The media hype, triggered in recent days by friends and admirers of Léopold Sédar Senghor, will not have been in vain. The auction, scheduled for Tuesday in Caen, of the library that the master owned at his Parisian home on Square de Tocqueville was finally suspended. “The Senegalese State,” auctioneer Jean Rivola declared this Monday, “wishes to initiate negotiations with our auction house and with the heir to purchase all” of the 343 volumes which were to be dispersed.
Those who feared that Senegal, in the midst of a political revolution, would allow this national treasure to be scattered can be temporarily reassured. At 97 years old, Henri Senghor, faithful epigone of his uncle, who represented his country all over the world during his career as a diplomat, was trying to find solutions to avoid this auction. Just like the Cercle Richelieu Senghor, Sally Alassane Thiam, of the NGO Afrique-Patrimoine, or Gérard Bosio, faithful collaborator and guardian of the memory of the poet president. The arrival to power of President Diomaye Faye and his Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko took place with radical accents of rupture. But not, it seems, to the point of making a clean slate of the past. In Paris, Ambassador Magatte Seye was tasked with following the matter closely. The French Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, also played the role of mediator.
The heiress of Léopold Sédar Senghor nevertheless insisted, at all costs, on proceeding with this sale. And this, as is often the case, to pay particularly crushing inheritance taxes. Died in 2019, Colette Senghor, the second wife of the president who died in 2001, had bequeathed a large part of her property to the woman who was her lady-in-waiting for many years in Verson, in Normandy. Caught by the throat, she had already sold a painting by Soulages dating from 1958. Last October, she was preparing to disperse jewelry and decorations, including the necklace of the Order of the Nile. At the last minute, these auctions had already been suspended, on the orders of Macky Sall, who left power in Dakar at the beginning of April. For 244,000 euros, the Senegalese state bought the entire complex “to preserve the national heritage”.
Is the total value of the lots that should have been offered this Tuesday equivalent to this amount? Between Verson, Dakar and Paris, Léopold Sédar Senghor owned several very beautiful libraries. According to Gérard Bosio, the collection which is now at the heart of the news “includes many rare works, bound by the president and signed by their authors”. Among them, a number of essays on negritude, notably the Discourse on Colonialism by his old friend Aimé Césaire; books signed by African or Haitian writers including some by the ethnologist and diplomat Jean Price-Mars; collections of French poetry, including one sent by Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet, and others by Latin or British authors. The French grammar teacher Senghor, Georges Pompidou’s khâgne companion at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, was a distinguished Latinist, but also a translator of English poetry.
Negotiations are therefore underway with Dakar. “Within a fortnight, specifies Me Jean Rivola, if there is no outcome with the State of Senegal in the discussions, the collection will be put back at auction. » The countdown is on, but it seems unlikely that no agreement will be concluded after such a mobilization, as spontaneous as it is determined. Gérard Bosio believes that this library has its place in the Senghor Museum that he is designing within that of black civilizations, in Dakar. It is the memory of the one who marked the history of Africa and the dialogue of cultures that is at stake.