Colonialism camouflaged its economic objectives under
the cloak of a “civilizing mission,” which in Africa was
aimed at illuminating the so-called Dark Continent with
Europe’s brilliant civilization. In 1899, the Polish-born English
author Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) fictionalized his harrowing
journey up the Congo River in the novella Heart of Darkness.
Expressing views from his Victorian perspective, he portrayed an
Africa that was incomprehensible, irrational, sensual, and therefore
threatening. Conrad, however, was shocked by the horrific
exploitation of the peoples of the Belgian Congo, presenting them
with a compassion rarely seen during the heyday of imperialism.
Over the years, Conrad’s work has provoked much debate,
and many African writers have been prompted to counter his vision
by reaffirming the dignity and purpose of the African people.
One of the first to do so was the Guinean author Camara Laye
(1928–1980), who in 1954 composed a brilliant novel, The
Radiance of the King, which can be viewed as the mirror image
of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In Laye’s work, another European
protagonist undertakes a journey into the impenetrable heart
of Africa. This time, however, he is enlightened by the process,
thereby obtaining self-knowledge and ultimately salvation.
JOSEPH CONRAD, HEART OF DARKNESS
We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.
It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums
behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain
sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our
heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war,
peace, or prayer we could not tell. . . . But suddenly, as we
struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush
walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black
limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies
swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless
foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge
of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man
was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could
tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings;
we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly
appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic
outbreak in a madhouse. . . .
It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not
inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this
suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly
to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid
faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—
like yours—the thought of your remote kinship
with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly
enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to
yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a reponse
to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion
of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote
from the night of first ages—could comprehend. And why
not? The mind of man is capable of anything—because
everything is in it, all the past as well as the future. What was
there after all? Joy, fear, sorrrow, devotion, valour, rage—
who can tell?—but truth—stripped of its cloak of time.
CAMARA LAYE, THE RADIANCE
OF THE KING
“I enjoy life . . . ,” thought Clarence. “If I filed my teeth like
the people of Aziana, no one could see any difference between
me and them.” There was, of course, the difference in
pigmentation in the skin. But what difference did that
make? “It’s the soul that matters,” he kept telling himself.
“And in that respect I am exactly as they are.” . . .
But where was this radiance coming from? Clarence got
up and went to the right-hand window, from which this radiance
seemed to be streaming. . . .
He saw the king. And then he knew where the extraordinary
radiance was coming from. . . .
And he had the feeling that all was lost. But had he not
already lost everything? . . . He would remain for ever
chained to the South, chained to his hut, chained to everything
he had so thoughtlessly abandoned himself to. His
solitude seemed to him so heavy, it burdened him with such
a great weight of sorrow that his heart seemed about to
break. . . .
But at that very moment the king turned his head, turned
it imperceptibly, and his glance fell upon Clarence. . . .
“Yes, no one is as base as I, as naked as I,” he thought.
“And you, lord, you are willing to rest your eyes upon me!”
Or was it because of his very nakedness? . . . “Because of your
very nakedness!” the look seemed to say. “That terrifying
void that is within you and which opens to receive me; your
hunger which calls to my hunger; your very baseness which
did not exist until I gave it leave; and the great shame you
feel. . . .”
When he had come before the king, when he stood in the
great radiance of the king, still ravaged by the tongue of fire,
but alive still, and living only through the touch of that fire,
Clarence fell upon his knees, for it seemed to him that he
was finally at the end of his seeking, and at the end of all
seekings.
Sources: From Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Penguin Books, 1991.
From The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye, tr
World History
