Léopold Sédar Senghor :: essays research papers

Lopold Sdar SenghorSenegalese poet and statesman, turn over of the Senegalese Democratic Bloc. Senghor was elected president of Senegal in the 1960s. He retired from tycoon in 1980. He was ace of the originators of the concept of Ngritude, defined as the literary and artistic expression of the black African experience. In diachronic context the term has been seen as a reaction against french colonialism and a defence of African culture. It has deeply influnced the strengthening of African identity in the French-speaking black world. "Lmotion est ngre, la raision est hllne." (emotion is Negro, causation is Greek) "Negritude is the totality of the cultural values of the Black world." Lopold Sdar Senghor was innate(p) in Joal-la-Portugaise, a small fishing vilage about seventy miles south of Dakar. His father was of noble descent and wealthy merchant. His mother was a Peul, one of a pastoral and nomadic people. Later Senghor wrote "I grew up in the heartland of Africa, at the crossroads / Of castes and races and roads" The first seven years of his keep Senghor spent in Djilor with his mother and maternal uncles and aunts. At the age of twelve, he attended the Catholic mission school of Ngazobil. He continued his canvas at the Libermann Seminary and Lyce Van Vollenhoven, finishing secondary-school education in 1928. later on winning a state scholarship, Senghor then moved to Paris and gradatory from the Lyce Louis-le-grand in 1931. During these years he read African-American poets of the Harlem reincarnation and such French poets as Rimbaud, Mallarm, Baudelaire, Verlaine and Valry. Among Senghors s friends were Aim Cesaire, with whom he would develope the thinker of Negritude, and Georges Pompidou, who later elected President of France. In 1932 Senghor was granted French citizenship. He served in a regiment of colonial infantry and in 1935 he obtained the agrgation degree in grammar. From 1935 he worked as a teacher, notably at Lyce Descartes in Tours, then in Paris at Lyce Marcelin Berthelot. At the outbreak of World War II, he joined the French army, but was captured by the Germans and spent eighteen months in a ring as a prisoner of war. During this period he learned German and wrote poems, which were published in HOSTIES NOIRES (1948). In 1944 he was appointed professor of African languages at the cole Nationale de la France dOutre-Mer. Senghors first collection of poems, CHANTS DOMBRE (1945), was inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson, and dealt with the themes of exile and nostalgia.