Republic of the Congo / All works
Poetry
Premier chant du départ
Not translated into English
Martial Sinda · 1955
Synopsis
A collection in three parts. The first is a hymn to traditional Africa and a tribute to the mother, with short poems given in Lari and in French. The second, opened by “Tam-Tam, Tam-Tam-Toi”, dedicated to René Maran, sings of revolt against colonization and slavery: “Because we are not free”, says the poet, who shows Armstrong a sleeping Africa. The third is placed under the sign of the beloved, with a “Song for a Congolese Woman”.
Context
The collection was published on 15 June 1955 by Pierre Seghers, in a series of slim poetry booklets, and was reissued as early as 1956. The Grand Prix littéraire de l'Afrique-Équatoriale française it received in 1956 caused a scandal: summoned by the intelligence services, the author, then a student, was threatened with expulsion and owed his remaining in France to the intervention of Léopold Sédar Senghor and the governor-general Paul Chauvet. It remained his only collection, and reappeared in 2025 from Orphie, augmented with thirty-five poems of the period and a preface by René Maran that had remained unpublished.
Who it is for
A booklet of some sixty pages, including a few short poems in Lari accompanied by French; the 2025 edition runs to two hundred.
Prizes and reception
Grand Literary Prize of French Equatorial Africa in 1956, awarded for the first time to a Black writer; it is the first collection of poems published by a Congolese author.
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