topics: |  fiction | africa | senegal | diaspora

Sambo Diallo is unable to identify with the soulless material civilization he
finds in France, where he is sent to learn the secrets of the white man's
power.

QUOTES:
    Your science is the triumph of evidence, a proliferation of the
surface. It makes you the masters of the external, but at the same time it
exiles you there, more and more. p.78

Diallobe, I salute you." A diffuse and powerful hum of sound answered
her. She went on: "I have done something which is not pleasing to us -and
which is not in accordance with our customs. I have asked the women to come
to this meeting today. We Diallobe hate that, and rightly, for we think that
the women should remain at home. But more and more we shall have to do things
which we hate doing, and which do not accord with our customs. p. 45

The new school shares at the same time the characteristics of cannon and
of magnet. From the cannon it draws its efficacy as an arm of combat. Better
than the cannon, it makes conquest permanent. The cannon compels the body,
the school bewitches the soul. p. 49

It may be that we shall be captured at the end of our Itinerary,
vanquished by our adventure itself. It suddenly occurs to us that, all along
our road. we have not ceased to metamorphose ourselves, and we see ourselves
as other than what we were. Sometimes the metamorphosis is not even
finished. We have turned ourselves into hybrids, and there we are left Then
we hide ourselves, filled with shame (pp. p. 113

On the horizon, it seemed as if the earth were poised on the edge of an
abyss. Above the abyss the sun was suspended, dangerously. The liquid silver
of its heat had been reabsorbed without any loss of its light's splendor. -
Page 74

Everything will depend on what will have happened to me by the time I
reach the end of my studies. p. 112

... but he insists on a place for God within. A strong hand must defend
the spirit, but he values inner force and the absolute over the Most Royal
Lady's choice of physical and material triumph. She embodies the epic of the
Diallobe in her haughty countenance. She reiterates and argues with the
Master that: "...the time has come to teach our sons to live. I foresee
that they will have to do with a world of the living... p. 27

No, they are not empty. One meets objects of flesh in them, as well as
objects of metal. Apart from that, they are empty. Ah! One also encounters
events. Their succession congests time, as the objects congest the
street. Time is obstructed by their mechanical jumble. p. 128

The word of God flowed pure and limpid from his fervent lips. There was a
murmur in his aching head. He contained within himself the totality of the
world, the visible and the invisible, its past and its future. p. 5

... on the sparkling surface of the lagoon. In the fortress of the
moment, man in truth is king, for his thought is all-powerful, when it
is. Where it has passed, the pure azure crystallizes in forms. Life of the
moment, life without age of the moment which endures, in the flight of your
elan man creates himself indefinitely. At the heart of the moment, behold man
as immortal, for the moment is infinite, when it is. The purity of the moment
is made from the absence of time. Life of the moment, life... p. 177