400
A FRICA
the boundless spaces of their continent. However, when we were a
short distance from the group, a tall slender young man began to
improvise a dance step, moving away somewhat from the others.
His
companions didn't look at him, they continued to walk on chattering
and laughing. But suddenly a woman began to dance too, still walking
at the same time: then another boy, then another woman, finally the
whole group, as if taken with a kind of infection or automatic imitation;
they proceeded down the road, in that majestic and funereal solitude
of the forest, jumping, shaking their arms and swaying their hips, with
a frenzy and a violence that the calm bearing of a few moments
before had not, in any way, foretold.
We passed next to them. There was an old man who carried
strung across his back a small wooden drum which he beat at the
edges with his palms ; there were some young men with fluttering
streamers of colored cloth thrown over their shoulders; there were
boys and some almost naked children. All were dancing while they
walked, their excitement in strange contrast with the absolute im–
mobility of the forest; and all had, in their white eyes, a fixed and
abstract look that made one think of an easy ecstasy, in a manner of
speaking, always within reach, always ready to make the fine screen
of individuality fall away and let man communicate with the mystery.
In this case, the mystery was there, two steps away, visible and obsessive:
the forest grandiose and hostile, beneath which they wandered like the
faithful beneath the nave of a cathedral. The group continued to dance
while we passed by. The road was straight, after about half a kilometer,
I turned and looked back: the group was no longer dancing; now they
had gone back to walking with a normal step.
What do I wish to express with this example? I wish to express
what I have already said before: that the Negro dances his life; and
that for this reason there is always in his dance something surprising,
something that springs up unexpectedly. In reality, the Negro doesn't
know what is waiting for him in the dance; in the same way, we usually
do not know what is waiting for us in life. He tries to move his body
in a certain direction, according to a certain rhythm. Sometimes, moving
in this way, he succeeds in entering into a more general, a vaster rhythm
which flows around him like a sea current that flows around the body
of a swimmer; and then he begins to dance. But sometimes the personal
rhythm doesn't succeed in becoming a part of the universal rhythm, and
then the Negro immediately stops dancing and goes back to his normal
step. But stilI, he tries, he tries continuously, and with the obstinacy
and the patience of a water-diviner or a gold prospector.
