Republic of the Congo / All works
Poetry
The Belly
Le Ventre
Tchicaya U Tam'si · 1964
Synopsis
A song of mourning and a cry of pain, written after the independence of the former Belgian Congo and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, whose figure serves as the backdrop to the collection. The poet voices the disappointment and grief of that moment, in a language always attentive to the body, and moves from collective drama to a search for origins and for his own identity.
Context
The collection appeared in 1964 from Présence africaine, two years after a book the poet had already devoted to Lumumba's passion. Présence africaine reissued it in 1978, augmented with two previously unpublished poems, “La Conga des mutins” and “La Mise à mort”, gathered under the title Le Pain ou la cendre. Gallimard has reprinted it in paperback following the author's first two collections, with a preface by Boniface Mongo-Mboussa, and Peter Thompson translated it into English in 2021.
Who it is for
A dense and demanding poetry, in French, also readable in a bilingual English edition. It is better to know the fate of Patrice Lumumba.
Prizes and reception
For the novelist Véronique Tadjo, the collection has become a classic of modern African poetry.
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