Year: 2005 (2004)
Publisher: Elisabeth Grate Bokförlag
The father/son
dichotomy is among the oldest tropes in literary history going back to pre-antiquity.
Zeus dethroning Kronos, Sophocles’ drama Oedipus, which is probably a much
older legend simply exploited by him, and much of the Old Testament revolve
around the discord between the begetter and his offspring. Many prominent
writers over the centuries have furthermore turned to writing as a form of
therapy, diving deeply into their fathers’ roles in their lives. Sometimes, the
purpose has been to understand. At other times, to forgive. At still others, to
deliver vengeance. Peter Härtling’s “Nachgetragene Liebe”, Charles Dickens’
“David Copperfield”, and Ivan Turgenev’s “Pervaya Lyubov” may serve as a few of
many examples from all over Europe of stories written by sons about their
fathers. Similarly, Marguerite Duras seems to have written “The Lover” (see my
review from 15 March 2020), in an attempt to process her memories of an
overbearing mother and to finally, at a mature age, liberate herself from her.
French
Nobel Prize-laureate J. M. G Le Clézio makes his mark on this territory with the
autobiographical essay “Afrikanen” (“The African”). This is a story about his
father, the physician serving in the British colonies in Africa while his wife
and sons remain in France, and how the distance in geography, time, and culture
laid the foundation to what turned out to be a virtually impenetrable curtain
between them.
Curiously
enough, the barrier between father and son did not become tangible until 8-years-old
Le Clézio and his family were called for by his father to unite with him in
Ogoja in south eastern Nigeria. This would be the first time the boy met his
father. He had heard his mother and other family members speak about him, of
course, and the father had been careful to write letters and remit funds to his
wife on a regular basis, but to the young Le Clézio he was just an idea. A
concept. Or more accurately; the idea of a concept. The physical encounter with
the father, who would become the embodiment of the unknown environment into
which the boy was thrust without any agency of his own, rattled the 8-year-old
mind and heart. He became an alien in his new home. The curtain, that had
previously been nebulous and logical suddenly became real and inexplicable.
The sensation
of displacement was further exacerbated by his father´s stern regime, which was
a contrast to the loose reins Le Clézio and his brother had enjoyed under the
supervision of his aunts and uncles back in France. Discipline, routine, and
order suddenly became mercilessly enforced on a level that the young boy was
completely unaccustomed to. Not only did he suddenly have a father, but he had
one that showed little love and plenty of acerbity.
A child of such
a tender age does not have the language or the perspective to process this type
of shock and Le Clézio can account merely for his memories of his juvenile self
trying to sort out a new reality. It is a gripping endeavour to try to put into
words the emotions of a child by the guidance of a grown man’s recollections of
emotions that he himself is no longer qualified to reproduce.
“As a
child, one doesn’t make use of words. And words are not exhausted. This is a time
in which I live far from adjectives and nouns. I cannot say or even think:
impressive, colossal, power. But I can experience what these words refer to.”*
Le Clézio’s
solution is to approach the memory of his father by integrating him into his memory
of the portion of his childhood spent in Africa. Africa made his father and consequently,
his father, to Le Clézio, becomes Africa. The opalescent landscape, the pungent
odours, the bright smiles on the dark faces of the people whose attitude to
nudity and privacy differs vastly from that of the French, are all building
blocks that make up the African. So are the squalor, disease, and colonial
oppression that he encounters.
As the author
digs deeper into memories and tries to navigate his impressions toward the
essence of his father, he also reflects upon himself and what his own existence
might have posed to his procreator. In Africa, his inevitable whiteness was the
main factor connecting him to his family, but it also placed him in the
category of the oppressors who instigated such animosity in his father. The aging
doctor, by all accounts, seems to have revolted vehemently against the maltreatment
of the local population by the British and French governments. He identified
with the people among whom he lived, not with those for whom he worked. The son
became an inescapable testimony to the African’s own whiteness and a reminder
that despite his best efforts and his own choice of identity, he may never
become Ogoja to the same degree that Ogoja had become him. He was African; his progeny
was French.
And yet, “Afrikanen”
turns out to be a love letter; an expression of affection and gratitude to the
man who loved the author’s mother and who beyond just giving him life, gave him
the opportunity to become the man that he is. It would certainly have been understandable
had he resented his father due to his harshness and his lack of interest in his
children. As Fyodor Dostoyevsky writes in “The Brothers Karamazov”.
“Why am I
bound to love him simply for begetting me when he has cared nothing for me all
life after? Oh, perhaps those questions strike you as coarse and cruel, but do
not expect an impossible restraint from a young mind. /…/ Let the son stand
before his father and ask him, ‘Father, tell me, why must I love you?’”**
Despite a thin
veneer of bitterness and travail, the totality of Le Clézio’s book is a warm document
of tolerance and gratitude. What makes this possible is in the end Africa. Father
and son who never got to know each other across a kitchen table, seem to
figuratively meet on the plains of Ogoja and connect on the grasslands on
Ntumbo. Their minds touch on a dirt road in Kwaja and they unite in their shared
experience of Babungo. In a photograph. In a memory. It is a love by proxy, but
it is a love that transcends time and space and flows beyond the confined entities
of mortals. A love as true as any other.
“While I
write this, I realise that this is more than my own memory. This is also the
memory of the years before I was born, when my mother and father trekked together
along the footpaths of the Cameroonian highlands. The memory of my father’s
angst and hope, of his loneliness and misery in Ogoja. The memory of moments of
happiness where my father and mother are united in a love that they think will
last forever.”*
In this
way, the African becomes the father not in spite of, but thanks to, Africa.
*My own
translation from the Swedish copy.
** Translation by Constance Garnett, The Lowell Press, New York, 2009
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