Coups de pilon

by David Diop

Poésie.
Il est rare que s'allient la maîtrise du verbe et la profondeur de l'émotion, que s'accordent la distance et le don. En cette harmonie paradoxale le meilleur se révèle. La parole de David Diop témoigne de ce lieu admirable et difficile. David Diop savait l'Afrique par cœur, au plus profond d'elle-même, en ses sources vives, en son peuple, c'est-à-dire en sa vérité. Il la connaissait en sa fragilité et en ses caricatures, avatars d'une Afrique vendue et exploitée aux marchés de l'Histoire. Le poète vivait cette tension, lourd de cette souffrance, mais porté en avant par l'espoir que la vitalité des peuples d'Afrique inspire. Cette double postulation marque sa démarche d'écrivain négro-africain engagé, lucide et rigoureux en son combat. C'est pourquoi ces textes beaux et fiers restent si proches de nous, fraternels et toujours exemplaires.

Genres: Poetry, Africa

88 pages, Broché

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

David Léon Mandessi Diop was a French West African poet known for his contribution to the Négritude literary movement. His work reflects his anti-colonial stance.

Diop started writing poems while he was still in school, and his poems started appearing in Présence Africaine since he was just 15. Diop lived his life transitioning constantly between France and West Africa, from childhood onwards. While in Paris, Diop became a prominent figure in Négritude literature. His work is seen as a condemnation of colonialism, and detest towards colonial rule. Like many Négritude authors of the time, Diop hoped for an independent Africa. Within the movement he was recognized as "the voice of the people without voice".

He died in the crash of Air France Flight 343 in the Atlantic Ocean off Dakar, Senegal, at the age of 33 on 29 August 1960. His one small collection of poetry, Coups de pilon, came out from Présence Africaine in 1956; it was posthumously published in English as Hammer Blows, translated and edited by Simon Mondo and Frank Jones (African Writers Series, 1975).

Reviews

[leynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars // I didn't understand everything (my French isn't the best and I was too lazy to look up every word), so take my rating with a grain of salt!

David Mandessi Diop was a French-Senegalese poet best known for his contribution to the Négritude literary movement and his anti-colonial stance. Born in 1927, to a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother, Diop lived his life transitioning constantly between France and West Africa. He started writing poems while he was still in school; his work started appearing in Présence Africaine since he was just 15 years of age.

(For those of you who don't know, Présence Africaine is an immensely important pan-African quarterly cultural, political, and literary magazine, published in Paris. It was founded by Alioune Diop in 1947. In 1949, Présence Africaine expanded to include a publishing house and a bookstore on rue des Écoles in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire, published first in 1955, remains its best-selling work. If you have the chance, it is well worth every visit!)

While in Paris, Diop became a prominent figure in the Négritude movement. His work is seen as a condemnation of colonialism, his detest towards colonial rule shines through most of his poems and essays. Like many Négritude authors of the time, Diop hoped for an independent Africa, free of any ties to its Western "masters". Within the movement Diop was recognized as "the voice of the people without voice".

Shockingly, he died in a plance crash in the Atlantic Ocean off Dakar, Senegal, at the tender age of 33 on 29 August 1960. His one small collection of poetry, Coups de pilon (Hammer Blows), had just been published four years early by Présence Africaine. It was translated in 1975 by Simon Mondo and Frank Jones for the famous Heinemann African Writers Series.

Coups de pilon is structured in three parts that contain, respectively, 17 poems, five poems and 21 re-discovered poems. The collection is organized around three major themes: the denunciation of colonialism, the rehabilitation of Africa (as an independent continent) and the call of the oppressed to the liberation struggle. It is important to note that when Diop was writing his poems, none of the African countries had yet achieved their struggle for independence. His pleas are therefore intense and urgent.

Whilst I found parts of the collection hard to understand (due to my lack of proficiency in French – again, totally not Diop's fault!), I still couldn't fail to notice the beauty of Diop's language in some of the poems. One of my favorite poems of the collection is "Les Heures":

Il y a les heures pour rêver
dans l’apaisement des nuits au creux du silence
Il y a des heures pour douter
et le lourd voile des mots se déchire en sanglots
Il y a des heures pour souffrir
le long des chemins de guerre dans le regard des mères
Il y a des heures pour aimer
dans les cases de lumière où chante la chair unique
Il y a ce qui colore les jours à venir
comme le soleil colore la chair des plantes
Et dans le délire des heures
dans l’impatience des heures
le germe toujours plus fécond
des heures d’où naîtra l’équilibre.

I love the pictures he paints in it – the soothing silence of dreams, the heavy veil of words, the impatience of the hours. It is a soothing, yet urgent poem. One in which Diop pleads for a new balance, a new equilibrium, one in which 2/3 of the world won't be exploited for the benefit of the few. In another favorite poem "The Waves", Diop talks about how "furious" the "waves of freedom" are, how "from yesterday's slave a fighter is born", how "the furious waves of freedom / slam on the panic-stricken Beast." It is a powerful, immersive poem. One that immediately makes its message clear, one where you don't have to ponder for hours on its use of metaphors. It's clear, crystal-clear, just like the waves!

Some poems of Diop's Coups de pilon have found their way into the mainstream. If you have engaged with Négritude literature before, you will probably have heard of his poems "Le Renégat" – in which he blackguards those Africans who have espoused European customs at the expense of their African roots – or "Afrique" – his love hymn and praise song of his mother continent.

The only poems I actively didn't enjoy where the ones in which Diop talks about/ praises Black women. I know he meant no harm but from a modern perspective a lot of these poems come across as quite fetishising and cringe-worthy. He praises Black women for their "wild looks", their "mouth with the taste of mango", "black pepper body" etc. It simply isn't my vibe.

Overall, I am very happy that I checked out Diop's work and I will definitely reread this collection in the future, take my sweet time with it and translate everything I don't get. (I might just get the English translation one day!)

[Raul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of poems by the French poet (of Senegalese and Cameroonian descent, not to be mistaken for his namesake, author of At Night All Blood is Black, with whom he shares Senegalese heritage) published when he was around 29, and translated into English after his death. It's an impassioned collection, one that carries the responsibility that was common around that time in writers originating from the colonies. Writing against colonialism, recording the travesties of oppression, calling for liberation, and showing the humanness and pride of the subjugated. Unfortunately, its writer died very young, and with such young death one mourns the promise and potential and evolution that comes with age, that could have been. The two poems that I think stand out in this collection are "Les Heures" and "Défi à la force" translated as "Challenge to Force" and "The Hours" by Simon Mpondo and Frank Jones:

The Hours
"There are hours for dreaming
In the calmness of nights in the hollow of silence
There are hours for doubting
And the heavy veil of words is torn in sobs
There are hours for suffering
Along the roads of war in the look of mothers
There are hours for loving
In the huts of light where the unique flesh sings
There is that which colors days to come
As the sun colors the flesh of plants
And in the delirium of hours
In the impatience of hours
The ever more fertile seed
Of hours from which equilibrium will be born"

Challenge to Force
"You who bend you who weep
You who die one day just like that not knowing why
You who struggle and stay awake for the Other's rest
You with no more laughter in your look
You my brother with face of fear and anguish
Rise and shout: NO!"

[Domenico Francesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poeta scoperto grazie ad una nota di Volti neri, maschere bianche di Frantz Fanon, sono andato a cercarmi il libro di quest'autore colpito dal tono arrabbiato molto vicino per stile e tematiche allo stesso Fanon. Sono poesie che riprendono i temi della negritude come il colonialismo, il neocolonialismo, il razzismo e l'alienazione della popolazione africana dei paesi coloniali di quel periodo. Diop non lasciò molto, solo uno smilzo libretto (Coups de pillon qui riproposto in un titolo più generico ed evocativo ma meno efficace) e qualche poesia sparsa su varie riviste prima di morire tragicamente in una disgrazia aerea mentre stava ultimando un secondo libro. Peccato solo che questa edizione non disponga del testo originale a fronte, sarebbe bello poter avere l'occasione in futuro di rileggere le poesie di Diop confrontandole nella sua lingua.

[Guillaume MrMn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mort tragiquement à 33 ans, David Diop est pour moi un auteur incontournable en Afrique, sa voix poétique est puissante, ce recueil de poésie en atteste, mon nouveau coup de cœur en poésie

[Ihab · Rating 5 out of 5]

un recueil de poèmes violent, puissant, réel

D. Diop nous plonge dans la violence de la colonisation, mais également de l'esclavage dont elle est l'enfant, et nous fait explorer la beauté d'une Afrique avant toute invasion européenne

mes poèmes préférés : Afrique mon Afrique ; Souffre Pauvre Nègre

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moi qui n'aime pas la poésie, agréablement surprise par ces vers engagés qui vont droit au but ne laissant pas beaucoup de place à l'incompréhension tout en respectant les codes poétiques. Je recommande !

[Timoté Corbin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Chiant

[Lyne Girard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Petit recueil de poésie engagée sur la négritude et l’esclavage. Celui sur les heures est mon préféré.

[M-AY · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je ne sais que penser de ce recueil qui oscille entre contestation et dénonciation des formes de domination que l'esclavage et la colonisation ont fait subir aux corps noirs sous fond de négritude et clichés (de l'époque peut-être) sur l'Afrique, ses tam-tam et ses négresses langoureuses qui rendraient la panthère jalouse...
De beaux poèmes tout de même qui s'accompagnent d'excellents articles publiés dans la revue Présence Africaine sur la décolonisation des esprits et les démarches pour enfin créer un système educatif qui s'affranchit des volontés assimilassionistes sous fond de faux universalisme enseignées pendant la période coloniale.

[Amalaye]

One of the most beautiful and most famous poem on Africain in this poetry book. A great author.