Values dissonance is a funny thing with art. Literature, music, and film that stands today as timeless and classical can bring up jarring problems to its modern audience. It's easy to read Heart of Darkness in what is going into the 2020s. It's a short novel, my edition clocks in at a very humble 92 pages. It's a book you could read in an hour. Yet the thing that makes Heart of Darkness so difficult is not the page count or prose, it's the setting. Set in the heart of the Belgian Congo, it is not kind to the Native Africans portrayal. Famed Nigerian author Chinua Achebe (who we will cover later of course) was very vocal in his criticisms of the work. He had an entire 1975 lecture dedicated to criticizing this book's handling of colonialism and racism. Achebe considered it a work of de-humanization of Africans. He saw Conrad as portraying Africa as the antithesis to Europe, ignoring the broader culture of the Fang people that lived in the Congo Basin where Conrad visited and was inspired to write the novel. He argued that Conrad promoted an image of darkest Africa that continues to depersonalize a portion of the human race, and did not consider it a work of art. It's actually interesting to me that Chinua Achebe would be so opposed to Heart of Darkness; not because of its contents, Achebe was an Igbo Chieftain himself. What interests me is how Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, his masterwork, is a perfect antithesis to Heart of Darkness. Touching on many of the same themes, portrayed on the opposite side of the coin.
The thing about Heart of Darkness I feel a lot of people miss out on, even Booktubers on YouTube who review novels, is that Conrad is just as unfair to those who run the Belgian Congo. In fact, the novel was written in 1899. The fact the Belgians are portrayed as being in the wrong at all is an extremely progressive view. Conrad's novel and prose I do think show a prejudice of his own, and perhaps I am wrong, but a prejudice of the world he is portraying. There are no good characters in Heart of Darkness. The Congo is not portrayed as being better off with the white man. If anything, Conrad's story shows a brutality, narcissism, and sadism in the colonists. Conrad's point in writing Heart of Darkness is not to criticize Africa, but to criticize mankind at their worst.
Joseph Conrad himself (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was born in Berdychiv, Russian Empire. The concept of his nationality is a bit of a headache but suffice that Joseph Conrad is Anglo-Polish. Berdychiv existed in what is known to the Poles as the Stolen Lands, in what is now Ukraine. These lands however, did belong to the Crown Kingdom of Poland at one point. Despite being populated mostly by Ukrainians and Jews, most of the countryside was still owned by the Polish nobility, to which Conrad's family belonged. Conrad's father Apollo was a revolutionary against the Russian Empire for independence of pre-partisan Poland. Because of this his family was often on the move and in exile, but Apollo did his best to educates his son. Giving him Victor Hugo and Shakespeare and most importantly the Polish romantic poets. Eventually Conrad was able to establish himself in the Austrian side of the former Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth. After his father's death, Conrad's Uncle attempted to obtain his Austrian citizenship but was denied due to Conrad not being released as a Russian Subject. Eventually Conrad was able to find a home in England. Granted British nationality in 1886, still a subject of the Russian Czar it took several trips to the embassy for the Russian Empire to release him as a Russian Subject to continue is life as an Englishman.
Conrad's journey as a writer does not quite begin here however. In 1874 Conrad journey to Marseille, France and joined the merchant-marine. Here he met Dominique Cervoni, who would inspire several characters of his words such as the title character in 1904's Nostromo (that's right Alien references Conrad). Four years later and Conrad is now a part of the British merchant-marine and for the next fifteen years served under the Red Ensign. Eventually obtaining the rank of Captain. Conrad's sailing career is as well known as his writing career, and the former greatly affected the latter. References to his friends, jobs, and posts can be seen in many of his novels. For example during a three year stint with a Belgian Trading Company he worked in part as Captain of a steamer on the Congo River, just like the protagonist of Heart of Darkness, Marlow. Conrad's last voyage was completed when the clipper ship Torrens docked in London and Conrad was formally discharged from service.a It was here that Conrad began his literary career. His life, friends, accomplishments and more are a book itself and worth looking into. Suffice to say, Joseph Conrad was considered a master of his art despite writing in English and only having become fluent in the language in his twenties. He wrote dozens of novels and short stories and essays. At one point becoming depressed and in debt, Conrad attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a revolver. He survived this attempt and would die of what is believed to be a heart attack in 1924. He was mourned by many. If you can name a famous writer in English chances are Conrad knew them and befriended them.
Heart of Darkness is considered one of his masterworks but ironically when it was published, it was bound with two other novellas. These two novellas received much more praise than Heart of Darkness did and Conrad himself did not consider it much. Which is hilarious due to the the critical backlash it receives today. Heart of Darkness follows Marlow, as mentioned a steamer Captain in the Belgian Congo. Marlow is recounting this time to his fellow sailors while anchored on the River Thames. What follows is ninety pages of brutality as Marlow walks among worked to death and diseased Africans forced to build the railroad along the Congo, or is beset by arrows on his boat by the Natives, or when he finds the severed head of natives on spikes outside the trading post of the novel's antagonist, Kurtz. Kurtz spends most of the novel as a ghost, being talked up to Marlow as a man among men, a champion who the natives worship as a God. A man who produces more ivory than any of the other trading posts combined. Deeper conversations reveal that Kurtz may not be as well liked as presumed. Kurtz was also tasked with writing up a report, which he did well with the added handwritten postscript of "Kill all the brutes!". When they finally reach Kurtz he is a sick and dying man and as they take him from his Trading Post down the river, he dies. His last words are "The horror! The horror!" to Marlow, and he is buried in a hole without much fanfare by the crew of the boat. Marlow returns to Europe contemptuous of the civilized world and withholds the papers Kurtz had given him. Eventually giving them to a journal to publish as seen fit. Marlow later visits Kurtz' widow who pressures him for his last words. Marlow lies, instead telling her that Kurtz' last word was her name. Sheltering her from the heart of darkness that had consumed Kurtz and enveloped Marlow.
Heart of Darkness is a masterpiece for its on the nose political commentary and criticism of the Belgian Congo, its analysis of the human psyche, and the question it raises on the goodness of humanity as a whole. The theme of the civilized world and the true primal humanity found in the Congo are given several foils throughout the novel. As Marlow is exposed to the horrors of the Congo he becomes more and more like Kurtz, a man consumed by savagery. His lie to Kurtz' widow also proving that the civilized world is not ready for the true horrors of the human psyche lurking just below the surface, ready to consume any who linger for too long. In context of its racist overtones, the novel was written in a time where these aspects of society were common. The fact that Conrad even thought to call the colonists out for being no better than the 'savages' they brutalized was extremely progressive. Heart of Darkness had a film adaptation that updated the setting the the Vietnam War. That film was Apocalypse Now. Whether you see the setting update as putting the brutalization and innate horror of the human mind into perspective or simply see the colonialism replaced with American imperialism against Communism, and the blacks of the Congo with the Vietnamese is your interpretation. I feel the film helps drive home that black or white, we all have the capability for evil.
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