Abstract - kau



Senghor’s Songs of Darkness

As a Revival of

Blake’s Songs of Innocence & Experience

by

Dr.Hind Reda Jamal Al-Leil

Associate Professor of English Lit.

English Department

Girls’ College

Jeddah

1426-2005

Abstract

Comparison and contrast enrich any literary study, but they cannot be drawn unless one finds the basis, the point or the link, on which to establish them .In the case of Senghor and Blake, it is the creation of Songs of Darkness and Songs of innocence & Experience. In such great works of literature, the journey motif plays an essential role, as both poets direct themselves towards the land of childhood innocence, then move ahead to experience, and eventually reach a new kind of innocence marked by peace, wisdom and harmony. In spite of their different cultural and literary backgrounds, and in spite of their different poetical compositions, this paper aims to assert the universality of the human conditions. Dreams and fears of all humanity are identical whether expressed by an African belonging to Negritude in one of the third- world countries in the twentieth century or a European belonging to romanticism in the great empire of the world two centuries earlier.

Leopold Sedar Senghor ( 1906-2001), the poet and statesman, was born in Joal, a small village in north Darkar, the capital of Senegal. While his father belonged to a noble and wealthy family, his mother had pastoral roots. At the age of twelve, he attended the Catholic Mission School, and successfully finished his secondary level of education in 1928. Winning a state scholarship enabled him to travel to Paris and to graduate from Lycée – le-grand in 1931. Senghor was affected by French and Afro-American poets, and with his friend Aimé Cesaire he established the concept of Negritude. It is “ defined as the literary and artistic expression of the black African experince,”yet “ in historical context the term has been seen as a reaction against French colonialism and a defense of African culture.”(on line1) In 1932, he becomes a French citizen, and from 1953 till the outbreak of World War II he worked as a teacher. During the war, he joined the French army, and fell as a prisoner of war in the hands of the Germans for eighteen months. In such period of captivity, he learned German and wrote poetry, which was later published in a collection entitled as Black Offerings “Hosts” (1948). After the war, he resumed his job as a teacher in different French academic institutions. His first collection of poetry, Songs of Darkness, was published in 1945. During this period,Senghor's political concepts and tendencies started to appear; hence he was elected to represent his country of Senegal in many French political assemblies. In 1948, he married a Guyanese woman and had two children. But it was unsuccessful experience, which ended in divorce. Senghor remarried later but this time it had been to a French woman. In 1960, he was elected as the first president of Senegal and enjoyed the post till 1980. Afterwards, he spent his time moving from Dakar to Normandy and back to Paris, where he died in 2001 after winning many international awards as a writer and Politician. His poetry was written in French, and translated into several languages, and his prose writing dealt with linguistics, politics and sociology.

As a poet, Sunday O,Anozie believes that “Senghor's earlier observations about traditional African metaphysics, and his attempts to formulate on the basis of these a theory of African Creativity, constitute a major contribution to negritude.” (Gates 113) Accordingly, Senghor had the upper hand in reviving the social and cultural awareness in post- independent Africa. While being greatly concerned with the essence of art in general, the content of his poetry is “ the African heritage.” (Peters 225) Bearing in mind the fact that the artist in traditional African is a “poet, musician, performer, sculptor, critic and society's transmitter of history,”(Peters 227) Senghor believed, similar to Chinua Achebe (1930 ַ ) and wole Soyinka(1934 ַ ), that “art must serve more than purely literary or aesthetic purpose;” ( Peters 226) thus, art for art’s sake is not applicable to Senghor, whose poetry is not “unswervingly dedicated to the service of artistic beauty for its own sake,[but] …. aims to serve the cause of African liberation in its most encompassing sense.” (Niekerk103) To construct and move forward towards a good future, Senghor believes, people need freedom, honour and unity as a means towards integration .If the artist, in particular, lacks integrity within himself and his world, he cannot achieve it in his artistic creation and reveal it to his fellowmen as a part of his duty towards them. In other words, he viewed himself as a father, spokesman, ambassador and ruler for his own people, the Senegalese.

Senghor's poetic career can be divided into two main phases: the poetry produced before the African independence, and the one composed after it. His first four volumes of poetry: Songs of Darkness, Black Offerings “Hosts”, Ethiopiques (1956) and Nocturnes (1961), belonging to the first phase, present him as a subjective propagandist of Negritude. Consequently such volumes idealise black Africa and its people and celebrate the nobility of its culture. Jonathan Ngate states that critics “salute Senghor for his pioneering work in the defence of African culture and literature,” as he “emerge[s] as a much positive force in [their] development………… along side practitioners of ………….. social realism.” (Arnold 103) Accordingly his role as a spokesman and ambassador for his own people is apparent more than other roles assumed by him later through his literary career. Marked by love, passion, regret, worries, uncertainty and agony, this phase harbours nostalgia and exile as its main themes. Eventually his active involvement in world war ІІ drew him to adopt a message of human love, and in a place of “disappointment and stife,” he suggested “healing and reuion.” (peters 236)

In the second phase of his poetic career, Senghor's role as an ambassador is “overshadowed by the sentiment of the poet- lover;” ( Peters 229) hence the role of the master of language and lamarch (ruler of land) are assumed instead. Undoubtedly, this phase is marked by “ the assurance of poet-lover-statesman,” (Peters 227) who has viewed his poetic career in the light of the actuality of the present . In such “Edenic retreat, “ ( Peters 228) there is no reference to the black man's superiority and Europe’s crimes, due to the newly discovered realities about Africa and African People after independence, who prove to be capable of the same conflict, strife and evil of their colonizers. Such disillusionment with his own people leads Senghor to seek reconciliation of differences between the two races and to retreat to a “ world of personal abandon to call forth his nobility and his virtue.” (Peters 229) Maturity channels all his literary effort towards a single sacred goal that is of “ a new age of cultural synthesis and social harmony.” (Peter 236)

According to Janice Spleth, the major themes of Senghor's poetry can be summed up in the following:

- Destruction and Alienation (the present)

The symbol of this theme is Europe as “ a society sacrificing the macrocosm for the microcosm,” in which reason replaces feeling and intuition, and man is alienated and uprooted. As sterility, artificiality and warfare stamp Europe, its civilization is condemned by emptiness and viciousness. Hence whiteness represents the resulted and unavoidable state of man's dilemma.

- Purification and Negritude (the past)

The symbol of this theme is Africa, as it stands for men's rapport with nature and his quest of self. To achieve his identity, man should start his journey, “ which must go back before it can move forward”. Thus, senghor has explored his childhood and his African past, first, to accept and be satisfied with his self, and, second, to reach his ultimate goal of self-realization and harmonious life. Blackness, dance, drums, masks and other African images form, according to Senghor, “ the complete man, man as a part of all that he has experienced.”(Spleth 196) Eventually one can say that having “the creation in the Western world of an African Diaspora” as its “inspiration,” (Omotoso 23) Senghor's Negritude is “ this process of purification through quest, self-Knowledge and acceptance.” On having self-dignity and self- realization, only then, man can start substantial and healthy relationship with people around him.

- Resurrection and Synthesis ( the future)

On being assured that others have similarly succeeded in conquering their loneliness and alienation, man starts his actual participation with such fellows to create a world of harmony and universal brotherhood. Consequently “ ‘Africa’ (human warmth, feeling) and ‘Europe’ (technology, reason) come into a kind of synthesis, and work together toward a ‘ civilization of the universal.” (Spleth 196).

As a first collection of his poetic production, Songs of Darkness belongs to the first phase of Senghor’s literary career. Being as such, its content and aesthetic formulation draw to the mind William Blake’s(1757-1827) Songs of Innocence & Experience (1789-1794).To elaborate, symbolic death, aspiring to purification and leading eventually to an achievement of a regeneration, is the central concept of both poets. Senghor’s actual exile in Europe drives him to design his spiritual journey to the past seeking rebirth and renewal, which may help him to conquer all the evils of the contemporary world, and to attain a kind of universal brotherhood.

An odyssey that is reminiscent in some respects of the philosophical journey of the English poet, William Blake, moving from the pure innocence of childhood into the often repellent but unavoidable world of experience, and finally, hopefully, into a new innocence ……………. born of experience.

Spleth 188

In relation to his Songs of Innocence & Experience, Blake believes that though this state of childlike happiness is wonderfully charming, it is not everything and it cannot last. To reach a higher position, man must be tested by experience and suffering, and this is the link between the two sections of Blake’s poetic collection. Experience is a necessary stage in the cycle of being. Though it is a much lower state than innocence, yet it is not less necessary. These songs clarify how that what we accept in childlike innocence is tested and proved feeble by actual events, how much that we have taken for granted is not true to the living world. Hence experience is not at all awful; it is something necessary in our life, as it implies both thinking and suffering. For Blake, once man stops thinking it means death in life, and that suffering implies energy, that leads to experience and ultimately to wisdom. Conclusively, one can say that in this poetic collection, Blake gives the essence of his imaginative thought about the crisis in himself and in all men.

Similar to Blake, who “ sought some ultimate synthesis in which innocence might be wedded to experience, and goodness to knowledge,” (Bowra 46) Senghor’s journey from innocence to experience, from childhood to manhood, is marked by uncertainty and fear. Animal of prey, as symbols of nature, roar and howl reflecting nature’s hostility towards this step of losing childhood innocence. The end of the security of the childhood world opens the door for the world of experience, “ a world which almost immediately threatens the close man-nature harmony, which the child has enjoyed since birth.” (Spleth 190). What Senghor is emphasizing in his journey- motif is, first, that such rapport with nature is essential to humanity at large not only in childhood but in adulthood as well;

Second, the hope that man can survive the threats of the world of experience and achieve a new innocence, having its roots and its symbols in that original innocence not only of the child but also of the ancient past which the child sometimes comes to represent.

Spleth 191

Accordingly, the child must die so that the man can be born. This draws to one’s mind William Wordsworth’s ( 1770-1850) declaration: ‘The Child is father of the Man’ Thus, the vanishing stage of childhood does not mean death, but life, as a new innocence will reborn instead.

Let us die, let us dance.

SD 163 (1)

meaning: let us die, let us live, promising a new life of profound creativity.

The beating rhythmical drums of Africa do not only accompany the transition from innocence to experience, but also form innocence “ to the promise of the world of experience, that new innocence.”(Spleth 192)In other words, drums are not against this procedure, but assure man’s progression towards the new innocence without being lost or alienated. Hence, man will lose his childhood innocence but simultaneously keep his rapport with nature forever. Consequently, this transition does not lead Senghor to despair, as he is hopefully expecting the new innocence in its place, which “must not be stifled by traditional trappings and by idle and misdirected regret for the loss of the past.” (Spleth 193)

In spite of the fact that dance “ as a mature and creative state” ( Spleth 192) makes the death of childhood quite acceptable, yet the transition from innocence to experience is not easy. Senghor has suffered from nostalgia for his childhood, whenever he confronts the hardships and complications of the world of experience. He misses the joy and grace of the earlier stage:

So many times I have wept ………how many times

for the transparent nights of childhood.

SD 164

What aggravates the situation more and more is that his totality in responding rhythmically to nature is no longer there, as his reason replaces his intuition and feeling. Even the beating drums are no longer there, symbolizing the loss of rhythm, in other words, the loss of life itself. But, still, hope and promise are there for men in general, as their fellow poet can, through the rhythm of his poem, help them to resume successfully their rapport with nature.

The responsibilities of the poet are heavy. To prepare himself, the poet must revitalize himself; only then can he create the poem, which is to say the rhythm, the life– giving ministrations which will save his flock.

Spleth 194

Finally, the new man will emerge out of such combinations: innocence and experience, feeling and reason, Africa and Europe. Only then

Phoenix rises, he sings with wings extended

Over the carnage of words.

SD 164

Such a poet cannot be called a racist due to his contribution to Negritude, as he visualizes it as a symbol of self-identity not only for his fellows, the Africans, but for all human beings all over the world, who are struggling to achieve their self-realization. But it should be noted that in spite of his declaration that Negritude “ does not preach racism,” yet it is based on one particular “ racial consciousness – the consciousness of the black man that he is black and that his being black has values which are good in themselves and which can be useful to mankind as a whole” (Egudu 34-35). All this proves that “his vision of a civilization of universal brotherhood obviously transgress ethnic and racial lines.” (Spleth 196).

In songs of Darkness,Senghor concentrates on his exile from his home country, Africa, and his childhood memories over there. Through it, it is clear that Senghor has been less obsessed with his colour than with his nostalgia for his little village, Joal, and the simplicity, purity and sweetness of his childhood. Naturally, in such a collection “ the two main features of Senghor’s iconology ……….. the ancestors and the masks” (Peters 16) predominate its main theme. Concerning ancestors, one notice a kind of “ the filial reverence towards their spirits,” (Peters17) due to their closeness to the supernatural world of life-forces. “By devoting themselves to reinforcing the force of living men, the ancestors continue their vital participation. “(Ba 56) But the masks stand as a black African cult united God to land and projected through social behaviors of singing and dancing. As a result, one finds that Sengor’s ancestors play an essential role in the three opening poems of this collection, while the masks preoccupy the four subsequent ones called as “ mask-poems.”

Senghor opens this collection with a poem called “ In Memoriam;” it is about one of the poet’s sunday in Paris, where he is all alone by himself in his “tower of glass.” Being cut off from everyone and everything there, draws the poet into reveries of Joal and the river Sine.

Sunday

The crowding stony faces of may fellows make me afraid

Out of my tower of glass haunted by headaches and my rest

less Ancestors.

I watch the rooves and hills wrapped in mist.

SD 103

Though it is sunday, yet it cannot conquer his sense of alienation; the poet’s tower of glass has not been the only and real obstacle, but the stony faces of the Parisians in the street, which put an end to any of the poet’s trial to establish any kind of personal intimacy. Cold, fear and apathy predominate, in spite of “ yesterday was All saints” (SD 103) .

The title of the poem reminds one of Tennyson’s elegy: “In Memoriam” written in the memory of his dead friend, Alfred Halem. But Senghor’s poem is not written for the sake of a dead person but for the sake of his dead dreams. He compares these dead dreams to his ancestors, “who have always refused to die,” ( SD 103) and haunted him during such moments of isolation. Thus, it is noticed that Senghor “passes and repasses from the stark waking reality of exile to the soothing assurance of ancestral presence. “(Fraser 46) By drawing contrast between the poet in his glass tower and the passers by in the street, his dead dreams and his eternal ancestors, the river Sine and the river Seine, the poem concludes with the poet still in his glass tower to prove the vicious circle, in which he has been trapped. There is only one change; it is when the poet addresses his restless living- dead ancestors to protect his dead dreams and the dead-living people in the street.

Guard my dreams as you have guarded your sons, your

Slender – limbed wanderers

O dead, defend the rooves of Paris in this Sabbath mist

Rooves that guard my dead

That from the dangerous safety of my tower, I may go down

Into the street

To my brothers whose eyes are blue

Whose hands are hard.

SD 103

In black Africa, death and life are two aspects of humanity; their interdependence on one another proves that there is no apposition between them. On the contrary, both are joined to become “one regenerating force,” resulted in making “death a form to contribution to life.” ( Ba 58) Truth, strength and purification are the living reward of this eternal relationship between life and death, between life-forces and the dead ancestors. In fact, Senghor’s concepts of the black African religion, art and literature are synthesized to form his philosophy of death and life.

Eventually, on contemplating the main ideas of “ In Memoriam,” as the first poem in Songs of Darkness, one “discover[s] some of the themes that will recur later in Senghor’s works: the decadence of Europe which needs the rejuvenating blood of Africa……………………………………the omnipresence of ancestors …………… and the desire for peace and reconciliation.” (Peters 19)

In Blake’s Song of Innocence , it is not a sunday preceded by All Saints’ Day, but it is a “Holly Thursday.” An annual event at St.Pauls’is described with six thousands children walking two by two in their coloured clothes towards the cathedral, guided by their beadles dressed in white to sing their song of praise to God.

T’ was a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean.

The children walking two & two in red & blue & green.

Grey headed beadles walked with wands as white as snow

Till into the high dome of pauls they like Thames waters flow.

SIE 35

But in Songs of experience Blake shows that this song of praise raised at St. Pauls’ on “ Holy Thursday” is now a trembling cry:

Is that trembling cry a song?

Can it be a song of joy?

……………………………..

………………………………

………….. Their sun does never shine,

And their fields are black & bare

And their ways are fill’d with thorns

It is eternal Winter there.

SIE 38

Similar to Senghor, the songs and joy of childhood innocence transfer into the harsh reality of cry, thorns and bareness.

In addressing a woman, who symbolizes his mother in particular and Mother Africa in general, Senghor in “Night in the Sine” is recalling the idyllic atmosphere of one of his African pastoral nights:

Woman, lay on my forehead your perfumed hands, hands

Softer than fur

Above, the swaying palm trees rustle in high night breeze

Hardly at all. No lullaby even.

The rhythmic silence cradles us.

Listen to its song, listen to our dark blood beat, listen

To the deep pulse of Africa beating in the mist of forgotten

Villages.

SD 104

It is a peaceful setting as it is related to Senghor’s sweet memories of childhood in Africa. This point is reinforced in the opening lines of the poems; the hands of the woman, whom he is addressing, are “perfumed………….. [and] Softer than fur” in contrast to the image of “In Memoriam,” where “ the blue-eyed” Parisians have hard hands.

The tropical images proceed to include music and dance, moonlight and storytelling, a child on its mother’s back and the sweet aura disbursed from humble huts. In this quiet atmosphere, people are lulled to sleep after sharing the intimacy of such social rituals.

The close bond is suggested in part by the image of the child on the back of its mother and the long milky cloth of night, in part by rhythmic harmony of participants and spectators and by the very conspiratorial intimacy among the huts form which sharp and sweet smells emanate.

Peters 20

Even in this joyful pastoral night, Senghor does not forget his ancestors; he recalls them here not to guard his dead dreams and the stony faces of his white fellows in Paris as in “ In Memoriam,” but to converse with him under the light of an oil lamp through these warm intimate moments before he plunges into sound sleep. Hence, Senghor concludes this poem by expressing this wish to his woman:

Let me breathe the smell of our Dead, gather and speak out

Again their living voice, learn to

Live before I go down deeper than diver, into the light profundities

Of sleep.

SD 105

In Blake’s Songs of Innocence, one has the same atmosphere of quietness and peacefulness of pastoral life. All Creatures, here, are innocent, pure and lovely. The child and the lamb represent the divinity and love of Blake’s paradise, and convey a special kind of existence. In such a state, human beings have the same kind of security and assurance of lambs under a wise shepherd. In “The ecchoing Green,” Blake converses with paradise, with heaven on earth, where the green re-echoes with the merry laughter of the young and old alike:

The sun does rise,

And make happy the skies.

The merry bells sing,

To welcome the Spring.

The sky – lark and thrush,

The birds of the bush,

Sing louder around,

To the bells cheerful sound,

While our sports shall be seen

On the Ecchoing Green.

SIE 31

This poem combines and visualizes all the joyful beauty of spring in nature and young humanity. It is daylight, the sun rises, bells ring, and birds sing for hope and life. In this earthly paradise, children play games happily, and older people sit under an oak tree laughing and watching this beautiful scene. Even their rememberances are pleasant recollection of their past childhood.

They laugh at our play,

And soon they all say,

Such such were the joys,

When we all girls & boys,

In our youth time were seen,

On the Ecchoing Green.

SIE 32

When the sun sets, the innocent children are very tired, so they stop playing and, like birds, they return to their homes peacefully protected by their mothers, and the darkening green is left empty and silent.

Round the laps of their mothers,

Many sisters and brothers,

Like birds in their nest,

Are ready for rest.

And sport no more seen,

on the darkening Green.

SIE 32

Though it is a day activity, yet it shares with Senghor’s tropical night the same joyful factors of singing, pleasant recollections and peaceful atmosphere. Both, similarly, end with rest and sleep as an essential part of human life.

Again in “Joal”, one has the same old reminiscences of Senghor’s lost childhood. His exile in Paris intensifies this feeling of nostalgia for his home village, Joal. This lyric is a kind of quick flashback scenes one following the other: “moonlight on the beach”, “ pomps of sunset,” “funeral feasts,” “ pagan rhythmic singing” and “ dance of the girls who are ready for marriage”. Such scenes are “connected with splendour and pomp, pleasure and love, feasting and the excitement of village sport”.(Peters 21) The poet’s reveries are continually preceded by his recall:

“I remember” about seven times through this short lyric. But eventually it comes to an end, as he is brought back to his actual sad exile in Europe by:

………………. The rhythm of the tramp tramp

So wearily down the days of Europe where there comes,

Now and then a little orphaned Jazz goes sobbing, sob-

bing, sobbing.

SD 106

But in “Introduction” of Blake’s Songs of Innocence, the happy tunes never last. It is a scene of a shepherd wandering and piping his flute; the child on a white cloud laughs happily and asks him to pipe a song about a lamb:

Piping down the valleys wild

Piping songs of pleasant glee

On a cloud I saw a child.

And he laughing said to me

Pipe a song about lamb,

So I piped with merry cheer,

Piper pipe that song again-

So I piped, he wept to hear.

SIE 31

The weeping of the child in this lyric is not out of sorrow and melancholy like Senghor’s sobbing at the end of “Joal”. But it is the weeping of joy and ecstasy evoked by these happy melodies.

The three previous poems of Senghor’s Songs of Darkness clarify the role played by the ancestors in his life and art. But the four subsequent ones: “Black woman”, “Black Mask”, “ Prayer To Masks” and “Totem” deal with another aspect of Senghor’s African tradition, which is the mask. Being called mask-poems, “ they deal with the mask as ancestral figure, work of art, symbol of a god and of spiritual essences beyond the physical artifact.”( Peters 22)

In “Black woman,” Senghor is addressing an unidentified woman recalled from his African past on one “sun baked noon” of summer. But different from his woman of “Night In the Sine,” this unknown women is fully described, as all her universal, classical and particular features are drawn throughout the poem. She is naked black African with “colour, which is life” and “from which is beauty”.

Naked woman, black woman

Clothed with your color which is life, with your form

Which is beauty.

SD 105

In Senghor’s land of innocence, black becomes the colour of life. In this way “he would make of the cause of oppression a source of pride, of the sign of sorrow the mark of vitality and joy, admit as a criterion of beauty those traits traditionally the opposite of Western ideals.” ( Anyidoho 88)

Contrary to that, in Blake’s Songs of Innocence, white is the colour of purity and life, and black has the connotation of dimness, fear and sadness. In “The Little Black Boy,” the black boy is conscious of his blackness, and that is a mark of inferiority according to his social surrounding, but his mother pacifies him by saying that his black colour is only a temporary cloud, which will vanish on his reaching “the tent of God”.

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O my soul is white;

White as an angel is the English child,

But I am black as if bereav’d of light.

………………………………………..

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;

And thus I say to little English boy:

When I from black and he from white cloud free,

And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

SIE 33

Thus, in Songs of Innocence, if evil, as racism, is introduced, it does not last or predominate. It is only for a while “to give a greater reality to happiness,” (Selincourd 26) and soon it is redeemed. Similarly the misery and hardship of “The Little Chimney Sweeper” come to an end, as he is released by an angel.

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry, “ weep! Weep! Weep! ”

So your chimney I sweep& in soot I sleep.

SIE 33

In the Victorian age, the shameful use of small boys, blackened by the soot of human cruelty, is redeemed by the appearance of an angel in the little boy’s dream. Unlocking their coffins, such an angel releases all the chimney sweepers from their unhappy circumstances and sets their spirits free to float on to paradise.

And so he was quiet, & that very night,

As Tom was a – sleeping he had such a sight!

That thousands of sweepers, Dick,Joe,Ned, & Jack,

Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black;

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

And he open’d the coffins & set them all free;

Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,

And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

SIE 34

So the little chimney sweeper sleeps in black soot and is locked in black coffin to stress that, contrary to Senghor, the colour of black in Blake’s Songs of Innocence stands for negative and adverse qualities.

In the same corresponding poem of Songs of Experience, the little chimney sweeper is presented as “A little black thing among the snow”, but his spirit is not wholly subdued. He tells about his exploitation by his parents, who believe that they are not wronging him. Such pious parents go regularly to church, that has sanctioned a society with such cruelty.

“ Because I was happy upon the heath,

And smil’d among the winter’s snow,

They clothed me in the clothes of death,

And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

“And because I am happy, and dance & sing,

They think they have done me no injury,

And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King,

Who make up a heaven of our misery.”

SIE 39

Blake’s abhorrence of the parents’ exploitation of their child is manifested in the subtle image referring to his job as a chimney sweeper. They clothe him in “the clothes of death”, meaning the black soot of chimney covering him on finishing his work.

Here, there is a clear declaration by Blake that black, for him, stands for death and not life like Senghor, the poet of Negritude.

Back to Senghor’s “Black Woman”, there is an image, that reminds the reader of a similar one in “Night In The Sine”.

In your shadow I have grown up, the gentleness of your

hands was laid over my eyes.

SD 105

It is about the effect of the woman’s gentle and soft hands on the poet’s head. “Always responsive to the tender, soothing hands on his brow , Senghor uses the recall of such a moment to introduce the sudden impact of beauty of the black woman”(Peters 22) on him:

And now, high up on the sun-baked pass, at the heart of

Summer, at the heart of noon, I came upon you, my

Promised land.

And your beauty strikes me to the heart like the flash of an

eagle.

SD 105

It is a strong dazzling impact like that of the flash of an eagle, as she is not any woman, but his “promised land”. This proves that Senghor is painting the portrait of the universal black woman, the portrait of mother and of Mother Africa. It is validated by the fact that in spite of the poem’s “ apparent flights of fancy and fortuitousness of the surrealist imagery, very little if any physical passion for the woman is manifested.” (Peters 23)

The idealization and the spiritual purity of the African Woman are expressed through images related to nature like: gazelle, stars, night, sun, pearls and gold in the two middle stanzas of the poem. The result “ is full of suggestions of ripeness and maturity, of desire and embrace amid drumming and spiritual song and of cosmic forces at work.” (Peters 24) Senghor’s main objective behind this portrayal of the black woman is to fix her in eternity as the essence of all aspects of the human life.

Naked woman, black woman,

I sing your beauty that passes the form that I fix in the

Eternal

Before jealous Fate turn you to ashes to feed the roots of life.

SD 106

To sum up, one can say that Africa in Senghor’s poetry is “often portrayed as a woman longingly remembered in European Exile,”(Gurnah VI) as all its attributes are presented through woman’s spiritual and physical beauty.

Within the same peaceful atmosphere of “Night In the Sine”, “ Black Mask” introduces the black mask not as a static object but as a sleeping woman, and she is not any woman but Coumb Tam, the goddess of beauty in Senghor’s Serer culture.

She sleeps resting on the innocence of the sand.

Coumba Tam sleeps. A green palm veils the fever of her

hair, bronzes the rounded brow

The eyelids are closed, twin goblets and sealed springs.

That delicate crescent, that blacker lip barely full- where

Is the smile of the accomplice?

The cheeks like patens, the line of the chin sing in

mute harmony

mask face closed to the ephemeral, eyes without substance

Perfect bronze head and its patina of time

Defiled by neither powder nor paint nor lines, no trace of

tears nor kisses.

SD 191

It is here that the adoration rather than the sensuality of “Black woman”, that marks Senghor’s emotional attitude in describing this woman / goddess’s superb beauty. After portraying the symmetrical lines and curves of the woman/ goddess’s face in the first half of the poem, she is “crystallized to form the bronze head of the mask,” which “ is not without its ‘patina of time’ but it is not subject to human caresses and emotion.” ( Peters 27) In spite of that, the poet begs her never to become alive and subject him to his human sensual feelings.

Oh face as God created you before even the memory of time

Face of the dawn of the world, do not reveal yourself like a

tender passage to rouse my flesh.

I adore you, oh Beauty, with my one- stringed eye!

SD 191

Hence, “Black Mask’s ” imagery is marked with divinity, peacefulness and stability to endow the woman/goddess with the bless of eternity.

Taking into consideration that masks and statues represent gods or eternal ancestors to endow their wearers with infinite power and divine presence in African tradition,

The paradoxes of “Masque negre” stem from the Symbiosis of three entities- woman, ancestral mask and deity- so that the figure is both human and divine, dead and alive, form and essence, bronze mask and human flesh. Woman as symbol of Life-giving forces and the mask / statue as symbol of the ancestors are here combined with a third principle, the goddess, constituting Three entities closely associated.

Peters 28

The divinity of human nature is also one of Blake’s main themes. In “The Divine Image” of Songs of Innocence, he “expresses one of his deeply felt themes, the identification of man with God.” ( Keynes 136) It illustrates how the divine features light up the natural and the human worlds alike.

For Mery Pity Peace and Love

Is God our father dear.

And Mercy Pity Peace and Love

Is Man his child and care.

For Mery has a human heart,

Pity, a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

…………………………

…………………………………

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, turk or jew

Where Mery, love & Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too.

SIE 35

But in the corresponding poem of Songs of Experience, this divinity is shuttered as:

Cruelty has a Human Heart

And jealousy a Human Face,

Terror, the Human Form Divine,

And Secrecy, the Human Dress.

SIE 45

When cruelty replaces mercy, jealousy replaces pity, and terror replaces peace in human hearts, divinity can no longer dwell there. Consequently, man is stripped of his divine essence, and his downfall form the Edenic innocence is fatal.

Similarly, in “ The Human Abstract” of Songs of Experience Blake elaborates on the same topic of human divinity. He declares that if there is pity in human world, it is because we allow somebody to be poor; if there is mercy, it is because we inflict wretchedness on an innocent soul; and if there is peace, it is only because we are afraid of one another. Thus, the resulted cruelty, deceit and selfishness put an end to the sacred divinity and sympathy that unite old and young, poor and rich in Songs of Innocence.

Pity would be no more,

If we did not make somebody poor;

And Mercy no more could be,

If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace,

Till the selfish loves in crease;

Then Cruelty knits a snare,

And spreads his baits with care.

SIE 43

“ Prayer To Masks” is more than a prayer to Senghor’s gods and ancestors, as it embraces his beliefs both as a man and a poet. Different form his other mask-poems, it involves not only one mask but several ones called form all earth’s directions to guard over his race.

Masks!,Masks!

Black mask red mask, you white-and-black masks

Masks of the four points from which Spirit blows

In silence I salute you!

SD 107

To reach a moment of eternity for his plea, Senghor chooses first, the traditional colours of Africa: black, red and white; second, a silent reverned greeting; third, a sacred place isolated from all evils of the human world.

You guard this place forbidden to all laughter women,

to all smiles that fade.

You distil this air of eternity in which I breathe the air of

my fathers

Masks of unmasked faces, stripped of the masks of illness

and the lines of age

You who have fashioned this portrait, this my face bent over

the altar of white paper

In your own image, hear me.

SD 107

In general masks cover faces behind and make them unknown, but Senghor’s mask is different as it never “[disguises] the identity beyond it, the sacred African mask reveals in its form and texture the character of deity it represents.” ( Petrs 29) Hence they are “ masks of unmasked faces “ belonging to those eternal ancestors, who establish the African heritage.

The rest of the poem validates Senghor’s concern for his homeland Africa as well as for his adopted exile, Europe:

The Africa of the empires is dying, see, the agony of a pitiful

princess

And Europe too where we are joined by the navel.

Fix your unchanging eyes upon your children, who are given

orders.

Who give away their lives like the poor their last clothes

Let us report present at the rebirth of the world

Like the yeast which white flour needs.

SD 107

Though Africa, ‘the princess,’ is dying due to the white man’s colonization, yet salvation of Europe will be in its hands. At that period, World War II was threatening Europe, which had been torn apart by internal strife and conflict. Consequently, black men in exile are called upon to participate in this war in order to restore peace back to the whole world. Actually, Senghor is referring, here, to his experience as a soldier in the French army during that war. Hence, ‘like the yeast which white flour needs’ the black man’s sacrifice and physical death are needed for the rebirth of a new peaceful world. “ This suggests that the black man will be charged with the task of infusing a spiritual essence into a world that is for all practical purposes white-and sterile.” (Peters 30)

To elaborate on the black man’s role in the present white world, Senghor passes three rhetorical questions, for which answers affirm the nobility of such a role:

For who would teach rhythm to a dead world of machine

and guns?

Who would give the cry of joy to wake the dead and the

bereaved at dawn?

Say, who would give back the memory of life to the man

whose hopes are smashed?

SD 107-108

Certainly it is the black man, who would successfully accomplish all this, according to Senghor. Natural rhythm, cry of joy and hope are invaluable presents of the black man to the white man’s world of machine. Here, our attention is drawn back to Blake, who has passed similar rhetorical questions. In “Earth Answer” of Songs of Experience, Blake personifies the earth as a woman trying her best to free herself from her “dread dreary” life, but her effort is in vain. He exploits such a personification to reflect how darkness prevades everything in life due to people’s vanity, selfishness and cruelty:

Earth rais’d up her head,

Form the darkness dread & drear.

Her light fled:

Stony dread!

And her locks cover’d with gray despair.

SIE 37

Consequently he exclaims:

“ Does spring hide its joy

When buds and blossoms grow?

Does the Sower

Sow by night,

Or the plowman in darkness plow?

SIE 38

The answer to such rhetorical questions is certainly no, unless men get rid of their evil, only then they can enjoy spring instead of winter,fruitfulness instead of barrenness and light instead of darkness.

“ The Sick Rose”, in the same poetic collection, elaborates also on the same idea by projecting it even in the world of nature, where the dark secret love of an invisible worm destroys a rose. The whole atmosphere of the poem is that of envy, evil and destruction to the extent that even a small beautiful thing, like a rose, is not saved from its cruelty. In fact, it suggests that most beautiful things in human life are frequently destroyed by evil forces.

O Rose, thou art sick.

The invisible worm

That flies in the night

In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy

SIE 93

The words ‘ invisible, night, dark, secret’ refer to the mysterious and hidden decay that is inflicted upon the rose to suggest “the destruction of love …………… by experience of spiritual death.” (Wilkinson 56)

“prayer to Masks” proceeds to clarify what prepares the black man to play such a noble role in the contemporary world. It is his strong and everlasting relationship with the natural and spiritual worlds. “ The assertion of the black man ’s contribution is made with full awareness of his current existential position”. But “he has many stereotypes, all of them revealing a bias above all against his colour, which forces on him a myth of inferiority.” ( Peters 30) Such stereotypes are stated by Senghor:

They call us men of coffee cotton oil

They call us men of death.

But, in fact, and according to Senghor:

We are the men of the dance, whose feet draw new strength

Pounding the hardened earth.

SD 108

To save the human world from destruction, and achieve a moment of resurrection, the black man, through dancing, will teach people the rhythm of life; “ an honour he has by virtue of his retention of the vital link with the cosmic forces ruling the universe as he dances the dance of the world………..celebrating the renewing cycle of life and death.”(Peters31)

In “Totem”, detachment and irony replace the seriousness, that marks the rest of the mask poems. More importantly, the very presence of mask and its sacred attributes are hidden to put an end to the idea of barbarism associated with black men in the minds of the white civilized people.

I must hide in the intimate depths of my veins

The ancestors storm-dark skinned, shot with lightning and

thunder

and my guardian animal, I must hide him

Lest I smash through the boom of scandal.

SD 108

Ironically , to avoid being scandalized in Europe, Senghor has to burry his totem, i.e. his ancestors in his veins. Yet it is impossible to extinguish their eternal existence, which is emphasized previously in an earlier poem of this collection, “ In Memoriam”, where he declares that they “ have always refused to die.” For more justification, Senghor’s ancestors, symbolized by the totem and run through his blood, do not only protect him from “ lucky races”, but from himself in exile as well.

He is my faithful blood and demands fidelity

Protecting my naked pride against

Myself and all the insolence of lucky races.

SD 108

By speculating his ancestors’ responsibility of transmitting and protecting the life-force of their descendents, Sanghor finds that “fidelity to the forces responsible for one’s very being is a moral obligation, fulfillment of which insures reciprocity and continued protection.” Hence the totem ancestors are hidden and burried, but not in any expected place; it is in his blood, the essence of life in any human. Within the concept of Negritude, blood, as a symbol of life-force and nobility, joins all the black race “through the common lineage of Mother Africa and through the common heritage of suffering.” (Ba 49) It flows freely in the human body as water flows through earth, both as fluid and vital forces leading to purification and regeneration. It is apparent here that though Senghor’s blood images are mostly conventional, yet when it is related to race “ the note of conviction, of pride and commitment” becomes their real meaning. But it is not a racial pride, “because of the vital realities bound by ………..blood ties.” ( Ba 47). Hence, the “Totem” is elaborating on this, as Senghor visualizes his totem in a hidden positive term contrary to his oppressors.

Though “Snow on Paris” elaborates on the positive characteristics of the black man, yet its setting is not African but European. Its whole atmosphere is completely different from that of “Joal” and “Night In The Sine”, where quietness, peacefulness and human warmth prevail. In spite of the fact that it is a Christmas Day, yet suffering, violence and conflict characterize the white-man world.

Lord, you have visited Paris on this day of your birth

Because it was becoming mean and evil

You have purified it with your incorruptible cold

With white death.

SD 194

While Senghor concentrates on Paris and on the white race, which is different from his own, Blake, in “London” of Songs of Experience, focuses on his homeland: London and his own people. But both have the same negative reaction towards the bad conditions of their worlds.

I wonder thro’ each charter’d street,

Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet

Masks of weakness, marks of woe.

SIE 42

The central and recurring symbol through “Snow on Paris” is the colour white: ‘white death,’ ‘white hands’ and ‘white snow’. “Both [its] intrinsic and extrinsic qualities are brought into play as the poet uses the snow on Christmas Day in Paris to embody the themes of transgression and forgiveness, of impurity and purification.” (Peters 32) The extrinsic quality of snow is whiteness, and the intrinsic quality is “shedding its burning quality and its colour” (Peters 33) through melting. Ironically, the whiteness of the snow is associated to Europe:“ white hands,” but stating its crimes against Africa in the following stanza proves the contrary. Hence such hands grow into “chalk-white hands” and “powdered painted hands” (SD 194) to check out the purity of its whiteness. Such metaphors are “mere camouflage for the evil that they shroud.” ( Peters 33) The intrinsic characteristic of melting while shedding heat and colour is exploited by Senghor to describe the effect of the sun in melting the snow of his heart, i.e. the hatred of the Europeans deep down there:

And now my heart melts like snow in the sun

I forget.

SD 194

Following Christ example, salvation cannot be achieved without suffering and death, and this is applicable to Senghor and his hope of peace. Therefore, he focuses on Europe’s crimes against Africa to extent of “equat[ing] the plight of suffering Africans with that of Christ.” (Peters 33) Consequently, and in contrast to the poem’s central symbol of whiteness, God has “brown hands”.

The white hands that felled the palm forests that once

waved over Africa, in the heart of Africa

Straight and strong, the Saras beautiful as the first men who

came from your brown hands.

SD 194

Still, his determination and his declaration to forget and forgive throughout the poem do not diminish the bitterness he feels towards his oppressors. But in the final stanza, one again finds the image of the sun melting the snow of his heart to emphasize “Christ’s massage of peace and goodwill to all men,” (Peters 33) which is actually Senghor’s message too, i.e. his “magnanimity of acceptance [and] forbearance of hatred .” (Peters 34) Hence, he announces that to the whole wolrd:

My heart, Lord has melted like snow on the Paris rooftops

In the sun of your sweetness.

It is gentle toward my enemies, toward my white handed

brothers without snow.

SD 195

About more than a century before Senghor, Blake emphasizes also the bad effect of hatred and antagonism on the human world. In “A poison Tree” of Songs of Experience, he states that while anger with a friend fades away soon, anger with a foe grows into a poisonous wrath, if human beings cannot open the door of forbearance and forgiveness.

And I watered it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears;

And I sunn`ed it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles,

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

SIE 44

Blake waters the tree of his wrath against a foe with fear, and ‘sunned it with smiles’ and ‘deceitful wiles’. Its fruit is a bright tempting apple for the foe, whose envy and jealousy draw him to sneak in at night and steal it. But death has been his fatal reward on eating such a poisonous apple, the fruit of the tree of anger and hatred.

In spite of Senghor’s declaration that his poetry is a “poetry of Childhood Kingdom,” ( Peters 34) yet Jonathan Peters divides his poetry into three groups of themes : isolation in exile, ancestors and masks, and Negritude, which sometimes overlap each other in his poetic volumes. As a result, Senghor’s constant nostalgia in Songs of Darkness, which embraces the first theme as its main subject, has been for his homeland Africa, for childhood innocence and for the past of his great ancestors. Senghor as a “colonized man ………. Ought to use the past with the intention of opening the future as an invitation to action and a basis for hope.” (Fonon 187) All this makes the journey motif “ complements the theme of exile…… and unifies the sub- themes in each category.” ( Peters 34) But in most of the mask poems, one sees a concentration on the second theme : ancestors, and how they “signify dreams, unyielding qualities of blood, guardians as well as haunting spirits.” Consequently , as mentioned before, their representative masks stand for “sources of power and life,” and reflect the African cultural heritage. All this arouses a kind of pride not only in Senghor but among the poets of Negritude as well, and channels their creativity towards the above mentioned journey motif to exhibit the greatness of their race. Thus one can say that their “spiritual pilgrimages to the shrines of the past” are accomplished “in wonder, love and praise”.

Other poems of Songs of Darkness, deal simultaneously with the third theme: Negritude. “Snow on Paris”, for example, glorifies the blake race by stating that the Africans are descendants of Christ, as they have gone through the same suffering at the hands of the white people. In “Prayer to Masks” ,Senghor “seeks to vindicate the black aesthetic by imploring the masks he invokes to make African’s children the leaven of the world.” (Peter 35) According to him, the new world cannot be born without abolishing the white man’s stereotypes of the black people as “coffee men cotton men oily men” and acknowledging them as “ men of the dance.” ( SD 108)

By inclouding such thorough ideas , one notices a kind of logical thematic development in Songs of Darkness .It starts with exile and alienation through discovery of self and origin, and finally towards pride and self assertion. Such development forms the essential parts of Negritude as a theme, and the availability of the journey motif is unquestionable. In “ Let koras and Balafongs Accompany me” and “ The Return of the Prodigal Son”, as Senghor’s heroic epics in Songs of Darkness, it is proved that such journey is both physical and spiritual.

In “Let koras and Balafongs Accompany me”, one finds “ four major movements, each covering two of the poems nine sections.” ( Peters 36) The first one includes his childhood memories in Africa. In such idyllic atmosphere, nothing is definite: “what were the months ? what was the year? I remember its fleeting softness at twilight.”(SD 109) The second one presents the divided psyche of the poet between two worlds: Africa and Europe, i.e . Soukeina and Isabella. But finally natural world of Africa has the upper hand, and Senghor chooses it as his favourite world and final destination.

I have chosen my toiling black people, my peasant people,

All the peasant race through all the world.

SD 111

Consequently, the third movement of the poem is devoted completely to the past, and being started by the same questions ‘ What were the months?’ and ‘what was the year?’ After praising the beauty of sira Badral, the legendary source of his own people, the Serer people, he begs her to clean him from all the dirt of the white civilization.

Wash me clean from all contagions of civilized man.

May your light which is not subtle wash clean my countenance,

your dry violence bathe me in tempests of sand.

SD 114

Through claiming his ancestors as scholars equal to the Egyptian hyperboreans and himself as a royalty equal to pharaohs, Senghor stresses the nobility of his peasant race.

this fluctuation between royalty and peasantry demonstrates Senghor’s self – conscious wrestling with the image of the black man’s inferiority fastened on him by Europeans and with the image of descent from a royal stock which he tries to project as best, and so often, as he can.

peters 36

In the fourth movement, one finds Senghor, similar to his earlier poems, refer to the past crimes of Europe in Africa. Yet it is only in this epic and the other one of Songs of Darkness that he presents the suffering of Europe during World War II. But within this context he counts the noble qualities of his race, and announces his “final redescent into the Childhood Kingdom.” The poem ends with Senghor enjoy wearing the mask of a child and grasping his uncle: TokÔ Waly’s hand to lead him towards comprehensive understanding of his land and race. Hence it is not strange to find that in the last lines of the poem Senghor addressing Mother Africa through its mystical night, “as an ancestral mask that keeps watch over” (Peters 37) the child, by saying:

Tame the child who is still a child, that twelve wandering

Years have not made old.

SD 116

Finally, one can say that in the fourth movement “ the image of the child predominates and makes [the poem] more an ode to departed childhood splendours relived in the imagination than a heroic legend of the African race.” (Peters 37) This fact makes it resemble Blake’s Songs of Innocence& experience to the extent of using the same symbols. To elaborate on this, in the last stanza Senghor addresses his students as lambs by saying:

You, my lambs, my delight with eyes that shall not look

upon my age

I was not always a shepherd of fair heads on the arid plains

Of your books

…………………………………………….

My lambs, my childhood is as old as the world and I am as

young as the everlasting youth of the world’s dawn.

SD 111

He chooses the lambs as a symbol of innocence and purity to declare that his childhood is eternal yet vital, i.e. as old as the world itself and as fresh as the shiny dawn. In addressing the lamb as a symbol of innocence, Blake has also a same declaration that he is still a child, and both he and the lamb are innocent creatures of God:

Little lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

…………………………

…………………………

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing wooly bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice!

Little lamb I’II tell thee,

Little lamb I’II tell thee!

…………………………….

…………………………….

He is meek&he is mild,

He became al little child;

I a child & thou a lamb,

We are called by his name.

Little lamb God bless thee.

Little lamb God bless thee.

SIE 32

Similar to “Let Kôras and Balafongs Accompany me,” “The Return of the Prodigal son” celebrates Senghor’s return to his homeland but after sixteen years of exile. This time, his reception there has not been a happy one due to his father’s death, the deserted family house and the absence of family members except of a herdsman, who leads him to his father’s grave:

Let me follow the golden note from the flute of silence, let

me ago follow the herdsman, my fellow-dreamer of long

Naked under his milk-white girdle, with a flamboyant flower

On his forehead.

…………………………………………

………………………………………….

……………………………………………

And my heart once more at the grave where reverently he

has laid his long genealogy to rest.

SD 117

Instead, Senghor feels the welcome of his great ancastors; hence ancestral majestic kings and brave warriors of Sine are subject of his worship:

I prostrate myself at your feet, in the dust of my respect

At your feet, Ancestors still present, who rule in pride the

great hall of your masks defying time.

SD 118

By invoking the elephant of the sacred grove at Mbissel, Senghor, as an African,

“ strongly confesses to his faith in and oneness with nature.”(Egudu 40-41) Through such an elephant, he addresses a prayer to his great ancestors as the source of all the Serer culture and tradition.

Elephant of Mbissel, through your ears hidden from our sight,

May my ancestors hear my reverent prayer.

Bless you, my father, bless you!

SD 119

There, Senghor’s compliant about ‘his white brothers’ neglect makes him happy on seeing the closing shops and businesses around his family house, as they signify for him a kind of representation of the materialistic civilization of Europe. Instead, “ the son of the soil wishes to revive the pastoral activities of the past.” (Peters 37) Similar to Blake, he wants to “ revive [his] earthly peasant virtues!” (SD 216) To elaborate more in “Introduction” of Songs of Innocence, one sees Blake having the same inclination. On piping down the valleys, he responds to the request of a child on a cloud to sing a song about a lamb. The aroused happiness and ecstasy resulted from such rural atmosphere prompt the child to ask for more:

“Piper sit thee down and write

In a book that all may read”-

…………………………….

…………………………….

And I made a rural pen,

And I stain’d the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear.

SIE 31

Back to “ The Return of the Prodigal Son,” the elephant of Mbissel, in the eighth stanza, is once again invoked by Senghor to grant him the knowledge, the wisdom, the will and the courage of his old ancestors for three reasons:

Let me die in my people’s quarrel, if need be in the smell of

powder and guns

Keep, root in my freed heart in the first love of the same people.

Make me your master of language; or rather, let me be

named the ambassador of my people.

SD 120

But in search for the same wisdom and thoughtfullness, Blake in “ The fly”, one of his Songs of Experience, visualizes himself equal to a helpless fly, which he ‘has brush’d away by his ‘thoughtless hand’. But John E.Grant contradicts that by stating that “ the reader should not assume that the speaker is ‘Blake’ in any of several personae. On the contrary, the speaker should be identified as a man in Experience, whose voice must be sharply distinguished from that of ‘the Bard’, the prophetic observer of the fallen world.” (Northrop Frye 35) Any way, in addressing the fly, Blake explains how both of them are creatures of God with similar fatal circumstances.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

For I dance

And drink & sing

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing.

SIE 40

Even this does not hinder him from going on in his search for wisdom, as it is the only means for the welfare of all humanity at large:

If thought is life

And strength & breath,

And the want

Of thought is death;

Then am I

A happy fly,

If I live,

Or if I die.

SIE 40

To accomplish his mission, he expresses the same wish of Senghor, which is to die for the sake of others’ salvation. All this proves that Blake has been “ a man of his time who respond [s] characteristically and sometimes violently to the main political and social events of his age.” (Daiches 874)

At the end of such recollections of “ the Return of the Prodigal Son,” Senghor comes back to the present, and states his intended departure from Africa to Europe on the following day to fulfil his dream of being the ambassador of his own people. But even before leaving, he feels “ longing for [his] black land.” (SD 217). Thus, through the “images related to animism, his ancestors and his rustic juvenile environment, the poet makes the reader perceptive to the great importance in his life his return to Africa.” (Niekerk 63)

Considering the “poem’s total meaning [as] ……….. a total image, a single visualizable picture,” ( Frye 125) both Blake and Senghor depend primarily on imagination in devising these poetic collections. Blake proclaims the supremacy of imagination as the very source of spiritual energy and the most vital activity of the mind. His aim is to cultivate man’s imagination to such an extent that it will be capable of perceiving ultimate truth without the help of reason. Through his direct and visionary imagination, Blake fulfils what he has felt the aim of poetry. In this respect, visible things help Blake to reach that transcendental state, which he calls ‘ eternity’, and feel free to create a new world.

While Songs of Innocence set out an imaginative vision of the state of innocence, Songs of Experience prove how life challenges, corrupts and destroys it. By considering imagination as more real than the materialistic world , Blake identifies his ideas with symbols, which could be translated into visual images . Symbols in these songs convey a special kind of existence; the lamb and the tiger are symbols for two different states of human soul. When the lamb is destroyed by experience, the tiger is needed.

Tyger ! tyger ! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immoral hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

…………………………………..

…………………………………..

What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was the brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

SIE 89

No commentator or critic agrees with any other on the exact meaning of this symbol. It may stand for the fierce forces in the soul, which are needed to break the bonds of experience. In other words, it is a fearful animal of the night, in which sin, crime and evil dwell, yet it is desirable and likeable. To sum up, both the lamb and the child of Songs of innocence are symbols of divinity and all the natural qualities of the pastoral life, but the tiger of Songs of Experience is, simultaneously, a symbol of beauty and terror, and all prove that Blake’s art knows no abstraction due to his anthropomorphic vision and his sensitive reaction to nature.

While Blake’s symbols in Songs of Innocence & Experience are either drawn from the Bible or out of his own invention, Senghor’s images are either drawn from the African tradition or out of his own invention, but all serve their central themes. The freshness and the vitality of Senghor’s imagery are resulted from his “sensory memory,” which has been “quite Proustian in its ability to render present some scenes from the past.”( Anyidoho 81) The images of life-forces, in particular, explain “ satisfactorily and logically such aspects of African culture as animism, totemism, the cult of the ancestors, the role of women, and puberty rites”.(Ba 46) Even his concrete images of fertility, maternity and physical love should be studied within the “black African cosmogony,” ( Ba 57)in which there is no separation between the spiritual and physical life, as the first leads naturally to the other.

Viewed as a source of life-Forces, woman is central to Senghor’s poetry. According to him, her image stands for the black African’s physical contribution to the spiritual world, and as an expression of his nostalgia for unity and harmony, i.e. for Africa at large. This validates that Africa is Senghor’s woman through all his poetic career, as all its attributes and merits are presented through woman’s spiritual and physical beauty. Hence the African woman’s emotional and spiritual potentialities feed his “concrete imagery [in] expressing [her] form and function.” (Ba 5)

Animal imagery is used both by Blake and Senghor to solidify their philosophical vision to their reading public. In Songs of Innocence, if animals of prey as wolves and tigers appear in this peaceful atmosphere, it is just to make an angel descend from heaven to guard the sheep, and if one of them is attacked, his spirit goes to God. But in Songs of Experience, such animals of prey are there to show the drastic changes between the world of innocence and that of experience, and to reflect its repression, cruelty and evil. By contrast and as mentioned before, Senghor’s lions and elephants are used as symbols of force and courage according to his African heritage.

Beside their major images and symbols, Blake and Senghor depend on other minor ones. Blake’s fly, sick rose and sunflower are good examples. In Senghor’s poetic collection, liquids such as water, blood or human semens are exploited as images “denoting vitality, fertility, dynamic movement.” (Ba 47) When it comes to shade and colour, one finds that Blake ornaments his poetic composition with all colours in nature in a kind of an impressionistic imagery. But in Senghor’s case, one finds that his “visual impressions are [not only] conditioned …… by the coloration of nature” but also by “the traditional colors of black Africa: red, black and white.” (Anyidoho 83) Black and white, in particular, are dealt with differently by Blake and Senghor. In Blake’s poetic collection, black and white have their regular connotation, as the white colour stands for purity, peacefulness and innocence, and the black colour stands for dimness, repression and evil. But in Senghor’s Songs of Darkness, the case is vice versa in dealing with such colours. To prove the superiority of his own race, Senghor represents the black colour as a symbol of purity and dignity in contrast to the white colour, that stands for the western civilization: its sterility, corruption and warfare.

In spite of Blake’s declaration that he was inspired, yet the drafts of his poetry proved the great care he took in expressing his vision in words. “The careful, observing eye which made Blake a cunning craftsman in line and colour was at work in his poetry …………….. his words are exact and vivid, and make his symbols shine brightly before the eyes.” (Bowra 12) Hence serious themes , which need comment and explanation, are expressed simply, vigorously and effectively by Blake in these songs. While Blake uses the traditional meters of English lyrics in Songs of Innocence & Experience, Senghor, mastering the French language, chooses free verse in composing Songs of Darkness. His sensitivity to rhythm paves the way for his originality in “adapt [ing] the harmonies of the French language to the rhythm of his own temperament and inspiration.” (Anyidoho 129) Though rhyme does not exist in such poetic composition, Senghor “achieve[s] musicality…. by his use of undulating lines,” (Niekerk 103) and through the use of alliteration and assonance. He exploits such devices to create “sound textures as well as images.” (Anyidoho 134).

In spite of being a winner of many international awards, Senghor has been the target of different adverse critical campaigns. While Songs of Darkness attract readers of different nationalities by its lyricism and exotic setting, it has been “ revolting to poets and critics who view this return to the child’s world as an escape from the present world and its very real challenges.”(Peters 38) They go further in considering “ the idyllic world of his poetry …… a deformed image of the present instead of an inspirational view of the past,” as they “cannot understand the value of a vision of the past in the elaboration of the future” (Anyidoho 173) Mistakenly, they think that Senghor cannot channel his artistic skill towards writing about contemporary issues, and even when he has tried that in his two heroic epics of Songs of Darkness, soon he flights back again to his idyllic atmosphere. But to be fair, one has to say that it is not only in his two epics, but also in many of his lyrics related to this collection, like “Prayer to Masks” and “Snow on Paris”, that he deals with up-to-date and serious issues through speculating all the blessings of his past childhood and the human values and traditions of his black African culture, that lead “logically to widespread protests against the continuation of French colonial rule and the policy of assimilation.”(Bute 152)

As an effective propagandist of Africa and its people, Senghor has been the centre of negative criticism, because the actual circumstances of the second half of the twentieth century prove that his overestimation of the black men at the expense of the whites is not true or logical due to the terrible conditions of Africa at the hands of its people after the independence of most of its countries. This leads critics to pass a judgement that his love poems are far much better than his propagandist ones due to the fact that the latter ones might be applicable only to Senghor’s personal experience in Africa and Europe but not to all Africans as a whole.

While this plan may have been politically sound, in its place and time, its major distortion of the true African reality strips Senghor’s poetry of the essential quality that makes great and abiding literature.

Peters 230

But Senghor is actually a creator of a great literature. His many volumes of poetry and prose have been and are still being translated into different languages to be sold all over the world, because he has “ the same attachment to human existence, with the same special vigour of communicative art, that we expect of any true literature.”(Irele 112) The sincerity of his emotion and the honesty of his human message compensate for that error, and make his reading-public receptive to his many declarations against racism after World War II. In one of his interviews, Senghor says: “Africans will be touched because they will recognize themselves in what I write. But other men will also be touched because they will have the impression that it is a new way of saying things human.”(Egejuru 15)

Finally, Senghor is criticized for his concentration on culture at the expense of “other facets of life” like politics, economics, religion and sociology. According to critics, this is “ a rather narrow approach …………. since these areas often determine the content, shape and pace of culture.” (Peters 230) But to view Senghor’s life, one finds that he practically occupies it by working as a politician and sociologist, and he transfers this personal experience to both his poetry and prose . A thorough reading of his literary production guides one to know that culture for Senghor is the essence of all the other facets of life. He differentiates between culture and civilization by seeing culture as the spiritual force of any civilization , and hence “the common denominator of [its] particular values.” (Ba 45) However, Senghor’s goal of universal civilization , beside being a far- fetched dream, has some negative after-effects, if its subtle implications are not taken into consideration. Senghor aims at “a civilization without racism, not without races as cultural realities.” According to him, “ the ideal civilization of the twenty- first century …………….. would welcome the positive values and virtues of each civilization in a symbiosis of giving and receiving”. Human beings, instinctively, like to have continual changes and differences, as this what gives life its taste and meaning. If people have one civilization all over the world, the result would be boredom and dullness. But it is the human essence of all civilizations, that we should look forward to establish in our life. In other words, it is enjoyable and enriching to have different civilizations with different traditions, rituals, celebrations and arts, yet human concepts and values should govern them as a whole. Hence, love, honesty, justice, freedom and democracy become their basis. Senghor affirms that by declaring that: “ True culture is being firmly rooted and being uprooted. Firmly rooted in ………………….. one’s spiritual heritage …………………… [and] uprooted …………… to the enriching contributions of foreign civilization”.(quoted in Anyidoho 179) Eventually , one can say that Senghor’s goal should not be expressed as “universal civilization” but as “cultural synthesis and racial harmony,” as he declared later.

To conclude, Blake and Senghors’ journey motif from innocence to experience to a new innocence expresses the dream of all humanity of reaching a stage of universal brotherhood and racial harmony. They prove through their literature the universality of the human condition, and that the aspirations and agonies of humanity are still similar whether expressed by a white European through the romanticism of the nineteenth century or a black African through the Negritude of the twentieth century.According to the present condition of the world, Blake and Senghors’ journey is incomplete, as its final destination should be “New experience” and not “ New Innocence.” The dream of new innocence marked by healing and reunion has gone for good. Instead, one has war, nuclear weapons, strife, famine, poverty and disease at the threshold of the twenty- first century.

Notes

1) Senghor’s Songs of Darkness will henceforth referred to whenever quoted as SD followed by page number.

2) Blake’s Songs of Innocence & Experience will henceforth referred to whenever quoted as SIE followed by page number.

Works cited

• Anyidoho, Kofi, et . al. ed .Interdisciplinary Dimension of African Literature Washington, D.C: three Continents Press,1985.

• Arnold, Stephen,ed. African Literature Studies: The Present State. Washington, D.C: Three continents Press,1995.

• Ba, Sylvia Washinghton.The Concept of Negritude in the Poetry of Leopld Sedar Senghor. New Jersy : Princeton University Press,1973.

• Bowra, Maurice. The Romantic Imagination. Oxford: Oxford university press, 1976.

• Bute, E.L. and H.J.P Harmer. The Black Handbook : The Peolple,History And Politics of Africa and African Diaspora. London : Casell,1997.

• Daiches,David. A Critical History of English Literature. London : secker & Warburg,1961.

• Egejuru, Phanuel Akubueze. Towards African Literary Independence: A Dialogue With Contemporary African Writers. London : Greenwood Press, 1980.

• Egudu,R.W. Modern African Poetry and the African Predicament. London: Macmillan, 1978.

• Fanon,Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. London :Penguin,1990.

• Ford, Boris,ed.The Pelican Guide to English Literature. London: Macmillan, 1975.

• Fraser, Robert. West African Poetry: A Critical History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

• Frye, Northrop. Blake. Twentieth Century Views. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966.

• Gates, Henry Louis,Jr.Black Literature& Literary Theory. London: Routledge, 1990.

• Gurnah, Abdulrazak.Essays on African Writing: A re-evaluation. Oxford: Heinemann, 1993.

• keynes, Geoffery William. Blake Songs of innocence and Experience. Oxford: Oxford university press, 1977.

• Irele, Abiola. The African Experience in literature and ideology. Indianapolis : Indiana University Press,1990.

• Niekerk,Barend V.D. The African Image: Negritude in the Work of Leopold Senghor. Cape Town: A.A Balkema, 1970.

• Omotosos, Kole. Achebe Or Soyinka? A Study in Contrasts . London: Hans zell,1996.

• Peters,Jonthan A. A Dance of Masks: Senghor, Achebe,Soyinka. Washington D.C: Three continents Press,1978.

• Selincout, E,ed .William Blake’s Poems. London : Thomas Nelson , n.d.

• Senghor, Leopold Sedar. Prose And Poetry. Trans.John Reed&Clive Wake. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1965.

• Spleth, Janice,ed .Critical Perspective on Leopold Sedar Senghor.Colorado Springs: Three Continents Press,1993

• Wilkinson, A.m.,ed. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

• ……………………“Leopold Sedar Senghor”.Books and writers. Online (http:/kirjasto. sci.fi/senghor.htm) Feb.2003.

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