Cruel City. Mongo Beti
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is the Europeans’ audience. Indeed, one has to admit that the African novelist, whether White or Black, writes primarily for the French reader of the Métro-pole, which explains an awful lot. But before going there, it’s important to define the attitude of this public with respect to the African author.
The French-person-who-reads-novels—that is, in truth, the bourgeois, whether petit or grand—is not only a citizen but the pillar of a country that was, not long ago, a great nation, a nation that aspires to remain great, that hopes to regain that status, and a nation whose pride has been wounded daily since the war, something that happens to once-great nations. One doesn’t need to be an expert on international affairs to realize that the properly European factors determining France’s prestige are more irrevocably eroded each day.
Nevertheless, if this country refuses to cede its past greatness, what desperate measures will it employ, not only to achieve its hallowed rank among nations but to remain there? Why, the colonies, by God! The Empire! The French Union! Call it what you will. Never has the French bourgeoisie gambled so heavily on the colonies as at the present time.
But the colonies themselves—because of those little jokers the writers, the press, the educational system; because of those who, in certain spheres, are called the specialists of subversion—the colonies themselves, as I said, have learned and repeat to themselves [Pierre Victurnien] Vergniaud’s famous call: “The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise.”3 And the desire for autonomy and even separation in the French Empire only increases. Something previously unheard of has happened: one of the most prized countries in the Empire has waged a sustained war against the Métropole. That’s not the end of it: another gem, the entire Maghreb, is facing a critical situation; and the truth is that nobody has a clue as to what is going to happen to this piece of the French Empire. Are we going to lose everything? Ask the colonizers and the French bourgeois, more worried than ever. “No, by God! Don’t we still have Black Africa?”
For the colonizer and the French bourgeois, what is Africa? “An inexhaustible reserve of men and primary resources.” (Here I am citing A[lfred]. Coste-Floret, Minister of the Colonies in one of the numerous governments of the first legislature of the Fourth Republic). We know the slogans: “Black Africa, our last chance!,” “Black Africa, the card we should be playing!,” “Eurafrica . . .,” etc. . . . The French bourgeois therefore thinks of Africa as his last remaining hunting grounds: a territory to be guarded jealously against the desires of so-called “revolutionary imperialisms.” It goes without saying that behind all of the bourgeois press’s well phrased liberal, generous, fraternal, and republican formulas there lies the same secular, intangible reality that is eternal cupidity: exploit man where and when you can without risk.
Yes, I said without risk! One can venture that these ladies and gents would not appreciate a realistic African literature, for what greater risk could there be that their operations should be denounced, dismantled, exposed in the popular press? They will therefore do everything to nip any realistic African literature in the bud. For the reality of Black Africa, its only true reality is before all else colonization and its crimes.4
Again, for those who aren’t metaphysicians, the first reality of Black Africa, its only true reality, is colonization and what comes after it. Colonization, which today saturates every last inch of the African body and poisons its blood, suppresses every challenge. It follows that writing on Black Africa means being for or against colonialism. It’s impossible to escape this equation. Even if one wanted to, one could not. Friend or enemy is the question at hand. Anybody who wants to escape this bind is forced to cheat.
It turns out that the bourgeois and the colonizers ask their scribes to cheat, to write in the name of their glory, to sing their praises. What happens then? If the scribe is a White man, he won’t have the least compunction about writing the reactionary and racist books to which bookstores have habituated us: “Stick to your own kind [Va-t-en avec les tiens],” “Knives were drawn [Les couteaux sont de la fête],” etc.
If the scribe is Black, the operation becomes a little more difficult, since this Black person has to take into account the world from which he comes, his friends, his family. Besides, there resides in a Black person a kind of demureness; he’s always loath to take a path that leads to prostitution; it’s only once he has finally set out on that path that everything goes smoothly. Besides, one never knows; one day there could be a little revolution in his native country. And if he were there, even accidentally, might some not hold against him the fact that he had collaborated with the colonial enterprise?
The Black scribe will therefore pretend to not take sides. He will take refuge among the sorcerers, his grandfather’s snakes, initiations at nightfall, fish-women, and the whole gamut of the two-bit picturesque. He will ignore all that might get him in trouble and particularly colonial reality. That’s why, paradoxically, he will make himself even less realistic than the White scribe whose own position is without the least ambiguity. It turns out, however, that in the realm of the non-realistic, the Black scribe is better placed than the White scribe, because the ignorant bourgeois is more likely to pay attention to him. You see, when the Black scribe claims to have been initiated by moonlight, to have belonged to the brotherhood of lions, to have petted a sacred crocodile, etc., the bourgeois can receive these claims only with enthusiasm. “Now that’s a guy who clearly knows what he’s talking about! . . .” And that’s the last word! All of this serves to further entrap the Black scribe in the quicksand of the folkloric, a mess from which it is difficult to extricate oneself. Under these circumstances the White scribe finds himself relegated to a secondary status.
If we refer to contemporary American literature, we discover what happens to a conformist writer, a friend of the high functionaries of those in power, who aspires to large print-runs. Ever since F. D. Roosevelt left power, Steinbeck has more or less stopped writing, Faulkner paraphrases the Bible (it’s true that he’s a special case), Hemingway has been content to develop a predictable myth in a little book received as his masterpiece, while a newcomer like Truman Capote, more logical than those who came before him, has deliberately chosen to go in the direction of the fantastic. In the same way, it would seem likely that an African writer, if he insists on dedicating his books to the great colonizers, will end up in the realm of the fantastic, assuming that’s not where he starts.
Therefore, we are not in a time that is suited to an authentic African literature. This is because either the author writes realistically, in which case not only is he unlikely to be published, but even if he were, critics would ignore him, as would the public. Or he is a conformist, in which case he risks giving in to easy folklore and even to the fantastic, which will impel him to write mostly nonsense. As I have already said, I believe that in this particular case, race is of little importance—what counts is the temperament of the writer.
Still, another question needs to be asked: given the literary journals that exist in France, are there not two distinct and even opposed reading publics? More simply, aren’t there on the one hand the readers of Lettres françaises, and on the other those of Le Figaro littéraire? Shouldn’t the readers of Lettres françaises enthusiastically welcome a realistic African literature?5
It would appear that way, but only at first glance. On closer examination, things are far more complicated. In 1955, the world is divided into two powerful blocks, set against each in such severe antagonism that there is no room for those who refuse to take sides. Here, the dilemma that says: “He who is not with you works against you: friend or enemy, useful or harmful” is truer than ever. This century is constructed such that sectarian thinking has unapologetically taken over; people prefer their worst enemy to those among their friends who don’t exactly replicate themselves.
Therefore, if, in the Metropolitan context an African writer is engaged neither totally on the Left nor totally on the Right, then he better keep quiet. Of course, it can happen that here or there, an individual succeeds in breaking down all the traditional barriers, in imposing himself against all odds, but it will nevertheless be the exception. So the France of 1955 suggests that the African author just keep quiet. Unless he should decide, not without a certain heroism, to write for that distant time when education will have sufficiently developed