From Poto-Poto to Paris, with the Congolese Henri Lopes
Audio 04:21
Congolese writer Henri Lopes.
© Editions Gallimard
By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow
13 mins
It was by publishing in 1971, 50 years ago, his first work of fiction,
Tribaliques
, that the Congolese Henri Lopes made himself known.
Rewarded the following year by the Literary Grand Prix of Black Africa, this collection of short stories allowed the author to establish his reputation as an attentive witness of the fortunes and misfortunes of independence Africa.
Leading a dual political and literary career, Lopes has established himself as an essential novelist, author of an important work, situated between social criticism and introspection.
First part.
Publicity
With nine novels to his credit, a collection of short stories, articles, essays and a recently published volume of memoirs, the Congolese Henri Lopes is one of the most fruitful and brilliant representatives of the African literary world. At the age of eighty, man is one of the “
sacred monsters
” of modern African literature. Crowned in 1993 by the Grand Prix de la Francophonie awarded by the French Academy, her work is characterized by its great thematic coherence and its ardent lucidity. It is taught today in schools and universities in Africa as well as throughout the French-speaking world.
The beginnings of the literary career of Henri Lopes go back to the 1970s, more precisely to 1971, 50 years ago, date of the publication of his first fictional book:
Tribaliques
.
It was a collection of short stories, published by CLE editions, a small Cameroonian publishing house.
Negritude, a dominant ideology
The title of the collection is not insignificant. He refers, with a consummate sense of the playful and ironic, to Senghor's famous volume of poetry, entitled
Ethiopia
. In independent Africa where negritude was the dominant ideology, this intertextuality was heavy with meaning. It so happened that at the time, with a certain number of intellectuals from the rising generation, Henri Lopes campaigned to free African literature from the grip of this identity doctrine, experienced more and more by the new generations as a brake on literary creation.
Conceived by Senghor and Césaire as a tool for affirming the civilizational values of the black world in the face of Western colonizers, negritude was a defining moment of the past century.
However, independence came, it had become over the years an essentialist ideology in which the youth had difficulty in recognizing themselves.
The rising authors then take their distance from this doctrinaire thought, as Lopes does in his first book.
Far from being the celebration of the tribe and the ethnic group, which are positively valued by the poets of negritude, the eight short stories of
Tribaliques
denounce the rise of tribalism in Africa of independence, as well as a certain number of 'other ailments.
Damascus Way
Paradoxically, when he was looking for his way in his early youth, it was his discovery of Senghor's work that had prompted the young Henri Lopes to embark on the path of literary writing, like the person concerned. often told. “
The thing that clicked was the reading
of Senghor's
Anthology of Negro and Malagasy Poetry
. I had a European, French training. My head was stuffed with authors, mainly French or European references, and I discovered a book written by blacks. And it's beautiful and it holds up, as it looks a bit trivial. And so, I say to myself, deep down, we can write, I can write. There are things I have to say that have not been said. So this was my first road to Damascus.
"
Born in 1937 in Léopoldville, today Kinshasa, but a citizen of Congo-Brazzaville, Henri Lopes studied in France, first in Nantes, then in Paris.
He was a student at the Sorbonne in the 1950s, when Paris had become the capital of the booming French-speaking black world, pending independence.
The young Lopes was then close to the French Communist Party and was active in the very active Federation of Black African Students in France (FEANF).
“
It was a wonderful time
,” recalls the writer.
First, because we almost all knew each other. We wanted to rebuild the world and the Federation of Black African Students in France was the crucible in which we found ourselves, where we campaigned. I was a Marxist, I became one in France. This is because post-war France has nothing to do with today's France. It is a France where the Communists played a big role in the resistance against Nazism and the French intelligentsia is - I say a random number, but which is not far from reality - 80% formed of Communists or fellow Communists. Aragon is a Communist, Éluard is a Communist, Picasso is a Communist, Léger is a Communist, the Joliot-Curies are Communists. Moreover, the Communists were the only party in thetime when we did not find racism. It was then normal that young Africans who wanted the independence of their country to move towards this ideology.
"
In 1965, his university degrees in his pocket, Henri Lopes returned to his country, now independent.
He obtained a post of professor of history at the Ecole Normale d'Afrique.
He is a young thirty-something, all fired up, who wants to "
make a revolution
". He is especially aware of not knowing his country very well, which he left at the age of 11. He quickly moved from teaching to politics. Co-opted by the Marxist regime which took power in Brazzaville in 1969, he held ministerial functions until becoming Prime Minister of President Marien Ngouabi, between 1973 and 1975, then Minister of Finance. In the early 1980s, he joined the ranks of Unesco in Paris, as deputy director of this organization. After his retirement from Unesco in 1998, he was appointed ambassador of his country to France and to the European Union, a post he would not leave until 2015.
Throughout this particularly active professional life, rich in responsibilities and distinctions, Henri Lopes led a dual career, literary and political. Quite naturally, he draws the material for his novels from his vast political experience. The result is often happy, as evidenced by the unmissable
Le Pleurer-rire
, Lopes' third novel, published in 1982 and considered by critics to be his most successful novel.
This novel is a fierce satire of the dictatorship in Africa, told through the picturesque account of the life and manners of the central character of Tonton Hannibal-Ideloy Bwakamabé Na Sakkadé. The character's name is quite a program, suggesting political domination as well as sexual domination. Former adventurer of the Colonial who became president of his country thanks to a coup, the man exercises an atrocious dictatorship over his people. His models are named Bokassa, Idi Amin Dada, Mobutu and other Eyadéma who had seized power across the continent in the years following independence.
If it is the issue of power that is the real theme of this novel, its major interest lies in its break with the conventions of classic realist fiction.
The Pleurer-rire
bases its originality on its polyphonic structure, allowing all voices to be heard, those of power as well as those of counter-powers. Goodbye also to linear narrative and omniscient and unique storytelling. This novel certainly marks a break in the literary production of its author.
“
I wanted to make engaged literature and I realized that good literature is not engaged
,” explains Lopes
. It is the author who can be hired. Literature has to be engaging. From there, I try to be engaging.
"
In the sequel to
Pleurer-rire
, the political and militant narrative gives way to a more intimate vein, with novels often more baroque than realistic.
They are called
Le Chercheur d'Afriques
(1990),
Le Lys et le flamboyant
(1997) or
Une enfant de Poto-Poto
(2012), to name just a few books.
According to the academic Lydie Moudileno, these novels of the new cycle stage “
the impossible reunion between a man and his history
”.
Above all, they tell of the never-closed wound of miscegenation, as we will see next week in the second part of this column devoted to Henri Lopes, the outstanding storyteller of the Congo and the world.
► Bibliography:
-
Tribalics
, short stories (1971)
-
The New Romance,
novel (1976)
-
Sans tam-tam
, novel (1977)
-
Le Pleurer-rire
, novel (1982)
-
The Researcher of Africa
, novel (1990)
-
On the other shore
, novel (1992)
-
Le Lys et le Flamboyant
, novel (1997)
-
Classified file
, novel (2002)
-
My Bantu grandmother and my ancestors the Gauls
, essay (2003)
-
A child of Poto-Poto
, novel (2012)
-
Le Méridional
, novel (2015)
-
It's already tomorrow
, memories (2018)
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