William Luis

Ortiz, Glissant, and Ellison: Fictional Patterns in Black Literature

Author(s): Martha K. Cobb
Source: Afro-Hispanic Review, Vol. 21, No. 1/2, SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY ISSUE: A 20-YEAR
RETROSPECTIVE (SPRING-FALL 2002), pp. 179-184
Published by: William Luis
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23054498
Accessed: 09-05-2019 11:04 UTC

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 Ortiz, Glissant, and Ellison:
Fictional Patterns in Black Literature

by Martha K. Cobb

The genesis of this study lies in the challengeacross

of language and cultural differences. In each of their
selecting black writers from different culturesworks
and I shall concentrate on aspects of style that
characterize their writing, showing a mode of
national traditions whose works demonstrate comparable
presentation that links these authors together as sharers
patterns of expression within the variousness of African
diaspora literatures written in western European in the making of a black literature, while at the same
languages. I have selected the novel as the genre most
time sustaining their individuality of expression.
likely to yield a complexity of materials whose First, there is the author's use of symbolic imagery
to transform themes into metaphors for the black
thematic and structural analogies suggest the aesthetic
bases for defining a literary art that can include experience of life. Second, there is the author's way of
Negrismo, Negritude, Antillanity, or a black aesthetic
manifesting the black point of view on two levels —the
as expressive forms which have been shaped out ofspoken
the voice of the protagonist by means of which the
displacement of African peoples in the Americas. The
speaker affirms his humanity to others; and the silent
concept of aestheticism, standing alone, is an voice of inner consciousness addressing its own
abstraction in any language; it is dry, cold, overly responses to a reality that denigrates blackness. A third
academic and meaningless when separated from itsaspect of structural style in these novels is the writer's
sources in the work of art itself. Yet, the search for a consistent uses of traditional expressive forms that
literary aesthetic is realistic if we can describe those originally came out of black oral cultures which
elements which mold the structure of a given work from identify, immerse, and to quote Stephen Henderson,
bases that are deeply embedded in the black experience "saturate" a literary work in black life.4 Moreover, as
the works of Ortiz, Glissant, and Ellison reveal, black
of life. Despite variations in language and culture, there
are elements which disclose certain constants of men and women have had a double vision of reality,
expression that stem from the historic wholenesscaught
of thebetween the polarities of black and white, slave
black presence in the Americas. and free, powerful and weak, Self and Other, creating
The three authors under consideration here are tensions which become key elements on which their
Adalberto Ortiz of Ecuador, Edouard Glissant of novels turn.
Martinique, and Ralph Ellison of the United States. As a starting point, we can look at Juyungo, an
Ortiz' major prose work is the novel Juyungo for which
Afro-Hispanic novel by Ortiz, whose title derives from
he received the National Prize for best Ecuadorian novel a derogatory epithet the Indians of the country were
of 1942.1 Edouard Glissant wrote La Lezarde (The accustomed to confer on black people. In the unfolding
Lizard), whose title carries out the symbolism of the of the story, Ascension Lastre, who is the novel's
tortuous, winding river by that name along whose protagonist, gradually comes to stand for a positive
banks black people work out the movement of their black presence—in his own rising black consciousness,
lives.2 Glissant received the French Prix Renaudot in in the history of his slave and free forbears, and by way
1958 for his novel. Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible of his strengths in forest, in mountain, and with
Man,3 whose title represents another symbolic allusion men—a black man, a "Juyungo" who contradicted the
to a black man's interpretation of his experiences, and negative identity that normally accompanied the epithet.
for which he received the National Book Award in 1952, Dominating the human presence, however, is the
will round out the trio of writers whose works lend mythic symbol of the forest, communicating in a choral
effect what it has observed in the brief lives of men.
themselves to examining a black literary aesthetic

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 Ortiz, Glissant, and Ellison

Heading each chapter from the first to the last, what Juyungo's perceptions of himself as a black man and
Ortiz calls the "ear and eye of the forest" introduces in his growing awareness of what that blackness means to
fifteen lines, more or less, passages of imagery that him as an individual moving within the racial
evoke the black experience of history in Ecuador. definitions formulated in Ecuador's history and culture.
Saturating the mind with a consciousness of black life, An important scene in the novel occurs while Juyungo
the "ear and the eye" have witnessed the reality of past sits in conversation with several black mountain
deeds, of runaway slaves, of nocturnal acts of whites, of people, reordering his thoughts in relations to some of
dark secrets forever interred in the forested mountains. the comments they were making. One of the men said:
More poetry than prose, these recurrent passages "It must be that we are what we are today because of
effectively establish a black point of view: centuries of forced labor and slavery." The other men
were silent, but Juyungo asked: "What do you mean by
Marimbas y buba. Bubas y marimba. Relucen los that?" And it was this man's answer that contributed to
machetes lo mismo que los rios rutilantes de sol a sol. Juyungo's hatred of whites. "I said," the mountaineer
Su pavoroso tin-tin brinca retumbando desde los elaborated, "that there was a time when blacks were
puntales de guayacan.. Distante la pena.... De la selva slaves of whites, who bought them and sold them like
profunda emergieron ebanos soberbios de nocturnos
animals, in order to keep them working from sunrise to
corazones, testigos sin lengua de las multiples hazanas
sunset." "And all whites were like that?" asked
de algun negro cimarr6n. Los blancos dijeron muchas
cosas. Los blancos hicieron peores cosas. Hasta los Juyungo. "No, not all, but most of them accepted
cayapas prescribieron: 'donde entierra juyungo no slavery because it made them rich." Juyungo's reply
entierra cayapa.' A poco pian con pian. Marimba sobre was quick and angry: "What bastards! If I had lived then,
marimba. Pero un di'a brotaran de aquf, de alia, y de mas you have my word I would have killed more than one of
alia, cien mil como aquel lejano Zumbf de los Palmares, them."5
(p. 7) Ortiz then develops the novel by molding Juyungo's
actions to his growing racial consciousness.
Evoking an intermix of music—xylophones, African Reinforcing the novel's thematic structure are major
drums—with instruments of death such as the characterizations that frame the image of Juyungo as we
knife-sharp edge of machetes and the putrefying wounds
are getting to know him. They are: an increasing flood
of human flesh juxtaposed against nature's background
of memories about the legendary deceased uncle in
of flashing rivers and mighty trees, the "ear and the eye"
Juyungo's family, the commandante Lastre; Juyungo's
recall the enmity of white and Indian against blacks connection
and with the mixed Black Indian zambo,
prophesy an uprising of blacks in Juyungo's countryAntonio
as Angulo; the role of the mulatto Nelson Diaz
mighty as that of the slave revolt of Palmares. Thiswho
is will replace Juyungo as survivor and symbol of
the first of the choral statements issuing from the "ear
hope in the racial and national tensions with which the
and eye," setting both theme and tone from a black
novel concludes. Even Juyungo's seduction of an
point of view for each successive chapter in the novel.
unattractive, orphaned white woman, Maria de los
Against this setting, the adventures of Ascension
Angeles Caicedo, was marked by contradictions
Lastre take shape: he ran away from home when still a
embedded in his sense of racial victory for having
boy; his earliest encounters were with the Indians, possessed
who her—or her whiteness—as opposed to disgust
gave him the name "Juyungo." By dint of courage, for
wit having strengthened his sense of blackness by
and strength, and by overcoming the threats of forest,
committing the sexual act.
river, and wild animals, Juyungo survived into youngIn the stages of his journey toward self-realization,
manhood. In this sense, he conforms to the traditional
Juyungo ultimately resolves tensions which the white
outlines of a hero figure to be found in all cultures,black polarity had produced in him by rejecting race as
including a mysterious family background which relatesthe threat to his country's destiny and adopting in its
stead
him, despite the poverty and illiteracy of his parents, to the concept of class as the evil to be overcome.
an uncle—the commandante Lastre—who was a famous There is evidence that Ortiz is looking at his
revolutionary leader a generation before. protagonist in a double way, seeing Juyungo as an ideal
Central to the narration of Juyungo's adventures,
black hero figure who will prove to be a "savior or
however, is the novel's most important element,
redeemer" of his race, or seeing him as the archetypal

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 Martha K. Cobb

raceless human being who will transcend history andintroduced

the first, a young man setting off from his
day to day black experience of life in order to workmountain
out home in response to a message from
the concept of a common humanity which will Mathieu, the second protagonist—young scholar and
automatically elevate black people when Ecuador's leader of students in the city.
problems are resolved. At their initial meeting, they grapple with thought
In the end, Juyungo dies fighting for his country and feeling about each other as they walk along the
against the invasion of Ecuador by Peru. Whether the beach to the city where Thael will be introduced to the
dying of Juyungo's racial consciousness, followed other students in Mathieu's group. For Thael, the city
shortly after by his physical death in the defense of his offers a new kind of knowledge, and he tells Mathieu: "I
country, is an irreparable loss is left to be determined by want to live, to experience, to endure this misery and
the return, unharmed, of Nelson Di'az, the mulatto who combat it." Mathieu finally discloses Thael's mission:
represents a shadowy promise for the future of black "But Thael," he says, "It's a matter of killing a man....
people, with which Ortiz concludes his novel. We must go below the surface, search the bottom." And
Adalberto Ortiz does not really answer the racial Thael at last understands why the students had called
contradictions with which this work grapples. Perhaps him from the mountain, why they needed him, and
for the author there are no easy resolutions; there is more significantly, why he had intuitively responded.
only the transcendence of race in the concept of class. For the students had learned that a corrupted official had
Bearing in mind Ortiz' superb "ear and eye of the forest" been assigned to destroy the student movement in the
imagery as symbol for the theme of a rising black city, with instructions to kill the activists and their
consciousness in the protagonist's early stages of leaders; moreover they had learned that this person was a
self-realization, and the subsequent tensions that racial former citizen and a renegade. Thael's response to this
polarities imposed on him, we can turn our attention to information was simple and confident:
a novel that comes out of the French-speaking
displacement of black people, in search of fictional I come from the mountain.... I have tied my dogs, I
patterns that illustrate the meaning of "Negritude", or have penned up my livestock, here I am. I would still
according to its author, "Antillanite." like to be up there singing, but there is a passion in
In La Lezarde by Edouard Glissant, the river is the me. I don't know. I want to understand my passion,
(p. 29)
controlling symbol in the structure of the work. Along
its banks black life appears happy, miserable,
conniving, loving, and sometimes sensitive to its own In this way the two young men joined forces, and the
historic sources as plans are being made by a small author tells the reader: "....Mathieu smiled, for he
group of student intellectuals to strike a blow for suffered from the same flames." As they talked, Mathieu
freedom against the corrupted leadership of this and Thael move side by side along the river which
French-speaking island where the story is set. The finally empties into the sea. "And Thael stepped forward
river's name, La Lezarde, meaning "The Lizard," is to meet the waves...with hope of liberation and
variously described by Glissant as sinuous, often fulfillment." Here on the beach he met Mathieu's fellow
turbulent, and alternately narrowing and broadening in students; young women and young men, who told him
its passage to the sea. It functions in similar what Mathieu had already said, that a man had to die,
relationship to black people as Ortiz' "ear and eye of the
they needed Thael with his expertise in tracking game in
forest" for the purpose of dramatizing the emergingthe mountain to search him out, follow him, and
racial sensibilities of the key figures of the novel. assassinate him.

To work out the theme of a rising black Thael accepts the mission, and the rest of the. novel's
consciousness which promises to resolve into action, structure—its thematic development, its moral position,
Glissant employs a myth-making characterization not its handling of the disparate elements of black life
unlike Ortiz's hero, Juyungo, choosing two central hero
experiences on the island, and the texture of its language
figures and telling their story from an authorialthrow into bold relief Thael's commitment to
first-person point of view, observing their actions, assassinate the selected victim who stood as symbol for
commenting on their emotions, often calling thea non-existent black leadership, namely Garin, the
reader's attention to a particular idiosyncrasy. Thael iscorrupted black who is under the control of white

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 Ortiz, Glissant, and Ellison

interests he works for and by whom he is rewarded conscious of as he follows Garin to the sea are the
extensively with worldly possessions. Juxtaposed to magical and the supernatural, the visions and the strange
Thael's mission is Mathieu's responsibility in the city. fire that foretell the ending of the novel, the appearance
The assassination must take place before the elections of the ancient African who lives on the island and who
so there will be no interference by Garin to destroy the will die that night, all of these introduced without
militant student group whose duty, under the leadership easing at any point the interior tensions of both Thael
of Mathieu, was to unite the predominantly black city and Mathieu as they carry out the work to which they
behind a single candidate for whom the people would be have committed themselves. Over all, there is the river
instructed to vote. Hence Thael, stalking the corrupted that twists down the slopes of the mountain to the
Garin, must accomplish the assassin's deed within the freedom of the sea. Symbolically it becomes the people,
time frame imposed by the coming election. the people become the river which Mathieu, after
The basic structure of the novel is discerned from the Garin's death, recognizes in the black voters who on
author's perspectives as he describes the movements of
election night wind through the narrow city street as
Thael and Mathieu, disclosing the elements of theone long sinuous body, on their way to the voting
booths.
legendary and the real which meet in the symbol of the
river, Lezarde, reminding the reader of Ortiz' Juyungo Edouard Glissant, like Adalberto Ortiz, is compelled
with its configurations of forest and mountain whosein the full sweep of his work to demonstrate to readers
mythic "ear and eye" watch over black people in the
the irony in the prices that are paid. Consequently,
valley below. In Glissant's novel, the quality of what is
tragedy appears in the death of Juyungo by the bullet of
mythic has become, in its variations, a legend in many a Peruvian soldier. In Glissant's novel, it is Thael who
cultures: namely, the unknown hero descends from his pays the price for the assassination when Valerie, the
mountain—or celestial—home to commit a deed that young city student whom he loves and who has left
will redeem his people. Reality is defined by Mathieu
the to give her love to him, is attacked and killed
revolutionary student group whose vision, embodiedby inThael's massive dogs when the couple climbs up the
Mathieu, gives the people a choice in leadership side of the mountain after election night in the city. In
provided they exercise the right to vote after the real
both novels there is an ironic tragedy in the deaths
enemy is destroyed. which follow the remarkable expanding of consciou
The shape of the novel forms out of Thael's long andsness that determined Juyungo and Thael's immersion
arduous pursuit of the renegade official, Garin, alongin
thecauses designed to free black men and women.
banks of the river that is as different, in its changeable
The ironic vision of black life that accompanies its
course leading it to the freedom of the sea as has been
spiritual tensions is not lost on Ralph Ellison whose
the destiny of black people whose history in the slave
novel Invisible Man rounds out this attempt to describe
diaspora led them to this island, and whose freedomblack
of literature in the essentials of its structure and in
choices is dependent on the assassination and the vote.
its saturation of black imagery. Ellison's novel opens
A symbolic representation of what is taking placewith in invisibility as the central metaphor identifying
real life appears in Thael's discovery of the source of black
the life. Thus,we are introduced to a self-proclaiming
river in the patio of Garin's home, kept closed in,
invisible protagonist who moves along descending
guarded and secret from the people, Garin's talisman levels
for of experience.
his continued good fortunes. Its discovery by Thael
signals the end of Garin's life and the controls that heI am an invisible man. No, 1 am not a spook like
represents. Each man is now fully aware of the other those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of
your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of
and his purposes as the pursuit leads at last to the ocean
substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I
where they confront each other in the water and Thael
might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible,
kills Garin.
understand, simply because people refuse to see me....
During the pursuit along the river's banks, the author (P- 3)
introduces into the texture of the work those elements,
those "forms of things unknown,"6 which represent an The nature of the invisibility renders the irony. A man
important aesthetic base for defining black liteature. of the darker shades of pigmentation invisible?
Among these elements that Thael is subliminallyDeclaring he is flesh, blood and mind, yet knowing his

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 Martha K. Cobb

with himself as the sacrificial victim. And so it

humanness is never truly seen and seldom acknowledged
happened, taking the invisible man on the long
in the society in which he is situated? Openly admitting
that his personal selfhood has been, and will continue to
northward escape route which would carry him through
be, defined from the perspective of the 'Other' levels
who of consciousness that represented in Ellison's
denies him his humanity? metaphor of invisibility the story of the black
In a series of encounters that move the invisible man experience in the absurdity of its anonymity—tragic,
from a small southern college to urban life in the burlesque, serious and quixotic—from the effort to
North, these are the questions that are raised through the acquire an education to the searching for a job in some
protagonist's sardonic awareness of himself that society instances, for survival in other cases.
refuses to see. Here this sense of a black self is as deep The invisible man's experience is not that of Juyungo
as the sensitivity that Ortiz' and Glissant's heroes were or Thael, but the underlying analogies in black life
attempting to realize. Added to this is the ironic vision, operate as firmly here as in the other two novels. The
as it may well be called, which in black expression invisible man is as much the alienated hero as Juyungo,
often penetrates to the very heart of tragedy. It is Thael, Mathieu, cut off from family, friends, and in the
another means of breaking down the tensions of the end deliberately severing his ties with the society he
black experience of life, finding in the language of knew. The first job he found in the North was with
incongruities the words that can be made to say Liberty Paints which relates the reader to his exile
something other than, and especially the opposite of, underground with which Ellison introduces the novel.
their literal meaning. The twist of sardonic expression, His encounter with Mr. Brockway in Building Number
the facade of words used to close in on the tragedies of two of the paint factory whose logo was "Keep America
black life, appear in black literatures from their earliest Pure With Liberty Paints" and his assignment to
oral sources in folk story and song to their mixing the white paints which resulted in solitary
incorporationin written literature in its twentieth punishment in a basement room of the paint factory,
century flowering across the African diaspora. From illustrate both invisibility and the tensions of blackness
blues and work songs, Br'er Rabbit and Anancy the in a white—Liberty Paint?—society which is neither
Spider, Bouqui and Ti Malice, through Edouard truly white any more than the paints were, since dollops
Glissant, Adalberto Ortiz and Ralph Ellison to many of black paint had to be added to give whiteness its
others, the imagery of words twisted out of their non-color, nor was it a society that approved of it,
original meanings have been used as both defense and despite its logo.
attack in language that black people learned to clothe in
In the end, despite the 1,369 light bulbs in his
their own mode of expression. There are different underground refuge, the invisible man received no
degrees of conveying life's, ironies, from the double enlightenment to release him from his spiritual
entendre with which Ellison's protagonist opens the tensions. The dividing line between the absurd and the
novel to the consummate imagery which carries the real, the image and the man, the illusions of self facing
story forward while at the same time disclosing the the realities of black personhood are convincingly
more tragic dimensions of reality for black people. illustrated in the fragmented representations of the
Two early scenes in Ellison's novel probe this deeper Reverend Rinehart, whom the protagonist, before he
reality, the first when a white trustee board member took his plunge underground, had observed on the
from the North confronts the incestuous, impulses of streets of Harlem. It was later, sitting under the electric
black Mr. Trueblood, thereby becoming so ill he had to lights, that the invisible man sought clarification.
be taken by our "invisible" man, then a student, to the "Could he be all of them," he asked himself, "Rine the
black operated Golden Day restaurant-bar where he is runner and Rine the gambler and Rine the briber and
revived, only to face the full, raw force of black life, Rine the lover and Rinehart the Reverend? Could he
black talk, and the veiled threat of black power himself be both rind and heart? What is real anyway?"
operating on its own grounds at the Golden Day, all of The questions raised here are asked in different contexts
which Ellison magnificently and hilariously conveys. In by Juyungo, by Mathieu, by Thael. Scenes can be
this chain of events the protagonist foresaw the tragic juxtaposed from the other two novels that repeat the
demise of his college career, caught as he was between sense of quest, the urgency, the personal crusade toward
the antipodes of white power and black sycophancy, one's true identity.

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 Ortiz, Glissant, and Ellison

Ellison's novel, like Ortiz' and Glissant's, is threaded

with oral traditions and a feeling for history that
transcends the reality of the invisible man's current
predicament. Sitting underground, he has visions of his
grandfather who had tried to give him advice in a dream,
and in the recollection blues melodies float through his
mind—What Did I Do To Be So Black And Blue?—and

an old Negro sermon is spelled out in his memory as he

thinks deeply and continuously under the white lights of
the electric power company. On these grounds, the
personal consciousness of the invisible man merges
with the consciousness of a Thael or a Juyungo.
Forest, river and invisibility converge in the three
novels toward a certain black conception of the human
experience—mythic, personal, visionary, ironic. Each
novel implies the potentially destructive and creative
forces on which black life turns. In the foreground is the
protagonist who must make choices, who must work
his way through the dilemmas of race and society, and
where in the end nothing is resolved. But let us take
this a step further: all is presented in ordered and
meaningful stages of action whose symbolic
configurations unify and enlighten a black self
awareness. The fact that these novels by Ortiz, Glissant,
and Ellison have come out in the mid-twentieth century
suggests a yet more sophisticated stage in the ongoing
development of fictional patterns which uncover the
reality of the African diaspora experience.

Reprinted from Afro-Hispanic Review, Vol. 1.3,

Sept. 1982.

Notes

'Juyungo: Historia de un negro, una isla y otros negros,

3rd ed. (Guayaquil: Libreria Cervantes, 1968).
2La Lezarde (Paris: Seuil, 1958).
3Invisible Man, 3rd ed. (New York: Random House,
1952).
4See Understanding the New Black Poetry (New York:
Morrow, 1973), pp. 62-66.
5Ortiz, p. 193. These translations and all subsequent
ones are by the author.
6The expression is originally Richard Wright's and has
been adopted by Stephen Henderson. See Understanding, p.
5.

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