Biography: David Diop

David Diop (1927-1960)

David Diop was one of the most promising French West African young poets, whose short career, however, ended in an air-crash off Dakar in 1960. Diop lived an uprooted life, moving frequently from his childhood onwards between France and West Africa. In Paris Diop joinded the négritude literary movement, which championed and celebrated the uniqueness of black experience and heritage. Diop's work reflects his hatred of colonial rulers and his hope for an independent Africa.

Africa tell me Africa

Is this you this back that is bent

This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation

This back trembling with red scars

And saying yes to the whip under the midday sun (from 'Africa')

David Diop was born in Bordeaux, France, of a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother. After his father died, he was raised by his mother. Diop had his primary education in Senegal, and then he attended the Lycée Marcelin Berthelot in Paris during World War II. At home Diop read the works of Aimé Césaire and debuted as a poet while still at school. Several of his poems were published in Léopold Senghor's famous Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache (1948), which became an important landmark of modern black writing in French.
Most of his life Diop lived in France, and he often expressed his longing to Africa in his poems: "Let these words of anguish keep time with your / restless step- / Oh I am lonely so lonely here.." Due to his poor health-he was a semi-invalid for most of his life after contracting tuberculosis-Diop changed his career plans from medicine to the liberal arts. He obtained two baccalauréats and a licence-ès-lettres. In 1950 he married Virginia Kamara, who was the center of many of his poems.

Despite his French upbringing and education, Diop empathized with the African plight against French colonialism. In the 1950s Diop returned to Africa to take part in the rebuilding of Senegal. He published several poems in Présence Africaine, and advocated independence struggle. His first book of poems, Coups de pillon (1956), called for revolution and attacked the domination of European culture in Africa. In his essay 'A Contribution to the debate on National Poetry' he argued, that poets who use the language of the conquering nation are perfect examples of the assimilationist policy, and submission to western literary fashions is another form of bastardization.

Diop worked as a teacher in Dakar and a principal of a secondary school in Kindia, Guinea. The country had gained independence in 1958 and as a result French administration was rapidly withdrawn. The republic was left without civil servants and a number of Africans volunteered to work for Ahmed Sekou Touré's regime, among them Diop. Toure governed from 1958 to 1984. Diop died on a journey over the Atlantic with his wife on August 25, 1960; their plane crashed on returning to France from Dakar. Most of his work was destroyed with him, among them the manuscript of his second volume of poems. Only the 22 poems that were published before his death still remain.
has been connected with the Negritude school of writing, especially with his themes of the harmful effects of inferiority complex. As a tool of protest, he employed a colloquial style. Diop criticized Western values and colonialism, encouraged for self-sacrifices for the collective good, and praised the strength of African women. To gain the attention of his audience, Diop employed the techniques of oral expression, rhythmic repetition, oratorical tone and assertion. Often he ended the poem optimistically as in 'The Vultures': "In spite of your songs and pride / In spite of the desolate villages of torn Africa / Hope was preserved in us as in a fortress / And from the mines of Swaziland to the factories of Europe / Spring will reborn under our bright steps."
Négritude: The term was coined in the 1930s by Aimé Césaire and L-S. Senghor, and was much used after World War II by French-speaking intellectuals in Africa and the Caribbean. It referred to the sense of a common Negro inheritance, revolt against colonialist values, and nostalgia for the beauty and glory of the African heritage. The advocates of négritude movement-in particular Senghor, Césaire, and Leon-Gontran Damas-were later criticized by their belief in intrinsic cultural blackness, neglecting contemporary political realities, and failing to achieve its revolutionary aims. However, the ideas of négritude influenced also the black social and political movement in the U.S. during the 1960s. The major early works expressing the spirit of the movement are Damas Pigments (1937), Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939), and Senghor's Anthologie de la poésie... Sartre's essay 'Orphée noir' in the anthology is perhaps the most famous attempt to analyze the movement from an Existentialist point of view.

Selected works:

Coups de pilon, 1956
Hammer Blows and Other Writings, 1973 (ed. by Simon Mpondo and Frank Jones)
David Diop: 1927-1960: témoignages, études, 1983