Without complexity
In the past
When the hour of uprooting came
you will see them
really stop at nothing
no longer content to laugh with restless forefinger
when they see a Negro going by
but coldly beating up
coldly knowing down
coldly laying out
coldly
beating up
knocking down
laying out
the blacks and cutting off their genitals
to make candles for their churches
Sure enough I'll get
fed up
and not even wait
for things
to reach
the state
of a ripe camembert
Then
I'll put my foot in it
or else simply
my hand around the neck
of everything that shits me up in capital letters
colonization
civilization
assimilation
and all the rest.
. . . . . .
I feel ridiculous
among them an accomplice
among them a pimp
among them a murderer
my hands frightfully red
with the blood of their ci-vi-li-za-tion
And in vain I swallow seven mouthfuls of water
three or four times in every twenty-four hours
my childhood returns to me
in a hiccup shaking
my instinct
like a cop shaking a hooligan
Disaster
tell me about disaster
tell me about it
. . . . . .
My mother wanting a son very do
very re
very mi
very fa
very so
very la
very ti
very do
re-mi-fa
so-la-ti
do
I understand that once again
you missed your vi-o-lin lesson
a banjo
you said
a banjo
No sir
you must know that we do not allow in this house
neither ban
nor jo
nor gui
nor tar
mulattos don't do that
leave that for black people
[Note: there is significant disagreement about how to translate the Antillean French "nègre" into English. Here it is translated as 'black people' (in "Hoquet") and as "Negro" (in "S.O.S."). . . whereas the translators of Césaire chose to render the word as 'nigger.' As far as I can tell, the word as used in the Caribbean does not necessarily carry pejorative meanings in the sense of racial insult, although it often represents class--e.g. a peasant, an uneducated person. Thus the color connotations--black as in NOT mulatto, not part of the Europeanized elite--are also more class-based than 'racial.' And in some instances, the word simply means 'person' (of any color). Another note about the "Hoquet" excerpt: the banjo is an African-origined instrument, and the guitar is associated with folk performance of various sorts.]