Published on :
In Senegal, more than 20 years following the death of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the work and the action of the “poet-president” still includes enigmas and arouses debates. An international research group has just been launched in Dakar to “revisit” Senghor, a man of many facets.
Almost nothing has changed in the Dakar house of Léopold Sédar Senghor, where he lived when he left the presidency in 1980. Now a museum, it houses around 2,000 books. ” We left them in the order the president put them in “, assures his former bodyguard, Barthélémy Sarr, the guide of the place.
Curator Mariama Ndoye now occupies the office of the former president, on the ground floor. The place recounts part of the life of Léopold Sédar Senghor, but ” not everything has been said, far from it regarding the Poet President, says Alioune Diaw, professor of African literature and coordinator of the research project at UCAD. According to him, the time has come for a rereading of Senghorian studies ». « Many things have been said regarding Senghor, but what was missing was that distance. It will allow us to read Senghor in a “dispassionate” way. We did not live this political history or this philosophical history which made that either one opposed Senghor, or one defended it. »
A complex man
Dr. Mouhammadou Moustapha Sow, teacher-researcher in contemporary history, participates in the program. For him, the image of Senghor is sometimes caricatural: ” He is a very complex, democratic and authoritarian man. His relationship with France is also that. At the same time, one can think that he is the man of France in Africa, but there are other texts by Senghor which show that he is a radical man. He looks like all those Pan-Africanists too. Which makes him such an interesting man to analyze. »
For that, we have to start from the archives… And those of the Senghor house in Verson, in Normandy, are eagerly awaited, explains Claire Riffard, of the French Institute of Modern Texts and Manuscripts. ” We hope that the archives of Verson, which will soon be made accessible, will make it possible to discover new elements on Senghor’s poetry, on his political work, on his correspondence. New material for the precise analysis of his work as both a poet and a statesman. »
The research work should be concluded with a symposium scheduled for the end of 2024.
