“I am a beast, a negro. »When Léopold Sédar Senghor reads these words which struck him down, he is not yet the cantor of« negritude »that he will become with his friend Aimé Césaire. He is even less the first black to enter the French Academy nor the first president of independent Senegal. He is only a young Senegalese who, in his student room in Paris, discovers A season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud, the one who, after having sung the Black Venus, will flee Europe for Abyssinia. But these words did not fall on deaf ears.
No need to hide it. At the time of highlighting the 20 years of his disappearance, on December 20, 2001 in his house in Verson, in Normandy, this monument of French and African culture seems to have fallen into a certain oblivion. In Paris, the birthday of the one who was one of the fathers of the Francophonie with the Quebecer Jean-Marc Léger was only highlighted by a university conference and an evening at the Senate. In Senegal itself, the transfer of his body from Dakar to his native region was canceled because of a quarrel of chapels between Djilor, the city of his mother, and Joal, that of his father, from the Serer ethnic group, who had 5 wives and 41 children. Two municipalities barely 23 kilometers apart as the crow flies, but both claim the birth of the prodigal son.
However, his legacy is immense, believes the former journalist of the WorldJean-Pierre Langellier, author of a biography which follows through hill and valley the itinerary of this man “who lived Europe as an African and who questioned Africa in the light of the West”. If, a month ago, the Goncourt Prize was awarded to Senegalese Mohamed Mbougar Sarr for The most secret memory of men, asks Jean-Pierre Langellier, isn’t it a little thanks to him?
“What a tribute to Senghor and to La Francophonie! He would be very happy. It is nevertheless in Senegal that today literature is the most alive, the most inventive. In a language that some, especially the African elites of the time, criticized him for using. Many people thrive today without thinking about the debt they owe Senghor. “
A black humanism
But if Senghor is a little forgotten, it is above all because his humanist ideas and his universalist thought are not quite in tune with the times. A pure product of French meritocracy, Léopold Senghor is “not at all the result of positive discrimination,” explains Langellier. It is truly the triumph of intelligence, courage and hard work ”.
When he arrives in Paris to enter hypokhâgne, the young Senegalese, who studied with the fathers and wanted to become a priest, falls into full black fashion. “It is a time of curiosity, of great openness and of very sincere interest in African art”, says the journalist. Between Joséphine Baker and Sidney Bechet, the Congo trip by Gide and theNegro Anthology from Cendrars, he frequented Picasso’s studio and the black American poets who had taken refuge in Paris.
“By opening myself up to others, Paris has opened me up to the knowledge of myself,” he says. By revealing to me the values of my ancestral civilization, Paris forced me to assume them and make them bear fruit in me. “With this” fundamental brother “, the Martinican Aimé Césaire, Senghor will be the champion of” negritude “. The term is not chosen at random. This word from Portuguese, unlike “black”, he will look for it “in the mud”, as the monthly writes. The Voice of the Negroes, to give it back “its truth and, therefore, its dignity”.
Nourished by Barrès, Rimbaud and Claudel, Senghor does not see this negritude as the color of skin, but as a civilization, “a certain way of being a man”, a “black humanism”.
Senghor was nevertheless at the antipodes of the decolonialist discourse, says Langellier. “This discourse which has invaded us for several years and which seeks confrontation, denunciation and repentance. He was a man of dialogue and consensus in search of the universal. He combined the wealth of differences with the common core of humanity. You have to assimilate without being assimilated, he said. He was a humanist. “
The Voice of the Negroes
There is no doubt that this first black grammar graduate would have experienced as an affront to intelligence the censorship of the word “negro” which is rampant in the media and universities in North America. “Forbid the word nigger?” These censors do not realize that this is a betrayal of Senghor, Césaire and all those who came before them, says Langellier. Before them there was The Voice of the Negroes, a far left newspaper from the 1920s published by trade unionist Lamine Senghor. He said: we are going to refer this negro word to the figure of the colonialists. To ban it is a betrayal of everything they wanted. “
However, Senghor will admit having, in his youthful enthusiasm, flirted with racism by being particularly passionate about the essentialist theses of the German Africanist Leo Frobenius. “Our distrust of European values quickly turned into disdain – and why hide it – racism. We thought, and we said, that the Negroes were the salt of the earth […] unconsciously, both by osmosis and by reaction, we spoke like Hitler and like the colonialists, we praised the virtues of blood. “
The Resistance, the war and the prison, where he comes close to being shot, will take care of bringing him back to earth. Is it his faith which will distance this great reader of Teilhard de Chardin from the class struggle towards which his communist friends and Jean-Paul Sartre push him, who prefaces the collection Black orpheus ? “Senghor refuses to subjugate himself to communism,” says Langellier. Its interest is culture. It is to give back through culture dignity and pride to its people while remaining firm against contempt, colonialism and Banania laughter. “
French, “universal heritage”
The one whose name means in Serer “who cannot be humiliated” (Sedar) will not have enough of a life to cultivate paradoxes. It was his high school friend Georges Pompidou, future president and prime minister of De Gaulle, who converted him to socialism. The first black associate in French grammar, he established the teaching of Wolof in Senegal against the elites of his own country. On his return, he represents the countryside in Dakar, far from cities that are too westernized for him. Catholic, he will lead a predominantly Muslim country for 20 years. Authoritarian president, he remains one of the few African heads of state to have left power on his own.
A late supporter of independence, Senghor will project his old dream of a confederation of the former colonies of France onto the Francophonie. A Francophonie that he would probably find a little sluggish these days, but the foundations of which he laid down in a speech at Laval University in 1966. During the centenary of Senghor’s birth, in 2006, the writer Jean-Michel Djian had confided to Duty that by making the French language “a universal heritage”, not only had Senghor helped Quebeckers “assert their Francophone identity”, but that there was perhaps a little of it in Bill 101.