International Nonino Prize 1985

Leopold Sedar Senghor

Senghor is the witness of the deep toils of a world on the way of transformation, as the “third world” is, which is hardly getting out of centuries of colonial slavery and is besieged by tensions and contradictions that are typical of that historical situation.

Senghor was a protagonist of this struggle for freedom and of this African turn, also as the President of the Republic of Senegal and then as an Academic of France. But he has been and still is one of the top living poets, of those who, in their song, have been able to draw from the everlasting and unforgettable feelings and values of a civilization that looks at the man as an object of love and interest well above power and potentates.