ALBERTO MORAVIA
403
ago, should be older. On the other hand, it is clear that black Africa
is at a cultural stage that Europe had reached some thousands of years
ago; therefore, in this case, Africa would be the older. But Africa is
now entering, for the first time, the industrial civilization that has been
established in Europe for two centuries, and thus Africa is younger.
StilI, one can not deny the fact that the African fails to comprehend
the deeper meaning of this industrial civilization; he accepts it without
understanding it and he doesn't understand it because his religious
concepts precede not only Calvinism, which lies at the origin of that
civilization, but Christianity itself; therefore Africa is older. But isn't the
African perhaps younger than the European in that he is more ir–
rational, more carefree, more infantile, more inclined toward dancing,
singing, pantomime-that is art forms which don't demand intellectual
maturity, and so on? But this is a trick of words. In reality, all things
considered, the culture of Africa is archaic, decrepit, prehistoric.
Today, the Africans, after having remained fixed at this culture
for millenia, are passing with a dizzying jump, because of a caprice
not unusual in history, to the neo-capitalist, industrial culture. Thus,
a trip to Africa, when it is not limited to a monotonous jaunt through
the large hotels that Westerners have scattered over the black continent,
is a plunge into prehistory.
But what is this prehistory that fascinates Europeans so much?
First of all, let us say, it is the structure of the African landscape
itself. The principal trait of this landscape is not its diversity, as in
Europe, but rather its terrifying monotony. The face of Africa is
therefore more similar to that of an infant with few of its features
yet defined than to that of a man on which life has marked innumerable
significant lines; or rather it is more similar to the face of the earth
in prehistory when there were no seasons and man hadn't yet appeared
than to the face of the earth today with its innumerable modifications
wrought both by the seasons and by man himself. This monotony, on the
other hand, presents two aspects that are truly prehistoric: repetition,
that is the repeating of a single theme or motif to the point of obsession
and terror; and formlessness, that is the inability to assume any limit,
finiteness, or shape.
Prehistory, for example, is the savanna that covers Africa for
thousands of kilometers from west to east, from the Atlantic Ocean to
the Indian Ocean. The savanna is a vast steppe, pale green in color,
scattered as far as the eye can see with one type of tree, the small
African acacia bristling with thorns, its branches opening out like an
umbrella, and one type of circular bush of a dark green. You can
