Into the Darkness

HUM 2052: Civilization IISpring 2013Dr. Perdigao

March 19-21, 2014

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)► Born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857 in Russia to Polish

parents, patriots involved in Polish resistance, seeking to liberate Poland from Russia (1632)

► Father, poet and translator, condemned for conspiracy in 1862; exile for family in northern Russia; mother’s death followed by father’s death; lived with uncle

► Joined British merchant marine, working on French ships; went to England in 1878 to avoid conscription; earned Master’s Certificate in 1886 and became British subject; traveled to Far East and India

► Learned English at age 21

► Trip to Congo in 1890, resulting in psychological trauma (Perry 693)

► Heart of Darkness (1899)

Politics and Darkness► In 1876, Leopold II of Belgium formed the International Association

for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa

► Henry Stanley sent to the Congo River Basin; established trading posts, signed treaties with chiefs, claimed territory (Perry 667)

► Stanley had led expedition to central Africa to search for David Livingstone (missionary-explorer) public feared to be in danger (667)

► Opening of “civilization,” declared aim of development but ended up being used for resources (including rubber and ivory); named Congo Free State, became Belgian colony in 1908, ending private enterprise and exploitation (667)

Conrad’s Darkness► Point of view

► Marlow

► Frame-tale

► The Lawyer, the Accountant, the Director (1634)

► Nellie

► “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. 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. . . ” (1636)

► Underground Man, Frankenstein, Walton—desire for expedition

► Fresleven

► “I should think the cause of progress got them, anyhow” (1638)

Conrad’s Darkness► “I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came

here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day . . . Light came out of this river since . . . We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday” (Conrad 1635).

► “It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts” (1637).

► “… the changes take place inside, you know” (1640).

► Craniometry, physical anthropology in 19th and 20th centuries, problematic theories about racial difference, although Darwin used it earlier as a basis for his studies on the origins of the species

► Craniometry is a basis of phrenology, a pseudoscience, developed by Franz Joseph Gall in 1796, that studies behavior and character, propensity for criminal activity (biological determinism): “I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting” (1647)

► “Dead in the centre” (1639); “I felt as though, instead of going to the centre of the continent, I were about to set off for the centre of the earth” (1641).

► Eldorado Exploring Expedition (1655)

Deconstructing Kurtz► Chief Accountant, Kurtz as “first-class agent” and “remarkable person”

(1646)

► Brickmaker: “The chief of the Inner Station. . . He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else” (1651)

► Harlequin, Russian, worship of Kurtz: Kurtz as poet

► Lacking restraint—natives, Kurtz

► “Save me! . . . I’ll carry my ideas out yet—I will return. I’ll show you what can be done” (1679); “I was on the threshold of great things” (1683)

► Marlow on Kurtz: “his unextinguishable gifts of noble and lofty expression” (1685); “He was a remarkable man” (1686)

► Company’s request for Kurtz’s papers, in the “name of science” (1687)

► Kurtz’s “cousin,” sees Kurtz as musician; as “painter who wrote for the papers, or else for a journalist who could paint” cousin couldn’t tell him “what he had been—exactly,” a “universal genius” (1688)

► Journalist emphasizes his politics

Apocalypse Now► “Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a

woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was sombre—almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister.” (Conrad 1651): brickmaker’s painting

► International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs—”Exterminate all the brutes!” (1671)

► “His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer

down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines” (Conrad 1685).

► “I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent” (Conrad 1686).

On Beauty, Women► Spinners of Fate

► Aunt

► “It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and can never be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset” (1641).

► The Intended—preservation of beauty, woman: “They—the women I mean—are out of it—should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours get worse” (1669)

► Kurtz’s mistress: “She was savage, and superb, wild-eyed, and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress” (1679).

Intentions► “The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—

that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets” (1686).

► “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!’” (1686)

► “It would have been too dark—too dark altogether” (1692).

Postcolonialism and CivilizationChinua Achebe, from Named for Victoria, Queen of England:

At the university I read some appalling novels about Africa (including Joyce Cary’s much praisedMister Johnson) and decided that the story we had to tell could not be told for us by anyone else no matter how gifted or well intentioned.

Although I did not set about it consciously in that solemn way, I now know that my first book, Things Fall Apart, was an act of atonement with my past, the ritual return and homage of a prodigal son. (2393-2394)

from Things Fall Apart (1958):

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . . --W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. (2508)

From T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

The Hollow Men

A penny for the Old Guy

II

We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, when We whisper togetherAre quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry glassOr rats’ feet over broken glassIn our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other KingdomRemember us—if at all—not as lostViolent souls, but only As the hollow menThe stuffed men

. . . .

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

. . . .

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

(pp. 2019-2021)