Léopold Senghor

• Born: 9 October 1906
• Birthplace: Joal, Senegal
• Died: 20 December 2001
• Best Known As: The French poet who was Senegal's first president

Léopold Sédar Senghor became the first president of independent Senegal in 1960, after a career in France as national assembly member and literary intellectual. Born and raised south of the Senegalese capital of Dakar, he went to France on a scholarship in 1928. He became a French citizen in 1932 and was a French soldier during World War II (during which he was captured and imprisoned for 18 months). Senghor established himself in the late 1940s as an adept politician -- representing Senegal in the French Assembly -- a university lecturer, a major poet and, with Aimé Ce´saire of Martinique, a founder of Négritude, an intellectual movement that rejected colonialism and celebrated traditional African culture. When Senegal gained independence from France in 1960, Senghor became the new nation's first president. The head of a one-party state, he served as president until stepping down at the end of 1980. Senghor won many accolades as a member of France's literati and he greatly influenced African literature, but he had his critics. Negritude has been criticized for oversimplifying one of Senghor's themes -- that Africans are intuitive and Europeans are analytical -- and Senghor's political opponents accused him of being too closely tied to Senegal's former colonial masters.

His 1948 project, Anthology of New Negro and Malagasy Poetry, had an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre... Senghor helped establish the black culture journal Présence Africaine in 1947... He claimed to be influenced by African-American writers Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois.

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Léopold Senghor addressing the United Nations General Assembly, 1961. (credit: United Nations Photograph)

(born Oct. 9, 1906, Joal, Senegal, French West Africa — died Dec. 20, 2001, Verson, France) Poet, president of Senegal (1960 – 80), and cofounder of the Negritude movement in African art and literature. He completed his studies in Paris and became a teacher there. Drafted into the French army in 1939, he was captured and spent two years in Nazi concentration camps, where he wrote some of his finest poems. He was elected to the French National Assembly in 1945. In 1948 he edited Hosties noires, an anthology of French-language African poetry that became a seminal Negritude text. That same year he founded the Senegalese Democratic Bloc, which merged with another political party in 1958 to become the Senegalese Progressive Union (known as the Socialist Party since 1976). When Senegal gained independence in 1960, he was unanimously elected president. Advocating a moderate "African socialism," free of atheism and excessive materialism, he became an internationally respected spokesman for Africa and the Third World. In 1984 he became the first black inducted into the French Academy.

For more information on Léopold Sédar Senghor, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Joal, Senegal, 9 Oct. 1906; d. 20 Dec. 2001) Senegalese; President 1960 – 80 A Catholic in a heavily Moslem country and member of the minority Serer people, Senghor was educated at the Sorbonne, and emerged in the 1930s as a major poet in the French language, helping to develop the idea of "negritude" which had a significant impact on the formation of a black consciousness; he founded the influential journal Présence africaine in 1947. As a member of the French Constituent and National Assemblies from 1945 to 1958, he built his political base by mobilizing rural Senegalese voters against the established urban élites, while disqualified by his religion from posing any threat to the autonomy of regional Islamic leaders. In 1955 – 6, he was briefly Minister of Education, not for Senegal but for France.

Becoming President of Senegal at independence in 1960, as leader of the Union Progressiste Sénégalaise, he combined a gentle and scholarly manner with a shrewd grasp of political power. He outmanœuvred his more radical opponents, both in the Mali Federation which linked Senegal and French Soudan in 1959 – 60, and in Senegal itself. He also used the support of rural Moslem potentates to control urban radicals in the capital, Dakar, and maintained close links with France including a military base near Dakar. Though initially he followed the common African pattern of a single party state, in 1976 he announced the formation of a three-party system based on competing ideologies — a device that allowed more open debate than in most African states, without threatening Senghor's Parti Socialiste, which was assigned the ideological centre and could also benefit from the advantages of office.

In keeping with his continuing cultural interests, he hosted the first world congress of black arts and culture in Dakar in the 1970s. He set a further precedent in December 1980, when he became the first African head of state voluntarily to leave office, retiring in favour of the Prime Minister, Abdou Diouf. He subsequently lived mostly in France. Though his rule was conservative, and left social inequalities especially in the countryside undisturbed or even enhanced, he is likely to be remembered as one of the most modest and benevolent post-independence African leaders.

Léopold Sédar Senghor (born 1906) was an African poet, philosopher, and president of Senegal. He was one of the originators of "Negritude," a "black is beautiful" doctrine begun in Paris during the 1930s.

The map of Africa as it exists today owes something to the efforts of Léopold Senghor who took a leading role in the negotiations that led to independence of France's sub-Saharan colonies. He established relations with the former mother country that endure to this day. While asserting the uniqueness and greatness of black culture, the equal in every respect to that of the Greeks and the French, he held out the promise of an eventual synthesis of diverse peoples' contributions to a coming great "civilization of the universal."

Senghor was born on October 9, 1906, at Joal, the son of a wealthy Catholic trader who descended from a Serer royal family. Raised as a Catholic among an overwhelmingly Moslem population, Senghor attended the school of the Fathers of the Holy Ghost at N'Gazobil in 1914 and went on to pursue his studies in Dakar until 1928, when he left for France. In Paris he was the first African to be awarded an agregation certificate, in 1935, qualifying him to teach at a lycee, which he did from 1936 to the outbreak of the war, first in Tours and then in Paris. Captured while fighting against the Germans in 1940, he organized a resistance among his fellow prisoners.

Political Career

After the war, Africa's representation in the French National Assembly was greatly increased, and opportunities for indigenous political activity were expanded. In 1945 Senghor joined with Lamine Gueye in cofounding a new political party affiliated with the French Socialist party, the Bloc Africain, which appealed to newly enfranchised people in the rural areas. In the same year, and again in 1946, the people of Senegal elected Senghor as deputy to the French National Assembly. In 1946 he was also selected the official grammarian for the new constitution of the Fourth Republic.

Senghor's alliance with Lamine Gueye soon grew thin, as Senghor turned to cultivate his rural following and as he rejected Gueye's assimilation politics. In 1948 Senghor formed his own political party and rejected affiliation with all metropolitan organizations. In 1951 his organization won both seats to the National Assembly. Senghor's proposal in 1953 that the French government divide French West Africa into two federations, one with its capital at Dakar in Senegal and the other at Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, was defeated. This defeat, as Senghor predicted, meant the "Balkanization" of West Africa, the creation of many small, not really economically viable, political units.

Senghor served as a minister in the Edgar Faure government in 1955; the following year Senghor's group, for the final time, won the elections to the National Assembly and then won 47 out of 60 seats in the newly established territorial council of Senegal. A division occurred among African leaders over the value of these councils, for some saw them as a positive step toward self-government, but others (Senghor foremost among them) argued that what counted was the unity of the region as a whole and that "territorialization" would only make this task more difficult.

Unlike the modernizing Africans in the British colonies, Senghor also argued that "mere political independence" could be a sham and therefore was not necessarily the highest goal African peoples should seek. Economic and technological realities in his day meant that even the "super powers" could not go it alone; what chance then for Senegal by itself? Not surprisingly, in 1958, when the new DeGaulle government offered the territories of West Africa the chance to "opt for independence" in a referendum - on the understanding that all financial and technical aid would be immediately withdrawn - Senghor, in spite of much domestic opposition, campaigned against this type of "self-government." Senegal joined the Sudanese Republic in 1959 to form the short-lived Mali Federation. Finally, on Aug. 20, 1960, Senegal became independent but remained part of a reconstituted "French community."

Thereafter Senghor survived several attempted coups d'etat, the most serious occurring in 1962, at least one assassination effort (1967), and widespread riots and demonstrations against rising prices and government financial policies (1968 and 1969). Nevertheless, throughout all these developments, he maintained his position as president of the republic and head of the governing political party while absorbing the major organized opposition groups and appeasing the central elements of his own coalition.

Negritude and Socialism

The evolution of Senghor's doctrine occurred in three distinct periods - the era preceding World War II, the period of achieving independence, and the epoch following independence. Senghor argued that the work of the black has distinction not in substance or subject matter but, rather, in a special approach, method, and style. In the pre-World War II period, Senghor particularly argued that one must look for the black person's uniqueness in the person himself. "Negritude" arises first, then, from the singular racial characteristics of the black. Later, after the war, Senghor became caught up in the problem of reorganizing societies - in Europe after fascism, in Africa after colonialism.

Revolted by Nazism, he placed increasing emphasis in his theory of Negritude on the historical context of the black evolution as an explanation for the rise of unique civilizations. Socialism he viewed as a way toward a renewed humanism through the ending of exploitation. Revolutionary change in France and the West as well as in the developing areas would allow a new type of community to be created. After independence in 1960, Senghor turned increasingly to the day-to-day problems of building a viable economy.

Significantly, Senghor used the term Senegalese socialism for the first time early in 1962. His ideas and ideology became increasingly pragmatic and technocratic as he attempted to maximize the effectiveness of modern agricultural methods, capital, industry, and social engineering.

Senghor resigned in 1981 after 20 years of being president. He devoted much of time afterwards to developing and publishing his philosophical contributions to the realization of a single, planetary civilization.

His Writings

The year 1945 marked not only Senghor's entry into political life but also the publication of his first collection of poems, Chants d'ombre. In 1948 he published another volume of poetry, Hosties noires, and edited an anthology of new Negro and Malagasy poetry. Later poetic offerings were Chants pour Naëtt (1949), Éthiopiques (1956), and Nocturnes (1961).

Senghor's major prose works were Nation et voie africaine du socialisme (1961), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin et la politique africaine (1962), LibertéI:Négritude et humanisme (1964), Les Fondements de I'Africanitéou Négritude et Arabité (1967), and Politique, nation et developpement moderne (1968).

Further Reading

A substantial collection of Senghor's poetry is in Selected Poems, translated and introduced by John Reed and Clive Wake (1964). Several of Senghor's major political writings were translated by Mercer Cook in On African Socialism (1964). Irving Leonard Markovitz, Léopold Sédar Senghor and the Politics of Negritude (1969), which has an exhaustive bibliography, traces the development of Senghor's ideas from 1931 and views them within the changing social, political, and historical scene of French colonialism and African development. See also Michael Crowder, Senegal: A Study in French Assimilation Policy (1962), for a good general treatment of the historical background.

president; poet; essayist

Personal Information

Born October 9, 1906, in Joal, Senegal; son of Basile Digoye (peanut merchant and exporter) and Nyilane (Bakhoume) Senghor; marriages: Ginette Eboue (divorced); Colette Hubert; children: Francis, Guy (with Eboue); Philippe (with Hubert).
Education: University of Paris (France), Diplome d'Etudes Superieures, agrege.

Career

Sent to a French missionary school in, 1913; entered a Catholic boarding school, 1914; won many academic prizes; entered a Roman Catholic seminary, 1923; was only African in the graduating class of the French lycee, Dakar, Senegal, 1928 enrolled in Lycee Luis-le-Grand, Paris, France, 1928; entered the Sorbonne campus of the University of Paris, 1931; began espousing theory of negritude; helped launch L'Edudiant noir (The Black Student), 1934; began writing poetry, mid-1930s; held series of teaching posts near Paris; drafted into the French army; spent two years as a Nazi prisoner-of-war; published first collection of poetry, Chants d'ombre (Shadow Songs), 1945; helped introduce Presence Africaine (African Presence), late 1940s; became part of the French Constituent Assemblies, 1945; elected to French National Assembly and General Council of Senegal, 1946; formed Bloc Democratique Senegalais in Senegal, 1948; helped draft a formal request to officially recognize the Mali Federation, 1959; became first president of independent Senegal, 1961; published Nocturnes, 1961; nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1962; sponsored Third World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, 1966; stepped down from presidency of Senegal, 1981; became a member of the Academie Francaise's Dictionary Committee, 1986.

Life's Work

Achieving major success as a poet, politician, and intellectual, Leopold Senghor has had a truly unique identity among African leaders. His development from tribal member in Senegal, to scholar in France, to head of the government back in Senegal made him a symbol of Africa's shift from colonial domination to self- determination.

Senghor was one of the architects of the philosophy of negritude, a movement established in France to raise black consciousness. He was the first black African to receive the equivalent of the American Ph.D. degree in France, as well as the first black African to be elected to the French Academy. As a poet, he generated a body of work that led to his nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Senghor's poetry often reflected his problems of dual consciousness resulting from his upbringing in Senegal and education in France. In his review of Senghor's The Collected Poetry in the Washington Post, K. Anthony Appiah wrote, "By themselves these poems would justify giving Senghor a place in the history of our times."

Along with maintaining dual identities as an African and Frenchman, Senghor has remained active as both a poet and a politician during his long career. Janet G. Vaillant summed up Senghor's life in Black, French, and African: A Life of Leopold Sedar Senghor: "Just as he [Senghor] refused to choose between his talents as poet and politician, sensing that each added depth to the other, so, too, he refused to choose between his two homelands, France and Africa. He knew their strengths and weaknesses, their darkness and their light, and he loved them both."

Senghor was one of the youngest of some two dozen children of Basile Digoye Senghor, a well-to-do peanut merchant and exporter in Senegal. Senegal at the time was a French colony and part of French West Africa. Senghor's membership in the Christian Serer ethnic group made him a minority in his mostly Muslim country. His minority status made it all the more impressive that he later became head of the country. As Ellen Conroy Kennedy noted in the Washington Post, "That Senghor, a Catholic in a country 85 percent Muslim, and from its smallest tribal group, succeeded in governing through the first 20 difficult years of independence was in itself a triumph." Part of Senghor's success story was a talent for compromise that was prevalent in his Serer tribal culture. "To survive in Senegal, Senghor had to go beyond his intellectual achievements in France and call on all the shrewdness of his Serer ancestors," wrote G. Wesley Johnson in the American Historical Review.

Much of Senghor's youth was spent roaming the countryside with local shepherds who taught him about Serer customs. His father did not care for this behavior, and expressed his disapproval by sending his son to a school run by French missionaries in 1913. This proved a pivotal development in Senghor's life, as he proved himself to have superior academic skills. Also playing an important role in Senghor's life as a child was his sister-in-law, Helene. She and Senghor had similar affections for French books and culture, as well as had similar religious views, and she helped promote his scholarly ambition.

While in the missionary school, Senghor was indoctrinated with the French colonial policy of "assimilation." According to this policy, the smartest Senegalese were taught the French language and culture and were urged to support French political interests. Senghor won many academic prizes as a student. He decided to study for the priesthood and enrolled in the Roman Catholic seminary in Dakar. Senghor was then considered unfit for the priesthood after he verbally attacked the director for calling Africans "savages."

After leaving the seminary, Senghor achieved academic distinction in the French lycee in Dakar by becoming the only African in its graduating class in 1928. This accomplishment made him famous in West Africa. His reputation was further enhanced when he won the book prize in every subject, in addition to receiving the outstanding student award. Senghor's success earned him a scholarship to study in France, and in 1928 he enrolled in Lycee Luis-le-Grand in Paris. While at the Lycee he made key contacts with the Martinican poet Aime Cesaire, the French Guyanan poet Leon Damas, and George Pompidou, who became the president of France in 1969. These friends helped introduce Senghor to theater music, museums, and other aspects of French culture.

Senghor entered the Sorbonne campus of the University of Paris after graduating from the Lycee in 1931. Around this time he began seriously evaluating his self-image and future in the world. He also became more sensitized to what he considered French "cultural arrogance." It was a difficult time for Senghor, and he suffered bouts of depression and anxiety over his financial situation and identity. He began writing poetry as a means of grappling with his emotional distress during this troubled period.

After earning a Diplome d'Etudes Superieures degree, Senghor began working toward his graduate degree at the University of Paris. Around this time, Senghor, Cesaire and other blacks began espousing their theory of negritude, which at the time was interpreted to mean that blacks had intuition superior to that of whites, while whites were better at rational thought. In 1934 Senghor was among those who launched L'Edudiant noir (The Black Student), which communicated his ideas and those of his circle. He also helped form the Association of West African Students, whose aim was to promote African culture and embrace French culture without being absorbed into it.

As he began writing poetry in the mid 1930s, Senghor held a series of teaching posts at Lycees near Paris. After being drafted into the French army during World War II, he was captured by the Nazis and spent two years as a prisoner-of-war. While incarcerated he studied German and organized underground resistance movements in a number of prison camps. He was released in 1942 due to illness, then went back to teaching and continued his resistance activities.

Senghor's poetry was first published in a collection called Chants d'ombre (Shadow Songs), which came out in 1945. French critics praised the collection. Containing poems about being torn between France and Africa, as well as ones that supported negritude, the collection made Senghor into somewhat of spokesman for people with mixed consciousness like him. His 1948 publication called Hosties noires (Black Sacrifices) contained poems that had been written by Senghor in a German prison camp and had been sneaked out of the camp to George Pompidou by a sympathetic guard. These poems dealt with public themes and historical issues, according to Vaillant. "This collection strikes a militant note," she wrote. "The very title Hosties noires was carefully chosen for its double meaning. It can be translated into English in two ways, either as 'black victims' or as 'black hosts'~host in the sense of the sacrificial host of Catholic Communion. The title suggests therefore that black people have been both victims and sacrifices for European causes." Also in the late 1940s, Senghor helped introduce Presence Africaine (African Presence), a journal that became an important voice of literary and sociopolitical thought for black intellectuals.

Formation of Senghor's literary self coincided with development of his political side. In 1945 he became part of the French Constituent Assemblies, as a deputy of Senegal. The following year he was elected to the French National Assembly and General Council of Senegal. His language expertise earned him an invitation to review the accuracy and style of the French constitution drafted in 1946. A dozen years later, he was asked to help write a new French constitution.

Staking a political claim in his own country, Senghor formed the Bloc Democratique Senegalais in Senegal in 1948. His formation of the party resulted partly from a protest against what he considered France's lack of consideration for the interests of Africa. "Senghor now realized that his vision of a free and self-directing African culture could not be realized without attention to political issues," wrote Vaillant. Senghor's friends in Senegal helped gather support for the new party, and Senghor himself spent much time traveling across the country to campaign for the party after its formation. Meanwhile, he continued to retreat regularly to write poetry. In 1949 he published a small compilation of lyric love poems, Chants pour naett (Songs for Naett), and another in 1956 called Ethiopiques, which dealt with his bonds to his native Senegal.

During the 1950s Senghor made numerous speeches demanding improvements in the life of the Senegalese, while at the same time demonstrating his loyalty to France. As his frustration with France's lack of concern for their African territories grew, he worked to establish a federation of the country's African colonies that would provide the territories more voice for positive change. Vaillant noted, "Without federation, he [Senghor] felt sure, the tiny states of West Africa would be doomed to poverty and perpetual dependence on others, probably France."

As problems with France's African colonies escalated with the revolt in Algeria in 1955, it was clear that France needed a new relationship with its colonies there. Senghor was appointed by the French government to investigate the problems of overseas territories. He had talks with leaders in Tunisia and Morocco that helped settle unrest there. He also urged France to allow African states to form in loose confederations. By 1956 he was stumping Senegal and calling for autonomy, stopping just short of demanding independence. "I urge you to consider yourselves henceforth as in a state of legal resistance," an increasingly militant Senghor told a meeting of members of a political party he helped to create in Senegal, the Union Progressiste Senegalaise, according to Vaillant.

Senghor was thwarted in his hopes when the new French constitution in 1958 gave only limited autonomy to the territories. Although he agreed to support the document, it added to his dissatisfaction with France as overseer of his homeland and fueled his efforts to create a federation. In 1959 he helped formulate a formal request to officially recognize the Mali Federation, a union of Senegal with the Sudanese Republic (now Mali). Although permission to form the union was granted, disagreements led to Senegal's withdrawal the next year. Senegal then drafted its own constitution, and Senghor was elected its first president in 1961.

As president, Senghor made economic development his top priority. However, problems arose due to disagreements between him and his prime minister, Mamadou Dia, a close friend. Senghor supported a tight relationship with France, while Dia wanted to sever these ties. Escalation of the two men's differences led Dia to attempt a coup d'etat in 1962, which was crushed by Senghor. Dia was then convicted to a life sentence in prison. Senghor used this opportunity to make the prime minister part of his own position, and through his presidency continued fostering his relationship with France. He also strove to build cultural exchanges between African nations.

Despite his early promotion of democracy, Senghor became more authoritarian as head of the Senegalese government through the 1960s. In the middle of the decade he declared all parties other than his own illegal. He also helped sidestep potential criticisms by hiring his critics for prestigious government posts. This system of patronage proliferated the bureaucracy and led to a great waste of government funds in a country that could ill afford it.

Political office did not deter Senghor from his poetry writing, and in 1961 he published an acclaimed collection called Nocturnes. The following year he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in honor of his esteemed body of work. Senghor tried to stir up support for his policies by promoting his philosophy of negritude through his writings and by sponsoring events such as the Third World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar in 1966, but his attempts largely did not succeed. His focus on cultural matters also had an adverse effect on the economy, and by 1970 economic growth was slowing. During his term the country became too dependent on the export of peanuts, and a major drought that hurt the harvest became an economic nightmare for the country. "Convinced as he was that Senegal's economic problems would yield to technology and modern planning, Senghor was slow to see poor performance as a reason to rethink his entire strategy," wrote Vaillant.

Numerous coups were attempted and thwarted during Senghor's term in power. As his support was eroded due to widespread hardship, Senghor responded by shifting away from his authoritarian stance. He re-established the position of prime minister, allowed the existence of competing political parties again, and voiced his support for freedom of the press. Senghor also released Dia and other political prisoners.

In 1981 Senghor became the first African chief of government to peaceably step down from power and pass the torch to someone else. He felt at the time that he would not live to see the country he had dreamed of in Senegal. "In the morning when I awake," he wrote, according to Vaillant, "I feel all the world that weighs on me . . . [but] when I open the window and see the sun rising over Goree, over the island of slavery, I say to myself, all the same, since the end of the slave trade, we have made progress."

In 1986 Senghor became a member of the Academie Francaise's Dictionary Committee to make sure that new words and expressions from Francophone territories would be incorporated into the academy's dictionary. After moving to France following his retirement from political office, Senghor focused more on writing, traveled widely, and became president of an international authors' rights organization. Leaders throughout the world have often turned to him for advice due to his achievement in helping Senegal gain its independence.

Senghor died on December 20 at his home in Normandy, France.

Works

Writings

• Songs for Naeett, 1949.
• Ethiopiques, 1956.
• Nocturnes, 1961.
• The Collected Poetry, 1992.

Further Reading

Books

• Baudet, Henri, Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man, Yale University Press, 1965.
• Buell, Raymond Leslie, The Native Problem in Africa, Macmillan, 1928.
• Hymans, Jacque Louis, Leopold Sedar Senghor: An Intellectual Biography, Edinburgh University Press, 1971.
• Johnson, G. Wesley, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal, Stanford University Press, 1971.
• Mortimer, Edward, France and the Africans, 1944~1960, Faver, 1969.
• Vaillant, Janet G., Black, French, and African: A Life of Leopold Sedar Senghor, Harvard University Press, 1990.

• Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1990, pp. C3, C5.
• Macleans, May 29, 1989, p. 17.
• New York Review of Books, December 20, 1990, pp. 11~21.
• New York Times Book Review, October 21, 1990, p. 7.
• Researches in African Literature, Fall 1990, pp. 51~57.
• Washington Post Book World, November 11, 1990, pp. 1, 14; July 5, 1992, p. 1.

— Ed Decker

Senghor, Léopold Sédar (1906-2001). Joint founder with Aimé Césaire, in Paris of the 1930s, of the black cultural movement of négritude, Senghor is now widely regarded as the doyen of African francophone writing. He has vindicated the movement's objectives in both a literary and a political capacity. Not only a poet of world stature, he is also a critic, educational and social theorist, and a member of the Académie Française. In the practical world, following a distinguished academic and political career in France, he dominated the West African scene as a statesman for several decades, being from 1960 to 1980 president of Senegal.

Senghor was born in the coastal town of Joal into a Christian merchant family of the Serer tribe; his writing in all fields draws strength from the cross-currents of his background and formative experiences. His position as a tribal and religious minoritaire enabled him to bypass internal rivalries as a leader in a Muslim state. The confluence in his education, first at mission schools, then at the Sorbonne, of his African heritage with orthodox French and classical culture, has nourished a body of poetry where sensual vibrancy and intensity combine distinctively with erudition, and the intricacies of traditional rhythm accommodate a polyvalent symbolism. Felt as the living core of his personality, négritude is also intellectually perceived as an anthropological and historical reality. His poetry, and no less his prose writings, offer a deliberately contrived défense et illustration of the vitality of African civilization and of its common ancestry with European counterparts; this was demonstrated in 1948 by his Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, with a preface entitled Orphée noir (Black Orpheus) by Sartre. Senghor's eclecticism in the language and substance of his poetry, or in the content of his political doctrine, stems neither from convenience nor from accident. It springs rather from a coherent philosophical vision, formally underpinned by systematic scholarship, where cultural diversity is deemed capable of resolving itself through cross-fertilization in a civilisation de l'universel.

Senghor's poetry may be classed in the conventional categories of lyric, elegy, and eulogy. Simultaneously it records his own personal odyssey of exile, alienation, protest, and revolt through to healing and fulfilment, intimate joy, and public celebration. The poetry's meaning is invariably multilayered. Thus, its frank eroticism, exalting both human and natural fecundity, is generated by the dualism of woman and the continent of Africa. Jointly they constitute a territory of body and of soul where images and sensations, though concretely evoked, are endlessly interchangeable. For Senghor's intense sensuality, quintessentially African as it is, holds the key to his spirituality. At its deepest level his poetry is sacramental, not only inspired in its content and metre by traditional ritual, but in itself constituting, through the creative articulation of signs, an act of participation in the cycles and forces of nature. In such visionary aspirations Senghor displays affinities with Claudel, while his conception of imagery as both analogical and associative recalls Baudelaire, though the reality thus translated must be construed as vitalistic rather than ideal.

The poems comprise the following volumes: Chants d'ombre (1945); Hosties noires (1948); Chants pour Naëtt (1949); Éthiopiques (1956); Nocturnes (1961); Lettres d'hivernage (1973); together with Élégies majeures (1979), composed in honour of friends and eminent contemporaries (e.g. Georges Pompidou, Martin Luther King), and Poèmes (1984). Their subjects range from the black exile's search for identity and war's revelation of Europe's spiritual and moral bankruptcy, to the potency of Africa's landscape and the poignancy of separation from the beloved. Metrically, Senghor practises a form of free verse. He simulates the rhythmic effects of traditional music by incorporating the grammatical elisions and parallelisms characteristic of some African languages.

His prose writings, in a projected six volumes, bear the collective title Liberté. In contrast to the erudite hermeticism of his poetry, they display literary cosmopolitanism, pedagogic directness, and the shrewdness of a pragmatist. Almost always addressing cultural and political issues raised by decolonization, Senghor explores the modalities of an African critical perspective. He shows particular skill in adapting such philosophical sources as Marx and, notably, Teilhard de Chardin, to forge a flexible ideology and attainable programme for emergent African nations. [For critiques of Senghor's ideas and political practice, see for instance Négritude; Sembène; Sow Fall.]

[Sheila Mason]

Bibliography

• S. W. Bâ, The Concept of Négritude in the Poetry of Léopold Sédar Senghor (1973)
• M. M. Marquet, Le Métissage dans la poésie de L. S. Senghor (1983)
• R. Joanny, Les Voies du lyrisme dans les ‘Poèmes’ de L. S. Senghor (1986)