578
PARTISAN REVIEW
resolves the dilemma in an ineffable "born again" experience. The only
known portrait of the author, an engraving that served as a frontispiece to the
early editions· of the
Interesting Na"ative,
depicts the moment of rapture:
Equiano holding a Bible, opened to the pages of Acts Chapter Iv, Verse 12:
"Salvation is by Christ alone." A sanctified believer, Equiano experiences life
as a cosmic
drama,
a stage where every detail is invested with salvific signifi–
cance and transcendent meaning.
Not that a belief in a Calvinist God let the individual off the hook. Giving
God the credit while working like the devil, he is tireless for his own and his
people's betterment. From within the straightiacket of a determinist theology,
he manages to negotiate room to move for his unceasing efforts to escape slav–
ery---even
if
the language tends to break down in contradiction. "If it were
God's will I ever should be freed it would be so, and, on the contrary,
if
it
was
not His will it would not happen," says the fatalist before gainsaying himself
"I could only hope and trust in the God of Heaven; and at that instant my
mind
was
big with inventions and full of schemes to escape." In God he
trusts-but in himself as well.
For Americans, this side of Equiano is apt to strike a familiar chord. His
professions of total dependence on Providence coexist with an utter reliance
on the individual will.
As
much as a disciple ofJohn Calvin, he is one of the
first apostles of the self-made man, not so much a representative figure in the
movement from Puritan to Yankee but Puritan
and
Yankee. Casting himself
in
the mold of upward mobility and willful self-improvement, Equiano resem–
bles no one so much as his more famous and fortunate contemporary,
Benjamin Franklin-resourceful, pragmatic, print-oriented, always on the
lookout for a likely scam or fast buck. Like Franklin, Equiano is thoroughly
acquisitive and possesses an almost supernatural faith in the written word. "I
therefore embraced every occasion of improvement; and every new thing that
I observed I treasured up in my memory;' he writes in an echo of the other
Autobiography.
"I had long wished to be able to read and write; and for this pur–
pose I took every opportunity to gain instruction...." An odd synchronicity
links
the lives of the two men, writing autobiographies in the same year, who
twenty years earlier may have passed each other on the streets of Philadelphia.
The tragedy of Equiano's life-and America in the eighteenth century–
is that unlike Franklin, Equiano is forbidden full admission into his new world.
At times he wants desperately to belong. "I not only felt myself quite easy with
these new countrymen, but relished their society and manners," he admits. "I
no longer looked upon them as spirits but as men superior to us; and there–
fore I had the stronger desire to resemble them, to imbibe their spirit, and
imitate their manners." Though he celebrates his African roots, he is a mar–
ginal man who cannot but admire the science and literature of the Christian
West, a culture that has been at once his spiritual salvation and earthly purga-
