Léopold Sédar Senghor
In Memoraim
It is Sunday.
I fear the crowd of my brothers with stony faces.
From my tower of glass filled with pain, the nagging Ancestors
I gaze at roofs and hills in the fog
In the silence – the chimneys are grave and bare.
At their feet sleep my dead, all my dreams are dust
All my dreams, the liberal blood spills all along the streets, mixing
with the blood of the butcheries.
And now, from this observatory as from a suburb
I watch my dreams float vaguely through the streets, lie at the hills’ feet
Like the guides of my race on the banks of Gambia or Saloum,
Now of the Seine, at the feet of these hills.
Let me think of my dead!
Yesterday it was Toussaint, the solemn anniversary of the sun
and no remembrance in any cemetery.
Ah, dead ones who have always refused to die, who have known
how to fight death
By Seine or Sine, and in my fragile veins pushed the invincible blood,
Protect my dreams as you have made your sons, wanderers on
delicate feet.
Oh Dead, protect the roofs of Paris in the Sunday fog
The roofs which guard my dead
That from the perilous safety of my tower I may descend to the streets
To join my brothers with blue eyes
With hard hands.
I think that Senghor is remembering his home in Senegal. He writes of the rivers in Senegal and the rivers in Paris. Where he was educated and became a French Citizen. He joined the French military. He asks the spirits of the dead from his life to protect the roofs of Paris. German planes could bomb France and Senghor calls to God asking for protection of his dreams and protect him when he leaves safety and descends to the streets to join the French soldiers with blue eyes to fight beside them duringWorld War II.
Senghor’s political and literary careers were inextricably linked. Residing part-time in France, he wrote poems of resistance in French which engaged his Catholic spirituality even as they celebrated his Senegalese heritage. He was the first African invited to join the Académie Française, and was awarded honorary doctorates from 37 universities, in addition to many other literary honors.
Senghor co-founded, with Aimé Césaire, the Négritude movement, which promotes distinctly African cultural values and aesthetics, in opposition to the influence of French colonialism and European exploitation.
Négritude which attempted to focus on distinctive African themes and values, hoping to draw his country’s literature from the traditional French culture. Controversial, some saw Négritude as anti-white, though supporters claimed it simply shifted focus on multi-culturalism which helped strengthen African identity in Senegal. His poetry has been translated into several languages including English. His own writing style is said to be mystical and have received worldwide critical acclaim. He has said that his own work would have been superficial had he remained simply a teacher and not become more involved in Senegal’s growth. His influences were broad, borrowing from American and French poets and his lithesome style attempted a departure from traditional styles.
Senghor was not only a prolific writer, an influential personality in Senegal, but he was also an influential contributor to global discussions on civilization and humanism.
Negritude was both a literary and ideological movement led by French-speaking black writers and intellectuals. The movement is marked by its rejection of European colonization and its role in the African diaspora, pride in “blackness” and traditional African values and culture, mixed with an undercurrent of Marxist ideals. Its founders (or les trois pères), Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon-Gontran Damas, met while studying in Paris in 1931 and began to publish the first journal devoted to Negritude, L’Étudiant noir (The Black Student), in 1934.
The term “Negritude” was coined by Césaire in his Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939) and it means, in his words, “the simple recognition of the fact that one is black, the acceptance of this fact and of our destiny as blacks, of our history and culture.” Even in its beginnings Negritude was truly an international movement–drawing inspiration from the flowering of African-American culture brought about by the writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance while asserting its place in the canon of French literature, glorifying the traditions of the African continent, and attracting participants in the colonized countries of the Caribbean, North Africa, and Latin America.
The movement’s sympathizers included French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Roumain, founder of the Haitian Communist party. The movement would later find a major critic in Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright and poet, who believed that a deliberate and outspoken pride in their color placed black people continually on the defensive, saying notably “Un tigre ne proclâme pas sa tigritude, il saute sur sa proie,” or “A tiger doesn’t proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey.” Negritude has remained an influential movement throughout the rest of the twentieth century to the present day.http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5666#sthash.e6GKNlel.dpuf
Do you think that the Negritude movement made a difference in our view as Americans of the black Africans residing in Africa today? Give some specific examples of how your individual view has changed since reading the literature and poetry of African authors.
Senghors’ poem shows a connection between France and Senegal, or more generally Africa, often made through reference to rivers or locations, especially the Sine and the Seine River that runs through Paris.
The Gambia is named after this majestic river, which is one of the most navigable waterways in Africa. It runs for 1100 Kilometers from its The River Gambia (The Smiling River)
source in the futa Jalon highlands, in Guinea (Conakry), to its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean. Six hundred Kilometers of these course like a knife through The Gambia, splitting the country into two halves with its banks fringed by tropical forest, bamboo and mangrove swamps. Villages and towns occur several meters inland where people pursue vocations tied to the river. Fishing is one of them. http://www.visitthegambia.gm
The Saloum River rises about 105 kilometers east of Kaolack, Senegal, and flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The significant Saloum Delta is located at its mouth, which is protected as Saloum Delta National Park. The river basin lies within the Serer pre-colonial Kingdom of Saloum. Mangrove forests occupy a 5-kilometer belt on either side of the river almost 70 kilometers upstream. (Wikipedia)
Paris is a river town. Ever since the first human settlements, from the prehistoric days and the village of the Parisii tribes, the Seine has played both a defensive and an economic role. The present historic city, which developed between the 16th (and particularly the 17th) centuries and the 20th century, translates the evolution of the relationship between the river and the people: defense, trade, promenades, etc. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/600
The natural region of Sine-Saloum is located north of The Gambia and south of the Petite Côte. It encompasses an area of 180,000 hectares. It is in this region that the Saloum Delta National Park is located. It is a river delta formed by the confluence of two rivers: the Sine and the Saloum.
Because it flows so slowly, this delta allows saltwater to travel deep inland. http://www.senegal-online.co.uk
Toussaint (French for All Saints’ Day, literally All Saints)
I feel a sincere empathy for the character in this poem when he says “Yesterday it was Toussaint, the solemn anniversary of the sun and no remembrance in any cemetery”. What was Senghor trying to say?
World Lit 2014 