Bernard Dadié, the father of Ivorian literature

It is always delicate to place the foundations of a literature on the shoulders of one man, yet Bernard Dadié undoubtedly has the talent and charisma to bear such an honour.

Born in 1916, as a child he witnessed the excesses of colonization. His father Gabriel, although a naturalized French citizen as a result of services rendered during the First World War, hardly enjoyed the same rights and advantages as his white counterparts, which led him to resign from the colonial administration, thus awakening in his son a true awareness of injustice. At first angry with the classical school and preferring the school of nature, he then accompanied his father who had become a logger, Bernard Dadié eventually reconciled himself to teaching through the grace of reading and writing which opened new horizons for him and then joined the Willy Ponty Teacher Training School in Gorée.

He also continued to be interested in political issues, which is reflected in his inaugural work, Les Villes

(1933), which is recognized as the first written play in Côte d'Ivoire. In this text, the young man imagines personified cities that compete for the title of capital of the country, which is moved according to the wishes of the colonial power.

If Dadié began his career in the theatre, a genre to which he will remain strongly attached, it is because he follows the path opened by the students of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) who came to present the playlets they imagined at the EPS in Bingerville, but also because he is influenced by the oral tradition which, through tales and legends, carries literature in an ancestral way in Côte d'Ivoire. The reference is all the more marked in his second play, Assémien Déhylé, roi du Sanwi, in which he interweaves the dialogues of proverbs - to quote just one of them La rivière a beau déborder, l'oiseau a même déborder, l'oiseau toujours trouve un endroit

où se poser - thus marking the rhythm and entering into conversation with spectators who, through books, might not have had such easy access to his creations.

This work and the next one, Les prétendants rivaux

, give Franz Joseph d'Amon d'Aby the opportunity to take the stage. A few years later, in 1938, this schoolmate would create the Théâtre indigène with Germain Coffi Gadeau, ensuring the continuity of a genre that is decidedly closely linked to the Ivory Coast. Dadié's work was a great success and was performed all the way to Paris. For ten years, he worked at the IFAN (Institut Fondamental d'Afrique noire) in Dakar, and began to militate for the independence of his country. He will return there in 1947, his commitment within the RDA (African Democratic Rally) will earn him a prison sentence. After Independence was proclaimed in 1960, Dadié held official posts, including Minister of Culture, but he was prolific and never stopped writing. Climbié, published in 1952 and whose purely autobiographical character he refuted, is considered the first Ivorian novel, followed by Un Nègre à Paris in 1959, a tasty almost ethnographic visit of the French capital, and of course his Carnets de prison (1949-1950 ) finally published in 1974. The story does not say whether at IFAN he was close to Amadou Hampâté Bâ, who himself died in 1991 in Abidjan, but the famous quote from the latter who, celebrating the oral tradition, said that "in Africa, when an old man dies, it is a library that burns", seems tailor-made for Bernard Dadié, the instigator of the transition to the written word, who will breathe his last at the honorable age of 103 years.

Freedom through literature

Decolonization in Africa meant hopes for a new world, which were undermined by conflict and corruption, such are the recurring themes addressed by another illustrious writer, Ahmadou Kourouma. Of Malinke origin, born in Boundiali in 1927, he had many stopovers before he died in Lyon in 2003. He left behind him a work that proved to be of importance from his first novel, Les Soleils des indépendances

, published in 1968 by the Presses de l'Université de Montréal and republished two years later by the Seuil publishing house in Paris. In this story, he invents a region that does not exist, but strangely reminds us of his own, the Ebony Coast, where Fama Doumbouya, a deposed prince who inherited only a card that automatically affiliated him to the Parti Unique, is camped. An uncompromising fresco, this text also evokes the sad fate reserved for women.

Kourouma continued his political work under the guise of fiction with Monnè, outrages et défis (Seuil, 1990), in which he delivered his vision of a colonialism that too often rhymes with compromise. Eight years later, En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages, a satire of a despot who believes he enjoys half-divine, half-magical protection, is crowned by the Prix du Livre Inter. It is to tragic realism that he dedicates the last book published during his lifetime, Allah is not obliged

, Prix Renaudot et Goncourt des Lycéens de l'année 2000. Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia, where little Birahima wants to join his aunt after his mother's death, display their real names. Unfortunately, war reigns and the child will find himself on the road enlisted as a soldier.

If freedom, or even true independence from the former colonizing countries, does not seem to be totally in place in reality, literature offers new spaces to explore, which is what the "novel N'zassa", whose founding father is Jean-Marie Adiaffi (1941-1999), is all about. He takes his inspiration from a term in the Agni

language, which refers to a patchwork of cloth pieces, to illustrate his process, which uses the juxtaposition of different genres and idioms, attempting to provide a response that can only be political to the delicate question of whether African literature can be written in the European language of the former colonist.

Jean-Marie Adiaffi, who for a long time was the author of 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

(Hatier, 1980). It told the story of a prince, Mélédouman, who, not having in his possession the proper document to prove his identity, was molested and thrown into prison by a police force that was a little too swift. Adiaffi wanted to conquer "the road to liberation" through a trilogy that would be written in three literary forms. He did not have time to tackle theatre, which became one of the favourite domains of another innovator, Charles Nokan. The man was born in Yamoussoukro in 1936, studied in France and then taught in Abidjan, a much more limpid career than his work, which from Le Soleil noir point in 1962, takes care not to define precisely to which genre it belongs, leaving the reader and the critic free to decide how best to approach this unclassifiable genre. If he plays with categorization - short story, play, epistolary or even autobiographical novel - Nokan also plays with didascalies and typographical rules. The 64 "paintings" follow in the footsteps of a young African who, on returning to Gnassé after a rather unhappy student stay in Paris, finds his country destroyed and miserable. This political denunciation of the problems of Independence proves fascinating through the discovery of the critical apparatus, so rich is the reading of different levels of understanding. Charles Nokan opens a path and frees himself from the classic accounts of his stays abroad, as was the case, for example, when he wrote Aké Loba (1927-2012), winner of the Grand Prix littéraire d'Afrique noire for Kocoumbo, the black student in 1961.

The statement

The breach is open for a bold and assertive literature, encouraged by several initiatives, such as the founding of the Association of Writers of Côte d'Ivoire, of which Paul Ahizi will be the first president from 1987 to 1996, or the launch of the Abidjan International Book Fair (SILA), which counted more than 175,000 visitors in 2019.

Côte d'Ivoire is one of the African countries with one of the highest literacy rates, which facilitates the emergence of a dense publishing ground (Nouvelles éditions ivoiriennes, L'Harmattan Côte d'Ivoire, Éburnie, Les Classiques Ivoiriens, etc.) and the creation of many internationally recognized literary prizes. Communities of readers (Abidjan Lit) or writers (225nouvelles.com) flourish and do not hesitate to seize modern communication tools to promote their passion, when, on the spot, the slam conquers the open stages. Second and third generation authors, born in the 50s and 70s respectively, explore all styles. Thus, literature for young people is flourishing under the pen of Véronique Tadjo, born in Paris in 1955, but raised in her father's country, who devotes herself to it while continuing her poetic research, under that of her contemporary Tanella Boni, who has also become known for her novels, including Matins de couvre-feu, which won her the Ahmadou-Kourouma Prize in 2005, or under that of Fatou Keïta, who did not hesitate to raise the theme of excision in Rebelle

(1998).

Moreover, the comic strip is beginning to find its audience since the 1970s, it is now well represented by Marguerite Abouet, screenwriter who gave life to the facetious Akissi and Aya de Yopougon (Gallimard jeunesse) who became 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

. If, for his part, Isaie Biton Koulibaly admits a predilection for "genre literature", including romance, the no less prolific Camara Nangala continues the path of humanism, while Koffi Kwahulé is fully invested in the theater engaged. Finally, it is impossible to conclude without mentioning two new voices that deserve a wide audience: Josué Guébo, born in 1972 in Abidjan, who, carried by his precocious taste for the work of Paul Verlaine and that of Aimé Césaire, successfully tried his hand at the writing competitions that introduced him to the world. He is now the recipient of the prestigious Bernard Dadié and Tchicaya U Tam'si prizes, and of course Armand Gbaka-Brédé, who is more familiar to us by his nickname, Gauz. The publication in 2014 of Debout-Payé 's Le Nouvel Attila editions sounds like a thunderbolt. Through the eye of a vigilante with a corrosive sense of humour, both Françafrique and the dubious policy of the French capital towards undocumented immigrants are pinned down. Comrade Papa, published in 2018, is no less tender and affirms all the more the author's sought-after style.