Poetry
Rêves à l'aube
Not translated into English
Ndouna Dépénaud · 1975
Synopsis
Poems written under the one-party state, when unwritten laws set limits on speech: the collection speaks in chiaroscuro of the courage to speak, of the living conditions of the Gabonese, and of the country itself, its nature and its beauty. Disagreement is expressed through allusion rather than open denunciation.
Context
The book appears in Libreville in 1975, from the Institut pédagogique national, which had published his first collection, Passages, in 1967 or in 1969 depending on the sources. A play, La Plaie, completes the work. The Raponda Walker publishing house has reissued the two collections and published an anthology in 2022; another, with unpublished poems, appeared in Paris in 2024. The title is also found in the form Rêves de l'aube.
Who it is for
In French, brief poems; it helps to know that Gabon was then living under a single party.
Prizes and reception
Cited by the history of Gabonese poetry as an example of the chiaroscuro of the 1970s; a secondary school in Libreville bears its author's name.
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