“Black Woman” by Leopold Sedar Senghor

Black Woman

- Leopold Senghor

Naked woman, black woman

Clothed with your colour which is life,
with your form which is beauty!

In your shadow I have grown up; the
gentleness of your hands was laid over my eyes.

And now, high up on the sun-baked
pass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon,
I come upon you, my Promised Land,
And your beauty strikes me to the heart
like the flash of an eagle.

Naked woman, dark woman

Firm-fleshed ripe fruit, sombre raptures
of black wine, mouth making lyrical my mouth
Savannah stretching to clear horizons,
savannah shuddering beneath the East Wind's
eager caresses

Carved tom-tom, taut tom-tom, muttering
under the Conqueror's fingers

Your solemn contralto voice is the
spiritual song of the Beloved.

Naked woman, dark woman

Oil that no breath ruffles, calm oil on the
athlete's flanks, on the flanks of the Princes of Mali
Gazelle limbed in Paradise, pearls are stars on the
night of your skin

Delights of the mind, the glinting of red
gold against your watered skin

Under the shadow of your hair, my care
is lightened by the neighbouring suns of your eyes.

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.

The poem “Black Woman” was written by Leopold Senghor and published in “Chants d’Ombre” in 1945. It was initially written in French as “Femme Noir” and then translated to English. Senghor was a Senegalese poet who was instrumental in starting the emotional, intellectual and political and literary movement called “negritude” along with other writers of African origin- like Aime Cesaire- in Paris. This movement was born as a result of Senghor going to Paris to study in 1928. In Paris, Senghor met Aime Cesair, young man from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, and together with the help of Leon Damas of Guyana, they started the Negritude movement. The negritude movement is essentially focused on making the value of the African people manifest. Negritude philosophy believed that despite the diversity and plurality of the African culture, and the African Diasporas, African people all over the world still had shared experiences of racial brutality and oppression. Hence, the negritude writers essentially tried to convey through their works, the pride they felt in being African and the pride they felt in African culture itself.

In the poem “Black Woman”, Senghor reinforces the ideas of negritude. He personifies Africa- the nation- as an African woman. In the first three lines (Naked woman, black woman/ Clothed with your colour which is life, / with your form which is beauty!), he says that the African woman’s true beauty lies in her natural self. He says that her colour is life, and that it is the natural form of beauty. The African woman that Senghor talks about in this poem is a representation of the African race itself, as well. In the fourth and fifth lines, Senghor equates Africa to a mother. He says that he grew up under the protection of his mother land. He calls Africa the “Promised Land” (Line 8) and says that he is returning to Africa which, for him, is the Promised Land. Further in the poem, Senghor compares Africa to a lover. He praises her and compliments her, comparing her to a goddess. Throughout the poem, Senghor equates the African woman to everything beautiful and graceful. For instance, in the last stanza, he compares her skin to the well oiled, beautiful skin of an athlete, or the Princes of Mali. He goes on to say that the African woman is as elegant and graceful as a gazelle. Senghor ends his poem on a philosophical note by saying that he will keep alive the African woman’s beauty eternally in his poetry.

The idea of negritude is very important in understanding “Black Woman” and Senghor’s poems, largely. In this poem, Senghor represents his love for Africa, his home land, his mother country, by personifying Africa as every woman he loves. He praises the African culture by finding beauty in the colour of the African skin, which had been the main cause for brutality and discrimination during the British rule in Africa. Writing in a period of decolonization, Senghor went to great lengths to uplift the standards of the African people, and the African culture, and the African people’s own view of themselves and their culture. In this poem, he showers praises on the “black woman” thus implying the greatness of the African culture and the African people. He takes immense pride in being African- and this itself is the main idea behind the negritude movement.

Another idea that stands out quite prominently about Black Woman is the idea of “appropriation.” Appropriation is a postcolonial concept which refers to a technique of writing that many postcolonial writers adopted where they used the language of the colonizer to speak out against them. They used the language that was imposed upon them to express various cultural experiences during the colonial rule. Although language played a major role in the process of colonization, many authors consciously took to English to communicate their experiences about colonial experiences, to other people around the world. Their adoption of the English language to communicate their experiences was almost always a personal choice rather than an imposed one. In “Black Woman”, however, Senghor used French to speak out against the colonizers. He wrote largely from the stand of being a subject of French colonialism as Senegal was colonised by the French.

The ideas of negritude and appropriation, thus, play a major role in understanding the poem “Black Woman” from a postcolonial perspective.