De kern van de zaak|Graham Greene 1949

||boek: De kern van de zaak|vertaling: H.W.J. Schaap|Moderne Meesterwerken

||door: Graham Greene

||taal: nl
||jaar: 1949
||druk: 2e druk
||pag.: 295p
||opm.: hardcover|zo goed als nieuw|zonder flap|linnen omslag

||isbn: N/A
||code: 1:002081

--- Over het boek (foto 1): De kern van de zaak ---

Met Graham Greene afdalen naar het onuitsprekelijke drama van het leven [2017-08-03]

Kun je geluk verwachten of maken in een wereld vol ellende? Graham Greene schreef er in 1949 een parabel over. De kern van de zaak is recent heruitgegeven.

In onze debat- en sociale mediacultuur lijken morele vragen enkel te bestaan als basis voor twistgesprekken. Maar een moreel vraagstuk is eigenlijk altijd een verhaal. Daar moest ik aan denken toen ik de recente heruitgave van Graham Greene's De kern van de zaak las.

De grote Britse novellist schrijft een parabel, en brengt zijn lezer langs die narratieve weg bij 'de kern van de zaak': "Leven en dood houd Ik u voor, zegen en vloek. Kies het leven, dan zult u met uw nakomelingen het leven bezitten" (Dt 30,19). Alle morele vragen zijn toepassingen van dit dilemma: brengt deze keuze leven of dood? Redetwisten is niet aan de orde. We dalen af tot het niveau van het onuitsprekelijke drama van het leven, dat slagveld waar je nooit ongeschonden uit komt.

De stille achtergrond van de roman is WOII. Het hoofdpersonage, politieofficier Henry Scobie, woont en werkt in een uithoek van het Britse Rijk. Greene verbleef zelf begin jaren '40 in de Britse kolonie van Sierra Leone. Maar hij legt in een kort voorwoord uit dat de setting van zijn boek geen persoonlijke rancune moet goedmaken. Het concrete dient het universele, zoals... in een parabel.

De verhaallijn in drie 'boeken'

Het verhaal is opgedeeld in drie 'boeken'. In het eerste 'boek' leren we officier Scobie kennen als een man met een scrupuleuze inborst die al jaren trouw dienst doet. Maar we ontdekken ook hoe hij er niet in slaagt zijn vrouw Louise echt gelukkig te maken. Daarom wil hij koste wat het kost haar wens inwilligen haar ellendige leventje een tijd lang achter zich te kunnen laten in een ander land.

Het tweede 'boek' gaat over die periode waarin Louise haar hart ophaalt in Zuid-Afrika en Scobie eindelijk in alle rust alleen thuis is. Beiden kunnen op hun manier naar geluk zoeken.

"We dalen af tot het niveau van het onuitsprekelijke drama van het leven, dat slagveld waar je nooit ongeschonden uit komt."

Het derde 'boek' vangt aan met de terugkeer van zijn vrouw. Nu staan deze twee echtelieden opnieuw tegenover elkaar. Alles is hetzelfde. Alles is anders. Wie heeft welk geluk gevonden?

De verhaallijn is uiterst sober. Niets is onverwacht in het hele plot. Niets is vreemd. Alles is zo menselijk, dat het 'te verwachten viel'. Sprongen in de tijd zijn nauwelijks nodig. Enkel her en der een ellips, omdat de belangrijkste zaken zonder woorden beter begrepen worden. De binnenkant van een dilemma kun je immers niet blootleggen, enkel insinueren. Dat maakt het boek zo sterk.

Wanhoop en medelijden

Halfweg het boek, als alle draden beginnen te spannen, denkt Scobie vol medelijden na over de trieste dood van een jonge agent: 'Wat was het toch dwaas om geluk te verwachten in een wereld die zo vol ellende was.' Want, als je er zo bij stilstond, was alles en iedereen in deze wereld gebroken. "Zou je misschien ook wel medelijden met de planeten moeten hebben als je alles wist?, vroeg hij zich af. Als je doordringt tot de kern van de zaak, zoals ze dat noemden?' [Lees: de kern van de materie.]

"De binnenkant van een dilemma kun je immers niet blootleggen, enkel insinueren. Dat maakt het boek zo sterk."

Van de echtelijke liefde durft de katholieke Scobie geen geluk te verwachten. Hij kan Louise's liefkozende 'Ticki' niet meer horen, en zij kan het niet meer hebben dat ze omwille van haar man de paria van de gemeenschap is; het literatuur-lezende kneusje van de club. Hun relatie is uitgedoofd en overschaduwd door de vroege dood van hun dochter Catherine. De twee nieuwkomers die op het toneel zijn verschenen en wél nog geluk verwachtten, hebben de zaken enkel complexer gemaakt: inspecteur Edward Wilson die Louise's liefde voor poëzie deelt, en de drenkelinge Helen Rolt, die zo'n noodlottige inwerking heeft op Scobie.

Geloof en ongeloof

'Men leert ons dat wanhoop de enige onvergeeflijke zonde is, maar het is een zonde die een zwak of een verdorven mens nooit zal begaan. Zo iemand blijft altijd hoop koesteren. Hij bereikt nooit het vriespunt, het besef van zijn volslagen mislukking. Alleen de man van goede wil draagt dit vermogen tot verdoemenis altijd mee in zijn hart', mijmert Scobie.

Is Scobie dan ongelovig geworden? Niet meer of minder dan de anderen, waarschijnlijk. Neem nu pater Rank. Die weet maar al te goed dat hij, als puntje bij paaltje komt, zijn gelovigen niet kan helpen, omdat ze, als het er werkelijk toe doet, niet bij hem komen, en omdat hij, wanneer er dan toch beroep op hem wordt gedaan, de juiste woorden niet kan vinden.

Bitter, als tranen uit een lege traanbuis

Of denk aan de jonge en kritische Helen. Van de hele heisa over God verstaat ze niets, maar ze vraagt zich wel af of ze geen slecht mens is als ze zo snel haar overleden echtgenoot vergeet. Het geldt ook voor de hysterische Louise. Ze lijkt op een wat inhoudsloze manier vast te houden aan haar katholieke gebeds- en devotiepraktijken, maar heeft een eerlijkere blik op zichzelf en haar echtgenoot dan de schijn laat vermoeden.

'Het mag vreemd lijken dat ik dit zeg,' zei pater Rank [tegen Louise], 'vooral als iemand zo'n grote fout heeft begaan als hij, maar voor zover ik hem gekend heb, geloof ik echt dat hij God liefhad. Ze had zo-even ontkend dat ze nog enige verbittering voelde, maar iets bitters kwam nu toch langzaam naar buiten druppelen als een paar tranen uit lege traanbuizen. 'Iemand anders heeft hij in ieder geval nooit liefgehad,' zei ze. En daar kon u wel eens gelijk in hebben ook,' antwoordde pater Rank.'

Grootse roman

Graham Green, De kern van de zaakGraham Greene heeft een boek geschreven dat zich met trage halen meester maakt van je hart. De achterflap van deze uitgave moet je misschien maar niet lezen, zodat de rustige gang van het verhaal niet te veel verstoord wordt door voorkennis. Het bespaart je trouwens ook de zin zonder punt. Ja de eindcorrector mag zijn oren voelen gloeien: 'Domme non sum dignus' [sic, p. 319]. Er zijn absoluut te veel fouten allerhande blijven staan. Gelukkig is de tekst te groots om hem daarmee stuk te krijgen.

Pieter Van Petegem [bron: https--igniswebmagazine.nl/kunst/graham-greene-de-kern-van-de-zaak]

De kern van de zaak van Graham Greene

Hun enige kind stierf drie jaar geleden in een Engelse kostschool. En hun huwelijk zit in het slop. Toch wil majoor Henry Scobie dat zijn vrouw gelukkig is. Maar dat is een lastige opgave.

Momenteel is Louise ontzet. Haar man is gepasseerd. Als assistent-commissaris had hij de commissaris moeten opvolgen. Maar dat gaat niet gebeuren. Ze kan zich niet meer in op de club vertonen. Bovendien hoort ze de raarste dingen beweren over haar tickie.

Alleszins wil Louise weg uit Sierra Leone. Wil ze naar Zuid-Afrika. Geen gemakkelijke onderneming door de oorlog. En dan is er nog de kwestie dat Scobie geen geld heeft om zijn vrouw naar Zuid-Afrika te sturen. Tenzij hij geld gaat lenen. Bij de bank vangt hij bot. Uiteindelijk leent hij geld bij Yusef, een van de Syrische handelaars.

Tijdens de afwezigheid van Louise komt een jonge weduwe op zijn pad. Voor hij het goed en wel beseft, moet hij voor het geluk van twee vrouwen zorgen. Bovendien had hij beter geen geld bij Yusef geleend. Door Edward Wilson komt Scobie meer en meer in nauwe schoenen. Ten slotte ziet hij maar één oplossing uit zijn impasse.

"Wanhoop is de prijs die je betalen moet wanneer je jezelf een onbereikbaar ideaal voor ogen stelt. Men leert ons dat wanhoop de enige onvergeeflijke zonde is, maar het is een zonde die een zwak of verdorven mens nooit zal begaan. Zo iemand blijft altijd hoop koesteren."

De zondige mens, die altijd de goddelijke genade kan ontvangen, is een vast gegeven in het oeuvre van Greene. Greene had zich in 1926 na een zware geestelijke crisis bekeerd tot het rooms-katholicisme. Net als Henry Scobie kon hij door zijn bekering trouwen met de vrouw die hij liefhad. Met de zonde was hij goed vertrouwd: Greene had verschillende liaisons tijdens zijn huwelijksleven met Vivien.

Naast bespiegelende reflecties over het leven en het geloof, is misdaad en verraad nooit ver weg in Greenes werk. Op de achtergrond in 'De kern van de zaak' ontspint zich een verhaal rond diamantensmokkel op schepen, rivaliteit tussen Syrische handelaars en de aanwakkering van het roddelcircuit door een spion. De Britse politie-ambtenaren in Sierra Leone worden namelijk in de gaten gehouden door een spion, gestuurd door Londen. Die spion heeft het vooral op Scobie gemunt. Edward Wilson wordt dan ook nog verliefd op Louise, waarmee hij een liefde voor literatuur en poëzie deelt.

Graham Greene was door zijn vakmanschap een van de grootste romanschrijvers van de twintigste eeuw. En 'De kern van de zaak' heeft alle elementen van een uitstekende Greene: intrige, spanning en een morele kwestie. Meer heeft deze lezer alvast niet nodig!

Oorspronkelijke titel: The Heart of the Matter.
Jaar van publicatie: 1948.
Oorspronkelijke vertaling drs. H.W.J. Schaap (1949). Herziening en actualisering door Uitgeverij Bint BV.

[bron: https--daniellecobbaertbe.com/2022/02/25/de-kern-van-de-zaak-van-graham-greene]

Een commisaris van de politie in een havenplaats aan Afrika's westkust geraakt, omdat hij gevoelens van anderen wil sparen en zelf de verantwoordelijkheid van zijn daden wil dragen, in steeds moeilijker situaties.

Hij greep haar polsen en hield die in een woedende greep omklemd. 'Zo kun je je er niet van afmaken,' zei hij. 'Ik geloof werkelijk, zeg ik je. Ik geloof vast en zeker dat ik voor alle eeuwigheid verdoemd ben - tenzij er een wonder gebeurt. Ik ben een politiebeambte. Ik weet wat ik zeg. Wat ik gedaan heb, is veel erger dan een moord begaan - dat is maar een daad van één ogenblik, een slag, een steek, een schot. Zo'n daad wordt gepleegd en dan is het gebeurd. Maar ik draag mijn verderf overal met me om. Het is alsof het een deel van mijn maagwand is. Ik zal het nooit uit mijn lichaam kunnen verwijderen.'

In geen enkele andere roman van Graham Greene krijgt het centrale thema van zijn werk - corruptie van de menselijke integriteit door de menselijke deugd van het medelijden - zo navrant en boeiend gestalte als in De kern van de zaak.

Scobie is a highly principled officer in a war-torn West African state. When he is passed over for promotion he is forced to borrow money to send his despairing wife away on a holiday.

In her absence he falls hopelessly in love with Helen, a young widow, and his life is transformed by the experience. With a duty to repay his debts and an inability to distinguish between love, pity, and responsibilty to others and to God, Scobie moves inexorably to his final damnation.

The terrifying description of a man's awe of the Church and the ability to portray human motive and to convey such a depth of suffering make The Heart of the Matter one of Graham Greene's most enduring, tragic novels.

[bron: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2021-01-28]

Beware the pity-party

This is a terribly British, terribly colonial novel, set in West Africa during WWII. You know what I mean by colonial, you can see it, right? Men with manly jobs, say, like a potential police commissioner, are called "Tickie" by their wives and have a "boy" who has worked for them for thirteen years.

You'll have to look past all that, in all likelihood. (I had to. Dear god, why "Tickie"??)

Once you get past the things that might annoy, or that may not have aged particularly well, congratulations, you are reading a gorgeous novel by the inimitable Graham Greene. A man who was tortured by his Catholic beliefs (so he inflicted them on his characters, poor things). A man who had deep compassion for those stuck in the crevasses between belief and LIFE with all its not-quite-measuring-ups and messiness.

Henry Scobie (sorry, but I refuse to call him "Tickie") is one of Greene's suffering Catholics - by which I mean he really believes, and thus is basically tortured by his need to be 'good'. He's also got this overpowering sense of pity for others - for his wife, who isn't happy, for his mistress, who wants more from him, for even God Himself, who is getting a raw deal from Scobie, this flawed, imperfect human. Greene shows brilliantly how dangerous and self-destructive, how misplaced pity can be, how doomed one is if one lives by it.

He also shows the complexity of life juxtaposed with the flatness of "rules". He does this by featuring a man who is corrupted, unfaithful, untrusting and compromised, but who is also the most moral, caring and God-fearing person in any given room. Willing to give it all up, like a tortured saint for an undeserving rabble, old Tickie will break your heart. He did mine.

Damn perfection. Damn those confining "rules".

"The Church says..."
"I know the Church says. The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."

Robin [bron: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2024-05-13]

When I read a book from a distinguished writer or otherwise for the first time I notice things particular to the author's style or mood. Has he an agenda, does he want to preach or just entertain. How well can he or she communicate with the reading audience, does the author care that much. Will people come back for a second helping maybe not, however a book that is boring to some will excite others. This is a way of stating people are different nobody pleases all, which makes for variety in the world, it would be dull if this was incorrect. Mr. Graham Greene starts and ends his story in West Africa during the Second World War to be precise 1943 in an unnamed country which looks like Sierra Leone, Mr. Henry Scobie the assistant commissioner of police in the largest city Freetown (unstated in the novel), a small town then but with over a million today. For 15 years there a honest man with a loving wife but now just been rejected for the top man when the commissioner is set to retire. Louise his wife is more disappointed than Scobie, discontented having no real friends, she wants and needs to get out on a long vacation to South Africa. As Louise leaves the husband becomes a very good friend of Helen a survivor of a ship torpedoed off the treacherous coast by a U- boat. Thirty years younger than the policeman nevertheless she is a lonely woman losing her husband in the tragedy, quickly succumbs to his charms. Secretly of course as people like to gossip not good for Mr. Scobie's career, you will not be surprised by the... uneasy conscience the two women he loves, cause him many problems and sleepless nights. He had to borrow money to pay for his wife's voyage. And the only one there that has cash is the corrupt Syrian Yusef, who needs cooperation from Henry to smuggle diamonds on a Portuguese ship, they being neutral can safely cross the seas. Little by little the good man becomes less so, this makes for much soul searching that gives the title of book The Heart of the Matter. The rather gloomy situation seems impossible to solve as Louse is arriving back home and the Vichy French are on the border . The lawman feels too anxious and can't choose. The writer lived in Africa for years and his apparent knowledge of the land and natives gives the authenticity required to tell a convincing plot in a British colony. Yes I will read another of Greene's works.

Henry Avila [bron: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2020-05-28]

Very strong, Very Greene. The comic touch always lurks on the edge of his major works - even here, a West African coastal colony town during World War 2, where British officers have regressed into a sort of juvenile madness. The novel is stifling, claustrophobic, and yet lightly rendered, as a police officer named Scobie moves along the fixed track of plot toward inevitable disaster.

Though (as the James Wood introduction, which is a horror of spoilers, discusses) Scobie is in some ways a confoundingly flat character, I enjoyed the way the novel mashed his unfeeling Catholicism against his pity for others, pity that drives him into sin. Greene is one of our most cinematic authors, and we can see these creations all too well: Scobie's bookish wife, Louise, the ridiculous Englishmen Wilson (a sublime foil) and Harris, the pathetic shipwrecked Helen, Yusef, a wonderfully crooked businesssman w/ a weak spot for Scobie (his pillows wet with tears for affection for the lead - what a villain!).

Though the book's racial politics are antiquated, Greene captures the grossness of the colonial ethos wonderfully and he goes deep into questions of redemption for Catholics. The text behaves oddly, with thoughts slipping onto the page and fracturing Greene's prose. Moments: Scobie inventing a story for a shipwrecked youth; Scobie's inability to get mad at Wilson; a late-night cockroach hunt.

"In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love."

Adam Dalva [bron: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2013-10-06]

This book is a classic "colonial novel." We are immediately immersed in the British colonial tropics - an unnamed British colony in West Africa during World War II. Cockroaches, rats and diseases abound. The British colony shares a border with a Vichy French (German-allied) colonial country so there is much intrigue about industrial diamond smuggling and the sinking of ships off the coast. This capital city is a melting pot with Africans and British of course (and the n-word is frequently tossed around by the latter over gin), Germans, and Syrian merchants, some of whom are Muslim and some Catholic.

Our protagonist is the chief of police. A man devoted to duty, he manages to create a totally loveless, duty-bound relationship with both his wife and mistress. He grows to dread spending time with either one. We watch his gradual and painful descent from stellar civil servant into evil.

The Heart of the Matter is a very "Catholic" novel. Unlike Brideshead Revisited, also considered a Catholic novel, the discussions of Catholicism aren't incidental to the plot and characters, but very much in the fore. There are discussions of points of Catholic theology with priests, the protagonist's wife and mistress, and religious discussions at cocktail parties as well as the debates that go on in the police chief's mind. But these aren't prolonged discussions; the plot moves and it's quite a fascinating book, suspenseful to the (bitter) end.

Jim Fonseca [bron: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2016-12-31]

I remember a striking image from a previous novel of Graham Greene, of vultures settling to roost on the iron rooftops of a nowhere town in a third world country (it's the introduction to "The Power and the Glory"). When I came across an identical image in the first pages of the present novel, I knew I was letting myself in for another traumatic ride through the maze of a fallible human mind, I knew I would struggle with depression and moral ambivalence and with a loss of faith, yet I was also aware that the novel will hold me in its thrall until the last page, like compulsively watching the grief and destruction left behind by a trainwreck or by a suicide bombing.

He felt almost intolerably lonely. On either side of the school the tin roofs sloped towards the sea, and the corrugated iron above his head clanged and clattered as a vulture alighted.

A mirror image reinforces the tonality of the novel in its final pages:

They didn't kiss; it was too soon for that but they sat in the hollow room, holding hands, listening to the vultures clambering on the iron roof.

Between these macabre bookends, a man named Scobie will be torn apart in his love, in his integrity and in his Catholic faith, in a sweltering tropical town on the coast of Sierra Leone, during the larger world tempest that was the second world war. The setting, the historical period and the damned protagonist made me toy with the idea of drawing parallels between Major Scobie and Geoffrey Firmin from Malcolm Lowry's masterpiece "Under the Volcano". Both writers taped their inner demons in order to create their memorable expatriates, both explore the theme of self-destruction in the face of personal failure, yet Scobie and Firmin have almost nothing in common when it gets down to the root cause of their misfortune.

If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter?

My heart went out for the Consul, a victim of an excess of love and of misguided faith in his peers, a man who would rather drink himself to death than live in a world without love. Scobie's tribulations rang hollow when his inner good intentions didn't translate in commendable actions. There is something rotten in his rationing chain, something that will drive him deeper and deeper into a spider's web of lies, deceit and betrayals culminating in the assassination of his trusted coloured personal servant . The author gives us the key to Scobie in his introduction, by drawing the reader's attention to the difference between pity and true compasion, between a true forgiving and selfless Christian and one who is driven by a need to feel superior or by a twisted fascination with ugliness and misfortune. For example, Scobie may claim to be forgiving, but he secretly despises the man who once did him wrong:

Ever since Fellowes had snatched his house, Scobie had done his best to like the man - it was one of the rules by which he set his life, to be a good loser.

I love failure: I can't love success. confesses at one point Major Scobie in self-justification, putting the lie to the earlier image he painted for the reader as a caring and devoted husband:

Fifteen years form a face, gentleness ebbs with experience, and he was always aware of his own responsibility. He had led the way: the experience that had come to her was the experience selected by himself. He had formed her face. [...] The less he needed Louise the more conscious he became of his responsibility for her happiness. When he called her name he was crying like Canute against a tide - the tide of her melancholy and disappointment.

The issue is made even clearer when Scobie sets his eyes on a young war widow rescued from a torpedoed ship in the Atlantic: Scobie is in love with his feelings of power, not with the actual person.

He had no sense of responsibility towards the beautiful and the graceful and the intelligent. They could find their own way. It was the face for which nobody would go out of his way, the face that would never cath the covert look, the face which would soon be used to rebuffs and indifference that demanded his allegiance. The word 'pity' is used as loosely as the word 'love': the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience.

I did feel a sort of sympathy and understanding for Scobie in the beginning of the novel, proof of the indisputable talent of Greene to capture the inner landscape of a weak man struggling to overcome his sins. I even gave him some leeway for circumstances beyond his control, like the devastating loss of his only daughter at a very young age. But, like the lapsed priest from "The Power and the Glory", Scobie goes and sins again and again instead of asking for redemption and of mending his ways. He may be honest in his prayers and in his dreams, but he is definitely a sinner in his actions. As Helen exclaims in despair of Scobie's inability to chose between his wife and his mistress:

If there's one thing I hate is your Catholicism. I suppose it comes of having a pious wife. It's so bogus. If you really believed you wouldn't be here.

Graham Greene deserves all the praise and the glory for writing these ambiguous, soul searching novels centered on morally corrupt and frankly despicable characters that somehow still capture the reader's imagination and illustrate a universal need for redemption and forgiveness. Scobie, in my opinion, dug his own grave and had an immense capacity for lying to himself ("I didn't know myself that's all."), yet for most of the novel I believed his struggle was honest and well intended. I am reminded of the parable of the stone and should be in a more forgiving mood towards Scobie when looking back at my own past mistakes and at the hurt I had caused to the people I loved thankfully, it didn't get anywhere near murder , so my conclusion and the genius of Greene is to make us aware of the Scobie inside each of us.

When he was young, he had thought love had something to do with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painfull affection, loyalty, pity ...

Scobie believes we are unable to truly know another person, and maybe this is one of the reasons he will fail - he is locked inside his own mind. But, like I mentioned before, he doesn't live in a perfect world, and his depression has roots that are part inherent human nature and part the crazy times and wild places he finds himself thrown in.

What an absurd thing it was to expect happiness in a world so full of misery.

Looking beyond the personal drama of Scobie, I feel the need to remark that Graham Greene's prose is outstanding out also in regards to capturing the sense of place and the elusive, ambivalent nature of love - a balancing act between clear eyed, lucid intellectual attraction and atavistic, subconscious lust. Greene put his actual experience of living (and spying) in Sierra Leone during the war to good use in the novel. The tensions with the French collaborationist neighbors, with German interests in the region and with neutral Portuguese smuggling of diamonds are convincing, as are the snatches of dialogue and the whole tropical lethargy of the expatriates:

This is the original Tower of Babel. West Indians, Africans, real Indians, Syrians, Englishmen, Scotsmen in the Office of Works, Irish priests, French priests, Alsatian priests.

Part of Greene secret of success is for me his empathy for the local population, his fascination with the less sophisticated societies that may be living closer to nature and are more honest in their likes and dislikes.

Why, he wondered, swerving the car to avoid a dead pie-dog, do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn't had time to disguise itself? Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worse: you din't love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed.

Some of the phrases and gestures strike me as extremely close to my own recent experiences of living as an expat in one of these countries. Others are embarassing reminders of the ugly undercurrent of racism and imperial arrogance that brought down the English Empire and that I still catch echoes of from some of my colleagues today:

"Been here long?"
"Eighteen bloody months."
"Going home soon?"

I already knew (from "The End of the Affair") that Greene is incredibly poignant and quotable when he describes human passion, and I was not disappointed here:

What they had both thought was safety proved to have been the camouflage of an enemy who works in terms of friendship, trust and pity.

Passion though tends to be insufficient to carry the heavy baggage of Scobie's past mistakes, defeats and hesitations:

Although they could touch each other it was as if the whole coastline of a continent was already between them; their words were like the stilted sentences of a bad letter writer.

In the end, Scobie must face his demons alone, neither women nor church nor career being proper substitutes for the huge empty spaces inside Scobie's soul:

I don't want to keep you, Father. There are other people waiting. I know these are just fancies. But I feel - empty. Empty.

It sometimes seemed to him that all he could share with them was his despair.

I wish I could explore more the religious implications and parables of Scobie's tragedy (I see Yousef the Syrian as an incarnation of the Devil offering the world, and Scobie as the sinner who surrenders in much too easily to temptation). That's what re-reads are for, and I believe I will feel the pull of Greene's prose and of his tormented characters soon enough. The author makes his argument crystal clear in one the last one liners to be picked in the text: the fact that each man is unique and should be judged on his or her own merits, to the particulars of his or her case, and not by any standard, cold and inflexible ancient code of ethics:

The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart.

final note: the current novel also includes in a moment of epihany for Scobie a rendition of one of my favorite poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, although the translation in my edition is a rather poor one. I will close my review instead with the original:

Herbst

Die Blätter fallen, fallen wie von weit,
als welkten in den Himmeln ferne Gärten;
sie fallen mit verneinender Gebärde.

Und in den Nächten fällt die schwere
Erde, aus allen Sternen in die Einsamkeit.
Wir allen fallen.

Diese Hand da fällt.
Und sieh dir andre an: es ist in allen.
Und doch ist einer, welcher dieses

Fallen, undendlich sanft
in seinen Händen hält.

Algernon (Darth Anyan) [bron: https--www.goodreads.com]

--- Over (foto 2): Graham Greene ---

Henry Graham Greene (Berkhamsted (Hertfordshire), 2 oktober 1904 - Vevey (Zwitserland), 3 april 1991) was een Engels schrijver en agent voor de Britse inlichtingendienst SIS.

Graham Greene was de zoon van een leraar aan Berkhamsted School, de public school van het stadje waar hij opgroeide. Hij had vijf broers en zusters, van wie zijn broers Hugh en Raymond eveneens bekende Britten werden. Zijn ouders waren achterneef en -nicht, en lid van een invloedrijke familie. Graham was intern als leerling aan de school van zijn vader, die er inmiddels directeur was geworden. Hij werd zwaar gepest en leed aan depressies. Na enkele zelfmoordpogingen werd hij door zijn ouders voor zes maanden naar Londen gestuurd voor psychoanalyse, wat in 1920 zeer ongewoon was. Daarna maakte hij zijn school af als extern wonende leerling.

Greene studeerde geschiedenis aan het Balliol College aan de Universiteit van Oxford. Hij leed van tijd tot tijd aan depressies en bemoeide zich niet met zijn spraakmakende tijdgenoten, zoals Evelyn Waugh. Zijn eerste werk, de dichtbundel Babbling April, verscheen in 1925. De recensies waren negatief. Nadat hij afgestudeerd was werkte hij eerst als privéleraar, maar hij begon al snel aan een carrière als journalist. Ook werkte hij als filmrecensent.

In deze periode ontmoette hij Vivien Dayrell-Browning (1904-2003), die tot het katholicisme was bekeerd, en om met haar te kunnen trouwen werd ook Greene zelf katholiek. Het huwelijk van Graham en Vivien vond plaats in 1927. Zij kregen twee kinderen, Lucy (1933) en Francis (1936). Graham verliet zijn gezin in 1947, ze gingen formeel uit elkaar in 1948, maar in overeenstemming met de rooms-katholieke leer is het paar nooit gescheiden en duurde het huwelijk tot Grahams dood in 1991.

In 1938 kreeg hij een opdracht om naar Mexico te reizen en verslag uit te brengen over de religieuze vervolging in dat land.

Zijn boeken zijn geschreven in een modern-realistische stijl, en bevatten vaak figuren die twijfelen aan zichzelf en die in een donkere wereld leven. De twijfel gaat vaak ook over religieuze zaken.

Greenes boeken werden in eerste instantie onderverdeeld in twee genres. De thrillers en mysteries die als "vermaak" werden getypeerd, maar die vaak een zeer filosofische kant in zich hadden, en de hoog literaire boeken zoals The Power and the Glory waarop zijn reputatie was gebaseerd. Naarmate zijn carrière vorderde, bleek dat zijn vermaak vrijwel net zoveel waarde had als de literaire schrijfsels. De twee factoren werden in zijn latere boeken met veel succes met elkaar verweven. Voorbeelden zijn The Human Factor, The Comedians, Our Man in Havana en The Quiet American.

Nadat Greene het slachtoffer was geworden van een financiële oplichter, koos hij er in 1966 voor om Groot-Brittannië te verlaten en naar Antibes te verhuizen, om dicht bij Yvonne Cloetta te zijn, die hij kende sinds 1959. Deze relatie hield stand tot aan zijn dood. Hij woonde de laatste jaren van zijn leven in Vevey, aan het Meer van Genève in Zwitserland, dezelfde stad waar Charlie Chaplin op dat moment woonde. Hij bezocht Chaplin vaak, en de twee waren goede vrienden.

Werken

Romans

• The Man Within 1929
• The Name of Action 1930
• Rumour at Nightfall 1932
• Stamboul Train 1932
• It's a Battlefield 1934
• England Made Me 1935
• A Gun for Sale 1936 (in 1942 verfilmd als This Gun For Hire)
• Brighton Rock 1938
• The Confidential Agent 1939
• The Power and the Glory 1940
• The Ministry of Fear 1943
• The Heart of the Matter 1948
• The Third Man 1949 (voor een film van Carol Reed)
• The End of the Affair 1951
• Loser Takes All 1955
• The Quiet American 1955
• Our Man in Havana 1958
• A Burnt-Out Case 1961
• The Comedians 1966
• Travels with My Aunt 1969
• The Honorary Consul 1973
• The Human Factor 1978
• Doctor Fischer of Geneva 1980
• Monsignor Quixote 1982
• The Tenth man 1985(Geschreven in 1944)
• The Captain and the Enemy 1988

Korte verhalen

• The Basement Room 1935 (8 verhalen)
• Nineteen Stories 1947 (11 verhalen)
• Twenty-one Stories 1954 (21 verhalen), gedeeltelijk een heruitgave van The Basement Room en Nineteen Stories
• A Sense of Reality 1963 (7 verhalen)
• May We Borrow Your Husband? 1967 (12 verhalen)
• The Last Word and Other Stories 1990 (12 verhalen)
• The Basement Room 1935, (verfilmd als The Fallen Idol)

Poëzie

• Babbling April 1925

Drama

• The Living Room 1953
• The Potting Shed 1957
• The Complaisant Lover 1959

Autobiografie

• A Sort of Life 1971
• Ways of Escape 1980
• Rat's Nest 1984 (autobiografie) (in Nederland populair, beter bekend als 'De Rattenvanger en het Buidelratje')
• A World of My Own 1992 (droomdagboek, postuum)
• Graham Greene: A Life in Letters (ed. Richard Greene). London: Little Brown, 2007

Reisboeken

• Journey Without Maps 1936
• The Lawless Roads 1939
• In Search of a Character: Two African Journals 1961

Kinderboeken

• The Little Train 1946
• The Little Fire Engine 1950
• The Little Horse Bus 1952
• The Little Steamroller 1955

[bron: wikipedia]

Graham Greene, in full Henry Graham Greene, (born October 2, 1904, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England - died April 3, 1991, Vevey, Switzerland), English novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist whose novels treat life's moral ambiguities in the context of contemporary political settings.

His father was the headmaster of Berkhamsted School, which Greene attended for some years. After running away from school, he was sent to London to a psychoanalyst in whose house he lived while under treatment. After studying at Balliol College, Oxford, Greene converted to Roman Catholicism in 1926, partly through the influence of his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning, whom he married in 1927. He moved to London and worked for The Times as a copy editor from 1926 to 1930. His first published work was a book of verse, Babbling April (1925), and upon the modest success of his first novel, The Man Within (1929; adapted as the film The Smugglers, 1947), he quit The Times and worked as a film critic and literary editor for The Spectator until 1940. He then traveled widely for much of the next three decades as a freelance journalist, searching out locations for his novels in the process.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet.

Greene's first three novels are held to be of small account. He began to come into his own with a thriller, Stamboul Train (1932; also published as Orient Express), which plays off various characters against each other as they ride a train from the English Channel to Istanbul. This was the first of a string of novels that he termed "entertainments," works similar to thrillers in their spare, tough language and their suspenseful, swiftly moving plots but possessing greater moral complexity and depth. Stamboul Train was also the first of Greene's many novels to be filmed (1934). It was followed by three more entertainments that were equally popular with the reading public: A Gun for Sale (1936; also published as This Gun for Hire; films 1942 and, as Short Cut to Hell, 1957), The Confidential Agent (1939; film 1945), and The Ministry of Fear (1943; adapted as the film Ministry of Fear, 1945). A fifth entertainment, The Third Man, which was published in novel form in 1949, was originally a screenplay for a classic film directed by Carol Reed.

One of Greene's finest novels, Brighton Rock (1938; films 1947 and 2010), shares some elements with his entertainments - the protagonist is a hunted criminal roaming the underworld of an English sea resort - but explores the contrasting moral attitudes of its main characters with a new degree of intensity and emotional involvement. In this book, Greene contrasts a cheerful and warmhearted humanist he obviously dislikes with a corrupt and violent teenage criminal whose tragic situation is intensified by a Roman Catholic upbringing. Greene's finest novel, The Power and the Glory (1940; also published as The Labyrinthine Ways; adapted as the film The Fugitive, 1947), has a more directly Catholic theme: the desperate wanderings of a priest who is hunted down in rural Mexico at a time when the church is outlawed there. The weak and alcoholic priest tries to fulfill his priestly duties despite the constant threat of death at the hands of a revolutionary government.

Greene worked for the Foreign Office during World War II and was stationed for a while at Freetown, Sierra Leone, the scene of another of his best-known novels, The Heart of the Matter (1948; film 1953). This book traces the decline of a kindhearted British colonial officer whose pity for his wife and mistress eventually leads him to commit suicide. The End of the Affair (1951; films 1955 and 1999) is narrated by an agnostic in love with a woman who forsakes him because of a religious conviction that brings her near to sainthood.

Greene's next four novels were each set in a different Third World nation on the brink of political upheaval. The protagonist of A Burnt-Out Case (1961) is a Roman Catholic architect tired of adulation who meets a tragic end in the Belgian Congo shortly before that colony reaches independence. The Quiet American (1956; films 1958 and 2002) chronicles the doings of a well-intentioned American government agent in Vietnam in the midst of the anti-French uprising there in the early 1950s. Our Man in Havana (1958; film 1959) is set in Cuba just before the communist revolution there, while The Comedians (1966; film 1967) is set in Haiti during the rule of François Duvalier. Greene's last four novels, The Honorary Consul (1973; adapted as the film Beyond the Limit, 1983), The Human Factor (1978; film 1979), Monsignor Quixote (1982), and The Tenth Man (1985), represent a decline from the level of his best fiction.

The world Greene's characters inhabit is a fallen one, and the tone of his works emphasizes the presence of evil as a palpable force. His novels display a consistent preoccupation with sin and moral failure acted out in seedy locales characterized by danger, violence, and physical decay. Greene's chief concern is the moral and spiritual struggles within individuals, but the larger political and social settings of his novels give such conflicts an enhanced resonance. His early novels depict a shabby Depression-stricken Europe sliding toward fascism and war, while many of his subsequent novels are set in remote locales undergoing wars, revolutions, or other political upheavals.

Despite the downbeat tone of much of his subject matter, Greene was in fact one of the most widely read British novelists of the 20th century. His books' unusual popularity is partly due to his production of thrillers featuring crime and intrigue but more importantly to his superb gifts as a storyteller, especially his masterful selection of detail and his use of realistic dialogue in a fast-paced narrative. Throughout his career, Greene was fascinated by film, and he often emulated cinematic techniques in his writing. No other British writer of this period was as aware as Greene of the power and influence of cinema.

Greene published several collections of short stories, among them Nineteen Stories (1947; revised as Twenty-one Stories, 1954). Among his plays are The Living Room (performed 1952) and The Potting Shed (1957). His Collected Essays appeared in 1969. A Sort of Life (1971) is a memoir to 1931, to which Ways of Escape (1980) is a sequel. In J'accuse (1982) Greene denounced a family friend's former husband and showed evidence of government corruption in the French city of Nice. A collection of his film criticism is available in Mornings in the Dark: The Graham Greene Film Reader (1993). In 2007 a selection of his letters was published as Graham Greene: A Life in Letters. The unfinished manuscript The Empty Chair, a murder mystery that Greene began writing in 1926, was discovered in 2008; serialization of it began the following year.

[source: https--www.britannica.com/biography/Graham-Greene]