(Paris, 1934) three young ex-patriates, one from Guyana, one from Martinique, and one from Senegal meet while students and form the L'etudiant noir (The Black Student) magazine publication, it was at this moment that the Negritude movement first started. Léon-Gontran Damas, Aimé Césaire, and Léopold Sédar Senghor were the three young poets, they met at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris and began countering racist attitudes in the socio-political world of colonialism with a new form humanism fit for the Negro-European world. However Negritude will not be limited to only Europe, the three poets will be reading on campus at the University of Texas at Austin for A Night of Negritude to further spread the movement. It will be yours truly introducing them.
(A little background) the three fathers of Negritude were greatly influenced by a magazine that came before The Black Student which had only published a couple of issues but was ran by West Indian students of the Lycee from Martinique just like Césaire, and it would also be Césaire who brought together Senghor and Damas to further evolve their form of humanism. L'etudiant noir acted as a matrix connecting both the West Indian and African new-negro movements. The point was to come before the world and say “Here we are, here is what represents the African world, the oppression of colonialism has not stopped the new-negro.” The poets were influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and even though Césaire's was known to criticize the literature being generated in America as juvenile spontaneity, his surrealist poetry in many ways matches trends in the new-negro movement, along with Damas's both holding upon a pedestal the ideas of jazz and the rhythm of the negro-world, something Senghor also beautifully executed. So even though Césaire is not from Africa he had to be included in this poetry reading because in a lot of ways he was a foundation upon which Negritude was placed. I go into this “meeting of the minds” in detail because it symbolizes Negritude and the universality of poetry. Senghor wrote that Negritude is the sum cultural values of the African world, so the three fathers included all African ancestry so that Negritude would mark the birth of global-African intellectualism in the twentieth century.
Léon-Gontran Damas will be reading first, at midnight. The time of this event symbolizes the bringing in of a new day, as our poets wished to do with the movement as well as the color of many lines of verse, black being a sort of “fuel for the fire” in their politically charged work. The poems selected are from Pigments, which was the first book of poetry to be published by one of the three. Damas must go first! He will be reading “They Came That Night,” “Obsession,” “Enough,” “There Are Some Nights,” “Position,” “The Wind,” and “In Indian File.” “They Came That Night,” is pretty well known and can be summarized as the symbolic fury and rhythm of Negritude, “tom tom roll from rhythm to rhythm of eyes, the frenzy of hands, the frenzy of statues’ feet.” The entire poem is provided on the blog. “Obsession,” which begins with “A taste of blood comes to me, a taste of blood rises in me,” focuses on the blood motif that will be returned upon in other poems but that represents the interconnection of Negritude, really doing well to mark the idea of humanism as a form of pride in ancestry and lineage. “Enough,” starts out, “Enough of blues, of piano hammering, of muted trumpet, of madness stamping its feet, to the satisfaction of rhythm” returns to the idea of rhythm and seems to really have drawn influence from the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The connection between Negritude and the new-negro movement occurring in America is the grounds for including this poem because it is in the connection of both that allows Negritude to reach beyond the intellectual confines of the European continent. “There Are Some Nights,” seems to bring together every motif already explained above, it starts “There are some nameless nights, there are some moonless nights, when up to, the point of clammy, suffocation, the acrid odor of blood, overcomes me, jetting, from every muted trumpet,” as if the song of Negritude is one of bloodshed due to colonialism and the white hierarchy which mutes the negro, as if each individual truly has the ability to play their own song; a song of liberation and rebirth. “Position,” reads “The days themselves, have taken the shape, of African masks, indifferent, to any profanation, of quicklime, that a piano, flatters, repeating the old tune, of sighing, moonlight, any size, in the shrubbery, gondolas, et cetera.” Again Damas writes of jazz and the African masks that modernist artists were so fond of (a Picasso painting is on the blog), moonlight being a motif that will work well at the poetry reading. “The Wind,” was picked because there is a refrain of “the night,” and in many ways, as I have said before, our poets like the image because it not only expresses Negritude in a poetic way as the midnight hour brings in a new day, but adds a sinisterness to the problems that have plagued intellectuals coming out of Africa. The poem contains this within it, “I awoke, enamored, without grasping anything, of all that the wind told, on the ocean, black night.” Negritude in many ways was an awakening. I love “In Indian File,” and Damas will be finishing with it. The poem starts out, “And the hooves, of the beasts of burden, that hammer out in Europe, the still uncertain dawn, remind me, of the strange self-denial, of full, early morning trays, that give rhythm in the Antilles, to the hips of the, women bearers, in Indian file.” It is hard to really enjoy poetry if it is quoted amidst prose, but I really want to introduce these poems because they are so beautiful, and so powerful. Damas seems to be saying that the beasts of burden, colonialism, hammers out the violence and oppression of early twentieth century Europe, but the rhythm, the life-force of Africa may never waver. The reference to Indian-ness probably has something to do with his friendship with Césaire who was West Indian. Damas will return for the round-robin discussion at the end of the night and even though it seems like he is reading a lot of poems compared to the other two, each one is quite short, very Langston Hughes-ish, very amazing.
Aimé Césaire will be reading second because he is literally the middle foundation between the other two, considering it was him who introduced Senghor and Damas. Césaire will read part of a poem from Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, and his other poems will include, “The Woman and the Flame,” “Scalp,” “Totem,” “Ex-Voto For A Shipwreck,” “Ode To Guinea,” and “Antipodal Dwelling.” The excerpt includes, among others “The old negritude progressively cadavers itself... the slave ships crack everywhere,” and basically symbolizes the revolution aspect of Negritude, all three poets were very keen on the idea that Negritude was not only a literary type of movement but also a socio-political one which would aim to “crack the slave ships,” bring down the oppression that was written so concretely in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. “The Woman and the Flame,” is on the website, and is remarkable. “The current weather matters little to me, my life is always ahead of a hurricane,” the hurricane seeming to represent the more insane aspect of Césaire who was literally almost driven insane by the condition of social systems for West Indians in Europe. He was always running from that type of insanity. “Scalp,” is amazing, it finishes “But one but I, enclosed in the tuft, that benumbs me, and by the grace of dogs, beneath the innocent and liana-unpleating wind, a hero of the hunt helmeted with a golden bird.” Césaire was heavily influenced by Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, and the poem perfectly represents the three father's love for European intellectualism and the modern philosophers, but did so in a way to glorify the Negritude movement. In a way I believe Césaire saw himself as that Nietzsche hero, the “superman,” sacrificing himself for the good of civilization. “Totem,” is utterly cryptic and utterly wonderful. There is a line, “like the flight of gazelles of fine salt of snow over the wild heads of the women and of the abyss,” that seems to point to a African ancestry that goes beyond just the continent of Africa. As a West Indian Césaire seemed obsessed with reuniting with the homeland of Negritude. “Ex-Voto For A Shipwreck,” has within it, “roll soft no faster than a log for distant ears, without utterance without purpose without star, the pure carbon duration of our endless major pangs, roll roll deep roll soft tom-toms speechless deliriums.” Here we see the rhythm of the tom tom repeating, creating a refrain for the entire event, bringing back to mind the starting poem of Damas's section. Both poems are quite interesting, “Ex-Voto,” seems again, to be making an argument for the revolutionary side of Negritude. “Ode to Guinea,” reads, “the sun slashes, the eared seal’s breast, oh amazons, by the wailing of the bow, by the glory of my nights, by my loins spurting more than ever, by the brown odor of a morning agitated in my nostrils, from the depth of a delirium without trembling.” What I love about Césaire is that he is incredibly surreal. Each poem of his should be a painting by Dali or Ernst or Magritte. This aspect of his poetry which is also why I am including “Antipodal Dwelling” is indicative of the contrast between what I before thought of when I thought of African poetry and what I know now. The last two poems by Césaire remind me of what Negritude means for the new-negro movement as it is carried into modernity along with the rest of the black world.
Léopold Sédar Senghor, who will be finishing the poem section of the night, will first read a selection from Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century. His writing in that essay is awesome, and really defines Negritude in a way that makes sense with the modern philosophers and political theorists. The poems Senghor will be reading are “I Am Alone,” “Before Night Comes,” “Song of the Initiate,” “What Dark Tempestuous Night,” and “Be Not Amazed.” “I Am Alone,” is provided under Senghor's page and seems at first to be a poem about isolation. Upon closer reading Senghor seems to be connected to others through the Melancholy. The refrain of “in the night,” works perfectly for the theme of the event. “Before Night Comes,” also works with this theme on a elementary level, but I chose it, along with some of his others, for the romantic love that exists in them. The poem begins, “Before night comes I think of you and for you before I fall.” The verse structure reminds me of my favorite poet, E.E. Cummings, and is indicative of African poetry reaching out to the ideas of modern poetry brought forth by Pound, Eliot and William Carlos Williams. “Song of the Initiate is what I would consider an epic of Negritude. Some of the lines in the poem are absolutely amazing, for example, “The wild blood that rises from her heart, the bloody milk that flows to her mouth, the scent of the wet earth.” In this poem Senghor is chasing the goddess of Africa. Her blood is his blood. The scent of wet mother earth, is the fertility that Negritude will grow from. There is a hyper-sexualized image of Africa that I cannot get out of my head. The verse is wonderful. “What Dark Tempestuous Night,” has a line that reads, “And what sacrifice will pacify the white mask of the goddess?” Senghor uses the black and white imagery well, speaking metaphorically of Negritude as the goddess the three fathers will strive to seduce. “Be Not Amazed,” begins, “Be not amazed my beloved, if sometimes my song grows dark.” The poem is beautiful and will conclude the poetry reading on a melancholy-romance motif that all three poets have within their work. More importantly, it's my favorite.
The three fathers, after reading their poetry, will join together on the stage to discuss Negritude Poetry. The audience will be able to ask questions for an hour. This part of the night should be the most unpredictable, but also the most fun. I wanted to include this in the event because some of the questions raised by the cryptic and beautiful poetry will perhaps get answered, as the audience is able to really dive into the ideas of Negritude and interact with some of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.
Works Cited
Coetzee, P. H., and A. P. J. Roux. The African Philosophy Reader. Routledge, 2003. Print.
Césaire, Aimé, Clayton Eshleman, and Annette Smith. Aimé Césaire, The Collected Poetry. Berkeley: University of California, 1983. Print.
Césaire, Aimé, Clayton Eshleman, and Annette Smith. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2001. Print.
Damas, Léon-Gontran. Pigments. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1972. Print.
Jack, Belinda Elizabeth. Negritude and Literary Criticism: The History and Theory of "Negro-African" Literature in French. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. Print.
"Negritude." Negritude (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Web. 10 May 2012. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/negritude/>.
Senghor, Leopold. "Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century." The Africa Reader: Independent Africa. London: Vintage, 1970. Print.
Senghor, Léopold Sédar, and Melvin Dixon. The Collected Poetry. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1991. Print.
Snyder, Emile. Introduction. The Problem of Negritude in Modern French Poetry. France: S.n., 1963. Print.
Warner, Keith Q. Critical Perspectives on Léon-Gontran Damas. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents, 1988. Print.
Wilder, Gary. The French Imperial Nation-state: Negritude & Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005. Print.
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