Introduction: Forgiveness Is a Major Political Issue

The “theology of forgiveness”: The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness, a book of essays by Wole Soyinka published in 1999, pays little attention to this. Just the title alone would outrage anyone familiar with Léopold Sédar Senghor, because for the Senegalese poet forgiveness is not a “muse” and memory is not a burden. Senghor loves memory (and all memories), and if he “forgives France”—a phrase that made him unforgivable to African intellectuals—it is not because he prescribed, for us and for all the “wretched of the earth,” the forgetting of the crimes of colonization. Quite the contrary. Soyinka’s analyses are a web of unfounded, insincere, and unjustifiable allegations. They form a bed of presuppositions that prevent him from reading “Neige sur Paris” (“Snow on Paris”), the last poem in Hosties noires (Black Hosts), a collection by Senghor published in 1948. Soyinka, like many African scholars, did not read it when it was published, but rather read it ten to fifteen years later, when the independence movements of 1960 and the Cold War were in full swing. Hence the total lack of contextualization, for which Senghor pays the price. Soyinka and the African progressives of the time did not bother to read it. And when they did, it was to overwhelm it with ideologies that had nothing to do with it. As I discuss below, The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness is full of incomprehensible analyses.

Soyinka knows nothing about the theology of forgiveness, despite his best efforts. Or rather, he does not want to know anything about it, because, from his point of view, African religions, like Islam, are exempt from it, which is completely false. Soyinka reduces the humanities and literary criticism to his own beliefs. They allow him to condemn without mercy anyone who deviates from them, which is scandalous. This brings us to the heart of the debate. Soyinka is one of those intellectuals who take refuge in ideas so as not to see things and people. He seems never to forgive others. In this case, he does not forgive Senghor because he was, along with Aimé Césaire and Léon-Gontran Damas, one of the inventors of negritude.

The future Nobel Prize winner for literature (in 1986) had castigated the poet-president of Senegal with a phrase that has become proverbial: “The tiger does not proclaim its tigritude, it pounces on its prey and devours it.” Such is Soyinka’s credo: action, and nothing else. For the “negritudists,” as he calls them, are theorists who spend their time disserting on the condition of colonized Africans, instead of working for their liberation. We would have liked him to engage in a critique of colonization, as Frantz Fanon did in his time. Indeed, if the colonized can be likened to a tiger, in historical terms, one wonders if this is not a misrepresentation. Until proven otherwise, nowhere have the colonized been masters of “their” jungle; nowhere have they imposed their law. The tiger metaphor is the greatest hoax in the history of African literature.

We must therefore define colonization, since Soyinka says nothing conclusive about it. Let us propose that of Césaire, a major “negritude” writer:

Césaire has just shattered the lively image of the tiger. Senghor will in turn deconstruct it with a phrase of rare subtlety. I return to this later. Soyinka’s brilliant retort operates on an unspoken assumption: the other, the colonized victim of violence, responds to the colonizer, the absolute perpetrator of violence. By painting the colonized as a tiger, Soyinka unwittingly perpetuates the violence of the master. His criticism of Senghor reflects his inability to break out of this vicious circle. Indeed, the Nigerian playwright, like the colonizer, animalizes the colonized, who in turn animalizes himself by responding with violence.

As for negritude—the other problem with which Soyinka grapples—Senghor defines it as “l’ensemble des valeurs de civilisation du monde noir” (“the set of values of the black world’s civilization”; Négritude et civilisation 69). This is too generic a definition, but let us quote the opening of his article, which is more instructive:

Senghor uttered these words on 19 May 1966, at Lebanese University of Beirut. He was responding to critics of negritude, particularly Soyinka. Hence his frequent references to American culture. We have forgotten that negritude is an invention of the Harlem Renaissance, the literary and artistic movement of Black Americans in the early twentieth century. The French influence that Senghor, Césaire, and Damas brought to it was humanism, as all three had been students in the Latin Quarter in the 1920s and 1930s. After the liberation, Jean-Paul Sartre gave them humanist credence with the publication of Existentialism Is a Humanism. Senghor went along with it: Sartre wrote the preface to his Anthology of New Malagasy Poetry in French, published in 1948 by Presses Universitaires de France. It was therefore out of the question for Senghor, like Césaire, to show any sympathy for colonial violence, the violence of the tiger. It would be as if he were likening society to the jungle where the big cat reigns supreme. The tiger metaphor masks the fact that the domination that exists in the jungle has nothing in common with colonial domination.

By turning Africans into tigers, Soyinka denies our humanity, and this denial prevents him from forgiving, since the other does not exist, the other that Charles Baudelaire once invoked with his famous words, “— Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!” (“—Hypocrite reader, —my fellow man, —my brother!”; 3). Baudelaire allows us to understand why Soyinka does not understand forgiveness, and therefore politics.

To forgive is to disregard the offense done to us and to renounce revenge. This is how the cycle of violence is broken. Christianity has imbued this notion to such an extent that we readily attribute its paternity to it. This is a huge mistake. Forgiveness is certainly inseparable from the sacred, but that sacredness refers to our humanity and not to religions, whatever they may be. Forgiveness forces us to explore uncharted paths, because each person’s humanity is unique. No two people are alike.

Political historians, like literary historians, deal with people of flesh and blood. They make their way in an environment that is at once secular and sacred, religious and ethical. Forgiveness is a great political thing.

Why would Soyinka, the tiger’s zealot, swept away by a faceless and emotionless world, need to pay any attention to forgiveness? Violence abstracts reality. Yet forgiveness is the exact counterpart of social and republican justice. Justice is synonymous with forgiveness. So when the Nigerian decides to examine the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1995–96) initiated by Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu in South Africa, he misses the mark in the same way as in his polemic with Senghor. The other is the blind spot in his analyses, and, at the same time, Senghor was Soyinka’s only counterpart. It seems incredible, but Soyinka writes it down in black and white, and on numerous occasions. I return to this at greater length below. This brief review sets out my method. The theology of forgiveness requires us to look at literary history in relation to African history, as well as the history of theology and philosophy. This address is a process of clearing the ground.

Wole Soyinka, the Agitator

It is ambitious, even presumptuous, for an academic, even one of African origin, to revisit an essay by a renowned writer, and one who is also a Nobel Prize winner for literature. Soyinka’s The Burden of Memory has not been translated into French or studied by African academics, whether English-speaking or French-speaking, with the exception of the Congolese Boniface Mongo-Mboussa, in a very accurate and beautiful article, which has unfortunately remained largely unknown since its publication in 2017. This article was of great help to me, as was one by the Belgian academic Martin Mégevand entitled “Soyinka, Senghor: Retour sur un différend” (“Soyinka, Senghor: Revisiting a Dispute”). I am tempted to write that the African world wants nothing to do with this book, the eternal Soyinka-Senghor opposition being enough for them. This is a plausible interpretation, as Soyinka, who is somewhat aware of this, warmly thanks Lilyan Kesteloot as the main source of his information on Senghor and negritude as if to absolve the Belgian academic of any responsibility for the three essays that make up The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness. Mégevand notes, “Ainsi, Lilyan Kesteloot, pourtant remerciée pour son Histoire de la littérature négro-africaine par Soyinka à l’ouverture du même livre, omet de citer dans l’édition augmentée de Négritude et situation coloniale, datant de 2010” (“Thus, Lilyan Kesteloot, although thanked by Soyinka for her Histoire de la littérature négro-africaine at the beginning of the same book, fails to cite him in the expanded edition of Négritude et situation coloniale, dating from 2010”; 56). That says it all.

The disappointing aspect of Soyinka’s book is very well summed up by this assault of delicacy:

Soyinka knows better than anyone that friendly accommodations weaken our ability to think, just as a single source reduces the possibilities available to our investigations. Thus, Kesteloot and all the authors cited by Soyinka are masks or diversions from the sole reason he writes “L. S. Senghor and Negritude”: “But I find that I have no new tribute to pay to Senghor beyond what I have written prior to his anniversary, and so I shall end with a passage from an essay that I wrote over fifteen years ago. It was published first in my collection of essays, Art, Dialogue and Outrage, under the chapter, ‘The External Encounter’” (Soyinka 140–41). What does Soyinka mean by “external encounter”? It is an impossible phrase. What is external about the encounter is the fact of being face-to-face with someone else. An opposition that is presence is then established, body to body and eye to eye. The “external encounter” is neither an oxymoron nor a pleonasm: it means nothing.

“What was to follow”—which is beautiful, magnificent—and one wonders why the Nigerian poet evokes a discomfort that has no place here. “What was to follow,” then, is this:

It was then that Soyinka recounted what he had written in his “old essay” from “fifteen years ago”: “This is the Senghor we prefer to remember, the one to whom we wish someone would award the Nobel Prize for literature, so that the rest of us African writers can rest in peace for the next twenty years” (144).

A magnificent confession, isn’t it? With Soyinka, one must be wary, for venom is never far away. The Nigerian poet knows neither friendship nor forgiveness, and while he admires Senghor, he never writes that he loves him. The first sentence of the previous quote emphasizes this: “This is the Senghor we prefer to remember,” an inventory sentence that establishes categories like a master of elegance. Soyinka does not like everything about Senghor, and it is not enough to point this out. Even before quoting the very last paragraph of “L. S. Senghor and Negritude,” where the source of the unease is finally revealed to us, let us note that Soyinka describes it as “haunt[ing],” “embarrassed squirming,” and “chagrin,” all details that refer to both somatic and mental medicine. His obsession is therefore not without “just cause,” as he stated earlier. It is then that he confesses:

Mégevand comments on this passage as follows: “Remords? Complexe d’imposture? Toujours est-il que Soyinka, lors de sa conference de 1997 avoue de découvrir très tardivement une dimension de la poésie de Senghor qui le conduira à réviser de la manière la plus radicale son jugement sur l’œuvre” (“Remorse? Impostor syndrome? The fact remains that Soyinka, during the 1997 conference, admits to having discovered very late in life a dimension of Senghor’s poetry that led him to radically revise his judgment of the work”; 64).

I have a completely opposite opinion to this judgment. Does Soyinka himself not write (I quoted this passage above): “But I find that I have no new tribute to pay to Senghor beyond what I have written prior to his anniversary” (140–41). Soyinka is referring here to the year 1996 and the international tribute paid to Senghor on his ninetieth birthday at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. In this essay, the Senegalese poet is treated badly from start to finish. To proclaim that “Senghor remains the first—albeit unannounced—African winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature” is indeed a considerable surprise for any reader of his essay.

From the outset of his career, Soyinka forged an image of himself as a writer who clashed with his peers. He regularly attacked V. S. Naipaul and Senghor. Friendship seems so unlike him, and love (or forgiveness) even less so. In short, Soyinka disappoints. The second essay in The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness, “L. S. Senghor and Negritude” (aptly subtitled in French “J’accuse, mais je pardonne” [“I accuse, but I forgive”]), deals neither with Senghor, nor with negritude, nor with forgiveness, nor with “Prayer for Peace,” the text announced as the subject of this essay. The latter is full of concepts such as “Negritude” and “Negritudism,” as if Soyinka were writing the history of a body of doctrine or that of a sectarian drift. One cannot be more defamatory toward a peer. However, francophone critics ignore these off-putting concepts. Even Stanislas Spero Adotevi’s “négrologues” (“negrologists,” or those who write obituaries for Black people) have never been used by anyone, because they were a hoax! There has never been a literary science called “negrology.” And yet Soyinka misuses these terms. The result is immense and paralyzing embarrassment. Twenty-four years after its American publication, the collection of essays has still not been translated into French. This is very surprising, because the publishing house Présence Africaine has translated almost all his works published during the same period.

For forty years, Soyinka was the tiger or the swordsman who crossed swords with Senghor. We loved this image. That Soyinka disavows it and is quite right to do so, as I explain later, is counterproductive for many Africans. The Nigerian is not allowed to deny the tiger that he is: he is definitively forbidden from saying that the tiger has lived. The power of this metaphor is such that we did not even notice that Soyinka was animalizing us. By recanting, Soyinka proves Senghor right, who rightly reminded him that we are humans and therefore beings gifted with speech and thought. Hence his reply: “Le tigre ne parle pas de sa tigritude parce qu’il est une bête. Mais l’homme, lui, parle de son humanité parce qu’il est homme et qu’il pense” (“The tiger does not speak of its tigritude because it is a beast. But man speaks of his humanity because he is man and he thinks”; Senghor, Négritude et civilisation 101; emphasis added).Footnote ³ This last sentence is a monumental slap in the face, but we covered our ears so as not to hear it. Just another piece of poor Senghor’s ratiocination. Yes, his sentence is no match for a tiger’s roar! Our enthusiasms, across the ages, will always be incomprehensible when we reevaluate them later, with a cool head.

The field of reflection is made up of fights, and thinkers love them: they galvanize the human beasts that we are, or rather, our warrior instinct. Until proven otherwise, it has not yet been demonstrated that animals organize war and even make it an economy, as is the case today, as flourishing as it is destructive. For the majority of Africans, Senghor will always be the traitor to the African cause, or rather, our scapegoat.

The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness disappointed African expectations. Having reread it for this article, while translating many of its pages into French, there is reason to feel disappointed. Soyinka does what Soyinka does: it is so predictable, so expected. He attacks Senghor without nuance, opposing him with arguments from the 1960s and 1980s—namely, Marxism and dialectics, as if Senghor had not written about Marxism and as if he were not an outstanding dialectician. One essay by the Chadian poet and novelist Nimrod (I had the honor of editing his Selected Writings for the University of Michigan Press in 2018), Tombeau de Léopold Sédar Senghor (Tomb of Léopold Sédar Senghor), shows that Senghor’s thinking is a great moment in dialectics, not Marxist but Hegelian. To use a slightly colloquial French expression, “en cette matière, on ne le lui fait pas!” (“in this matter, no one can fool him!”).

Moreover, the authors cited by Soyinka, notably the renowned Belgian critic Kesteloot, are all outdated in their approach to francophone literature and negritude. Indeed, like Soyinka himself, these critics are not interested in Senghor’s poems as such, but rather in their political background. As Mégevand shows, Soyinka spends his time burdening Senghor with his own political ideas (notably his commitment to restitution and reparation for the damage caused by slavery and colonization [60]). The Nobel Prize winner in literature is intoxicated by his own excellence.

“Prayer for Peace”

Ideally, this poem should be read in its entirety—at least the first section in the original French—so that the reader can appreciate its musicality. Failing that, I will provide extensive excerpts in English. Let’s start with the first stanza (“Prayer for Peace” has five) and its English translation:

We have read the original French version and the English version. Let’s admit that the original version passes the translation test with flying colors. As for Soyinka, he translates the title as “Prayer for Peace.” This change in preposition gives the poem a different orientation. Senghor offers us “Prière de paix” as if it embodied peace itself. The last line of this stanza emphasizes this: “Let me tell You, Lord, her prayer for peace and forgiveness.” Even though it is more convenient to translate “de” as “for” in English, this substitution creates a radical reversal. French perfectly distinguishes between “de” and “pour.” “De” indicates the origin (or the activity linked to an origin). It can even be confused with that origin. For example, in the sentence, See where I am speaking to you from. In other words, the place from which I am speaking to you and my words come from the same location. “De” emphasizes the origin and “pour” the target or place where we intend to go. A “goal” and a motive are attached to it.

Senghor is not seeking to make peace with France and French colonization at the expense of the fate of Africans, as Soyinka insists in order to discredit his poem and, by extension, a supposed doctrine of negritude portrayed as antirevolutionary. No, it is none of these things. Senghor offers his peace to France and to French history. To this end, he obliges himself to recount the history of its crimes from the slave trade to the liberation from Nazi rule in 1945. For he takes care to date his poem: “Paris, January 1945.” “Prayer for Peace” is very composed and very coherent. On this point, Soyinka is right to write that Senghor dominates the context of his poem, as well as its enunciation. From there, to conclude that Senghor possesses an “inhuman” power that allows him to forgive everything is to make an extravagant, if not delusional, comment.

During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa (1996–98), women from very humble backgrounds forgave the murderers of their children. They did not have Soyinka’s intellectual background, yet they understood the need to forgive in an extreme context such as apartheid. They did not have the lofty status of Senghor, the “priest of God,” a priest or rather a god, as portrayed by Soyinka. It should be noted that the title of the poem is not preceded by any determiner.

To understand “Prayer for Peace,” one need only pay a little attention to the four elements that make up the title. This requires no particular reading effort on Soyinka’s part, who knows from experience that no word or syllable in a poem is gratuitous. Senghor writes his title in capital letters followed by an indication for its musical accompaniment: “(for large organs).” Note that, typographically, the title and the subsequent indication are in the same font: the first in capital letters (uppercase and italics) and the second in lowercase (lowercase and italics). These two titles are followed on the third line by the names of the poem’s dedicatees: À GEORGES ET CLAUDE POMPIDOU. Senghor takes care to write them in capital letters, but in a proportionally smaller font. Typography, as we can see, is a physical language. Isn’t it said that to change style, you just need to change the font size? This adage is perfectly illustrated here. The eye immediately perceives PRAYER OF PEACE and TO GEORGES AND CLAUDE POMPIDOU, with the slight difference that one is large and the other smaller. Let us add that the title is in italics and the names of the dedicatees are in roman type. Usually, it is the dedication that is in lowercase and italics. Senghor breaks with this rule: he gives the title and the dedication a form of equality, while emphasizing the title with a larger font size and italics.

If we ignore these typographical observations, we miss the essence of the poem. For “Prière de paix” is dedicated to friends who are, dare we say, a “sister” and a “brother” to Senghor. Thus, the objection that would consist in reproaching him for granting his “unconditional forgiveness” to his friends, as Soyinka does obsessively, becomes incomprehensible. Obviously, Soyinka never dwells on these details. He makes no mention of Claude and Georges Pompidou, even though he draws a bold comparison between Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senghor. This comparison is invaluable, because the great Black civil rights activist sought not to divide the United States, even if that was the motive for his assassination on 4 April 1968, but to demonstrate that Black and white people are “brothers” despite their skin color and despite the exorbitant weight of slavery on American society. Soyinka does not even exploit this comparison, in which he juxtaposes the Senegalese poet and the great African American preacher as two priests, two ministers of a reconciling God. This “failure” is sad and disarming!

Finally, let us turn to the fourth element that makes up the title, a Latin epigraph, a fragment of “Our Father,” the canonical prayer of Christians and, singularly, Roman Catholics, as Soyinka so aptly points out: “Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris,” which means, “Forgive us as we forgive those who have offended us.” It should be noted that the Latin quotation from the Gospels is not only an act that reflects Senghor’s faith but also a habit made possible by his status as a teacher of Latin and Greek. Until the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Catholics commonly recited this prayer in Latin. Soyinka does not even mention this. It does not matter, because we now have all the information we need to read “Prayer for Peace” fairly accurately.

Without forcing the meaning, let us say that this poem dedicated to Senghor’s loved ones is an offering of war, or rather a toxic offering. It is written in black and white in the first line: “Lord Jesus, at the end of this book that I offer to You as a ciborium of suffering.” Offering a vessel of suffering to one’s friends, which of us would dare to do such a thing? Which of us is capable of it? It is utterly senseless, but no one seems to realize it. Where does this blindness among African writers and thinkers come from? Even Soyinka, the quintessential fighter of our literature, has never distinguished himself with violence of this nature, because it is too subtle for him. He is used to hitting out—often aided by his preconceived ideologies—and so he does not see Senghor’s violence. And yet, isn’t every poet, whoever they may be, an unparalleled decoder of meaning and rhythm? Apparently not.

The fact that the Senegalese poet evokes “the snowy roofs of Paris” in the second line is by no means an act of appeasement. Indeed, in the third line, he writes, “But I know very well that the blood of my brothers will once again redden the yellow East, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean where storms and hatred rage.” The snow contrasts sharply with the red blood of the riflemen in Asia. Hence Soyinka’s blindness. For from a review of the first three lines, we can deduce that the forgiveness Soyinka stumbles over is only possible if a trial is convened. Note the care with which Senghor organizes and stages it. He does not merely accuse, as the Nigerian poet notes, he establishes an intimate and cosmic tribunal in which Georges and Claude Pompidou, as well as nature itself, are the defendants. However, all Africans, from the 1950s to the present day, are unable to see and read this.

Let us reproduce one of Soyinka’s quotations, which sums up the failure of his essay on the theology of forgiveness:

This is Soyinka’s typical method of discrediting Senghor. His work is littered with it, but it is very cleverly concealed. Often, it is only on second reading that one is able to pick up on it, as is the case here. Is it possible to accuse Senghor of candor, in whatever form? The candid one is Soyinka, who really understands nothing about “Prayer for Peace.” The second discredit is contained in the Yoruba adage, the implication of which is that Senghor is more royalist than the king! This infamous insinuation makes Christianity the essence of the West, even as Senghor strives to show that forgiveness is a matter that concerns each and every one of us and, therefore, a society, a country, an empire. Soyinka condemns Senghor to identity assignment. To be Christian, our intellectuals proclaimed in the 1960s, is to deny our African identity. Anticolonial fanaticism was a religion that, alas, still persists in certain revolutionary left-wing circles. However, this is to misunderstand the history of the West African Sahel. Forgiveness is common practice in Senegalese society. Sufi Islam, which originated with the Mourides (Morocco), has been established there since the ninth century. Jean-René Bourrel writes in his notes on “Prière de paix” from a recent edition:

Bourrel’s theological, sociological, and historical analysis is illuminating. It helps us question the very title of Soyinka’s book, The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness. Mégevand notes that the Nigerian poet created it from an article by Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands” (57n6). As Bourrel points out, for Senegalese people, forgiveness never implies forgetting the “insults suffered,” and this is what Senghor does in “Prière de paix” by methodically chronicling French crimes. Firstly, Christianity and Islam are African religions. To claim otherwise is simply to play into the hands of European racists of all stripes, even while believing oneself to be radical and revolutionary.

An intellectual of Soyinka’s stature could have recalled St. Paul’s words: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Bible, Gal. 3.28). The blinders of our thinkers are appalling. One need only ask, When was the last time the West asked forgiveness for its crimes? This question leaves us speechless. Forgiveness, as Senghor advocates, is unprecedented in African and Western history. It is a revolutionary act. One last clarification: Senghor never wrote, “Charity begins at home.” This is the third flaw in this brief quotation. By wanting to attribute it to Senghor at all costs, the phrase that completes this adage becomes incomprehensible. For the Senegalese writer mentions neither “charity” nor its opposite in order to benefit who knows whom. Forgiveness is not a charitable gesture. By writing nonsense, Soyinka makes himself unbearable. Unfortunately, his essay contains at least a dozen such examples.

The forgiveness that troubles Soyinka is asserted by Senghor at the beginning of the second section of his poem: “Lord God, forgive white Europe!” Soyinka must have jumped at this statement! This reaction would be insignificant if the Nobel Prize winner for literature did not focus on this verse to the point of using it to demolish his Senegalese colleague. The eminent professor knows full well that a sentence taken out of context loses its relevance, because meaning emerges only from the interplay between sentences. Soyinka does not even respect this basic methodological principle. It should be noted that this second sequence is, from start to finish, a condemnation of the West. Apart from “Lord God, forgive white Europe!,” one will search in vain for a judgment favorable to the West. Senghor demolishes it with verses that are twice as long as those in the first section. Of course, Soyinka quotes them, but he cuts out several lines in a row. Without these cuts, the opprobrium with which he overwhelms Senghor would collapse on its own. And yet, the third sequence of “Prayer for Peace” seems the most terrible, but Soyinka does not quote it. Let us listen to these last six lines:

This indictment of France (it is unforgivable, no pun intended, since France is literally compared with the Nazi occupier) elicits no comment from Soyinka. In 1948, when Black Hosts was published, barely three years after the Allies’ victory over Hitler, had Senghor not crossed the Rubicon? Certainly. If he wanted to sabotage his career as a member of the French National Assembly, as well as his friendship with Georges Pompidou, his fellow student at khâgne (1929–30) who had since become one of Charles de Gaulle’s advisers, he could not have done better. Didn’t Senghor write of Pompidou, “C’est lui qui m’a converti au Socialisme, qui m’a fait aimer Barrès, Proust, Gide, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, qui m’a donné le goût du théâtre ou des musées. Et aussi le goût de Paris” (“He was the one who converted me to socialism, who made me love Barrès, Proust, Gide, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, who gave me a taste for the theater and museums. And also a taste for Paris ”; Négritude et humanisme 405)? Not only is truth indispensable in friendship (and Senghor proves this with his incendiary poem), it is also subject to trial and public scrutiny. The “truth” of “Prière de paix” is that forgiveness does not erase the slate of historical wrongs: it presupposes that justice is done properly.

The Theology of Forgiveness

In 1994, when Mandela became president of South Africa, followed in 1996 by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, promoted on his initiative by Tutu, the Nigerian Nobel laureate finally understood, fifty years later, the significance of Senghor’s “Prayer for Peace.” He made his mea culpa: Black Hosts, he wrote, was “a poetic anticipation of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (Soyinka 107). Further on, he added that Senghor believed that forgiveness was essential in a situation where true justice cannot be done. Soyinka has been praised for his words. In fact, these are rather pale acknowledgments. Senghor has brought about a reversal whose disruptive power his former opponents struggle to grasp. And for good reason: they are only poets, novelists, or intellectuals. None of them has ventured into politics, and none has been president of the republic. Soyinka notes the powerlessness of Senghor the leader. He could have added that this powerlessness is only temporary. If a president makes compromises, it is to gain more later. Hence his unfortunate description of “Prayer for Peace” as “poetic anticipation.”

Senghor is grounded in reality. Africa’s current weakness is also its victory here and now. We struggle to understand this dimension. The poem always unfolds in the present. It is current events itself. The power of language is illustrated in a concreteness that leaves one speechless. All poetry is action. Senghor always defended this point of view and portrayed himself as a poet of action or a poet-president. During the last ten years of his term as head of Senegal, he said nothing else, to the point of irritating his compatriots.

Today, who can doubt that Barack Obama’s compromises were weaknesses? Donald Trump has proved him right in a caricatural way! Yet Obama’s victory also stems from the theology of forgiveness. He borrowed it from King, the greatest man the United States has ever had.

What exactly is forgiveness? Why does Soyinka get so confused about it? Why doesn’t he draw on the theology of King, to whom he refers numerous times? Or Cornel West, the African American philosopher and theologian whose ideas, very much in line with those of King, are surely familiar to him? I could also mention the philosophers Jacques Derrida and Vladimir Jankélévitch (see Derrida; Jankélévitch). But the most regrettable omission is the masterpiece by the South African poet Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull, published in 1998 in Johannesburg, a year before The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness. Soyinka could have revised his 1997 lecture in the light of this, or later: his collection of essays has been reprinted several times to date. In Country of My Skull, Krog analyzes the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with an entire chapter devoted to forgiveness.

The most striking surprise about forgiveness is when, without any explanation, Krog replaces it with “reconciliation,” and suddenly everything becomes clear in our minds! Forgiveness is an eminently social and political act. It is not a favor from the gods; its theological content is primarily sociological. By forgiving others, we join the divine. This is the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The verticality of God begins with the horizontality of men. The Latin etymology of forgiveness, perdonare, is made up of per and dare, which means “to give,” but also “date” and even “dice.” The proximity of these terms—their richness, their uncertainty—gives us a glimpse of how forgiving means setting a date or rolling the dice on the social chessboard. Krog highlights all this with some illuminating phrases:

We should have started with the epigraph to chapter 10, a quotation from Cynthia Ngewu, the mother of Christopher Piet, one of the Guguletu Seven:

Is this not the most perfect explanation of Senghor’s attitude? It comes to us from a Black woman in South Africa, undoubtedly illiterate. What light there is in her words! Divine light, theology in its purest form. We practice forgiveness in order to rediscover our humanity. We cannot resist forgiveness, as the Afrikaans dictionary notes. It requires us to step outside our beliefs and prejudices. It is not the result of inhuman power or “extremism of love,” as Soyinka notes. These expressions only reflect their inability to love and forgive, because revolutionary thinkers are subjugated by violence. In doing so, they also show that they lack any political genius, and sociology, in this case, is the least of their concerns. I would like to conclude this debate with Krog’s presentation of Tutu. She writes:

Forgiveness is African. I will add nothing to Krog’s words except that for Africans, as for people all over the world, forgiveness does not come naturally. You have to pay with your very being by “participating” in the destiny of society. And even then. Forgiveness often stumbles over the “unforgivable” and the “unforgettable,” because there are misfortunes that cannot be overcome. In Rwanda, survivors and perpetrators of genocide are forced to live side by side in the same neighborhoods: they have no choice. It is an extremely violent situation: How can one reconcile with one’s tormentor? Must one become amnesiac to achieve this? Have we measured the cost of such an action? These are reflections that would require another article.

Conclusion: Love and Literary Criticism

When you read this title, you might think and rightly so that the author of these lines is rambling. What connection does love have with literary criticism and forgiveness? Everything. Absolutely everything, as I have already shown. Suffice it to recall these lines from Letters to a Young Poet, familiar to us all: “Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and nothing can reach them so little as criticism. Only love can grasp them and keep hold of them and be just to them” (Rilke).

Rainer Maria Rilke is stating eternal truths here. He is not denouncing the criticism of academics and journalists, but it is very similar. It is significant that the Austrian poet referred to “works of art.” The generality of this description, when we stop to think about it, applies to all human activities. If forgiveness or reconciliation restores our bonds with others, it is thanks to this kind of infinity that, through a book from Finland or South Africa, the United States or Japan, radically changes our lives.

Soyinka fails to share with us the riches of “Prayer for Peace” because he never allows himself to let go. For admiration alone can never break down our prejudices and preconceptions. Soyinka is not the first writer to whom this has happened. In his poem, Senghor describes only Soyinka’s expectations, but Soyinka reacts as if he were discovering his face in a distorting mirror. This reaction shows that there is too much competition between them.

By dressing the Senegalese poet in the robes of a priest offering African suffering to the Christian God, Soyinka had unwittingly understood the essence of his life and his poems. But he does not allow himself to be overcome by this knowledge, which permeates him capillary by capillary and ultimately elevates “Prayer for Peace” to a magnificat and a requiem to reconcile the world and, first and foremost, France with itself, for African forgiveness knows no borders because, yes, the poem is propitiatory: