Published on : 15/09/2022 – 12:34
Verson (France) (AFP) – The Norman house of Léopold Sédar Senghor, which opens to the public for the first time on Saturday for the European Heritage Days, inspires researchers who hope to find “nuggets” there, such as drafts of the Senegalese poet-president.
“At the BNF there is a Senghor collection of 629 sheets but it is not at all complete. Senghor gave access to versions 2, 3, 4 but not to the first version of the texts, where he hesitated more, groped and experienced”, explains to AFP Claire Riffard, of the CNRS.
The inventory of the contents of the house of Verson, which has just inherited this village of 3,600 souls 5 km from Caen, remains to be done. But the town hall has already come across a treasure, according to the researcher who visited the premises recently: in a cupboard, a large notebook with small squares, entitled “Song for Naëtt, poems”, noted AFP on the spot.
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This handwritten document “is priceless”, enthuses Jean-René Bourrel, who is preparing a Senghor dictionary to be published by Classiques Garnier. Senghor will rewrite this collection, initially intended for his first wife, which will become “Nocturnes” (1961).
“Here is a nugget. We can expect to find others”, adds Souleymane Bachir Diagne, professor at Columbia University in the United States, who has met Senghor on many occasions. Because “Senghor was developing his poetic work when he was taking his vacation in Normandy”, specifies the Senegalese philosopher.
The future academician stayed there in the summer from 1957, the year of his marriage to Colette Hubert, in Gonneville-en-Auge, then in Verson, his second wife having had properties in these two towns.
The researchers are also eager to have access to the library of the man who was the first president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980 before settling permanently in Verson, where he died in 2001.
In the office of the defender of “universal civilization”, Lenin rubs shoulders with de Gaulle, or JFK in VO, Swedish poems, a German translation of great French poets.
The academics are especially impatiently awaiting the inventory of the 25 m3 of archives evacuated in 2015 because some of them were attacked by rodents, and stored safely today in a shed in Bretteville-sur-Odon, a town adjoining Verson.
Prefaces, speeches, “everything that Senghor writes is interesting”, underlines Mr. Bourrel.
Precious dedications
In the meantime, in the house of several hundred m2 built in 1837 in a wooded park, valued at around 900,000 euros, the public will discover the modest interior, for a man of such stature. The academician allowed himself only a few gildings in his bathroom.
The wisteria no longer brighten the facade with its slightly faded shutters.
But the soul of the poet remains there. There is a bust and portraits of the academician in most rooms of this house, where Colette Senghor lived alone for 18 years before dying there in 2019.
Above all, in the library of the great man, on the old carved wooden chest transformed into a desk, still sleep in several works of precious dedications:
“To my Colette, who is my poetry” or “to Colette, my wife, to my princess of Beborg, beautiful even in her fury +green and gold+, with the expression of my tenderness, November 20, 1976”, Beborg being a Viking-sounding name invented by the poet to allude to the Norman origins of his wife, according to Mr. Bourrel.
From this office also emanates the strength of a legendary friendship: “To Léopold Sédar Senghor, co-author without knowing it of this work where he will find so many familiar echoes: those of our youth, our struggles and our common hopes , fraternally, Aimé Césaire”, can we read by opening a copy of the complete works of the Martinican poet.
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