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| A camel train in Aden (now Yemen), when it was a British colony. From the British Museum Collection. See http://blog.britishmuseum.org/2013/06/28/collecting-postcards-from-the-middle-east/ |
Our first main text is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, first published 1899. Given the introduction to colonial postcards that we'll do in class, I encourage you to use your blog post to reflect on how Conrad encourages us to "see" things in this novel. Feel free to make comparisons with the colonial postcards and their culture of circulation, if you wish, or to share other images that you might come across.
I don't have access as an author yet, but before my evening class I wanted to post about the very beginning of the novel when Marlow starts talking about his obsession with maps as a young boy. If you have the class edition of the novel it will be pages 10-11. I wanted to close read Marlow’s experience with his maps in comparison to the culture of circulation of the colonial postcards. In class we came to an agreement that those who were obsessed with receiving the postcards may have felt like they knew something about the world. Dr. Karl proposed the question of whether or not they could actually be knowledgeable of something they are simply looking at in a picture from the comfort of their own English homes.
ReplyDeleteBut there is something particularly inviting about the postcards, we decided, and what comes to mind in particular is the image of “The Native Musician”.
The woman in the image is in a sort of inviting, sexual, seductive pose. She would have been mysterious, yet fascinating to those who perceived her image.
Similarly, Marlow describes the river Congo as “an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land”. The snake is a temptation for Marlow, and as he states further along, “The snake had charmed me”. Here's a link to a decent picture of the Congo: http://rachelstrohm.com/2011/05/20/technicolor-congo-rivers/
Interestingly, Marlow describes the inviting and mysterious places as white spots all over the map, while the discoveries that were made about each place covered them in darkness, literally on the map and symbolically. It’s as if Marlow is suggesting that he was better off as a little boy indulging in the “delightful mystery” of the maps rather than giving in to temptation and discovering the darkness for himself. This is interesting to me because illumination and light can be associated with knowledge and enlightenment, but instead, the white spots on the maps represent the unknown, while darkness represents the knowledge gained after the discovery of each place. If we are to take Marlow’s idea of ignorance vs. knowledge/mystery vs. discovery, what might this mean for the audience of the colonial postcards and those who were in Africa taking the pictures?
I also found Marlow's description of the Congo as an interesting portion of the novel, not only because of the way in which he addresses the physical attributes of the river, but because of the relation that can be made back to the postcards from class.
ReplyDeleteWhen Marlow is describing this "snake", from the map in the window, he is almost mesmerized by it, but then quickly remembers about the trade on the river, making him seem as if he knows what the river actually is.
Although it is not quite exactly the same as the concept we talked about in class, I believe that you can draw a comparison between Marlow in the portion of the story and someone who would receive the post cards and then thinking that they know the world from which the photograph came from.
In the novel i believe that Conrad's awe of the Congo river is captured very early on. Within the first chapter he is captivated by a speech Marlow gives depicting the savages and the wilderness they are to set out into. Marlow tells the others of the travelers that came before them such as Sir Francis Drake who famously set out on the same river and was never heard from again. My first reaction to this was the thought of a possible foreshadowing to later events in the novel. However, it seemed at the moment that these past adventurers were mentioned Conrad was more focused on the journey rather than the consequences.
ReplyDeleteMarlow goes on to talk about a river that had formed into a patch of darkness from a white patch of his boyhood dreams. He explains it as "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, and it's tail lost in the depths of the land." This quote embodies the lust for adventure that a sailor like Marlow possesses.
Conrad wants us to understand what it was like to live in a world of unknowns, where men sought out on savage expeditions. More so than not it seemed that the men leaving for these trips were out in regards to a personal sense of adventure. These men weren't content with seeing the world through a postcard. They were out to see the world for themselves
Elizabeth Gagne
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Thoughts on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” 1899
This book is an interesting piece which gives us insight into a time and place in a man’s life and his thoughts as he remembers them from this dark time. Conrad describes what it was like to be a steamboat captain on a river which, although never explicitly identified as a river in Africa, from reading other articles on the matter, it seems to have been agreed upon that it is one of these is the river which he traverses in his youth. On his journey, he described how wild and unkempt the forest on either side of the river is, especially in comparison to Europe (Conrad 71). He talks about it as containing “living trees lashed together by the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth” (Conrad 71). He seems to see it as alive; as a living, breathing entity, possibly even one capable of “pensive” thought (Condrad 110).
Conrad also describes how different the people are, especially the natives who shoot arrows at the boat on the way to retrieving Mr Kurtz (83-5). He talks about the way they seem to “come up from the ground . . . as if by enchantment, streams of human beings--of naked human beings--with spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, were poured into the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest” when him and his crew finally reach Mr Kurtz (Condrad 110). In their last night before the long boat ride back to the station and civilization, Conrad describes how the natives kept an “uneasy vigil” (119). He says that “deep within the forest , red gleams . . . wavered” and there was the “monotonous beating of a big drum [that] filled the air with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration” as well as “a steady droning sound of many men chanting . . . some weird incantation . . . [which] had a strange narcotic effect upon [his] half-awake senses” (Conrad 119). Conrad also describes a “spell--the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts” which Marlow could obviously feeling trying to pull him in as it was Kurtz (123). Marlow realizes that this spell had driven Kurtz’s soul mad because it was “the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear yet [was] struggling blindly with itself” (Conrad 124-5). This book shows us how Conrad believes loneliness can affect a person, especially under extreme circumstances.
I went in and accepted the invitation to be a contributor to this blog. When I did that, it brought up the dashboard so I could create a post. Now that I am trying to do if from a computer where I can actually type - I can't seem to get into the dashboard and create a post. I am only able to comment.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that jumped out at me was the description of the Russian guy on the shore. On page 99 it says "He looked like a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brown holland probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with bright patches, blue, red, and yellow,--patches on the back, patches on front, patches on elbows, on knees; coloured binding round his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done.
Here I think that Conrad is using detailed description to help us to see his characters. This "Russian" doesn't get a name, and it almost sounds like he's wearing a patchwork quilt in a remote intersection of several very different worlds and cultures.
Conrad wants the reader to see the native peoples of Africa as fascinating as well as people who need the pity of the colonizers. Marlowe describes the helmsman as a native who had training, but still isn't good at his job. He also makes it sound like it's okay because he is just a native. Just like the people on the post card the helmsman looks like he belongs, but he is still just a savage, who can only be taught so much.
ReplyDeleteIt also feels as if those listening to Marlowe's story are receiving multiple post cards because of the vivid descriptions that he gives of everything- the people, the places, even the things like the steamboat. The listener/ reader is getting snippets of his adventure surrounded by vivid drawn out descriptions, much like a post card with a short message on the back.
Thinking about Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in terms of vision (what Conrad lets readers see and how he creates these images) immediately makes me think of the critical pieces about Impressionism we were assigned and how they relate to the visual experience presented in the novel. In Modernism Keywords, Cuddy-Keane, Hammond, and Peat cite an explanation that claims “they [impressionists] do not render a landscape, but the sensation produce by the landscape” which resonated with me as I read the novel as Conrad’s descriptions did not only allow me to see what Marlow was seeing, but I also felt as if I could experience the apprehensive emotions he felt. In this way “seeing” Marlow’s trip down the river became almost secondary as I felt Conrad let me have more than simply the visual experience. One area where both vision and emotion seemed to intersect and almost blend was through the discussion of the both varied and constant darkness that Marlow faced on his journey. One example of this is when Marlow is debating on whether he would reveal the truth about Mr. Kurtz and thinks “ I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone,- and to this day I don’t know why I was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that experience” (120-121). While readers understand that the dense vegetation of the jungle left Marlow and the others on the steamboat in a constant state of darkness and inability to fully comprehend their surroundings, we also see that the idea of darkness extends to mean much more. In this instance we see that darkness served as the shield to hide Kurtz’s true intentions. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad constructs the story so that the idea of visual and emotional experience blends so that readers can have a more true understanding of the story of Charles Marlow.
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