Major Elegies
Major Elegies, published in June 1979 by Éditions du Seuil (followed by a Dialogue on Francophone Poetry), is the last major collection of unpublished poems by Léopold Sédar Senghor before his silence.
The book gathers his major elegies — “Elegy of the Trade Winds”, “Elegy for Jean-Marie”, “Elegy of Carthage”, “Elegy for the Queen of Sheba” — and especially the “Elegy for Martin Luther King”, tribute to the pastor assassinated in 1968: a dialogue between two humanisms, African and American, where Martin Luther King becomes a Christ-like figure of non-violence.
After this collection, Senghor would publish only anthologies and prose works. Major Elegies sounds like a poet’s farewell to his dead — and a kind of lyrical testament.