Bernard Binlin Dadié

Dadié, Bernard Binlin (b. 1916). Poet, playwright, and ‘chronicler’ from Ivory Coast. His autobiographical novel Climbié (1956) tells of his schooling, work in the fields, followed by the École William Ponty and work in the education department of the AOF in Dakar. Experiences of the hardships of rural life under the colonial regime and discovery of the works of Marcus Garvey turned him into a political activist; Charles Béart's enthusiasm for theatrical activities at William Ponty inspired him to become a playwright; discussions with Alioune Diop attached him to the négritude movement and confirmed him as a committed poet. He founded the periodical Dakar Jeunes, in which he published traditional folk-tales, retold in French, and in addition issued two slim volumes of poetry, before returning to Ivory Coast, where his political activities led to his imprisonment in 1949. One of the most prolific and gifted of this early generation of African writers, Dadié's literary works (apart from his political journalism) fall into the following categories:

(i) Poetry. After the juvenilia mentioned above came Afrique debout! (1950), a clarion call to arms to his people and a litany of protest against colonial domination. In La Ronde des jours (1954), less truculent, the defiance is tempered with Christian humility. This volume contains one of the most moving and dignified protest poems of the négritude movement, ‘Je vous remercie mon Dieu, de m'avoir créé Noir’. Hommes de tous les continents (1967) shows a maturing of Dadié's philosophy, his humanism, and his command of subtler poetic effects.
(ii) Folklore. Work at the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire inspired him to collect material from the oral heritage of Ivory Coast for Légendes africaines (1953) and Le Pagne noir (1955), which include historical legends, cosmogonic myths, moral fables, and spider stories. Les Belles Histoires de Kakou Ananze, l'Araignée (1979) are spider stories presented as a school reader.
(iii) Drama. First produced in 1936, Assémien Déhylé, chronique agni was presented by the William Ponty pupils in Paris for the Exposition International in 1937 and published as Assémien Déhylé, roi du Sanwi (1965), a series of tableaux interspersed with aphorisms and local wisdom. Papassidi, maître escroc (1975) is a Molièresque farce about a charlatan, while Monsieur Thôgô-Gnini (1970) offers the comic portrait of a profiteer and seducer, illustrating the evils accompanying the arrival of the white man in Africa. Béatrice du Congo (1970), a pageant of symbolic events covering the history of the colonization of West Africa by the Portuguese, is an anti-colonial diatribe in tragic mode. Les Voix dans le vent (1970), an allegorical tragedy, studies the corrupting influence of power, and Îles de tempête (1973) traces the history of the colonization of Haiti. In Mhoi Ceul (1979) Dadié returns to social satire.
(iv) Fiction. Climbié, published as a novel, is autobiography. In 1980 two volumes of short stories, Commandant Taureault et ses nègres and Les Jambes du fils de Dieu, set in the colonial era, are inspired by the author's early memories.
(v) Other prose works. Dadié's travels in Europe and America furnish him with material for ironic chronicles. Un nègre à Paris (1959), based on his first journey to France, adopts the artifice of a supposed long epistle to an African correspondent. Patron de New York (1964) and La Ville où nul ne meurt (Rome) (1968) continue his meditations on the influences moulding different societies. These chronicles, like Dadié's dramatic works, demonstrate his virtuosity in handling the resources of the French language, juggling with idiom, puns, and adding new dimensions to worn-out clichés. Opinions d'un nègre (1979) is a collection of aphorisms, summing up his mature philosophy.

— Dorothy Blair

Bibliography

• C. Quillateau, Bernard Binlin Dadié (1967)

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