Twenty-two years after his death, France pays tribute to Léopold Sédar Senghor.
The Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, in Paris, emphasizes the policy and cultural diplomacy that the former president of Senegal launched, after independence, in 1960. It will therefore have taken a long time before the country he loved remembered him.
In 2001, when he died in his home in Verson, Normandy, the French authorities observed a despicable silence.
At her funeral, celebrated in Dakar, France sent only an obscure minister to represent her.
This moment of shame is not quickly passed, so
"Ghor"
, as his friend Georges Pompidou nicknamed him, marked the history of Franco-African relations and the artistic life of the black continent.
This exhibition is therefore a useful reminder of who this singular man was, a champion of Negritude, but a lover of French grammar and strong in theme, a curt political animal, but also an inspired poet...
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