Highlights: Library of former Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor on sale. More than 300 lots are on sale, for sums ranging from 20 to 3,000 euros. A literary and heritage treasure that risks being scattered. The international research group calls, in a letter addressed to the new authorities in Dakar, to buy back the lot before it is too late, as had been done the previous government in 2023 during the sale of personal effects of the “poet president”

“In Africa, an old man who dies is a library that burns,” it is customary to say. In Normandy, a library that is sold is a heritage that is dispersed... In this case, this…

Culture: the library of former Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor on sale

“

In Africa, an old man who dies is a library that burns

,” it is customary to say. In Normandy, a library that is sold is a heritage that is dispersed... In this case, it is the thousands of works that belonged to the former Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor which will be sold to the auction on April 16 in Caen, France.

Undated photo of Léopold Sédar Senghor © MAE

By: RFI Follow

More than 300 lots are on sale, for sums ranging from 20 to 3,000 euros. A literary and heritage treasure that risks being scattered.

The

international research group Léopold Sédar Senghor

(group of researchers and academics founded in 2022) calls, in a letter addressed to the new authorities in Dakar, to buy back the lot before it is too late, as had been done the previous government in 2023 during the sale of personal effects of the “poet president” who died on December 20, 2001, at the canonical age of 96 years. The Senegalese poet-president died in his home in Verson, in Normandy, where he had settled with his wife, after voluntarily leaving power in 1980.

House of Léopold Sedar Senghor in Verson in Normandy: the highlight of the visit is the president's office. The room is more solemn than the rest of the house, in shades of red and gold. © RFI/Isabelle Chenu

Also read: Léopold Sédar Senghor: the man of two worlds

“

We have approximately a thousand works from Senghor’s personal library. There are all the works of the friends of Senghor and the negritude movement, Aimé Césaire, who dedicates for example the Discourse on Colonialism to this old Léopold Sédar Senghor,

explains the academic

Céline Labrune-Badiane

, at the microphone of

Frédéric Garat

, from the Africa editorial team.

We also have books from Aragon dedicated to him. We have the book by Jean Price-Mars, therefore the Haitian ethnologist, who was really very important in the construction of Senghor's thought, and many works by Senegalese and West African authors, which constitute an absolutely heritage major of Senegalese and West African literature, which therefore contributed to the negritude movement.

The terms of their repatriation to Senegal do not belong to us, however, we would like to draw the attention of the new authorities, of the future Minister of Culture, to the need, precisely, to bring this heritage back to Senegal so that it can be accessible to the public. The State of Senegal can very well buy back at least part of these works.

Culture: the library of former Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor on sale

Culture: the library of former Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor on sale

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