SOURCE: Guillaume, Jr., Alfred J. “Negritude and Humanism: Senghor's Vision of a Universal Civilization.” In The Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations, edited by Amritjit Singh, William S. Shiver, and Stanley Brodwin, pp. 271-80. New York: Garland Publishing, 1989.

[In the following essay, Guillaume ruminates on the ideology of Negritude as espoused by Senghor and others during the 1930s.]

If the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s served as the catalyst for the “New Negro” in the United States, the Negritude movement of the 1930s in Paris sparked a similar renewal for black students from Africa and the Caribbean, who rejected the assimilation of European values and redefined themselves as children of Africa. This journey to the ancestral sources (“pèlerinage aux sources ancestrales”)¹ began in 1932 with the publication of Légitime Défense, a Communist and surrealist journal that opposed the bourgeoisie. Founded by Etienne Léro, Jules Minnerot, and René Ménil, all from the Antilles, the journal extolled black values and culture. But it was the 1934 literary journal Etudiant Noir, of Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, and Léopold Sédar Senghor, that gave birth to Negritude, the second Negro Renaissance.

Although Césaire coined the word, Senghor, the poet/politician, became Negritude's principal apostle, promoting it in his poetry and essays as well as integrating it into his political posture. Senghor defined Negritude as the “sum total of black cultural values.”² This ideology was as much a reaction against the imposition of European culture as a celebration of African civilization. Through Negritude, the black rediscovers the self and reaffirms the riches of his own heritage.

This reawakening of blackness by the students in Paris did not develop in isolation. The Harlem writers were a major source of inspiration. For Senghor, to proclaim one's blackness, one's Negritude, was to reclaim one's humanity. The Harlem Renaissance writers had done so, and Senghor read them voraciously, even translating some of their work. He admired particularly Langston Hughes, whom he met for the first time in 1959 as a delegate to the U.N. General Assembly. In a letter to Mercer Cook on 8 September 1967, Senghor states that Hughes “… is the greatest Negro-American poet. … He was, without doubt, the most spontaneously Negro poet. In other words, he best fulfilled the notions I have of black cultural values, of Negritude. I believe, moreover, that Langston felt everything that linked us—Césaire, Damas, and me—to him.”³

This spontaneity that Senghor speaks about is emotion; this, he says, is the special quality that makes one black. His statement “emotion is black, reason is Greek” (“l'émotion est nègre, comme la raison hellène”)⁴ is now legendary and has caused much consternation among African literati who feel that Senghor's theories reinforce ideas that the Negro is inferior. Nevertheless, Senghor insists that emotion enables blacks to grasp an object intuitively in its totality, its interior as well as its exterior composition. This unique reaction, according to Senghor, supersedes rational consciousness and is a surreal participation of subject and object. He calls this phenomenon an “attitude of abandon, assimilation, not domination: attitude of love.”⁵

In a 1976 interview with Senghor, I asked him to clarify what he meant by object. His response was that “the European seeks to dominate nature, as Descartes once said. He transforms it to serve his own needs, whereas the Negro-African considers nature as reality of the object, of that which is in front of and which is beyond him; he blends into this reality.” To further illustrate his point, Senghor recalled a dance of the bull that he witnessed at the home of President Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast: “The bull's movements bring forth fertility. Through his movements and gesticulations, [the dancer] allows himself to be seized by the bull's force. The dancer is totally identified with the object, bull. In contrast, the Albo-European sets himself apart from the object; he analyzes it; he uses it as an instrument. The black man abandons himself into the object to live its essence. This is called emotion.”⁶ Hence, for Senghor, the black man lives the object. There is a symbiosis of the real world and the imagination. In his response to nature as assimilator, he expands himself as subject and object.

That the Harlem Renaissance writers expressed a sensual celebration of life, is, according to Senghor, due to their African heritage. That they demonstrated a continuity of a past musical heritage (the link between the tom-tom and the swing of the trumpet), an outpouring of religious sentiment (the correlation between the African's respect for the cosmic forces and his ancestral dead and the Negro-Americans' image of God) is due to their shared Negritude.

Senghor's Negritude is a revalidation of the humanistic elements of African society. From Africa's innocence a new order of fraternal love and respect will emerge. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Senghor's poetic evocation of childhood. Through the exploration of this distant reality, Senghor rediscovers the lost world of unrestrained happiness. His intention is twofold: to become an individual mind united with nature and to retain the continuity that he associates with an African feeling for life. This emphasis on intensity and communion is the source of a profound feeling that progresses beyond personal fulfillment and in his poetry is often linked to a sociopolitical vision. Beginning with the emptiness of his Parisian environment experienced as a student, Senghor visualizes a fuller life for himself and all oppressed people through childhood innocence.

This retreat into memories of childhood is a rejection of Europe and a return to family, the ancestors, and the land, all of which represent a restoration of beauty and simplicity. This quest is not simply romantic idealization but a tangible reality that the poet can recall at will: “I only need to name things, the elements of my childhood universe, in order to prophesy the City of Tomorrow, that will rise from the ashes of the past. That's the poet's mission.”⁷ In order to purify himself from the “contagions of being civilized” (“contagions de civilisé”) (“Que m'accompagnent kôras et balafong”), Senghor uses the imagination to dissolve all conflicts between himself and the external world; he recreates the oneness with nature that he experienced as a child, thus maintaining an indissoluble link with the splendor of African life. He says of himself and of the other students exiled in Paris: “We walked, equipped with the miraculous arms of double vision, piercing the blind walls, discovering, recreating the marvels of the Childhood Kingdom. We were re-born through Negritude.”⁸ His poetry inevitably leads to the complex questions of his attitudes toward Europe and of the poetic and social function which he as a writer assigns himself.

In Senghor's mind the innocence of Africa is somehow the guardian of the innocence that Europe has lost:

At the turn in the road, the river, blue in the cool
          September fields
A Paradise that protects from fevers a child with eyes
          as bright as two swords
Paradise my African childhood, which kept watch over the innocence of Europe

(“Que m'accompagnent kôras et balafong”)⁹

According to Senghor, the freshness of childhood assures the triumph of what poetic reverie reveals, the possibility of a future society of universal brotherhood. Although he does not explain in detail how this will happen, childhood innocence is thus broadened to include the promise of Africa's sociopolitical future. What is certain is that his prophetic vision involves a transcendence whereby the Europeanized psyche of the poet dies in order to be purified in the child:

Oh! to die to childhood, may the poem die[,] the syntax disintegrate, may all the inessential words be
          swallowed up.
The weight of the rhythm suffices, no need of
words-cement to build on the rock the City of
Tomorrow.

(“Elégie des circoncis,” Nocturnes)¹⁰

These lines from an elegy recall a youth's initiation rites but also the poet's re-initiation into the childlike universe that he associates with a new society.

Senghor's messianic quest, as poet and politician, is to seek the New Day, the Clear Dawn of the New Day (“Aube transparente d'un jour nouveau”) that will include the emancipation of all colonized peoples and oppressed workers. This metaphor of the “Clear Dawn” is of utmost importance in his ideology and is the conclusion of “A l'appel de la race de Saba” (Hosties Noires), a poem that shows the complexities of Senghor's vision of Africa, nature, and politics. It demonstrates how in the poet's mind the return to the African experience of his childhood is identical to the struggle for liberation. Part I of the poem introduces themes of exile and nostalgia; Part II shows how the poet's memory of family and community preserved him from the evils of European society. Parts III and IV express Senghor's desire to unite Africa and Europe, but also reveal the danger of becoming an assimilé. But against that risk is the need to engage in the communal combat for freedom. The poem thus demonstrates how, in Senghor's mind, the return to the African experience of his childhood is identical to the struggle for liberation.

The child motif is a symbol of Senghor's political vision. This is especially evident in “The Return of the Prodigal Son” (“Le Retour de l'Enfant prodigue”), a poem that contrasts the childlike world with the destructiveness of war, the “mud of civilization” (“la boue de la Civilisation”), that Senghor had known during his sixteen years of separation from Africa. Like a number of other poems, it is a stormy attack on the oppressive aspects of European society, but the poet asserts that he is preserved from hatred and favors fraternity. He is willing to die for his people, but realizes that he can best serve as “Master of Language—Nay, name me its ambassador” (“Maître de Langue—Mais non, nomme-moi son ambassadeur”). He must stop European destruction of nature and resurrect his own past: “I resurrect my earthly virtues!” (“Je ressuscite mes vertus terriennes!”). Again, it is clear that Senghor's poetic-political undertaking springs from his adherence to the values of his African childhood:

Oh! to sleep once more in the clean bed of my childhood
Oh! once more the dear black hands of my mother tucking me to sleep
Once more the bright smile of my mother.
Tomorrow, I will again take the road to Europe, the
          road of my embassy
Homesick for my black native land.(11)

Often in Senghor's poetry, his political mission presents certain ambiguities that appear to contradict this idealistic conception of justice inspired by childhood nostalgia, but a complete treatment of these issues is beyond the scope of this essay. It is instructive to note that in “Que m'accompagnent kôras et balafong,” an early poem, Senghor's cleansing of the physical and psychic assimilation of European culture and his ultimate victory to restore Africa's dignity and nobility are not without violence and retribution. The poet as Archangel and trumpeter of justice purges his people of centuries of slave trade with a sword that spills the blood of colonizers into Europe's rivers. Similar ambiguities between Senghor the African and Senghor the European parallel the conflicts between Senghor the politician and Senghor the poet. These are especially apparent in the dramatic poem “Chaka.”

Written about a Zulu chief who fought the whites early in the nineteenth century, the poem attempts at first to justify the use of violence to defend primitivistic values. Divided into two sections (chants), the poem is an apology for Chaka, who caused many Africans to suffer. Accused by the Voix blanche of killing Nolivé, an embodiment of woman-Afrika, Chaka responds, in the first chant, that her death is an act of love and ultimately the liberation of his people from European aggression. Her death is a new life that assures the continuity of African civilization. She is a sacrificial victim of the politician in his fight against the oppressor. A man of action and fortitude, Chaka destroys the poet within him. Both deaths are necessary for the liberation of the African people. Politics is Chaka's calvary, but it is an unselfish response to racism, exploitation, and colonialism. In spite of the suffering brought upon his people by the “Pink Ears” (“Roses-d'oreilles”), Chaka insists that his mission is not one of hate, but one of reconciliation and love.

In the second chant, however, Chaka loses his political persona and becomes Senghor, the poet. The violence-love of the first section is replaced by childhood-love that glorifies Africa's renaissance. As poet, Chaka envisions the serenity of childhood as a sociopolitical symbol of universal peace. Chaka is praised as a hero. His love for his people culminates in the sexual bond between him and Nolivé, a union that celebrates the living forces of African society. He is the prophet of a new order and the creator of life, a mission for which he was prepared by the serenity of childhood and the loneliness of exile.

From the union of lover and beloved, poet and Africa, arises the “new world” in an act of universal creativity. How this will come about remains unexplained. Perhaps it is mere mystification. Within the poem, however, it involves an ultimate triumph. Chaka's death is somehow an augury to the resurrection of the Africa to which Senghor aspires and to the creation of a future society void of oppression.

Senghor's vision of childhood, his idealization of an Africa of innocence and primeval goodness might appear diluted by his affection for France: “I have a strong weakness for France” (“… j'ai une grande faibless pour la France”) (“Prière de paix,” Hosties Noires). And he wrote further: “Ah! don't say that I don't love France. …” (“Ah! ne dites pas que je n'aime pas la France. …”) (“Poème liminaire,” Hosties Noires). In fact, the series of poems, “Epitres à la Princesse” (Ethiopiques), written to a European princess and involving themes of love, separation, and death, seems to compromise his fidelity to Africa and to his mission. And yet he makes it clear in “Que m'accompagnent kôras et balafong” that if at any time he were forced to choose, he would choose Africa:

But if I must choose at the moment of ordeal
I would choose the verse of the rivers, of the
          winds and of the forests
The assonance of plains, and of streams.
I would choose the rhythm of the blood of my
          unclothed body
I would choose the trill of the balafongs and
          the euphony of the strings.
I would choose my weary black people, my peasant people.(12)

He reminds those who may consider him a servant of white European culture that before he was a teacher of French boys and an obedient civil servant, he was a child of Africa, nourished by the rich traditions of his people. The message of Senghor's Negritude, then, is that the humanity of Africa is preferable to the mechanization of Europe.

Some critics believe that Senghor's vision of Negritude fails because it appears to perpetuate the myth of the inferior Negro. Kofi Anyidiho, for example, referring to Senghor's romantic quest, states, “The only problem … is that he chooses the wrong myths for the cause of Negritude he claims to be championing. Not only are his myths compromised by his reliance on anthropological views of Africa; they conform too well to all the old stereotypes of colonialism, with their emphasis on the irrational, the sensuous, the luxuriant, the dark, the ingenuous, the compulsively self-giving.”¹³ Negritude, according to Stanislas Adotevi, is pure propaganda and “a panacea the president-poet uses for problems of government … an opium.”¹⁴ Frederick Ivor Case calls it a “philosophic aberration,” and asserts that “the concept of Negritude cannot be the answer to any situation pertaining to the reality of the black masses.”¹⁵

Yet fifty years after the founding of the Negritude movement, Senghor still tenaciously views it as the path to universal culture, conceiving his own childhood and youth as an ageless symbol of Africa's past, present, and future, a vibrant Africa, where rests the promise of mankind.

Notes

1. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Liberté I: Négritude et Humanisme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1964), p. 103.

2. Ibid., p. 260.

3. Mercer Cook, “Afro-Americans in Senghor's Poetry,” Hommage à Léopold Sédar Senghor: Homme de Culture (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1976), p. 154.

4. Liberté I, p. 24. (All translations are mine.)

5. “… attitude d'abandon, d'assimilation, non de domination: attitude d'amour,” ibid., p. 71.

6. “L'Européen, aujourd'hui, cherche a être le maître de la nature, comme le disait Descartes. Il transforme la nature pour l'asservir aux desseins, aux désirs de l'homme, tandis que le Négro-Africain sent la nature comme une réalité de l'objet, de ce qui est posé en face de lui et qui le dépasse, et il se plie a cette réalité. … Le taureau est signe de fécondité. Ce jeune danseur dansiat la danse du taureau, en reproduisant les gestes caractéristiques de l'animal, pour mimer et faire venir la fécondité. Par les figures et le rythme de ses gestes, il se laissait saisir par la force du taureau. Il s'identifiait à l'objet taureau. Tout au contraire, l'Albo-Européen se distingue de l'objet. Il l'analyse et s'oppose à lui pour le maîtriser et s'en servir comme d'un instrument, quand nous, Négro-Africains, nous abandonnons à l'objet pour vivre son essence. C'est cela l'émotion.

7. “Il m'a donc suffi de nommer les choses, les éléments de mon univers enfantin, pour prophétiser la Cité de demain, qui renaîtra des cendres de l'ancienne, ce qui est la mission du poète,” Liberté I, p. 221.

8. “Nous marchions, munis des armes miraculeuses de la double vue, perçant les murs aveugles, décourvrant, recréant les merveilles du Royaume d'Enfance. Nous renaissions à la Négritude,” ibid., p. 99. The “armes miraculeuses” of which the poet speaks is the power of the written word and an obvious allusion to the poem by Aimé Césaire, “Les Armes miraculeuses,” that appeared in 1940 in the journal Tropiques. This title later appeared as a volume of poetry in 1970 published by Gallimard.

9. “Au détour du chemin la revière, bleue par les prés frais de Septembre. / Un paradis que garde des fièvres une enfant aux yeux clairs comme deux épées / Paradis mon enfance africaine, qui gardait l'innoncence de l'Europe,” Léopold Sédar Senghor, Piènes (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1964). All citations following are from this edition.

10. “Ah! mourir à l'enfance, que meure le poème se désintègre la syntaxe, que s'abîment tous les mots qui ne sont pas essentiels. / Le poids du rythme suffit, pas besoin de mots-ciment pour bâtir sur le roc la cité de demain.”

11. “Ah! de nouveau dormir dans le lit frais de mon enfance! / Ah! bordent de nouveau mon sommeil les si chères main noires / Et de nouveau le blanc sourire de ma mère. / Demain, je repredrai le chemin de l'Europe, chemin de l'ambassade / Dans le regret du Pays noir.”

12. “Mais s'il faut choisir à l'heure de l'épreuve / J'ai choisi le verset des fleuves, des vents et des fôrets / L'assonance des plaines et des rivières, choisi le rythme de sang de mon corps dépouillé / Choisi la trémulsion des balafongs et l'accord des cordes. … / J'ai choisi mon peuple noir peinant, mon peuple paysan.”

13. Kofi Anyidiho, “Kingdom of Childhood: Senghor and the Romantic Quest,” French Review, May 1982, p. 769.

14. Stanislas Adotevi, Négritude et Négrologues (Paris: Union générale 10:18, 1972), p. 114.

15. Frederick Ivor Case, “Negritude and Utopianism,” African Literature Today, ed. Eldred Durosimi Jones, No. 7 (1975), p. 74.