Notebook Of A Return To The Native Land Quotes

Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.

A man screaming is not a dancing bear. Life is not a spectacle.

Do not make me into that man of hatred for whom I feel only hatred.

And if all I know how to do is speak, it is for you that I shall speak. My lips shall speak for miseries that have no mouth, my voice shall be the liberty of those who languish in the dungeon of despair… And above all my body as well as my soul, beware of folding your arms in the sterile attitude of spectator, for life is not a spectacle, for a sea of pain is not a proscenium.

At the end of the small hours: life flat on its face, miscarried dreams and nowhere to put them, the river of life listless in its hopeless bed, not rising or falling, unsure of its flow, lamentably empty, the heavy impartial shadow of boredom creeping over the quality of all things, the air stagnant, unbroken by the brightness of a single bird.

J’habite une blessure sacrée j’habite des ancêtres imaginaires j’habite un vouloir obscur j’habite un long silence j’habite une soif irrémédiable j’habite un voyage de mille ans j’habite une guerre de trois cent ans j’habite un culte désaffecté entre bulbe et caïeu j’habite l’espace inexploité j’habite du basalte non une coulée mais de la lave le mascaret qui remonte la valleuse à toute allure et brûle toutes les mosquées je m’accommode de mon mieux de cet avatar d’une version du paradis absurdement ratée -c’est bien pire qu’un enfer- j’habite de temps en temps une de mes plaies chaque minute je change d’appartement et toute paix m’effraie tourbillon de feu ascidie comme nulle autre pour poussières de mondes égarés ayant crachés volcan mes entrailles d’eau vive je reste avec mes pains de mots et mes minerais secrets j’habite donc une vaste pensée mais le plus souvent je préfère me confiner dans la plus petite de mes idées

and no race has a monopoly on beauty, on intelligence, on strength

But the work of man is only just beginning, and it remains to conquer all the violence entrenched in the recesses of our passions...and no race possesses the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of force. And there is a place for all at the rendezvous with victory.

And suddenly, strength and life charge me like a bull and the tide of life surrounds the taste bud of the morne, and all the veins and veinlets busy themselves with new blood, and the enormous lung of the cyclones breathes and the hoarded fire of volcanoes and the gigantic seismic pulse now beats the measure of a body alive in my firm blazing.

My negritude is not a stone, its deafness hurled against the clamor of the day my negritude is not a leukoma of dead liquid over the earth's dead eye my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral it takes root in the red flesh of the soil it takes root in the ardent flesh of the sky it breaks through opaque prostration with its upright patience.