Published on : 31/08/2022 – 18:02
Verson (France) (AFP) – The former Norman residence of the former president of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor will be open to the public for the first time, on the occasion of heritage days, the town hall of Verson (Calvados) said on Wednesday.
“It’s a world first. The succession took two and a half years but it ends well: since July 7 we have owned the park, the house, the furniture” and about 25 m3 of written archives, in accordance to the wishes of Colette Senghor, the second wife of the politician, told AFP Marie-Hélène Brioul, deputy mayor of the town of 3,500 inhabitants 8 km from Caen.
In her will, the former first lady of Senegal, whose family is of Norman origin, asks “that this house of the poet be a living place accessible to the public”, according to the town hall of Verson.
From 1957, the couple spent all their summers in Verson, before settling there permanently in the early 1980s, according to the town hall. The poet-academician died there in 2001 and his muse, Colette Senghor, in 2019.
For Heritage Days on September 17 and 18, guided tours of the white stone house with its many windows will be offered to the public, who will also have access to its large wooded park.
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The house, with shutters and gate now faded, will be cleaned, says Ms. Brioul. Work is planned but in a second time.
The Heritage Foundation carried out a health diagnosis of the house and the park and “the general state of health is good”, indicated the regional council in 2021.
In the house are “a few notebooks” of the poet, according to Ms. Brioul.
But most of the archives that Verson inherited cannot yet be presented to the public. Kept in a shed in Bretteville-sur-Odon, between Verson and Caen, the documents still have to be the subject of a precise inventory.
In particular, there are letters with other heads of state, according to Ms. Brioul, but it is possible that we will also discover documents “which concern” the academician, the poet “.
“We are much in demand by researchers” who are interested in the “context in which he wrote, the first drafts of an elegy to reach the final elegy. He wrote in small notebooks and then after that it took shape”, explains Ms. Brioul.
The writings which gave rise to publication are them at the BNF, according to the elected.
The town hall is still considering how it will make the house accessible to the public in the longer term.
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