From orality to writing
It's no coincidence that the name of Pierre Tchicaya de Boaempire (1894-1964) is associated with the collection of Contes des peuples du Kouilou that Delphine Baya published with L'Harmattan in 2021. This pastor, originally from the Kingdom of Loango, is indeed considered one of the fathers of Brazza-Congolese literature, as much for his poetry as for his work in favor of Vili, the Bantu language that he strove to transcribe in order to safeguard its secrets, from its customs to its proverbs and legends. He is often linked with the name of Emmanuel Damongo-Dadet, a politician who shared his love for their country and its oral tradition. Yet it is the name of Jean Malonga that still resonates in people's memories today. Born in 1907 in what was then French Congo, he too worked on collecting legends, which he compiled in three volumes. Despite his strong involvement in the public sphere - he was a senator in the Fourth Republic from 1948 to 1955 - he found the time to take a decisive step forward by writing his own fiction. His first novel was republished by the dynamic Brazzaville publisher Hémar (available from Présence Africaine in Paris) in 2014. Sixty-one years after its publication, Cœur d'Aryenne retains its modernity and universality, depicting the drama of a couple punished for loving each other when those around them objected. Jean Malonga's second novel, La Légende de M'Pfoumou Ma Mazono, was adapted for the cinema by Sébastien Kamba in 1974 under the title La Rançon d'une alliance.
Then there's Paul Lomami Tshibamba, although he has always oscillated between the two banks of the river: born in Brazzaville in 1914, he preferred Kinshasa as the setting for his first novel Ah! Mbongo (L'Harmattan). However, during one of his stays in the Congo that interests us here, he played a fundamental role by taking over the direction of Liaison magazine, the official "organ of the cultural circles of French Equatorial Africa", which appeared from 1950 to 1960. Between its columns were published a whole generation of writers who gained renown before allowing themselves the freedom of longer texts. While this publication does not explain all the petulance of literature from Congo-Brazzaville, it does go some way to justifying it, as it provided a springboard unprecedented on the African continent. Patrice Joseph Lhoni took charge of Liaison in its final year of publication. During his short life - he died in 1976 at the age of 47 - he was above all director of the Centre congolais du Théâtre, a field in which he excelled, as demonstrated by the three volumes of his plays published by Acoria. Jean-Pierre Makouta-Mboukou (1929-2012) was also a playwright, but not only: the wide range of literary genres he explored (collections of poetry, novels, literary and political essays...), and his intelligence, earned him comparisons with Victor Hugo. The brilliant publisher Honoré Champion has reprinted his Enfers et paradis des littératures antiques aux littératures nègres : illustration comparée de deux mondes surnaturels, while some of his texts are still available from L'Harmattan: L'Homme-aux-pataugas, Cantate de l'ouvrier, Les Exilés de la forêt vierge ou le grand complot... Two years his junior, Tchicaya U Tam'si offers Brazzaville-Congolese literature another dimension: he is considered one of Africa's greatest poets. Born Gérald-Félix, he chose a significant pseudonym in Vili, U Tam'si meaning "he who speaks for his country", and it was to Rimbaud that he was compared as early as Le Mauvais sang (L'Harmattan), his first collection published at the age of 24. After carrying his voice and that of his people to France, he returned to his country when independence came in 1960. His writings then entered the field of so-called decolonization literature(Le Ventre, Présence africaine), without resonating with the Négritude movement. His early death in 1988 did not extinguish the flame, and Gallimard paid him a fitting tribute by republishing his Œuvres complètes between 2013 and 2018.
After Independence
The difficult post-independence years didn't get the better of literature, even if some writers chose to leave or postpone their writing. Sylvain Bemba, for example, devoted himself first and foremost to journalism, before turning to theater (L'Homme qui tua le crocodile, Un foutu monde pour un blanchisseur trop honnête, etc.) and then to novels in 1979 with Rêves portatifs, followed by Le Soleil est parti à M'Pemba and Léopolis. As for Mambou Aimée Gnali, she didn't take up the pen until 2001, at an honorable age of several decades. Nevertheless, she is a great female voice to be discovered without delay by Gallimard with Beto na beto: le poids de la tribu, a book that evokes the post-colonial era and was hailed by Henri Lopes, as well as L'Or des femmes, which denounces the rituals used against young girls, and through them the conflict between tradition and modernity. For his part, Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard never stopped writing, from his 30th birthday in 1968 until his last days in 2009, composing a valuable poetic and contemplative bibliography that has earned him many honors. Editions Présence Africaine has preserved several of his titles in its catalog, including Le Dialogue des Plateaux, L'Ordre des phénomènes, and Le Masque du chacal, in which he spoke out against the civil war that tore the Republic of Congo apart.
This same war cost Emmanuel Dongala his American exile. Then director of the Théâtre de l'Éclair and dean of Brazzaville's Marien Ngouabi University, he lost everything in 1997, owing his salvation only to his friendship with Philip Roth, who supported his request for asylum in the United States. Today, Dongala is known the world over, thanks in particular to the film adaptation of Johnny chien méchant, the terrifying story of a child soldier. Most of his work has been published in France by Actes Sud: Photo de groupe au bord du fleuve, Le Feu des origines (Grand Prix Littéraire d'Afrique noire 1988) and La Sonate à Bridgetower. The playwright Maxime N'Débéka was also forced into exile, a journey to France that sounded like a repetition, since in the early 70s, one of his poems had already landed him in political trouble. His plays (published by Obsidiane: Toi, le possible chimérique, L'Oseille, les citrons; published by Lansman: Le Diable à longue queue) echo his torments. On the stage too, Sony Labou Tansi - born on the other side of the Congo River in 1947, but a Brazzavillois by adoption - was widely applauded and accumulated awards that earned him international recognition. Tansi was also a novelist: La Vie et demie, which describes an imaginary dictatorship called Katamalanasie, was reissued by Points in 2022, a fitting recognition for a book considered one of the greatest in African literature, yet somewhat forgotten after the tragic death of its author who, deprived of a passport, was unable to benefit from treatment for the HIV virus that killed him in 1995. At the request of Radio-France, Tansi also wrote Le Coup de vieux, a "drama in two breaths" and four hands, composed with Caya Makhélé. Caya Makhélé, a native of Pointe-Noire, went on to a successful theatrical career, winning the Grand Prix Tchicaya U Tam'si for La Fable du cloître des cimetières (L'Harmattan). Most of his other plays can be found at Acoria: L'Étrange destin de Batouala, Les 7 métamorphoses de Mytho, Métaphores picturales, Les Matins de Prague...
New generations
Although they had to face numerous conflicts, sometimes joining the diaspora, these authors born in the second half of the 20th century proved to be as vigorous and innovative as their elders. We might mention Daniel Biyaoula's (1953-2014) first novel, L'Impasse (Présence africaine), which evoked the difficulty of navigating between two cultures and was awarded the Grand Prix littéraire d'Afrique noire in 1997, or Léopold Congo-Mbemba (1959-2013), who devoted his entire life to promoting poetry and left behind some sumptuous collections still available from L'Harmattan (Déjà, le sol est semé, Le Chant de Sama N'déye, Le Tombeau transparent), or Gabriel Okoundji, who continues to explore the art of poetry and to question literary matters, as demonstrated by De l'identité culturelle congolaise, a book (Cana, 2017) featuring two of his lectures.
Two other names have become much more familiar to us: Alain Mabanckou, of course, but also Wilfried N'Sondé, who was born in Brazzaville in 1968, spent his youth in France, where he returned to settle after more than 25 years in Germany. Both were quickly and amply rewarded for their books, whose success went far beyond the borders of their native and adopted countries. In 2006, for example, Mabanckou won the Prix Renaudot for Mémoires de porc-épic (Seuil), after having been awarded the Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie the previous year, while N'Sondé received the same award as well as the Prix Senghor de la création littéraire for his first novel, Le Cœur des enfants léopards (Actes sud, 2007). His abundant body of work also includes Un océan, deux mers, trois continents, for which he won the prestigious Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma in 2018. In conclusion, the new generation seems determined to keep the flame alive, if the literary standards of Dieudonné Niangouna, a playwright born in Brazzaville in 1976, are anything to go by. The fine publisher L'Œil d'or is a fervent supporter of his novels, and has already published Papa tombe dans la lune in 2022 and La Mise en papa in 2023. At just 29, Fann Attiki, from Pointe-Noire, also made a name for himself with his first title, Cave 72, a realistic fresco of contemporary Congo-Brazzaville published by Lattès in 2021.
