Abstract

Engelbert Mveng’s poetry collection Balafon reads as a window onto the world. This impression arises from the diversity of peoples, cultures, and territories that find expression within its verses. In this collection, the poet undertakes a genuine poetic exploration of the world in both its geographical and cultural multiplicity, framing friendship and fraternity as essential conditions for a fulfilled humanity. Mveng thus aligns himself with authors of a hybrid thought that transcends borders and embraces a multicultural existence (living together) within a globalized context characterized by migratory flows that increasingly give rise to identity withdrawal, exclusion, xenophobia, and racism. In the vein of Glissant’s poetics of relation, the poet claims affiliation with the cultures of all the territories he has traversed. He distances himself from singularity and roots his work in multiplicity, without forgoing his own identity, employing a mode of writing free from the established norms of Classicism. Accordingly, and through several poems, emerge vivid portrayals of landscapes from both his native land and distant elsewhere, intertwining African beliefs with those of other continents. This results in a rich interweaving of territories and traditions that ultimately situates the reader in an in-between space, within the realm of diversity. The reader is immersed in a universe that unites races by highlighting what is uniquely their own in terms of territory and culture. In light of several studies on cultures in relation, this article examines the contours of diversity, considering that the poet’s multidimensional experience be it as ethnologist, Jesuit priest or historian, underpins the territorial and cultural heterogeneity that characterizes many of his poems. Thus, after demonstrating how Balafon produces a mosaic of territories through the transcendence of borders (displacement), the analysis leads to the emergence of a composite identity born of the poet’s assimilation of diverse belief systems throughout his journey.