French Guiana (France) / All works
Poetry · A way to begin
Pigments
Léon-Gontran Damas · 1937
Synopsis
Short poems that tell what assimilation costs: learned shame, stifled culture, the European suit imposed on the colonised. Written in French, they break verse, metre and metaphor, and make rhythm and the body into weapons of resistance. One poem, “Et caetera”, calls on the Senegalese riflemen to leave the Germans in peace rather than fight for those who enlisted them.
Context
The book appeared in Paris in 1937 from Guy Lévis Mano, in a print run of three hundred copies, with a preface by Robert Desnos and a woodcut by Frans Masereel. The first book of poems published by one of the three founders of négritude, it is regarded as the movement's manifesto. At the declaration of war, in 1939, it was seized and banned for undermining state security, because of its appeals to Black soldiers. The following year Damas published the account of an investigative mission to Guiana.
Who it is for
Very short poems, to be read aloud, where rhythm counts as much as meaning; the book can be read in a short time.
Prizes and reception
Seized in 1939, it is regarded today as the first book of négritude, before those of Césaire and Senghor.
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