ANDERSON
DOUGLAS
Division
Below
the Surface:
Olaudah
Equiano's
Interesting
Narrative
To write history is so difficult thatmost historians are forced tomake
to
concessions
the
technique
EVERY MATERIAL
of
legend.
FEATURE
Auerbach, Mimesis
?Erich
OF OLAUDAH
1789 MEMOIR
EQUIANO'S
is, as it happens, interesting?not least so, the equivocal modifier that
NEARLY
Narrative of
forms a nearly invisible part of the book's title: The Interesting
theLife ofOlaudah Equiano orGustavus Vassa, theAfrican.Written byHimself.
story appeared at the close of a publishing era that prized true
Equiano's
histories and surprising adventures, commercial labels invoking the appetite
forwonder or novelty that sustained the English literarymarketplace from
the time ofDaniel Defoe through the opening years of the nineteenth cen
tury. Michael
McKeon
cites
assault
Shaftesbury's
on
the
"Gothick"
taste of
early eighteenth-century readers, who sought out "the TravellingMemoirs
of any casual Adventurer" in the hope of finding stories of "monstrous
Brutes"
and
"yet
more
monstrous
Men."
Within
a few
artistic
generations,
Shaftesbury's term for the outlandish had become wholly naturalized.1 The
years immediately surrounding the outbreak of the French Revolution
produced a burst of remarkable "gothic" fiction from the English press,
much ofwhich was committed to exploiting the entanglement of narrative
and
historical
the Gothic
processes
that Fiona
Robertson
identifies
as
the
signature
of
imagination.2
i.
Epigraph from Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation ofReality inWestern Litera
The Origins
ture, trans.Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton UP,
1953). Michael McKeon,
of theEnglish Novel 1600-1740 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP,
1987) 116-17. The OED
traces the evolution of "gothick" from Shaftesbury's disparaging application
in the 1710
Characteristicks through Johnson's matter-of-fact reference to "Gothick romance"
in a letter
toMrs. Thrale of 21 September
1773.
2. Vathek, The Mysteries
ofUdolpho, The Romance of theForest, The Monk, and Caleb Wil
liamswere
SiR,
439
43
all published
(Fall 2004)
between
1786 and 1796. On
the relation of the Gothic
sensibility to
ANDERSON
DOUGLAS
440
Even comparatively judicious writers were not immune to the appeal of
narrative
if not
extravagance,
absolute
monstrosity.
J. Paul
Hunter
makes
concessions
notes
that the faithfulportrayal of human nature, inHenry Fielding's "History"
of a foundling, did not preclude significant doses of themarvelous in Tom
fones.3 Prose fiction routinely exploits both terms in Erich Auerbach's per
ceptive account of the difficulty confronting the historical imagination: its
make
among
nonfictional
legend. The
and
from
durable
the
to
concessions
legends
history,
and
its "history"
to
interweaving ismost vividly expressed in novels, perhaps, but
forms
representational
slave
transatlantic
few
books
cravings
trade,
were
than
during
more
the
suited
stories
the course
to
these
that began
of
the
complex
to emerge
eighteenth
cen
tury.Olaudah Equiano's title,however, pointedly avoids invoking the sen
sational rhetorical elements that characterized thework of his contempo
raries, including that of his immediate predecessors in what Henry Louis
Gates
terms
the
"black
literary
tradition."4
To be sure, Equiano's introductory letter to the "Lords and Gentlemen"
of Parliament alludes to the "horrors" of the slave trade thatwill form part
of his subject, and to the public role that he currently played in the debate
over its abolition. His haunting portrait, in the frontispiece of the book, as
well as the suggestive nature of his dual names form part of the evocative
text: the fusion of the exotic and the historical that
sociology of Equiano's
his complex identities imply.5 These preliminary physical and verbal fea
tures of his story indicate that it had already secured a measure of advance
"interest," ifnot as a "gothick" then certainly as an improbable product of
Legitimate Histories: Scott, Gothic, and theAuthorities of Fiction
history, see Fiona Robertson,
1994) 68-116.
(Oxford: Clarendon,
3. J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts ofEighteenth-Century English Fiction
1990) 208-17.
(New York: Norton,
A narra
title to that of his immediate precursors: Briton Hammon,
4. Compare
Equiano's
a Negro man (1760),
tive of the uncommon sufferings,and surprizing deliverance ofBriton Hammon,
Gronniosaw, Narrative of theMost Remarkable Particulars in theLife of
James Albert Ukawsaw
an African Prince (1770) and Ottobah
Thoughts
Cugoano,
James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw,
and sentiments on the evil and wicked trafficof the slavery and commerce of the human species: humbly
a native of
submitted to the inhabitants of Great-Britain by Ottobah Cugoano,
Africa (1787).
the tradition that Henry
established
first
with
and
Gronniosaw,
Equiano,
along
Cugoano
Louis Gates describes in The SignifyingMonkey: A Theory ofAfro-American Literary Criticism
(New York: Oxford UP,
5. See D. F. McKenzie,
1988).
York and London:
Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (New
title
of Equiano's
features
to
of
the
1999). According
James Olney, many
Cambridge UP,
it the paradigm of slave autobiography,
including the engraved frontispiece por
page make
trait, the emphasis on renaming, and the express stipulation that the narrative was "written by
and as Litera
himself." See "I Was Born: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography
20
Callaloo
46-73.
ture,"
(1984):
OLAUDAH
the cultural collisions associated with an imperial age. Under
stances,
Equiano's
is all
title
invites its audience
degree, his book
in
of
choice
a word
"interesting,"
that was
the more
441
NARRATIVE
INTERESTING
EQUIANO'S
the circum
a
To
remarkable.
striking
(initially at least) to take some interest
in the process
of acquiring
new,
subjec
tivemeanings in the years thatOlaudah Equiano was adjusting to his Eng
lish name in an English world. Through the medium of this seemingly
invitation,
equivocal
narrative
Equiano's
remains
"It
significant,"
Williams
Raymond
to
begins
ethical and documentary burdens.
its profound
address
"that
suggests,
our most
eralwords for attraction or involvement should have developed
mal
term
objective
in property
and
This
finance."
gen
from a for
observation
concludes
brief account of the etymology of "interest" in Keywords.6 The
notes, designating
original legal and monetary definitions thatWilliams
Williams'
as
"interest"
the
a
of
possession
in
"share"
some
material
or
right
value,
only began to acquire wider cognitive and moral significance in themid
speculates that all modern permutations of
eighteenth century.Williams
the word
remain
with
"saturated"
economic
their
origins?a
suggestion
with which William Empson takes issue, in the third edition of The Struc
ture ofComplex Words. All references to "interest," Empson insists in his
are
preface,
not
held
to
hostage
puns,
etymological
except
where
a
given
writer appears to solicit the blend of older meanings with newer ones.7 Just
such a situation would appear to occur in the opening words of Olaudah
memoir,
Equiano's
the conventional
offering
scure individual" who
of "a private
apology
and
ob
is about to embark upon a long, autobiographical
narrative.
It is evident from the book's front-matter that thiswill be no ordinary
story, but Equiano pretends to some doubt about whether his pages will
prove
"sufficiently
interesting
to engage
general
He
attention."8
has
gone
to the considerable trouble of producing them, however, both to satisfythe
demands of his friends and to promote "the interest of humanity": "Permit
with
me,
the greatest
deference
and
respect,"
asks,
Equiano
in his
prefatory
letter to Parliament, "to lay at your feet the following genuine Narrative;
the chief design of which is to excite in your august assemblies a sense of
for
compassion
6. Raymond
the miseries
which
the Slave-Trade
has
entailed
on my
un
Keywords: A Vocabulary ofCulture and Society, revised edition (New
1985) 173.
7.William
Empson, The Structure ofComplex Words, third edition (Totowa, New Jersey:
Roman
and Littlefield, 1979).
8. Olaudah
The InterestingNarrative and Other Writings, ed. Vincent Carretta
Equiano,
York:
Oxford
(New York:
Equiano's
Williams,
UP,
1995) 31. Page
Penguin,
refer to this edition.
book,
numbers
in parenthesis,
identifying passages
from
442
DOUGLAS
ANDERSON
to be
undertakes
in the
(7). Equiano
countrymen"
"interesting"
a
to
assert
"interest"
of humanity,
claim
in the service
of
subjective
fortunate
larger
is the simplestway of describing his purposes but the
objective ends. That
as
is scarcely
an
thing,
description
one
For
as
simple
it seems.
not
does
narrative
interesting
a
establish
necessarily
profound subjective claim. The curiosity that it arouses may be purely
superficial. That is exactly how Mary Wollstonecraft, for instance, viewed a
in Equiano's
passage
representative
lyticalReview, two months
stonecraft
a brief
offered
she believed
account
"not
would
be
"We
homeland.
and
cians,
Thus
its
of
unacceptable
in The
Writing
of Equiano's
an
reprinting
appeal,
to our
readers."9
Ana
book, Woll
"extract"
In
that
the passage
is describing some of the customs of hisWest
that she selected, Equiano
African
chapter.
opening
after the publication
he wrote,
are,"
a nation
"almost
musi
of dancers,
poets":
every
as a
such
event,
great
return
triumphant
from
or
battle,
other cause of public rejoicing, is celebrated in public dances, which
are
with
accompanied
songs
and music
to the occasion.
suited
as
The
sembly is separated into four divisions, which dance either apart or in
succession, and each with a character peculiar to itself.The firstdivi
sion contains themarried men, who in their dances frequently exhibit
feats
of arms,
married
and
the
the
occupy
scene
interesting
employment,
and
third;
of
of a battle.
representation
in the
dance
who
women,
second
real
life,
fourth.
the
the maidens
as
such
To
these
a great
Each
spirit and
musical
many
which
variety
instruments,
I have
some
domestic
achievement,
or some
rural sport; and
story,
pathetic
on
some
recent
it is therefore
founded
event,
a
the
men
young
represents
a
generally
our dances
gives
have
where.
We
succeed
The
division.
as the
ever
is
subject
new. This
seen
scarcely
particularly
else
of dif
drums
ferent kinds, a piece of music which resembles a guitar, and another
much like a stickado. These last are chiefly used by betrothed virgins,
who play on them on all grand festivals. (34)
singles out this language because,
Wollstonecraft
into
the
a
specific
"flat,"
"very
category
"childish,"
interesting"
of
interest:
"puerile,"
literary
puzzling and discontinuous
specimens
the
"not
as
unacceptable,"
"tiresome,"
that
in her judgment,
"solid,"
form what,
texture of Equiano's
book
it falls
to
opposed
"well
written,"
to her,
is the
or
rather
(28).10
The Analytical Review 4 (May 1789): 27-29.
9. Mary Wollstonecraft,
[Untitled Review],
review in his edition of the InterestingNarrative
Carretta reprints most of Wollstonecraft's
xxvi-xxvii.
10. See Helen
book
UP,
Thomas'
in Romanticism
2000)
88-89.
brief account
and Slave Narratives:
ofWollstonecraft's
mixed
Transatlantic Testimonies
response
(Cambridge:
to Equiano's
Cambridge
OLAUDAH
INTERESTING
EQUIANO'S
NARRATIVE
443
The sensational accounts ofWest Indian persecution, in Equiano's pages,
are (according toWollstonecraft)
"simply told," and perhaps for this very
reason
"make
the blood
turn
its course."
But
such
are
passages
presumably
too disturbing (or already too familiar) to English readers to explore in a
brief book review. Instead this ethnographic anecdote catchesWollstone
craft's
eye. Her
review
Smyrna
I have
even
ing his childhood memory
was
in
preserves
curious
Equiano's
footnote,
compar
to an episode from his adult travels: "When
seen
frequently
the Greeks
dance
I
this manner."
after
incidental connection too, asWollstonecraft might have noted, is not
uninteresting, but it is scarcely the kind of disclosure to turn the course of
the blood. Geraldine Murphy observes that a number of contemporary
anti-slavery tracts sought to celebrate the dignity of African societies with
similar claims of hidden affinity to European cultures.11
This
words,
Equiano's
ter,
however,
is to
stress
may
turn
well
the
course
of
the
reader's
sources of interest.Part of his intent, in this first chap
to unexpected
mind
the
cultural
announcement
of Paul's
implications
to
the
Athenians, in Acts 17, that God "hath made of one blood all nations of
men for to dwell on all the face of the earth" (45). In particular, Equiano
"the
emphasizes
strong
analogy"
that he
detects
between
certain
customs
of
the ancient Jews and some of the practices that he recalls witnessing in his
West African childhood. The rites of circumcision, regular sacrifices and
burnt offerings, "our washings and purifications" all seem, to Equiano,
common to both peoples, as do certain features of their
patriarchal law.
Three contemporary biblical scholars (he notes) appear to corroborate the
link. Skin color is an obvious difference between "Eboan Africans and the
modern
Jews,"
concedes,
Equiano
but
like many
contem
of his European
poraries he suspects that itmay be only a superficial one, derived from cli
mate
rather
than
from
some
deeper,
interior
source.12
from the Philosophical Transactions of theRoyal
order
to
emphasize
the mutability
of
He
weaves
an extract
Society into his narrative in
the human
complexion
and
to con
front the intractable prejudices of his European
readers: "Let such
reflections as thesemelt the pride of their superiority into sympathy for the
wants
and miseries
that
edge,
of
understanding
their
sable
is not
brethren,
confined
and
to
compel
feature
them
or
to acknowl
colour"
(45).
is only too aware that he is preaching to an audience of cultural
imperialists not unlike Paul's complacent Greeks.
cul
Judging from the tone of her early review, Mary Wollstonecraft's
tural pride did not reach itsmelting point. The Interesting
Narrative, she ob
Equiano
ii.
Geraldine
Studies 27
12. On
Wheeler,
"Olaudah
Accidental
Tourist,"
Murphy,
Equiano,
Eighteenth-Century
(1994): 551-68.
the prevailing, climatic theories of race, in the eighteenth century, see Roxann
The Complexion ofRace: Categories ofDifference in
Eighteenth-Century British Culture
U of Pennsylvania P, 2000).
(Philadelphia:
DOUGLAS
444
served,
ate
ANDERSON
a contemporary
certainly
of
nevertheless
race,
"stigma"
was
the
which,
proved
that
not
if it did
its author
was
obliter
as
at least
as "the general mass ofmen, who fill the subordinate stations
accomplished
in a more
curiosity
civilized
merchant
for example,
society"?hairdressers,
or
clerks,
musicians, if not sailors (28). These are the social "stations" to which
lays explicit claim during the course of his story, though all are
Equiano
at
with the historical identity that he finally assumes: petitioner
odds
clearly
to Parliament,
for
advocate
writer.
abolition,
Wollstonecraft's
response is clearly not the transformativemoral
to effect.
A
account
documentary
of
the
patronizing
result thatEquiano
atrocities
of
hoped
stir the
may
slavery
reader's blood but leave the entrenched assumptions of prejudice intact.
During his description of slave life in theWest Indies, Equiano acknowl
edges
that a "catalogue"
of all
instances
the
of
"oppression,
extortion,
and
cruelty" that he had witnessed would only succeed in being "tedious and
disgusting" (113). Readers are as vulnerable as slave holders to the effectsof
systematic desensitization. A change in deep-seated cultural attitudes could
only take place through avenues of interest that deliberately avoided taxing
(and perhaps exhausting) the reader's powerful feelings.
One
attempt
at
such
exploring
avenues?admittedly
not
a very
success
in the identical
ful one, to judge fromWollstonecraft's
response?occurs
Wollstone
which
the
Eboan
with
of
the
dances
passage depicting
people
craft concludes her notice in The Analytical Review. Equiano's passing com
to sug
was
intended
to the
almost
of the Greeks
certainly
dancing
to the literary
African
another
experience
linking
gest yet
"strong
analogy"
a central
on
from
touches
He
reader.
of the English
culture
episode
inte
at several
the
that
Homer's
dramatizes,
mysteriously
points,
Odyssey
as it
as strained
not
is
This
interest.
connection
of
might
power
grative
of
translations
seem.
For
the eighteenth-century
reader,
Pope's
English
parison
Homer
served the same, triumphal purposes
Elizabethans:
they
appropriated
poems
into
two
that Chapman's
great monuments
of ancient
had for the
genius
to
the contemporary language of imperial sway. And they answered the im
1711 and 1716 translations of
plicit challenge posed by Madame Dacier's
the Homeric
French
prose.13
13- For Pope's strictures on the translations of his predecessors, see his "Preface" to The Il
et. al. (New Haven:
iad ofHomer in The Poems ofAlexander Pope, 12 vols., ed. Maynard Mack
to
as
and
21-22.
with
volume
cited
Hereafter
Yale UP,
7:
page.
Pope's attitude
1967):
Pope
Dacier's work is largely respectful, but it is complicated by his response to her
ward Madame
"Preface" to the Iliad. See Pope's
criticism of a French translation of Pope's
"Postscript" to
The Odyssey ofHomer in The Poems ofAlexander Pope 10: 391-97, where he concludes by
as "the best that ever human wit
poems and the English Constitution
identifying Homer's
invented ... we despise any French or English man whatever, who shall presume to retrench,
to innovate, or to make
the least alteration in either." This assertion underscores Srinivas
Aravamudan's
account
of the link between
English
literary culture and the country's
"pas
OLAUDAH
NARRATIVE
INTERESTING
EQUIANO'S
445
In the course of his own famously protracted wanderings, Ulysses
a nation
counters
of
and
musicians,
dancers,
to whom
poets,
en
Equiano's
gifted Eboans bear a striking resemblance. These are the Phaeacians, who
without any knowledge of Ulysses' identity or his past welcome him to
their court, solicit his participation in their "rural sports," and ultimately
draw from him the story of his adventures that occupies books nine
through twelve of The Odyssey. Alcinous, the Phaeacian king, briefly sus
pects
that
the
spectacular
who
suppliant
at his wife's
materializes
suddenly
feetmay be a god, intent on testing the piety ofmen. But the king quickly
embraces the unconditional obligations of hospitality, founded (as Pope's
translation stresses) not on the interest that earthly rulers understandably
have in placating gods in disguise but on the common bonds of human
suffering:
For Fate has wove the thread of lifewith pain,
twins ev'n from the birth, are misery and man!
And
(Pope 9: 248)
Phaeacians are richly endowed with cultural gifts, evident in the
splendid architecture of Alcinous' palace, in itsparadisal gardens, and in the
remarkable fabrics produced by the Phaeacian women, but dancing and
poetic song form their chief distinction. Alcinous affirms this pre-eminence
The
when
he
asks
for a dance
in order
to soothe
no
better
gain."
"Let
than
a
other
temporary
Ulysses'
after one of the young nobles at the Phaeacian
resentment
court accuses him of being
mean
"Some
merchant,
shipwrecked
the deathful
realms
wield,"
gauntlet
sea-farer
Alcinous
in pursuit
announces:
of
Or boast the glories of th' athletic field;
in the course unrival'd speed display,
We
Or
thro'
To
dress,
The
Rise
Your
cerulean
billows
to dance,
to
sing
plow
our
the way:
sole
delight,
feast or bath by day, and love by night:
then ye skill'd inmeasures: let him bear
to men
fame
that breathe
a distant
air:
And faithful say, to you the pow'rs belong
To
race,
to
sail,
to dance,
to chaunt
the
song.
(Pope 9: 278)
The
subject of the ensuing performance, by Phaeacia's dancers, isVulcan's
triumph over the adulterous passions ofMars and Venus, through themar
velous net that he makes in order to trap the lovers and expose their guilt.
sionate nationalistic
and London:
Duke
claims."
UP,
See Tropicopolitans: Colonialism
1999) 233-34.
and Agency,
1608-1804
(Durham
446
DOUGLAS
"Art
subdues
release
his
the
the gods
strong,"
before
conclude,
to
Vulcan
convincing
victims.
the notes
In
ANDERSON
to
Pope's
edition,
popular
as
examples
tuous
rather
of
an
than
admirable
a
manly
assures
Broome
William
eigh
did not intend to offer the Phaeacians
teenth-century readers thatHomer
nation;
people,
are
a
(Broome
declares)
they
volup
more
French
in their cul
than English
tural sympathies.14But Ulysses is filled with wonder at their artistic and
athletic skill, praising the dance that he witnesses and almost immediately
confirming, in his own person, the power of art to subdue the strong. The
Phaeacian bard Demodocus
repeatedly reduces Ulysses to tearswhen he
about
the
of
sings
seige
Troy, a response that eventually prompts Alcinous
to interrogate his mysterious guest, eliciting the tale of Ulysses' adventures
that occupies the next four books of the poem. This sympathetic hearing
from the lords and gentlemen of an ancient kingdom may have encouraged
as he made
Equiano
his
atavistic
own,
appeal
to the
"august
of
assemblies"
the English Parliament by placing his "genuine Narrative" at their feet.
account of Eboan dance to the court of
The leap from Equiano's
one wonders
Phaeacia in The Odyssey is anything but obvious?though
acute sensibility may have detected it as she
whether Wollstonecraft's
framed her review. Smyrna, the city towhich Equiano pointedly refers in
the footnote thatWollstonecraft retains, is one of two chief claimants to be
the birthplace of Homer.15 By contrast with such furtive links, the "strong
analogy" between African and Jewish culture that Equiano draws is very
much in the open, buttressed with biblical passages underscoring the impli
cations
of his
one
from
claim
another.
that cultures
Equiano's
and
candor
are not
peoples
risks the direct
hermetically
resistance
sealed
of
off
contem
porary readers who might be disinclined to credit the fancies of a handful
of theologians, the speculations of a correspondent of the Royal Society,
and
the biblical
exegesis
of a former
slave.
Deeper
and more
durable
reser
voirs of interestmight be responsive to subtler appeals of the kind that
Ulysses' natural guile leads him to deploy in circumstances where a forth
right claim might prove futile or dangerous. This elusive dimension to hu
man receptivity lies behind the newly inflected significance of the term
"interesting" that Laurence Sterne first explores in A Sentimentalfourney
throughFrance and Italy, two decades before the publication of Equiano's
book.
This
second
associative
and
textual
leap
may
seem
every
bit
as
far
the decadent features of
call to mind
14- Broome's
implication is that the Phaeacians
favorable comments on the Phaeacian
Dacier's
French culture, a fact that explains Madame
court. See Pope 9: 260, 278.
15. Pope noted the proliferation of claims to the status of Homer's
birthplace but con
cluded
7: 44.
that "theWeight
of the Question
seems to lie between
Smyrna and Chios."
See Pope
OLAUDAH
INTERESTING
EQUIANO'S
447
NARRATIVE
fetched as the first. It rests initially on Sterne's application of "interesting"
first to a forehead and then to a haunting face that his narrator, Yorick,
encounters in a coach yard at Calais. By chance, Yorick abruptly finds him
selfwaiting at the door of a coach house, holding the hand of an intriguing
who
traveler
lady
had
briefly
his
caught
eye,
a few moments
as
earlier,
He im
he drafted a preface for his book in the cab of an old desobligeant.16
to
construct
the
and
the
of
his
past
mysterious
mediately begins
identity
companion:
not
I had
seen
yet
her
not material;
face?'twas
for
the drawing
was
instantly set about, and long before we had got to the door of theRe
mise, Fancy had finished thewhole head, and pleased herself asmuch
with itsfittingher goddess, as if she had dived into the Tiber for it. . . .
When we had got to the door of theRemise,
shewithdrew her hand
from
across
about
six
without
was
her
twenty?of
or
powder?it
rouge
that in it,which
more
to
widow'd
two
and
forehead,
and
was
it?it
a
let me
clear
was
see
Iwas
but
of
set off
there
in, attached me much
it wore
I fancied
a face
simply
handsome,
critically
in the frame ofmind
interesting;
brown,
transparent
not
was
the original?it
the
characters
of
a
look, and in that state of itsdeclension, which had passed the
first paroxysms
of
sorrow,
and was
quietly
beginning
to reconcile
a thousand other distressesmight have traced the
to know what they had been?and was ready to
enquire, (had the same bon ton of conversation permitted, as in the
aileth thee? and why art thou disquieted? and why
days of Esdras)?'What
is thyunderstanding troubled?'?In a word, I felt benevolence for her;
itself to its loss?but
same lines; I wish'd
and
resolved
not
of
some
ity,
to throw
in my
mite
of courtesy?if
cite thispassage as the earliest illustrative use of the
The editors of theOED
word
or other
way
service.17
"interesting"
or
attention,
to mean
to excite
to arouse
interest,"
"adapted
rich subjective
of
connotations
array
emotion?a
curios
that
are
quite new to eighteenth-century English diction. The worldly and materi
alistic etymology to which Raymond Williams
calls attention drops away
in favor
of meanings
that
are
(as Sterne
quietly
implies)
"not
material."18
It is not necessary to establish a direct connection between Sterne's book
16. See Melinda
Rabb's
discussion of the paradigmatic import of this scene: "Engendering
in Sterne's A Sentimental Journey," inJohnson and His Age, Harvard
English Studies
12, ed. James Engell
1984): 531-58.
(Cambridge: Harvard UP,
17. Lawrence
Sterne, A Sentimental Journey throughFrance and Italy, ed. Ian Jack (New
York and London: Oxford UP,
1968) 17.
18. Martin Battestin identifies Sterne's fondness for puns on "material," aimed at his ac
Accounts
quaintances
in d'Holbach's
the Philo
sophes: Body
and Soul
17-36.
circle of philosophical materialists. See "Sterne Among
inA Sentimental Journey," Eighteenth-Century Fiction 7 (1994):
448
DOUGLAS
in order to detect provocative
and Equiano's
that each
ANDERSON
the gradual,
handles
if imperfect,
parallels between
the ways
of human
recognition
affinities.
An equally compelling face?young,
dark, simply set off against the con
ventional costume of eighteenth-century gentility?presides at the thresh
old of Equiano's
story [fig. i]. Like
too
features
Equiano's
suggest
a
the image thatYorick
state
complex
contemplates,
a story
of disquietude,
that
requires to be told. As the first chapter of his narrative will disclose,
is kidnapped and sold into slavery before the age at which he
Equiano
would have been subjected to the ritual scarring that his sex and family
rank required: the thickened weal of tissue formed across the brows by cut
ting the skin at the edge of the scalp, drawing it down, and holding it in
place until it shrinks into the embrenche,"a mark of grandeur" among the
Eboan people (32-33). The meticulous description of this strangely dis
placed form of circumcision augments the impact of the engraved portrait
at the beginning of Equiano's book, giving it the appearance of an "origi
nal"
cut off from
countenance,
time
unscarred
by
a
a cultural
prescribed
identity.19
to be sure but
heritage
a
It forms
suggestive
same
at the
entangle
of human possibility and of loss, an enigmatic emblem of the costs
and the opportunities latent in Equiano's
story.
This perception of experiential depth is both an attribute and a theme of
ment
the
Interesting
of
Caricatures
Narrative.
happy
servitude
Sterne
associates
are
on
very much
Equiano's mind as he drafts his memoir. They partly explain the emphasis
that he places on the expressive range and ambition that lay behind the
dances that he witnessed during his Eboan childhood. These were in no
sense
escapist
and
his
sure
to
frolics
of
the kind
on
companions
down
all
your
lay
their Paris
cares
holiday,
and
together;
the weights of grievance, which
the
that
with
earth"
(Sterne
101).
bow down
response
Equiano's
the
antics
of
exclaims of La Fleur
servant, La Fleur. "Happy people!" Yorick
Yorick's
"that
once
dance
and
a week
sing
and
at
are
least
away
sport
the spirit of other nations to
to
such
is filtered
assumptions
through the invidious medium provided by still another contemporary
book, Thomas Jefferson'sNotes on theState ofVirginia, published in London
two years before the firstedition of Equiano's memoir. In Jefferson's hands,
Sterne's
stereotype
takes
on monstrous
dimensions,
becoming
an
impene
trable and disturbing "veil of black" that thwartsJefferson's scrutiny of the
emotional and intellectual lives of his slaves. Their imaginations, he de
clares,
are
provement:
"dull,
tasteless,
and
anomalous,"
incapable
of cultivation
or
im
"never yet did I find that a black had uttered a thought above
elabo
19. The portrait does, however,
suggest an uncanny relation between Equiano's
"dress" is a con
rately ruffled shirt linen and his physical description of the embrenche.Ritual
describes. Folds of
ventional badge of status,much like the ritual disfigurement that Equiano
flesh and folds of fabric are, in some measure,
equivalent cultural expressions.
'
.u..?i.?i.uim
{. .
Mill
mil.
?n.u
...-?
IIIIIWJMLIIIWMK
yip<^wWWWM.MWipwill>llWl><llLlllUUll.
'.'" .""".rmiiiniii
i,i.,-^
Fig. i: Portrait from The InterestingNarrative
theAfrican (London,
1789).
of theLife ofOlaudah
-tiiiiii.inn.
.1.
-J
Equiano,
orGustavus
Vassa,
450
DOUGLAS
ANDERSON
the level of plain narration." Neither misery nor religion can prompt them
to poetry. Their inextinguishable love of amusements, their fondness for
simple melodies, their immersion in lives of mere sensation, Jefferson be
lieves, insulate them from the kind of private grief or historical anxiety that
he
to attach
appears
The
comparison
to
exclusively
between
European
experience.20
memoir
Laurence
and
Sterne's
Equiano's
fictive exploration of themechanisms of human interest is admittedly spec
could have overlooked
ulative. But it is highly unlikely that Equiano
Thomas Jefferson's anguished reflections on the problem of abolition in
this portion ofNotes on theState ofVirginia at a timewhen Equiano was so
closely identifiedwith the struggle to abolish theEnglish slave trade. Jeffer
son too finds occasion to cite Pope's popular translation of The Odyssey, as
evidence
that
of enslavement
the condition
itself,
Jove fix'd it certain, thatwhatever
Makes
man
rather
than
class
or
race,
impact of bondage:
explains the dehumanizing
a
slave,
takes
half
day
his worth
away.
(Jefferson 142)
But Jeffersonnever attempts to reconcile the humane implications of these
words with themanifest inhumanity of the passages in his book that pre
cede them. The contradiction is a perceptual veil in its own right, captur
ing in vivid termsJefferson'spainful ambivalence over race.When Equiano
paraphrases these same lines fromHomer in his impassioned address to the
Indian planters at the close of his fifth chapter, he
community ofWest
knows precisely how to apply their energies: "When you make men
insists:
he
slaves,"
duct,
them
deprive
an
example
sary
to
you
of half
their virtue,
of fraud,
rapine,
set them,
you
and
in your
and
cruelty,
compel
own
con
them
to
livewith you in a state ofwar; and yet you complain that they are not
honest or faithful!You stupify them with stripes, and think it neces
them
keep
in a state of
ignorance;
and
yet you
assert
that
they
are incapable of learning; that theirminds are such a barren soil or
moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a
climate, where nature (though prodigal of her bounties in a degree
unknown
to
yourselves)
has
left man
alone
scant
and
unfinished,
and
on the State of Virginia, ed. William
Peden (Chapel Hill: U of
Jefferson, Notes
P, 1954) 139. I have argued elsewhere for Jefferson's deliberate exposure of
as part of the complex rhetorical ambition of his book. See
his own racist consciousness
of Thomas
The Ethical Poetics
"Subterraneous
Jefferson," Eighteenth-Century
Virginia:
Studies 33 (1999-2000):
233-49.
20. Thomas
North
Carolina
OLAUDAH
NARRATIVE
INTERESTING
EQUIANO'S
451
incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him! An as
at once
sertion
and
impious
absurd,
(in?12).
This indictmentmakes astute use of the logical absurdities in Jefferson's ra
cial attitudes by exposing those attitudes to the same skeptical interrogation
forwhich Jefferson himself is celebrated. Even so, the terms of Equiano's
are
attack
Once
transparent.
deceptively
the
initial,
"fraud"
catastrophic
takes place?giving
"one man a dominion over his fellows which God
and slave find themselves locked in a self
could never intend"?master
defeating embrace, stripped of their inherent human virtues and forced to
in what
live
nism:
as a state
characterizes
Equiano
pointedly
a household
of enemies.
The
of
intimate
texture
allusive
complex,
antago
denser
grows
stillwhen, within a sentence or two of the passage cited above, Equiano
commits the startling impiety of adapting the voice of Beelzebub from Par
adise Lost to express the righteous resentment of his fellow slaves:
. . .No
us
To
And
is given
peace
but
enslav'd,
severe;
custody
stripes and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted?What
can we
peace
return?
to our power, hostility and hate;
But
Untam'd
and
reluctance,
tho'
revenge,
slow,
ever plotting how the conqueror least
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice
Yet
In
we
what
doing
most
in
suff'ring
feel.
(112)
Plain narration this plainly is not. But neither is it simply an instance of the
"unequal" or unpolished style thatmany of Equiano's first readers believed
that they found in his pages. To narrate the impieties and absurdities of the
slave
trade would
eighteenth-century
require
its
incommensurable
elements.
modating
language
The favorable letters and notices thatEquiano
to
later
which
editions
the
story
of
his memoir
or
is written
the
capable
of
accom
included in the frontmatter
frequently
cite
"simplicity"
of
"the
Equiano's
artless
in
manner"
prose?euphe
misms intended to reassure the English reader that the book's language, or
namented though it iswith snippets from the Bible and from Paradise Lost,
is sufficiently clumsy to be credible as the genuine work of an anglicized
African. Richard Gough's comments in The Gentlemen's Magazine, how
ever, were
"very
too blunt
unequal,"
Gough
to be
of much
wrote,
his
use
as a testimonial.
entire
second
volume
Equiano's
was
style
was
categorically
452
DOUGLAS
and
"uninteresting,"
that it "oversets
unfortunate
the whole."
Wollstonecraft
Mary
on
story.
Equiano's
of Methodism
impact
was
toMethodism
conversion
the author's
able
ANDERSON
so
unpalat
about
the
agreed
She
that
too,
agreed,
therewas what she termed "a kind of contradiction" in the book's narra
tive fabric. The level of authorial acuity seemed inexplicably uneven,
Wollstonecraft
and
thought,
itself was
the prose
the
Key
lem
of narrative
authenticity
story,
no
or
words,
one
with
are
often
that
to address,
reluctant
another.
to
the
in part
the reception
of
wrote
his own
complicate
that Equiano
doubts
of
substance
But they point to a puzzling feature of his book?one
too,
"a
the general tenor of
links these reservations to the prob
that continues
express
They
in his own
largely
articulate
nor Gough
work.22
Equiano's
not
did
passages
language."21
Neither Wollstonecraft
erratic:
correspondingly
few well written periods do not smoothly unite with
because
that
story
was
thatmodern
readers,
about
questions
true.
expres
sive or representational properties take on the appearance of quibbling
a
of
the presence
text
that
matters
addresses
of great
moral
and
in
historical
urgency.
however,
Equiano,
instances
in which
for
Why,
born?a
so are,
does
are
instance,
that he
people
to invite
appears
he
the Eboan
portrays
as
a measure
perhaps,
Africans
hardy,
of quibbling.
less consequential
whom
among
affable,
and
Some
than
of the
others.
was
Equiano
"undebauched"
in all
aspects of their communal life?so plagued with the crime of poisoning?
He presents this anomaly in his opening chapter but devotes virtually no
attention to its implications, despite his detailed account of the success of
themagical tactics that the Eboan priests routinely adopt for the detecting
of poisoners (42). On two occasions, during his journey to the sea, Equiano
to African
is sold
first a
and
goldsmith
tends
Equiano
own
age
plicable
masters
as a
and
size"
ends,
the
the
who
second
appear
to treat him
"a wealthy
for her
son,
with
widow,"
"a young
companion
situations
of these new
(52). Both
as
second
has
drawn
just
Equiano
favor?the
special
in
who
apparently
about
gentleman
come
the
to
abrupt,
reassuring
my
inex
conclu
to Vincent
2i. Compare
reviews in the introduction
the Gough
and Wollstonecraft
Carretta's edition: The InterestingNarrative and Other Writings xxv-xxvii.
22. Vincent Caretta offers the most recent challenge to Equiano's
credibility in "Olaudah
or Gustavus Vassa? New
question of Identity,"
Light on an Eighteenth-Century
argues that the first chapter of
1999): 96-105. S. E. Ogude
Slavery and Abolition 20 (December
assembled from contemporary
the InterestingNarrative is a complete fiction that Equiano
Research inAf
travel narratives. See "Facts into Fiction: Equiano's Narrative Reconsidered,"
Equiano
rican Literatures, 13 (Spring 1982): 31-43. David Brion Davis finds these discussions decisive in
recent study, The Many-Headed Hydra:
and Marcus Rediker's
his review of Peter Linebaugh's
Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and theHidden History of theRevolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon
account of his life as largely
and Rediker,
P, 2000). Linebaugh
by contrast, accept Equiano's
truthful. See The New York Review of Books 48 (July 5, 2001): 54.
OLAUDAH
NARRATIVE
INTERESTING
EQUIANO'S
sion that he was about to be adopted into the family.These
in
are,
some
unmotivated
callousness
an
suggest
ways,
the "small remains of comfort" thathe reports he loses,when he
Among
are
in Barbados,
first arrives
the attentions
ious
masters.
island
These
writes,
Equiano
"who
women,
"were
of
all gone
the
slave women
who
ac
had
are rather quickly sold away to var
companied him on board ship and who
me,"
sudden changes
than
Equiano's
unsettling
original
kidnapping.
freaks of circumstance,
rather than the products
of
or
no effort to
What
could
them?
makes
Equiano
explain
greed.
answer.
seem
They
more
453
to wash
used
different
and
ways,
take
I never
and
saw
care
of
one
of
inAfrica, had they
them afterwards" (62).What were their names? Where,
come from? IfEquiano recalls such details, he does not preserve them, and
yet the glimpse that he offersof the persistence of such surrogate parenting,
on
a slave
board
vessel
in the
and
slave markets
of the West
is a star
Indies,
tling disclosure. Why, too, does the separation by sale of a group of broth
ers, brought to Barbados on the same slave shipwith Equiano, prompt his
tolerate such atrocities,
angry rebuke to the "nominal Christians" who
while the dispersal of thewomen who so lovingly tended him goes largely
unremarked,
as a
except
deprivation
of personal
comfort?
may not be the sorts of contradictions and inequalities, in
Equiano's book, that troubledWollstonecraft and Gough, but they form an
increasingly conspicuous element in the texture of the experience that he
These
records.
In
some
measure,
certainly,
they
reflect
the fact
was
that Equiano
only ten years old when he was kidnapped. Despite his efforts to recon
struct his African and Caribbean past using a variety of published sources,
signs
of his
imperfect
knowledgment
these
fissures
memory
are unavoidable.
In
the
absence
of such narrative difficulties on Equiano's
acquire
subtle
powers
of
implication.
They
of
any
ac
part, however,
resemble
calcu
lated and disturbing breaks in the story's signifying chain?like
those "pas
traces in the Gothic
sages that lead to nothing" which Fiona Robertson
novel, they offer little or no transition between a child's limited grasp of
the circumstances
shaping
his world
and
the more
penetrating
understand
ing of an adult (Robertson 68).
A particularly conspicuous instance of this disorienting narrative effect
occurs as Equiano records what he calls "a triflingincident" that took
place
while he was spending severalmonths, between sea voyages, on the Isle of
Wight:
Iwas one day in a field belonging to a gentleman who had a black
boy
about my own size; this boy having observed me from his master's
house, was transported at the sight of one of his own countrymen, and
ran to meet me with the utmost haste. I not
knowing what he was
454
DOUGLAS
ANDERSON
about, turned a littleout of his way at first,but to no purpose; he soon
came close tome, and caught hold ofme in his arms as if I had been
his brother, though we had never seen each other before. After we
had talked together for some time, he took me to his master's house,
where Iwas treated very kindly. This benevolent boy and Iwere very
happy in frequently seeing each other, till about themonth ofMarch
1761,
our
when
had
ship
orders
to fit out
for
again
another
expedi
tion.When we got ready, we joined a very large fleet at Spithead,
commanded by Commodore Keppel, destined against Belle-Isle; and
having
to make
a number
of
a descent
transport
on
the place,
in company,
ships
we
sailed
with
once
on
troops
more
in quest
board,
of fame.
I longed to engage in new adventure, and to see freshwonders.
The
reverberations
of
Equiano
ries of
turns
(as most
readers
of
this passage,
that eighteenth-century
invokes
publishers
are
recognize)
any
and adventure, to which
quest for freshwonders
at the end
interest
encounter
this
thing but trifling.The
(85)
the conventional
were
most
inclined
catego
to ex
ploit in their efforts to attract readers. Equiano clearly implies that his brief
period of intimacy with a nameless African boy is not similarly (or
profitably) interesting. "I had a mind on which everything uncommon
its full
made
he
impression,"
assures
the reader,
as he
prepares
immediately
to record some of the singular incidents of the Belle-Isle expedition. Yet
this uncommon interlude of kindness amidst the violence of Equiano's na
val career would appear to be of negligible importance. Sentiment and sen
sation
collide
as
in this
passage?much
Equiano's
ship,
the Aetna,
and
the
Lynne shortly do during the Belle-Isle voyage, leaving theAetna in such a
"crazy condition" that she has to be held togetherwith hawsers and tallow
as
she
narrative
These
into
limps
content
passages
port.
seems
The
more
conjunction
than simply
fall at a critical
point
between
narrative
practice
story, just
after
and
fortuitous.
in Equiano's
a fierce
engagement offGibralter, inwhich Equiano and another powder boy re
peatedly risk their lives to keep their gun supplied with ammunition, and
just before Equiano's curiosity towatch the charging of theEnglish mortars
at Belle-Isle nearly gets him killed. On this occasion, too, he "and another
boy who was along with me" barely escape the French shot. Before the
meeting with his benevolent double, on the Isle ofWight, Equiano ap
as a fatalist, "cheering myself with the reflection
proaches such experiences
that therewas a time allotted forme to die aswell as to be born" (84). The
echo of Ecclesiastes is certainly deliberate, but so is the suggestion of a
measure
of stoic
resignation
that
seems
completely
tional religious significance. After the Isle ofWight
independent
of conven
interlude, Equiano
re
OLAUDAH
INTERESTING
EQUIANO'S
in the events that he
peatedly stresses "the interposition of Providence"
witnesses
in the
and
circumstances
own
of his
455
NARRATIVE
survival
(85-87).
The shift in emphasis is anything but dramatic and far from consistent in
its effects. Indeed, precisely where one might expect Equiano's evangelical
faith to overset thewhole (asRichard Gough insists that it does) it begins
instead to play a distinctly equivocal role in the narrative, becoming in
pervasive
creasingly
When
Equiano's
and
increasingly
once-benevolent
dysfunctional
Michael
master,
as an
tool.23
interpretive
Pascal,
sells
abruptly
him to a ship captain bound forMontserrat, for instance, the victim of this
gross betrayal of trust unhesitatingly attributes it to "a judgment of
in punishment for his impulsive habit of swearing?a
ludicrous
Heaven,"
application of providentialist thinking (95). A few pages later, a visit to the
active volcano known as Brimstone Hill, inMontserrat, prompts Equiano
to draw no providential implications whatever from this ominous spot or
from the earthquakes that he subsequently experiences in the vicinity of
the mountain.
Few
in Equiano's
places
are more
experience
suitable
candi
dates for a divine onslaught with fire and brimstone thanMontserrat, but
he pointedly avoids such an apocalyptic analysis precisely where circum
stances
seem
would
to
require
it. Instead,
some
boils
Equiano
in
potatoes
the thermal springs on Brimstone Hill and notes that the sulphurous fumes
on the summit turn silver shoe buckles "black as lead" (114). A stop at
much
Vesuvius,
later
in his
career,
proves
a rhe
from
anticlimactic,
equally
torical point of view, despite Equiano's anger at the institution of galley
slavery that he finds thriving inNaples and elsewhere in Italy (169).
Like the encounter with the "benevolent boy" on the Isle ofWight,
these passages seem deliberately designed to elicit and then immediately to
thwart
the reader's
tive
together,
own
Equiano's
gious
inclinations?the
integrative
to make
its parts
articulate.
anger
counselors,
that
and
frustration
when
grace
is utterly
saving
latent
The
he
informants
"The
assures
law
him,
is a school-master
but
the law
is not
is not
experience
learns,
discontinuous
lous (if imperfect) efforts that he had been making
mandments.
to tie a narra
desire
from
one
with
unlike
of his
the
reli
scrupu
to keep the Ten Com
us to Christ,"
to
one
bring
a substitute
for the mysterious
of his
in
ner change thatEquiano seeks (186). At first "puzzled" and "wounded"
by
these disclosures, Equiano ultimately reacts much as the Aetna did in its
collision with the Lynne: "I staggeredmuch at this sort of doctrine," he ad
righdy points to the confused nature of Equiano's
religious de
and to Anglican
tendency tomix up his loyalties to charismatic Methodism
the conclusion
that Aravamudan
draws from this sectarian tangle seems ex
23. Srinivas Aravamudan
velopment?his
ism?though
treme: that Equiano's
Tropicopolitans 240-44.
efforts to craft a spiritual autobiography
crumble under
the strain. See
DOUGLAS
456
ANDERSON
mits, confused and angry at the gap that suddenly opens between works
and faith.Only his own, inexplicable religious transformation one October
evening in Cadiz harbor ultimately convinces him that the Bible can only
"talk" when its reader has been miraculously equipped to "listen." In some
measure,
structures
Equiano
the
to
experience
reading
this gap
replicate
textual foreground and textual background, between nominal and
between
essential
powers.
interpretive
Erich
Auerbach's
stylistic
of
concepts
metaphors?the
and
foreground
background that he employs to distinguish Homeric from biblical storytell
language. The
ing?are particularly pertinent to this feature of Equiano's
are
to those
Narrative
identical
of
the
fields
Interesting
nearly
representational
contrasts
that Auerbach
to one
in
another
the opening
Scar,"
"Odysseus'
chapter ofMimesis: aworld ofmilitant public display, on the one hand, and
of agonized religious introspection on the other. The characteristics of nar
rative foreground thatAuerbach identifies inHomer's verse preclude im
plicit or residual meanings. Full illumination is themost distinctive feature
action
and mo
externalized
argues,
completely
epic, Auerbach
a
a gap, never
never
a lacuna,
of
depths."
unplumbed
glimpse
. . .
is completely
stable
he continues,
"this world
"As a social
picture,"
ever
up from below"
21).
(6?7,
nothing
pushes
of Greek
"never
tive,
The second of the representational worlds thatAuerbach examines oper
ates on quite different principles. Biblical narrative, unlike itsHomeric
an
cultivates
contemporary,
of
atmosphere
imperfect
events and human agents "fraughtwith background,"
that
latency
creates
a vivid
"remains within
Homer
ment
stories
and
friction,
of moral
and
themes
"Historical
contingency.
leaving
depth.
psychological
Testa
notes, but Old
all
become
histories,
involving
increasingly
and uncertain"
the "unresolved,
truncated,
of historical
teristic
impression
the legendary," Auerbach
disclosure,
filled with a sense of
the
cross-currents
charac
elements
in general,"
he
adds,
require of a writer an aptitude for coping with the inexplicable and unpre
reserves
dictable
that
of meaning
comprise
experience:
non-legendary
The historical event which we witness, or learn from the testimony of
those
who
witnessed
it, runs much
more
variously,
contradictorily,
and confusedly, not until it has produced results in a definite domain
are we able, with their help, to classify it to a certain extent; and how
often the order towhich we thinkwe have attained becomes doubtful
us have not led us
again, how often we ask ourselves if the data before
to a far too
cal
comprises
events!
of the original
classification
simple
a
motives
of contradictory
great number
. . . the histori
in each
individ
ual, a hesitation and ambiguous groping on the part of groups; only
seldom
. . . does
a more
or
less plain
situation,
comparatively
simple
to
OLAUDAH
NARRATIVE
INTERESTING
EQUIANO'S
457
describe, arise, and even such a situation is subject to division below
the surface, is indeed almost constantly in danger of losing its simplic
ity; and themotives of all the interested parties are so complex that the
slogans of propaganda can be composed only through the crudest
. . .To
simplification.
are forced tomake
concessions
The
write
is so difficult
history
are
makes
that Equiano
that most
historians
to the technique of legend. (19?20)
concessions
evocations
those
largely
of provi
dential oversight and intercession appropriate to the religious "legend"
within which he casts his experience. In the Isle ofWight episode, how
divisions
ever,
"about
my
the
below
own
size,"
simplicity of Equiano's
These
are
transports
surface
abruptly
evocative
whose
a
produce
presence
"transported"
anonymous
as emotional
as well
share
who
companions
that of
with
the
story.
textual
in their nature?a
out and a blending of one child's narrative being with
even
boy,
threatens
promptly
the African
military
Equiano's
widow's
another
son,
lifting
that of the two
perils?perhaps
"about
boy
own
my
age and size," whose brief appearance early in Equiano's
captivity had so
a
of
"delusion."
the
characteristics
disconcerting
Surely
quickly acquired
there is an uncommon affinity linking all such half-lit figures from a near
legendary past with the picture that Equiano offers of two African boys,
caught up in a respite of happiness on the Isle ofWight. That crucial epi
too
sode
is fraught
with
as evanescent
background,
as
and
as
haunting
the
suggestive linesmarking the face of Yorick's young companion in a Calais
coach yard. Equiano
(like Sterne) elects to evoke these subterranean stories
to
but
leave
them
stress
unexplained?to
the dramatic
and
psychological
spiritual gaps thatfinally unite his historical with his religious experience.
Interest
of
the
kind
that
the
Interesting
strives
Narrative
to
is an
evoke
imaginative ligature, a tie that resists the solicitation of formal devices or
overt
much
appeals,
at first
hopes
Equiano
as
grace
to secure
resists
the
it. Such
tactics
contractual
ties
resist, with
with
nearly
which
equal
suc
cess, the "interested" application of ethical or religious fervor, like that
which Equiano
frequently deploys on behalf of slavery's victims, the
"strong" analogies that he draws between Eboan and Jewish customs, his
stirring
references
toMiltonic
hymns
or
of resistance,
the
instances
of prov
idential intercession with which he marks the gradual progression of his re
ligious feeling. This dimension of human intimacy attaches itself, instead,
to thosemoments when Equiano's story loses its simplicity, avoiding senti
mental
able
or
pious
assessment
formulas?sometimes
of
the
narrator's
at the expense
character?and
superficial approval the imperfect perception
Auerbach associates with "the historical."
of
the
reader's
substituting
of unplumbed
favor
for
such
depths that
458
DOUGLAS
ANDERSON
Part of this effect springs from Equiano's methods of conveying the sheer
fertilityof his experience. A single, extensive paragraph early in the book,
for example, opens straightforwardly enough with an instance of mistaken
identity at sea. The Roebuck, an English warship on which Equiano and his
are
master
serving,
currently
an
meets
unidentified
off
vessel
coast
the
of
France that does not respond to repeated hails. Just as the Roebuck opens
fire,
the
stranger
colors,
English
same
closes
paragraph
with
"mis
averting
narrowly
recent edition of
full pages later, in Vincent Carretta's
the
book,
Equiano's
hoists
abruptly
chief" (71). Three
the narrator
the
admiring
a
scalp and "ornaments" of "an Indian king," grisly trophies taken by
Highlander at the siege of Louisbourg.
Between
these
transfers
Equiano
points,
from
one
to another
vessel
four
times, catching several glimpses in the process of Admiral John Byng, dur
a
ing his 1757 trial for cowardice and dereliction of duty. He nearly loses
a
"judgment
leg to chilblains in a London hospital; survives smallpox; notes
of God" on a wicked young sailor,who damns his eyes only to lose one;
narrowly averts being shipped to Turkey, on board the Preston, so as to
study the French horn en route; briefly wonders at "the shops and stalls
of every kind of goods" that he finds on board the Royal George; admires
the peak of Teneriffe; gains the favorable intercession of "the good and
is caught "fighting with a young
gallant General Wolfe," when Equiano
at sea;
gentleman"
and witnesses
the gruesome
of an English
wound
lieu
tenant,whose cheek is pierced by a musket ball as he is in the act of open
at
ing his mouth to give "the word of command" during the landing
Louisbourg (73).
The cascade of circumstances is intoxicating. The mixture of gallantry
and barbarity?of English enterprise and English incompetence?mingle
with
tantalizing
fleeting
own
character
of Equiano's
the
when
resistance
manifestations
his
impression:
successful
that
doctors
a
register
at St.
George's Hospital want to amputate his infected leg; themusical aptitude
that tempts his master to train him on the French horn; his willingness, for
some
unknown
reason,
to
fight
a young
white)
(presumably
"gentleman"
the British flagship during the Louisbourg campaign. Like the
in the following chapter, these
suggestive encounter on the Isle ofWight
and
of
personal gifts seem overwhelmed by the
private passions
glimpses
on board
public
panorama
itselfbecomes
ness
to which
that
surrounds
them,
a static background
the
traditions
at the
same
time
that
the panorama
for the growth of individual conscious
of a conversion
narrative
steadily,
and
almost
invisibly, appeal. This strange inversion of foreground and background
takes comic form at the beginning of the elaborate epigraphic summary
that precedes Chapter iv: "The Author is baptized?Narrowly
escapes
drowning."
How
such
a ludicrous
juxtaposition
escaped
Equiano's
scrutiny
OLAUDAH
INTERESTING
EQUIANO'S
through nine editions of his book
to
tended
Some
the
is itself inexplicable, unless it too is in
to forces
attention
reader's
that
from
erupt
below.
of the disappointment thatMary Wollstonecraft
and Richard
express in the so-called "Methodist" portions of Equiano's
story
Gough
may
invite
459
NARRATIVE
from
spring
the process
of narrative
or
attenuation,
that
shallowing,
begins just at the point where the narrator undertakes to plumb the depths
of his soul. Such a resultmay simply be a generic liability of conversion
narratives.
The
to
strives
"uncommon
voice,
give
commotions"
in a
within
conventional
long,
to which
Equiano
as
inaccessible
remain
poem,
to expressive language as grace itself is inaccessible to the purely external
tactics
a
of
"churchman."
good
some
Despite
moments
of
eloquence,
confessional lines shed no light on the bewildering metamor
Equiano's
from
the victim of English
grief to guilt that they describe. How
phosis
is
slavers
entirely
to
brought
himself
perceive
almost
exclusively
as a sinner
remains
unexplained.24
This
especially startling collision of incommensurable
itself be
purposeful:
an
extreme
instance
of
the capacity
experiences may
of Equiano's
story
to lose its simplicity.When
in addition to his familiaritywith the three
of
the
French horn, with themathematical Rule of Three, with the
parts
principles of barter, with refiningwines, and with hair dressing, Equiano
adds the skill of alligation, he touches directly on the problem of finding
grounds for integrating apparently incommensurable
things (165?66).
Ephraim Chambers relates alligation to the commercial necessity of blend
ing precious
chants
metals
a
into
to
accustomed
single
of value
system
different
drastically
that would
currencies
to make
permit
mer
fair exchanges
one blended vintages of wine, the value of the
of goods. When
resulting
would
be arrived at by alligation. Any mixture of several
amalgamation
into
"simples"
a more
whole
complex
this method
required
of propor
tional analysis. The term, Chambers adds, comes directly from the Latin
alligare, to tie together. In antiquity, Chambers observes, the alligatiwere
the
"basest"
category
least
reconciled
those
always
Olaudah
kept
to
slaves
their
that
the Roman
circumstances
marketplace
and who
were,
these
victims
recognized?
accordingly,
in fetters.25
Equiano
ger for liberty.To
to trade
of
in "human
is not
among
desperate
of an
acute
hun
the dismay ofmany of his readers, he finds himself able
cargo,"
as a commercial
agent
for his West
Indian
and
Thomas'
claim
that Equiano
is largely successful
in synthesizing
24. Helen
(or
his African and his English religious identities strikesme as
in the
"creolizing")
unpersuasive
face of the difficulty that this confessional poem represents. See Romanticism and Slave Narra
tives 226-54.
in Ephraim Chambers,
25. See the entry on "alligation"
nary ofArts and Sciences, 4 vols. (London,
1786).
Cyclopedia: Or an Universal Dictio
DOUGLAS
460
ANDERSON
English employers, even afterhis religious conversion;
economic
self-interest
and
to
abolitionism;
inhabit,
to fuse the values of
without
apparent
dis
comfort, a profoundly impure world. Inmany aspects of his experience, he
is in factwhat the impetuous Phaeacian prince accuses Ulysses of being: a
mean sea-farer in pursuit of gain. Some deeply sublimated form ofmental
or spiritual alligation would seem indispensable to accommodating these
ethical
unstable
mixtures.
But
aphor for the process by which
fettered
perience,
by
alligation,
like
"interest,"
is a suggestive
met
readers find themselves tied to another's ex
consciousness
and
by
conscience
to the
contradictory
and ambiguous realm of the historical. In grasping the basis of this appeal,
Equiano insured that his storywould retain a measure of artistic life far in
excess
of
its documentary
University of Georgia
importance
to a contemporary
cause.