The Arabic Constituents ofAfricanit�: Senghor and the Queen of Sheba

Abstract

Léopold Sédar Senghor's "Elégie pour la Reine de Saba" (Elegy for the Queen of Sheba) first appeared in 1976, and in 1978, it was placed at the end of an edition of previously uncollected works entitled Elégies majeures (Major Elegies), Senghor's last book of poetry. In 1973, the Senegalese poet had published a cycle of love poems entitled Lettres d'hivernage (Letters in the Season of Hivernage) and between 1973 and 1978, some of the elegies had come out separately, but the 1978 volume stands as his first major collection of new poems since Nocturnes (1961) to be written on themes that were more public than personal. The period between the two collections spans almost all of Senghor's presidency (1960-81), and as one might expect, the new elegies reflect important developments in the writer's thinking. Several of the elegies also have obvious political implications and deal with such topical subjects as the deaths of a French coopérant, Georges Pompidou, and Martin Luther King, and the achievements of Senegal's francophone neighbor Tunisia. "Elégie pour la Reine de Saba," describing the narrator's wooing and winning of a black princess, recalls the earlier Negritude poetry in many respects and carries the imprint of the more lyrical inspiration characteristic of Chants d'ombre, published in 1945, or the other romantic poems to be found throughout Senghor's opus, but in its way, this elegy too bears a political message, one that reflects the increasing importance of the Arab world in international affairs. It represents as well a significant evolution in Senghor's use of the Negritude concept, broadened under the impact of political reality to include Arab-Berber Africa within the concept of Africanité. This paper proposes to examine two literary sources on which Senghor has drawn in the composition of the poem and to show how these intertextual references might be construed to reflect the new political and philosophical elements. As the last piece architecturally in what the poet calls the definitive version of his work, the elegy was designated by him to stand as the ultimate expression of his poetic, political, and personal ideals, and whatever messages it conveys must be considered in the light of the additional value accorded to it by virtue of its privileged position.