The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Fourth Century by Édouard Glissant. Trans. Betsy Wing
Jason D. Fichtel

Édouard Glissant. The Fourth Century. Trans. Betsy Wing. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2001. 294 pp. Paper: $20.00.

The Fourth Century opens as young Mathieu Béluse, seeking guidance from Papa Longoué, a quimboiseur, asks him to “tell [him] about the past. . . . Just what is it?” It is this question that drives the novel, and the past Mathieu desires to know is not only the “unofficial” past of his country, Martinique, but is in fact his own family’s past, which spans four centuries. Mathieu and Papa Longoué are the last living members of their respective families, first brought to Martinique as slaves in 1788, and their histories have been intertwined from the start. While the first Longoué escapes from slavery, Béluse remains captive, and in future generations the two lines converge in marriage and in murder. Now the last remaining Béluse has come to the last remaining Longoué to discover the hidden past, the past not in the history textbooks Mathieu has been reading. As the two reconstruct history, we come to see that Papa Longoué is in fact making Mathieu his heir. As much as The Fourth Century is a meditation on the complex history of these two families, it is equally (if not more so) a meditation on the very nature of history and of language. I can think of no way to describe the narrative of this novel other than Faulknerian. Glissant’s novel seems deeply indebted to Faulkner, as it blurs the lines between past and present, allows for extended stream-of-consciousness narration, and illustrates the ambiguous-and perhaps unknowable-nature of history. (Glissant’s Faulkner, Mississippi further proves this connection.) The struggle that The Fourth Century so beautifully presents in Mathieu and Papa Longoué’s search for and reconstruction of the past is in fact a universal struggle that, as Mathieu discovers in the final pages, “has no end and no beginning.” [Jason D. Fichtel]