The Viceroy of Ouidah
The Viceroy of Ouidah (English original title: The Viceroy of Ouidah ) is a novel published in 1980 by the British writer Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989). It was made into a film by Werner Herzog under the title Cobra Verde .
construction
The novel consists of six chapters. The first two and the sixth, very short chapters take place long after the protagonist's death , the other sections describe his life from birth to death. Depending on the edition, the book has around 130 to 160 pages.
content
The novel is set in Brazil and in Dahomey, today's Benin . Francisco Manoel da Silva is a Brazilian slave trader who has long lived in the town of Ouidah in Dahomey on the slave coast . At the height of his power, he is viceroy .
In the first chapter a family celebration of the descendants of da Silvas in Ouidah is described. It is believed to be set in 1974 in the now independent Dahomey, where a Marxist government rules. Relatives from several West African countries have come together to commemorate their ancestors. A speech by the President sounds in the background on the radio.
The second chapter takes place after 1957 and is about da Silva's favorite daughter Wéwé, who is dying. She is over 100 years old. As a young woman, she had an affair with a British researcher who never sent the bride money . From then on she lived alone for a long time. After all, a relative boy lives with her. She made a shrine for her father out of the ruined chapel of Ouidah Fort .
The description of life da Silva begins with the third chapter. He was born in 1785 in Sertão , Brazil . His father died when he was one year old and his mother died a few years later. After a short time with his guardian, a Portuguese priest, he becomes a drover and later a wandering robber and murderer. He also meets the bandit Cobra Verde .
Since Silva is getting married, she advises day laborers and receives a share of her wages in return. When his first child is born, he leaves the family and goes hiking again. While working on a sugar cane plantation, he made friends with his employer's son, Joaquim Coutinho. There he gets to know African slaves. He has to leave the company when his employer suffers a stroke .
In Bahia , da Silva gets to know the slave trade. The most valuable slaves come from Ouidah, which belongs to the Dahomey kingdom , so he went there on a slave ship in 1812.
In the next chapter he lands in Ouidah. The Portuguese-Brazilian fort São João Baptista d'Ajudá there has been destroyed. Da Silva forces repairs and the slave trade gets going again. The Portuguese station is not recognized by the British. Da Silva lives there in a palace.
Da Silva accepts the beautiful local chief daughter Jijibou as a woman. She subsequently has a son who is called Isidoro. This is a signal for her relatives to move into the palace. Da Silva loses influence and is subjected to numerous harassments. Eventually he is arrested and mistreated. He awaits his death but is taken to Dahomey's capital, Abomey . There after a while he meets the king, who is similarly cruel, and becomes his friend. But he remains a prisoner. After a year it is dipped in indigo solution to darken it and left to die. But he survived and, with the help of the young Prince Kankpé, was able to flee. The two become blood brothers .
The following, fifth chapter is the longest in the book. Da Silva comes back to the coast. He plans to return to Bahia, but fears life as a poor man there and remembers Prince Kankpé. With the support of his Brazilian trading partner, he helped Kankpé to power in Dahomey and was then given a monopoly in the slave trade. He becomes a chief and is nicknamed "Elephant". A year later he was appointed viceroy. His honorary title is "Dom". He helps Dahomey to build a powerful army in which numerous Amazons fight. They wage cruel wars, which da Silva approves of until he sees children being massacred. He thinks of his child in Brazil.
Da Silva has many children (a total of 63 sons and an undisclosed number of daughters), and his house is constantly being furnished with valuable goods. Numerous clippers drive for him between Ouidah and Bahia. At the age of 50 he is at the height of his power but is desperate inside. He sends his first son Isidoro to Brazil for training. There he is rejected because of his "African" habits. Joaquim Coutinho breaks off business relations with da Silva, especially because of the increasing ban on the slave trade. Isidoro is sent by Coutinho's successor to Marseille , where he then works for a shipowner . He wants to extract palm oil in Ouidah , and a factory is built. But when he is attacked because of his collaboration with the slave trader, the factory is closed. Da Silva turns to his archenemies, the British. Due to a translation error, however, they cooperate with Kankpé. As a result, the king insults the British monarch Victoria , so that the British go to war against Dahomey and Dahomey's 5,000 soldiers die.
Numerous former slaves who have returned from Brazil are settling in Simbodji, da Silva's place of residence. In a Christian wedding celebration, the king marries a young woman from this group. Shortly afterwards, the bride's father starts his own trading activity. The king now knows the value of gold and silver and has them taken away from da Silva. The last clipper is applied.
An epidemic breaks out in Simbodji and the doctor falls victim to it. Da Silva now lives with his widow Dona Luciana. They have two twin daughters, da Silvas. When da Silva loses his Brazilian citizenship, he wants the twins to move to Brazil with Dona Luciana. The twins drive without them and become prostitutes there. But Dona Luciana and da Silva have sexual relations for the first time. The daughter Eugenia, later called Wéwé, is born nine months later.
After da Silva's possessions in Brazil go bankrupt, Dona Luciana dies and he is also ostracized by his children, da Silva goes insane.
In the sixth chapter, the dying Wéwé remembers, among other things, that her father was buried in a rum barrel. In the final scene, a security officer is portrayed who ponders possible traitors.
style
As in his other books, Chatwin used a laconic, content-rich style characterized by a large vocabulary. Verbatim speech occurs, but dialog does not. Chatwin tried to imitate Gustave Flaubert's style .
background
Many details of the plot of the book are historically guaranteed and only slightly changed. The model for the figure da Silvas was Francisco Félix de Souza, known as Cha Cha, who probably landed in Ouidah in 1788 and died there in 1849 at the age of 95. A portrait of de Souzas shows a bearded, strong man. The model for the older king was Adandozan , for Prince Kankpé Gézo .
Chatwin made two trips to Benin to do research for his book. He stayed there in February 1972 and from December 1976 to January 1977. He was fascinated by the history of de Souza, especially the "blackening" of the descendants and the Amazon armies. On January 16, 1977, Chatwin fell into a coup in Cotonou and was briefly arrested. He describes this in his collection of essays and travel descriptions What am I doing here .
He then flew to Brazil, where he visited Bahia, among other places. He wrote the book from May 1977, first in a cottage in Wales , then in Tuscany and Spain.
Editions (selection)
- The Viceroy of Ouidah , English, Jonathan Cape, London 1980, ISBN 978-0224018203
- The Viceroy of Ouidah , German, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1982, ISBN 978-3498008598
reception
The reviews were partly positive, but partly also subdued. The brutal representations were often rated negatively.
The book sold relatively poorly. Both the hardbacks and paperbacks reached about a third of the circulation of the previous book In Patagonia and the subsequent books Chatwins, such as On the Black Mountain . For this book, Chatwin received the Whitbread Book Award for Best First Novel, although The Viceroy of Ouidah had previously appeared.
filming
The Viceroy of Ouidah was filmed in 1987 under the title Cobra Verde by Werner Herzog. The film is based on chapters 3 to 5. In the film, da Silva and Cobra Verde , who is only mentioned in passing in the book, merge into one character portrayed by Klaus Kinski .
Secondary literature
- Nicholas Shakespeare : Bruce Chatwin. Biography . Pp. 477-558, Kindler, Reinbek 2000, ISBN 3-463-40389-7