Poetry
Musique nègre
Not translated into English
Léon Laleau · 1931
Synopsis
A collection of poems in which a poet of French culture questions what he owes to Africa. The best known, Trahison, speaks of the despair of a heart from Senegal that matches neither the language nor the customs of the one who bears it, and that he must express in the words of France. Other pieces, Jazz, Cannibale, Silhouette and Sacrifice, touch on music, relations between colonists and Creoles, and rites brought from Africa.
Context
The collection appeared at the author's own expense in 1931; Mémoire d'encrier reissued it in Montreal in 2003. Île en île regards Trahison as his best-known indigenist poem, and Jean-Paul Sartre, in Orphée noir, the preface he gave in 1948 to Senghor's anthology, names Laleau among the poets who pour into French, a language “half dead” for them, “the fire of their skies and of their hearts”.
Who it is for
Verse in French, available again since its Quebec reissue; a website devoted to the literatures of the islands offers five pieces.
Prizes and reception
The collection earned its author Pierre Guéguen's praise as the “black Max Jacob”.