Cruel City. Mongo Beti
to the city, Tanga, we witness the Francophone African novel transitioning to a new form. Not surprisingly, catching this movement challenges the process of translation, since questions concerning language lie at the heart of any manner of narrative exploration, and Cruel City is of course no exception. Because it is a series of experiments, the novel can appear—or is—flawed: it drifts through phases of sentimentalism and is repetitive in parts. As I mentioned above, perhaps the story’s most significant flaw is the absence of a convincing resolution. In sum, as its critics have often pointed out, this is not a mature work of fiction. At the same time, any heavy-handedness is the trace of the Promethean task the narrative performs; these faults are the immediate effect of the canon formation in which the novel is involved.
The novel’s flaws resulting from its grand ambitions can be baffling for the translator; there are times when certain turns of phrase had to be modified, “corrected,” or otherwise rendered more readable. At times I made such translational editing changes, but only with extreme caution and in highly selective cases since, taken as a whole, these shortcomings—if indeed they are such—are also precisely among the text’s most interesting features. Beti’s novel is a laboratory where modern Francophone African fiction is being deliberately wrought, almost out of thin air. The twist and turns of plot, the rhythm of the prose, all of which I have tried to reproduce in the English, constitute a series of trials (and errors) that explore the issues raised in “Romancing Africa.” Ultimately, whether or not Beti succeeds is almost irrelevant: the novel is its own justification. In sum, “Romancing Africa” and Cruel City represent the theoretical and practical inauguration of an absolutely new kind of Francophone writing.
PIM HIGGINSON
NOTES
1. The journal, launched in 1947 by Alioune Diop, had heavy support from a number of famous French and African diasporic intellectuals, such as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Richard Wright, Michel Leiris, and Jean-Paul Sartre, whose names would also appear prominently in its pages. It should be noted that Beti subsequently became disenchanted with what he saw as its over-coziness with French interests on the African continent.
ROMANCING AFRICA
Setting aside books written by explorers and missionaries, books where the thinking motivating their authors is so outdated that they are useless,1 there is to my knowledge, not one quality literary work inspired by Black Africa and written in French. When I say a quality work, what I mean is something received, known, seen as such, by the public at large—because from the perspective of effectiveness, what might be the point of a masterpiece published in 1955 that will only be read and appreciated in the year 2000? It goes without saying that, for the purposes of my presentation, it wouldn’t matter if the writer of such a work were Black or White. So, digressions aside, there is a complete absence of quality literary works in French inspired by Black Africa. Given the extensive research I have done, one would be hard pressed to contradict me on this last observation.
During the interwar years, it would have been easy to explain this dearth by the general lack of interest that Europe, and especially France, then had in Africa, and by Africans’ inability to write in French due to a lack of training; in 1955, however, now that Africa is increasingly on Europe’s mind and an ever greater number of Africans not only can but want to write, this absence of quality works is harder to fathom. Or so it might appear.
Look more closely and everything makes sense. To begin with, what kind of writer is interested in Black Africa?
You have the journalists, who are always stalking a new topic, and who, when they have located it, treat it for its novelty effect. The news stories written on Africa since the last war are particularly objectionable. It is difficult for journalists to write masterpieces on Africa.
You also have the intellectuals looking for a solution to the world of the future; they generally write semi-political, semi-philosophical, semi-literary narratives. This generates such works as “Naked People,” by M[ax].-P[ol]. Fouchet, or again: “France and the Blacks,” by Jean Guéhenno, to whom I will return shortly. Let me say up front that nobody is waiting for a masterpiece from this category of writer.
Then there are the industrialists, the politicians, the economists, and similar specialists. It would be best not to speak of them.
There are also the poets, some of whom are excellent: A[imé]. Césaire, D[avid]. Diop, Paul Nige, J[acques]. Rou-main, etc. They are found most commonly among men of color, that is to say the colonized. These are generally highly aware, honest intellectuals, hence completely incapable of any sort of compromise with the colonial order; the result of this situation is that their voice isn’t heard. Thus, in keeping with our idea of the masterpiece, I cannot accept what they are producing as quality works; as already noted, one cannot designate as a masterpiece, in terms of its present effectiveness, a work that nobody reads or knows about. I can only hope that the future will rehabilitate these poètes maudits [cursed poets]; but that’s another story.
In fact, the category of writers from whom we expect the most are the novelists. I should note right off the interest generated by the publication of an African novel—assuming, of course, that the press is willing to talk about it. It is therefore specifically the case of African fiction that I will do my best to elucidate.
It so happens that, since the end of the last war, the novelists inspired by Black Africa are as often Whites as Blacks. This particular observation will turn out to be completely unimportant, as we will see shortly.
Instead, let’s go straight to the heart of the problem and ask the essential questions.
First of all, what will be the overriding tone of the African novel, realistic or non-realistic? This will depend primarily on the temperament of each author, on his concern for the public’s attitude. If the writer has no backbone, he will do what the public is asking for. If he has a backbone, he’ll write according to his own taste and his own ideas. Figuring out what the French public wants from an African author is another question, one I will deal with a little later.
Next, what will be the central quality of this novel? It will depend primarily on its tone. Given modern conceptions of the beautiful in literature, at least what is essential in these considerations, if a work is realistic, it has an excellent likelihood of being good; otherwise, even assuming it has formal qualities, there is a high risk that it will lack resonance, depth, and most of all what great literature most pressingly needs: the human—from which we can surmise that it is far less likely to be good than a realistic work, if indeed there is any such likelihood at all.
As already mentioned, what will distinguish the African novelists is less their ethnic origin than their distinctive temperaments, their personalities. Indeed, it would seem, in theory at least, that only White writers would explore the folkloric side of Black Africa, whereas Black writers, more aware of their native continent’s serious problems, would use folklore only as a way of underscoring Africa’s deeper reality; but upon a close examination of the small number of authors writing on Africa, it becomes apparent that the folklorists can be found equally in both groups.
Among the Whites: Knives At Play, Stick to Your Own Kind, etc. . . .
Among the Blacks: Black Child, The Gaze of the King, Karim,2 Batouala, etc. . . .
When I say “etc. . . .” that’s actually just a figure of speech, for, though I was only going to cite those African authors specializing in folklore, I suddenly realize that I have named all the African authors to whom the French public and its critics have deigned pay attention in the last ten years.
Could it be that the French public asks for folklore, nothing but folklore, from the African author?
Besides, when I speak of the French public, of whom am I thinking exactly? Certainly not of the Africans, whose consumption of this foodstuff called literature is statistically negligible, at least for now, and this for reasons too complicated to explain in a journal article. I’ll simply say that this illustrates the infamous drama of the uprooting of the African elite: African