Tamango (Mérimée)
Tamango , also called The Slave Ship , is a novella by the French writer Prosper Mérimée , which appeared in 1829 in the literary magazine "La Revue française". There are no survivors in this indictment of slavery .
action
The French fur seal Ledoux had served himself from sailor to helmsman's mate, lost his left hand at Trafalgar and then trained himself as a sea officer as an autodidact. Despite the prohibition of slavery in France , he leaves Nantes with his brig "Hope" and - according to the papers - heads for Senegal . On the Joale River he buys 160 negroes from the black slave trader Tamango for a stick of cardboard. During the relentless haggling, the choleric Tamango had drunk a good drink and, while drunk, gave one of his wives - Ayché - to his French "trading partner". When the African “ebony dealer” wakes up from his intoxication, the brig on the river is already heading for the sea. The destination is Martinique . The crossing will take around six weeks.
The meandering river course comes to the aid of the local slave trader. Tamango catches up with the two-master - rushing ashore - and is taken on board. Captain Ledoux does not give up his present. Ayché is an attractive woman who is allowed to run around untied on board and serve the captain. The armed and strong Tamango is overwhelmed by the French sailors and tied up with the other slaves below deck. At first, the reception below deck is not friendly. After all, Tamango's “human goods” were personally captured in the African interior and prevented from escaping with a bulky wooden yoke around the neck. Tamango later rises to be the leader of his fellow prisoners. He was immediately flogged for this by the furious Captain Ledoux, but he continued unbroken despite the welts on his face. Tamango promises the prisoners that they will return to their African homeland. Ayché, the captain's new wife, has a remorse - actually completely innocent - and is still subject to her former husband Tamango. At Tamango's behest, Ayché gets him a small file. In this way, the prisoners below deck free themselves on their own. In the slaughter that followed on board, all the French were killed. In a fit of rage, Tamango twists the helm in heavy seas. The two masts break after the thoughtless maneuver. The brig is no longer navigable. All sailors are dead anyway. Some of the eighty surviving negroes can be accommodated in the sloop and the small dinghy . The wounded also stay behind with Tamango and Ayché on the drifting wreck.
Ayché died when the English frigate "Bellona" came by. The governor of Kingston gives Tamango freedom. As a basin bat in a regimental band, Tamango speaks to the rum and succumbs to pneumonia in the hospital.
filming
- 1957 " The black slave ". Director: JOHN BERRY . Alex Cressan played the Tamango, Curd Jürgens the captain and Dorothy Dandridge the Ayché.
German editions
Used edition
- Tamango . P. 1–28 in Prosper Mérimée: Auserlesene Novellen (also contains: Federigo . The Etruscan vase . Colomba . Carmen . The Venus of Ille . The alley of Madama Lucrezia . The Blue Room ). Translator: Helmut Bartuschek (1951). With an introduction by Herbert Kühn. Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung zu Leipzig 1965 (5th edition, license Rudolf Marx). 398 pages
Web links
in English
- Raphaël Lambert on January 29, 2011 in “Film International” on: Mérimée and the slave trade .
in French
- Tamango, 1829 , online text in the French WikiSource
Individual evidence
- ^ French. La Revue française
- ↑ Edition used, p. 6, 5. Zvo