Conférence de Pierre Akinwande HERA 2015, find San Francisco (USA), medicine 11 avril 2015

CONTEMPORARY NEGRO-AFRICAN POETSWRITING IN FRENCH, tadalafil DEMAGOGUES OR REVOLUTIONARIES?
AKINWANDE PETER OLAKUNLE(Ph.D)
Senior Lecturer (Comparative French & Francophone Literatures)
Department of European Languages
University of Lagos (Nigeria)
P. O. Box 1063, Ebute Meta Post Office, Lagos
peterakinwande@gmail.com

Abstract
Contemporary Negro-African poets of African and Caribbean extractions writing in French constitute the object of this paper. What we set out to examine here is the relevance of the poetry of Black writers in the Caribbean islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, and Guyane, the former DOMknown since 1946 as departments of the French Republic,as well as that of poetsoriginating from Francophone Black Africa, the former TOM that comprise of the former French Equatorial Africa (AEF) and French West Africa(AOF). Also to beexamined is the perception of critics in Europe and Africa about Négritude poetry, an aspect of 20th century French poetry, in the contemporary world. Our focus will be on African writers such as Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate (1986), StanislasAdotevi, Mongo Beti and AhmadouKourouma who perceive Negritude poetry as irrelevant in the postcolonial era, on the one hand, and French western writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and André Breton, who acknowledge the uniqueness of the Negritude poetry which they also describe as “the greatest revolutionary poetry ever “, on the other hand.
Those Negro-African poets most of whom belong to the Négritude school include Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Léon-GontranDamas, Léonard Sainville, Aristide Maugée, BiragoDiop, David Diop, OusmaneSoce, the Achilles brothers, all members of the founding team of the peer-reviewed journal, L’Etudiant noir, whomSenghor claimed number about ten, as well as lots of other writers and critics, including Daniel Maximin, Gilles Carpentier, CamaraLaye, DjibrilTamsirNiane, Mongo Beti, AhmadouKourouma, etc., who have through their creative writings enhanced the beauty of black culture thusheightening the tempo of Negro-African art in French,making it to become what Jean-Paul Sartre describes as “… de nosjours,la seulegrande poésie révolutionnaire� (… in this era, the sole great revolutionary poetry), in his “Orphée noir�, preface to Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Anthologie de la nouvelle poésienègre et malgache de langue française (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1948, XII).

Key Words:‘Contemporary’, ‘Negro-African’, ‘Poets’, ‘Demagogue’, ‘Revolutionary’
Introduction
The key words in this paper are:“Contemporary�, “Negro-African�, “Poets�, “Demagogues�, and “Revolutionaries�. Contemporary means “Belonging to the present time�; Negro-African, an adjective qualifying a group of black writers in the Caribbean’s and in Sub-Saharan Africa; Poets are writers who engage in writing in verse andin strophe; Demagogues are leaders who try to win support by using arguments based on emotion rather than reason; while Revolutionaries in this context are poets whose creativity brings about radical, positive changes into the art of poetry.
As we examine the various stages of the evolutionary process of the Négritude poetry that emerged by 1930, as well as the senghorian, cesairian and damasian perspectives of the protest stage of that poetry, reflecting varying reactions of diverse black populaces in the Caribbean’s and Black Africa to the oppressive French assimilation policy of the three centuries preceding World War II, the contribution of these black scholars towards enhancing the richness and complexity of poetry as a primary art form will become clearer. What is poetry, its role in the society, and who is a poet?
What is poetry and who is a poet?
Dictionaries describe poetry as the art of language used forexpression, using rhythm, verse, harmony and imagery. Mme de Stael, French writer and precursor of French Romanticism, is quoted as saying in late 18th century that poetry must “réfléchir par les couleurs, les sons, et les rythmes, toutes les beautés de l’univers�1 (reflect by colours, sounds and rhythms, all the beauties of the universe).Later in the 20th century, Senegalese-born French poet, Léopold Sédar Senghor, defined poetry as: “une image ou un ensemble d’imagesanalogiques, mélodieuses, et rythmées� (an image or a group of analogical, melodious and rhythmic images), adding in his famous book, Ceque je crois: Négritude, Francité et Civilisation de l’Universel (Ed. Grasset&Fasquelle, 1988, 119), that “le poèmen’est accompli ques’il se fait chant, parole et musique en même temps� (the poem is complete only if it produces song, word and music at the same time).
Senghor however underscores the role of imagery and rhythm as two most important elements of poetry, in his fifth philosophical essay, Liberté V: Le Dialogue des cultures (Ed. du Seuil, Paris, 1993, 22-23), with rhythm taking the pride of place, especially in black poetry:
L’image ne suffit pas à donner à l’œuvre d’art toute sa poésie, toute sa force de
suggestion. Véritablement, c’est le rythme  qui exprime la force vitale : l’énergie
créatrice. L’image n’atteint son plein effet qu’animé par le rythme … Le rythme
nègre se rencontre dans tous les arts, quels qu’ils soient. Par des procédés divers,
combinant le parallélisme et l’asymétrie, l’accentuation et l’atonalité, les temps
forts et les temps faibles introduisant la variété, voire la rupture dans la répétition,
le rythme nait, se renforce … Le rythme, c’est incontestablement le sceau de la
Négritude

(Imagery does not suffice to give to the work of art its poetry, all its suggestive
force. Truly, it is rhythm that expresses the living force: the creative energy.
 Imagery only attains its full effect only when strengthened by rhythm …Black
rhythm is found in all arts, whatever they may be. By varied procedures,
combining parallelism and asymmetry, accentuation and tonality, the strong
moments and the weak moments introducing variety, in other words rupture in
repetition, rhythm comes into being, strengthens itself … Rhythm, is indisputa-
blythe seal of Negritude)

In an interview granted by Léon-Gontran Damas in 1972, published in English in Keith Q. Warner’s book:Critical Perspectives on Léon-Gontran Damas (Three Continents Press, Washington, 1988, 4), the French poet from Guyane lays emphasis on the rhythmic element of Negro-African poetry : “I am not afraid to say that in my poetry you find rhythm. My poems can be danced. They can be sung�. And perhaps one may mention at this stage JanheinzJahn’s comment in his book, A History of neo-African literature(1966), that Léon-Gontran Damas collection of poems, Black Label (1956) “was composed like a piece of music, with each part held together by a leitmotiv verse�, adding that it contains also “somerhythmic innovations which made French poetic language dance in an Afro-American fashion�2.
The Belgian critique, LilyanKesteloot has identified the presence of humour in Damas poem, “Hoquet�, as in other parts of the collection of poems, Pigments (1937). She also says that Damas uses rhythm effectively in the poem, “Limbé�, contained in the same collection, Pigments.And so, Léon-Gontran Damas has, in the words of his biographer, Daniel Racine, invented his own style of poetry, its rhythmic aspects, hence, “rompant avec la tradition de la métriqueclassique, il a sudonner à son langagepoétiqueune cadence que les critiques les plus autoriséss’accordent à trouverparfaitementappropriée à la poésie nègre�3 (breaking with classical versification, he was able to give his poetic language a measure that the best of critics will find most appropriate for black poetry).
Aimé Césaire, the Martiniquais-born French poet who invented the word “Négritude�, first in 1935, in an article titled, “Négrérie�, published in L’Etudiant noir journal, to describe his group’s brand of the 20th century French poetry, defines poetry in the following words: “La poésieestcettedémarche qui par le mot, l’image, le mythe, l’amour et l’humourm’installe aucœur vivant de moi-même et du monde�4. (Poetry is that effort which through the word, imagery, myth, love and humour, places me in the very depth of myself and of the world).Aimé Césaire, also aleading theoretician of the Negritude poetic school went further to place emphasis, just like Senghor, on imagery and rhythm as two most vital ingredients of poetry, in his book, La Poésie (Ed. du Seuil, Paris, 1994, 5-6):

Pour l’image … l’image relie l’objet; achève, en me montrant la face inconnue,d’accuser sa
singularité, mais par la confrontation et la révélation de ses rapports; définis non plus son être
mais ses potentialités bref, le dote de satranscendance fondamentale. Le rythme enfin, et peut-
être est-ce par là quej’aurais du commencer, car c’est en définitive l’émotion première, prière et
injonction, qu’annonced’abordsarumeur

(Concerning Imagery … imagery links the object again, and succeeds, by showing me the
unknownfaçade, in acknowledging its uniqueness, but by confronting and revealing its
accounts, defines not more its beingbut its potentialities in brief, endue it with its fundamen-
taltranscendency. Finally,rhythm, but perhaps that’s where I should have started, for it is
conclusivelythe firstemotion, prayer and injunction which its uproar first announces)

Therefore, poetry in its pure form since Greco-Roman antiquity, and despite the formal canons of Aristotle and the resultant vagaries brought about by the dynamics of change and intellectual discourse from the 16th/17thcentury Classical era through to the period of Romanticism in the 19th century, simply covers epic, tragedy and comedy, and the panegyric art. However, poetry was extended later by Nicolas Boileau, French theoretician and admirer of Aristotle, in his book L’Artpoétique (1674) to include satire, epic poetry, dramatic poetry and small traditional poetic forms such as rondo, ballad, madrigal, etc. And so the versified genre which has over the centuries been described as the noblest form of art, by ancient poets, notably Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles, as well as Victor Hugo, Senghor, Césaire and Damas, etc., in modern times, includes narrative or dramatic genres that are fictional in nature.
The poet is described by Victor Hugo, the great 19th century French romantic poet, novelist and playwright, in the preface to his book,Cromwell (1827) as: “un mage chargé de conduire le peupleversunedestinéemeilleure� (a magi assigned to lead the people to a better future), underscoring the role of the poet as a social-political activist, a catalyst for change who cannot be indifferent but rise to the occasion to resist the oppression of the populace under a totalitarian regime such as was the case in France when on 2ndDecember 1851, Louis-Napoléon, French Second Republic president elected in 1848 with the support of writers of the day who were predominantly republicans, suddenly suspended the Constitution and proclaimed himself emperor. The league of romantic writers in France some of whom held ambassadorial and ministerial posts in the republican government felt scandalized and declared war on the new tyrant, even as they ran into exile.
In like manner, Aimé Césaire, who along with Léon-Gontran Damas, led the protest against the oppressive French assimilation policy in the French Caribbean islands from 1930, describes the role of the poet as that of an oracle, a pragmatic leader, a type of saviour or liberator committed to serving the collective interest of his people, in his famous long poem, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939).The pragmatic pan-Africanist and deputy-mayor of Martinique says: “Ma bouche sera la bouche des malheurs qui n’ont point de bouche, ma voix, la liberté de celles qui s’affaissent au cachot du désespoir�5 (My mouth will be the mouth of the less fortunate ones who have no mouth, my voice the freedom of those who succumb to the imprisonment of despair).
Here again we take a look at what Léopold Sédar Senghor portrays as the profound essence of poetry which the poet, the artisan,the creative mind plunges into. The revealing audio-visual recorded account contained in a documentary on poet-president Senghor titled: “2Si racines� (on Youtube), produced in the 1970s while the poet was president of independent Senegal, states inter-alia: “Je penseque le poète, un écrivain, estdans un état de grâce, et qu’ilvoit les choses avec des yeuxintérieurs. Cette vision des choses est la véritable vision tandis que la vision quotidienne, la vision prosaïque est une vision utilitaire qui ne va pas au fond des choses » (I thinkthat the poet, a writer, is ina state oftrance, and thatheseesthingswithinnereyes.That vision of things is the true vision whereas the daily vision, the prosaic vision is a utilitarian vision which does not penetrate into the depth of things), alluding to the early stage of his poetry, titled « Le Royaumed’Enfance », which is rooted in the sérère traditional rites that the poet Senghor went through during early childhood in his native village, Dyilor, in Senegal.
What distinguishes Negro-African poetry from Western poetry?
Globally, poetry remains today what it was inthe days of the Hellenistic poets like Homer and Virgil, as well as the great philosophers of art, Socrates, Plato and especially Aristotle, that period in history when Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides ranked among the greatest men of the arts excelling in poetry and drama. That tradition of art form that combines rhythm, verse, harmony and imagery for expression has been in vogue over the ages and all over Europe and the entire world. It must be noted however that while the verse, enunciation and content constitute component forms of traditional poetry, a combination of these criteria is not necessary in modern poetry of the post-classical era when writers relish innovation and liberty as essential ingredients of vitality and dynamism in art.That perhaps is the form of modern art referred to by Mongo Beti and OdileTobner in their critical essay on Negritude, Dictionnaire de la Négritude (Ed. L’Harmattan, Paris, 1989, 27):“…On ne seraitenfermer la créationafricainemodernedans un art dont les critères et les modèlesseraientdéfinisunefois pour toutes » (It would be out of place to confine African creativity into an art which criteria and models would be defined once and be fixed.)
The modern form of poetrywhich Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel and Saint-John Perse identified with in 19th century and early 20thcentury is what the black French poets of the Negritude school imbibed through their intensive classical studies and research at Lycée Louis-le-Grand and Sorbonne University in Paris. While some of our black poets like Léopold Sédar Senghor displayed a mastery of the alexandrine style in the portrait of black art, evident in collection of poems such as Chants d’ombre (1945), Hostiesnoires (1948), Ethiopiques (1956), Nocturnes (1961), Lettresd’hivernage (1973) and Elégiesmajeures (1979), others like Aimé Césaire deviated from the western alexandrine style, inventing a new poetic style in Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939), an art form that is akin to the surrealist creation of André Breton school but which Aimé Césaire was totally unaware of, as he claimed not to have met the surrealists nor read their works before writing his ‘Cahier’.
In response to a remark by Françoise Ligier that people sometimes assumed Césaire was a surrealist poet, but that it seemed he had separated from the surrealists, the Martiniquais poet replies thus : “Mais je ne me suis pas séparéparceque je n’ysuisjamaisentré. Je vous ai dit que ce que je retire du surréalisme c’est la volonté d’accéder à l’être par-delà le fatras social … »6 (But I did not separate myselfbecause I never for once joinedtheir camp. I have already told you that what I draw from surrealism is the will to attain a level of being far above the social trash).
Léopold Sédar Senghor, foremost theoretician of the Négritude poetic school alluded, in his preface to Daniel Racine’s book : Léon-GontranDamas, l’homme et l’oeuvre (PrésenceAfricaine, Paris, 1983), to that classical tradition that saw himself, Aimé Césaire and Damas, immerse deeply into Greek, Latin and Hebrew – language, history, philosophy and literature – right from the Lycée, both in Dakar and Martinique, and their profound graduate studies in Paris in the years 1928-1932, especially by Senghor and Césaire, who, in the decade before the 2nd World War, launched, according to Senghor, “dansd’interminables et rigoureusesétudesclassiques, en passant par toutes les filières des examens et concours, jusqu’àl’agrégationâ€� (into endless and rigorous classical studies, going through all the stages of regular and specialized examinations, up to “aggregationâ€�).
And Senghor’s two major poetic inspirations – the childhood initiation into traditional sérère rites in native Dyilor and Joal, otherwise referred to as his “Royaumed’Enfanceâ€�, as well as the deepimmersion into the works of great western scholars right from the Lycée (high school) to the Sorbonne – he later put both in perspective in the voluminous book, Léopold Sédar Senghor:Poésie complete (CNRS Editions, Paris, 2007, 816):
Bien sûr, il y a les poétesses populaires de mes villages d’enfance, Dyilor et Joal,
mes Trois Grâces. Il reste que, si celles-ci ont été mes premières audiences, avant
l’âge de dix ans, elles n’ont pas été mes premières lectures. Mes premiers auteurs,
je les ai partagés – c’est une manière de dire  – avec vous tous. En me référant
à vos biographes, ce furent, entre autres, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé,
Valéry, Claudel, Saint-John Perse. Des poètes de la rigueur dans la forme, de la
liberté, voire du délire dans l’imaginaire.

The poet’s nostalgic feelings about his native sérère customs, the immense richness of African culture, are portrayed by the warm embrace of the mother, the thunderous noise of the hunters gun shots, the fascinating moonlight tales in Dyilor, the prowess of the traditional palace bards called “griots�7,and native female poets, as well as thespecial attraction of the beautiful sceneries of the Sine-Saloum region in Senegal, as in these lines of the poem, “Ethiopie: A l’Appel de la Race de Saba� :

Mère, sois bénie !
J’entends ta voix quand je suis livré au silence sournois
de cette nuit d’Europe
Prisonnier de mes draps blancs et froids bien tirés, de toutes
les angoisses qui m’embarrassent inextricablement ….
Ou celle des guerriers noirs au tonnerre de la tornade des
tanks
Et tombe leur chef avec un grand cri, dans une grande
giration de tout le corps.
Mère, oh ! j’entends ta voix courroucée ….
Je me rappelle les jours de mes pères, les soirs de Dyilor ….
Je repose la tête sur les genoux de ma nourrice Ngâ, de
Ngâ la poétesse ….
Et mon père étendu sur des nattes paisibles, mais grand
mais fort mais beau
Homme du Royaume de Sine, tandis qu’alentour sur les
Koras, voix héroïques, les griots font danser leurs doigts
defougue …

This poem is described by JosianeNespoulous-Neuville in the book, Léopold Sédar Senghor: Africanité – Universalité(L’Harmattan, Paris, 2001, 58) as portraying “bien des aspects d’unepoésiepolitique à tonalitémarxisante� (some substantial aspects of political poetry with marxist tonality), while also evoking the nostalgia of the poet’s native land, that of his parents, and serving at the same time as a pastoral souvenir of his years of childhood, the time when the young Sédar lived with his uncle TokoWaly.  That was the far distant past the poet referred to in the poem, “D’Autres Chants …� in the collection Ethiopiques(1956): “Je ne sais en quels temps c’était, je confondstoujoursl’enfance et l’Eden� (I do not know what season it was, I usually confuse childhood and Eden). Grouped along with these poems of “Royaumed’Enfance� are other poems such as “Joal�, “Le Retour de l’Enfantprodigue�, dedicated to Jacques Maguilen Senghor, nephew of the poet, all published in the collection, Chants d’ombre (1945).

One striking similitude in lyrical poetry is noticeable in the two “Elegies� of Léopold Senghor and Victor Hugo, two catholic poets, written in memory of their young, beloved son and daughter who died in accidents, one in a road crash together with his fiancée, in Dakar, in 1981, and the other drowned in river Seine together with her husband while on honey-moon barely two weeks after their wedding, in 1843. Senghor’s “Elégie pour Philippe-Maguilen Senghor� is published in the collection of poems, Elégiesmajeures(1979), while Hugo’s poem, “TroisAns Après�, is contained in Les Contemplations (1856). We have here an extract from Senghor’s “Elégie pour Philippe-Maguilen Senghor�:

Or c’était le sept juin, c’était la Pentecôte
Soudain, le coup de téléphone blanc, qui te faisait toujours
trembler de frissons blancs
Le coup de foudre blanc. Et fleur vaporeuse soudain, tu
tombas dans mes bras
Voici donc mon enfant, souffle mêlé de nos narines, qui
s’éteint, ha !
Et j’ai dit « non » au médecin : « Mon fils n’est pas mort,
cen’est pas possible »

And from Victor Hugo’s poem « TroisAns Après�, we have this extract:

……………………………………………………..
                  L’humble enfant que Dieu m’a ravie
                  Rien qu’en m’aimant savait m’aider
                  C’était le bonheur de ma vie
                  De voir ses yeux me regarder
                  ………………………………………………………
                  Ces clartés, jour d’une autre sphère,
                  O Dieu jaloux, tu nous les vends !
                  Pourquoi m’as-tu pris la lumière
                  Que j’avais parmi les vivants ?
 
So, speaking in general terms, the uniqueness of Negro-African poetry can be seen from two perspectives,first, through the style which is substantially distinct from the Western alexandrine, and secondly, through the poetic content which emphasis is on the exploration of themes such as black cultural renaissance, nostalgia, anti-colonialism and the quest for racial equality. And it is in this latter context that one acknowledges the great role played by notable Negro-American and Caribbean writers such as W. E. B Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and René Maran, as precursors and “ancestors� of Negritude.

Léon-Gontran Damas, the Guyanese poet, described by Léopold Sédar Senghor as “le premier écrivain engage� (the first committed, activist writer)and “le plus nègre des écrivains de la Négritude� (the most “negro� of the Negritude writers),in his preface to Daniel Racine’s book, Léon-GontranDamas, l’homme et l’oeuvre (PrésenceAfricaine, Paris, 1983, 10-12), is noted to have given black poetry a mark of originality, with a style that is quite distinct, amply illustrating such essential elements of poetry as imagery, rhythm, humour, melody, etc., in his collections of poems, notably, Pigments (1937), Graffiti (1953), Black Label (1956). Senghorspeaks further on what appeared to him as “les troisvertusmajeures de l’écrivaincomme de l’artiste noir en général� (the three major virtues of the black writer and artist in general), which are,l’imageanalogique (analogical imagery), la mélodie, le chant (melody, song), and le rythme (rhythm),all of which are exemplified in Damas poetry:

Et d’abord, à l’image analogique ou symbolique. André Malraux nous l’a diten
son temps, tandis que l’artiste de l’ancienne Grèce regardait la nature pour
l’imiter, l’artiste noir lui tournele dos. Par-delà les apparences du visible, il recrée
l’invisible, le vrai réel … Ainsi fait Léon Damas. Mais loin de toute solennité, de
tout archétype, ce que crée le poète, c’est l’image familière, celle de tous les
jours. Comme dans le poème « Solde », où j’ai noté les métaphores populaires
quevoici:

(And first, there is analogical or symbolic imagery. André Malraux toldus in his
time. Whereas the artist in ancient Greece looked at nature in order to imitate it,
the black artist turns his back to it. Far beyond theappearances of the visible, he
recreates the invisible, the true real … That is what Léon Damas does. But far
from all solemnity, from all archetypes, what the poet creates is familiar imagery,
the kind used every day.As in the poem “Solde�, where I have noted the following
popularMetaphors) :
avec mon cou en cheminée d’usine
 ……………………………………………………..
un peu d’eau chaude
et des gâteaux  enrhumés
 ……………………………………………………..
 (…) leurs instincts ouverts la nuit
en forme de paillasson
Or donc, la deuxième vertu de la négritude, c’est la mélodie, le chant … On aura
remarqué, dans presque tous les textes reproduits dans ce livre, la musique des
poèmes de Damas, tissés d’allitérations et d’assonances, comme en Afrique
noire. Comme dans ces vers de Black-Label, un recueil qu’à juste raison, Racine
présente comme une suite de « chants » :

(Then, the second virtue of negritude is the melody, the song … It could be seen
                In almost all the texts reproduced in this book, the music in the poems of Damas,
laced with alliterations and assonances, as in black Africa. As in these verses of
 Black-Label, a collection that justifiably, Racine presents as a continuation of
“songs�)
NOUS LES GUEUX
nousles peu
nousles rien
nousles chiens
nousles maigres
nousles Nègres …
Nous voici donc amenés à la troisième, à la principale vertu de la négritude,qui
est le rythme. Cequi caractérise le rythme, nous dit-on, c’est « le retour d’un
repère ». Ici, de toute évidence, c’est le retour du mot « sang » et, à un moindre
degré, dumot « se ». … Ce qui caractérise, précisément, le rythme nègre, c’est,
presque contradictoirement, la vigueur de ce retour et son irrégularité.

(Here we are brought to the third, to the main virtue of negritude, which is rhythm.
 What characterizes rhythm, we are told, is “the return of a mark�. Here, from all
indications, it is the return of the word “sang� and, to a lesser degree, of the word
 “se�. … What characterizes, in short, black rhythm, is, almost contradictorily, the
vigour of this return and its irregularity),

This comment on the third virtue of negritude poetry by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegalese-born French poet, refers to the poem, « Sang satisfait du sensancien du dit » of Léon-GontranDamas published also in the collection,Black Label (1956), and cited in the preface to Daniel Racine’s book above:

Sang satisfait du sens ancien du dit
sang du sens de ton sang de pur sang
sang qui ne s’ignore
sang qui se relève
sang qui se dresse
sang qui se redresse
sang qui se rebelle …

And what innovation has Aimé Césaire brought into poetry, its form and content? First, the Martiniquais poet is seen to exemplify the values of poetry, as is the case with rhythmic verses, constantly repeating themselves on the first five pages, and more, of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939), thus enabling the readers to appreciate the extreme degradation of infrastructures in a city that is “plate� (flat), and the misery of the populace, described as “cettefoulecriardesiétonnamment passé à côté de son cri� (thenoisy crowd astonishingly taken aback by its noise), or again “cettefouledésolée sous le soleil� (the crowd that is grieved under the sun), calling for help.Besides, this long poem, a collection of poems indeed, which the author himself describes as: “Le poème de la prise de conscience et de la délimitation du domaine�8(The poem of awareness and of delimitation of terrain), is written in a deregulated form, with no paragraphs nor sub-titles, and most often the lines start with small letters, and thus not conforming to the alexandrine style, therefore portraying the poet’s belief in innovation and freedom as ingredients of modern creative writing.

This césairian style came up in 1939,with the publication of the first edition of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, and by mere coincidence it resembled the “automatic writing� of the surrealist school of poets which inspiration emanates from the poets’subconscious mind. The surrealists later read Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, admired its style and adjudged it the best model, while their leader, André Breton, affirms in the preface to the 1947 edition of “Cahier�, as follows: “Cepoèmen’étaitrienmoinsquele plus grand monument lyrique de ce temps�9 (This poem is nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this era).

David Diop, French poet, born in Bordeaux, France, of a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother, is one other major contribution to the growth of Negro-African poetry in French, and particularly the radical, protest wing of anti-assimilation negritude poetry of the World War II and early decolonization years. The talented poet who had his brilliant literary career cut short by death in a plane crash at the age of 33 in 1960, made a remarkable debut with the collection of poems, Coups de pilon published by L’Harmattan, in1956. The young writer whose first set of poems got published by Présence Africaine at the age of 15, just like Victor Hugo, the French literary prodigy, used the verse both to denounce the ills of colonial rule and express optimism about an independent Africa.

David Diop’s Coup pilon contains this extract from Hammer Blows, translated and edited, and posthumously published in English by Simon Mpondo and Frank Jones (African Writers Series, 1975), titled “Africa�:

Africa tell me Africa
Is this you this back that is bent
This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation
This back trembling with red scars
And saying yes to the whip under the midday sun

Birago Diop, Senegalese-born veterinary doctor, colonial officer, and founding member of the Negritude school had his first major publication, Les Contes d’Amadou Koumba in 1947, followed by Les Nouveaux Contes d’Amadou Koumba (with a preface by Léopold Sédar Senghor) in 1958. However, the poet in Birago Diop manifested fully with the publication of his collection of youth poems titled Leures et Lueursin 1960, followed in 1963 by Contes et Lavanes, a revealing painting of the traditional social life in West Africa that fetched the poet the prestigious Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique noire in 1964. And finally, Diop’s 5-volume Mémoires came out successively in 1978, 1982, 1985, 1986 and 1989.

In Birago Diop’s poem « Souffles », published in the collection, Leures et Lueurs (1960)every object is given life by being made to speak, portraying that there is a dynamic force in nature that is nurtured by a vital breadth. The extract below shows that the living voice discerned in objects is the “Breadth of the Ancestors�10 (“le Souffle des ancêtres):

Ecoute plus souvent
Les Choses que les Etres
La Voix du Feu s’entend,
Entend la Voix de l’eau
Ecoute dans le vent
Le Buisson en sanglots
C’est le Souffle des ancêtres.

Here we see Birago Diop’s reflections on the revelation of the mysteries of nature align with Charles Baudelaire’s views in his “Correspondences�. However, both poets’ ideas differ in a way in that unlike Diop who discerns two voices – one of beings, the other of objects –which he believes that man must identify in order to be able to attain esoteric knowledge of his existence, Baudelaire, earlier in the 19th century, saw nature emit confused words not easily discernible. Below is William Aggeler’s translation of Baudelaire’s “Correspondences� in The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

“Correspondences�
Nature is a temple in which living pillars
Sometimes give voice to confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
In a deep and tenebrous unity,
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day,
Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.

There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
— And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant,

With power to expand into infinity,
Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin,
That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.

Negritude poetry, a prophesy of the universal concept of cultural hybrid

One other uniqueness of the Negro-African poets worth mentioning is that, quite unlike any other group of writers or artists, they were the first to conceive and develop the concept of cultural hybridor complementarity of cultures, as a cultural philosophy to which some western writers such as Schoelcher, Théodore Monod, l’abbéGrégoire, Bergson, Arthur Rimbaud, Leo Frobenius, Albert Einstein, and theologian, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, had alluded in their writings.Victor Schoelcher is cited by André Julien in hisForeword to Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Anthologie de la nouvelle poésienègre et malgache de langue française(P.U.F; Paris, 1948, VII), to have condemned the false, racist claim of some western scholars that Black people have “cerebral incapacity�, an intellectual blunder described by Schoelcher as “uneerreurcréée, entretenue, perpétuéeparl’esclavage� (an error created, nurtured and perpetuated by slavery).

L’abbéGrégoire is known for his anti-slavery stance in his book, De la littérature des Nègres (1808), while Arthur Rimbaud associates with the negritude philosophy, affirming, in his book, Unesaison en enfer: “Je suIsnègre� (I am a negro). Leo Frobenius talks of “Ethiopian civilization�, while Maurice Delafosse calls negritude, “l’âme noire� (black soul). Albert Einstein, originator of the theory of “Relativity� identifies emotion as the source not only of art but also of scientific discovery, even as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin advocates the fundamental and living unity of the universe.

While Senghor’s poetry is generally known to be conciliatory, unlike the militant, sometimes vitriolic style of Césaire and Damas, making the Senegalese-born, French Academician to be vulnerable to attack from a good number of African critics who see him as an apologist of the West, his humanistic message, apart from the lyrical poems and the epics on native Africa, understandably, is a call for reconciliation and collaboration between ancestral Africa as well as Western and Asian civilizations, within the context of the utopia of a “Universal Civilization� of his dream. Such vision of the sérère poet for the 21st century that is today known as “Francophonie�,is clearly visible in these lines of the poem, “Par-delà Eros�, selected from the collection of poems, Chants d’ombre (1945):

Ne soyez pas des dieux jaloux, mes Pères.
Laissez tonner Dzeus-Upsibrémétès, que Jéhovah embrase
la superbe des villes blanches.
Mon âme aspire à la conquête du monde innombrable et
déploie ses ailes, noir et rouge
Noir et rouge, couleurs de vos étendards !
Ma tâche est de reconquérir le lointain des terres qui
bornaientl’empire du Sang

(Don’t be jealous gods, you my Fathers
Let Dzeus-Upsibremetes strike like thunder, and let Jehovah consume
the arrogance of white cities
 MY soul aspires for the conquest of the multiracial world and
spreads its wings, black and red
Black and Red, colours of your flags !
My duty is to re-conquer the expanse of land that
surrounds the empire of Blood)

This conscious effort by Senghor to reconcile ancestral Africa and the adopted nation, France, is also glaring in the collection of poems, Ethiopiques (1956), which Henri Bonnet describes as testifying to “l’union sans compromission de l’Africanité première et de la Francité d’adoption�11 (a non-compromising union between native African culture and adopted French values), while it also constitutes a sine qua non for Senghor’s vision of cultural hybrid or complementarity of cultures. Congolese writer, André-Patient Bokiba, also sees in the cultural hybrid ofLéopold Sédar Senghor (surname of Portuguese origin),a major element of the itinerary that places the poet “au Carrefour de l’Occident et de l’Afrique� (at the crossroads between the Western world and Africa), and at the same time, a pointer to the “dualitéculturelle qui consiste à concilierl’authenticité de la parole nègre et le génie de la langue française� (cultural duality which consists in reconciling the authenticity of the negro word and the spirit of French language). Bokiba’s views are found in the Introduction to the book, Siècle Senghor (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2001, 8).

Aimé Césaire’s cautious optimism about the coming together of the diverse civilizations and cultures in the world at a round table called “Le Rendez-vous du donner et du recevoir� (a Give and Take round table), first came outin an article titled “Négrérie�, published in L’Etudiant noir journal in 1935, to announce the humanism of the Black race which the Negritude philosophy proposed to Western and Asian civilizations for a multiracial dialogue that could end the hostility of the prevailing colonization, in the following words :

… C’est pourquoi la Jeunesse noire tourne le dos à la tribu des Vieux. La tribu
des Vieux dit : Assimilation. Nous répondons Résurrection. La Jeunesse noire
veut agir et créer, elle veut avoir ses poètes, ses romanciers qui lui diront à elle
ses malheurs à elle et ses grandeurs à elle : elle veut contribuer à la vie univer-
selle, à l’humanisation de l’Humanité …

(… That’s why the black Youth turns its back to the club of the Elders. The Elder’s
club says: Assimilation. We say in response Resurrection. The black Youth wants
to act and invent, it wants to have its poets, its novelists who will say to its face
its own misfortunes and its own achievements: it wants to contribute to
universal life, to the humanization of Humanity)

And Césaire’s message of universal love and fraternity can be clearly seen in his collection of poems, Les Armesmiraculeuses (1946), especially in the poem, “Les Pur-sang�:

Ah, Le dernier des derniers soleils tombe
Où se couchera-t-il sinon en Moi ?
A mesure que se mourait toute chose
Je me suis, je me suis élargi – comme le monde …
et ma conscience plus large que la mer !
Dernier soleil. J’éclate. Je suis le feu, je suis la mer
Le monde se défait. Mais je suis le monde

(Ah, the last of the last suns falls
 Where will it set if not in Me?
Even as everything was dying
I got, I got expanded – like the world …
and my conscience became larger than the sea !
Last sun. I burst. I am fire, I am the sea
The world is diminishing. But I am the world) 

And also in the poem, “Visitation�:

forces éruptives tracez vos orbes
communications télépathiques reprenez à travers la matière
réfractaire
messages d’amour égarés aux quatrecoins du monde
revenez-nous ranimés
par les pigeons voyageurs de la circulation sidérale

(eruptive forces draw your orbits
telepathic communications take back across the stubborn
subject
messages of love spread all over the four corners of the world
comeback to us re-invigorated
withthe moving doves circulating likestars)

Controversy on Negritude poetry and oral tales – African writers’ perspective
It is apposite here to examine some contentious issues that revolve around the validity of negritude cultural philosophy and its poetry, as well as the place of traditional oral tales as valid elements of poetry. In other words we want to examine first the views of some African critics who consider negritude cultural philosophy irrelevant in postcolonial era while holding the notion that negritude poets, especially its chief theoretician, Léopold Sédar Senghor, are demagogues. And secondly, we will examine the views of those African writers who consider BiragoDiop’sContesd’AmadouKoumba as unpoetic, or CamaraLaye’sL’Enfant noir(1953) as a mere autobiography, totally banal for lacking the steam of anti-colonialism.

The critiqueapparentlymostsevereagainstnegritudephilosophy and poetsis Stanislas Adotévi, the Béninois writerwho in his book,Négritude et négrologues (Uniongénérale d’éditions, Paris, 1972, 13, 17, 29, 32),says,: “Souvenir dans la connivence nocturne, la négritude est l’offrande lyrique du poète à sa propre obscurité désespérément au passé� (Souvenir in nocturnal connivance, negritudeis a lyricaloffering of the poet to hisownobscurity in a far distant past), and « L’esthétique de la négritude c’est avant tout l’esthétique du bizarre. Ce qu’on nomme ce n’est pas le présent donné, c’est ‘l’ailleurs’ : cette grande nuit noire à la folle démarche du mythe » (The aesthetic of negritudeis first and foremost an aesthetic of the bizarre. What we define is not a concrete reality; it is an ‘abstraction’: that big black night in a crazy step of myth). Although the critic softens his tone shortly after, saying: “Par cosnséquentquellesquesoient les réticencesque nous nourrissons à son égard et bienquecertains aspects en soientdémodésouréactionnaires, nous devrions la considérercomme le temps primitif de la Renaissance africaine » (Consequently, whatever reservations we may have about it, and even though some aspects of it are outdated or reactionary, we should consider it as the primitive stage of African Renaissance).

StanislasAdotevi however concluded by exempting from attack Aimé Césaire and Léon-Gontran Damas about whom he says : “ … nospoètes, telsCésaire et Damasfirentparvenir à la bonne conscience européenne les ‘ferrements’ de l’esclavage. Les mots vinrent.Entrechoqués, reproduisant la misère violente des colonisés�(… our poets, such as Césaire and Damas made clear to the Europeans the severe hardship of slavery. The words came out. Falling on one another, hard pressed, bringing out again the violent misery suffered by the colonized peoples)

AhmadouKourouma, Ivorian-born celebrated prose writer and author of Le Soleil des Indépendances (1968), Monnè, outrages et défis (1990), En attendant le vote des bêtessauvages (1998), et Allah n’est pas obligé (2000), sees the concept of Negritude as relevant only in the colonial era when it served to re-awaken the consciousness of the people about the authenticity of the history and culture of the African continent, and says during an interview in 1999: “C’est ne riencomprendre à la négritude, c’estconsidérer la négritudecommeuneécolepermanente et actuelle. Non seulement la négritude s’est assignée une mission qui consistait à révéler l’histoire et la culture d’un contient, elle l’a accomplie et en l’accomplissant, elle s’est effacée » (It’s as if one understadsnothing about negritude, it’sliketakingnegritude for a permanent and functionalschool. Not only did negritude set for itself a mission which is about the rediscovery of the history and culture of a continent, it has accomplished it and having accomplished it, it has disappeared).

Also in a series of reactions to the negritude philosophy and particularly the apparent ambiguity in Senghor’s cultural conviction, the great literary icon, and Nobel Laureate (Literature, 1986), Wole Soyinka, opined first at a conference of African writers held in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, that Negritude in its theoretical, ideological form is irrelevant as a slogan in the post-colonial era: “The Tiger does not have to proclaim its tigritude, it simply has to jump on its prey and devour it�. And recently, Soyinka is amazed, in his book, The Burden of Memory and Muse of Forgiveness (Oxford University Press, New York, 1999, 33-144), about the humanism of Senghor whom he describes as being “closely attached to European culture, more precisely French culture�, wondering about the “cultural conviction� of poet-president Senghor in favour of France, and not Africa, noticeable in Senghor’s 90th birthday speech read in Verson, France, in 1996.

Soyinka who paid glowing tribute to Aimé Césaire, described as “ … man of letters, historian, poet and philosopher�, in his address titled “A Protagonist for Race Validation�12, on 22nd May, 2008 inside the prestigious UNESCO HOUSE in Paris, as part of the UNESCO’s special honour for the departed Deputy-Mayor of Martinique, had nonetheless in an interview with Denis Coussy, published in aParis-based, peer-reviewed journal, Cultures Sud (April-June 2008, 117-118), commended the fighting spirit of Léopold Sédar Senghor as well as the dynamism of his poetry in the early years of negritude, especially these two lines drawn from the poem “Prière de Paix�, published in Senghor’s collection of poems, Hostiesnoires (1948) :

Au pied de mon Afrique crucifiée depuis quatre cents ans
et pourtant respirante
Laisse-moi Te dire Seigneur, sa prière de paix et de pardon.

(At the foot of my Africa, crucified since four hundred years
and yet still breathing
Permit me to say to you Lord, her prayer of peace and forgiveness)

And so in response to critics’ misgivings on oral tales and poetry, we say oral tales, such as those in Birago Diop’s Les Contes d’Amadou Koumba, are essential ingredients of traditional poetry in all civilizations. The Homeric hymns of Greco-Roman antiquity, Odyssey and Iliad, are replete withtales on the myth of origin about ancient Greece. And similar oral tales on the myth of Soundjata, the Lion-King, Conqueror and Ruler over all the thirteen kingdoms in Ancient Mali (13th century), in French West Africa, constitute the theme of two epic poems transmitted orally and separately (in Malinké language) by two traditional “Griots� (bards), Babou Condé and MamadouKouyaté, the one’s account recorded by DjibrilTamsirNiane and the other’s by CamaraLaye. The two writers and translators published their oral accounts in French language. DjibrilTamsirNiane’ book is titled, Soundjataoul’EpopéeMandingue (1960), while CamaraLaye’s book is titled, Le Maître de la parole (1978).

And if we may add, CamaraLaye’sL’Enfant noir(1053) which Mongo Beti described as lacking the steam of anti-colonial prose, has been certified by the French Academician and poet of repute, Léopold Sédar Senghor, as a piece of poetry, indeed a masterpiece to be celebrated. In his paper presented at the1st Congrès International des Ecrivains et Artistes noirs, held in Paris (1956), and titled:“L’esprit de la civilization ou les lois de la culture négro-africaine�, Senghor evokes the symbolism ofthe craft called « blacksmithing�and of the incantations of the “griot� (bard), both of which Laye’s father incarnates, to illustrate his thesis that “literature and art cannot be separated from generic activities of man, especially craftsmanship. They are its perfect expression� (Our translation). And poet Senghor concludes thus:

Que l’on se rappelle, dans l’Enfant noir, le père de Laye forgeant un bijou d’or.
La prière, plutôt le poème qu’il récite, l’éloge que chante le griot tandis qu’il
travaille l’or, la danse du forgeron à la fin de l’opération,c’est tout cela – poème,
chant, danse – qui, au-delà des gestes del’artisan, accomplit l’œuvre  et en fait
un chef-d’œuvre13

(One needs to remember, in L’Enfant noir, the father of Laye while making golden
 jewelry. The prayer, rather the poem that he recites, and as he works on the gold,
the praise songs chanted by the griot, the dance of the black smith at the end of
                             the operation, it is all that – poem, song, dance – which, far above the gesticula-
                             tions of thecraftsman, accomplishes the creative work and makes it a masterpiece)
Critique of Negro-African poets– European perspective

European critics are appreciative of the contribution of Négritude poets towards enhancing the quality of poetic works and indeed all forms of art. For the purpose of this analysis, we will examine the views of Jean-Paul Sartre, the Existentialist philosopher and André Breton, leader of the French Surrealist poetry, both of whom are full of admiration for Aimé Césaire, Léon-Gontran Damas and Léopold Sédar Senghor, for the improvement they have brought upon literature in general, and poetry in particular. The Négro-African poets are particularly commended for the uniqueness of their style.

André Breton is particularly fascinated by Aimé Césaire’s style of poetry which he noticed first in 1941 when passing through Fort-de-France, Martinique, on his way to Haiti, he was shown a copy of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939). The writing looked striking, resembling the surrealist writing which is not regulated and which inspiration flows from the sub-conscious. Breton thus gladly accepted to write the preface to the 1947 edition of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, a masterpiece he described as “the greatest lyrical monument of this era�, written by “the greatest black poet�, who “handles French language masterly as never done by any white man� (our translations).

Jean-Paul Sartre’s critique of Negritudepoetryiscontained in his “Orphée noir�, preface to Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (1948). Sartre himself a humanist philosopher, acknowledges the humanism of the Negritude cultural philosophy.And despite instantly identifying the racist nature of the attack of the black poets against the oppressive, racist, assimilation policy of French colonization, he reviews and commends the gesture of reconciliation initiated by the Negro poets themselves after World War II, to build a strong French cultural family.

And Jean-Paul Sartre concludes by saying: “Leur poésie n’est ni satirique ni imprécatoire: c’est une prise de conscience » (their poetry is neither satirical nor imprecatory, it is an awareness), which is « la seule grande poésie révolutionnaire » (the only great revolutionary poetry), because, « paraissant d’abord raciale, elle est finalement un chant de tous et pour tous »14 (appearing racial at first, it finally became a song by all and for all).

Conclusion

Evidently, Negro-African poets of the 20th century, have not only contributed meaningfully to nurturing poetry and art in general, they have also offered poetry as an instrument for fostering love, peace and harmony in the world in the 21st century. Hence, the Negritude poets are revolutionaries. And need we state unequivocally that the relevance of the Negritude humanistic philosophydid not end in the days of colonization, but rather, it endures even beyond the third millennium. And for poetry, the most noble literary genre, and poets the world over, the following message of poet-president Léopold Sédar Senghor, underscoring the humanism of Negritude poetry, relayed in a documentary, “2Si raciness� (Youtube), isgermane:

Pour la poésie négro-africaine, il faut se faire enfant, se faire simple, … il faut
 s’abandonner au monde intérieur, au monde du rêve, du sentiment, de la sensi-
bilité, et je dirais même de la sensualité parce que chez nous, la sensualité
est quelque chose d’enrichissant. Ce n’est pas de l’érotisme, ce n’est pas la
distinction du toi et du moi, c’est abandon du moi ou toi, c’est la symbiose par
complémentarité, c’est l’amour

                          (As for Negro-African poetry, one needs to be like a child, to be simple … one needs
 to yield to the inner world, to the world of dreams, of emotions, of sensibility, and I
should even say, of sensuality because in Africa, sensuality is something that enriches.
It is not just something erotic, it is not distinction of you and of me, it is the forsa-
king of me or you, it is symbiosis by complementarity, it is love)
Author’s Biography

Dr. AKINWANDE Peter Olakunle, recently elevated to the position of Professor of Comparative French &Francophone Literatures at the University of Lagos (Nigeria), is author of Literature Française et Divergence Culturelle (Pierro Publication Bureau, Lagos, 2013, 242 pages), Négritude et Francophonie, paradoxes culturels et politiques (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2011, 325 pages), and L’Afrique Francophone, de 1444 à nos Jours (Pierro Communication Bureau, Abeokuta, 2004, 121 pages), and several articles published in peer-reviewed journals in Euro-America and Africa.

References

1. Le nouveau Petit Robert 2008, Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française

2. Edition, Faber and Faber, London, 1966, 244-248)

3.  Daniel Racine: Léon-Gontran Damas, l’homme et l’œuvre (Présence Africaine, Paris, 1983, 60)

4.  Aimé Césaire : La Poésie (Ed. du Seuil, Paris, 1994, 5)

5.  Aimé Césaire : Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Ed. Présence Africaine, Paris, 1971, 61, édition bilingue)wwi

6.  Interview with Françoise Ligier titled « L’Europe m’a apporté l’Afrique », published in Cultures Sudjournal
(Paris, no.164, janvier-mars 2007, 31)

7.  “Griots� are the unlettered moving encyclopedia, the custodians of African oral traditions and tales found in
 Palaces of Kings not only in ancient Mali but in virtually all African countries)

8.  Aimé Césaire’s interview with Françoise Ligier, published in Cultures Sudjournal, Paris, no. 164, janvier –
     mars 2007, 33

9.  Aimé Césaire : Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Présence Africaine, Paris, 1971, 17, édition bilingue)

10.  In ancient African mythology, when Elders die, they are believed to have merely changed locations to
assume higher spiritual responsilities as guardians of their people, to watch over them. So they become
 deities. Then it is also said that “the words of our Elders are words of wisdom, filled with power�, that
 should never be discountenanced but taken seriously.

11. Ethiopiques de Senghor, Etude de l’œuvre (Hachette Education, Paris, 1997, 4)

12. Full text of Wole Soyinka’s tribute to Aimé Césaire titled:“A Protagonist for Race Validation�, published in
Annexe 2 of the book,  Pierre Akinwande : Négritude et Francophonie, paradoxes culturels et politiques
(L’Harmattan, Paris, 2011, 306-308)

13. Compte Rendu du 1er Congrès de Paris-Sorbonne, Présence Africaine, 19-22 septembre 1956, 56)

14.  Ed. P.U.F., Paris, 1948, XI-XII