Graham Greene's in Africa, Keywords:, civilization

The fateful events of the first third of the 20th century - the World War, a wave of revolutions, riots and military coups-aroused an unprecedented interest of Europeans in life in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The problem of colonization became particularly acute in journalism in the middle of the last century, although in the late 1930s it attracted the attention of many authors, including the outstanding English writer Graham Greene (1904-1991). His work - novels, short stories, and nonfiction-raised the most pressing political issues of his time. G. Green wrote several travelogues (and now a very popular genre of travel notes, travel diaries) devoted to the issues of colonization and the situation in a number of countries in Africa and Latin America. At that time, the writer could not even assume that the collapse of the colonial system was only a few years away, but perhaps his work, his clear position on this phenomenon, contributed to the inevitability of subsequent events.

With enviable regularity, Greene returned to Africa: during his first trip in 1934-1935, he visited Sierra Leone and Liberia, in 1942 he visited Nigeria and Sierra Leone, in 1959-in the Belgian Congo, and finally, in 1967 - again in Sierra Leone. What is the reason for the writer's interest in travel as such: in the desire to collect exotic material for publication, in the desire to take a break from everyday life, or in something else?

TRAVEL AS SUCH

In 1931, an event that caused an international outcry occurred in Liberia: the Kru tribe protested the actions of the territory's leaders, and paid dearly for it. 41 villages were burned, and people were killed in the fire. The government's armed forces were led by Elwood Davis, a black American immigrant who returned to his historic homeland after the First World War. He quickly gained a reputation as a tough and disciplined warrior with local roots, and became one of the colonels of the Liberian Border Service. It was rumored that when Colonel Davis ordered the suppression of the Crewe rebellion, he ordered the killing of women and children in order to eventually destroy the entire tribe.

The League of Nations learned of the incident, and the ongoing sale of Liberians into slavery was reported to the Anti-Slavery Society of London. Two influential figures in this society expressed their belief that Liberia needs a new leadership consisting of " strong white people with high aspirations." Soon there was a volunteer - the English writer Graham Greene. He was supposed to go to the country for

collecting materials, under the pretext of finding inspiration for a new novel. At the same time, Green needed to visit Sierra Leone to establish where to begin the work of putting power "in the right hands."

It is known that G. Green later collaborated with the British SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) and on its assignment visited African countries more than once. Greene's biographer, American journalist and literary critic M. Shelden, writes in his biographical study "Graham Greene: The Enemy Within" that the writer's trip may have been paid for, but in general he perceived it as a new adventure and a real opportunity to gather material for a new book1.

The writer aspired to a place where you could feel the real Africa. Liberia was exactly the place where Europeans left the least traces. At the very beginning of the travelogue "Journey without a Map" (1936), G. Green speaks of "a vague hope [e] to find something for which there are a thousand names-the mines of King Solomon*, "the soul of the black people", and perhaps its place in time, due to the knowledge of not only the present day of humanity, but also the future of the world." and his past, where we all came from "(p. 172)². It is precisely with these searches that the author connects a person's need for creativity in general.

Creating a work, the creator knows himself. If you look at the creative process from this angle, you can understand the remark of F. Kunkel, a well - known researcher of G. Green's work: "'Traveling without a map' is more than just a trip to the interior of Africa. On another level, it is a journey, incriminating and terrifying, through the innermost regions of Mr. Green's own soul."³. Western criticism notes that when the writer went to Africa, he was primarily guided by the desire to understand the essence of the human soul. However, from the context of the work, it becomes absolutely clear that its main task in this case is to focus public attention on the problems of colonial Africa. Moreover, on the basis of historical documents, one can draw interesting conclusions that are somewhat different from those presented to readers and journalists by G. Green himself and some Western researchers of his work.

So, a young writer goes to uncharted Africa not as an idle tourist or an author seeking to amuse his audience with an exotic story, but as an authorized British observer, a publicist concerned with the fate of civilization, and at the same time a researcher of his own personality (one might say, a psychoanalyst for himself). His mind is open to everything new. In one of the interviews, he admits:: "I was never a British imperialist. I think I was lucky to have been in Africa when I was young; if I had been there ten years later, I might have had my own unyielding beliefs, and I would have been looking for those experiences that I had already somehow formed in my head ^"4

In his book, G. Green is not a politician or intelligence officer, but a publicist who rises to the level of analysis, understanding and forecasting the future of all mankind. The traditional narrative of the travelogue genre is being reduced, and topical political issues are being put first. The author himself defines the main task of the book as follows: "Today our century is somehow particularly susceptible to any cruelty. Isn't it a longing for the distant past - the pleasure with which people read gangster novels and meet characters who have managed to simplify their spiritual world to the level of mindless creatures? Of course, I don't want to go back to this level, but when you see what disasters and threats to the human race have been caused by centuries of increased brain activity, you are drawn to look back and find out where we lost our way" (p.172).

Of course, the book is political and topical, but politics here, as in the novels of G. Green, is expressed not in the struggle of parties, but in the desire for justice.-

* This refers to the 1885 adventure novel King Solomon's Mines by Henry Haggard.

We are looking for patterns of behavior and harmony of the environment with human dignity. In the words of the Indian writer M. Couto, " Green's work teeters on the edge of his inherited perception and the process of forgetting it [unlearning], during which he comprehends the basic principles of human life."⁵. Of course, his state of mind is far from tabula rasa, but he, armed with a psychoanalytic tool, has a much better chance of success than other travelers who are obviously skeptical of everything they see in Africa and perceive it purely as the territory of savages.

THE ROAD TO AFRICA

On a three-month trip to Africa (1934-1935), Greene disembarked in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, took a train to Pendembu, crossed the border, ended up in Liberia, and walked to Grand Bassa. According to the author, he went on his first major trip, having no experience behind him, except for reading the books of African researchers - D. Livingston and M. Park: "I didn't know anything about traveling in Africa. I was going to cross Liberia on foot, but I had no idea how to go or what to expect on the road" (p. 188).

And his journey begins in England in Liverpool. Greene's description of the" Goods of civilization "is bleak and even depressing: a gloomy hotel built without any aesthetic taste, "ordinary English clumsiness", a sickly-sized "sweet bun". With characteristic straightforwardness, Greene notes the absurdity of the luxury of English houses, the desire to appear better than it really is, the theatricality of the situation. Everything here is unnatural, improbable, and " too good to be true."

It is interesting that the same attitude of the author is shown in the fragments of the text that describe the oases of English civilization in Africa. For example, the following is said about the capital of Sierra Leone:: "Everything that was ugly in Freetown belonged to Europe: shops, churches, government buildings, both hotels. Everything that was beautiful here belonged to Africa: the stalls of fruit vendors who stood at the crossroads in the evening with their wares consecrated by burning candles; the black women who marched out of church on Sunday mornings, swaying their beautiful hips, moving their broad shoulders, in all their glory... Nature in its splendor could not make up for the ugliness of Freetown" (p. 182).

Freetown combines the lush splendor of nature and the ugliness of civilization. British officials who have been educated and come here understand "that they have been cheated, that they have been given the worst of both worlds 'legacies" (p. 183). Despite their seemingly advantageous position as officials, they do not feel like they are the rulers here. Rather, they exist in their own separate world, in the likeness of England in Africa. Tomatoes and cabbages are grown in the Governor-General's garden, and some visitors wear military uniforms. Black commissars become the embodiment of the very idea of colonization: putting on a new form without changing the content, the colonies are deprived of their national identity, while receiving nothing in return. Despite all the "freedoms" proclaimed by the civilized world at the beginning of the twentieth century, by the end of the first third of it, colonial society still lives by the old laws.

For Europeans, the African continent is a special world, not measured by rails and highways, a world without a map. The narrator confesses: "In a country where you can only travel by setting the name of the next town or village and repeating it to everyone you meet on the way, unforeseen circumstances forced you to change your plans again and again" (p.187). In the absence of the usual ways for a civilized person to navigate the terrain, one has to resort to the help of intuition - the way of a primitive person. Gwen Boardman, a researcher on Greene's work, notes that this is why Africa served Greene's goals perfectly and contributed to the success of his psychoanalytic experiment, helping to discover the realities of wild life that, having disappeared from the everyday life of a civilized person, made him different, forced him to"grow up"⁶. The author's compass was the ability to tune his thoughts in tune with the world around him, and this helped him better understand the essence of life on the continent.

The title of the work - "Journey without a map" - can be understood in two ways: on the one hand, in the 30s of the XX century, there really was no reliable map of Africa. So, according to the ironic remark of Graham Greene, in the American version, 95% of the territory was designated as "Cannibals". It is clear that such a signature was not an accurate reflection of the fact, rather, it showed the inability and unwillingness of civilized people to admit their own ignorance: "This map did not allow dotted lines; but it was so inaccurate that it would have been useless and, perhaps, even dangerous to use it" (p. 186).

On the other hand, the title of the work is connected with the unknown path of civilization itself. Where are we going? What will happen next? And in this respect, Graham Greene's journey across the expanse of the African continent can be likened to a spectacle-

* Tabula rasa (lat. "blank slate") is used to denote the thesis that the knowledge resource of a single human individual is completely built up from the experience and sensory perceptions of the external world.

back to the past of humanity, to its origins. According to G. Green, the path of humanity into the unknown resembles a journey through wild Africa without a map in your hands. And the map that politicians and the military offer us is no better than the American map of Africa with the inscription "Cannibals" where there is nothing else to write.

OUR MAN IN AFRICA

Once in Senegal, the writer notices a significant difference between the African colonies subordinate to Great Britain and France, already in the very method of developing territories: "The British just came here to stay. They just want to use the land of East Africa." On the contrary, the French brought with them a solid monolith of culture held together by the Catholic faith, while "the British brought with them only polo shirts, Sunday school teachers,and priests. 7

According to the writer, West Africa gave the world a relatively rich literary heritage, especially works written in French, while " British East Africa gave rise to almost nothing."

In Dakar, Green sees Senegalese men in white and blue clothes laughing and experiences "the charm of warmth and sleepy beauty, a sense of serene and carefree joy" (p.179). But it would be unfair to say that, on the whole, the narrator is enthusiastic about the primeval savagery of the continent, contrasting it with the pernicious influence of civilization. The feeling of joy is quickly replaced by thoughts of the plague epidemic, the poverty and despair of the inhabitants of Dakar. In addition to this carefree coast, there is another Dakar, "the city of despair and injustice", but it was here, as the author notes, "for a moment something else glimpsed through its appearance, something stubbornly preserved here from time immemorial" (p. 180). This "something" is sincerity, bold expression of emotions, lack of theatricality and grandeur. This is how primitive consciousness differs from the civilized one. G. Green does not write directly about this anywhere, but this idea permeates all the reflections and impressions of the traveler.

Greene is critical of African Creoles, understanding this definition exactly as the West African population sees it. For him, Creole is not associated with skin color at all: we are talking about Africans whose ancestors spent some time in the West (in Europe or America), and then their children returned to their homeland, while feeling like Europeans. In an interview, the writer said that he first encountered Creoles in Liberia: "I didn't like what I saw at all. [This man] seized power over [former tribesmen] and behaved with them in an un-human way, even selling them into slavery."⁸. Most likely, we are talking here about Colonel Davis, who was involved in the Liberian conflict in 1931.

It would be wrong to say that the" dominant race " of whites did not seek to change the barbaric customs of the inhabitants of Africa. The colonizers did not just bring with them everything dear to their hearts, but also tried to instill their customs and way of life in the local population. This was partly due to the subconscious desire to overcome the problem of "one's own-another's", characteristic of any emigrant. Looking at the bar's patrons, the narrator notices: "Users... did you try to bring English customs here, not how would they keep their peace of mind?" Finally, the narrator begins to realize that he, too, needs something "of his own" in this country, a certain point of support: "at least two or three familiar and understandable things, even if it will be a detective novel or a cocktail glass" (p. 192). Going to Africa in search of an answer to the question about the fallacy of the path of civilization, he, however, is devoid of maximalism and does not renounce his civilized habits.

The travelogue highlights the problem of power in Liberia in a special way. G. Green calls the African aristocracy "shabby". Local tribal leaders, imitating their white brothers, learn to save shillings and pence: they "give" every guest food and expect other things in return.-

a fee that exceeds the actual value of the product. In the colonial towns, bribery and nepotism reign supreme. "If people prefer one president over another, it is simply because they had a better life under one commissar than under another" (p. 202). In this, the common people of Africa are surprisingly similar to their civilized contemporaries from Europe, but they were not always like this: "If you have to blame someone, you have to blame the headquarters, the main headquarters of the empire - a country that gave them nothing but a thirst for decency and a sense of honor, which very quickly fades in this heat" (p. 184). White power not only changed the appearance of the Aborigines, but also deprived them of something more important: "How can you compare the" unenlightened " Negroes from the Buzi tribe, walking with a proud bearing in their long robes along narrow forest paths?.. with Anglicized "enlightened" blacks from Sierra Leone, in military uniforms, striped shirts and dirty tropical helmets!" (p. 202).

One of the main tasks of Europeans was to "educate" the population of the colonies and eradicate religious ignorance. However, Mr. Green is skeptical of the efforts of preachers who " naively beg to donate a few shillings for a new altar cloth or a silver tabernacle." In his opinion, the efforts of missionaries are futile if they are aimed only at the external, formal manifestation of religiosity. He writes :" I could not believe that they would do so much harm to the secret Societies of alligators and leopards, or would molest those who secretly sacrifice children to a huge python" (p.203). At the same time, it becomes quite clear to him why preachers pay much more attention to external issues - hygiene and nutrition of the population, than to issues of spirituality: physical needs come first, because before collecting donations, it is necessary that the population be able to work and have some property.

Gwen Boardman notes that the state of Christianity in Africa reminded Greene of the degeneration of Christianity in Europe. As in Europe, in Liberia the role of the Church has been narrowed to "distributing social favours" and reduced to "matters of political and financial expediency"⁹. Moreover, the Africans themselves are ambivalent about the missionaries ' sermons: thus, the black government does not trust missions, the Commissioner for Mohammedan affairs hates Christians, and the indigenous people continue to practice paganism, poorly disguising it as nominal Christianity.

G. Green concludes that by interfering with the life of the colonies, civilization not only failed in its quest to "enlighten the Africans", but also deprived them of what they had before. The author's attitude to this problem is succinctly expressed in one phrase: "The coast is the most dangerous place in Liberia for travelers, because its inhabitants were touched by civilization, which taught them to steal, lie and kill" (p. 238).

A DECREPIT WORLD

In his travelogue, Graham Greene touches on the fate of not only the African aborigines, but also the British colonialists themselves, coming to the conclusion that the former lost a considerable part of their heritage, while the latter could not bring this heritage with them and are forced to be content with the symbiosis of the realities of the primitive and civilized way of life.

G. Green compares the world of Africa to childhood, which has its own secrets, riddles and legends. "Adult" civilized people fail in their efforts to make a mature experienced person out of a "child" in the short term.

Paradoxically, it is precisely a civilization whose history is younger than that of Africa that G. Green calls "decrepit": "Well, here I am back, or rather, I have come closer again to the decrepit world from which I left. My journey, if it did not give me anything else, at least it was even more disappointing in what man has turned the primitive world into, what he has done with his childhood " (p. 239). People have gained nothing by replacing mystical, otherworldly, supernatural cruelty with everyday cruelty.

It was civilization that deprived a person of love for life in the true sense of this concept, but there is no way out of this situation. You can't turn back time, and the past is irretrievably lost.

At the same time, Mr. Green understands that everyone is given their own: "I am at home, after all, in the sense that we understand it, and I will soon forget what a finer sense of taste, a sharper sense of pleasure, a deeper sense of fear is, even though we might have retained them for the rest of our lives" (p.240). Apparently, it was the desire to "remember" that called him to Africa again and again in the first place.

^{Shelden M.} 1 Graham Greene: The Enemy Within. Random House, NY, 1994, p. 159.

^{Green G.} 2 Travel without a map. Series "My 20th century", Moscow, Vagrius Publ., 2007.

^{Kunkel Francis L.} 3 The Labyrinthine Ways of Graham Greene. Sheed & Ward, NY, 1959, p. 10.

^{Couto M.} 4 Graham Greene: On the Frontier. Politics and Religion in the Novels. St. Martin's Press, N.Y., 1988, p. 218.

⁵ Ibid., p. 118.

⁶ См.: Boardman Gwenn R.. Graham Greene: The Aesthetics of Exploration. University of Florida Press, Gainsville, 1971, p. 19.

⁷ Graham Greene: Man of Paradox. Ed. by A.F.Cassis. Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1994, p. 164.

^{Couto M.} 8 Op. cit, p. 219.

^{Boardman Gwenn R.} 9 Op. cit., p. 16.

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