Black-Label, Léon-Gontran Damas's book-length poem published in 1956, is a text that calls for translation because of its sheer literary power, its long-lasting topicality and not least because of the comparative neglect affecting one of the three founders of the Négritude movement. Damas was the ‘rasta’ of the Négritude movement, the one who was most radically opposed to systems, schools and exclusions of any kind. He was corresponding with writers such as John LaRose or Andrew Salkey, and dreamt, half a century before Glissant, of anthologies of the African diaspora beyond linguistic, geographical and colour demarcations.

This chapter discusses the text in relation to the English translation we have produced. It first examines Damas's critical position within the Négritude movement and the complex achievement of this four-part poem; next, it shows how the pervasive sense of uncertainty related to the condition of exile affects place, time and the identity of the figures in the text, which inevitably is echoed in the translation; finally, it comments on various aspects of the text from the translator's point of view, namely, the effect of Caribbean references, the rhythmic significance of repetitions and enumerations, departures from standard language and the difficulties raised by rhyming lines and idiomatic phrases.

Black-Label is a kind of circumfession (to use a concept coined by Derrida): a complex piece of poetry in which Damas blends a decidedly individual dimension with the collective destiny of his people of mixed Amerindian, African and European origins, against the backdrop of ongoing discrimination against the ‘négraille’. Both deeply personal and universal, private and public, the poem combines poignant memories and a sense of anguished pointlessness and tragic displacement with a sweeping apprehension of history leading to deep-seated rebellion against all forms of injustice. As Robert Goffin (1972: 10) puts it, Damas ‘anoblit [la résistance de sa race exploitée] de ses chants revendicateurs. Il livre sa colère en mots de feu. Il brasse son émoi en poèmes qui expriment l’âme noire elle-même’.

Belated Recognition

While Damas remains the least studied of the three cofounders of Négritude, his poetry might well be the most provocative and anti-colonial. Overshadowed in most essays and anthologies devoted to the movement by his Senegalese and Martinican fellow writers, Damas deserves renewed academic and public attention, especially since some critics have misunderstood his work.