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Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad's disturbing novella recounted by the itinerant captain Marlow sent to find and bring home the shadowy and inscrutable Captain Kurtz. Marlow and his men follow a river deep into a jungle, the "Heart of Darkness" of Africa looking for Kurtz, an unhinged leader of an isolated trading station. This highly symbolic psychological drama was the founding myth for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 movie Apocalypse Now.
lucyknows: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad may be paired with Fly Away Peter by David Malouf as both authors show human nature to be hollow to the core.
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness isn't a very festive title for this time of the year, but this audiobook, superbly narrated by David Horovitch, been my companion at bedtime while I can't read myself to sleep. (Eye trouble, again. *sigh*). The cumulative effect of nodding off half way through each CD and starting again the next night is that I now know some parts of the story off by heart and that I have a renewed appreciation of Conrad's inimitable style.
31st December 2003, Reading Journal #6 Aug 03 - April 04 Heart of Darkness is set in the 19th century Belgian Congo. It's about the journey deep along the Congo River of a sea captain called Marlow, whose assignment is to locate an ivory trader called Kurtz, who is said to be ill. Marlow is delayed, deliberately, en route by the machinations of a manager who sees himself in competition for promotion with Kurtz, an enigmatic and very successful trading station manager who brings in more ivory than anyone else.
Due to the deliberate delay — Marlow's ship has been sunk in the river and the rivets to repair it can't be delivered — Kurtz is left isolated upriver for months, and finally succumbs to illness and dies on Marlow's return journey. (Carroll also dies in The Piano Tuner, but in different circumstances.) What is similar in both stories is that Kurtz has been 'corrupted' by the Congo and has 'gone native'. This was something much feared by colonials in far flung places, and they set great store on maintaining dress codes and imperial habits, not the least of which was to maintain contempt for the 'savages'.
Marlow doesn't sentimentalise the natives. They are cannibals, and they have some pretty horrible practices. Yet he can see that they had common sense in abandoning European projects as soon as they could escape from being press-ganged into slavery. He could understand why stretcher-bearers had no moral obligation to carry sick white men who — when healthy — had treated them so appallingly. And as Marlow progresses on his journey and witnesses shocking atrocities practised by the colonists — including, most horrifically by Kurtz —Conrad is clearly questioning just who the savages in colonial Africa really were.
An excellent read. However, the madness of Kurtz at the end is, by some commentators, attributed to malaria. Why not sleeping sickness (Human African Trypanosomiasis)? Such symptoms are not inconsistent with advanced stages of the disease. ( )
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
Quotations
"The horror! The horror!"
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
"What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous," he said, with a laugh.
I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire...these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed men - men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.
And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.
When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality - the reality, I tell you - fades. The inner truth is hidden - luckily, luckily.
I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.
You can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man.
I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
We live as we dream--alone...
Last words
The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad's disturbing novella recounted by the itinerant captain Marlow sent to find and bring home the shadowy and inscrutable Captain Kurtz. Marlow and his men follow a river deep into a jungle, the "Heart of Darkness" of Africa looking for Kurtz, an unhinged leader of an isolated trading station. This highly symbolic psychological drama was the founding myth for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 movie Apocalypse Now.
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Book description
This is story of Marlow and his quest to find Mr Kurtz within the dense jungles of Africa. His journey challenges his values and life and reveals new sides of himself that only darkness could expose.
Haiku summary
King Leopold's fans appreciate this tribute; Mister Kurtz, he dead. (thorold)
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Heart of Darkness: Final Thoughts
Wikipedia in English (1)
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I had read it before. Many years ago when I was too young to appreciate it or even follow the plot, and again in 2003, when wrote about it in my reading journal and drew parallels with The Piano Tuner (2002) by Daniel Mason because TPT was about colonialism in Burma. I didn't record which edition of Heart of Darkness I had read, but I suspect it was one without an introduction because I made no reference to Edward Said's 1996 doctoral dissertation 'Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography'. But there are now multiple summaries and reviews of Heart of Darkness online, scholarly and otherwise, some claiming it's a masterpiece and others denouncing it as so racist as to be worthless. There is no need for me to compete with those. I'm just sharing my thoughts here from 2003, such as they were.
31st December 2003,
Reading Journal #6 Aug 03 - April 04
Heart of Darkness is set in the 19th century Belgian Congo. It's about the journey deep along the Congo River of a sea captain called Marlow, whose assignment is to locate an ivory trader called Kurtz, who is said to be ill. Marlow is delayed, deliberately, en route by the machinations of a manager who sees himself in competition for promotion with Kurtz, an enigmatic and very successful trading station manager who brings in more ivory than anyone else.
Due to the deliberate delay — Marlow's ship has been sunk in the river and the rivets to repair it can't be delivered — Kurtz is left isolated upriver for months, and finally succumbs to illness and dies on Marlow's return journey. (Carroll also dies in The Piano Tuner, but in different circumstances.) What is similar in both stories is that Kurtz has been 'corrupted' by the Congo and has 'gone native'. This was something much feared by colonials in far flung places, and they set great store on maintaining dress codes and imperial habits, not the least of which was to maintain contempt for the 'savages'.
Marlow doesn't sentimentalise the natives. They are cannibals, and they have some pretty horrible practices. Yet he can see that they had common sense in abandoning European projects as soon as they could escape from being press-ganged into slavery. He could understand why stretcher-bearers had no moral obligation to carry sick white men who — when healthy — had treated them so appallingly. And as Marlow progresses on his journey and witnesses shocking atrocities practised by the colonists — including, most horrifically by Kurtz —Conrad is clearly questioning just who the savages in colonial Africa really were.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/12/27/heart-of-darkness-1899-by-joseph-conrad-read... (