Previous
Zabeth
Father Huismans is a Belgian priest fascinated with the history of Africa and colonial rule who works as the headmaster of the lycée in town. Father Huismans is a reverent believer in European superiority, subscribing to a view of history that always swings back toward the colonial path. Despite this he is also fascinated with the bush and African religion and believes that “true Africa” is dying. Father Huismans makes frequent trips into the bush to study the cultures and collect relics and artifacts such as wood carvings and masks. He is one of Salim’s few friends in town, and in their time together explains to him the history and meaning of the town’s motto on the old placard by the docks. He uses the rooms and courtyards of the lycée as his own personal museum, displaying artifacts of the town’s colonial past and keeping a massive collection of tribal masks in the building’s basement gun room. As opposed to Raymond, Salim sees Father Huismans as having a pure and true interest and understanding in the culture of Africa as he is actually engaged with its history and people, but after his unceremonious death in the bush, public opinion on him sours, with people like Ferdinand criticizing his colonial looting and museum practices. At the intersection of Father Huismans’s beliefs is his conviction that the town at the bend in the river is a natural meeting place for desperate cultures, as well as the past and present, and believes it will always continue.
Father Huismans Quotes in A Bend in the River
The A Bend in the River quotes below are all either spoken by Father Huismans or refer to Father Huismans. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
Miscerique probat populos et foedera jungi. “He approves of the mingling of the peoples and their bonds of union”: that was what the words meant, and again they were very old words, from the days of ancient Rome […] I was staggered. Twisting two-thousand-year-old-words to celebrate sixty years of the steamer service from the capital… To carve the words on a monument beside this African river was surely to invite the destruction of the town. Wasn’t there some little anxiety, as in the original line in the poem? And almost as soon as it had been put up the monument had been destroyed, leaving only bits of bronze and the mocking words…
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
This is Zabeth’s world […] But Zabeth’s world was living, and this was dead. That was the effect of those masks lying flat on the shelves, looking up not at forest or sky but at the underside of other shelves […] That was the impression only of a moment, though. Because in that dark, hot room, with the mask smells growing stronger, my own feeling of awe grew, my sense of what lay all around us outside. It was like being on the river at night. The bush was full of spirits; in the bush hovered all the protecting presences of a man’s ancestors; and in this room all the spirits of those dead masks […] seemed to have concentrated. The masks and carvings looked old [but] they were all quite new. So old, so new. And out of his stupendous idea of his civilization, his stupendous idea of the future, Father Huismans saw himself at the end of it all, the last, luck witness.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6
Quotes
Everything the President did had a reason. As a ruler in what was potentially hostile territory, he was creating an area where he and his flag were supreme. As an African, he was building a new town on the site of what had been a rich European suburb—but what he was building was meant to be grander […] He was creating modern Africa […] He was by-passing real Africa, the difficult Africa of bush and villages, and creating something that would match anything that existed in other countries. Photographs of this State Domain—and of others like it in other parts of the country—began to appear in those magazines about Africa that were published in Europe but subsidized by governments like ours…Under the rule of our new President the miracle had occurred: Africans had become modern men who built in concrete and glass and sat in cushioned chairs covered in imitation velvet. It was like a curious fulfilment of Father Huismans’s prophecy about the retreat of African Africa, and the success of the European graft.
Get the entire A Bend in the River LitChart as a printable PDF.
Father Huismans Quotes in A Bend in the River
The A Bend in the River quotes below are all either spoken by Father Huismans or refer to Father Huismans. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
Miscerique probat populos et foedera jungi. “He approves of the mingling of the peoples and their bonds of union”: that was what the words meant, and again they were very old words, from the days of ancient Rome […] I was staggered. Twisting two-thousand-year-old-words to celebrate sixty years of the steamer service from the capital… To carve the words on a monument beside this African river was surely to invite the destruction of the town. Wasn’t there some little anxiety, as in the original line in the poem? And almost as soon as it had been put up the monument had been destroyed, leaving only bits of bronze and the mocking words…
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
This is Zabeth’s world […] But Zabeth’s world was living, and this was dead. That was the effect of those masks lying flat on the shelves, looking up not at forest or sky but at the underside of other shelves […] That was the impression only of a moment, though. Because in that dark, hot room, with the mask smells growing stronger, my own feeling of awe grew, my sense of what lay all around us outside. It was like being on the river at night. The bush was full of spirits; in the bush hovered all the protecting presences of a man’s ancestors; and in this room all the spirits of those dead masks […] seemed to have concentrated. The masks and carvings looked old [but] they were all quite new. So old, so new. And out of his stupendous idea of his civilization, his stupendous idea of the future, Father Huismans saw himself at the end of it all, the last, luck witness.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6
Quotes
Everything the President did had a reason. As a ruler in what was potentially hostile territory, he was creating an area where he and his flag were supreme. As an African, he was building a new town on the site of what had been a rich European suburb—but what he was building was meant to be grander […] He was creating modern Africa […] He was by-passing real Africa, the difficult Africa of bush and villages, and creating something that would match anything that existed in other countries. Photographs of this State Domain—and of others like it in other parts of the country—began to appear in those magazines about Africa that were published in Europe but subsidized by governments like ours…Under the rule of our new President the miracle had occurred: Africans had become modern men who built in concrete and glass and sat in cushioned chairs covered in imitation velvet. It was like a curious fulfilment of Father Huismans’s prophecy about the retreat of African Africa, and the success of the European graft.
