Page 190 - BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK

THE NEGRO AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 151

really murdered them!” My acquaintance, who was not unaware
of his father’s origin, was extremely embarrassed. For that matter,
so was I. Both of us were victims of a cultural imposition. I am
convinced that anyone who has grasped this phenomenon and
all its consequences will know exactly in what direction to look
for the solution. Listen to the Rebel of Césaire:
“It is rising . . . it is rising from the depths of the earth . . . the
black tide is rising . . . waves of cries . . . bogs of animal odors . .
. the raging storm of naked feet . . . and the paths of the cliffs are
teeming with more, they clamber down the sides of ravines where
obscene savage torrents pour impregnation into chaotic rivers,
seas of corruption, oceans in convulsion, amid a black laughter
of knives and bad alcohol. . . .”
Do you understand? Césaire has come down. He is ready to
see what is happening at the very depths, and now he can go up.
He is ripe for the dawn. But he does not leave the black man
down there. He lifts him to his own shoulders and raises him to
the clouds. Earlier, in Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, he had
prepared us. What he has chosen is, to use the expression of
53
Gaston Bachelard, a psyche of ascent:
and for this, O lord with white teeth, men
with fragile necks
receive and collect fatal calm triangular
and for me my dances
my bad-nigger dances
for me my dances
break-the-yoke dance
jail-break dance
it-is-fi ne-and-good-and-right-to-be-a-Negro dance
For me my dances and let the sun bounce off the racket of my hands
no the unjust sun is no longer enough for me
twist yourself, wind, round my new growth
touch my spaced fi ngers
I give you my conscience and its rhythm of fl esh
I give you the fl ames that char my weakness
53. L’air et les songes (Paris, Corti, 1943).

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