DIOP, DAVID
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Diop, David (1927-1960) was born of a Senegalese father, Amadou Diop Yande, and a Cameroonian mother, Marie Bell, on July 9, 1927, in Bordeaux.
Long periods in hospital cast a gloom on his childhood, but did not prevent him from becoming a brilliant pupil. After a time at the Petit Lycée in Dakar, he continued his secondary education in Nice at the Lycée Marcelin Berthelot, where his cousin, Léopold Sédar Senghor, was then teaching.
He became the latter’s pupil and protégé. Senghor was then teaching. In spite of a serious lung disease and the attendant suffering, he obtained the baccalauréat. Shortly after this, he went to live in a sanatorium in Air-les-bains for two years. It was the post-war period, and with the launching of Présence Africaine in 1947 by his brother Alioune Diop, Black Poetry in French was given a new impetus.
In 1948, Léopold Sédar Senghor published an Anthology of new black and Malagasy poetry, and David Diop featured prominently in it with the following poems: (Celui qui a tout perdu) (The Dispossessed); ‘Le Temps du Martyr’ (“The Martyr’s Day”); “Un blanc m’a dit’ (A Whiteman told me) ‘Souffre pauvre Négre’ (‘Hold fast, Poor Negro’), and ‘Défit à la force’).
After his recovery and return to his family, he gallantly continued his studies and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree and a post-graduate Diploma. At the same time, he was contributing to Présence Africaine as a literary critic. In 1956, his ‘Coups de pilon’, containing some twenty poems, appeared. The best known of these poems are: ‘A ma mére’ (To my Mother), ‘ A une Danseuse noire’ (To a Black female Dancer), ‘Afrique’ (Africa) and ‘Kama kam’.
In 1957, he was a teacher at the Lycée Delafosse in Dakar, but resigned in 1958 at the request of newly independent Guinea. There, he held various teaching appointments and then became Principal of the Teacher Training College at Kindia. He was returning to Senegal with his wife Yvett Diop on August 30, 1960, when he met a sudden death in a plane crash.
His short but eventful life was marked by the desire to affirm the freedom and dignity of the Blackman, faith in Negritude, and the future of Africa. Most of his poems are dedicated to this ideal, and this is how he came to be called “The Maiakovsky of the African Revolution”.
MAHANTA FALL
