Travels in the Congo

Posted on 24 May 2017 by André Gide

The Belgian Congo now the countries of Congo, Zaire, and Central African Republic has fascinated travellers for centuries with its mysterious and brilliant landscapes and its rich tribal cultures While the area is investigated in the most minute detail, Gide is clear about his position as the responsive outsider He does not claim cultural familiarity rather, he treats all that he describes with the authority of a writer whose startling awareness makes places and people live indelibly in the imagination. Best Read [ Travels in the Congo ] Author [ André Gide ] – kino-fada.fr In July 1925, French novelist Andr Gide, accompanied by filmmaker Marc Allegret, his lover, took a ten month trip that encompassed the French Congo, touched briefly on the Belgian Congo, and then swung north to Chad, the territory of Ubangui Shari, and coming back to the ocean via a long journey through the entire length of Cameroon What with the tsetse flies, the ringworm, and strange jungle fevers which killed not a few of their party, this was not in any way deluxe travel Although Allegret In July 1925, French novelist Andr Gide, accompanied by filmmaker Marc Allegret, his lover, took a ten month trip that encompassed the French Congo, touched briefly on the Belgian Congo, and then swung north to Chad, the territory of Ubangui Shari, and coming back to the ocean via a long journey thr...This is not a mere travel book Apart from the mostly dull and sometimes somewhat poetically floating observations of the Central African nature, this travellog documents the way the colonial administration treated the local people structurally hardly human and without respect for their culture and traditions The last aspect has led, via Gide s report to the French government, to discussions in the French House of Representatives and an international conference in Geneva about Gide s accusatio This is not a mere travel book Apart from the mostly dull and sometimes somewhat poetically floating observations of the Central African nature, this travellog documents the way the colonial administration treated the local people structurally hardly human and without respect for their culture and traditions The last aspect has led, via Gide s report to the French government, to discussions in the French House of Representatives and an international conference in Geneva about Gide s accusations.One of the main difficulties in trying to get grip on the situation in the African colonies was, that, in fact, private trade companies like the Compagnie Foresti re dominated the colonies, and the officials in France h...Travels in the Congo is an artifact, a strange viewfinder showing hard to access parts of Central Africa circa 1925 from the perspective of a very oddly chosen special envoy of the Colonial Ministry Andre Gide a controversial, avant garde French playwright is shuttled around in a Tipoye a porter conveyed chair about which he is often wringing his hands with guilt, As a general rule we use our tipoyes very little, as much because we like walking as to spare our wretched bearers , on ho Travels in the Congo is an artifact, a strange viewfinder showing hard to access parts of Central Africa circa 1925 from the perspective of a very oddly chosen special envoy of the Colonial Ministry Andre Gide a controversial, avant garde French playwright is shuttled around in a Tipoye a porter conveyed chair about which he is often wringing his hands with guilt, As a general rule we use our tipoyes very little, as much because we like walking as to spare our wretched bearers , on horseback, in various boats and sometimes, to his credit, he walks on his own feet Gide s entourage often exceeds seventy people forcibly requisitioned to transport the ponderous equipment of his unclear mission for less than two francs per person, per day There is...Dedicated to the memory of Joseph Conrad, this travel memoir explores the observations of Gide, who traveled to the Congo from 1925 to 1926 Gide s unique positioning in the Congo as a traveler for pleasure his quotations reveals the unstable relationship between the colonizer and the colonized As one whose nationh....Compares favorably with Gide s fiction and has an excellent eye for detail Several other writers of Gide s era who tried their hand at non fiction did not pull it off so well nor age so gracefully The somewhat misleading title Travels in the Congo may sound better than Travels in French Equatorial Africa but the latter is aaccurate description The back cover of my Ecco Press edition manages to muddy the waters further by describing the Belgian Congo as now having devolved into the n Compares favorably with Gide s fiction and has an excellent eye for detail Several other writers of Gide s era who tried their hand at non fiction did not pull it off so well nor age so gracefully The somewhat misleading title Travels in the Congo may sound better than Travels in French Equatorial Africa but the latter is aaccurate description The back cover of my Ecc...R cit d un long p riple effectu par Gide au Congo Brazzaville et belge et au del vers l Oubangui Chari et jusqu au Lac Tchad Un vrai r cit de voyage mais aussi une d nonciation cinglante de l exploitation de l Afrique et des africains par les concessionnaires priv s Si Gide peut avoir une relative compr hension pour l exploitation impos e par l tat garant du bien fond des d veloppements r alis s, par le biais de cette exploitation, pour la mise en valeur du pays il expose que le seul R cit d un long p riple effectu par Gide au Congo Brazzaville et belge et au del vers l Oubangui Chari et jusqu au Lac Tchad Un vrai r cit de voyage mais aussi une d nonciation cinglante de l exploitation de l Afrique et des africains par les concessionnaires priv s Si Gide peut avoir une relative compr hension pour l exploitation impos e par l tat garant du bien fond des d veloppements r alis s, par le biais de cette exploitation, pour la mise en valeur du pa...This was enjoyable both as travel writing and as a historical document Gide writes poetically about the scenery, the people and animals that he encounters He documents the abuses of the colonists with no little despair and he is never less than fair in his dealings with the Africans It is interesting to look at the map at the front of the book and consider how different its countries are from a modern map and also how different our politics are Given the attitudes at the time, it is even mor This was enjoyable both as travel writing and as a historical document Gide writes poetically about the scenery, the people and animals that he encounters He documents the abuses of the colonists with no little despair and he is never less than fair in his dealings with the Africans It is interesting to look at the map at the front of the book and consider how different its countries are from a modern...This is an interesting document It s a journal so you get a day to day account of traveling through the heart of French Congo in the Twenties, with the backing of the French Government Problems with porters, local chiefs and sheiks, fevers, cooks and the French companies extracting rubber from the d...Andre Gide has a passion for humanity, nature, language and literature, as reflected in the diary of his nine month trip in 1925 26 across the Congo He is quite forward thinking for the time period in his views on Africans, in his relentless pursuit of local justice and in his pr...

English
24 May 2017

André Gide