Prayer to the Masks

“Prayer to the Masks” is a poem by influential Senegalese poet and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor, published in 1945 in his collection Chants d’ombre (Songs of Shadow). Senghor often used his work to illuminate African history and contemplate the consequences of colonialism. Educated in Paris, Senghor was a founding member of the artistic and political movement Négritude, which emphasized pride in African and Black identity and history, which he practiced through his poetry. With “Prayer to the Masks,” Senghor looks back on the history of his people and its troubled state. Turmoil and exploitation dominate sections of the poem, but Senghor ends with an optimistic message. Despite hardship, and the prejudices to which they’re subjected, his people are strong and capable, able to create new beauty and prosperity.

Poet Biography

Léopold Sédar Senghor was born in 1906 in Joal, a town outside of Dakar, the capital of Senegal. His father was a successful merchant and businessman, and his mother was a devout Christian with Fula ancestry (one of largest ethnic groups in Africa). In his childhood, Senghor dreamt of being a priest but was also drawn to French literature. An adept student, he won a scholarship to study in Paris, where he studied French grammar and later obtained a teaching position. While living in Europe, Senghor and other Black intellectuals grappled with racism, inspiring them to begin a new artistic and social movement, Négritude, which aimed to promote pride in one’s African culture, history, and identity. Despite facing racism in his adoptive home, in 1939 Senghor fought for the French army in World War II. The following year, he was taken prisoner during Germany’s invasion of France. Senghor was held captive for approximately two years, during which time he wrote many poems he’d later publish in his first collection, Chants d’ombre.

Senghor returned to teaching after the war but became progressively involved in politics. He was elected to numerous political positions in Senegal, steadily climbing the ranks as his home country sought to gain independence from France. A socialist ideologically, Senghor maintained a close relationship with France and the West, believing there was a peaceful and cohesive way to live with his country’s former colonizers. His political success reached its apex when, in 1960, he became the first elected president of the newly independent Republic of Senegal, a position he held until 1980. Politically and artistically, Senghor demonstrated a complex perspective on history, assimilation, and global politics. His poetry, like his politics, critiques colonization while still achieving an optimistic tone, always hopeful for a brighter future and acknowledging the richness of African history. He died in 2001, at the age of 95, and is regarded as one of the most significant African figureheads in modern history.

Poem Text

Masks! Oh Masks! 

Black mask, red mask, you black and white masks, 

Rectangular masks through whom the spirit breathes, 

I greet you in silence! 

And you too, my panterheaded ancestor. 

You guard this place, that is closed to any feminine laughter, to any mortal smile. 

You purify the air of eternity, here where I breathe the air of my fathers. 

Masks of maskless faces, free from dimples and wrinkles. 

You have composed this image, this my face that bends 

over the altar of white paper. 

In the name of your image, listen to me! 

Now while the Africa of despotism is dying – it is the agony of a pitiable princess, 

Just like Europe to whom she is connected through the 

naval. 

Now turn your immobile eyes towards your children who 

have been called 

And who sacrifice their lives like the poor man his last garment 

So that hereafter we may cry ‘here’ at the rebirth of the world being the leaven that the white flour needs. 

For who else would teach rhythm to the world that has 

died of machines and cannons? 

For who else should ejaculate the cry of joy, that arouses the dead and the wise in a new dawn? 

Say, who else could return the memory of life to men with a torn hope? 

They call us cotton heads, and coffee men, and oily men.

They call us men of death. 

But we are the men of the dance whose feet only gain 

power when they beat the hard soil.

Senghor, Léopold. “Prayer to the Masks.” 1945. All Poetry.

Summary

A narrator calls out to various masks—black, red, white—and the rectangular masks, which spirits breathe through. The narrator is exclamatory, yelling, but also greets the masks silently. The narrator calls out to other ancestors, who stand guard, shielding the afterlife from femininity, joy, and mortality. The ancestors cleanse the eternal air, and the narrator breathes in the air of past fathers. The masks can be found on maskless faces, and the masks are free of impurities and wrinkles. The masks have helped compose the narrator’s own face, which hovers over a page of paper, writing.

The narrator cries out to the masks again, asking them to listen. Africa is changing. Those that wield power cruelly are fading, sad royalty dying out in agony. Europe is changing too, and the two continents are connected, like a fetus to a mother. The narrator asks the masks to look closer at the people of Africa. They sacrifice, even when impoverished. As the world is reborn, it is the people of Africa that can stand at the center. They are the nutrition the world needs. They can teach the world rhythm again, a world that has been lost to machinery and weapons. Who else, the narrator asks, can spread joy that awakens the dead and inspires the living to create a new world? It is Africans who can bring back the sensation of living to a world without hope. They might be called slurs, seen as mere laborers and bringers of death, but Africans are full of life. They’re full of dance. As they dance and beat the soil of the earth, they only become more powerful.