Bernard Dadié, the father of Ivorian literature
It's always tricky to place the foundations of an entire literature on the shoulders of one man, but Bernard Dadié undoubtedly has the talent and charisma to bear such an honor.
Born in 1916, as a child he witnessed the excesses of colonization. His father Gabriel, although naturalized French following services rendered in the First World War, enjoyed few of the same rights and benefits as his white counterparts, prompting him to resign from the Colonial Administration, awakening in his son a real awareness of injustice. Initially angry with the classical school system, preferring that of nature, he accompanied his father who had become a forester. Eventually, Bernard Dadié was reconciled with teaching through reading and writing, which opened up new horizons for him, and he went on to join the Willy Ponty teacher training college in Gorée.
His continuing interest in political issues is reflected in his inaugural work, Les Villes (1933), which is recognized as the first play written in Côte d'Ivoire. In this text, the young man imagines personified cities vying for the title of capital of the country, which is moved at the whim of colonial power.
Dadié began his career in theater, a genre to which he would remain strongly attached, not only because he followed the path opened up by students from the Gold Coast (now Ghana), who came to Bingerville's EPS to present the playlets they had imagined, but also because he was influenced by the oral tradition that, through tales and legends, had long carried literature in Côte d'Ivoire. The reference is all the more marked in his second play, Assémien Déhylé, roi du Sanwi, in which he intersperses dialogue with proverbs - to name but one La rivière a même déborder, l'oiseau trouve toujours un endroit où se poser - thus setting the pace and entering into conversation with audiences who, through books, might not have had such easy access to his creations.
This work and the next, Les prétendants rivaux, give François-Joseph d'Amon d'Aby the opportunity to take the stage. A few years later, in 1938, this schoolmate would go on to create the Théâtre indigène with Germain Coffi Gadeau, ensuring the continuity of a genre that is decidedly closely linked to Côte d'Ivoire. Dadié's work was a great success, and was performed as far afield as Paris. For ten years, he worked at IFAN (Institut Fondamental d'Afrique noire) in Dakar, and began campaigning for his country's independence. He returned in 1947, but his involvement with the RDA (Rassemblement Démocratique Africain) earned him a prison sentence.
After independence was proclaimed in 1960, Dadié held a number of official positions, including Minister of Culture, but his prolific writing never ceased. Climbié, published in 1952 and refuted as purely autobiographical, is considered the first Ivorian novel, followed by Un Nègre à Paris in 1959, a delightful quasi-ethnographic tour of the French capital, and of course his Carnets de prison (1949-1950), finally published in 1974. History doesn't say whether at IFAN he rubbed shoulders with Amadou Hampâté Bâ, who died in 1991 in Abidjan, but the latter's famous quotation, celebrating oral tradition and asserting that "in Africa, when an old man dies, it's a library that burns", seems tailor-made for Bernard Dadié, the instigator of the transition to the written word, who breathed his last at the honorable age of 103.
Freedom through literature
Decolonization in Africa was synonymous with hopes for a new world, but these hopes were undermined by conflict and corruption. These are the recurring themes addressed by another illustrious writer, Ahmadou Kourouma. Of Malinke origin, born in Boundiali in 1927, Kourouma had many stopovers before his death in Lyon in 2003. Kourouma left behind a body of work that began to take shape with his first novel, Les Soleils des indépendances, published in 1968 by Presses de l'Université de Montréal and reissued two years later by Editions du Seuil in Paris. In this story, he invents a country that doesn't exist, but is strangely reminiscent of his own, the Côte des Ébènes, where he portrays Fama Doumbouya, a deposed prince who inherited only a card that automatically affiliated him to the Parti Unique. An uncompromising fresco, this text also evokes the sad fate of women.
Kourouma continued his political work in the guise of fiction with Monnè, outrages et défis (Seuil, 1990), in which he shares his vision of a colonialism that too often rhymes with compromise. Eight years later, En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages, a satire on a despot who believes he enjoys half-divine, half-magical protection, was awarded the Prix du Livre Inter. It was to tragic realism that he dedicated the last book published in his lifetime, Allah n'est pas obligé, which won the Prix Renaudot and Goncourt des Lycéens in 2000. The Ivory Coast and Liberia, where little Birahima wants to join his aunt after the death of his mother, display their true names, but alas, war reigns and the child will find himself on the road enlisted as a soldier.
If freedom, or even true independence from former colonial powers, doesn't seem to be the order of the day in reality, literature offers new spaces to explore, and this is what the "N'zassa novel", whose founding father is Jean-Marie Adiaffi (1941-1999), is all about. Inspired by a term in the Agni language, which designates a patchwork of cloth pieces, Adiaffi uses the juxtaposition of different genres and idioms to illustrate his process, in an attempt to provide what can only be a political response to the delicate question of whether African literature can be written in the European language of the ex-colon.
Jean-Marie Adiaffi, who for a long time wrote only one collection of poetry, Yale Sonan, published in 1969, was awarded the Grand Prix littéraire d'Afrique noire for his novel La Carte d'identité (published by Hatier, 1980). In it, he told the story of a prince, Mélédouman, who, lacking the proper document to prove his identity, was molested and thrown into prison by an overzealous police force. Adiaffi wanted to conquer "the trail of liberation" by means of a trilogy to be written in three literary forms, but he didn't have time to tackle the theater, which became one of the favorite domains of another innovator, Charles Nokan.
Born in Yamoussoukro in 1936, Nokan studied in France, then taught in Abidjan. His career was much clearer than his work, which, from Le Soleil noir point onwards in 1962, is careful not to define precisely to which genre it belongs, leaving readers and critics free to decide how best to approach this unclassifiable work. While he plays with categorization - short story, play, epistolary novel or even autobiography - Nokan also plays with didascalia and typographical rules. The 64 "tableaux" follow in the footsteps of a young African who, on his return to Gnassé after a rather unhappy student sojourn in Paris, finds his country destroyed and destitute. This political denunciation of the problems of Independence proves fascinating through the discovery of the critical apparatus, so rich is the reading in different levels of understanding. Charles Nokan breaks new ground, freeing himself from the classic accounts of foreign sojourns as written, for example, by Aké Loba (1927-2012), winner of the Grand Prix littéraire d'Afrique noire for Kocoumbo, l'étudiant noir in 1961.
The statement
This opened the way for a bold and assertive literature, encouraged by several initiatives, such as the founding of the Association des écrivains de Côte d'Ivoire, of which Paul Ahizi was the first president from 1987 to 1996, or the launch of the Salon International du Livre d'Abidjan (SILA), which attracted over 175,000 visitors in 2019.
Côte d'Ivoire is one of the African countries with the highest literacy rate, facilitating the emergence of a dense publishing ground (Nouvelles éditions ivoiriennes, L'Harmattan Côte d'Ivoire, Éburnie, Les Classiques Ivoiriens, etc.) and the creation of numerous internationally recognized literary prizes. Communities of readers (Abidjan Lit) or writers (225nouvelles.com) are flourishing, and are not hesitating to seize modern communication tools to promote their passion, while, on the spot, slam is conquering open stages. Second- and third-generation authors, born in the 1950s and 1970s respectively, explore all styles. Children's literature, for example, flourished under the pen of Véronique Tadjo, born in Paris in 1955, but raised in her father's country, who devoted herself to it while pursuing her poetic research; under that of her contemporary Tanella Boni, who also won recognition for her novels, including Matins de couvre-feu, which won her the Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma in 2005; and under that of Fatou Keïta, who didn't hesitate to raise the issue of female circumcision in Rebelle (1998).
Comic strips, meanwhile, have been finding their audience since the 1970s, and are now well represented by Marguerite Abouet, the scriptwriter who brought to life the mischievous Akissi and Aya de Yopougon (Gallimard jeunesse), now the heroine of a cartoon, and by Jean-Louis Lacombe, creator of Monsieur Zézé, whose adventures have long brightened the pages of the newspaper Ivoire Dimanche.
While Isaïe Biton Koulibaly admits to a predilection for "genre literature", particularly romance, the no less prolific Camara Nangala pursues the path of humanism, while Koffi Kwahulé is fully committed to engaged theater. Finally, it's impossible to conclude without mentioning two new voices that deserve a wide audience: Josué Guébo, born in 1972 in Abidjan, who, inspired by his precocious taste for the works of Paul Verlaine and Aimé Césaire, tried his hand at writing competitions that led to his discovery. Today, he is the recipient of the prestigious Prix Bernard Dadié and Tchicaya U Tam'si, and of course Armand Gbaka-Brédé, better known to us by his nickname, Gauz. Debout-Payé, published by Le Nouvel Attila in 2014, sounds like a thunderclap. Through the eye of a security guard with a corrosive sense of humor, Gauz pinpoints both Françafrique and the French capital's dubious policy towards undocumented immigrants. Camarade Papa, published in 2018, is no less tender, and further confirms the author's sophisticated style.
