M HKA Ensembles

Book, 22,5 x 14,5 x 2,2 cm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp.

This anthology of African and West Indian poets, edited by Léopold Senghor is a key document in the history of the concept of Négritude. The volume provides an overview of francophone poetry divided by regions, thus following the logic of Damas’ anthology. However, it received much more recognition for its introductory essay Orphée Noir (BlackOrpheus) written by Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre characterises Négritude as an "anti-racistracism" (racisme antiracist). Emerging as an opposition to colonial racism, the revolutionary poetry movement then transformed into a strategy, with the final goal of racial unity. Through his analysis of black poetry, Sartre argues that black consciousness is primarily based on the black soul, or on “a certain quality common to the thoughts and conduct of negroes, which is called Négritude”. According to Sartre, it is this sort of subjectivity, the need to reveal the black soul (just as Orpheus went to claim Eurydice from Pluto, a black poet tirelessly “descends into himself”), that is the source and the main idea of Négritude poetry, which unlike any other kind of poetry, is functional.