TRAVELOGUE AS A LITERARY ENCOUNTER WITH ANOTHER: THREE AFRICAN PLOTS

Abstract

The article presents a travelogue in various literary forms as reflection of a meeting with Another. This may be a discovery, both expected and unexpected. The journey is motivated by an interest in what at first appears to be alien, unknown, hints at complex content, promises heuristic surprises, which are associated with hopes for Something Else. Geographical and cultural sites with such properties were often sought just beyond the sea. During a trip around the world in 1853, I. A. Goncharov came to the interior of South Africa, their indigenous inhabitants, Blacks, Kaffirs, Bushmen, aroused his interest as representatives of Another breed of man, an ethnocultural group alien to him, and he got to know them in order to understand their characteristics and place among other similar groups. N. S. Gumilev went to Africa in search of Another One. He not only transferred his creative intuitions to African soil, but also strengthened them, extended them into the field of fiction and mythology. Above all the material that he found in his travels and which formed the content of his African poems, another topic arises, more intimate for Gumilev and more metaphysical in its meaning. It is present in him not in a consistent, distinct development, but in separate images, in associations. The purpose of the Italian writer A. Moravia's trip to Africa is to get her accurate information about the natural environment, about the social structure and about the mores of people in all the countries he visits. But along with the reality of Africa, Moravia also feels something different about the modern world. He sees here a clear evidence of the first days of peace, after which all subsequent development, from Adam to the present day, had to take place in the order described and predicted in the Old and New Testaments.

Extended Abstract:

This article presents the travelogue in its various literary forms as a reflection of the encounter with the Other. This meeting can become a discovery—both anticipated and unexpected. The journey is motivated by an interest in what initially appears alien and unknown, hinting at complex content and promising heuristic surprises linked to hopes for the Other. Geographical and cultural objects with such properties were often sought precisely beyond the sea.

During his round-the-world voyage in 1853, I. A. Goncharov ventured into the interior of South Africa. Its indigenous inhabitants—Negroes, Kaffirs, Bushmen—interested him as representatives of another breed of humanity, an alien ethnocultural group, and he familiarized himself with them to understand their peculiarities and place among other similar groups. However, the sight of a Bushman evoked in the writer a painful sensation of encountering something almost subhuman, his own Other, which simultaneously identifies with man and denies him.

N. S. Gumilev, in his search for the Other, travelled to Africa. He not only transferred his creative intuitions to African soil but also intensified them, extending them into the realm of fiction and mythology. Over all the material he found, which formed the content of his African poems, another, more intimate and metaphysically significant theme arises. It is present not in a consistent development but in separate images and associations, often of a religious-metaphysical order. In Africa, Gumilev found the Other of his internal images of a "God's garden" and a "golden age"—a neglected, wild paradise of a fallen man and fallen nature, where a "black Adam" begins human history anew, thereby negating the path of biblical Adam.

The goal of the Italian writer A. Moravia's journey to Africa was to obtain precise information about the natural environment, social structure, and customs of the people in all the countries he visited. But along with the reality of Africa, Moravia also senses the Other of the modern world here. African landscapes directly inspire in the author the sensation that this nature is a visual testimony to the first days of Creation. He perceives the journey through the Sahara as a travel in metaphysical space, outside of history. It seems that even a thoroughly secularized European personality, remaining Christian in its origins, finds in Africa its religious Other—the ancient chaos and the fascination of a world where Adam remained in Eden.

Thus, the primary and deepest motive in these travelogues is not simply the desire to see and describe new phenomena outside one's cultural experience. What drives a person, whether conscious before or during the journey, is the striving to psychologically and existentially recognize the Other—the Other as an otherness that is part of him and expands his subjective world.