INFO + VIDEO: Léon-Gontran Damas, 28 March 1912 – 22 January 1978

LEON DAMAS

Damas was born into a middle class mulatto family in French Guyana in 1912. After he went to Paris to pursue university studies, Damas became a founding member of the négritude movement, a literary and cultural affirmation of black identity and experience similar to the Harlem Renaissance.

This video uses puppetry and stop-motion animation techniques to dramatize a lecture on Damas' poem, "Limbe." The repeated refrain "give me back my black dolls" emphasizes the poet's desire to regain control of self-image and the power to assert the validity of an African world view.

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Léon-Gontran Damas,

28 March 1912 – 22 January 1978

By admin | Published: March 28, 2012

Twenty years before Frantz Fanon had organized the concept of “the colonized personality” into psychoanalytic theory, Pigments, a book of poems published in 1937 by Leon Damas, revealed the anguish of what has come to be known by that term.

Ellen Conroy Kennedy, “Leon Damas: Pigments and the Colonized Personality,” Black World/Negro Digest (January 1972)

Race, ethnie, pays, peu importe le mot, puisque dans les Antilles-Guyane, tout cela se confond. Mais qu’on se le dise, c’est de cela qu’il s’agit quand on parle de poésie de la négritude. Et c’est vrai que Damas a été un poète de la négritude, sans doute le premier d’entre eux.

Aimé Césaire, Hommage à Damas, (31 août 1978)

It may be
they dare to
treat me white
though everything within me
wants only to be black
as negro as my Africa
the Africa they ransacked

Léon-Gontran Damas, excerpted from “Whitewash” (for Christiane and Alioune Diope). First published in Pigments, translated and reprinted in Black World/Negro Digest (January 1972)

[The papers of Damas are held by the New York Public Library. The Académie Guyane hosts a digital archive of poems by Damas. Île en île has a Damas bibliography.]

via thepublicarchive.com

 

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Theater:

“Damas! Fragments”

Renders Tribute to

Léon-Gontran Damas

Many thanks to Peter Jordens, who translated and shared this post with us. The ‘Chapelle du Verbe Incarné’ Theater in Avignon, France, has announced the staging of the musical-theatrical show Damas! Fragments from July 7 to 28, 2012. The show is based on excerpts from poems, stories, and essays by the late Guyanese writer and co-founder of the Négritude movement, Léon-Gontran Damas (1912-1978).

Damas! Fragments is a collaborative production of two French-Guyanese performing companies, the Compagnie de l’Homme aux Semelles de Vent and the Troupe du Méridien, who created the show to honor Damas in the centennial of his birth. It was first staged in French Guyana in April and May 2012 is now being presented in France during the Avignon Festival, an arts festival held annually in July.

Damas! Fragments combines theater, music, song and dance in order to embody the work and life of Damas: theater to tell the story of his career, his rebellion, his fight for justice and his love for the world; music to sing the blues of his poetry (like his 1956 book-length poem ‘Black-Label’); and dance to illustrate the physicality and sensuality of his words. By connecting excerpts from his work, the Compagnie de l’Homme aux Semelles de Vent and the Troupe du Méridien have sought to gradually shape a ‘poetics of the fragment’; hence the title of the show. Damas! Fragments is performed by a trio of artists: Guyanese actor Grégory Alexander (creator and artistic director of the Troupe du Méridien), gospel and soul singer Régine Lapassion, and actress, dancer and storyteller Valérie Whittington. They are accompanied on piano by Jean-Louis Danancier. Patrick Moreau and Raffaele Giuliani are the artistic directors.

Léon-Gontran Damas was one of the founders of the Négritude movement together with Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor. At the time of his death in 1978, he was a Distinguished Professor of African Literature at Howard University in Washington, DC. [Also see our previous post Léon-Gontran Damas.] Earlier this year, Howard University commemorated the centennial of Damas’ birth with a panel discussion and a keynote address by Maryse Condé, Guadeloupean ‘grande dame’ of Francophone literature [seehttp://www.hunewsservice.com/legendary-writer-maryse-conde-commemorates-centennial-of-negritude-co-founder-leon-damas-1.2843256].

See one of the several fragments—“Tambour Ka”—of Damas! Fragments (available on Youtube) here:

For the original announcement (in French) of Damas! Fragments by the ‘Chapelle du Verbe Incarné’ Theater, see http://www.rverbeincarne.fr/fr/archives/1877