Coups de pilon by David Diop, or the Word Made Flesh and Fury
Translated from French
The work of David Diop (1927-1960)1Rejected forms:
David Mandessi Diop.
David Léon Mandessi Diop.
David Diop Mendessi.
David Mambessi Diop.
Not to be confused with:
David Diop (1966-…), writer and academic, winner of the Goncourt des lycéens prize in 2018 for his novel Frère d’âme (Soul Brother)., as brief as it was brilliant, remains one of the most gripping testimonies of militant negritude poetry. His sole collection, Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows, 1956), resonates with undiminished force, hammering consciences and celebrating the indefatigable hope of an Africa standing tall. Born in Bordeaux to a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother, Diop experienced Africa less through prolonged residence than through dream and heritage, which takes nothing away from the power of a voice that knew how to echo the sufferings and revolts of an entire continent.
A Poetry of Revolt
Diop’s poetry is above all a cry. A cry of refusal in the face of colonial iniquity, a cry of pain in the face of his people’s humiliation. In a direct style, stripped of all superfluous ornament, the poet delivers his truths like so many “hammer blows” intended, in his own words, to “burst the eardrums of those who do not want to hear and crack like whip strokes on the egoisms and conformisms of order”. Each poem is an indictment drawing up the bloody balance sheet of the tutelary era. Thus, in “The Vultures,” he denounces the hypocrisy of the civilizing mission:
“In those days
With shouts of civilization
With holy water on domesticated brows
The vultures built in the shadow of their talons
The bloody monument of the tutelary era.”Diop, David, Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows), Paris: Présence africaine, 1973.
Violence is omnipresent, not only in the theme, but in the very rhythm of the phrase, sober and sharp as a blade. The famous and laconic poem “The Time of Martyrdom” is the most poignant illustration, a veritable litany of dispossession and colonial crime: “The White killed my father / For my father was proud / The White raped my mother / For my mother was beautiful”. These unadorned verses, giving the text its striking force, have disconcerted some critics. Sana Camara sees in them, for example, a “simplicity of style that borders on poverty, even if the poet attempts to captivate us with the irony of events”. Yet it is undoubtedly in this economy of means, this refusal of artifice, that the brutality of the subject reaches its paroxysm.
Africa at the Heart of the Word
If revolt is the engine of his writing, Africa is its soul. She is that idealized motherland, glimpsed through the prism of nostalgia and dream. The opening apostrophe of the poem “Africa” — “Africa, my Africa” — is a declaration of belonging and filiation. This Africa, he admits to having “never known”, but his gaze is “full of your blood”. She is by turns the loving and scorned mother, the dancer with a body of “black pepper”, and the beloved woman, Rama Kam, whose sensual beauty is a celebration of the entire race.
It is in this dreamed Africa that the poet draws the strength of hope. To the despair inspired by the “back that bends / And lies down under the weight of humility”, a voice responds, prophetic:
“Impetuous son, that robust and young tree
That tree over there
Splendidly alone in the midst of white and withered flowers
Is Africa, your Africa that grows again
That grows again patiently obstinately
And whose fruits gradually have
The bitter taste of freedom.”Diop, David, Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows), Paris: Présence africaine, 1973.
A Militant Humanism
To reduce Diop’s work to an “anti-racist racism”2Sartre, Jean-Paul, “Orphée noir” (“Black Orpheus”), preface to l’Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (Anthology of New Negro and Malagasy Poetry in French) by L. S. Senghor, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1948., to borrow Sartre’s formula, would be to misunderstand its universal scope. If the denunciation of Black oppression is the starting point, Diop’s struggle embraces all the wretched of the earth. His poetry is a clamor that rises “from Africa to the Americas” and his solidarity extends to the “docker of Suez and the coolie of Hanoi”, to the “Vietnamese lying in the rice field” and the “convict of the Congo brother of the lynched of Atlanta”.
This fraternity in suffering and struggle is the mark of a profound humanism. The poet does not content himself with cursing, he calls for collective action, for unanimous refusal embodied by the final injunction of “Challenge to Force”: “Stand up and cry: NO!”. For, ultimately, beyond the violence of the word, David Diop’s song is “guided only by love”, the love of a free Africa within a reconciled humanity.
The work of David Diop, cut down in full bloom by a tragic death that deprived us of his forthcoming manuscripts, retains a burning relevance. Léopold Sédar Senghor, his former teacher, hoped that with age, the poet would go “humanizing himself”. One can affirm that this humanism was already at the heart of his revolt. Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) remains an essential text, a classic work of African poetry, a viaticum for all youth yearning for justice and freedom.
“That is already a lot for a work that is, all things considered, quite limited, for a first and—alas—last work. But there are texts that go to the heart of things and speak to the entire being. Lyrical, sentimental, expression of a personal demand and anger, this poetry ”launched gravely to assault chimeras“ […] is indeed one of those that will eternally, to plagiarize Césaire, defy ”the lackeys of order“ [that is, the agents of repression], one of those that […] will always obstinately remind us that ”the work of man has only just begun“, that happiness is always to be conquered, more beautiful and stronger.”
Société africaine de culture (ed.), David Diop, 1927-1960 : témoignages, études (David Diop, 1927-1960: Testimonies, Studies), Paris: Présence africaine, 1983.
To Go Further
Around Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows)
Quotations
“My brother with teeth that shine under the hypocritical compliment
My brother with golden glasses
On your eyes made blue by the Master’s word
My poor brother in a tuxedo with silk lapels
Chirping and whispering and strutting in the salons of condescension
You make us pity you
The sun of your country is but a shadow
On your serene civilized brow”Diop, David, Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows), Paris: Présence africaine, 1973.
Downloads
Sound Recordings
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Alphonse Fara. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Amadou Kaa. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Amilcar Silva. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Camara Sidiki. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Chantal Épée. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Didier Destouches. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Farid Daoudi. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Guy Ferolus. (Haiti Inter).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Korotoumou Sidibé. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Laetitia Meyo. (Posh en vogue).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Oriane Oyono. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by Paul Ouengo Zemba. (Solidarité Tia).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by ~LePouvoirDesMots. (YouTube).
- Partial reading of Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows) by ~ShabaazMystik. (YouTube).
Bibliography
- Camara, Sana, La Poésie sénégalaise d’expression française, 1945-1982 (Senegalese Poetry in French, 1945-1982), Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011.
- Chevrier, Jacques, Littératures francophones d’Afrique noire (Francophone Literatures of Black Africa), Aix-en-Provence: Édisud, 2006.
- Dieng, Amady Aly (ed.), Les Étudiants africains et la littérature négro-africaine d’expression française (African Students and Negro-African Literature in French), Mankon, Bamenda: Langaa Research & Pub., 2009.
- Jarrety, Michel (ed.), Dictionnaire de poésie de Baudelaire à nos jours (Dictionary of Poetry from Baudelaire to the Present Day), Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2001.
- Kesteloot, Lilyan, Histoire de la littérature négro-africaine (History of Negro-African Literature), Paris: Karthala, 2004.
- Kom, Ambroise (ed.), Dictionnaire des œuvres littéraires de langue française en Afrique au sud du Sahara (Dictionary of French-Language Literary Works in Sub-Saharan Africa), vol. 1, Des origines à 1978 (From the Origins to 1978), Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001.
- Ndiaye, Christiane (ed.), Introduction aux littératures francophones : Afrique, Caraïbe, Maghreb (Introduction to Francophone Literatures: Africa, Caribbean, Maghreb), Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2004.
- Société africaine de culture (ed.), David Diop, 1927-1960 : témoignages, études (David Diop, 1927-1960: Testimonies, Studies), Paris: Présence africaine, 1983.
