“Hiccup” (“Hoquet”), like “Bargain”, is from Damas’s first collection, Pigments (1937). It reveals the inferiority complex felt by blacks of Africa and the Caribbean because of centuries of abuse and exploitation by white European colonials.
The solution to this problem lies neither in assimilating white European values nor in denying the difference of one’s color or cultural heritage, for such attitudes lead to a catastrophic loss of identity, and thus the peoples of these countries must celebrate their négritude—their “blackness”—and their unique cultural identity.
In “Hiccup” the central metaphor of the title signifies the speaker’s attempt to repress the traumatic memories of his childhood. Swallowing water at intervals as a remedy is futile, for the images always resurface, like hiccups: “back comes my childhood / in a hiccup that jolts / my instinct / like the cop shaking the tramp.”
One sees in Damas’s style the influence of French surrealism—the strange quality of the central metaphor, the absence of punctuation and formal meter and rhyme. The lines are short—some containing just one word—like the be-bop style of American jazz, revealing Damas’s admiration for artists of the Harlem Renaissance in the United States.
Throughout “Hiccup” is the refrain, “Disaster / tell me about the disaster / tell me about it.” The speaker defies readers to pity themselves, when his own life has been more disastrous than readers can imagine.
This “disaster” lies in his mother’s insistence that he imitate every aspect of white bourgeois culture, such as refined table manners, Catholic worship, and European education: to wit, “My mother hoping for a syllabus son / Unless you learn your history lesson / you shall not go to mass on Sunday / in all your Sunday best.” Most important, the child must use the French language perfectly: “. . . you must speak French / the French of France / the Frenchman’s French / French French.” Thus Damas reveals how oppression is achieved by French colonials, directly and indirectly, through linguistic dominance.
Revealing how deeply the child has been shamed by the color of his skin (the “pigment” of the collection’s title), his mother forbids him to play the banjo or the guitar—instruments of “blacks.” She explains that the superior “mulattos”—those with at least some white racial heritage—play only the violin.
Categories: British Literature, French Literature, Literature, World Literature
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