Joseph ConradJozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski

1857 Berdichev, Poland now in the Ukraine

1924 Kent

Heart of Darkness1899/1902

• Personal experience: 1890 comander of a vessel on the Congo River for a Belgian company.

• Marlow, the narrator, tells the story of a journey he made in the Belgian Congo.

• He is horrified by the greed of the ivory traders and by the way they exploit indigenous people.

„back to the earliest beginnings of the world“

• He learns about Mr. Kurtz, the company‘s best agent, who has set up his camp in the very heart of the ivory country.

• Kurtz is ill and Marlow sets off to find him.

• Travelling up the river he has the sensation of going towards the dark heart of humanking and „back to the earliest beginnings of the world“

„The horror! The horror!“

• He learns that Kurtz has become like a god to the tribesmen.

• As the ship approaches, Marlowe finds evidence of human sacrifice. He deduces that Kurtz has gone beyond the limits of civilisation.

• He takes Kurtz back, but Kurtz dies on the journey back

interpretations

• Pro-imperialist: a story about colonialism in the stream of imperialist fiction, travel and adventure writing,

• popular among his contemporaries who shared the idea of a project of civilizing people.

• They ideologically supported the idea of the growth of the British Empire.

• A critic of imperialism: as a denunciation of the mechanisms of empire.

• The destructive process of colonialism in Africa, ist cruelty and exploitation.

Marlow, a conventional hero?

• more ambivalent and problematic than the typical adventure hero

• His journey is the quest of the mythic hero who faces obstacles and trials to acquire knowledge for himself and his people (Homer, Aeneas, Dante)

• he has to face difficulties connected with both: the dark environment and the dark nature of people, both black and white

Marlow and Kurtz

• Marlow• Strives to hold on to

his integrity• Work and duty

become the value of a moral principle

• Kurtz• Progressive and

liberal• An artist• yields himself to

instinct• A first example of

moral nihilism and inner hollowness

Heart of Darkness

• unknown and wild country

• darkness of human nature

an interior journey into human consciousness

Civilized man, freed from the restraints of society at heart is savage and instinctual

English adopted me

• Conrad‘s first languages were Polish and French, but he chose English because:

• No English word is simply a word but an instrument for exciting blurring emotions.

• No English word has clean edges so it was ideal to express his complex vision of life.

Exotic, secluded settings

• Congo or China, not because people are different there, not conventional adventure stories. But

• The individual, their complex character and problems stood out clearly against an exotic setting.

• Not the interaction between individual and society was to be focused on, but the isolated character and his inner conflicts.

Aim: why do I write?

• No amusing

• No teaching

• Catch the complex pattern of life

• Present the fleeting moments of life to explore the meaning of the human situation.

• > Joyce: epiphany

• > Woolf: moments of being

an „oblique“ style

• Not the plot is important

but

• The effect of the events on the character.

• Conrad‘s characters = tragic heroes

• Solitary figures without past or future, viewed through the mind of others or through their actions.

narrator

• No omniscient narrator

but

• several points of view: 1st-person-narrator, an invisible narrator, journals, letters

in order to

• distance the author/narrator and leave the reader free to decide for himself (relativism

of moral values)

time

• no chronological sequence

but

• time shifts to show how past, present and future are superimposed in human mind.

themes

• Conflict: professional duties – personal feelings.

• Organized society gives men confidence.

but

• confidence is deceptive because when man is alone and surrounded by a wild and hostile background