Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad

I read this novel last Saturday at a Starbucks inside the new Eastwood Mall.

Despite it being one of the more canonical works of the west, I never really took any interest in reading it simply because it has a maritime setting--I don't know why, this is the reason why I've never found the inkling to read "Moby Dick" too. I read things not just because someone tells me I have to read them or someone tells me it's great. For me it has to pass "the blurb" test. Upon recommendation of a person, I look it up on the internet and know initially whatzitabout, if the brief abstract looks interesting that's the time I'll go out of my way and read the first few chapters, but I must say this is not always true cause sometimes I read things simply because a great writer finds it influential in his craft--but cut me some slack, you cannot read every book in a lifetime, so it's best to be guided by the "experts" but this operates on another level too, I have to "like" or idolize the said "great writer".

I can't remember the novelist who said, I think it is Henry James, to never tell a person that a book is great--if you want them to read it. But I understand the slight difficulty in practicing the virtue, out of laziness or excitement you just tell a person to read stuff because it's...great.

How did I became familiar with Conrad? It was in a college English class, and I remember that we read a short story of his "The Lagoon" in a very formalistic setting we analyzed the plot, and stuff, and found it to be very symbolic--like most of his works. After knowing that--as our teacher explained--English was a third language for him (he only learned it in his twenties) medyo humanga na ako, and he spoke Polish and French! I read up on him a little, and of course found out that "Heart of Darkness" is one of his best, and most read work. I shelved this bit of information for a time, and used it when I found a battered copy of the work at Booksale in Alimall years ago. I wasn't supposed to buy anything but seeing the dirt cheap price (I think I got it for Php 25.00) I bought right away thinking it might be "useful" someday.

And oh how the planets and stars aligned.

Cause "Heart of Darkness" is a very "postcolonial" text, cited/discussed by many critics and writers--and since I still have this on going struggle of not being the most clueless person in grad school, I finally read it. Actually the aspect of convenience helped to, I wanted to finish something in one sitting and the slim volume was perfect.

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Only recently did I realize that this is also true for "Mansfield Park", yes by Jane Austen. The endless reruns of "The Jane Austen Book Club" on HBO did not help LOL. I found out that "Mansfield Park" is a "postcolonial" read too--so I'm thinking of finally finishing it (I couldn't at first, and after the second reading I gave up...I got bored). And besides I want to cap it all off since besides this and "Persuasion" I've read all of Austen already HAHAHA. The reason was part Keira Knigthley and part Amis...and their is Jane Eyre pa and it's prequel "The Wide Sargasso Sea"...sigh, ang dami, how am I supposed to read all of these?
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Conrad's style of writing is very rich and descriptive. I had difficulty following him at some pages--the fact that I was in a hurry to finish it did not help. But I appreciate the mood and the exploitation of setting. And the great use of the "frame" device...how Marlowe decides to tell his crew a story at dusk while their ship cruises along the Thames...and how at the end, his trip to the Congo mirrors his journey along the thames as well...a journey to the "heart of darkness" (truly masterful!). This illustrates one of my Professors' explanation that the West's "Othering" of the East was simply a projection of their negative selves. We can argue that the Congo really did change Kurtz but was it really because of the native's savagery? Isn't it entirely because of Kurtz's greed for fame, power and fortune?

I love the psychological breakdown of Kurtz as a renegade ivory dealer, how he became "God" among the native "savage" men. How we hear how great he is at first and the surprise we see at the end of what he has become. To be honest I really felt like it was similar to "The Tales of the Black Freighter" in "Watchmen" hehehe I wonder if Allan Moore made it intentional.

This passage from the book sums it up:

Marlowe relates how he came to read a paper Kurtz wrote which the man entrusted to him as Kurtz was dying when Marlowe's crew found him.

All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs has entrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it too. I've seen it. I've read it...Seventeen pages of close writing he had time for!...But this must have been before his--let us say--nerves, went wrong...He began the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of the supernatural beings--we approach them with the might of a deity'...by the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded....

but Marlowe soon reads a postcript--added at a later time:

It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying...: "Exterminate all the brutes!"

and Kurtz's last words as Marlowe finds him fairly lucid:

"The horror, the horror."




...p*tang ina.