Salon Wanderlust | Another Africa

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

T A B L E_T A L K
Learning Spanish in South America: Weigh in on the best places to study in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
This week in travel
Hostages at Club Med, strikes in Italy, a Paris renaissance, Mideast warnings and more news from the travel world
(11/13/98)
A fiume runs through it
By Thom Elkjer
An American on a fly-fishing pilgrimage learns that in Italy, it's who you know that counts
(11/12/98)
On the road with the Smokejumpers: Part Two
By The King Teen
Shotguns and dead bunnies, pizza and beer -- a San Francisco band explores America
(11/11/98)
Tokyo sex wars: Part Two
By Karl Taro Greenfeld
The arrival of 24 "classy ladies" to work in a fledgling nightspot convulses Japan's new demimonde
(11/10/98)
Tokyo sex wars
By Karl Taro Greenfeld
Drug demons and sex junkies in Japan's new demimonde
(11/09/98)

Browse the
Wanderlust Passages archives

S A L O N
E M P O R I U M
FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

ANOTHER AFRICA | PAGE 1, 2, 3
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
------photographs from Another Africa

A saint like Schweitzer can give one a lot more trouble than King Leopold II, a villain of unmitigated guilt, because along with doing good and saving African lives, Schweitzer also managed to say that the African was indeed his brother, but only his junior brother.
But of all the hundreds and thousands of European visitors to the Congo region in the last five hundred years, there was perhaps no other with the deftness and sleight-of-hand of Joseph Conrad or the depth of the wound he gave that roadside tree. In his Congo novella, "Heart of Darkness," Conrad managed to transform elements from centuries of generally crude and fanciful writing about Africans into a piece of "serious" literature.
Halfway through his story, Conrad describes a journey up the River Congo in the 1890s as though it were the very first encounter between conscious humanity coming from Europe and an unconscious, primeval hegemony that had apparently gone nowhere since the world was created. Naturally, it is the conscious party that tells the story:

We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on the earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance.

Prehistoric earth ... unknown planet ... fancied ourselves ... the first of men ... This passage, which is Conrad at his best, or his worst, according to the reader's predilection, goes on at some length through a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, of hands clapping, feet stamping, bodies swaying, eyes rolling, through a black incomprehensible frenzy to the prehistoric man himself, in the night of first ages. And then Conrad delivers his famous coup de grâce. Were these prehistoric creatures really human? And he answers the question with the most sophisticated ambivalence of double negatives:

No they were not inhuman. Well, you know that was the worst of it -- this suspicion of their not being inhuman.

Perhaps this is a good point for me to anticipate the kind of objection some people expressed when I first spoke about Conrad and "Heart of Darkness" in 1975. It was not my intention then or now to spend the rest of my life in Conrad controversy, and so I have generally kept away from both critics and defenders of my 1975 argument. But my present purpose requires that I take up one particular line of objection, one which presumes to teach me how to distinguish a book of fiction from, say, a book of history or sociology. My critics do not put it as brutally as that; they are very kind. One of them actually took the trouble to write a letter to me and offer his good offices to reconcile me with Conrad because, as he said, Conrad was actually on my side! I did not, however, take up this kind mediation offer because I was not talking about sides. For me there is only one, human, side. Full stop!
But to return to Conrad and the word fancy, which his genius had lit upon:

We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance.

I suggest that fancied is the alarm-word insinuated into Conrad's dangerously highfalutin account by his genius, as well as by reason and sanity, but almost immediately crowded out, alas, by the emotional and psychological fascination he had for the long-established and well-heeled tradition of writing about Africa. Conrad was at once prisoner of this tradition and one of its most influential purveyors; he more than anyone else secured its admission into the hall of fame of "canonical" literature. Fancy, sometimes called Imagination, is not inimical to Fiction. On the contrary, they are bosom friends. But they observe a certain protocol around each other's property and around the homestead of their droll and difficult neighbor, Fact.
Conrad was a writer who kept much of his fiction fairly close to the facts of his life as a sailor. He had no obligation to do so, but that was what he chose to do -- to write about places that actually exist and about people who live in them. He confessed in his 1917 "Author's Note" that

"Heart of Darkness" is experience too, but it is experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate, I believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of the readers.

One fact of the case about the River Congo which Conrad may not have known was how much traffic it had seen before it saw Conrad in the 1890s. Even if one discounts the Africans who lived on its banks and would presumably have sailed up and down it through the millennia before Conrad, there was even a European sailing ship on the Congo four hundred years before our man made his journey and wrote his book. Yes, four hundred!
The Portuguese captain Diogo Cao, who discovered the river for Europe in 1482, was actually looking for something else when he stumbled on it; he was looking for a passage around Africa into the Indian Ocean. On his second voyage he went further up the river and heard from the inhabitants of the area about a powerful ruler whose capital was still further up. Cao left four Franciscan monks to study the situation and resumed the primary purpose of his expedition. On his way back he once more detoured into the Congo to pick up his monks; but they were gone! He seized in retaliation a number of African hostages, carried them off to Lisbon, and delivered them to King Manuel of Portugal. This unpropitious beginning of Europe's adventure in the heart of Africa was quickly mended when Cao returned to the Congo for the third time in 1487, bringing back his African hostages who had meanwhile learned the Portuguese language and Christian religion. Cao was taken to see the king, Mweni-Congo, seated on an ivory throne surrounded by his courtiers. Cao's monks were returned to him, and all was well.
An extraordinary period ensued in which the king of Congo became a Christian with the title of King Afonso I. Before very long,

the royal brothers of Portugal and Congo were writing letters to each other that were couched in terms of complete equality of status. Emissaries went back and forth between them. Relations were established between Mbanza and the Vatican. A son of the Mweni-Congo was appointed in Rome itself as bishop of his country.

This bishop, Dom Henrique, had studied in Lisbon, and when he led a delegation of Congo noblemen to Rome for his consecration, he had addressed the Pope in Latin.
Nzinga Mbemba, baptized as Dom Afonso, was a truly extraordinary man. He learned in middle life to read and speak Portuguese, and it was said that when he examined the legal code of Portugal he was surprised by its excessive harshness. He asked the Portuguese envoy what the penalty was in his country for a citizen who dared to put his feet on the ground! This criticism was probably reported back to the king of Portugal, for in a 1511 letter to his "royal brother," Dom Afonso, he made defensive reference to differing notions of severity between the two nations. Can we today imagine a situation in which an African ruler is giving, rather than receiving, admonition on law and civilization?
The Christian kingdom of Dom Afonso I in Congo did not fare well and was finally destroyed two centuries later after a long struggle with the Portuguese. The source of the problem was the determination of the Portuguese to take out of Congo as many slaves as their vast new colony in Brazil demanded, and the Congo kings' desire to limit or end the traffic. There was also a dispute over mining rights. In the war that finally ended the independence of the kingdom of Congo and established Portuguese control over it, the armies of both nations marched under Christian banners. But that is another story, for another time.
N E X T+P A G E | An Africa where nothing good ever happens


	T A B L E_T A L K Learning Spanish in South America: Weigh in on the best places to study in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y This week in travel Hostages at Club Med, strikes in Italy, a Paris renaissance, Mideast warnings and more news from the travel world (11/13/98) A fiume runs through it By Thom Elkjer An American on a fly-fishing pilgrimage learns that in Italy, it's who you know that counts (11/12/98) On the road with the Smokejumpers: Part Two By The King Teen Shotguns and dead bunnies, pizza and beer -- a San Francisco band explores America (11/11/98) Tokyo sex wars: Part Two By Karl Taro Greenfeld The arrival of 24 "classy ladies" to work in a fledgling nightspot convulses Japan's new demimonde (11/10/98) Tokyo sex wars By Karl Taro Greenfeld Drug demons and sex junkies in Japan's new demimonde (11/09/98) Browse the Wanderlust Passages archives S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		ANOTHER AFRICA \| PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ------photographs from Another Africa A saint like Schweitzer can give one a lot more trouble than King Leopold II, a villain of unmitigated guilt, because along with doing good and saving African lives, Schweitzer also managed to say that the African was indeed his brother, but only his junior brother. But of all the hundreds and thousands of European visitors to the Congo region in the last five hundred years, there was perhaps no other with the deftness and sleight-of-hand of Joseph Conrad or the depth of the wound he gave that roadside tree. In his Congo novella, "Heart of Darkness," Conrad managed to transform elements from centuries of generally crude and fanciful writing about Africans into a piece of "serious" literature. Halfway through his story, Conrad describes a journey up the River Congo in the 1890s as though it were the very first encounter between conscious humanity coming from Europe and an unconscious, primeval hegemony that had apparently gone nowhere since the world was created. Naturally, it is the conscious party that tells the story: We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on the earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance. Prehistoric earth ... unknown planet ... fancied ourselves ... the first of men ... This passage, which is Conrad at his best, or his worst, according to the reader's predilection, goes on at some length through a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, of hands clapping, feet stamping, bodies swaying, eyes rolling, through a black incomprehensible frenzy to the prehistoric man himself,* in the night of first ages.* And then Conrad delivers his famous coup de grâce. Were these prehistoric creatures really human? And he answers the question with the most sophisticated ambivalence of double negatives: No they were not inhuman. Well, you know that was the worst of it -- this suspicion of their not being inhuman. Perhaps this is a good point for me to anticipate the kind of objection some people expressed when I first spoke about Conrad and "Heart of Darkness" in 1975. It was not my intention then or now to spend the rest of my life in Conrad controversy, and so I have generally kept away from both critics and defenders of my 1975 argument. But my present purpose requires that I take up one particular line of objection, one which presumes to teach me how to distinguish a book of fiction from, say, a book of history or sociology. My critics do not put it as brutally as that; they are very kind. One of them actually took the trouble to write a letter to me and offer his good offices to reconcile me with Conrad because, as he said, Conrad was actually on my side! I did not, however, take up this kind mediation offer because I was not talking about sides. For me there is only one, human, side. Full stop! But to return to Conrad and the word fancy, which his genius had lit upon: We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance. I suggest that fancied is the alarm-word insinuated into Conrad's dangerously highfalutin account by his genius, as well as by reason and sanity, but almost immediately crowded out, alas, by the emotional and psychological fascination he had for the long-established and well-heeled tradition of writing about Africa. Conrad was at once prisoner of this tradition and one of its most influential purveyors; he more than anyone else secured its admission into the hall of fame of "canonical" literature. Fancy, sometimes called Imagination, is not inimical to Fiction. On the contrary, they are bosom friends. But they observe a certain protocol around each other's property and around the homestead of their droll and difficult neighbor, Fact. Conrad was a writer who kept much of his fiction fairly close to the facts of his life as a sailor. He had no obligation to do so, but that was what he chose to do -- to write about places that actually exist and about people who live in them. He confessed in his 1917 "Author's Note" that "Heart of Darkness" is experience too, but it is experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate, I believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of the readers. One fact of the case about the River Congo which Conrad may not have known was how much traffic it had seen before it saw Conrad in the 1890s. Even if one discounts the Africans who lived on its banks and would presumably have sailed up and down it through the millennia before Conrad, there was even a European sailing ship on the Congo four hundred years before our man made his journey and wrote his book. Yes, four hundred! The Portuguese captain Diogo Cao, who discovered the river for Europe in 1482, was actually looking for something else when he stumbled on it; he was looking for a passage around Africa into the Indian Ocean. On his second voyage he went further up the river and heard from the inhabitants of the area about a powerful ruler whose capital was still further up. Cao left four Franciscan monks to study the situation and resumed the primary purpose of his expedition. On his way back he once more detoured into the Congo to pick up his monks; but they were gone! He seized in retaliation a number of African hostages, carried them off to Lisbon, and delivered them to King Manuel of Portugal. This unpropitious beginning of Europe's adventure in the heart of Africa was quickly mended when Cao returned to the Congo for the third time in 1487, bringing back his African hostages who had meanwhile learned the Portuguese language and Christian religion. Cao was taken to see the king, Mweni-Congo, seated on an ivory throne surrounded by his courtiers. Cao's monks were returned to him, and all was well. An extraordinary period ensued in which the king of Congo became a Christian with the title of King Afonso I. Before very long, the royal brothers of Portugal and Congo were writing letters to each other that were couched in terms of complete equality of status. Emissaries went back and forth between them. Relations were established between Mbanza and the Vatican. A son of the Mweni-Congo was appointed in Rome itself as bishop of his country. This bishop, Dom Henrique, had studied in Lisbon, and when he led a delegation of Congo noblemen to Rome for his consecration, he had addressed the Pope in Latin. Nzinga Mbemba, baptized as Dom Afonso, was a truly extraordinary man. He learned in middle life to read and speak Portuguese, and it was said that when he examined the legal code of Portugal he was surprised by its excessive harshness. He asked the Portuguese envoy what the penalty was in his country for a citizen who dared to put his feet on the ground! This criticism was probably reported back to the king of Portugal, for in a 1511 letter to his "royal brother," Dom Afonso, he made defensive reference to differing notions of severity between the two nations. Can we today imagine a situation in which an African ruler is giving, rather than receiving, admonition on law and civilization? The Christian kingdom of Dom Afonso I in Congo did not fare well and was finally destroyed two centuries later after a long struggle with the Portuguese. The source of the problem was the determination of the Portuguese to take out of Congo as many slaves as their vast new colony in Brazil demanded, and the Congo kings' desire to limit or end the traffic. There was also a dispute over mining rights. In the war that finally ended the independence of the kingdom of Congo and established Portuguese control over it, the armies of both nations marched under Christian banners. But that is another story, for another time. N E X T+P A G E \| An Africa where nothing good ever happens