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Aime Cesaire, Note/JQQlt ofa Ren,m to the 19 Nati.,.. u,nJ, trans. and ed. Clayton Eshleman and Anncne Smith: in trod.Andre Breton {1947, repr.. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001). Sartre thus contrasts the revolution• 2O ary authenticity of those who live in exile from Being and in the poetic gap with a poetry that claims 10 be that of "the furure revolution" but which "has remained in the hands of the young well·intenrioned bourgeois who draw lhcir inspi· ration from their psychological contradictions. in the antinomy of their ideal and their class, in the uncertainty of the old bourgeois language." Sanre. "BlackOrpheus," p.14. Frantz Fanon. Buzek Sltin, Whire MJJSl!s, 21 trans. Charles Lam Markmann(NewYork: Grove Press.1991). pp. 133-55. The translation has been corrected: Fanon does say ·unforgiving blow" and not a "blow that will no1 be forgiven" as the translator hasil Aime Cesaire, "Len re a Maurice Thorcz," 22 in "Lire": Le DisC()Ur.t SIU� C()UJnkl/isme d'Almt Cisoin:, ed. George Nga! (Paris: Presence Africaine. 1994). p.136. l3 I bid, p.157. lbid .. p.138. 24 25 Ibid. Aime Cesa.ire, "Discours sur la negritude," 26 in Discour.r sur le cgilJnkllbme {Paris: Presence Afrlcaine. 2004� p. 82. The lecrure was given on February 26, 1987. al Florida lnlemational Uni versity in MiamL This is contrary to Marcien Towa's claim 21 that "ii is, no doubt. partly under the influence of Scnghor that Sartre so easily likened Negritude 10 a search for 'the black soul' and an 'antiracist racism.'" Towa contrasts what is, in his view, a Senghorian Negritude marked by religiosity with a more revolutionary Negritude that be sees in Ccsaire. Thus, if Sartre speaks of the black soul. it is because he is under the "influence• ofScnghor. Towa, Poesie tk la nqrifllde. Appnxht struauraliste (Sherbrooke. QC: Naaman.1983). p. 266. Sartre, "BlackOrpheus,"p.51. 28 29 Ibid.. p. 52. 30 Sengbor, Antlwlogie, p. 135. 31 Ibid. 32 This is bow Scnghor describes this onto! ogyofviial forces. to which we will return: "'lhccn· tire universe, visible and invisible-from God to the grain of sand, including spirits, ancestors, ani mals, plants and minerals is composed of'com municatlng vessels; interdependent viial forces, that all emanate from God. Living man, because he is a force endowed withjiuum, is capable of rein-farci111 bis vital force or, through negligence. defqrci111 it. though he can only do Ibis by making other forces act or Jelling them make him acl" Birago Diop, La Tl()llvtllUX,:qntesd'AntlJlkJu Koumba (Parts: Presence Afrlcaine. 1958), pp. 15-16. Ibid.,p.21. 55 We find numerous examples of this "play�, ing," which is not simply translation in tbework of
Three Poems about the Road Hiva Panahi
Souleymone BachiL Diagne
Diop, who is a master of a style of writing that baa been called "feigned orality." He has beenablc1o employ it with subtlety, unlike otherauthorswhc, have made it into a mechanical writingtechnJque (speaklng adifferm1language in French)and wbo end up being tiresome: when all is gap, there is no more gap. Looking back at the movement's bea:in 3S nings in a 1976 lecture "La n!gritude, co111n1e culrure des peuples noirs, ne saurait i!trc dl· passee," Senghor explains: ",Dluring the fit11 years or the movement. in the Latin Quancr Negritude was. I freely recognize, a son oi moral gheno. a gheno tinted with racism In the sense that with the enthusiasm of the rc1um to the source and the discovery of the black Grail (to speak like Sartre). we came to find Albo European values insipid.... Nevenheless. we were not 10111 in coming out of this gheno. I have spoken cbe where or my personal experience more lbao once: how two years of contemplation in the F/'4'n/stalags as a prisoner ofwar got me out, CUttd me of the black gheno." Leopold S6dar Sengbor, lifJerti S: u Diawgue des cuin,res (Paris: £ditio ns du Seuil, 1993), p. 107. Senghor,AnthiJwgie, p.135. 36
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