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At Siem Reap

Vallejo Nocturno 2018- Craft at Siem Reap 2009

A kind of nobility

 

 

V.S. Naipaul recently passed away, an article from NYRB by Ian Buruma. I enjoyed Naipul's fiction when I was young-in my thirties. He appeared to me to be clear and cryptic at the same time about topics that hounded me. Bend of the River I considered a masterpiece for its detatchment and depth. But then sometime in the mid 80"s I stopped reading him and never had the will to go back to him. But there was probably more as he was an impeccable writer :

V.S. Naipaul’s fastidiousness was legendary. I met him for the first time in Berlin, in 1991, when he was feted for the German edition of his latest book. A smiling young waitress offered him some decent white wine. Naipaul took the bottle from her hand, examined the label for some time, like a fine-art dealer inspecting a dubious piece, handed the bottle back, and said with considerable disdain: “I think perhaps later, perhaps later.” (Naipaul often repeated phrases.)

This kind of thing also found its way into his travel writing. He could work himself up into a rage about the quality of the towels in his hotel bathroom, or the slack service on an airline, or the poor food at a restaurant, as though these were personal affronts to him, the impeccably turned-out traveler.

Naipaul was nothing if not self-aware. In his first travel account of India, An Area of Darkness (1964), he describes a visit to his ancestral village in a poor, dusty part of Uttar Pradesh, where an old woman clutches Naipaul’s shiny English shoes. Naipaul feels overwhelmed, alienated, presumed upon. He wants to leave this remote place his grandfather left behind many years before. A young man wishes to hitch a ride to the nearest town. Naipaul says: “No, let the idler walk.” And so, he adds, “the visit ended, in futility and impatience, a gratuitous act of cruelty, self-reproach and flight.”

It is tempting to see Naipaul as a blimpish figure, aping the manners of British bigots; or as a fussy Brahmin, unwilling to eat from the same plates as lower castes. Both views miss the mark. Naipaul’s fastidiousness had more to do with what he called the “raw nerves” of a displaced colonial, a man born in a provincial outpost of empire, who had struggled against the indignities of racial prejudice to make his mark, to be a writer, to add his voice to what he saw as a universal civilization. Dirty towels, bad service, and the wretchedness of his ancestral land were insults to his sense of dignity, of having overcome so much.

These raw nerves did not make him into an apologist for empire, let alone for the horrors inflicted by white Europeans. On the contrary, he blamed the abject state of so many former colonies on imperial conquest. In The Loss of Eldorado (1969), a short history of his native Trinidad, he describes in great detail how waves of bloody conquest wiped out entire peoples and their cultures, leaving half-baked, dispossessed, rootless societies. Such societies have lost what Naipaul calls their “wholeness” and are prone to revolutionary fantasies and religious fanaticism.

Wholeness was an important idea to Naipaul. To him, it represented cultural memory, a settled sense of place and identity. History was important to him, as well as literary achievement upon which new generations of writers could build. It irked him that there was nothing for him to build on in Trinidad, apart from some vaguely recalled Brahmin rituals and books about a faraway European country where it rained all the time, a place he could only imagine. England, to him, represented a culture that was whole. And, from the distance of his childhood, so did India. (In fact, he knew more about ancient Rome, taught by a Latin teacher in Trinidad, than he did about either country.)

When he finally managed to go to India, he was disappointed. India was a “wounded civilization,” maimed by Muslim conquests and European colonialism. He realized he didn’t belong there, any more than in Trinidad or in England. And so he sought to find his place in the world through words. Books would be his escape from feeling rootless and superfluous. His father, Seepersad Naipaul, had tried to lift himself from his surroundings by writing journalism and short stories, which he hoped, in vain, to publish in England. Writing, to father and son, was more than a profession; it was a calling that conferred a kind of nobility.

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What makes Phantom Africa such a fascinating document is Leiris’ observational acuity and emotional honesty. His presumed audience is ambiguous. He is keeping this peripheral record with the intent of publishing, yet it seems as if he is writing, first and foremost, for himself and for his wife. He realises that some of what he is capturing may not be well received. He takes little care to mask the identity of team members when reporting potentially scandalous behaviour, and advises Zette early on that it is likely best that she not share the instalments he is sending home beyond a few trusted friends. He does not edit what he records—his impressions of those he encounters, accounts of pillaging that read like tales of adventure, details of rituals and ceremonies, and descriptions of his nightly dreams all go into the mix. He does not rework and tidy up the entries. There is no index or glossary. Any corrections or updated information is confined to infrequent footnotes. He does, however, make liberal use of ellipses throughout, granting space for his unfinished thoughts and opinions to hang in the air. The resulting text lands somewhere between uninhibited literature and hallucinatory documentary.

Leiris’ entries during the early months of the expedition reveal a marked vacillation between enthusiasm and disillusion, as he adjusts and readjusts his romantic image of Africa to the reality he finds. Dakar, where they disembark, disgusts him and he is eager to get “into the bush”. He is excited when they reach villages and begin to interact with the “natives”, but it doesn’t take long before disenchantment with his new would-be profession seeps in. He longs to be able to engage his informants in more human topics than the meaning and uses of objects. Ethnographic practice at this time is still essentially in the service of a colonial agenda—data is gathered as a means of understanding and exerting control on the colonised, while items are collected to furnish museums in France. Acquisition by whatever means necessary is the order of the day.

Less than a month out, Leiris begins to notice a growing sense of displacement and isolation from his companions. He becomes irritated easily. His appetite for the work will wax and wane, as will his commitment to personal growth. His letters home provide a deeper level of reflection, as he confesses to Zette feelings he won’t even include in his journal. As the Mission progresses deeper into Africa, his spirits are buoyed, particularly in Mali where they encounter the Dogon people. With their elaborate masks, colourful rituals, and complex system of ancestor worship, he feels he has finally found the “exotic” he was anticipating. However, it is also a place where the tactics of the ethnographic team are particularly egregious. Leiris’ unvarnished accounts of looting are disturbing, but they form an important documentation of the extent of the cultural exploitation that existed under colonialism. And he willingly partakes in the deception, although not without some uncomfortable awareness of the unacceptable power imbalance. Frequent raids are made on shrines, caves and holy sites. In one such incident Leiris reports:

In the next village, I spot a kono hut with a ruined door. I point it out to Griaule and we decide to take it. Like the last time, Mamadou Vad [the interpreter] announces brusquely to the village chief, whom we have brought to the hut, that the commandant of the Mission has ordered us to seize the kono and that we are prepared to pay compensation of 20 francs. This time I carry out the operation alone and slip into the sacred retreat carrying Lutten’s hunting knife in my hand in order to cut the cords of the mask. When I notice that two men—not at all threatening, to be honest—have entered behind me, I realize in a dazed stupor, which only later transforms into disgust, that you feel pretty sure of yourself when you’re a white man with a knife in your hand…

He will struggle with the incongruity of being a swashbuckler with a conscience. His disdain for all aspects of colonial administration will grow, as will his concern for the conditions of the colonised. Yet, Leiris’ mood is regularly revived whenever they are furthest from “civilisation”, where the “natives” are living in traditional communities. Even better, where magic, sacrifice and cannibalism might be found. Following such a close, day-to-day account, one sees that Leiris is a mess of contradictions, a fact he does not endeavour to hide. He realises that the Africa he seeks is elusive—one sense of the phantom of the book’s title—but he continues to romanticise it, while, even though he sought escape, his life in Europe begins to weigh heavily on his mind. He misses his wife, naturally, but he is also deeply disturbed by news from home. Even in 1931, rumours of war are in the air.

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