Cuentos del Sahel
BIRAGO DIOP
Published in November 2006 in Spanish
Original title: "Les nouveaux contes d'Amadou Koumba"
In Sub-Saharan Africa every fable and every fairy tale expresses a moral truth in a visual way. Concurrently these stories depict knowledge of the world and a lesson in social life. The fairy tale immerges in cosmic powers in the form of myths whereas the fable more often illustrates the beginning of a moral practice or a proverb.
Let it be in the fables or in the fairy tales, but Birago Diop in person of Amadou Koumba just translates the dialectics of life with the help of interacting vital powers which result in the life of the universe itself. Life faces anarchy and death. Human beings, situated in the middle of the world, are the real protagonists of this wide "Human comedy".
Birago Diop (1906 - 1989) obtained a veterinarian training - a work making him travel a lot through West Africa in times of French colonization. Short after the initiators of the "negritud" had emerged, he published his first poems and fairy tales. The numerous contacts to the "griots" allowed him to gain an excellent material for those fairy tailes: "Les contes d'Amadou Koumba" (1947), "Les nouveaux contes d'Amadou Koumba" (1958), "Contes et lavanes" (1963).
The poet Birago Diop is faithful to a classical form and a lyric topic "Luerres et Lueurs" (1960). After his country - Senegal - has been declared independent, he was nominated ambassador in Tunis. The author Birago Diop has always been loyal to oral tradition mixing humor and realism.