David Mandessi Diop

David Lon Mandessi Diop was a French-African poet, especially associated with the
Pan-Africanist Ngritude literary movement. Diop was born on July 9th, 1927 in
Bordeaux, France. Hi father was Senegalese and his mother Congolese. Diop was
thus, strictly speaking, a European of African parentage, but his struggle to affirm
his African identity in the face of colonial Europe is reflected in his poetry and short
life. As a child, Diop and his family traveled often between France and Africa, and he
attended some primary school years in Senegal. Diops father died when he was
eight years old, thus leaving his mother Marie Diop to raise his large family (he was
the third of five children.) Diop lived his earliest teenage years in German-occupied
France, and suffered greatly from bouts of tuberculosis, meaning that many of his
childhood years were spent in hospitals. It was in sanatoriums that Diop found his
passion for literature, and he started writing poetry at the tender age of fifteen. His
greatest influence is normally listed as Aim Csaire, the poet and later political
figure from Martinique whose work is associated with the Ngritude movement and
Surrealism. Whilst studying in secondary school in France, Diop had Lopold Sdar
Senghor, the renowned Ngrtude poet and later Senegalese president, as one of his
teachers. Whilst the two differed greatly in poetic style and attitudes towards
colonialism and cultural heritage, it was Senghor who helped launch Diops literary
fame. Although he had published some of his poems in the Prsence Africaine
journal founded by his friend Alioune Diop in 1948, Diop achieved international
renown when five of his poems were published in Senghors famous 1948 black

Francophone poetry collection Anthologie de la nouvelle posie ngre et malgache de

la langue franaise. Senghor seemed somewhat critical of the young Diop, hoping
that with age he would develop a more appropriate style for the expression of
Ngritude instead of relying on theme, adding that his poems displayed a violent
expression of an acute racial conscience.1 Diops militant, combative poems
rejected the idea of being a black Frenchman (as black writer Rn Maran, who
lived his life in France had called himself) as well as that of being a cultural mtis, as
the more compromising Senghor termed himself.
Diops growing reputation as Ngritudes angry young man was furthered by
the appearance of his best-known (and only) published collection of poetry, entitled
Coups de pilon (translated as Hammer Blows by Simon Mpondo in 1975, although
Dorothy Blairs translation of the title as The Pounding of the Pestle seems more
appropriate) in 1956. These angry poems of protest against European cultural
values list the sufferings of Africans first under the slave trade and then under
colonial rule, calling for revolution in order to produce a glorious future for the
African continent. He particularly attacks the falseness of European promises of
camaraderie and the role of the Catholic Church in the so-called civilizing mission of
the French. Colonials are painted as masters of disguise (mystificateurs) who hide
behind pious religious language whilst forwarding a nefarious agenda; the violent
inflicting of European culture upon Africans. In his poem Vautours (Vultures) he
writes "civilization kicked us in the face" and "holy water slapped our cringing
brows." He describes the French civilizing project as "the bloodstained monument
Senghor, Lopold Sdar. Anthologie de la nouvelle posie ngre et malgache de la
langue franaise. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris, 1948: 173
1

of tutelage. His poem Afrique (Africa) testifies to his own agonizing exiles
conscience. Dedicated to his mother, the poem begins with the lines, "I have never
known you/But my face is filled with your blood." He bemoans the continents
struggling under the weight of humiliation yet has the continent speak back to
him, reproaching him as an impetuous son and talking of its own regeneration in
the form of a young and robust tree bearing freedoms bitter flavor whilst
white and wilted flowers (colonials?) lie around it. The poem often regarded as
his best A une danseuse noire (To a Black Dancer) a black woman contains the
hope for the regeneration of the continent. In its portrayal of Africa as a sensual
woman this work also recalls Senghors 1945 poem femme noire (Black
Woman). His poetry is generally best remembered for its uniquely vehement rage
against the French, ironically expressed in the French language through a medium
largely reserved for lyricism in the Francophone tradition. As Dorothy Blair puts it,
To him more than to any other of the West African poets do (Shakespeares
character) Calibans words apply, You taught me language; and my profit ont Is I
know how to curse.2
Beyond his literary endeavors, Diop led a scholarly and politically committed life. In
the near-decade between the publication of his poetry collections, he obtained two
baccaulaurat qualifications and a licence s lettres, all liberal arts diplomas
qualifying him to teach in secondary school. He married Virginia Kamara from
Senegal in 1950, and she is regarded as his poetic muse. Diop traveled with his wife
and children to Senegal in the early 1950s, when tabloids such as Bingo! (founded in
Blair, Dorothy. African Literature in French: a history of creative writing in French
from west and equatorial Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976: 159.
2

1953) were starting to play a role in propagating African poetry, publishing works
by Diop, Senghor and other emerging writers. From 1957 to 1958 he was a teacher
of Classical Letters at the Lyce Maurice Delafosse in Dakar. After Guineas vote to
secede from the French West African Union and thus take independence from
France, Diop responded to the plea of the countrys new president, Skou Tour that
Africans help the foundation of this first Francophone African republic (following
the hasty departure of the French, Guinea was left without a civil service). As a
member of the countrys African Party of Independence, he was appointed a school
principal at the towns cole normale. On leave from duties in the last week of
August, 1960, he died in an aeroplane crash off the coast of Dakar,Senegal, which he
had been visiting. He was thirty-three years old. The manuscript for Diops second
book of poetry was also lost in the crash; the twenty-two poems he had already
published being all that was bequeathed to readers, Diops is perhaps the smallest
surviving creative output of any African writer. His promise (all of his poems were
published before he was twenty-one years old) militancy and the tragic manner of
his death have made Diop something of a cult figure in Francophone literary studies,
with his demise in the belly of the Atlantic reflecting his own position in-between
Africa and Europe, one that is felt especially acutely by the current generation of
Francophone African writers. A school in Dakars Libert VI arrondissement is
named after him.

Further Reading.

Blair, Dorothy. African Literature in French: a history of creative writing in

French from west and equatorial Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1976

Sadji, Amadou Booker Washington. Le rle de la gnration charnire ouestafricaine : indpendance et dveloppement, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006.

Diop, Maria. Biographie de David Lon Mandessi Diop. Paris: Prsence

africaine, 1980

Trout, Paulette J. David Diop: Negritudes Angry Young Man in Journal of

the New African Literature and the Arts, 1968; 5-6: 76-78.