Gorée initially appeared in Édouard Glissant’s collection Yokes (1979), but is also included in the collection Black Salt (1998), an anthology in English translation of three separate collections of Glissant’s poetry—Le sel noir (Black Salt), Le sang rivé (Riveted Blood), and Boises (Yokes)—all published between 1947 and 1979.
Like most of the other poems in these collections, Gorée is very short (only three sentences) and is actually a poem in powerful prose rhythms. The subject, an enslaved African, is first seen awaiting transport by sea from Gorée, an island off the coast of Senegal, to the Americas, where he will work the plantations.
To describe the African, who will be uprooted from his home, Glissant uses the metaphor of a tree: “He inhabited his cry treefull: his roots spilled into ravines / shouting out.”
The captive’s facial expression as he looks upon the slave ships is severe, as is the contempt he feels for his captors, but the power of his gaze, which “stayed many a wind-bare sail,” is ultimately powerless, and he is transported nonetheless, “steered between coast and bluff shore.”
As his ship approaches the foreign islands of the Caribbean, the man realizes that his future is futile, as hopeless as when “yesterday’s dreams garrotte dreams of tomorrow to their death.”
Bibliography
Glissant, Édouard. “Gorée.” In Black Salt. Translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Categories: French Literature, Literature
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