for everything that is nègre is a slice of myself2. I didn’t like the poem because it implied I was a melon, and on my list of detestable things melon came between carrot and clove. Later on I found more to my liking the more evocative poems in which one sighted from a distance exquisite négresses (we say nègès in Kreyòl) bathing in a river. It was Léon Laleau who woke me up from my adolescent torpor with a short poem, “Trahison” (Betrayal), published in his collection Musique nègre (Negro music) in 1931: D’Europe, sentez-vous cette souffrance et ce désespoir à nul autre égal d’apprivoiser avec des mots de France ce cœur qui m’est venu du Sénégal.
other
From Europe, do you feel my pain and my despair like none
of ever taming with words from France this heart of mine from Senegal. Then came the whiplash of René Depestre’s Minerai noir (Black Ore), published in 1956, in which he points out that after the extermination of the Indians “they turned to the muscular river of Africa to ensure the continuity of despair.”3 We have now come to History, and I remember my passion for those stories full of vigor, hope, and folly, in which in order to conquer their freedom slaves hurled themselves against the grapeshot of the soldiers of the Napoleonic army led by General Leclerc. It was not in some parlor room but on the battlefields of Ravine-à-Couleuvres, Crête-à-Pierrot, and Vertières that the word nègre would take on a new meaning, from slave to human. The generals who fought in that horrible colonial war would hold on to the word after Haiti’s independence. Art Nègre But this word, dry, naked, without the blood and the laughter that irrigate it, is no more than an insult in the mouth of a racist. I don’t understand why we grant to an individual so much power over us. He only has to utter that one five-letter word and we go into shock, hands and feet tied, as though the word was stronger than the chains of slavery. The slaves did not do the revolution so that we could be at the mercy of the word nègre. 2 An alternate translation of these two lines is “I love black folks / for everything that is black is a slice of myself.” However, although it is an accurate translation, the term “black folks” still does not have the polysemous resonance of nègre. 3 The original French quotation is “on se tourna vers le fleuve musculaire de l’Afrique pour assurer la relève du désespoir.” –Translator’s note.
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