Léopold Sédar Senghor
Senegalese poet and statesman, founder of the Senegalese Democratic Bloc. Senghor was elected president of Senegal in the 1960s. He retired from office in 1980. He was one of the originators of the concept of Négritude, defined as the literary and artistic expression of the black African experience. In historical context the term has been seen as a reaction against French colonialism and a defence of African culture. It has deeply influnced the strengthening of African identity in the French-speaking black world.
"L'èmotion est nègre, la raision est héllène." (emotion is Negro, reason is Greek) "Negritude is the totality of the cultural values of the Black world."
Léopold Sédar Senghor was born in Joal-la-Portugaise, a small fishing vilage about seventy miles south of Dakar. His father was of noble descent and wealthy merchant. His mother was a Peul, one of a pastoral and nomadic people. Later Senghor wrote: "I grew up in the heartland of Africa, at the crossroads / Of castes and races and roads" The first seven years of his life Senghor spent in Djilor with his mother and maternal uncles and aunts. At the age of twelve, he attended the Catholic mission school of Ngazobil. He continued his studied at the Libermann Seminary and Lycée Van Vollenhoven, finishing secondary-school education in 1928.
After winning a state scholarship, Senghor then moved to Paris and graduated from the Lycée Louis-le-grand in 1931. During these years he read African-American poets of the Harlem Renaissance and such French poets as Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Verlaine and Valéry. Among Senghor's s friends were Aimé Cesaire, with whom he would develope the idea of Negritude, and Georges Pompidou, who later elected President of France. In 1932 Senghor was granted French citizenship. He served in a regiment of colonial infantry and in 1935 he obtained the agrégation degree in grammar.
From 1935 he worked as a teacher, notably at Lycée Descartes in Tours, then in Paris at Lycée Marcelin Berthelot. At the outbreak of World War II, he joined the French army, but was captured by the Germans and spent eighteen months in a camp as a prisoner of war. During this period he learned German and wrote poems, which were published in HOSTIES NOIRES (1948). In 1944 he was appointed professor of African languages at the École Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer.
Senghor's first collection of poems, CHANTS D'OMBRE (1945), was inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson, and dealt with the themes of exile and nostalgia. "Tokowaly, uncle, do you remember the nights gone by / When my head weighted heavy on the back of your patience / or / Holding my hand your hand led me by shadows and signs / The fields are flowers of glowworms, stars hang on the / bushes, on the trees / Silence is everywhere /" In 1945 and 1946 Senghor was elected to represent Senegal in the French Constituent Assemblies. With Senghor's help Alioune Diop, a Senegalese intellectual living in Paris, created in 1947 Présence Africaine, a cultural journal, which had on the advisory board André Gide, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1948 Senghor became professor at Ecole Nat. de la France d'Outre-Mer. From 1946 to 1958 he was continuously reelected to the French National Assembly.
After breaking with Lamine Guèye, who was allied with the French socialist (SFIO), Senghor created a new political party, BDS (Bloc Démocratique Sénégalais). He married in 1948 Ginette Eboué, the daughter of a prominent Guyanese colonial administrator. They had two children; the marriage ended in divorce. Senghor's second wife, who was French, had her family roots in Normandy.
When Senegal joined with the Sudanese Republic to form the Federation of Mali, Senghor became president of the federal assembly. In August 1960 Senegal separated from the federation and Senghor was elected the first president of Senegal. Since leaving the presidency in 1980 Senghor has shared his time between Paris, Normandy, and Dakar. In 1983 Senghor was elected to the Académie française. He died in France on December 20, 2001.
VISIT
I dream in the intimate semi-darkness of an afternoon.
I am visited by the fatigues of the day,
The deceased of the year, the souvenirs of the decade,
Like the procession of the dead in the village on the horizon of the
--shallow sea.
It is the same sun bedewed with illusions,
The same sky unnerved by hidden presences,
The same sky feared by those who have a reckoning with the dead.
And suddenly my dead draw near to me...
Senghor has received several international awards as a writer and a major African political opinion leader, among others Dag Hammarskjöld Prize (1965), Peace Prize of German Book Trade, Haile Sellassie African Research Prize (1973, Apollinaire Prize for Poetry (1974). He was appointed in 1969 member of Inst. Français, Acad. des Sciences morales et politiques.
Senghor's poems, written in French, have been translated into several languages: Spanish, English, German. Russian, Swedish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and others. In his poetry Senghor invites the reader to feel the nearly mystical essence Africa. His non-fiction includes writings primarily in linguistics, politics and sociology. His philosophy and the concept of Negritude has received wide attention and critic. The concept is defined in contradistinction to Europe. According to Senghor, the Negro is intuitive, whereas the European is more Cartesian. Senghor's statement about reason and intuition has led to numerous protests, but among others Sartre has declared the Negritude is "an antiracist racism" in his preface entitled 'Orpée noir' to Senghor's ANTHOLOGIE DE LA NOUVELLE POÉSIE NÉGRE ET MANGACHE (1948).
"Yes, in one way, the Negro today is richer in gifts than in works. But tree thrusts its roots into the earth. The river runs deep, carrying precious seeds. And, the Afro-American poet, Langston Hughes, says: / I have known rivers / ancient dark rivers / my soul has grown deep / like the deep rivers. / The very nature of the Negro's emotion, his sensitivity, furthermore, explains his attitude toward the object perceived with such basic intensity. It is an abandon that becomes need, and active state of communion, indeed of identification, however negligible the action - I almost said the personality - of the object. A rhythmic attitude: The adjective should be kept in mind." (from 'Ce que l'homme noir apporte,' in L'Homme de couleur, ed. by Claude Nordey, 1939)
In the area of political philosophy, Senghor has examined African socialism. For him, socialism is not new to Africans, where the concept of sharing has been important throughout history. Senghor sees that scientific socialism express in many ways the personal point of view of its inventors, Marx and Engels. He believes that there will be eventually one world civilization, a unique and universal one. The opposition of Africa and Europe in a central theme is his fiction and non-fiction - the appeal of the humanist ideals of French cilization and his commitment to the African cause. To unite these both halves Senghor has advocated Civilisation de l'universel. In a poem of the legendary founder of the ancient empire of Ghana, Senghor wrote: "My empire is that of Love, for I am weak for you, woman, / Foreigner with clear eyes, lips of cinnamon apple, / And a sex like a burning bush / For I am both sides of a double door, the binary rhythm of space / And the third beat, I am the movement of drums, / The strength of future Africa." (from 'The Kaya-Magan')
Négritude: a term much used after WW II, which embraces the revolt against colonialist values, glorification of the African past, and nostalgia for the beauty and harmony of traditional African society. The term owes a great deal to its French intellectual origin. Main exponents have been Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon.