Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 1:06 am
I think this is the message Marlow gets, yes.
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Hello again Tom, this is a pleasant trawl. Here is my latest theory about Heart of Darkness, building on discussion of fate and horror. Chatting with a friend last night, I commented that the European eruption over the world was like a volcanic eruption, and the colonial invasions were like lava flowing unstoppably. However, and this gets to our earlier free will discussion, lava has an id and no ego, whereas people imagine they direct the path of their lives. Conrad is presenting the Belgian Congo as an inexorable outflowing of the modern id, watched in horror by the ego. The horror is partly the lack of awareness of the forces at work, partly what happened to Africa, partly, as you say, our bond with the thin mask stripped off in Kurtz.Thomas Hood wrote:Isn't 'the horror' that if the darkness can strip the veneer of civilization from one so strong as Kurtz then it can do the same to anyone? Tom
Hi Tom, I hadn't thought of Conrad's discussion of Roman Britain explicitly as an idea of eternal return. Does he use that term? Now that you mention it, there is value in exploring the comparison. My own view on eternal return is set out on a recent web thread http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainst ... story.html . I link eternal return to astronomy, and the cyclic pattern of the great year. By matching events separated by 2147 years, my view is that the nineteenth century compares well with the time of Alexander's conquest of Asia and the Hellenistic Empire. This is a highly speculative, but I think interesting, line of enquiry. On my view of eternal return, the USA is now analogous to Rome in 140BC. At that stage, Rome was still a Republic, but had recently sacked Corinth and Carthage to show its imperial potential and might. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were preparing to exercise tribunician power on behalf of the Roman people against the leading corporate interests. China was in the seventh decade of the multi-century Han Dynasty. The Roman Empire was over one hundred years in the future.Thomas Hood wrote:I agree, Robert, that the European eruption was foredoomed for both perpetrator and victim and that psychological satisfactions were as important as ivory and rubber. Empires are popular because in remoter regions of empire the lower class European/American could lord over the natives like a noble. In Marlow-Conrad's comparison of the Congo invasion to the Roman invasion of Celtic Britain, he invokes the myth of the eternal return, but in taking this philosophical standpoint, he is in effect saying that it is possible for a person who is aware to step outside the course of history and transcend limitations. Tom
Do you see strength in Kurtz? I see him as unusually gifted, with a dangerous charisma, but on the other hand lacking almost totally in moral strength. I think that's why Marlow hates him, hates him until the end, when Kurtz faces himself and what he descended to. The horror is Kurtz's reflection on all that he did. That redeems him in Marlow's eyes. Maybe that is also why he goes to the extreme of visiting the Intended in Brussels.Thomas Hood wrote:Isn't 'the horror' that if the darkness can strip the veneer of civilization from one so strong as Kurtz then it can do the same to anyone?
Yes, I do see strength in Kurtz. The qualities attributed to him byDWill wrote:
Do you see strength in Kurtz? I see him as unusually gifted, with a dangerous charisma, but on the other hand lacking almost totally in moral strength. I think that's why Marlow hates him, hates him until the end, when Kurtz faces himself and what he descended to. The horror is Kurtz's reflection on all that he did. That redeems him in Marlow's eyes. Maybe that is also why he goes to the extreme of visiting the Intended in Brussels.
That leaves the question of how much of Kurtz's descent was brought on by the physical darkness of the jungle; what did the environment have to do with his becoming so brutal? It's not easy for me to see Conrad making this equation between Kurtz's moral decay and some decay inherent in the jungle, but maybe. Marlow himself seems to be fighting off this reaction himself throughout the book. Perhaps it is just that being is so out of his element made Kurtz vulnerable to the urges that had been buried in him.
DWill
So Kurtz repents of his sins and is forgiven? I am not sure. I said before that "the horror" is the key statement of conscience in the book. However, trying to psychoanalyze Kurtz, it is hard to tell if this statement is an emotional eruption from his unconscious id or a rational product of conscious guilt. I tend towards the former: Kurtz is so wrapped up in buckling his swashes, to the point of pathological piratical madness, that he is incapable of remorse or sorrow, except as self-pity. Repentance is a precondition of forgiveness, by and large, so the question is whether Kurtz really does face himself or just give vent to a broader archetypal statement.DWill wrote:Do you see strength in Kurtz? I see him as unusually gifted, with a dangerous charisma, but on the other hand lacking almost totally in moral strength. I think that's why Marlow hates him, hates him until the end, when Kurtz faces himself and what he descended to. The horror is Kurtz's reflection on all that he did. That redeems him in Marlow's eyes. Maybe that is also why he goes to the extreme of visiting the Intended in Brussels.
Of course, there is a level at which Kurtz "goes native". The unholy trinity of imperialism were the missionaries, the mercenaries and the misfits. Kurtz gives us the three in one, incorporating strands of these three perverse European identities. His moral decay arose more from his sending than from his relation to his environment. The decay of the rainforest is part of a cycle of life, while the decay of Kurtz has a much more destructive trajectory. You can't blame the resilient natural systems of the Congo for their effect on a crazy lost messiah figure who tries to redeem Africa by destroying it.DWill wrote: That leaves the question of how much of Kurtz's descent was brought on by the physical darkness of the jungle; what did the environment have to do with his becoming so brutal? It's not easy for me to see Conrad making this equation between Kurtz's moral decay and some decay inherent in the jungle, but maybe. Marlow himself seems to be fighting off this reaction himself throughout the book. Perhaps it is just that being is so out of his element made Kurtz vulnerable to the urges that had been buried in him. DWill