THE CLASSIC QUARTERLY, VOLUME TWO, NUMBER TWO. 1966 . PRICE 35 CENTS FlUsSSCII AFlUlkXSS WIUTIS6I; THE CLASSIC VOLUME TWO, NUMBER TWO, 1966 EDITOR: Barney Simon. TRUSTEES AND EDITORIAL ADVISERS: Ian Bernhardt, Nimrod Mkele, Nadine Gordimer, Philip Stein, Dorothy Blair, Barney Simon. THE CLASSIC IS PUBLISHED BY THE CLASSIC MAGAZINE TRUST FUND, P.O. BOX 23643, JOUBERT PARK, JOHANNESBURG. The Trust is financed mainly by Farfield Foundation, Inc., New York. Price in South Africa; 35c. Subscriptions: South Africa (four issues), R1.50; United Kingdom and Europe, 16/6; United States, $3. Writers are invited to send their manuscripts to the Editor, The Classic, P.O. Box 23643, Joubert Park, Johannesburg. Printed for the Proprietors, The Classic Trust Fund, by Excelsior Printers (Pty.) Limited. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Works which have already appeared elsewhere are reprinted here in English translation with the following acknowledgements: To Fasquelle Editeurs (Paris) for Sarzan by Birago Diop. To Presence Africaine for Vanite by Birago Diop. To Oxford University Press for John Reed and Clive Wake’s translation of Senghor’s Nuit de Sine. To Edition Seghers for Je vous remercie mon Dieu by Bernard Dadie. To Oxford University Press (An Anthology of African and Malagasy Poetry in French, ed.: Clive Wake) for Un Jour, tu apprendras by Francis Debey. To Driss Chra'ibi for Quatre Malles. To Edition Caracteres for A Travers temps et fleuves by Tchicaya U Tam’si. ^iiifiuiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinimminiiiiiiimiiiiiiii|| I THE WORLD OF NAT NAKASA | I ^ 1 Copies are still available (40 cents, postage paid) of f § Classic, Vol. 2, No. I. ‘ The World of Nat Nakasa,’ con- 1 S taining the best of his brilliant ‘ Rand Daily Mail ’ essays H 1 and comments by William Plomer, Nadine Gordimer and 1 1 Athol Fugard. The preface by Can Themba has been § 1 removed since his banning. 1 1 Write to; § 1 Classic Magazine, § I P.O. Box 23643, | 1 Joubert Park, 1 1 Johannesburg. | CONTENTS Whither Negritude, Dorothy Blair ............... 5 Sarzan, Birago Diop ............................................... 11 One Day You Will Learn, Francis Bebey .... 21 Badalos, Edouard Maroun ................................... 22 Vanity, Birago Diop ............................................... 33 The Gramophone, Joseph Zobel........................ 34 I Thank You O Lord, Bernard Dadie.............. 44 Four Trunks, Driss Chra'ibi .......................... 46 Across Time and Rivers, Tchicaya U Tam’si 61 African Painters in Paris, Irmalin Lebeer .... 63 Art Section Beaufort Delaney, James Baldwin .... 68 Nult De Sine, Leopold Sidar Senghor .. 70 Book Reviews, Lionel Abrahams 72 Biographical Notes ..................................... |!iiiiiiim im m iitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim niiiiiiiiiiiiiim iiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiniiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiininiii| I CLASSIC REGRETS I I PRESENT RULES EXISTING, THAT WRITERS | I OF THE CALIBRE OF EZEKIEL MPHAHLELE, | I LEWIS NKOSI, CAN THEM BA, TODD MAT- | I SHAKIZA, BLOKE MODISANE, ARE ADDED TO | I THE LIST OF TALENTS THAT CAN NO LONGER | I BE READ IN THIS MAGAZINE OR COUNTRY. | I ALSO THAT WE WILL NOT READ NADINE | I GORDIMER’S ‘THE LATE BOURGEOIS WORLD,’ | I IN MANY WAYS THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY | I WORK OF A SIGNIFICANT ARTIST. | siiiiim m iiiim m iim nim iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitir; WHITHER HEGRITUDE DOROTHY S. BLAIR Guest Editor h e awakening of indigenous literary activity in what were the T French colonial territories of West Africa dates from approximately half a century ago. There also, indirectly, Negritude was born a couple of decades later. During the first World War Africans, particularly Senegalese, troops fought side by side with French soldiers on European soil. For some like Birago Diop’s Sarzan^ this was their first contact with European “ civilization.” Others born at the turn of the century had already sat beside French children on the benches of Primary and Secondary Schools, where they had benefitted from the high standards of the French educational system. The best pupils went on with bursaries to higher studies in France, either in scientific and technical subjects, like Birago Diop who became a veterinary surgeon, or in the humanities, like L. S. Senghor the present President of the Republic of Senegal, who became a lecturer in Classics. The first writings by Africans, published in France soon after the war, were inspired by a deep regard for French as a medium of literary expression (the indigenous tongues were as yet in­ capable of anything but oral expression) together with a proud desire to preserve what was best in their own history and heritage. They were critical of European culture but not yet to the point of aggressivity. The African writers’ pride in their own past was expressed creatively in different ways: Paul Hazoume, a Dahomean schoolteacher, already the author of an important historical and ethnological study on the “ Blood Pact of Dahomey,” com­ posed the epic novel Doguicimi, exalting a proud heroine of his country’s history. Doguicimi can be considered the first major contribution to an African humanism. Birago Diop, a Senegalese, devoted his literary talents to perpetuating the oral tradition of folk-tales and fable, to which he added his personal contribution of sophisticated irony. The story Sarzan, of which we publish here the English translation, while being a-typical of the subject matter and themes of the rest of Diop’s tales, is wholly characteris­ tic of his racial and cultural attitudes. He sets out to expose the dangers of a too naive and uncritical embracing of Western European values and the rejection of traditional indigenous belief. His Sarzan, fanatically embued with his mission to “ civilize ” his native village, and root out all traditional customs as expressions of “ savagery,” loses his wits as the spirits of the ancestors take vengeance on him. Diop, as does Hazoume to a lesser extent, presents that curious mixture of European modernism and African tradi­ tionalism, characteristic of their generation of writers. Using the French language with consummate professionalism, they infuse into it the personal rhythms and poetic imagery born of Africa; having accepted the best of Western education, and sometimes reaching the top in a scientific or academic field, they maintain a deep respect for the rites, worships and beliefs of their fore­ fathers. The problems posed for the African, at the crossroads of two cultures, were stated directly in a steady stream of novels, mostly with a broad autobiographical basis. Some of these are motivated by a polemical intention—to state the position of the Black man as the victim either of colonialism or of capitalism. Others, of which the best are possibly Camara Laye’s “ Black Child ” and Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s “ Ambiguous Adventure ” (Paris 1961, recently translated into English and published by Mbari Press) include both a movingly authentic account of a traditional African childhood and the anguish of the African, drawn to the West, but finding himself an eternal alien. Meanwhile, in the ’30’s, a group of West African and West Indian students in Paris were sinking their differences of geo­ graphic and perhaps ethnological origin in the unity of their common colour. The word “ Nigritude ” was coined and the revue “ The Black Student ” was founded to give expression to a new literary doctrine and as the organ for the creative writings produced. The promotors of negritude were Senghor from Senegal and Aime Cesaire from Martinique. They and their disciples expressed deep faith in the destiny of Africa. They wrote much poetry exalting the values of “ blackness,” both as the external characteristic of a man most easily perceived, and the symbol most easily exploited of a social and anthropological situation; Black vis-a-vis White. As the numbers of black writers increased, so did their interpretations of nigritude. Sartre has defined it as “ the Annun- ciation of quintessential blackness.” Thomas Malone states in 1962 of the thirty-year-old phenomenon: “ Negritude supplies an answer to the negro world in its anguished search for its own image ” and “ Negritude can be summarily defined as the message of a race,” or again “ Negritude is the language of the Negro- African consciousness.” In theory, Negritude in literature could amount to nothing more than a deliberate use of Negro-African themes imagery and inspirations—with the rejection of white as the traditional, European-accepted symbol of light, purity and beauty. In practice, in the hands of its most vehement exponents, it became a political war-cry, the expression of the demand for liberation of a race dominated by other races. At its best, for example in Senghor’s poetry, it is not so much racialistic as cultural and artistic: his style, his imagery, his rhythms as well as his themes being purely African in origin. As we progress towards the last quarter of the decade, some thirty years after the birth of Negritude, definitions, analyses, colloquia and conferences on this literary and political pheno­ menon abound. But is the literary movement as such still alive? Polemical writing in itself has a self-destructive element. Unless it has inherent, vital, original literary qualities it cannot survive the amelioration of the social and political evils that gave it birth. With most of Black Africa having achieved independent status, the need to express political