"I suffer from nothing. I no longer know what suffering is. I have come to an end of all that too."
So speaks an architect from Western Europe in his late fifties by the name of Querry as he travels up a Congo river to take residence among lepers in a colony run by Catholic priests.
I read A Burnt-Out Case fifty years ago and could immediately detect the power in Graham Greene's timeless classic. I just did reread and my initial judgment is confirmed - the insights pour forth on every single page.
To share a taste of the depth and range of the great British author's penetrating observations, I'll link my comments to a number of direct quotes taken from the opening chapters. However, in the spirit of freshness, I'll take a somewhat unorthodox approach, a particular slant in my selection. Here goes:
“He had a passion for slaughtering any living thing, as though only man had the right to a natural death.”
The objective third-person narrator is alluding to the captain of the small ship Querry travels on and this captain also happens to be a Roman Catholic priest. One of the ugliest aspects of Western Culture: a complete misreading of mankind's place within the web of nature, a gross misunderstanding that sees humans as the only form of life worthy of respect. It was only after 1960, publication year for the novel, that Europeans and Americans would begin to shoot African wildlife with a camera rather than a rifle.
“The passenger wondered when it was that he had first begun to detest laughter like a bad smell.”
One of the indicators someone might qualify as suffering from existential burnout: they lose their sense of humor and capacity to experience joy. This is certainly true of Querry, a man wishing to sever any ties he has with his past. When the doctor at the leper colony first spots Querry, he sees a man with a grizzled morning stubble and wearing a crumpled tropical suit, an appearance that seems to exude misery.
“We are men of the world, Querry, you and I....I tried to teach her the importance of loving God. Because if she loved Him, she wouldn't want to offend Him, would she?”
So speaketh Rycker, a man trained by the Jesuits and a man who might have become a priest. Rycker objects to his young wife refusing to share his bed and uses theological reasoning (love God therefore do not offend God by refusing to accept your marital duties as wife) as an attempt to get his own way. For me, Rycker qualifies as among the most despicable characters in fiction.
“I wasn't concerned with the people who occupied my space – only with the space.”
Querry spent a career as a distinguished architect of churches. Yet he didn't care about the congregation or their prayers; rather he only valued the aesthetics of space, light and proportion. He adamantly objected to the worshipers crapping up his creation with tawdry plastic saints and replacing his plain windows with stained glass. Querry states directly he made what he made exclusively for his own pleasure. Is such a rigid stance justifiable in an architect?
“Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven't even got a self to express. I have no interest in anything any more, doctor. I don't want to sleep with a woman or design a building.”
These are Querry's harsh words. I kept wondering how much of Graham Greene we can read in burnt-out architect Querry.
The tale takes a number of unexpected turns as we discover the depth of complexity in Querry and just how ugly, vile, slimy and retched a man like Rycker can be.
British author Graham Greene, 1904-1991
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