The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

Black Orpheus Author(s): Jean-Paul Sartre and John MacCombie Reviewed work(s): Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Autumn, 1964 - Winter, 1965), pp. 13-52 Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087216 . Accessed: 25/02/2012 01:15
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Jean-Paul

Sartre Black Orpheus

the gag that was keeping these black That what were you hoping for? When they would shut, you think that when they raised them sing your praises? Did in the eyes of these read adoration selves up again, you would to the very to bend down had forced heads that our fathers at us, and I are black men Here standing, looking ground? feel the shock of being seen. For me?will hope that you?like you removed mouths three of thousand without years, the white seen; man has seeing being he was the privilege enjoyed a look?the only light

from his eyes drew each thing out of the shadow of its birth;
the whiteness white a torch of his skin was because man?white and unveiled are black men another look, condensed light. The was man, white like daylight, he

white like truth, white like virtue?lighted

the secret white essence these our own

up the creation like

of beings. Today, at us, and our gaze comes back to looking in their turn, black torches eyes; light up the world our white heads are no more than Chinese lanterns and swinging to with in the wind. A black poet?unconcerned us?whispers the woman
Naked Dressed

he loves:
woman, in your black color woman which is life .. .

"Orph?e de la nouvelle

Noir"

appeared

originally

as

the

preface

to

an

anthology

of

African andWest
key document able in English

Indian poets, edited by Leopold S?dar-Senghor

Paris, it has issue

(Anthologie
A 1948). avail been of Presence with

et malgache de langue n?gre fran?ais, fo?sie of "N?gritude," of the concept in the history to come in a difficult only by and out-of-print its first American by John

It appears here in Africaine (Paris, 1951). of M. in a translation the permission Sartre,

publication MacCombie.

13

The Massachusetts
Naked woman, dark woman,

Review

Firm fleshed ripe fruit, somber ecstasies of black wine. seems to us to be a strange that livid varnish and our whiteness our skin from breathing?white worn out at the tights, keeps find real human flesh elbows and knees, under which we would the color of black wine if we could remove them. We think we are to the world?suns of essential no more than its fauna, tides; we are These
These

its harvests, beasts. Not

moons even

of

its

beasts:

gentlemen
proper

from the city

gentlemen

Who Who
Who

no longer know how to dance in the evening by moonlight no longer know how to walk on the flesh of their feet
no longer know how to tell tales by the fireside . . .

with divine feel right, we were already Formerly Europeans or Soviet to crumble under American ing our dignity beginning was already no more acci than a geographical looks; Europe shoves into the Atlantic. We were that Asia the peninsula dent, in the at least to find a bit of our greatness reflected hoping are no more But there domesticated of the Africans. eyes and free looks that judge our domesticated eyes: there are wild world. Here is a black man wandering:

to the end of
the with eternity cops of . . . their endless boulevards

Here

is another Alas!
fingers

one Alas!
and

shouting

to his brothers: ismoving

ships . . .

Spidery Europe
its phalanxes of

its

Here

is:
the silence of Europe's . .

cunning

night.

14

Black Orpheus
inwhich
. . . there is nothing that time does not dishonor.

negro
At

writes:
times, we will haunt Montparnasse torments, and like memories Paris,

and its endless Europe . . . or like malaises

seems France and suddenly a malaise, than a memory,

exotic

in our own eyes. She is no more a white mist at the bottom of sunlit

to live in; she has drifted unfit towards souls, a back-country near Kamchatka: the essential she is anchored the North, thing islands" is the sun, the sun of the tropics and the sea "lousy with and the lilies of Iarive and the vol and the roses of I mangue

?anos of Martinique.
we are

Being

[l'Etre]

is black, Being

ismade of

our to justify accidental and far away, we have fire, our technics, our undercooked and our verdigris mores, paleness are eaten away to the bones by these quiet and We vegetation. looks: corrosive Listen to the white world horribly weary of its immense effort
its rebel articulations crackling under hard stars,

its steel-blue stiffnesses piercing mystical flesh listen to its exhibitionist victories trumpeting its defeats listen to itswretched staggering with grandiose alibis
Have pity on our na?ve omniscient conquerors.

our victories?their bellies are, finished; sticking to their guts, our secret defeat. If we want up in the air?show crack open this finitude which us, we can no longer imprisons of our race, of our color, of our technics: rely on the privileges we will not be able to become a part of the totality from which those black eyes exile us, unless we tear off our white in tights There order If to be men. to try simply not intended shame us however, these poems they were to: they were not written not shame any for us; and they will or their accomplices this book, for these colonists who open 15

we

The Massachusetts
latter will der, letters think they not meant

Review

ing themselves neither satiric ness. "So," you will

are reading shoul letters over someone's are address for them. These black men is to black men about black men; their poetry nor imprecatory: an awakening to conscious it is

it interest us, if it say, "in what way does cannot enter into it." I should like to We is only a document? of jet ; I should show inwhat way we can gain access to this world seems racial at first?is like to show that this poetry?which a hymn I am In a word, for everyone. by everyone actually to them like to explain a it is necessarily through why in his present that the black man, condition, experience conscious of himself; first become and, inversely, why in the French is, in our time, the only language poetry I should revolutionary poetry. * It uses than is not poetic by accident to speak language just sons: one Nor slaves * that about * the white

and talking now to white men, know: what black men already poetic must black great

rarely proletariat its anger or its its suffering, efficacious grace?loses in one widespread that takes away their even harder and yet

pride in itself; neither do I think that workers are less gifted

all meaning class than capacity we know worker nics, our bourgeois when for "talent"?that that is it hard work used claims it is more

in another.

to drudge song: must that It therefore be recognized of slave hymns. that keep the circumstances of the class struggle it is the present from he wants himself expressing to be a technician by tech Oppressed poetically. that technics because he knows

will be the instrument of his liberation; he knows that it is only

that and scientific know-how economic by gaining professional, to control He business management. he will be able someday now has a of what poets have knowledge practical profound more he has gained it is a knowledge but called Nature, through him?that isMatter for his eyes: Nature on with his that he works inert adversity crafty, has no song. At the same time, the present Matter phase tools; his hands than through 16

Black Orpheus
politi of organization forecasting, discipline, to dream, at this point, would the masses; be to betray. Ra themes of his daily great tionalism, materialism, positivism?the for the spontaneous creation of poetic battle?are least propitious cal calculation, precise The last of these myths?the myths. the circumstances under withdrawn "Upheaval"?has one must struggle: take up the matter that is most urgent, gain this and that posi raise this salary, decide on that sympathy strike or on some tion, the war in Indo-China: alone matters. protest against efficiency of the without a doubt, famous of his struggle requires of him continual, positive action:

And, This

the oppressed class must first find itself. is the exact opposite of a sub however, self-discovery, it is a question of oneself: of recog rather, jective examination situation of and action?the the objective by nizing?in can be determined which the circumstances of by proletariat, or of redistribution an op of property. Unified by production on each and every one, and reduced is exerted pression which are hardly to a common workers the with acquainted struggle, inner contradictions that fecundate the work of art and that are to the praxis. As far as they are concerned, to know harmful themselves great both forces is to situate that surround themselves within the context of the

it requires them to determine them; their exact position in their class and their function in the use is free from The the slight very Party. they language of the screws, the constant frivolous the loosening impropriety, create the poetic Word. which of transmissions In their game business, language technical and as for the terms; they use well-defined of revolutionary has shown Parain that it is parties, it is used to transmit informa orders, watch-words, of apart. All the subject; this po The

pragmatic: if it loses its exactness, the Party falls tion; more more to eliminate tends and rigorously however, has proletariat etry, must in not found

some way remain subjective. a poetry that is sociological and yet as it is that is just as subjective finds its source in subjectivity, on ambiguous or uncertain that is based sociological, language as exalting and that is nevertheless and as generally understood as the most or as the phrase "Workers of precise watch-words 17

The Massachusetts
all countries, unite" that one of reads

Review
on doors in Soviet has Russia.

this, Lacking in the hands

the poetry the future revolution remained of well-intentioned who found young bourgeois their inspiration in their personal contradictions, psychological in the dichotomy their ideal and their class, in the un between of the capitalist his close

of the old bourgeois certainty language. is a victim Like the white worker, the negro structure situation reveals of our society. This

to him

certain classes ties?quite apart from the color of his skin?with of Europeans it incites him to like him, are oppressed; who, in which skin pigmentation will society imagine a privilege-less a mere even though be considered fluke. But itself oppression the circumstances under which it fluke, to history the and geographic conditions: vary according man is a victim of it because he is a black man and insofar a colonized or a deported And is native since he African. the confines of his race and because of it, he within pressed may be first who of all become have conscious tried of his race. He must the centuries a mere exists black as he is op must

throughout vainly status of a beast, to recognize this that he is a man. On no means or of trickery, no "crossing there is of evasion, point, a Jew?a line" that he can consider: white man among white a man can declare men?can himself that he is a Jew, deny to the nor can cannot deny that he is negro, among men. The negro he he claim that he is part of some abstract colorless humanity: the wall of authen is black. Thus he has his back up against he picks up and formerly been insulted enslaved, ticity: having at him like a stone, he thrown which was the word "nigger" a black man, erect and proudly draws himself himself proclaims come eventu to face with white men. The unity which will face in the same strug all oppressed together ally, bringing peoples in the colonies by what I shall call the mo must be preceded gle, or negativity: racism is the only ment of separation this anti-racist road could that will lead to the in it be otherwise? of racial differences. abolition count on a distant Can black men its own own 18 How white are isn't

those oblige to reduce him

proletariat?involved and organized united

on their

they struggles?before soil? And furthermore,

Black Orpheus
there realize from some the of need for obvious identity The white worker somewhat benefits conditions? in spite of himself: of low as his standard colonization, be even lower if there were no coloniza may be, it would exploited technical the day and equipment than a thorough work of analysis that underlie the interests of in order the to

difference

living tion. In any case, he is less cynically or Saint-Louis. laborer in Dakar The

of the European industrialization countries make it possible for measures to be immediately of socialization there; applicable or the Congo, seems more but as seen from S?n?gal socialism than anything else like a beautiful dream: before black peasants can discover answer to their pres is the necessary that socialism ent local claims, they must learn think to formulate jointly; But Marxism worker, unearned of the therefore, this new tries class they must of themselves these claims as black men.

is different from that which self-discovery to awaken in the white worker. In the European is based on the nature consciousness of profit and ownership the objec But since men?and towards

on the present conditions of the increment, for work; instruments in brief, it is based on tive characteristics of the position of the proletariat. scorn that white men the selfish for black display that has no equivalent in the attitude of the bourgeois

the working recesses aimed at the deepest class?is a more black men must exact view it with oppose

of the heart, of black sub

race consciousness is based first of all jectivity; consequently on the black the term is often used in soul, or, rather,?since a certain quality this anthology?on common to the thoughts and conduct of negroes which is called N?gritude [sic]. There are two ways to go about forming racial concepts: either only one causes certain subjective to become characteristics objective, or else one tries to interiorize manners revealed of objectively means thus the black man who asserts his n?gritude conduct; by a revolutionary movement himself in immediately places to meditate, the position of having to either because he wishes in himself certain objectively established traits of the recognize or because African he hopes to discover the Es civilizations, sence of blackness in the well re of his heart. Thus subjectivity of 19

The Massachusetts
appears:

Review

of the self with the relation the self; the source of all from which the very poetry the worker had to disen poetry, man who to asks his colored black brothers The gage himself. to try to present to them an ex is going "find themselves"

emplary image of their N?gritude

soul to grasp it. He wants

and will

look into his own

and a mirror;

to be both

a beacon

the first revolutionary will be the harbinger of the black soul, the herald?half prophet and half follower?who will tear Blackness out of himself in order to offer it to the world; in
brief, more, precise he will black terms. be a poet in the literal sense of "vates." in common has nothing with poetry Leaf through an anthology of Further heartfelt

effusions: it is functional, it answers a need which

is defined in
contemporary

white poetry: you will find a hundred different subjects, de

the mood of the poet, depending and interests upon pending his country. I am his position In the anthology which and upon to you here, there is only one subject that all the introducing or less successfully. to to treat, more From Haiti poets attempt there is a single idea: reveal the black soul. Black po Cayenne, etry is evangelic, discovered. However, it announces good news: Blackness has been re

this n?gritude, which they wish the soul's does not fall under abyssal depths, The herald in the soul, nothing is gratuitous. has gone law which those through forbids he schools, the oppressed has stolen himself had some from at contact the the white

to fish for

in their

gaze all by itself: of the black soul a brazen in accordance with arms ex man to possess any from with the white of he it is oppressor; that his culture existence has more to or the less

cept

through blackness meditative ceased

having has passed state. But to live

has become

to see what he is, he his n?gritude. on And he no longer co-incides with himself. split, from himself exiled it is because he was already the other hand, to reveal himself. He therefore this need that he discovered

immediacy same time, In choosing

begins by exile. It is a double exile: the exile of his body offers a magnificent image of the exile of his heart; he is in Europe
most of the time, in the cold, in the middle 20 of gray crowds; he

Black Orpheus
dreams he in was of Port-au-Prince, in exile; already those of Haiti. the slavers were But had in Port-au-Prince, torn his fathers

out of Africa

and dispersed

them. And

all of the poems

written

in Africa this book?except us the same mystical A hemisphere: in the show geography. the first of three concentric circles?ex foreground?forming then comes the daz tends the land of exile, colorless Europe; which zling circle of the Islands and Roundelay around Africa; of all black navel, pole like a snake's skin, Africa nothingness, but absent, black but more beyond invisible which dance the of childhoood, is Africa, the world's the last circle Africa, rain, torrid a flame, between boulevards burnt, oily and tufted; and being with

poetry?dazzling of fire and like

Africa?phantom

flickering real than attainment, rays;

the "eternal

disintegrating an imaginary Africa, native have their

cops" with its Europe The continent. and

extraordinary good luck of black poetry lies in the fact that the
anxieties of the colonized own grandiose into deeply obvious need only to be gone and to symbols which be meditated the Africa-Europe upon: exile, slavery, couple and the great Manichaeistic division of the world into black and white. black the This soul ancestral is an Africa the other exile: exile represents bodily the negro, from which in the midst culture n?gritude like his and technics, haunts him, is exiled. rubs the of An

cold buildings but ever-present is spread

of white concealed him

against and his

him; he himself rubs up against its silky wing;

throughout searching

it palpitates and
memory

loftiest demands, like his shrouded, betrayed childhood, and like the childhood of his race and the call of the earth, like
the swarming of insects and the pure legacy of his to unify his truncated ought like squarely white culture?its at his n?gritude, silence, the indivisible ancestors, life. But it vanishes its words, and if he of Nature, simplicity that like the Ethics turns around to look of the walls up between

in smoke; its mores?rise

it and him:
Give me back my black dolls, so that I may play with My instinct's simple games 21 them

The Massachusetts
that I may
cover up my

Review

remain
courage

in the shadow of its laws

my audacity
feel me as me

me renewed

through what

I was yesterday

yesterday without complexity yesterday

when they the have uprooting ransacked hour the came space . . . that was mine

However, it will down; the themes

be broken prison must some day: to Africa to return be necessary thus to the native and of re-descent of return country the walls of this culture

into the glaring hell of the black soul are indissolubly mixed
A quest is involved up in the vates of n?gritude. here, a sys an "asc?se"1 and tematic by a continual accompanied stripping I shall call this poetry And effort of investigation. "Orphic" into himself makes me think the negro's tireless descent because to claim Eurydice of Orpheus from Pluto. Thus, through going an exceptional stroke of poetic good luck, it is by letting himself on the ground man like a possessed fall into trances, by rolling or his regrets of his angers, tormented by singing by himself, "civili his wounds, his life torn between his hates, by exhibiting zation" most and his old that lyrical, poetry: great collective by speaking he seems it is when for all negroes; of our culture dertakes and acquired, ture taking-up chains. In A that he is the most to ruin in short, substratum; is most certain the black poet black only smothered by becoming a of creating of himself, he speaks by the serpents for he then un

revolutionary, he has the European knowledge systematically the great fu this spiritual destruction symbolizes their black men will of arms by which destroy last remark. have pas

this suffice to clarify will single example most ethnic minorities the twentieth century, endeavored
the ascetic's

sionately
1 asc?se:

to
movement

resuscitate
of

their

national
(translator's

languages
note)

int?riorisation,

22

Black Orpheus
for their while struggling one is Irish or Hungarian, of has the benefit which tonomy; means above but to be all: independence. one must be able to say that to a collectivity belong au economic and political To also think traits

Irish, which of a Society specific to the untranslatable locutions of its lan correspond exactly are forced to The of n?gritude fact that the prophets guage. means that there is a certain risk their gospel in French write to reject of dangerously the efforts of black men down slowing to the four corners of the been dispersed tutelege. Having earth by the slave trade, black men have no common language; to unite, in order to incite the oppressed they must necessarily of the oppressor's And French is rely on the words language. our

a broad one must Irish, think in Irish. The

the language that will

audience, in this goose-pimply and which Mallarm? lence of half going all since our dead at least within

furnish the black poet with

the limits language?pale said was "the of French and neutral cold

the largest
It is

an attenuation spirit demands this brilliant color"?in excessively

skies, par excel language of variegation and

colonization. like our

for them, that Damas, to pour the fire of their

this language alone through the sixteenth-century scholars who can meet in Latin, black men only man that the white has prepared to be the eternal arranged is there?always there?even mediator when

which is language are Rab?arivell Laleau, Diop, skies and of their hearts: it is that they can communicate; like each other only understood on that trap-covered ground the colonist for them: has between he

the colonized; he is absent, even in the most secret meetings. are ideas, when And since words the negro de in French that he rejects French clares culture, he accepts with one hand what he rejects with the other; he sets up the enemy's in himself, not like a crusher. This would thinking-apparatus matter: that this syntax and vocabulary?forged thou except sands of miles away in another epoch to answer other needs and to designate to furnish other objects?are unsuitable him with the means of speaking about himself, his own anxieties, his own hopes. The French language and French thought are analytical.

What would happen if the black spirit were above all syntheti 23

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cal? The rather

Review

contributions is a definable other more diate

term "n?gritude" is one of the few black ugly to our dictionary. But after all, if this "n?gritude" or at least a describable it must subsume concept,

to the imme concepts which elementary correspond ideas directly con fundamental involved with negro are the words sciousness: but where to describe them? How one understands well the Haitian poet's complaint: This
To my

obsessing heart which

language, nor to my

does not correspond

customs,

And on which encroach, like a clinging-root, Borrowed feelings and the customs Of Europe, feel this suffering
And this despair?equal to no other?

Of ever taming with words from France This heart which came to me from S?n?gal. It is not true, however, that the black man expresses himself in a "foreign" since he is taught French from child language, at ease when he thinks in the terms hood and since he is perfectly of a technician, one must of a scholar or of a politician. Rather, about the slight but patent difference that separates what speak he says from what he would like to say, whenever he speaks about himself. It seems to him that a Northern Spirit steals his or less what ideas from him, bends them slightly to mean more he wanted; self together that and white takes words a step drink his thoughts there are like the sand sounds

drinks blood. If he suddenly gorges himself,

backward,

if he pulls him

lying prostrate in front of him?strange: half signs and half things. He will not speak his n?gritude with precise, efficacious words which hit the target every time. He will not speak his
in prose. As everyone every poetic experience knows, n?gritude has its origin in this feeling of frustration that one has when a language to be a means with that is supposed confronted of direct The what believe communication. reaction Bataille of calls the is in effect frustrated speaker by prose the holocaust of words. As long as we can harmony 24 governs the relationship

that a pre-established

Black Orpheus
and Being, we use words without seeing them, with blind trust; they are sensory organs, mouths, hands, win a first frus dows open on the world. As soon as we experience falls beyond us; we see the whole this chattering system, tration, out-of-order mechanism than an upset, whose it is no more existence arms are still flailing to indicate in emptiness; in on the foolish one fell swoop we pass judgment of business between a word is in essence prose, that language things; we understand naming and that prose stands erect in front is in essence failure; Being to catch it, we of us like a tower of silence, and if we still want can do so only in an intentional silence: "evoke, through never direct, tu" by allusive words, the object reduc shadow, one has better to the same silence."2 No stated ing themselves to suggest is an incantatory in and that poetry attempt Being on his of the word: by the vibratory by insisting disappearance us words mad, verbal the poet makes by making impotence, this chaos which cancels itself out, there are suspect that beyond silent densities; since we cannot keep quiet, we must make silence with goal poetry destruction of language. are themselves knocking language. of French From Mallarm? seems A to me the final Surrealists, to have this auto been is a dark room where words Collisions in the air: to the

poem

about,

quite mad.

they ignite each other with their fire and fall down in flames.
that we must situate the efforts of the It is in this perspective answer a ruse with the colonist's "black They evangelists." ruse: since the oppressor is present similar but inverse in the

very language that they speak, they will speak this language in
order dehumanize to destroy it. The contemporary European to give in order them back words poet tries to to nature; the

black herald
them, them break

is going
their usual

to de-Frenchifize
associations,

them; he will
violently

crush
couple

he will

with with with 2 Mallarm?, Magie

little steps of caterpillar rain little steps like mouthfuls of milk little steps like ball-bearings (Edition de la Pl?iade, p. 400). 25

The Massachusetts

Review

with little steps like seismic shocks in the soil stride like gaps of stars8 Yams their whiteness does he regurgitated a solemn, sacred of this ruined them, making language adopt can the black Poetry through Poetry. Only superlanguage, men of Tananarive the black men of Port-au and of Cayenne, each other in communicate with of Saint-Louis, and Prince Only when they have private. And since French lacks is silence, terms and n?gritude, sive words, since n?gritude never direct, to evoke these to define concepts poets will use "allu

to the same si reducing of language: behind it. Short-circuits lence" we glimpse a great black mute idol. fall of words, the flaming that seems poetic It is not only the black man's self-portrayal of ex the means to me; it is also his personal way of utilizing incites him to do it: even at his disposal. His position pression themselves in order

before he thinks of writing poetry, in him, the light of white

is nowhere more and altered. This is refracted, polarized terms?"white-black" than in his use of two connected manifest and night"? cover both the great cosmic division?"day ?that words and But the human conflict system: by giving lan this term, the teacher also gives him a hundred the negro over the consecrate the white man's habits which rights guage to like snow" learn to say "white black man. The negro will to speak of the blackness of a look, of a soul, indicate innocence, he accuses himself, of a deed. As soon as he opens his mouth, it if he upsets the hierarchy. And in upsetting unless he persists can you imagine the strange he is already in French} poetizing: or of innocence" like "the blackness savor that an expression have for us? That is the savor of virtue" would "the darkness we taste on every page of this book, when, for example, we read:
Your round, shining, black satin breasts . . .

it is a connection

the native between on a hierarchical based

and

the

colonist.

which

this white
C?saire, Les armes

smile
miraculeuses: tam-tam II.

26

Black Orpheus
of eyes
in the awaken deaf face's in me rhythms shadow this . . . evening

which
our

intoxicate,

there

in Guin?e,

sisters

black and naked and inspire inme this evening black twilights heavy with sensual anxiety for the soul of the black country where the ancients
are sleeping

lives and speaks this evening

in uneasy your back strength, . . . along the small of

Throughout
soft diffuse

this poem, black is color; better still, light;

its

our habits; radiance dissolves the black country are where the ancients is not a dark hell: it is a land of sleeping sun and fire. Then in another the superiority connection, again, over black does not express of white the superiority that only claims to have over the native: more profoundly, the colonist it a universal as our night of day as well adoration expresses In this sense, these black men also are universal. terrors, which are re-establishing the hierarchy they have just upset. They to be poets don't want and de of nighty poets of vain revolt the promise of dawn; spair: they give they greet
the transparent dawn of a new day.

At last, the black man discovers, through the pen, his baleful
sense of foreboding: Nigger one of them, and then black like misery cries out:

another, me

Deliver

from my blood's night 27

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Thus

Review

to contain black is found all Evil the word and all two it covers up an almost tension between unbearable Good, classifications: solar hierarchy and racial hierarchy. contradictory an extraordinary like self-destructive poetry, thereby from the hands of Duchamp and the Surrealists; there objects a secret whiteness in white, is a secret blackness in black, a fixed It gains

flickering of Being and of Non-being

expressed as well as in this poem

which is perhaps nowhere

by C?saire:

statue, a stone in its fore My tall wounded inattentive day flesh with head; my great pitiless spots, my great night flesh with
day spots.

The poet will go even further; he writes:

Our
power

beautiful

faces like the true operative

of negation.

this abstract eloquence Behind Lautr?amont is seen evoking an extremely some sense to to give and subtle bold attempt the poetic of the two faces of black skin and to realize synthesis

night. When

David Diop
black

says that the negro

is "black like
of light. But deeply: color, night it is the to

represent misery," deprivation into this image more C?saire and goes develops is no longer is not it is refusal. Black absence, sun. The revolutionary others' Truth. negro Black is negation faces?these because

he makes

destruction of this borrowed clarity which falls from the white

he wishes which

be complete nudity:
destroy patiently

in order to build his Truth,

he must first which

curiously

night memories which

haunt our days?embody

gnaws at concepts.

the dark work of Negativity

Thus, by a reversal

recalls that of the humiliated negro?insulted

when he asserts nigger" that establishes darkness his

and called "dirty

Destructions, autodaf?s all the negative of concepts: bivalence aspects of modern poetry are here. But of some gratuitous it is not a matter game. The 28

is the privative aspect of rights?it is the color of night. its value. Liberty am of language, symbolism, magic

Black Orpheus
black man's

a foreign way of thinking imposes on him, all oblige him to

as a negro,?or, if you prefer, his existential reconquer unity a the original of his plan?through "asc?se," gradual purity a point the language stage. N?gritude?like liberty?is beyond it is a matter and an ultimate of departure of making goal: a matter to the mediate, of pass from the immediate n?gritude it. The therefore find death in black man must thematicismg white Platonic reborn culture in order to be reborn with a black death philosopher in truth. This body and mystical dialectical a method. But this method in directing applies which it; lead whose embraces soul, like the in order to be to origins

position,

his original

"rending,"

the alienation

that

return

necessarily implies as a set of rules to be used comes with one with whoever successive transformations

is not presented the spirit. Rather, it be it is the dialectical law of to coincidence the negro nor of his knowing, from himself, but rather at this pri sub

in n?gritude. It is not himself himself of his ecstatically away tearing and becoming what he is. of both discovering means are two convergent of arriving There simplicity The poets of existence: one is objective, sometimes

a matter

mordial

the other

use one, some in our anthology jective. times the other, and sometimes both of them together. In effect, an objective that is expressed there exists by the n?gritude of the African chants and dances As a mores, arts, populaces.

spiritual exercise, the poet will prescribe allowing himself to be fascinated by primitive rhythms, letting his thoughts run in
of the poems included poetry. Many because from the night borrow they a percussive time tambourine is some rhythm which players, sometimes times sharp and regular, torrential and bounding. The poetic act, then, is a dance of the soul; the poet turns round here forms of black traditional are called tams-tams,

and round like a dervish until he faints; he has established his ancestors' time in himself, he feels it flowing with its peculiar violent pulls; he hopes to "find" himself in this rhythmic
I shall say that he tries to make himself "possessed" pulsation; he hopes his people's that the echoes of his tam n?gritude; by come to awaken tam will timeless instincts sleeping within him. 29

The Massachusetts

Review

one will get the impres this collection, Upon through leafing a genre sion that the tam-tam tends to become of black poetry, as the sonnet or the ode was a genre of our poetry. just Others, like Rabemananjara, will be inspired by royal proclamations, still others will draw from the popular well of the Hain-tenys. The alone and calm center of this maelstrom it comes all and of rhythms, directly the other chants, shouts,

is the poetry of Birago Diop,

is at rest because oral tradition. taut Almost

in all its majestic

attempts them

simplicity:
narratives have because some

it

from Griot

thing contorted, aim at becoming ing from it. But where ancestors

desperate they a part of folkloric rather than emanat poetry however far he may be from "the black country the black man is closer than we to the sleep,"

about

as Mallarm? creates Gods." great period when, says, "the word It is practically to resume some close for our poets impossible ness with ten centuries traditions: of scholarly poetry popular such from folkloric traditions; furthermore, : at the very best, we could is drying up inspiration only imitate its simplicity on the from a distance. The black men of Africa, are still in the great period of mythical and contrary, fecundity as black poets are not just using their myths French-language a form of diversion as we use our allow epic poems:4 they to be spellbound themselves by them so that at the end of the separate incantation, This is why
charm.

them

n?gritude?magnificently I call this method on the

surge forth. evoked?may or of "objective poetry" magic, chose to backtrack descend into himself. road of the

C?saire, turns around will you, daily

4

contrary,

Since this Eurydice will disappear in smoke if Black Orpheus

to look back on her, he will below words the the royal

of his soul with his back turned on the bottom of the grotto ; he
descend I have placed and activities and meanings,?"in order to think on the all words mountain-of-pity"?below plan of "repetition," even below

Sartre

uses

"chansons"

for what the Medieval

we

have French

translated epic

as poems,

to is referring, of course, Geste, (translator's note)

"epic poems" the Chansons

; he ?e

30

Black Orpheus
his back turned and his eyes of revolt, with to touch with his feet the black water of closed, finally in it.5 Desire and to let himself drown and desire dreams like a tidal wave; and dream will rise up snarling they will first barrier reefs in order make words dance like flotsam and throw them pell-mell, shattered, on the shore.

and just as the old geography "Words go beyond themselves; is done for, the high and the low (words) do not allow diversion
either operate towards on a heaven strangely or towards earth. range at . . .On one the flexible level: contrary, they on the gaseous

Level
and

of an organism
night."6

both solid and liquid, black and white

day

the old surrealistic method writ (automatic recognizes an is a method: it presupposes like mysticism, ing, apprentice a start along One must the way). dive under ship, exercises, crust of reality, the superficial of common sense, of reasoning One bottom of the soul and very of desire: desire which makes of man a refusal of everything and a love of everything; desire, a call laws and of the possible, the radical negation of natural to miracles; its mad cosmic energy, desire which, by plunges reason, awaken the timeless forces man time, Right back lifts breast of Nature and, at the same seething the affirmation above Nature of his through to be unsatisfied. C?saire is not the first Furthermore, to take this road. Before L?ro had founded him, Etienne into the him in order to touch the

negro "was says Senghor, L?gitime Defense. ^L?gitime D?fense," a cultural movement more than a review. the from Starting Marxist of the society of the "Islands," it discovered, analysis
0 Sartre not seems to to hare look back from confused while Pluto, his images ascending note) so here, since from structed retrieved 6 The he was Orpheus Hades, after untranslatable of et its sense. For (tLes mots was he in had that those se

writing" an we have to give tried English simply care to consult French who the original d?fassent, tent fas traire, Niveau un c'est de bien vers c'en un ciel est distraire, fait solide

Eurydice French

"automatic

(translator's was

completely

affroximation it runs text, terre de que la vieille

as follows:

et une aussi res

le haut

?tagement de Vorganisme gazeux

curieusement

fir able et liquide, 31

s'of ?re blanc

le bas ne fermet . . . Au con g?ografhie. au niveau. r?el mais Au jour et nuit."

et noir

The Massachusetts
in the Antilles, centuries. from his descendants that of African

Review
negro slaves, who had him cannot

been kept in the dulling

It affirmed taboos

condition of the proletarian for three

deliver one

However, may allow

surrealism could only and express him in his entireness." if one compares L?ro with C?saire, the abyss that prevents white surrealism. L?ro

help but be struck by their dissimilarities,

us to measure from utilizing tionary the exploitation cursor; he invented lous weapon" and an instrument radar with poems do not other: are go which student beyond The one probes exercises, themselves;

and this comparison

a black revolu was the pre as a "miracu of surrealism a sort of for reconnaissance,

the depths of the abyss. But his are mere imitations: they they in on each rather, they close

ancient heads of hair Glue to the branches floors of empty seas Where your body is only a memory Where Spring trims its nails Helix of your smile thrown far away
On the houses we will have nothing to do with . . .

"The helix of your "the trims its smile," spring which in these the preciousness nails": we recognize and gratuitous ness of surrealistic that consists the eternal of process imagery, a bridge two extremely or sep between unrelated throwing hoping?without really believing?that uncover some hidden the dice" will aspect of It does not seem to me that, either in this poem or in the Being. at the the liberation demands of the black man: others, L?ro most he lays claim to a categorical of the imagi liberation very no combination in this completely abstract of game, nation; even remotely. evokes Africa If these poems were words taken this "throw of out of the anthology I and the name of their author hidden, or black, not to attribute at all, white them would defy anyone or Le to La Revolution to a European Surr?aliste contributor Minotaure. race and The condition, purpose beyond of surrealism class, 32 behind is to rediscover?beyond the fire of language? arated terms and

Black Orpheus
dazzling are no longer opposed to any which silent darknesses even to day, because day and night and all opposites thing, one might are blended in them and suppressed; consequently, of the sur and the impersonality of the impassiveness speak and is a Parnassian realist poem, impassiveness just as there not impersonality. on the contrary, and wheels bursts A poem by C?saire, suns turning and exploding into new suns like a rocket; around It is not a ques come out of it; it is a perpetual going-beyond. tion of the poem becoming part of the calm unity of opposites; one of the opposites in the "black-white" but rather of making to the other. The in its opposition like a phallus couple expand density volcano, Europe culture desire of of these words thrown into the air like stones from a as being against is defined which is found in n?gritude, is not all C?saire What and colonization. destroys to light is not what he brings but rather white culture;

the revolutionary but rather for everything aspirations is he touches in his very depths what the oppressed negro; a certain concrete form of humanity. not the spirit but specific, one can speak here about engaged and even With this in mind, directed translate fixed automatic but the same intervention writing, because torrid not because The there and is any meditative the words obsession. and images perpetually surrealist finds white

within himself
inflexibility feebly

the trigger; C?saire finds within himself

of demands L?ro's words

the
are

feeling. ex around themes vague through general organized are C?saire's words and a relaxing of logical ties; pansion his furious passion. each other and cemented by pressed against the most the most and between Between comparisons daring

terms, runs a secret thread of hate and hope. widely separated thrown For "the helix smile far of your compare example, a free is the product of away"?which play of the imagination as well as an invitation to revery?with and the radium mines buried in the abyss of my will jump by grains into the feeding-trough of birds 33 innocence

The Massachusetts
and will the be stars' the stere name of fire-wood

Review

common

gathered in which ganized Po?tique." Or read: Our Also

from the alluvium

of the singing veins of night are so or the vocabulary a black "Art that there is

the "disjecta membra" of as to allow the supposition

beautiful read:

faces like the true operative power of negation.

Seas lousy with islands cracking in the roses' fingers and my lightning-struck flame-thrower body intact.

Here we find the apotheosis of the fleas of black misery jump

in a stream of light, islands hair, ing in the water's cracking rose of the celestial under delouser: dawn with the fingers colored the dawn of Greek and Mediterranean culture fingers, a black thief ?snatched from the sacrosanct Homeric poems by ?whose enslaved princess's a Toussaint Louverture by of the black sea; parasites is metamorphosed, which of white fingernails in order triumphant rebels and suddenly that savage weapon the weapon the of scientists, are suddenly to crack the controlled

the dawn, which opens fire like

the tall black Titan with its weapon in order to begin the and he arises intact and eternal white fire, on Europe In C?saire, the great surrealist and heaven. assault and is it takes on its definitive is realized, tradition meaning movement?is taken from surrealism?that European destroyed: a Black man who turns it against them and the Europeans by out else I have pointed function. defined it a rigorously gives shut itself of the proletariat how the whole where completely sur in Europe, of Reason: the destructive off from poetry realism given and pales, rejected by languishes of their own blood. it a transfusion 34 those who But could at the very have mo

the flame-thrower, men, strikes of executioners,

Black Orpheus
ment when Antilles, tion; it is losing onto grafted contact with another branch into an enormous directed oppressed, it is, in the the Revolution, Revolu of the universal somber flower. C?saire's his powerful, as a militant free concentrated

it develops lies in his having originality as one as a negro, anxiety into this world of poetry to give

individual, and metaphysical destructive, were at the moment and Aragon when Eluard failing content to their verse. And negritude finally, political the most like a cry of pain, of love and the surrealist of ob tradition

from C?saire is snatched object of hate. Here again he follows

do not describe words they n?gritude, poetry. C?saire's jective like a do not copy it from the outside do not designate it, they a model: it under our they create it; they compose painter with can be observed a thing which and it is very eyes: henceforth learned; objective soul from to the subjective we method himself method which he has he chosen ejects spoke at the very moment when others are is the same in both the final result about earlier: joins the the black trying cases.

interiorize

N?gritude night;

it; at tam-tam in the streets of Dakar is the far-away some Haitian shouts from voo-doo cellar window, slid level with the roadway; in the dust like the Congolese mask; but it is

ing along phlegm,

also this poem by C?saire, this slobbery, bloody poem full of

a cut-up worm. This double of the and excretion beats out the rhythm spasm of absorption black heart on every page of this collection. is this n?gritude, What sole anxiety of these then, at present, twisting

It must that a of this book? first be stated sole subject poets, white man could hardly since he has no speak about it suitably, lack words inner experience of it and since European languages to describe pages But this cated of this it. I ought collection then would to let the reader his own be encounter conclusions if, after it in the about it. indi in its and draw

introduction

that

original thesis of revolutionary show that this complex

having incomplete the quest for the Black Grail represented?both most and in its methods?the intention authentic

syn I did not and poetic anxiety, aspirations I shall notion is essentially pure Poetry. 35

The Massachusetts
therefore a cluster cipal poem which limit myself of testimonies is less Senghor its theme

Review

themes.

to examining as these poems objectively out some of their prin and to pointing the n?gritude of a says: "What makes

than its style, the emotional warmth to words, transmutes the word into the which gives Word." It could not be more is stated that n?gritude explicitly a state nor a definite or neither of vices and virtues ensemble of intellectual and moral but rather a certain affective qualities, life attitude psychology towards has the world. renounced Since its great the beginning scholastic of this century, We distinctions.

no longer believe that the "facts" of the soul are divided

into

or actions, or or volitions sentiments knowledge perceptions, We know that a feeling is a definite blind passiveness. way of our rapport with the world around us, that it in establishing a certain comprehension of this universe. It is a tension volves of the beyond the voluntary the Negro's Furthermore, My soul, the a choice raw a way of going and of another, a in short, facts of experience; plan quite like act. To use Heidegger's is N?gritude language, of oneself C?saire tells us about it:

being-in-the-world. here is what

n?gritude is not a stone with its deafness flung out against the clamor of the day on the My n?gritude is not a dead speck of water dead eye of the earth
my n?gritude is neither a tower nor a cathedral

it plunges into the red flesh of the ground it plunges into the ardent flesh of the sky it perforates the opaque pressure of its righteous

patience.

N?gritude
as an act than termination: world universe nical. For the white

is portrayed in these beautiful lines of verse more

it is not

as a frame of mind. But this act is an inner de a question the goods of this of taking it is a question and transforming in one's hands them;

of existing in the middle

remains

of the world. The

relation with
is not To not

the
tech

an adaptation. But this adaptation to possess is to transform. the white man, uses he does instruments which worker 36

be sure, possess.

Black Orpheus
But are his own: if it is true that the per at least his techniques for the major inventions in of European responsible comes mainly at least the trades from the middle classes, dustry seem to the white workers of carpenter, cabinet-maker, potter, sonnel the fact that the orientation of despite tends to remove their "joy in work" great capitalist production to say that the black worker from them. But it is not enough uses instruments are lent to him; are also lent which techniques heritage, him. C?saire
Those

to be a true

refers
who

to his black
have invented

brothers
neither

as:
nor

powder seas

compass . . .

those who have never tamed either steam or electricity

those who have not explored the and the sky

But situation: source Nature

this

haughty could what A

claim

of wealth. as simple

reverses of non-technicalness the as a deficiency a positive becomes pass with Nature technical reveals rapport inertia, exteriority: nature dies. By

quantity,

his haughty refusal to be homo fabery the negro gives

it life

of one of the members of the "man again. As if the passiveness nature" Ac the other's necessarily couple produced activity. is not passiveness, since it "perforates the flesh tually, n?gritude sky and of the earth": imitation pears like an active first of all an act on oneself. immobilizes on himself the branches like of of the it is "patience," and patience ap of passiveness. act is The negro's The black man stands erect and

perch the world?through

a bird-charmer, come to and things this fake tree. A magic of inveigling silence and rest?is involved here: the white

man, by acting first of all on Nature, loses himself when he loses Nature; the negro, by acting first of all on himself, claims
to win Nature while winning
abandon

himself.
themselves to the essence of

Seized,

they

every thing ignorant of the surfaces but seized by the movement every thing 37

of

The Massachusetts
heedless of counting,
truly porous the elder the sons of to all

Review
the world's
. . .

but playing
the world of

game

breaths

the world

flesh of the world's

movement of

flesh palpitating

from the very

the world.

Upon famous lished

reading distinction by Bergson.

this, one between C?saire

help and intelligence us calls rightly

na?ve conquerors.

can

hardly

thinking intuition

of

the

estab

Omniscient

and

. . .

all. But he only knows tools, the white man scratches the surface of things; he is unaware of the duration of unaware on the contrary, of life. N?gritude, is compre things, instinctive secret The black man's hension through congeniality. Because of his is that the sources of his existence and the roots of Being are identical. If one wanted

a sociological to give of this interpretation one would that an agriculturist is here say poetry metaphysic, to an engineer it is not true that the prose. Actually, opposed the rapport black man has no techniques: between any human is always in one way or and the exterior world technical group I shall say that C?saire another. And is imprecise: inversely, the earth below like a carpet Saint Exup?ry's folding airplane is first of all of disclosure. the black man is a means However, a peasant; is "righteous it technique agricultural patience"; to impregnate trusts in life; it waits. To plant is the earth; after atom of remain motionless and watch: "each that, you must each instant brings forth a ripe fruit," than man gave, whereas the worker finds as much as he put into it; in the manufactured only product man grows his wheat: to minute with from minute he along himself and becomes more he intervenes goes beyond golden; silence for hundred times more is a chance

in this watchful wait before the fragile swelling belly, only to

is a microcosm protect. Ripe wheat for and rains was needed sun, wind is both the most natural thing and 38 the cooperation because of a blade of wheat it to grow; the most chance. improbable

Black Orpheus
Techniques peasant His existence have remains contaminated the great male the white but the black peasant, of the earth, the world's sperm. his work is the yearly patience;

is great vegetal coitus. Creating and nourished he of holy because repetition to plant, creates. To to eat, is to make nature. love with till, sexual pantheism of these poets is undoubtedly what will

The

impress us first of all: it is in this that they join the dances and
the phallic Oho May For, rites of the Negro-Africans. !Congo lying in your bed of forests, queen of tamed Africa the phalli of the mountains carry your banner high through my head, through my tongue, through my
you are a woman,

belly,

writes

Senghor.

And: again the soft belly of the dunes

of the day. . . .

and so I shall mount

and the gleaming

thighs

and Rab?arivelo
the earth's

:
the stone's sweat and the of

blood,

sperm

the world and Laleau: The And

Sultry Outraging

conical drum laments under the sky it is the very soul of the black man
spasms the of men calm of in rut, the lover's evening. sticky sobs

we Here, is no longer

are

a matter

far from Bergson's chaste asexual It intuition. of being with but rather congenial life,

of being in love with all its forms. For the white technician, an engineer. is first of all God orders chaos and pre Jupiter

scribes its laws; the Christian God conceives the world through his understanding and brings it into being through his will: the
relation between the created and 39 the creator is never carnal,

The Massachusetts
except

Review

a the Church for a few mystics whom looks upon with has nothing in so, erotic mysticism great deal of suspicion. Even common with it is the completely wait for a fecundity: passive are steeped come statuettes in alluvium: sterile penetration. We from the hands of the divine If the manufactured sculptor. us could worship their ancestors, objects they surrounding adore us as we adore the All-powerful. undoubtedly our black on the contrary, comes out of poets, Being like a penis becoming is an enor Creation erect; Nothingness would For

mous perpetual delivery;

on wind, the sea and the Negro in the finds

the world is flesh and the son of flesh;

on the rocks, in the sky, on the dunes, the softness of human he rubs him skin;

self against the sand's belly, against the sky's loins: he is "flesh of the flesh of this world"; he is "porous to all its breaths," to
all when This its pollens; he is both Nature's a woman he makes love with seems to him to be the celebration is like the female of his of tension and race, the its male; and sexual act of Being. balancing feeling patient, is

spermatic religion two complementary between an erect phallus, of being

the Mystery of a soul the dynamic deaf, more Thus

tendencies: and that more a growing

more

one of being feminine a sort of androgyny. basically

There you are

plant.

n?gritude

Upright
alluvium

and naked
you are and remember yourself as having been

but in reality you are the child of this parturient shadow feeding on lunar lactogen7 then you slowly take the form of a bole on this low wall jumped over by the dreams of flowers
and the perfume of summer at rest.

To feel, to believe that roots are pushing your feet and running and twisting like thirsty serpents
toward some subterranean spring .. .

(Rab?arivelo)

7 "lactogen":

This

is a neologism

in the French

text

as well.

40

Black Orpheus
And C?saire:
Wornout and and now you mother, wear are leafless husks. mother, You of are are you a calabash . . .9 a flamboyant8 tree

only a stand only

couis.

This

profound

unity as Michel

of vegetal

and has

sexual

symbols most

is cer

tainly the greatest originality of black poetry, especially

period of

in a

the shown, when, Carrouges to mineralize the human being. images used by white poets tend on the contrary, "animalizes" sea, sky "vegetalizes," C?saire, is a perpetual his poetry and stones. More coupling precisely, into animals, been metamorphosed and beasts metamor stones, stones, with plants vegetables, the Black man attests to a natural Eros; into men. Thus phosed in he reveals and incarnates it; to find a point of comparison one must the peasant back to Lucretius, go poetry, European of men and women who have when the mother celebrated Venus, poet who goddess, market. was not yet much more than a large agricultural seems to me to have had a cosmic Lawrence time, only for sexuality. works. Even so, this feeling remains very literary Rome In our feeling in his

seems basically to be this im However, n?gritude although a unity and plant erection of phallic mobile springing-forth, one could exhaust it with this single scarcely poetic growth, is another motif this collection, theme. There through running like a large
Those They

artery:
who know have invented remote neither powder corners of the nor compass of . . .

the most . . .

country

suffering.

To

the

absurd

utilitarian

agitation

of

the white

man,

the

black man opposes the authenticity gained from his suffering;

a found in semi-tropical in the countries, especially flamboyant: plant a or Antilles: flower, (translator's note) foinciana feacock 9 some couis: of tree found in the Antilles, kind (translator's apparently 8

note) 41

The Massachusetts
the black privilege though race of these is a chosen touching poems of himself of human for the white the race because of

Review
it has had the horrible even And to end, has taken for

depths are anti-Christian sees himself suffering man. upon

unhappiness. from beginning who

one might
is conscious the whole all, even On

call n?gritude a kind of Passion: the black man who

as the man himself and who suffers

the judgment
of man's

day, Armstrong's
sufferings.

trumpet will

be the

interpreter

(PaulNiger)
a re that this in no way immediately implies I was A while about Bergson ago signed speaking suffering. now to quote I would and Lucretius; be tempted that great Let us note and his "Dionysianism." of Christianity: Nietzsche adversary to penetrate Like the negro the the Dionysian attempts poet, a thousand brilliant of the day, and encounters, feet phantasm the inexpiable under is the Apollonian surface, suffering which one one wished essence of man. to systematize, the universal If the whole of nature would say that the Black man blends with in as much in as much movement which as he as he if one represents claims he considers sexual isMan and with Life congeniality of rebellious in his Passion

suffering. One will

psychiatrists is only one

feel the fundamental unity of this double

establish

the constantly tighter relationship and sexual desire. between anguish can be equally well which There proud upheaval or as suf as a desire plunging its roots into suffering described a sword across a vast This cosmic desire. fixed like fering evokes is both vegetal that C?saire growth "righteous patience" and patience the negro; balanced the in the very muscles of it resides suffering; against a thousand miles the black porter going it sustains

up the Niger

under a blinding
But of Nature

sun with

a fifty-pound

load

if in a certain sense, one can compare to a proliferation in an of suffering, fecundity one is also Dionysian?this other sense?and this by fecundity, it in its creative drowns its exuberance, goes beyond suffering, on his head. 42

Black Orpheus
abundance one must which have to understand this in order is poetry, love and dance. Perhaps, eros and joy, of suffering, indissoluble unity seen the Black men of Harlem dance frenetically which cements are the saddest sounds in the of the the multiple aspects its Nietzschian with lightness the

to the rhythm of "blues," In effect, world. rhythm black soul, communicates dionysian of these And ture, intuitions; poems?represents a black poet when he portrays

heavy

rhythm?tam-tam, jazz, "bounding" the temporality of negro existence. a better to his brothers fu prophesies deliverance to them in the form of

their

rhythm: What? rhythm

sound wave soul in the night across the forests, nothing?or a new

timbre
intonation

vigor dilation vibration which flows out by degrees into the marrow revulses10 in its progression an old sleeping body, takes it by the waist and spins it
and turns

and once more

sexual member,

vibrates in its hands,

its thighs, its vagina

in its loins, its

. . .

this basic experience of suf go still further: is ambiguous; black conscience to is going through it, fering historic. In effect, whatever become be the intolerable may it is not to that condition that iniquity of his present condition, the black man first refers when he proclaims that he has touched

But

one must

the heart of human suffering. He

having
10

has the horrible benefit of

poets, most of whom were

known

bondage.

For

these

revulses:

referring note)

to

the

medical

term

revulsion:

counter-irritant,

(translator's

43

The Massachusetts
born tury between 1900 and

Review
half a cen

earlier?lingers

1918, slavery?abolished on as a very real memory:

Each of my todays looks on my yesterday with large eyes rolling with rancor with
shame

Still real ismy stunned condition of the past of blows from knotted cords of bodies calcinated from toe to calcinated back of dead flesh of red iron firebrands of arms broken under the whip which is breaking loose . . . writes Damas, a poet . . .Often
Awaken

from Guiana.

And

the Haitian,

Brierre:

like me you feel stiffnesses

after murderous centuries

And

old wounds

bleed in your flesh .. .

the black man the of slavery, drank the centuries During and slavery to the last drop; is a past fact cup of bitterness nor their fathers have actually ex our authors which neither even from which it is also a hideous But nightmare perienced. awakened. the youngest of them are not yet sure of having one end of the earth to the other, black men?separated From by languages, politics a collective memory one aware only of recalls and the history This in common. of their will not in colonizers?have if be surprising were still 1789,

who, peasants terrors back to the Hundred that went the panicky man goes back to his prin war. Thus the black when Years' to him in two dimen revealed it is suddenly cipal experience, the still-fresh Pascal who memory of a historic past. Here, that man

the French

sions: it is both the intuitive seizure of the human condition and

relentlessly repeated his greatness and history, of metaphysics unexplain composite comes from the alluvium, his misery if able if he unexplainable that in order to understand he is still as God made man, him; was I am thinking of an irrational

one had to go back to the simple basic fact of man's downfall. 44

Black Orpheus
is in this sense that C?saire calls his race "the fallen race." in a certain sense I can see the rapprochement that can be between conscience and Christian conscience: black made the It And brazen which slavery man's white evokes law of slavery states the consequences recalls this other that of law of the Old The the Fault. Testament, abolition The white of

fact: Redemption. 1848 resembles after that of the insipid paternalism the Passion. The God after difference however, being, is not his own, is the innocent it belongs victim of to the white it. This to white is why man; his the con

historic

that the expiable fault that the black man discovers in the back
of his memory the black man

first fact of negro history is certainly a kind of original sin: but

is radically "dolorism." If cept of suffering opposed are for the most these poems part so violently anti-Christian, a hoax it is because the white man's is more in religion clearly the eyes of the negro than in the eyes of the European prole to make him share the tariate: this religion wants responsibility for a crime of which to persuade he is the victim; it wants him to see the kidnappings, the massacres, the rapes and the tortures as a legitimate which have covered Africa with blood, punish tests. Will that it also proclaims deserved ment, you say equal

ity for all men before God? Before God, yes. Only yesterday I
was reading : isworth
a child

in Esprit

these

lines

from

correspondent

in

Madagascar

I am as certain as you that the soul of a Malagasy

a white man. . . . Just as, before God, the soul of

the soul of
is worth the

soul of his father. However, your children drive it. One

if you have

an automobile,

you don't

let

can hardly more reconcile and colonialism Christianity to these sophisms, In opposition the black man?by elegantly. a simple as a former of his memory slave?affirms investigation that suffering is man's lot and that it is no less deserved for all that. He horror Christian with rejects stagnation, melancholy sensual masochistic and all the tendentious pleasure, humility to his submission; inducements he lives the absurdity of suffer 45

The Massachusetts
ing and

Review

in its pure form, in its injustice and in its gratuitousness; or he discovers this truth which is misunderstood thereby masked carries within its own itself by Christianity: suffering a to suffer, it is the dark side of it is by nature refusal; refusal onto revolt it opens and liberty. The black man negativity, as much as the in into history transforms promptly himself intuition of signs was a sheer ifestation his colored to him suffering a goal confers in the future. a collective past and as a short while ago, he Only a simple man of timeless instincts, on him fecundity. language: Now he calls to another

present surging of universal and brothers in quite

eternal

Negro pedlar of revolt you have known the paths of the world
ever since you were sold in Guin?e . . .

And:
Five centuries have seen you with weapons

in your hands and you have taught the exploiting passion for liberty. There

races

a black Epic:11 is already first the golden age of the era of dispersion then then the and captivity, Africa, the heroic and somber of conscience, times of great awakening and black heroes, then the of Toussaint Louverture revolts, fact of the abolition says C?saire?then of slavery?"unforgettable for definitive the struggle metamorphosis," liberation:

You are waiting for the next call the inevitable mobilization for that war which is yours has known only truces for there is no land where your blood has not flowed no language inwhich your color has not been insulted You smile, Black Boy, you sing
11 Epic: comparing (translator's the French the negro here Epic reads with "Geste" the themes as in Chanson of Medieval de Geste; is Sartre French epic poetry,

note)

46

Black Orpheus
you you dance cradle generations

which go out at all hours to the fronts of work and pain which tomorrow will assault bastilles onward toward the bastions of the future
in order to write in all languages

on the clear pages of all skies the declaration of your rights unrecognized
for more than five centuries . . .

into historicity, is temporalized, explodes n?gritude? with its Past and its Future?is inserted into Universal History, a state, nor even an existential it is no longer it is a attitude, to the evolution the black contribution of Human "Becoming"; a bouquet of taste, rhythm, ity is no longer savour, authenticity, Strange the black Present and a instincts: it is a dated enterprize, primitive long-suffering man construction and also a future. the Black Previously, sun in the name his place claimed in the of ethnic qualities; to life on his mission; his right and this now, he establishes comes to him from his historic like the proletariat's, mission, he has suffered from capitalistic because position: exploitation more a love most when than all the others, he has acquired than all the others. of liberty more he necessarily pursues for his own deliverance: a sense And the of revolt he of and is the all, because liberation

and decisive

turn:

race

is transmuted

oppressed, he works

of hope Black messenger you know all the hymns of the world even those of the timeless building-works But, after

of the Nile.

geneousness Sometimes

in the interior still believe homo that, can we And how can one say that it exists? of n?gritude? in some it is lost innocence which had its existence hope City. which can be realized it contracts Sometimes only with it

faraway past, and sometimes within the walls of the future Nature spreads in a moment itself out of

fusion and sometimes pantheistic to coincide with the whole of Human history 47

The Massachusetts
ity; sometimes Is it is an existential of negro-African it being After created? after all,

Review
attitude and sometimes the

objective covered? who works

ensemble

traditions.

Senghor Does the poet who would grees of n?gritude. for his colored invite them to become brothers does he disclose

"collaborate"; of each poet,

all, there in the prefaces he writes for the seems to distinguish de between be more the Prophet or negro,

Is it being dis are black men

to them what they are, by a sort of poetic psy or liberty? For the authentic Is n?gritude choanalysis? necessity as con is it a matter from essences, of conduct deriving negro,

or is one a negro in the way from a principle, derive sequences are believers, that the religious that is to say in fear and faithful remorse in perpetual for never in anguish, being trembling, what one would like to be? Is it a given fact or a value? enough or of a moral Is it a intuition The concept? object of empiric Or does meditation of meditation? it? Is it conquest poison never and in the immedi when authentic unmeditated except Is it a systematic of the black soul, or a Platonic explanation one can approach ever without which indefinitely Archetype our engineer's common Is it, for black men, like attaining? Or do some shared thing in the world? sense, the most widely ate? have will and if so, does it have its chosen ones? One answer that it is all this question by saying undoubtedly And I agree: like all of these at once, and still other things. a shimmer and of being is notions, N?gritude anthropological of needing-to-be; it: both oath and it makes you and you make it, like grace; passion. But there we

even more in it: the is something important racism. have said, creates a kind of antiracist negro himself, to dominate he desires the the world: He in no way wishes

abolition of all kinds of ethnic privileges;

ity with

he asserts his solidar

the oppressed of every color. After that, the subjective, as Hegel of n?gritude ethnic notion says, existential, "passes," one has of the proletariat: and into that which objective, positive says: "For C?saire,cWhite' symbolizes precise. Senghor capital, . . When . as Negro work. about the symbolizes just writing about the worldwide black men of his race, he is writing prole it tarian struggle." It is easy to say, not so easy to think. And 48

Black Orpheus
is certainly N?gritude of race does crete not just by accident that are also militant Marxists. not mix with the notion the most ardent cantors of Nevertheless, of class: the former the notion is con

one be and abstract; the latter, universal and particular; to to what and the other calls comprehension, longs Jaspers of a psycho-biological the first is the product syn intellection; construction with is a methodic and the other cretism, starting In fact, N?gritude like the up-beat appears [un experience. a dialectical and the theoretical accented of beat] progression: the posi is the thesis; affirmation of white supremacy practical as an antithetical is the moment of tion of N?gritude value they at preparing of the is for de in a raceless human society. Thus N?gritude being to" and not an "arrival it is a "crossing at," a itself, stroying a black means and not an end. A poem by Jacques Roumain, of this new furnishes the most moving evidence communist, know that it aims negativity. and these moment But this negative black men who use it know is not sufficient in itself, this perfectly well; or realization the synthesis

ambiguity:
Africa
you Like are

I have held on to your memory

in me in a wound a thorn

Africa

like a guardian mascot

make of me the stone

in the center of the village

of your sling

of my mouth the lips of your wound of my knees the broken columns of your humbling
however

I want
peasant

to be only of your race

workers of all countries.

With his

what

sadness

he for

still

retains

for a moment

what

he has

decided to abandon! With

as a negro pride is in him like Africa to be only the empire of of afflicted

what pride as a man he will

other race

strip

"a thorn conscience.

He who that men! says both in a wound" and that he wants of One the oppressed, has not left more step and N?gritude

the universal

will disappear completely:

the negro himself makes of what 49

The Massachusetts
was

Review
ac

a the mysterious of black blood, bubbling geographical determinism: of universal the inconsistent cident, product Is it all that climate extended space which creates clan tribe nation
skin race gods

our inexorable dissimilarity.12 have the courage But the poet does not completely for this rationalization of the racial the responsibility a bitter one sees that he limits himself to questioning; visible beneath his will search black men to unite. to accept concept;

road: Strange to find their themselves within offended, deep most secret pride; have found it at last, it chal and when they its own right to exist: through supreme lenges generosity they his bow and arrows abandon abandoned it, just as Philoctetes at Neoptolemus. Thus finds the secret the rebel C?saire in the bottom revolts of his heart: he is of royal blood: ?it
never an

is regret humiliated and

of his

is true that there is in you something which

been able to an a desire,

has

anger, yield, a violence in short a scorn, impatience, not mud not veins ; pride, your carry gold,

a sadness, . . . and now servitude.

King .But he

you have been King thrusts

in the past. this temptation:

immediately There
as far

aside

is a law that I cover up with a chain unbroken

as the confluence of fire which violates me

which
gamated

purifies me and burns me with my prism of amal

gold. ... I shall perish. But one. Whole.

that has snatched of man is perhaps this ultimate nudity his black armor, from him the white rags that were concealing that very armor; it is perhaps and rejects and that now destroys for Negri that best symbolizes this colorless N?gritude: nudity It
12 there Although should be the a poem question itself mark and here, note) Sartre's there interpretation in is none of the it text that suggest from which

this was

translated,

(translator's

50

Black Orpheus
tude when is not a state, it is a simple going-beyond-itself, it is love.

It is when n?gritude renounces itself that it finds itself; it is

the colored man?and it accepts losing that it has won: he the pride of his color. He is the asked to renounce be one who on this ridge between is walking past particularism? alone?can

which he has just climbed?and future universalism, which will be the twilight of his n?gritude; he is the one who looks to the end of particularism in order to find the dawn of the universal.
Undoubtedly, class in order the white worker also becomes conscious of his to deny the advent of a class since he wants it, less society: but once again, the definition of class is objective; it sums up only the conditions of the white worker's alienation;

whereas it is in the bottom of his heart that the negro finds race, and he must tear out his heart. Thus N?gritude is dialectical; it
is not only nor above it represents "going the blossoming a situation beyond" all of atavistic defined by instincts; free con

sciences. N?gritude is a sadmyth full of hope, born of Evil and pregnant with future Good, living like a woman who is born to
die her and who feels her own death an rest, absolute even in the richest moments of life; renounces it also lived it is an unstable itself, an explosive that knows attitude Because man the black fixity, a pride which for it is transitory: and by free men a it is tension between can no longer enter

whereas

it is the Announcer of its birth and of its death agony,

remains the existential to the fullest. into which chosen

nostalgic

absolutely, Past

completely and a future in which it will be replaced by new values, N?gritude adorns itself with a tragic beauty that finds expression only in poetry. Because it is the living and dialectical unity of so many opposites, because it is a Complex defying analysis, N?gritude is only the multiple unity of a hymn that can reveal both it and the flashing beauty of the Poem which
Breton ceptualize royal poetry calls "explosante-fixe" its various aspects Because would any necessarily attempt end up to con showing

its relativity,?even
consciences?and alone that will

though it is lived in the absolute through

because allow the poem is an absolute, it is the unconditional of this at aspect

titude to be fixed. Because it is subjectivity written 51

in the objec

The Massachusetts
tive, N?gritude must take form

Review

subjectivity-object; will find its most

that is to say in a in a poem, it is an Archetype and a Value, it in aesthetic be transparent symbol values; because

cause it is a call and a gift, it will make itself heard and offer itself only by means of a work of art which is both a call to the
spectator's content of mysterious self. One Narcissus' words and is the and absolute liberty generosity. N?gritude it is the poem the poem, like a thing of the world, and open, obscure and suggestive; it is the poet him must suicide, beyond go tension of Narcissism and triumph soul beyond culture, beyond all psychic luminous of un facts, night and of what Ba choice of the impossible still further; of the of the acceptance of "the law of the

deliberate knowing, taille calls "torture" world heart," and refusal double

intuitive [supplice], in the name of the world

retraction, contradictory postulation, demanding For in essence, Poetry. of generosity?N?gritude is, expansion once at least, and the authentic the most revolutionary plan most pure poetry come from the same source.

And if the sacrifice is achieved one day, what will happen then? What will happen if, casting off his n?gritude for the
sake of the Revolution, the black man no longer wishes to con

sider himself only a part of the proletariat? What will happen if he then allows himself to be defined only by his objective
he condition? against white capitalism, if, in order to struggle the source of po to assimilate white technics? Will undertakes the great black will etry run dry? or in spite of everything, does not matter: it flows? That river color the sea into which each in each era, circumstances of history its poetry; situa elect a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch, by creating or that can go beyond themselves tions that can be expressed era has

sometimes the poetic ?lan coincides with only through Poetry; us Let the revolutionary ?lan and sometimes they diverge. to black men chance that will permit greet today the historic shout out the great negro cry so hard that the world's foundations will be shaken.18
13 C?saire, Les armes miraculeuses, p. 52 156.