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Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Conrad, whose original name was Józef TeodorKonrad Korzeniowski, was born near Berdichev, Poland (now in Ukraine), the son of a Polish nobleman who was also a political journalist and anarchist. From his father the boy acquired a love of literature, including romantic tales of the sea. He was orphaned at the age of 12, and when he was 16 years old he left Russian-occupied Poland and made his way to Marseille, France. For the next four years he worked on French ships, ran guns for the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, and became involved in a love affair that ended in his attempted suicide. He then entered the British merchant service, becoming a master mariner and a naturalized British subject in 1886; a few years later he changed his name to sound more English.
Joseph Conrad
Most famous novels:Almayer’s Folly (1889)Lord Jim (1900)Heart of Darkness (1902)Nostromo (1904)The Secret Agent (1907)Under Western Eyes (1911)
1. As autobiography: The account of a journey up the Congo river
that Conrad undertook in the early 1890s.
2. As anticolonialism: An exposition of the brutality of Belgian
colonial rule.
3. As myth: An ( Arthurian) quest.
4. As classical or Norse mythology.
5. As psychology or psychoanalysis: A journey into the Self.
6. And as a picture of the American involvement in the Vietnam
War
Heart of Darkness is Conrad’s most widely read novel.One reason is that it lends itself to wide range of interpretations.It can be read as:
Like Marlow, Conrad also:
• Journeyed up the Congo River in 1890
• got the job to go to the Congo through his aunt.
• did not get along with the manager
• was sent to pick up an agent Klein (1889-1890)
• fell ill and nearly died
• suffered from trauma & illness the rest of his life
Conrad on Colonialism:
• “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means
the taking it away from those who have a
different complexion or lightly flatter noses than
ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look
into it too much.”
• On the colonial exploitation of the Congo, “the
vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the
history of human conscience…”
Narrative Form
• Heart of Darkness is a frame story. An unnamed narrator begins the story on the deck of the Nellie in London on the Thames River and listens to Marlow recount his journey.
• Marlow’s 1st-person narration = “limited” omniscient [not all-knowing]: introspective, discontinuous/fragmented, suggestive/evocative, a-rational connections
• Story/Plot is structured by flow of consciousness & memory: Interior monologue, “stream of consciousness," flashforward / flash-back; “logic” intertwines present awareness & memory
Early Modernism and Heart of Darkness• Social breakdown, fragmentation: lose faith in progress, science, religion, politics, bourgeois morality
• Alienation from urban bureaucratic society, a sterile, materialistic “waste land”
• Question, challenge structures of human life--e.g. Christianity-challenged as “convenient fictions” created to impose order, meaning on random, senseless, violent world
“High” ModernismEarly 20th century – Post -WW I
• Decline of West: Catastrophe of WWI shook faith in Western civilization & its cultural values
• Radical break from traditional structures of Western culture & art
• Artists sought new forms to render contemporary disorder & alienation
Heart of Darkness = Harrowing Critique of Western Colonialism
• 1899, 1902: Heart of Darkness exposes predatory European Colonialism & its atrocities
• Brussels = “whitedsepulchre”; hypocrisy of hollow ideals: “civilizing mission” & “White Man’s Burden
• Public opinion turns against “jingoism” (e.gRudyard Kipling), or extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy
• 1908: Leopold II loses Congo to Belgian government
• 1960: Belgian Congo achieves independence
A Brief History of Slavery & European Development in Africa
• Atlantic Slave Trade (1650 - 1900): up to 28 million central & west Africans captured & driven to coasts to be sold as slaves
• 450 and 1850: at least 12 million Africans were shipped from Africa to New World--notorious "Middle Passage“ (20% mortality rate)
• 18th & 19th Centuries: European political, economic, scientific interests fuel search for new markets & "exploration" of Africa
• 1863: British explorers Speke & James Augustus Grant, traveling downstream, & Sir Samuel White Baker, working upstream, locate sources of Nile…almost. David Livingstone takes the exploration further but eventually dies before discovering the source
• Christian missionaries & European merchants come with European explorers
• View of Africans: "primitive, pre-literate, undeveloped”• 1870s: European “Scramble for Africa” • 1876-1884: King Leopold II (r. Belgium, 1865-1909) uses Stanley
to explore, acquire, colonize “Congo Free State” as his personal possession
• 1885: Berlin Conference European powers divide up Africa
Myth
•In the King Arthur myths a knight in shining armor goeson a quest. Typically a quest for the holy grail.
•The quest usually involves a number of trials. Some of thoseare physical, but the toughest tests are usually spiritual, a test of moral fibre or personal integrity.
•The trials do not necessarily lead to wealth and fame, but equally often to insight and humility.
Mythic Journey
• Unsettling global correspondences in world “myths” & rituals: e.g. Frazer’s Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1890) & Weston’s From Ritual to Romance (Fisher king)
• Carl Jung (1875-1961): all humans share common spiritual/ psychic heritage: collective unconscious, racial memories, archetypes emerge in dreams, myth/religion, art & literature
Mythology, Classical and Norse
There are a number of references to Greek and Norse Mythologyand to the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid :
The women in the Brussels office => Fates or Nornes
The Sepuchral city => Descent into the underworld ( Odyssey and Aeneid)
The river => Styx, Lethe (Rivers in the underworld)
The dying Negroes => The lifeless shadows in the underworld
The journey itself => the journeys of Odysseus and Aeneas
The novel has repeatedly been compared to Dante’sDivine Comedy.
Dante also undertakes a journey to the underworld, to theChristian Hell.
Other parallels are:The river = snake = temptationThe dying Negroes = souls in limboThe Inner Station = the inner sanctum of Hell, Inferno
Christian Mythology
Dante (1265-1321)with his Divina Commedia
Psychology & Psychoanalysis
More than 20 years before Freud published his tripartitedivision of the mind into Superego, Ego and Id, Conradseems to use similar ideas:
superego
ego
id
‘the policeman’ (p. 85)
‘your own innate strength’ (p.85)‘..he was hollow at the core’ (97)
‘powers of darkness’ (p. 85)‘But the wilderness had found him out early… and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating’ (p. 97)
“Psychological” Novel
•Freud (1856-1939): feeling, unconscious, inward journey into self, back into past/ childhood keys to understanding human nature/behavior
•Psychoanalytical method: healing through storytelling
•Focus: mental life, perceptions of story teller and his search for meaning (vs. tale itself)
•inward journey into dream/nightmare world of irrational “uncontrollable” unconscious
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is only loosely based on Heart of Darkness.
However, the main plot and quite a few individual lines have been lifted directly
from the novel.
• Like the novel it is an delving into the darkness of man’s heart.
• Like the novel, the film wants to penetrate all the way to the reptile brain.
• Where the novel may be called anticolonialist, the film may be seen as anti-war.
• There is the same basic conflict of a technologically advanced culture attempting
to impose its will on a less developed people.
• If the novel questions ‘the white man’s burden’, the film questions the right of
one country to impose its political system on another.
‘The horror…the horror’
Other parallels between Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness
Same basic plot: An man goes up a river in order to get another man who, in the process, takes on an ominous significance
and e.g…..•The helmsman is killed by a spear•Kurtz’ camp is in both versions a vision of hell (in the novel someof the natives wear horns- in the film we see them.)•Both Kurtzes are in opposition to their superiors.•Both Kurtzes are extremely gifted.•Kurtz’ voice plays a major role in both works. (Film: ”His voice really put the hook in me.” Novel: ”The man presented himself as a voice”.
Survey of various interpretations of Heart of Darkness
1. Realism the real journey the Congo River Brussels description of Stanleyville Marlow (Conrad) return toAutobiography expectation main office condition in the Inner Station close to dying civilisation
colony
2. Anticolonialism journey do absurd bureaucracy criticism of Europe’s so-called alienationPolitics alienation colonialism civilising influence inability to turned upside down communicate
3. Myth quest expectation delegation of task learning process culmination cleansing return, mission(Arthurian) departure temptation, trial purification accomplished
4. Mythology quest Styx, Lethe ? Nornes, Fates Hades, Hel dénouement danger of the for- homecomingClassical, Norse journey descent into Hades the underworld climax bidden, nemesis
5. Christian A Pilgrim’s Pro- Snake, tomb, descent lost souls inner Sanctum punishment forgivenessMythology gress, Everyman temptation memento mori limbo of Hell, Inferno purgatory salvation
6. Psychology analysis, method first scary learning process final step into the crisis curePsychiatry introspection revelations desperation Id
7. War movie mission ’circuit cable staff office, absurdity of the civilisation and Willard alive on mission accom-plugged into Kurtz’ bureaucracy war, ’arsehole of morality dissolved Kurtz’ terms plished, return
the world’
Snake skeleton