Not in Asia & not in innocence was mankind born. Our first primitive homeland was in the African highlands, where we evolved slowly, ever so slowly, on a sky-swept savannah glowing with menace. Those potent words are taken from Robert Ardrey's African Genesis & I have considered them often since initially reading the book while living in Kenya ages ago.


The Heart of Darkness by Jósef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, better known as Joseph Conrad, represents a masterpiece of what might be termed literary archeology, a deep probing into the nature of the human spirit. It is a much-condemned & frequently misunderstood work that is far more than one man's travel journal into the African interior.

In fact, Conrad made a voyage to Africa, in some ways not unlike the one narrated by Mr. Marlow in the author's brief novel and that journey changed Conrad forever. When Conrad's Marlow embarks on the Nellie from the Thames & out to sea, he...

bears the sword & then the spark from the sacred fire, as ships have done for ages--the dreams of men & the seed of common wealth, the germs of empires & the mystery of the dark places of an unknown earth.

Marlow is a seaman but also a wanderer rather than a plunderer & it is said that he "did not represent his class, sitting on deck like a Buddha in European clothes but without a lotus flower". He overhears some on the ship speak of the "conquest of the earth from those who have a different complexion, to tackle a darkness." At this point, Marlow is just an observer, having been enlisted by a London company but with an imperfect mandate.


The mission turns out to be is a quest to recover ivory for the home office & in the process Marlow is confronted with tales about a seemingly mystical character called Kurtz, a rogue white man who has "gone native", proceeding into the interior while losing sight of his initial mission to engender enormous profit for the home office.

Kurtz is "chief of the inner station" & some suggest that he is "a prodigy, a genius, the emissary of pity & science & progress & devil knows what else". But who is this Mr. Kurtz really, wonders Marlow?

After reaching port & eventually going upriver into the African interior, Marlow smells what is termed "primeval mud in his nostrils, also noticing the high stillness of a primeval forest." Obviously, he has been taken to a place beyond his expectations & asks: "What were we who had strayed in here. Could we handle the dumb thing or would it handle us?"

There are complaints about sulky natives, ivory & lost invoices but much of the search by those on board, referred to as "pilgrims", seems intangible, as they...

penetrated deeper & deeper into the heart of darkness, traveling into the night of first ages. of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign & no memories, causing the earth to seem unearthly, the quest for truth stripped of its cloak of time, in search of Kurtz on a stern-wheeler about to give a last gasp, like watching the flickering of a life.

The imagery surrounding Kurtz is stark & foreboding but it is also engaging, even seductive. The man has killed countless Africans, even posting some heads on posts, while also endeavoring to heal others & occasionally reciting poetry. Apparently, he has had a mesmerizing impact on some of the local Africans, as he has on those on board the boat. In spite of his enigmatic & ruthless behavior, Kurtz seems to have left an indelible impression on everyone who has encountered him. It is said that "you can't judge Kurtz as you would an ordinary man."

The hunt for Kurtz has become other-worldly. There is not infrequent use of the N-word in Conrad's novel and many of the Africans, including a few working on the boat, are reckoned to be cannibals. In the midst of all of this, Marlow declares that he "is trying to account to myself for Mr. Kurtz, not trying to excuse or explain Mr. Kurtz because all Europe contributed to the making of Mr. Kurtz." A fragmentary manual Kurtz has composed seems to confide, "exterminate the brutes".

When the pale, emaciated Kurtz is suddenly seen on shore amidst the beating of tribal drums from the forest, causing "a strange narcotic effect", he appears like an "atrocious phantom." It was like he was "exhaled from the earth". A pent-up frenzy is followed by silence, as the boat's steam-whistle appears to terrify the Africans.

Marlow declares that he was "anxious to deal with this shadow by myself, while remaining loyal to the nightmare of my choice." Removing Kurtz from the interior was like "a satanic ritual", one that left Marlow with the sense of looking into himself.

Kurtz's pursuit into the interior had involved moving forward with the greatest possible risk & with a maximum of privation. But on board, Kurtz appeared as a grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, the conquest of trade, of massacres, of blessings, as he cries out "the horror, the horror!" Then someone intones, Mistah Kurtz, he's dead.

I've read Chinua Achebe's critique of Conrad's brief book & those of others but I contend that when he wrote Heart of Darkness, Conrad employed the interior of Africa as a metaphor, as he attempted to glance into our collective soul in offering this very dismal appraisal into the nature of mankind.

The novel expresses Conrad's deep-seated concern for humanity, far apart from the mistreatment of Africans by King Leopold's Belgian forces in the Congo, among other examples of the arrogant & bloody savagery committed around the globe by supposedly more enlightened people.


What I take all of "the horror" to convey is that the human species has the potential for both high art & social refinement but also descents into incessant wars & extreme bestiality, with the Holocaust as just one example.

As Robert Ardrey, whose words opened my review put it, "We are born of risen apes & not fallen angels, and the apes were born killers besides." But in closing, Ardrey also counseled in a rather more hopeful tone that "we are known among the stars by our poems & not by our corpses."

*Within my review are 2 images of Joseph Conrad + two of the Congo under Belgian occupation. **My edition of Heart of Darkness is an older Signet Classics paperback, copyright 1950, with an interesting introduction by Stanford professor Albert Guerard.

Confusing as hell. Just rent Apocalypse Now and pretend you read the book. Just remember to change a few details: 1) the setting is Africa, not Vietnam. 2) Kurtz is an ivory trader. He is not in the army. 3) Kurtz does not get killed; he gets sick and dies. 4) There are no puppies.
That's pretty much it.

Read for: 12th grade AP English

Ship of Fools

The narrator of the framing story tells us early on who is present on board a yacht sitting immobile in the Thames (a river of commerce and pleasure!): the Company Director, the Lawyer, the Accountant, Charlie Marlow, and the unnamed narrator himself.

The narrator seems to represent us, the audience. Marlow does the talking. The group could almost be the executive that runs a trading company, although what unites them is the bond of the sea:

"Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns - and even convictions."

And so it is that Marlow (twice removed from Conrad, Mr. Kurtz being thrice removed) comes to tell his tale of the time he once turned fresh-water sailor for a bit.

Bent on Conquest

More used to the sea, he had to go upstream to an ivory trading post in the Congo, the Central Station, a (just one?) heart of darkness, by sailing up a river that is "fascinating - deadly - like a snake."

Ships sailed to Africa and elsewhere once, bent on conquest:

"Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him - all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men.

"There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination - you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."

For all the romance of empire, it was heartless and brutal:

"They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness."

Perhaps they were equally blind to their own darkness?



Conquerors and Colonists

Marlow differentiates between conquerors and colonists. But he also sees his own group as different from past colonists:

"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency - the devotion to efficiency."

The first adventurers and settlers were often brutal:

"Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame...bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire…the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires."

Now, more modern colonists were supposedly building businesses.

Slightly Flatter Noses

It's at this point that Marlow makes his most revealing comment, at least one that establishes a context for the rest of his story:

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

This is perhaps one answer to charges that Conrad (or at least Marlow) is somehow racist. He explains empire and colonialism in terms of misappropriation of the property of other races.

No Sentimental Pretence

On the other hand, Marlow suggests that it (or something) might be justifiable in some circumstances:

"What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to."

So, what is justifiable, and what is it exactly that might justify it?

Is he appealing to some greater authority? Is it God? Religion? Civilisation? Trade and commerce? Capitalism? Improvement?




Savages and Scoundrels

Marlow frequently refers to negroes, niggers, half-castes, savages, cannibals, and scoundrels.

What can be inferred from this? At one time, he even refers to himself as being "savage" with hunger. There's a sense in which the scarcity of food, the desperation of subsistence living makes all people, even white colonists, desperate. They could even be savage with greed.

Still, he assesses the Congolese honestly: "Fine fellows - cannibals - in their place. They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them."

Marlow recognises that they are "not inhuman". One was "an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler."

Stately and Superb

They are capable of improvement, even if they have a different sense of time, no concept of change and progress:

"They still belonged to the beginnings of time - had no inherited experience to teach them as it were."

They still did things the same way they had always done. From their point of view, there was no need to change, let alone any need for improvement.

Equally, the word "savage" isn't always pejorative (etymologically, it derives from a word for a wood or forest). Marlow says of Kurtz' mistress:

"She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress."

A savage could be magnificent, stately, noble, superb.

They didn't need to be improved in order to make deliberate progress.

They just happened to live in the untamed wilderness, in the wood, in the forest, in the jungle.

Fantastic Invasion

It's time we met Mr. Kurtz himself.

Like everybody else, Kurtz was in the Congo to make as much money as quickly as possible and get out: "I had immense plans." There was no unselfish belief in an idea worth bowing down before.

Only, the Congo changed him:

"...the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core…"

Hollow Man

So, apparently, as T.S. Eliot would later acknowledge, Western Man is hollow. Yet, for a while, the darkness of Africa allowed Kurtz to rise above his nothingness:

"He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, ‘must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings— we approach them with the might of a deity,’ and so on, and so on. ‘By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,’ etc., etc. From that point he soared and took me with him."

He had become a Nietzschean Superman in the wilderness. Yet how was that different from madness?

"His soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad.

"I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself."

But Which Brutes?

For all the talk of savagery, it is the Europeans who are un-grounded, here and at home.

In his madness, Kurtz writes "Exterminate all the brutes!" and famously declares to Marlow, "The horror! The horror!"

Yet, by this time, it's arguable that he has turned around and is commenting on European Man, ostensibly Civilised Man, and the underlying brutality of his delusions, not the "savages" around him.

Bent on improving others, he has discovered he is the one most in need of improvement. But he might also have realised that it's European brutes who are most in need of extermination.



Artist: Matt Kish, illustration of "Heart of Darkness", page 085
http://www.spudd64.com/hod2_codes/hod...


Something to Say

It's left for Marlow to judge Kurtz:

"This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up - he had judged. ‘The horror!’

"He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth - the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best - a vision of greyness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things - even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot."

Just as Kurtz looked into the universe, he saw himself.

And so, later, inevitably, Marlow learns that "Mistah Kurtz - he dead."

Some Knowledge of Your Self

Now, for Marlow, home again, life is conformist, grey, deluded, pretentious, inauthentic and insincere.

On the Thames, finally, at the conclusion of Marlow's tale, no longer idle, the yacht seems to resume its course "into the heart of an immense darkness".

The heart of darkness is ours. Not Africa's, not the savages'. It isn't the darkness of the wilderness. It's the darkness of the self. Kurtz just happened to confront his in the wilderness, in the midst of the incomprehensible. However, the incomprehensible is just as much inside as outside.

"Droll thing life is - that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself."



"Mistah Kurtz - he dead"

"Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men"

T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men".

Blast you, F. Scott Fitzgerald! After reading this book twice, I now have to read this book a third time for "after-effects" on the reader's mind!

Earlier this year, I was reading The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference. In that book, there were two articles that discussed Conrad’s influence on F. Scott Fitzgerald. Critics said that the influence merely related to the use of Nick Carraway as a narrator, telling a story within a story, a framing technique. In Heart of Darkness, Charles Marlow is on a ship with sailors gathered round to hear his story.

As part of my study, I was highlighting quotes, similes, metaphors, alliteration, and references to light. In Heart of Darkness, these same techniques are utilized. However, Fitzgerald wrote about how Conrad shaped his entire writing philosophy, how he crafted the story so that it would linger in the mind of the reader, that its impact would be enduring and profound.

Heart of Darkness is a bit spooky, and the framing technique isn’t implemented well. In fact, Conrad very quickly reverts back to Marlow in one short paragraph tacked onto the very end of the book. The book is also a bit difficult to read with massive run on paragraphs.

If Conrad laid the seeds, Fitzgerald was Jack and the Beanstalk, cultivating and growing those seeds into something solid and magical.

F. Scott Fitzgerald mentioned Joseph Conrad at least 19 different times in his personal letters.

Here are a few of those instances:

“I keep thinking of Conrad’s N***** of the Narcissus Preface—and I believe that the important thing about a work of fiction is that the essential reaction shall be profound and enduring.”*

*Conrad wrote: “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”

“The theory back of it I got from Conrad’s preface to The N*****, that the purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which leave respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.”

“The happiest thought I have is of my new novel [The Great Gatsby] – it is something really NEW in form, idea, structure—the model for the age that Joyce and Stien are searching for, that Conrad didn’t find.”

“I thought it was one purpose of critics + publishers to educate the public up to original work. The first people who risked Conrad certainly didn’t do it as a commercial venture. Did the evolution of startling work into accepted work cease twenty years ago?”

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Softcover Text – $9.68 from Blackwell's
Audiobook – Audible Credit (I think this was a freebie but honestly I have no idea-I got a bit too happy deleteing old emails)

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Nail in the Coffin

This has to be the worse book written on the subject. Now if only Cormac McCarthy had written it. The verbosity of his writing was grueling. I had to read much of it twice, and still I could not stop my mind from Wandering But I have had this book for years and thought it time to read it, get it out of the way.

The Englishman Marlow walks into the camp where the French are taking out ivory, mostly fossils or ivory that the natives had buried. He sees African men in chains, carrying baskets on their heads. Then he comes upon a scene, much by accident. He needs some shade and heads for the nearest tree, but he will find himself sharing it with the dying for the slave owners had not cared for those they had taken into slavery. They are sick now and had been let lose. Their black skin covers their bones. He sees a man leaning against the tree and hands him a biscuit. The man reaches out for it slowly and holds it in his hand. He is too weak to do much else. His eyes are sunken and almost unresponsive. Then one of these creatures gets up on all fours and crawls to the river, cups his hand and takes a drink. They all look hardly human anymore. Marlow walks away. I thought perhaps that he was the one with compassion. I think this because o his one act of kindness, and while thorught the book he judges the treatment of these slaves as inhumane, I really don’t see it in his other actions, which are nil.

I think that there is going to me more of this book, some redeeming qualities outside of just Conrad telling us the story of colonization and the cruelties of it all. Which perhaps is enough but not enough for me to give it moe than two stars. For me, it is just one more nail in the coffin for mankind.

چند نکته‌ی کوچک:
1- کتاب تا حدودی سخت خوان است و باید با تمرکز زیاد و حوصله و دقت آن را خواند تا بیش‌ترین دریافت را داشت. من ابتدا به خوبی با آن ارتباط برقرار نکردم. ولی چون کتاب دارای یک مقاله‌ی مقدمه‌ای از دکتر صالح حسینی و دو مقاله‌ی مؤخره از ایشان و دکتر پرویز طالب زاده است، با خواندن آن‌ها خیلی بیشتر لذت بردم و این مقالات امتیازم به این کتاب را بالا برد. در ضمن این کتاب نقدخور خوبی هم دارد و نقدهای زیادی برایش نوشته‌اند.
2- من برای مطالعه‌ی این کتاب، به خاطر وجود لغات زیاد ناآشنا، بارها به لغتنامه رجوع کردم و البته درک می‌کنم که مترجم مجبور بوده است از این لغات استفاده کند. سخت خوانی کتاب را نمی‌توان به گردن مترجم و ترجمه‌ی بد گذاشت. دکتر صالح حسینی را از زمانی که در شهید چمران اهواز بودم می‌شناسم. می‌دانم که انسانی فرهیخته و اهل مطالعه و باسواد است و شاگردان ایشان خیلی دوستش داشتند و برایش احترام زیادی قائل بودند و این را به چشم دیده بودم. چند سطر از خود ایشان در مورد ترجمه‌ی کتاب "دل تاریکی" برایتان نقل قول می‌کنم: "پیش از این که به ترجمه‌ی این رمان بپردازم، هفت بار آن را درس داده‌ام و می‌توانم بگویم که تمام مقالات انتقادی و تفسیری را درباره‌ی آن مطالعه کرده‌ام. ضمن بحث هم ریزه‌کاری‌های فراوانی بر من معلوم شده است. کار ترجمه هم با روزی هشت ساعت تأمل و نوشتن و باز نوشتن، با دشواری و رنج فراوان و در عین حال با شور و سرمستی در چند ماه به پایان رسیده است. قدر مسلم این است که انتقال زبان شاعرانه‌ی این اثر که در عین حال تلفیقی از زبان فاخر و زبان عامیانه است، اگر نگوییم محال، بسیار دشوار است. اگر توانسته باشم پنجاه درصد چنین زبانی را به فارسی منتقل کنم، پاداش خود را گرفته‌ام." صفحه 26 و 27 کتاب. از طرفی کتاب برای اولین بار توسط محمدعلی صفریان (1355) ترجمه شده است که حسینی در مقاله‌ای تحت عنوان "کشف حقیقت در عمق تاریکی" این ترجمه را نقد می‌کند و کتاب را نیازمند ترجمه‌ای دوباره می‌داند و سپس آن را دوباره ترجمه می‌کند.
3- در جستجوها و مطالعات پراکنده اینترنتی فهمیدم که "فرانسیس فورد کاپولا" هم فیلم "اینک آخر الزمان" را تحت تأثیر "دل تاریکی" ساخته است و به نوعی این فیلم اقتباس آزاد از این رمان است. اگر علاقه‌مند بودید پس از مطالعه‌ی کتاب این فیلم خوب را هم ببینید.
Apocalypse now (1979) 8.4 Meta:94
4- یک بررسی آکادمیک به صورت پایان نامه‌ی کارشناسی ارشد، تحت عنوان "بازتاب ایدئولوژی در رمان دل تاریکی ترجمه صالح حسینی بر اساس مدل حتیم و میسن" توسط آقای عماد خلیلی نگاشته شده است که شاید برای مترجمان و زبان شناسان جذاب باشد.
********************************************************************************
فتح زمین که اغلب اوقات به معنای گرفتن زمین از دست کسانی است که رنگ پوستشان با رنگ پوست ما فرق دارد یا دماغشان پهن‌تر از دماغ ماست، چون نیک بنگریم، چندان کار خوبی نیست. چیزی که مایه‌ی نجات آن می‌شود، عقیده است و بس. عقیده‌ای در پس آن؛ نه تظاهر احساسات گرایانه، بلکه عقیده؛ و اخلاص در عقیده- چیزی که آدم آن را برپا دارد و در برابرش سجده کند و نذر و نیاز کند...ص 36 کتاب
خودتان می‌دانید از دروغ بیزارم و از آن بدم می‌آید و خارج از تحملم است. دلیلش هم این نیست که من از شما روراست‌تر باشم. دلیلش این است که دروغ هراسانم می‌کند، همین و بس. ته رنگی از مرگ و طعمی از فنا در دروغ هست- و درست این همان چیزی است که از آن بیزارم و بدم می‌آید- همان چیزی که می‌خواهم از یاد ببرم. درمانده و ناخوشم می‌کند، همان بلایی که از گاز زدن چیز گندیده‌ای بر سر آدم می‌آید. ص 72 کتاب
سرنوشت. سرنوشت من! آوخ که زندگی- این ترتیب اسرار آمیز منطق بی‌امان برای هدفی بیهوده- چه بیمزه ‌است. آدمی نمی‌تواند برای هیچ چیز به آن دل ببندد جز رسیدن به معرفتی اندک درباره‌ی خودش- که آن هم دیر به دست می‌آید- و خرمنی از حسرت‌هایی که آتش آن خاموش نمی‌شود. ص 147 کتاب

"Ni tiene confines el infierno ni se circunscribe a un solo lugar: sino que allí donde estemos estará el infierno. Y donde esté el infierno, allí siempre estaremos." Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

Hacía más de tres años que había leído este libro y en su primera lectura no me gustó. Simplemente me pareció sin dirección alguna, algo abstracto y divagante.
Bueno, efectivamente me equivoqué. Puede que tal vez en aquel tiempo yo no había leído tantos clásicos como ahora ni tenía tampoco tan agudizada la capacidad de analizar un texto para elaborar una reseña, por eso sostengo que tanta lectura me hizo bien para volver a leer “El corazón de las tinieblas” y realmente conseguir plasmar otra visión sobre esta novela tan particular.
El relato de Charlie Marlow es en cierta forma una extensión de las propias experiencias de Joseph Conrad en el África, más precisamente en el Congo belga durante sus años de marino mercante.
Todo lo vivido le serviría para plasmar lo que narra en este libro con el agregado de permitirse soltarse y cambiar ciertos aspectos de lo que él mismo vio para darle mayor profundidad y destacar mayores elementos de ficción en la historia que nos cuenta.
A medida que Marlow comienza a navegar en un vapor remontando río arriba para llegar a Kurtz, un enigmático hombre a cargo de la explotación y el comercio del marfil terminará experimentando su propio Descenso ad ínferos de la misma manera que Ulises o Eneas o el mismísimo Dante con la salvedad de que Marlow no tendrá ningún Virgilio para guiarlo en ese, su infierno personal y no elegido, sino impuesto por el azar de su incierta travesía.
Es también digno de destacar el profundo enfoque de introspección psicológica que Conrad le imprime al personaje de Marlow, puesto que con el correr de las páginas, comenzará este a desmoronarse mentalmente a partir de su expedición.
Por otro lado, tenemos la figura fantasmal y omnipresente de Kurtz, ese hombre desconocido para Marlow que comenzará a tener una influencia total en él para terminar arrastrándolo a un colapso inevitable.
Es que, en cierto modo, Kurtz representa lo ominoso, lo poderoso y su imagen desconocida generará tanto curiosidad como un temor inherente en Marlow y esos dos elementos lo empujarán hasta querer llegar a conocer a Kurtz a toda costa.
Kurtz, durante gran parte de esta novela oficia en cierto modo, con su presencia lejana y opresiva de la misma manera que Moby Dick sobre la tripulación del Pequod en la novela de Herman Melville, ya que todos saben que el inmenso leviatán está allí, oculto, merodeando y al acecho y con el mismo efecto logra alterar los nervios de Marlow hasta que llegue el momento indicado y se enfrenten cara a cara.
Y de la misma manera, la jungla, con su poderosa atracción enloquece a Marlow. Todos esos peligros están allí, latentes y le sofocan, apenas le permiten descansar. Cualquiera puede ser el momento en que los seres primitivos que pueblan la selva arrasen con todo y Marlow lo sabe, por eso debe estar alerta, con los nervios crispados ante el peligro latente.
La novela roza también distintos aspectos relacionados a la esclavitud, el comercio ilegal de marfil y la piratería más cruenta ejercida en el continente africano durante el siglo XIX, más precisamente por Bélgica en el África. Dichas prácticas, hoy prohibidas eran moneda corriente para los conquistadores anglosajones que devastaron el continente de ébano.
Habiendo releído la novela descubro su poder de atracción, incertidumbre y curiosidad que genera tanto en el personaje principal como en el lector y es este el mejor elemento del que dispone Conrad para mantenerlo a uno atento a la lectura.
Dice Marlow en un pasaje de la novela: "Quizá toda la sabiduría, toda la verdad y toda la sinceridad están contenidas en ese lapso inapreciable de tiempo en el que cruzamos el umbral de lo invisible. ¡Tal vez!"
Indudablemente, Marlow cruzó el umbral hacia su propio infierno personal y Joseph Conrad lo transformó en un relato convincente.

I had thought this was a re-read but, about halfway through, it all started seeming new to me, so perhaps I never finished it the first time round. It wouldn't surprise me – although the book is short, and its plot slight, it somehow contrives to feel extremely dense. Like a pocket Moby-Dick, it begins with a atmospheric Gothic opening and then sort of coagulates into a treacly mass of archaism, narrative grandstanding and morbid watery ruminations.

Conrad is strangely coy about identifying the Congo Free State, perhaps in order to dissuade readers from seeing this as a purely political novel: the Congo is just ‘the big river’, and Brussels is only alluded to as the ‘city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre’. It isn't quite a novel about colonialism, but it is, along the way, extremely damning about Leopold's pet project, jeering at ‘the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern’ and, famously, redefining ‘the conquest of the earth’ as ‘the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves’.

To tear treasure out of the bowels of the earth was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.

Turning from this to a modern novel like Tram 83, or to the newspapers, is enough to make you throw up your hands and sigh plus ça change…, like the pretentious fuck you are. But if this were just a worthy polemic it would be no more than commendable; as it is, Conrad's universalising smudges turn it into a kind of parable that takes colonialism's quest to spoil the unspoilt parts of the world, and links it with an interior journey towards man's most atavistic instincts.

At times this works very well, but at times too it verges on the heavy-handed, and the great sensation of portentous mystery is more asserted than demonstrated. What does work well, I think, is the simple but powerful suggestion that Central Africa and Western Europe are not very different from one another, modulo a few details of timescale. Marlow's moody disquisition at the start, on the Romans who first came to Britain, is fantastic – before we've had any mention of Africa or jungles we get this wonderful evocation of some generic legionary in Dark Ages Gravesend, who could

feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him,—all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.

It's no wonder this text has amassed such a huge body of postcolonialist and psychoanalytic exegesis – not all of which, I think, it can really comfortably support. But what it does have is real atmosphere. Like the tale Kurtz whispers on his deathbed, Heart of Darkness seems ‘to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river’.

From 1885 to 1908, an area in Africa now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium, experienced an intense genocide. Through the Red Rubber system, the people of the Congo were essentially enslaved to harvest rubber. Those who failed to collect enough rubber had their hands chopped off. Some died from disease brought on by the terrible conditions, while others were just flat-out murdered. It is estimated that around three to thirteen million people died between 1885 and 1908, perhaps 25 to 50 percent of the total population. By the end of this period, the Congo, which just a 100 years ago had hosted the expansive and successful Kongo Empire, had seen its natural resources destroyed, its people mutilated, and its entire society changed forever.

The negative legacy of colonialism is strong throughout Africa and across the world, but the Congo is one of the countries that suffered most. This is a horrifying, disgusting legacy. And one that this book does not on any level respect.

On the surface, this book can be read as anti-colonialist, a narrative that decries the brutality with which King Leopold II and other rulers allowed African people to be treated. This reading is comforting to us. It feels right. How can we read of their deaths and not feel ashamed? How can we see the heads of so-called rebels on pikes and not find ourselves filled with horror? How can we read a scene in which people walk in a chain gang and not find our deepest sympathies with them? n  How could Conrad not have felt the same?n

But I do not believe that is the intent, or, to be quite honest, an accurate reading of the narrative of this book. Conrad’s descriptions and depictions of black people are n  dehumanizingn to their core. No black character in this book feels real, feels like a person we may empathize with and care for. It is in the descriptions of Kurtz’s black mistress, of the slave-boy whose only contribution to the narrative is the line “Mistah Kutz, he dead” - Conrad does not share our empathies. Our horror at their fate and in their suffering is our own, not the narrators.

The thing about this book is that it’s not a criticism of colonialism, and while reading it as such feels viable on the surface, n  looking deeper into the narrative makes this book feel odder and odder.n This book is a look at the depth of human evil and how that can be brought out when society breaks down. Notice the end of that sentence? Because the reason Africa is the subject of this book is because this narrative fundamentally believes that n  Africa is a primitive, uncivilized, immoral landscape.n Which I find to be an inaccurate and frankly immoral view of Africa. The historical record of our time shows that pre-Colonial (and pre-slave trade) African civilization was filled with the same life as European civilizations, and populated by strong kingdoms. Conrad emphatically believes otherwise. And while I am willing to understand on some level that this was an ingrained belief of European colonists, this book pushes this message to a very high degree - it’s irrevocably tied to the message of the book - that I found impossible to ignore.

Yes, the idea is also pushed that the people of Europe are really no different from the people of the Congo. I am fully aware that Joseph Conrad is getting at the idea that none of us are so evolved and none of us are so civilized ourselves and white society cannot put itself totally above others. Conrad is explicitly attempting to put black people and white people on an equal level of brutality. But this narrative is still fundamentally flawed. The white characters in this book are evil colonists, but they are depicted as people. The black characters of this book are “savages.” They are rebels. At best, they are the helmsman, unnamed in his own narrative and dying ten pages in. At worst, they are literal cannibals. n  The narrative shows a fundamental dehumanization of each “savage” character, undermining any sort of anti-colonialist or pro-African message.n

And I find that fundamentally disturbing. If I cannot feel any horror within the narrative for a genocide, a time in which culture was destroyed and the environment strangled and thousands slaughtered for the profit of an empire, how can I garner anything from this book? How can I, in good conscience, enjoy or recommend this book?

I understand and appreciate that many are going to read this review and think I misread the text, because this book is a classic. I would remind them that no work of literature can be kept free from critique because it has stood the test of time. And beyond that, I do not believe this is at all a surface reading. It’s been pushed in the minds of many that reading this book as racist is a surface-level interpretation, but I genuinely believe that the racism is what you get upon close reading.

Literary analysis of racist historical works is a polarizing and complex topic, and I recognize that many will feel antagonistic towards this viewpoint. I also fully admit that this book makes good use of an unreliable narrator and is one of the most gritty classics I have read as to its depiction of the human soul, and I have nothing against those who enjoyed it. But I cannot enjoy this for those and erase the flaws. n  I cannot appreciate the literary merit of a book that lacks a fundamental understanding of the humanity of black people.n And I'm not sure I believe that I should.

recommended reading: Chinua Achebe's beautifully rendered essay on Heart of Darkness.

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Proving yet again that doing a concept first will get you immortalized, while doing it WELL will make you an unknown and forgotten writer at best, I also learned that in Conrad's time, people could drone on and on with metaphors and it wasn't considered cliched, but "art." I blame this book and others like it for some of the most painful literature created by students and professional writers alike.

It was like raking my fingernails across a chalkboard while breathing in a pail of flaming cat hair and drinking spoiled milk, meanwhile Conrad is screaming DARKNESS DARKNESS OOOH LOOK AT MY METAPHOR ABOUT THE DARKNESSSSSSSSSSS like a fucking goth on a loudspeaker.

Άβυσσος. Άνθρωπος. Ψυχή. Εκπολιτισμός. Αποικιοκρατία. Εκμετάλλευση. Απληστία. Μάρλον Μπράντο. Ζούγκλα. Ομίχλη. Ποταμός. Αποκάλυψη Τώρα. Θεοποίηση. Φράνσις Φορντ Κόπολα. Ψυχισμός. Τρέλα. Φόβος. Χειραγώγηση. Ανθρώπινη Ύπαρξη. "The horror! The horror!"

Me ha parecido una novela excepcional.

"El corazón de las tinieblas" es una historia ambientada en el corazón de África en época del colonialismo británico. Un narrador anónimo, sentado en la cubierta de un barco en el rio Támesis junto a unos amigos mientras esperan que la marea les permita zarpar, escucha a Marlow narrar la aventura que vivió en África.

Marlow es, y ha sido siempre, un soñador, un aventurero deseoso de explorar nuevos territorios. Aparece como un hombre íntegro, independiente en sus acciones y en sus ideas. A lo largo de la historia va demostrando su valía, y aunque intenta mantenerse firme en sus convicciones y en su forma de ser, la misma oscuridad que envuelve la selva va envolviendo su propio corazón.

Aunque hay otros personajes secundarios que aparecen, el más importante es Kurtz. Él parece representar el poder del hombre blanco sobre África; un poder que oprime y atrae al mismo tiempo. Los nativos lo ven como a un dios, y como a tal lo veneran; sus congéneres lo admiran y lo envidian. Él se convertirá primero en un deber para Marlow -cuando tiene que ir a recogerlo a su cabaña, en las profundidades de la selva, a causa de su enfermedad- y luego en una obsesión.

El viaje que emprenderá a través del rio en un barco de vapor, estará lleno de peligros, pero además, se volverá una escuela de aprendizaje para el protagonista. Descubrirá el corazón de la selva, amenazadora, terrible, y el corazón del hombre. Las tinieblas que envuelven las márgenes del gran rio, van envolviendo poco a poco también su mente y su corazón.

La narración es fluida y amena, con pocos diálogos, y unas descripciones extraordinarias tanto de los paisajes y escenarios externos como del panorama interior de los personajes. Como muestra, un botón: "El viejo río reposaba tranquilo, en toda su anchura, a la caída del día, después de siglos de buenos servicios prestados a la raza que poblaba sus márgenes, con la tranquila dignidad de quien sabe que constituye un camino que lleva a los más remotos lugares de la tierra".

Recomiendo esta lectura, especialmente a los amantes de los clásicos.