SOURCE: "The Political Context of Senghor's 'Elégie pour Georges Pompidou'," in Critical Perspectives on Léopold Sédar Senghor, edited by Janice Spleth, Three Continents Press, 1993, pp. 217-28.

In the following essay, Spleth contends that Senghor's poem denotes his expanding political horizons.

Senghor's early poems are united in their political vision by the challenges and dreams characteristic of the end of the colonial period. They focus on the injustices of a specific political system and look forward to the creation of a new egalitarian society. With the coming of independence to Senegal in 1960 and the restructuring of the global political reality, many of the constraints that shaped the old visions had weakened or disappeared entirely, and it is only to be expected that in his later poetry, the poet-president, reacting to this transition, would reflect new political perspectives and begin to develop a new vision of the...