Open Access Kent State (OAKS)

In his poems about World War II, Senghor reveals a dualism in the blend of cosmopolitanism and anticolonialism that appears in his depiction of the disasters that the German army brought to Paris during the early years of the conflict. While he empathizes with the suffering that the attack brought to France, Senghor does not forget the similar pain that the French inflicted on the Senegalese during colonialism. Counterbalancing his cosmopolitan sympathy for the French victims of Nazi invasion, Senghor depicts the similar kind of racism and dispossession that the French perpetrated against Senegalese people and the Tirailleurs during the war.