Bernard Binlin Dadié
Bernard Binlin Dadié (10 January 1916 – 9 March 2019) was an
Côte d'Ivoire
from 1977 to 1986.
Biography
Dadié was born in
Grand Bassam and then the Ecole William Ponty.[1] He worked for the French government in Dakar, Senegal, at the Institut français d’Afrique noire, then returned to his homeland in 1947.[2] He became part of its movement for independence. Before Côte d'Ivoire's independence in 1960, he was detained for sixteen months for taking part in demonstrations that opposed the French colonial government.[1]
In his writing, influenced by his experiences of
F. J. Amon d'Aby, he founded the Cercle Culturel et Folklorique de la Côte d'Ivoire (CCFCI) in 1953.[3] In 1955, he published a collection called The Black Cloth: A Collection of African Folktales
(in French).
Dadié was rediscovered with the release of Steven Spielberg's 1997 movie Amistad[4] which features the music by American composer John Williams. The choral text of Dadié's poem, "Dry Your Tears, Afrika" (“Sèche Tes Pleurs“) is used for a song of the same name. Published in 1967, the poem is about coming home to Africa.[5]
Dadié was the brother of politician Hortense Aka-Anghui.[6] He turned 100 in January 2016[7] and died in Abidjan in March 2019 at the age of 103.[8]
Awards
Dadié received several awards in recognition of his literary career, with one of the last being the Grand Prix des Mécènes of the GPLA in 2016.[9]
Main works
- Afrique debout (1950)
- Légendes africaines (1954)
- Le pagne noir (1955)
- La ronde des jours (1956)
- Climbié (1956)
- Un Nègre à Paris (1959)
- Patron de New York (1964)
- Hommes de tous les continents (1967)
- La ville où nul ne meurt (1969)
- Monsieur Thôgô-Gnini (1970)
- Les voix dans le vent (1970)
- Béatrice du Congo (1970)
- Îles de tempête (1973)
- Papassidi maître-escroc (1975)
- Mhoi cheul (1979)
- Opinions d'un nègre (1979)
- Les belles histoires de Kacou Ananzè
- Commandant Taureault et ses nègres (1980)
- Les jambes du fils de Dieu (1980)
- Carnets de prison (1981) – details his time in prison
- Les contes de Koutou-as-Samala (1982)
- Escale dans le temps : le combat pour la dignité de l'Afrique (2017)
References
- ^ ISBN 0841906408.
- JSTOR 3992675.
- ISBN 978-0-415-23019-3
- ^ "Amistad (1997)". IMDb.
- ^ ""Seche Tes Pleurs" de Bernard Binlin Dadié / "Dry your Tears Afrika" by Bernard B. Dadié". African Heritage. 19 December 2012. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-8108-7389-6.
- ^ Staff (14 February 2016). "Littérature: Bernard Dadié, l'orfèvre des vers, fête ses 100 ans d'existence avec un prix mondial (Portrait)" (in French). abidjan.net. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
- ^ Deuil : l'écrivain Bernard Dadié est décédé
- ^ "Cameroun, Bernard Dadié: Winner of Grand Prix des Mécènes :: CAMEROON – Camer.be". 21 February 2017.
External links
- Les Lignes de nos mains/The Lines of our hands by Bernard Dadie translated by Dr. Y., Afrolegends.com and cited from La Ronde des Jours edition Pierre Seghers, 1956.
- Biography, "Bernard Dadié: Les couleurs du monde" (in French)
- Reviews of One Way: Bernard Dadie Observes America, and An African in Paris Archived 21 June 2017 at the Wayback Machine