Bernard Binlin Dadié (10 January 1916 – 9 March 2019) was an Ivorian novelist, playwright, poet, and governmental administrator. Starting in 1957, he held many governmental positions in the

Côte d'Ivoire Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest city and ...

, including Minister of Culture from 1977 to 1986.

Biography

Dadié was born in

Assinie Assinie-Mafia is a coastal resort town in south-eastern Ivory Coast. It is a sub-prefecture of Adiaké Department in Sud-Comoé Region, Comoé District. Geography Assinie-Mafia is located 80 kilometres east of Abidjan along the coast of th ...

, Côte d'Ivoire, and attended the local Catholic school in Grand Bassam and then the Ecole William Ponty. He worked for the French government in

Dakar, Senegal Dakar ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of Senegal. The department of Dakar has a population of 1,278,469, and the population of the Dakar metropolitan area was at 4.0 million in 2023. Dakar is situated on the Cap-Vert peninsula, the w ...

, at the Institut français d’Afrique noire, then returned to his homeland in 1947. 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. In his writing, influenced by his experiences of

colonialism Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism c ...

as a child, Dadié attempts to connect the messages of traditional African folktales with the contemporary world. With

Germain Coffi Gadeau Germain may refer to: *Germain (name), including a list of people with the name *Germain Arena, the former name of an arena in Estero, Florida *Germain Racing, a NASCAR racing team *Germain Amphitheater, a concert venue in Columbus, Ohio *Paris Sa ...

and F. J. Amon d'Aby, he founded the Cercle Culturel et Folklorique de la Côte d'Ivoire (CCFCI) in 1953.Wangar Wa Nyateũ-Waigwa, in

Simon Gikandi Simon E. Gikandi (born 30 September 1960) is a Kenyan Literature Professor and Postcolonial scholar. He is the Class of 1943 University Professor of English and Chair, Department of English at Princeton University. He is perhaps best known for h ...

, ed., ''Encyclopedia of African Literature''. Routledge; 2002; 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'' which features the music by American composer

John Williams John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932)Nylund, Rob (November 15, 2022)Classic Connection review, ''WBOI'' ("For the second time this year, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic honored American composer, conductor, and arranger John Williams, who w ...

. 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. Dadié was the brother of politician Hortense Aka-Anghui. He

turned 100 A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100. Because life expectancies at birth worldwide are well below 100, the term is invariably associated with longevity. The United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarian ...

in January 2016 and died in

Abidjan Abidjan ( , ; N'Ko script, N'ko: ߊߓߌߖߊ߲߬) is the largest city and the former capital of Ivory Coast. As of the Demographics of Ivory Coast, 2021 census, Abidjan's population was 6.3 million, which is 21.5 percent of the overall population ...

in March 2019 at the age of 103 leaving his two cats behind him.

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.

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

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.

* ttp://www.unc.edu/~ottotwo/dadie.html Reviews of ''One Way: Bernard Dadie Observes America'', and ''An African in Paris'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Dadie, Bernard 1916 births 2019 deaths 20th-century dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Ivorian novelists 20th-century poets 20th-century male writers Government ministers of Ivory Coast Ivorian men centenarians Ivorian dramatists and playwrights Ivorian male writers Ivorian poets Male dramatists and playwrights Male novelists Male poets People from Comoé District People of French West Africa Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire winners