Dance of Silhouettes: A Critical Exploration of Sauve-Gérard Ngoma Malanda’s Poetic Revolution
In the bustling literary landscape of contemporary African poetry, a remarkable voice emerges from Cameroon, challenging conventions and redefining the very essence of poetic language. Sauve-Gérard Ngoma Malanda‘s collection Danse des silhouettes (Dance of Silhouettes), published this year by Editions Ndze, represents not merely a compilation of poems but a profound philosophical inquiry into the nature of language, beauty, and human experience.
Spanning 82 pages, this meticulously structured work divides into two substantial parts, each containing a prologue, an epilogue, and twelve poems written in free verse. But what truly sets this collection apart? How does Malanda transform ordinary language into something transcendent, and why does his work resonate with such compelling urgency in our contemporary moment?
The Architecture of a Poetic Universe
Walking through the pages of Danse des silhouettes feels like entering a carefully constructed universe where every element serves a deliberate purpose. The two-part structure creates a natural rhythm, a breathing pattern that guides the reader through contrasting emotional landscapes. Each section’s prologue and epilogue function as philosophical bookends, framing the twelve poems that form the heart of each division.
This architectural precision recalls the classical traditions of poetry while simultaneously subverting them. Malanda understands that form must serve content, and his structural choices create a container potent enough to hold the explosive linguistic energy contained within. The free verse format liberates the poems from metrical constraints while maintaining an internal musicality that echoes long after the pages are closed.
The Sacred and The Profane: Reimagining Poetic Language
Mexican poet Octavio Paz once observed that “Men use words; the poet serves them,” a distinction that finds vivid embodiment in Malanda’s work. Where ordinary language functions as mere utility, Malanda’s poetic language approaches the sacred. He doesn’t simply communicate; he consecrates.
Consider the opening prologue, “Danse ma vie” (Dance My Life), where life becomes “a basket of snakes,” “a basket of crimes,” and “a basket of verbs.” These are not mere metaphors but transformative linguistic acts that reconfigure our understanding of existence. When the poet describes seeing his dreams “take hits at point-blank range,” we feel the violence of disappointed hopes in our bones.
Malanda’s language frequently elevates the mundane to the magnificent, much like Homer’s “rosy-fingered dawn” transcends the simple mechanics of sunrise. Beautiful lips become “coral” and breasts “alabaster,” echoing Charles Baudelaire’s celebration of beauty that “reigns in the azure like an misunderstood sphinx.” Yet Malanda is no mere imitator; he builds upon these traditions while forging something distinctly his own.
The Lexical Alchemist: Between Rarefied and Common Tongue
What makes a word poetic? Is it inherent in the word itself, or does poetry emerge from how words are arranged, juxtaposed, and recontextualized? Malanda explores this fundamental question with the precision of a linguistic scientist and the soul of a mystic.
At times, he employs rare, almost arcane vocabulary, reminiscent of Stéphane Mallarmé’s challenging syntax in poems like “Ses purs ongles très haut dédiant leur onyx” (Her pure nails highly dedicating their onyx). In “Les silhouettes de l’espérance” (The Silhouettes of Hope), the poet wonders if time has “drunk hemlock,” questioning temporal reality itself as something that “comes from further than the river source that irrigates his dreams.”
Yet this elevated language exists in dynamic tension with strikingly common expressions. Words like “fragile memory” and “silhouette” ground the poetry in accessible human experience. Malanda follows in the tradition of Henri Michaux, who incorporated vernacular terms like “triturate,” “bawl out,” and “sausage” into his poetic lexicon. Since Arthur Rimbaud dared to mention “ulcer on the anus” in “Anadyomène Venus,” the gates have been open for poetry to embrace the full spectrum of human vocabulary.
The Music of Meaning: Phonetic Innovation and Syntactic Rebellion
Malanda’s poetic labor extends beyond word choice to the very fabric of linguistic sound and structure. His work demonstrates what Roland Barthes would call “the pleasure of the text”—the visceral enjoyment of language as material substance.
Consider the line “La vie est un panier à serpents” (Life is a basket of snakes), where the sibilant sounds create an auditory experience of the very serpents hissing “on your heads.” This phonetic play transcends individual words to encompass entire phrases, creating a musicality that operates independently of semantic meaning while enhancing it.
Traditional syntax becomes another frontier for innovation. Like the hermetic poetry of Mallarmé, Malanda frequently disrupts conventional grammatical structures, forcing language to accommodate new patterns of thought. This syntactic rebellion isn’t mere experimentation for its own sake; it represents an authentic attempt to make language adequate to experiences that defy straightforward expression.
The Subversion of Common Expression
Perhaps Malanda’s most distinctive talent lies in his ability to take familiar expressions and twist them into startling new configurations. Lines like “I pissed in the mouth of love,” “A suitor to rival,” “Let my silhouettes dress in life,” and “I never knew your joys” demonstrate this transformative power.
These aren’t random provocations but carefully calculated linguistic operations that detach words from their conventional meanings and charge them with new significance. The poet becomes what the ancient Greeks called a “maker”—not just of poems but of reality itself, through the manipulation of language.
This approach reaches its zenith in passages that blend sacred and profane registers:
“…, We took the time to look at each other. Life is a basket of conspiracies
We took one for the other. Feigning to weave a thousand crimes on each other’s backs. With the illusion of fooling the world like true politicians…”
Here, political machinations become personal, and personal relationships become political, all through the alchemy of poetic language.
Poetry as Spiritual Practice
For Malanda, poetry transcends aesthetic consideration to become a form of spiritual practice. His work frequently adopts the rhythms and cadences of religious texts, particularly the Bible, creating what might be described as secular liturgy. The influence of French Nobel laureate Saint-John Perse is evident in these expansive rhythms, as is the litanic quality found in poets like Pierre Oster.
This spiritual dimension extends to Malanda’s address to divine figures:
“To you who are goodness/Born from the love of God/Raised by the virtue of Mary…”
Such invocations position poetry not as mere entertainment but as genuine communion with transcendent realities. The poet becomes a priest of language, and the poem becomes a sacred space where human and divine might meet.
The Political Dimensions of Poetic Language
Like Paul Eluard writing during wartime, Malanda understands poetry’s capacity for ideological engagement. His work functions as both aesthetic innovation and social commentary, challenging not only poetic conventions but political ones as well.
The breaking of traditional verse forms in the late 19th century represented not merely artistic evolution but a broader cultural revolution. Malanda continues this tradition, using poetic innovation as a form of cultural resistance. His language becomes what the Frankfurt School theorists might call “negative capability”—the ability to imagine alternatives to existing social realities.
In this sense, Malanda joins a distinguished lineage of African poets including Tchicaya Utamsi, Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard, Sony Labou Tansi, and Dominique Ngoy Ngala—writers who have transformed the French language into a vehicle for distinctly African experiences and perspectives.
The Universal Material of Humanity
Ultimately, what makes Danse des silhouettes so compelling is its recognition that language constitutes “the universal material of humanity.” Malanda’s poetic language may appear different from ordinary speech, but is it really more specialized than the technical jargon of engineers or the evasive language of politicians?
Compared to these specialized languages, poetry has the distinct advantage of being beautiful. And like the artisan or farmer, the poet performs essential work—the maintenance and renewal of our most fundamental human tool. As Malanda demonstrates throughout this remarkable collection, we need poets not despite their linguistic peculiarities but because of them.
In an age of algorithmic content and standardized communication, Sauve-Gérard Ngoma Malanda reminds us that language remains our most potent technology for exploring what it means to be human. Danse des silhouettes doesn’t just add to the conversation about contemporary African poetry; it fundamentally transforms it, offering not just poems but a philosophy of language that resonates far beyond the page.
As we navigate our own baskets of snakes, crimes, and verbs, we might find in Malanda’s silhouettes not just beautiful words but companions for the dance of life itself.