“The Emotion is Negro, the Reason is Hellenic”

One of the great figures of the African literature who played a leading role in the renaissance of the African literature is Leopold Sedar Senghor. He is mostly named as the Multi-dimensional man. Indeed, Leopold Sedar Senghor was born in 1906 in a village named Joal, in Senegal. His early interest in knowledge led him to pursue literary studies and to become later the first African allowed to the French assembly. He has been a Senegalese skirmisher in the World War II. After being a prisoner in a German camp, he devoted himself to a teaching career. In 1960, he becomes the first president of Senegal, after a decade of colonization. Senghor was the creator of the concept “Negritude”, which opened up a total epoch of awareness of being black.
Senghor is the author of much poetry and books all valuing the magnitude of Africa and the spirit of the black man. One of his major works was the Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache. This book was published in 1948 and has been translated in English, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Greek, Portuguese and other languages. In the book, Senghor commemorates the first centennial of the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. His intention was to share his love for black poetry. In fact, the black individual never gets rid of his black fundamental nature. Senghor highlights in this anthology that the main difference between Africa and Europe is that the European reason is analytic by utilization; the Negro reason is intuitive by participation. It means that the African man’s sensibility, his power in terms of emotions is always full of meaning.
What makes me valuing Senghor’s work highly is that it constitutes an important component of African writing. Moreover, Leopold Sedar Senghor had a great knowledge in languages. He was speaking French, English, German, Spanish, and Wolof and serer which are his native languages. That motives me to value my language and to pay attention to other idioms such as English and Spanish. Senghor’s book announced that the Blacks no longer just formed works in imitation of their white equivalent, but that their writings replicate the price scheme of Africa and its people. Regardless of four centuries of colonialism, the integration was likely to be on the outside only.