Heart of Darkness 1

• First serialized in Blackwood’s Magazine from February to April 1899

• First published in book form in 1902 in the volume Youth, a Narrative and Two Other Stories

Heart of Darkness 2

• “It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while looking at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the blank space then representing the unresolved mystery of that continent, I said to myself with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are no longer in my character now: ‘When I grow up I shall go there’ […] Yes, I did go there: there being the region of Stanely Falls which in ‘68 was the blankest of blank spaces on earth surface” Joseph Conrad, A Personal Record, 1912

Heart of Darkness – The context

• 1876: Leopold II of Belgium organized The International African Society

• 1878: Stanley hired by Leopold to explore the Congo region

• 1884-85 - Berlin Conference: Leopold appointed himself sovereign ruler of the Congo Free State

• 1908: Congo Free State was annexed to Belgium and became the Belgian Congo

Heart of Darkness – authobiographical element

• Conrad on HD: “it is experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of readers.”

Heart of Darkness – authobiographical element

• “Before the Congo I was mere animal”, Joseph Conrad, Letter to Edward Garnett

• Conrad defines the exploitation of Congo: “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration”, in Geography and Some Explorers

Conrad in Congo

• November 1899 Conrad applied to the Société Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut Congo

• 1890 Expedition in Congo recorded in the Congo Diary • Conrad was to replace a certain Freiesleven (Marlow’s

Fresleven)• From Boma, on the mouth of the Congo, he travelled

to Matadi (Outer Station), then he trekked overland to Kinshasa (Central Station) and sailed up the Congo on the Roi des Belges as far as the Stanley Falls (Inner Station)

Heart of Darkness

• Physical journey in which Marlow seeks Kurtz in the jungle

• a journey within, a spiritual journey into darkness in search of self-knowledge

• an inquiry into the hidden depths of man’s psychology• a quest• an inquiry into the moral values of white civilization• an anthropological and Darwinian investigation of

man’s primitive roots• a mythical initiation trial

Colonialism - Imperialism• Chinua Achebe “An Image of Africa: Racism in Heart of Darkness”,

1975:• “Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist … The real question is

the dehumanization of Africa … the very humanity of black people is called into question”

• Cedric Watts “ ‘A Bloody Racist: About Achebe’s View of Conrad”, 1983: “it is precisely against this dehumanization that the tale amply protests … of all the people described by far the happiest, healthiest, most vital are the group of black paddling their canoe through the surf … Furthermore against this stance of natural vitality we can measure the state of the ‘hollow men’, the European pilgrims”

Fates: Cloto Lachesis Athropos

• Multiplicity of literary and historical associations pervade the scene

• Dante, Divina Commedia «Ma perché lei che dì e notte fila,non gli avea tratta ancora la conocchia, che Cloto impone a ciascuno e compila…» Purgatorio, Canto XXI, vv. 25.27

• Virgilio, Eneide, “sic volvere Parcas”, Libro I, v. 22• The symbolic connotations take us far beyond our

primary sense of the fateful, uncanny atmosphere of the scene

Fates

• Unconcern is what the fates have in common with the two other main historical parallels evoked in the passage: the French tricoteuses callously knitting at the guillotine, and the Roman crowds to whom the gladiators address their scornful farewell in Marlow’s rather pretentious interjection: “Ave, old knitter of black wool, Morituri te salutant”

Fates

• Thin knitter: does not speak to Marlow, does not see him, movements unrelated to other human beings. The knitter’s appearance increases this sense of the nonhuman. She is a dehumanised death in life and a prefiguring symbol of what the trading company does to its creatures

• Older knitter: visual image of physical and spiritual deformity