Poetry · A way to begin
La Divine Pastorale
Not translated into English
Alexis Kagame · 1952
Synopsis
The first of the eighteen vigils of a Christian epic composed in Kinyarwanda, Le Chantre du Maître de la création, which the author himself translated into French. The epic adapts the pastoral genre of Rwandan poetry and tells the history of the world according to the Christian faith, bringing it closer to the traditions of ancient Rwanda. It aims to win its listeners to Christianity while turning them away from imitating Europeans.
Context
Kagame began the epic in 1941 and completed it in April 1966, after twenty-five years of work: one hundred and fifty cantos, in homage to the psalms, divided into eighteen vigils, nearly thirty-six thousand lines of verse. Only the first two vigils were translated into French: this one, published in Brussels by Éditions du Marais with ten linocuts by Antoine de Vinck, then La Naissance de l'univers in 1955, both with prefaces by the Jesuit Pierre Charles. The poet applied in them the principle of rhythm he had identified by studying some five hundred pastoral songs by eleven bards, and Pope Pius XII congratulated him on each of the two volumes.
Who it is for
A long Christian poem translated from Kinyarwanda by its author; it is of interest for the meeting of two traditions.
Prizes and reception
Jean-Paul Martinon sees in it his most sustained poetic attempt to convert his compatriots.
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