January 8, 2002

LEOPOLD Sedar Senghor, the great statesman and poet, who was also president of his native Senegal during its first twenty years of independence, died at his residence in Verson, France, at the age of 95 on December 20.

In spite of failing health, Monsieur le President, as he liked to be called, maintained a busy schedule almost until the end. He still attempted to arise at 5.30 in the morning, just as he did when he was the Senegalese head of state. His daily schedule for many years never seemed to vary: upon arising he would do a good half-hour of callisthenics, have breakfast, read the day’s press, and then would write until lunchtime.

Then he would write again in the afternoon, receive guests, and spend the remainder of the evening reading.

He died not only proud of a body of work which placed him during many years on the short list for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but also that he had been the first post-Independence head of state to peacefully hand over power to his successor, Abdou Diouf, who has since been — also peacefully — replaced by Abdoulaye Wade.

Indeed, because of the record he established in bringing Senegal into independence Senghor was much sought out by other national leaders for the advice he could provide on running their own countries. The French, above all, whether of the Left or the Right, had long listened to his advice, and he relished being able to receive at his table all of the heads of state of the Fifth French Republic.

He was visited by Charles de Gaulle, and also his successor Georges Pompidou, a classmate of his at the prestigious Lycee Henri IV in Paris, and then Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, whom he considered also as a close personal friend — and who once said that “like my friend Senghor I’m convinced that we are all of mixed blood”. M. Senghor never hid his dislike for one French President, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, during whose presidency M. Senghor chose to step down as Senegalese head of state.

The poet-president, who did not like to dwell on the matter, sometimes burst out in anger when questioned about Giscard d’Estaing. He never seemed to have lived down the role he was asked to play as the head of a “Committee of wise men” created at the behest of Giscard d’Estaing and Ivoirian head of state Felix Houphouet-Boigny to render judgment in the matter of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the self-styled Emperor, who in the late 1970s was held responsible for the death of some school children in the Central African Republic.

Senghor was specially disgusted, he told this writer, at having pressure placed upon him to change the conclusions of his committee’s report which in its first draft had whitewashed Bokassa. The “humiliation” to which he’d been subjected as head of the “Comite des sages”, he told this writer, was one of the reasons why he chose to step down as Senegalese head of state on December 31, 1980.

Although it was never officially acknowledged, Senghor played a key role in defining France’s new policy of cooperation towards its former African colonies and was very proud of the role he’d played in convincing the powers that be that the new policy should have an important cultural component. If there is one thing that dominated Senghor’s thinking during the final years of his life, it was the idea of mixed blood, of — metissage — of the ideal civilization being that which contained elements of all other civilizations, and which promoted the mixing of the races.

He would speak with this writer, of mixed Franco-American blood, of his admiration for the United States, a country which he considered, at least in the latter part of the twentieth century, to be as close as possible to his ideal. In his estimation, he told this writer, whereas America had only 50,000 mixed marriages a quarter century ago, in recent years there had been at least ten times as many.

Senghor had predicted many years ago that early in the new century the world would have two such civilizations: Africa, and what he called “Euramerica”, a civilization common to the European and North American continents. M Senghor’s ideas on the subject were spelled out in a book he published in the 1980s and which he titled: De la Negritude a la Civilisation de l’Universel.

Probably Senghor’s least known but most ambitious work, however, was one he hardly spoke publicly about, a study he wrote of the culture of Normandy, the northwest region of France that his wife Colette, a French woman, came from and where he spent the final years of his life. Doing something similar to what he had done for Africa with his theories on “Negritude”, Senghor had developed the idea of “Normandite”, a trait he attributed to the people of this region and that he claimed to have located also in the works of such Norman French authors as Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant. He also called this trait “lucid lyrism”, a poetic way of seeing the world that he claimed to find specially in this part of France, otherwise known for its cider and cheese. Listening to Senghor speak of “Normandite”, one became convinced it had become as important an idea for the Poet President as “Negritude”, a word which has now made its way around the world.

Although he received many awards during his life, Senghor remained a modest man who never seemed too concerned about glory or even immortality. Rather than discuss his accomplishments or the great figures of the world whom he knew, he always seemed to prefer to speak about one subject above all: his childhood, which he referred to as Le Royaume d’Enfance, the kingdom of childhood. It was, he told this writer, the period of his life when, growing up in Senegal, he was happiest.

He made sure to point out that “I do not place this Royaume d’Enfance only at the beginning of my life. I place it also at the end. I’m convinced that the ultimate goal of man upon this earth is to recreate his Royaume d’Enfance”. It’s certainly the idea that best sums up the multifaceted life and work of a man who was certainly hard to pin down, a man whose greatness undoubtedly lies in his having been so faithful all of his life to his childhood, to the little boy he once was.

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