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    Negritude - Leon Damas

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    Ruben Feliciano
    Leon-Gontran Damas was a French Guianan poet born in 1912 who helped found the journal L'Étudiant Noir in Paris in 1934 with Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor. Through his poetry, Damas refused the label of "black" given by the French and instead claimed his own identity as Nègre. His poem "Sleepless Night" uses the metaphor of waltzing to represent the process of cultural assimilation African children underwent in the French colonies, being taught European history and culture rather than their own heritage.

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    Negritude - Leon Damas

    Uploaded by

    Ruben Feliciano
    338 views14 pages
    Leon-Gontran Damas was a French Guianan poet born in 1912 who helped found the journal L'Étudiant Noir in Paris in 1934 with Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor. Through his poetry, Damas refused the label of "black" given by the French and instead claimed his own identity as Nègre. His poem "Sleepless Night" uses the metaphor of waltzing to represent the process of cultural assimilation African children underwent in the French colonies, being taught European history and culture rather than their own heritage.

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    Leon Damas and Negritude

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    Leon-Gontran Damas was a French Guianan poet born in 1912 who helped found the journal L'Étudiant Noir in Paris in 1934 with Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor. Through his poetry, Damas refused the label of "black" given by the French and instead claimed his own identity as Nègre. His poem "Sleepless Night" uses the metaphor of waltzing to represent the process of cultural assimilation African children underwent in the French colonies, being taught European history and culture rather than their own heritage.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    338 views14 pages

    Negritude - Leon Damas

    Uploaded by

    Ruben Feliciano
    Leon-Gontran Damas was a French Guianan poet born in 1912 who helped found the journal L'Étudiant Noir in Paris in 1934 with Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor. Through his poetry, Damas refused the label of "black" given by the French and instead claimed his own identity as Nègre. His poem "Sleepless Night" uses the metaphor of waltzing to represent the process of cultural assimilation African children underwent in the French colonies, being taught European history and culture rather than their own heritage.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 14

    Negritude

    and
    Leon-Gontran
    Damas

    Born March 28, 1912


    in Cayenne, French
    Guiana
    from a comfortable
    middle-class mulatto
    family

    He met Aime Cesaire and Leopold Sedar


    Senghor
    while studying in Paris.
    In 1934 they founded
    LEtudiant Noir
    or The Black Student.

    the

    journal

    It explored American-derived ideas of a


    Negro renaissance.

    Pigments, his first


    collection of
    poems, was
    published in 1937.

    Through his poetry,


    Damas refused the
    black title given by
    the French and
    claimed his own
    identity: Ngre.

    It is an attack, a
    cry of pain, an
    anguished
    inventory of the
    personal loss of
    Africa, of Black
    identity, of
    discomfort and
    revolt at the

    Sleepless Night
    My friends Ive waltzed
    waltzed
    more than any
    of my ancestors
    the Gauls
    to such a point my blood
    still beats
    to the Viennese

    My friends Ive waltzed


    waltzed my childhood through
    wandering on
    some blue Danube
    white Danube
    red Danube
    green Danube
    pink Danube
    red green pink or blue
    whichever

    My friends Ive waltzed


    Madly
    Waltzed
    to such a point that often
    I thought I had an arm around the waist
    of Uncle Gobineau
    or of Cousin Hitler
    or of that good Aryan that gums his years
    on some park bench

    Nuit Blanche as a phrase


    means Sleepless Night
    But it literally means White
    Night
    The waltz is a European dance
    that would have been taught to
    Damas from a very early age.
    It symbolizes the process of
    cultural assimilation that many
    colonials went through.

    Sleepless Night
    My friends Ive waltzed
    waltzed
    more than any
    of my ancestors
    the Gauls
    to such a point my blood
    still beats
    to the Viennese

    my ancestors /
    the Gauls is an ironic
    statement.
    African children in the
    French colonies are not
    taught of their own
    heritage.
    Instead they are taught
    European history and
    culture.

    My friends Ive waltzed


    waltzed my childhood through
    wandering on
    some blue Danube
    white Danube
    red Danube
    green Danube
    pink Danube
    red green pink or blue
    whichever

    Blue Danube refers to


    the famous waltz
    composed by Yohann
    Strauss II
    blue /Da/nube
    white /Da/nube
    red /Da/nube
    These lines follow the
    Viennese beat, which
    emphasizes how much it
    has been engrained into
    the persona.

    My friends Ive waltzed


    Madly
    Waltzed
    to such a point that often
    I thought I had an arm around the waist
    of Uncle Gobineau
    or of Cousin Hitler
    or of that good Aryan that gums his years
    on some park bench

    Arthur de Gobineau wrote An Essay


    on the Inequality of the Human Races
    and developed the theory of the
    Aryan master race.

    In
    a
    blunt,
    dry,
    vivid
    style,
    unashamedly plain language, staccato
    rhythms and acridly witty puns,
    Damas short poems lay bare their his
    often violent rejection of white
    European
    ci-vi-li-za-tion.

    Damas is Negro and insists


    on his Negro-ness and on his
    condition as a Negro.

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