The ambiguous meeting of tradition and modernity, according to Cheikh Hamidou Kane
Audio 03:49
The first volume of the "Sillage d'homme" collection is devoted to Cheikh Hamidou Kane, author of L'Aventure ambiguë (1961) and Les Gardiens de Temple (1995) © Editions "Paroles woven"
By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow
11 mins
There is no need to introduce Senegalese Cheikh Hamidou Kane.
Legendary writer, but also political figure, the man, now 93 years old, has played an important role in the political and cultural life of his country.
In the minds of Senegalese, his name will forever be associated with his novel
L'Aventure ambiguë
, the self-fictional hero of which embodies the drama of the African man torn between tradition and modernity.
It is with Mariama Samba Baldé, who has just devoted a book-portrait to the author of
L'Aventure ambiguë
, that our chronicler Tirthankar Chanda paints the portrait of this man with “
multiple long maturities
”.
Publicity
In 1961, sixty years ago,
L'Aventure ambiguë * appeared
.
A masterful story of the tragic encounter between Africa and the West, this novel has become a must-read for generations of Africans.
Some even had to write dissertations analyzing this or that aspect of this great novel, to obtain their baccalaureate.
Its author is not only a writer, but he has also been a major figure in Senegalese political life.
Between the 1960s and 1990s, Cheikh Hamidou Kane was a minister in the governments of Senghor and Abdou Diouf and made an impression with his political practice based on humanist and democratic values.
Thus, in the midst of the government crisis which in 1962 pitted President Senghor against his Prime Minister Mamadou Dia, he resigned from his post to protest against the regime's authoritarian abuses.
But more than his political action, it is to his novel that is
L'Aventure ambiguë
, which has become an essential classic of modern African letters, that Cheikh Hamidou Kane owes his reputation, which today goes beyond the borders of his country. and its continent.
"Wake of Men"
The recent publication of a new book devoted to this sacred monster of African letters, written by editor Mariama Baldé, provides us with the opportunity to return to this extraordinary journey.
Cheikh Hamidou Kane: The unforgettable spark of being (
“Woven Words” Editions, 2020) is a work in an original format.
Divided into five chapters named after the five fingers of the hand and composed of interviews with the writer, it sheds light on the different parts of the life of the latter, from his studious youth to his Pan-Africanist thought, including man. politician, literary and believer.
“
I really wanted it to be Cheikh Hamidou Kane who inaugurates the“ Wake of men ”collection,
declares Mariama Baldé.
This collection is made up of portraits that I qualify as “philosophical”, which studies a personality and analyzes a work.
Cheikh Hamidou Kane goes beyond his work and his thought touches Africans, but also the whole world.
Precisely, it touches what I like to call “the water table of our common humanity”.
When he deals with the meeting, he draws attention to the dangers, but also what the meeting can produce that is beautiful.
"
Cheikh Hamidou Kane was born on April 2, 1928, in Matam, a peaceful village in Fouta Toro, in northern Senegal, on the banks of the river of the same name.
Coming from a large family of traditional Fulani leaders and Muslim scholars, he was brought up in the purest Islamic tradition.
He attended Koranic school, but at the age of nine his family decided to send him to French school, even as the debate raged in colonized Senegal between "
the pro and the anti. - foreign school
”.
"
Is what they will learn from the French worth what they will forget
", such is the dilemma which shook the Senegalese elite at the beginning of the last century.
This dilemma is at the heart of Cheikh Hamidou Kane's self-fictional novel,
L'Aventure ambiguë
, which tells the tragic journey of a young African during the time of colonization.
Samba Diallo, the author's double, is torn from his traditional environment to be sent to the French school to acquire the knowledge and values of the conquering West, versed in "
the art of winning without being right
" .
A brilliant student, Samba went to Paris in order to perfect his intellectual training, but worked by loneliness and a deep feeling of being uprooted, he sank into an identity crisis that was both existential and mystical.
He will die of it.
A religious novel?
Initially,
L'Aventure ambiguë
was to be called "
God is not a parent
", a title which was in phase with the philosophical and spiritual dimension of this novel.
In the interviews that the author gave to Mariama Baldé and which are gathered in his portrait-book, he recalls the importance of the philosophical thought which constitutes the basis of his novel.
This aspect had not escaped the first critics of the work who had underlined "
the intertextuality between the Koran and the work of Sheikh Hamidou Kane
".
Confirming the accuracy of this reading, Mariama Baldé recalls that “
Sheikh Hamidou Kane learned the Koran by heart when he was a child.
I want to say that he drank the Koran.
It is a text that he continued to read and visit.
So, it is not surprising that critics have been able to detect traces of this text in
L'Aventure ambiguë
which, at times, has poetic and mystical overtones.
The descriptions of nature, of the sky, of the stars, these are descriptions that one finds in
L'Aventure ambiguë
as an echo of the Koranic text.
The Quran relies on symbols and elements of nature to indicate to man signs of God.
"
Interrupting his literary silence of thirty-five years, Cheikh Hamidou Kane published in 1995 his second work.
The Guardians of the Temple **
follows on from the first one, but it is less philosophical and more political.
It is inspired by the war of the chiefs between Senghor and his second Mamadou Dia, which marked modern Senegalese history.
Camped in a contemporary African country that resembles resolutely postcolonial Senegal, this novel nevertheless attempts to provide answers to the conflicts between traditions and modernity staged in
L'Aventure ambiguë
.
“
For example, if we wondered in
The Ambiguous Adventure, underlines Mariama Baldé,
if the synthesis between tradition and modernity was possible, the character of Saïdou Barry, who is the hero of the
Guardians of the temple
and who
shows another opposite Samba Diallo, embodies this synthesis.
There is also the master in
The Ambiguous Adventure
who had a very, very austere outlook on life, who even wanted to kill all exuberance of life, while the master in
The Guardians of the Temple
, he accepts life.
So it shows two different approaches to Islam.
"
Universal questions
A man of two novels, Cheikh Hamidou Kane likes to define himself as a “writer on an incidental basis”.
A leading political actor, he wrote in his spare time to testify to the tragedies of African youth at the end of colonization.
Her work goes beyond, underlines Mariama Baldé, "
its socio-cultural setting to resonate universal questions about the human condition
".
This explains why, coming to writing by accident, the storyteller of the ambiguous encounter of civilizations has established himself as an essential writer of our planetary modernity.
* L'Aventure ambiguë, Julliard 1961 (republished in pocket 10/18)
** The Guardians of the Temple, Stock 1995
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