Who Comes Before Wilbur Smith?

We all know that Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925) is fully regarded, thanks to the Ayesha cycle — most notably the best seller “She”, but also adventurous gothic tales such as “The Lady of Blossome” — the forerunner of fantasy and literary imagination, like Lovecraft, Poe, Verne and Stevenson.

But have we ever wondered who was there before Wilbur Smith, before the hunts, the fiery savannas, the tribal struggles between Zulu, the adventure novel par excellence? Again he, Henry Rider Haggard, with his famous work “The Mines of King Solomon”, and the legendary character of Allan Quatermain.

Both in “She” and in “King Solomon’s Mines”, the adventure finds its central nucleus in the relationship with wild, uncontaminated and virgin nature but, above all, in the exploration and discovery of hidden, “lost” worlds, largely popular in the Victorian period, revived by Kipling, Conan Doyle, Rice Burroughs, and later amplified by Hollywood (think of films like “The Lost World: Jurassic Park”). In Haggard we are dealing with caves, containing secrets and mysteries that have remained unknown to most (how can we not think of the mines of Moria?), that are all too obvious symbols of descent into the unconscious. It is not surprising that the Ayesha cycle attracted the attention of Freud and Jung.

The topoi of fantastic literature are many, such as the sudden aging of Ayesha in “She”, which reminds us of Morgana in “Excalibur”, or the Spirit of the Flame which takes us back to the final scene of “Indiana Jones and the raiders of the lost ark”. Here too it is the abuse of magic that corrupts and destroys instead of enlivening and strengthening. Another topos is the acknowledgment, with the recognition of Umbopa / Ignosi as the legitimate king of the Kukuana in “King Solomon’s Mines”.

Henry Rider Haggard was born near Norfolk, where he spent an unhappy childhood due to poor health and learning difficulties. He attends parapsychological circles and is convinced that he himself is endowed with extraordinary faculties. He leaves for Natal where he will be captivated by the charm of southern Africa. He writes “The Mines of King Solomon” to demonstrate that he can invent a story on par with Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”, after some of his stories had not met the success he hoped for. The novel dates back to ’85 and immediately became a best seller, followed by “She”, in ‘87.

Rider Haggard travels the world, visits Egypt, like Wilbur Smith, and Mexico, getting ideas for new books and learning how to quickly write entertaining and blockbuster novels. Quatermain’s character gives life to other narratives, for the most part unpublished in Italian.

Quatermain, known as “Macumazahn”, he who gazes into the night, is the model of “the great white hunter”, not anti-colonial but still just and good with the natives. Infallible but not bloodthirsty predator, he always defines himself as “a meek man”, even “a bit cowardly”, and finds the excess of slaughter vaguely “nauseating.”

Haggard is a convinced colonialist, he feels white supremacy as indisputable and some of his attitudes of superiority towards the natives and certain hunting scenes that have the ruthlessness of those of Hemingway are unwelcome for our modern palate, but at least, lack the bloody complacency of the author of “Green Hills of Africa”.

Adventure, little psychological subtlety, no inner conflict, great hunting and war scenes as befits the most typical escapism. And, however, at times, there is an unusual philosophical reflection on man, on his place in the cycle of life and on his transience.

“Yet man does not die as long as the world, both his mother and his grave, remains. His name is certainly forgotten, but his breath still stirs the pines on the mountains, the sound of his words still echoes in the air; we inherit today the thoughts born from his mind; his passions are our reason for living; his joys and his pains are our friends … the end, from which he fled in terror, will certainly be ours too! Of course the universe is full of spirits, not veiled cemetery ghosts, but the inextinguishable and immortal elements of life, which, once born, can never die. “

It should be remembered that Emilio Salgari published an adaptation of the novel under the pseudonym of Enrico Bartolini, entitled “The caves of diamonds” in 1899. Also memorable is the 1950 film with Stewart Granger in the role of Quatermain, and Debora Kerr, although, according to by the narrator himself, “there is not a single skirt in the whole story.”