[In the following essay, Kimenyi defines the characteristics of Negritude, moving on to expound on the reasons for its rise and popularity.]

Books, conferences and hundreds of essays, supportive and critical, have been devoted to Négritude. The question which has never been discussed is why Négritude became so popular. Négritude as a literary movement denouncing oppression, political domination, economic exploitation and intellectual and cultural alienation was indeed predictable. Literature, or any other type of art, is not independent of the spatio-temporal factors in which the writer lives. Whether he is committed or not, the political, economic and social conditions witnessed by the author will be reflected in the work.

Since Africans have been subjected to all forms of humiliation, were not responsible for their own destiny, had been forced to negate themselves, to reject their cultures (values, customs, languages, religions, etc.), Négritude had to be both a reaction against European acculturation and reaffirmation of traditional African culture. The mission of the French colonialist was to civilize the African, to change the Negro into French in manners, language, and in all aspects of behaviour. As Frantz Fanon put it: “… for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white. Long ago the black man admitted the unarguable superiority of the white man and all his efforts have aimed at achieving a white existence.” Négritude has unquestionably been accepted as a legitimate literary movement because of its characteristic form and content, or in other words, its themes and style, expression and substance.

CHARACTERISTICS OF NéGRITUDE

Since Négritude was an intellectual liberation movement, it had to divest itself of the standard French literary form. To communicate with the outside world, the francophone African writer had to use French, the colonial language. It was a necessary tool. For this reason, the writers had to make this language their own. However, even though it seems to be independent of the traditional French literature, Négritude has very much been influenced by Marxism, existentialism and the French surrealist movement headed by Andre Breton, as one can tell by reading Aimé Césaire's hermetic poetic work Return to my native land. Emphasis was put on rhythm, music, images and symbols. Former African and Caribbean writers were copying and imitating French writers, which was in a way understandable since they had no traditional national written literature. They were writing about the so-called “universal” themes and using the French style. They had little to offer as far as their readership was concerned. Before this term was coined by Aimé Césaire, Etienne Lero, the young Martinican intellectual who died too early, was indeed at the origin of Négritude as an intellectual and cultural liberation movement. In the journal Légitime Défense he suggested that Black artists be themselves, have their own literary form, discuss themes that interest them and cease imitating French poets. Lero is at the origin of the pan-African art concept since he suggests that instead of French models, African and Caribbean poets should turn to other Black artists, especially the ones in the United States such as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen.

The recurrent themes are on African history, African values and culture. The poets sing Africa, they glorify the African woman, write about the African mother, African heroes such as Chaka and Sundiata, fauna, flora, Zambezi, Nile and Congo rivers. There are many poems about African masks, about the griots, tom toms, totems, rituals and ancestor worship. Praised were those characteristics or values of African culture which were mocked by Europeans. This is illustrated in the following poem of Bernard Dadié:

… I thank you Lord, for having made me Black
for having made me the sum of all griefs …
White is the color of all occasions—Black the color of everyday. …
I am content—with the shape of my head—made to carry the world.
Satisfied with the shape of my nose—made to inhale the four winds of the World.
Pleased—with the shape of my legs—
ready to run the end of the Earth.
… Yet I am content—to carry the World
Happy with my short arms
with my long arms
with my thick lips. …

A lot of stereotypes are abundant in Négritude poetry also. The poets claim that there is more harmony between the African and the universe. The African is linked with cosmic forces. Compared to Europeans, Africans have more compassion, sympathy and understanding. The Negro is innocent and childlike. He is portrayed as happy, thus the stereotyped “Negro laughter.” The Negro is supposed also to have rhythm as Senghor defines it:

This is rhythm in the masterpieces of Negro art, especially sculpture. It is composed of a theme-sculptural form—which is set in opposition to a sister theme, as inhalation is to exhalation, and that is repeated. It is not the kind of symmetry that gives rise to monotony, rhythm is alive and free. … This is how rhythm affects what is least intellectual in us, tyrannically, to make us penetrate to the spirituality of the object; and that character of abandon which is ours is itself rhythmic.

FACTORS THAT MAKE NéGRITUDE POPULAR

Given the themes and aspects of Négritude, why did this movement become so popular, since it doesn't seem to differ from other Negro literature, such as the one in the United States or that of African English speaking countries. Four factors seem responsible for its expansion and diffusion: (1) European curiosity, (2) sponsorship from liberal intellectuals, (3) status of the poets, and (4) the propaganda of the French government.

At a time when Europe was demoralized (World War I, World War II), young intellectuals were seeking new values and a new philosophy. They were sincerely curious about the new African literature. For the first time they discovered the existence of African culture through the works of Picasso and Matisse who had been very much influenced by abstract African art. Since the Négritude movement had a literary form which was different from the standard French form as well as a hermetic character (especially Césaire's poetry), people were curious about it. The European intellectuals thought that this type of poetry would allow them to penetrate and understand the Black mind and the authentic African culture. They believed that Négritude had the same artistic value, the same depth and the same power as the African visual art. This attitude was of course wrong since Négritude was not, like the traditional oral literature, a collective product of African society influenced by the European civilization and culture.

Négritude was not similar to traditional ritual, epic, pastoral and lyric poetry. It was not transmitted in African language from African ancestors. Négritude poetry was a reaction against the imposition of European values. It was also written in French by Africans and Antillans who had been assimilated and who could not translate adequately certain African cultural concepts. It did not represent the African world in the way that visual art and oral literature did.

European curiosity about Négritude does not explain sufficiently the reason for its “popularity.” There were excellent African poets from English speaking countries who denounced colonialism and defended African values. It is also true that the French had a policy of assimilation and that the British did not. The French wanted to turn the African intellectual into a French person, but a French person without the same rights as the French in France. The African Anglophone was left alone, but his own African culture was despised and ridiculed. The popularity of Négritude is best explained in terms of its sponsorship from many places. Since it was influenced by the Afro-American poets, especially those of the Harlem Negro Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Sterling Brown and James Weldon Johnson, these poets made it known in the United States. Langston Hughes, for instance, had edited books on Négritude. It was not because of its artistic value that Négritude was diffused in the United States; it was rather in the spirit of Pan-Africanism, with the support of W. E. B. Dubois, whose purpose was to unite all people of African descent to fight the same enemy and defend the same interests.

Jean-Paul Sartre played a very important role in both the shaping and the diffusion of Négritude. An outstanding figure among European intellectuals, the leading intellectual of the time, and considered by many as the greatest philosopher of the century, Sartre wrote Orphée Noire as a preface to the Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, a work edited by Léopold Senghor. The preface explained and endorsed Négritude poetry.

It should also be added that Négritude is almost always associated with Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Leon Damas, all of whom are very important political figures. Other excellent Négritude poets, such as David Diop and Bernard Dadié, are less known. It is interesting to note that very important writers such as the great novelist from Caméroun, Mongo Béti or the greatest Sénégalese novelist, movie producer and director, Sembéné Ousmane are less known than these poets. It is as if African French literature consisted only of poetry. There are libraries filled with Senghor's writings. African high schools and universities have courses on Senghor since the curriculum is developed in France. Some French universities do not allow graduate students to write their dissertations on the so-called “militant” writers, but grants are given to those students who are writing and doing research on Senghor. Senghor himself has sponsored conferences on Négritude and on his own work in Dakar where the world's Africanists came to praise him.

NéGRITUDE AND EUROPE

Senghor, the Négritude poet par excellence, has been conferred awards and medals from different European governments such as Belgium, Holland, Germany, Portugal. He has been awarded honoris causa doctorate degrees by American universities. He was named in 1977 “the prince of poetry” by the Association of French Poets. The Sénégalese poet is victim of his own popularity. When Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize for literature, his refusal was based on the danger of accepting the award. He felt he would lose his freedom, his reason for being. He would write to please those who give awards.

Senghor's type of literature has been sponsored by European governments and propagated precisely because it is not a “revolutionary” literature. It is a “romantic” literature, as the South African, Ezekiel Mphahlele calls it, or a “backward” one to use Mpomo's expression, since it still claims that Africa also has a culture. Of course each society has a culture. Society and culture are not independent of each other. Each implies the other. A society cannot exist without a culture and a culture cannot exist without a society. The Négritude poet writes about African culture and asks the European to accept it because it can contribute to the “universal culture,” the term used by Senghor. This culture is supposed to be more humane. Thus, Senghor sees himself as the messiah of the White man.

In his poem New York, he asks Whites to accept Harlem for the Whites' own survival:

… New York! I say to New York to let the black blood flow into your blood

Cleaning the rust from your steel articulations like an oil of life. …

Whether the Négritude poets, especially Senghor, know it or not, the Europeans like this poetry not only because it is romantic and talks about an unreal past instead of looking at the present but also because it is racist. The Black poet praises the European superiority by stressing the African inferiority. For instance, Césaire in his poem Return to my native land, suggests this very inferiority:

… Those who invented neither gunpowder nor the compass
Those who never learnt to conquer steam or electricity
Those who never explored the seas or the skies
But they know the farthest corners of the land of anguish
Those who never knew any journey save that of abduction
Those who never learnt to kneel in docility
Those who were domesticated and christianed. …

Although these verses may be true in one sense, they can be taken literally to mean that Africa did not contribute to humanity in both culture and technology. These poets ignored the works of their contemporaries, such as the Sénégalese Egyptologist Cheik Anta Diop and the Afro-American historian William Chancellor who have demonstrated beyond doubt that Africa has participated in the World civilization. Although they emphasize African values in their poems, these poets seem not to know what the contributions of Africa to science, technology, and humanity really are. They appear ignorant of African history: the succession of the Mali Empire, the Ghana Empire, the Songhai Empire with its intellectual city Timbuktu, where African and Arab scholars met at the university to exchange ideas and which had weakened and collapsed as did the Roman, the Egyptian, the Turkish and Greek empires.

Senghor, in many cases has repeatedly stated that Africans differ from Europeans, which he seems as complementary. The “European mind,” he says, “is analytic by utilization and the African mind intuitive by participation.” In other places he writes:

… ils (whites) ont plus d'esprit que nous
nous (negroes) avons plus d'âme qu'eux …
… l'émotion est nègre
la raison est hellene. …

What this means in Senghor's view is that Europeans are more logical, whereas Negroes don't have to be because they are more gifted. They have intuition. They feel things because of their cosmic link with the universe. This statement has evident racial overtones. Even if it were true that indeed Whites and Negroes are conceptually different and have a different methodology, this has nothing to do with race. He doesn't seem to ignore the view that the way people think, behave, value things, relate themselves to the world, is not innate but learned. Culture is trained behavior transmitted from one generation to another. If Afro-Americans appreciate music and dance, it is not because they have “soul,” but because of the importance that Blacks in the United States put on them. The principal way for these people to survive was through entertainment, art, and sports. They have excelled in this domain precisely because academic life was closed to them. Note that although they do very well in sports, they cannot compete in tennis and swimming. So it may be indeed possible that Africans are more emotional and Europeans more rational but this depends largely on the culture, which is in turn the product of the relationship between man and his environment. Water would not have the same value in both desert areas and non-desert environments. In some Arab countries there are water ministries. If Igbo of Nigeria did not have a government, it is because they were a homogenous society. Rwanda which was one of the most sophisticated kingdoms had a central government, because people belonging to different ethnic groups had to live together. If certain people of Zaire and Tanzania eat insects it is because they cannot find meat which gives them the proteins that their bodies need. If in all Africa societies' respect is given to elders, it is because experience plays a key role in these societies where formal education did not exist. If polygamy is universal, it is because of the value of immortality in all African cultures. In the African concept, immortality occurs only when the person can not be remembered. To ensure this immortality, it is necessary to have as many wives as possible—if one can afford it—so that one has many descendants who will worship you.

Senghor sincerely believes that Africans and Europeans can complement each other, the former by teaching the Europeans how to be humane, to love, and to forgive; the latter can teach the Africans how to use the cartesian discursive method. The Black-White relationship is thus seen to be antithetical. His poetry is conciliatory. The Africans should show forgiveness and gratitude. Even though the Europeans destroyed African culture, they taught Africans mathematics and French, the language Senhor likes to use because it is “the most logical, the most abstract and the most expressive.” It is no wonder Négritude is associated to Francophonie, a political movement sponsored and founded by Senghor himself and which advocates cultural unity and cooperation between former French colonies and the French government. Africa needs Europe just as a child needs a mother, thinks Senghor. To remove Europe would be like cutting the umbilical cord as he states in his poem, “Prayer to the Masks.”

… The Africa of Empires lies dying
it is the agony of a pitiful princess
And also Europe to whom we are bund by the navel. …

That Négritude be a reaction and yet have racial overtones is understandable. Wherever there has been contact between the White and the Negro, it has led to the same type of experience: discrimination and oppression. The Negroes of the diaspora: Afro-Americans, Afro-Antillans, Afro-Iberians, all have an African heritage. But the Whites have destroyed it. If all these Negroes manifest the same behaviour, it is because they come from the same cultural background, have undergone the same existential experiences, and not because of their “Negro-ness.”

The fact also that humanity can benefit from African culture is undeniable. All cultures have been borrowing from each other. In order for a culture to survive, it cannot remain in isolation. If the Mediterranean area has been the cradle of civilization, it is because of its privileged geographic position as the crossroad of all cultures and civilizations: African, Asian, and European. All powers that succeeded each other in that region: Egyptian, Babylonian, Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Turk …, brought elements of their own specific cultures and civilizations and those of the societies they conquered.

The mission of the Négritude movement was already finished in the fifties. Africa is now faced with new realities. There is recognition that Africa has a history and a culture. Writers should think of the future and the present; writing about the past is romantic and avoids new responsibilities. To keep portraying the Negro as innocent, nice, forgiving, simple, perfect, in harmony with nature … is a distortion. The Negro, as Ezekiel Mphahlele says, is a human being like anyone else, capable of loving and hating, who can rape, who can express anger, who can take revenge and exploit. The Negro is fighting for his rights and freedom as a human being, not as a Negro.

References

Césaire, A. 1947. Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. Paris: Présence Africaine.

Fanon, F. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, Inc.

Kimenyi, A. 1979. Les savants comme les autres: les Noirs américains. Jeune Afrique no. 956. Paris: Groupe JA.

Mphahlele, E. 1962. The African Image. London: Faber and Faber.

Mpomo, S. 1977. Senghorisme et Négrescence. Jeune Afrique no. 845. Paris: Group JA.

Sartre, J. P. 1948. Orphée Noire. Préface à la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française. Ed. L. S. Senghor. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Senghor, L. P. 1948. Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.