The Plays from Alienation and Freedom

Frantz Fanon, Jean Khalfa, Robert J. C. Young, Steven Corcoran

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350126596
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: African Drama
• Index: Literature

Prior to becoming a psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon wanted to be a playwright and his interest in dialogue, dramatisation and metaphor continued throughout his writing and career. His passion for theatre developed during the years that he was studying medicine, and in 1949 he wrote the plays The Drowning Eye ( L'Œil se noie ), and Parallel Hands ( Les Mains parallèles ). This first English translation of the works gives us a Fanon at his most lyrical, experimental and provocative.

1

The Drowning Eye

A room. A window. A door.

The door opens onto a dark hallway. The window opens out onto a garden in which flowers amuse themselves in short dresses. A thick velvet curtain. A sofa. An armchair. A table. In a corner, a painting by Wifredo Lam.

On a cushion, a blind black cat.

François is seated at Ginette’s feet. As the curtain rises, he looks at her intensely.

THE CHARACTERS

François: Ginette’s lover.

Ginette

Lucien: François’ elder brother.

A blind servant.

The lighting has to be metallic. If possible, an intelligent play of lights must render:

Lucien aiming at (we never know at what, Ginette perhaps): pewter colour;

Ginette absorbed (her face must lose all human heaviness): rain-drop colour;

François absorbing: new blotting paper colour.

Scene 1

As the curtain rises, a voice: ‘The rain that chaps the overly essential clarity of the night, yesterday, in full grip, surprised the confession-less rivers.’

François Do you love me?

Ginette I love you.

François Say it.

Ginette I love you.

François Again.

Ginette I love you.

François Wait. You mustn’t reply so quickly. You mustn’t be in a rush. Swear to me that you will never be in a rush!

Ginette I swear it to you!

François Swear to me that you will not look at the time whenever you are with me.

Ginette Yes!

François That you will not move unless the moon has brought down the murderous hordes of the day.

Ginette Yes!

François Look at me straight in the eyes. Immerse yourself in me, gently, very gently, and say to me that never will you laugh as they do!

Ginette Yes!

François That never will you cry as they do.

Ginette Yes!

François You see, it’s easy! That lot, they say that everything is difficult, that living is such a complicated business. I didn’t want to leave yet. I was waiting. Now that you’re here, we can go. (A moment passes.) Do you love me?

Ginette I love you!

(Silence. François gets up and walks very slowly. He reflects. He would like to talk. Ginette, satisfied, looks as though she’s passed an exam.)

François Since when do you love me?

Ginette I don’t know. I adore you.

François It happened just like that?

Ginette Yes! I looked at you through my cigarette smoke and I knew that I was soon bound to love you. I saw your eyes seeking my lips, your tormented lips that twisted with expectation and I knew that I would have to love you.

François Why?

Ginette I don’t know anymore. I love you!

François Yes, I know that you love me, or at least you say you do. But do you get it, I want to know.

Ginette What?

François The beginning.

Ginette What beginning?

François I would like you to explain to me how, why and at what moment you started to love me.

Ginette Why? I love you!

François (He stops walking.) That’s not enough for me! I do not want to be loved in their way. I do not want the germ of their decay coming to live alongside me …

Some things happen to you and you know neither why nor how. I was born and no one explained it to me. When I got it, I was told that I had to be serious, so I fought. I have struggled every day, and I’ve had it tough, very tough. Minute after minute, I refused to grow up: I refused to wear their ties, their big shoes that hurt your toes. Minute after minute, I clung to my childhood, to my old short-trousers, to my pockets with holes in them. When small, I was given tonics that I then spat out. I saw the adults with their large strangling hands roaming freely and I was afraid, very afraid! Minute after minute, always tense, tired, I fought those who wanted me to believe in hate, in blood, in tears.

I preferred dogs to the boys of my age and their ball games. Do you know what it means to fight people?

I was proposed a certain kind of man. That man set fear into me … Oh those sustained struggles against others’ joy, against others’ misery, against others’ indifference. There is something despicable about what they call their feelings. Everywhere that impression of the unaccomplished, that impurity weighing down the most marvellous subtleties. The Evening was my glory. I climbed onto the rooftops and spoke to the stars. They alone understood me. They spoke among themselves and debated a lot. But when one spoke to me, the others hushed up. Once, the night was buzzing, I clambered up a tree, and wanted to reply to a question that one of the biggest stars had asked me. I shouted very loudly so I would be heard. Then all the stars began trembling and I saw their hearts panic. My father made me come back in. I cried a lot because I had surely saddened my friends. The next day, I climbed up again, totally fearful. When they saw me, they smiled at me a long while. They were all there, young, new, armed with their first teeth. They just didn’t stop playing around. One was rubbing its eyes still swollen with sleep, another hastened to get back to its corner …

I went back down happy and fell sound asleep like a star.

Ginette And then?

François And then they shook me like they shake the beasts on the day of their first communion. They told me that there were books, emotions, struggle, a role to play, a life to contest …

Ginette And then?

François And then I got to know men. True, hard, strong men!

Those who harmed me because they loved me, those who harmed me because they hated me. Those who harmed me because, they said, something must be done.

But even so I have sought to understand! I told myself that there was perhaps a word to be known. A word of the sort that opens doors and forces the smiles of mean men …

You, you really do not know what it’s like not to understand. Not to understand what’s...