Black Woman

by Léopold Senghor

Black Woman Summary

“Black Woman” is a poem first published in 1945 and written by Léopold Senghor.
The poem is written from the first-person perspective and in free verse, meaning
that it has no set rhyme scheme.

In the poem, Senghor personifies Africa as a beautiful woman, who is

sometimes a maternal figure and sometimes a lover.
In the final stanza of the poem, the destruction of Africa’s beauty is
foreshadowed, and the speaker imagines that “jealous fate” will turn the
beauty “to ashes.”

Summary
Last Updated on February 22, 2023, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 919

"Black Woman" is a poem first published in 1945 and written by Léopold Sédhar
Senghor. Senghor was a leading figure of the Negritude movement, an anti-
colonial organization that originated in France and set out to celebrate and reclaim
African identity and culture. In the poem, Senghor personifies Africa as a beautiful
woman; his vision of her is multi-faceted, imagining her as maternal, earthly,
divine, and sensual all at once. The poem is written from the first-person
perspective and in free verse—meaning that it has no set rhyme scheme.

The first stanza comprises just a single line, "Naked woman, black woman." This
line—or a slight variant of it—is repeated often throughout the poem. The woman
embodies herself but is also a symbolic personification of the African continent:
both are beautiful in their blackness, and her nudity indicates a proud and
shameless knowledge of this beauty.

The "life" of Africa is blackness, and its "form" is "beauty." This assertion in the
second stanza ties beauty with blackness, synonymizing the two concepts and
inextricably linking them to the continent as a whole as well as those who inhabit
it. This linkage is repeated for emphasis throughout the poem, reaffirming the
speaker’s correlation of "beauty" as the necessary output of blackness and African
life.
In the third stanza, the speaker describes his emotional tie to this woman and the
land she represents: he has "grown up" in the "shadow" of Africa and remembers
her gentle hands "laid over (his) eyes." Here, the personification of Africa takes on
a maternal cast, a mothering figure who has reared the speaker, her son.

Moving into the fourth stanza, the speaker transitions from memory to present
experience, describing his journey to Africa. He stands "high up on the sun-baked
pass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon." Before him, is his "Promised
Land," the land in whose "shadow" he has forever lived. Seeing Africa close up, he
is struck by its beauty, which wrenches his heart “like the flash of an eagle.”
The single-line fifth stanza, "Naked woman, dark woman," is a variation of the
poem's opening line. The repetition emphasizes the two key characteristics of
Africa: her nakedness and her darkness.

In the sixth stanza, the speaker describes Africa much as one might describe a
lover. He describes her "mouth making lyrical [his] mouth," suggesting two lovers
kissing and characterizes the African savannah as "shuddering beneath the East
Wind's / eager caresses." The words "shuddering" and "caresses" conjure sexual
undertones. Here, Senghor suggests that African culture, symbolized by the "tom-
tom" drums, has endured.

With the focus turned to endurance, Senghor uses the seventh stanza to transition
toward colonial commentary, writing of the "Conqueror's fingers." The reference
here is to the European colonizers who forcibly ruled much of Africa in the
nineteenth century. Specifically, Senghor—who was born in Senegal—is likely
referencing the French colonialism that dramatically affected his home country.

The speaker returns to the musical theme in the eighth stanza, where Africa's
voice is described as a "solemn contralto" and "the spiritual song of the Beloved."
Presumably, Africa's song is solemn because of the European colonizers; yet even
through this oppression, Africa's maternal instincts endure, and she sings for her
"Beloved" Africans who have been oppressed or uprooted.

Following these references to European colonization, there is yet another variation

of the line that began the poem: "Naked woman, dark woman." The repetition of
this line at this point in the poem implies that Africa will endure through and
beyond even the toughest of times.
:
In the tenth stanza, the speaker again returns to the beauty of Africa,
encapsulated in the final words of the stanza, "pearls are stars on the / night of
your skin." Africa here is presented as a beautiful woman adorned with precious
and beautiful "pearls." The fact that the pearls are described metaphorically as
"stars" suggests that Africa's beauty is heavenly, enduring, and vast. Moreover,
the comparison of Black skin to night evokes a sense of infinite omnipresence,
calling Black beauty a facet of existence as irrefutable and lovely as the night sky.

Africa's beauty is further described in stanza eleven, as "the glinting of red / gold
against your skin." The color imagery here—of "red" and "gold" respectively—
connotes heat, passion, elegance, and wealth. It conjures rich images of luxury
and comfort, calling for a vision of African beauty that lingers in modern
trappings.

In stanza twelve, the speaker describes how he is impacted by Africa's beauty. He

says that his cares are "lightened by the neighboring suns of your eyes." The
imagery of the suns here connotes the intensity and vitality of Africa's beauty. The
vision of African glory tempers his fears, as if his worries are inexplicably tied to
the continent’s nature, and by merely gazing upon its glory, he is healed.

In the thirteenth and penultimate stanza, the speaker declares that he shall
continue to sing of and celebrate Africa's beauty but ominously declares his fear
that her beauty may one day pass. However, he hopes that, through his singing,
he can make Africa's beauty "Eternal."

In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker foreshadows the desecration of
Africa’s beauty, imagining that "jealous fate" will turn it "to ashes." Perhaps the
speaker, in the concluding stanzas of the poem, imagines this fate because he
fears Africa’s beauty is too intense and too precious not to be ravaged and
exploited once more by the aforementioned "Conqueror's fingers."

Cite this page as follows:

"Black Woman - Summary" eNotes Publishing Ed. eNotes Editorial. eNotes.com,

Inc. eNotes.com 26 Feb. 2023 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/black-
woman#summary-summary-862239>

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