Secrets":TheIdeologyof
"Unspeakable
in Conrad'sHeartofDarkness
Landscape
Anne McClintock
How then,askedthe stone,canthehammerwielderwho seeksto penetratethe heartof
the universebe surethat thereexist anyinteriors?Aretheynot perhapsfictions,these
luresof interiorsforrapewhichthe universe
usesto drawout its explorers?
JohnCoetzee,Dusklands
Over the years, a number of heroic efforts have been made to restoreJoseph
Conrad'sHeartof Darknessto its historicalmoment.1 A meticulous unearthing
of sourceshas occupieda good deal of the energy of Conrad scholarship. Much
has been made, for example, of Conrad'sclaim that "Heartof Darknessis . . . experiencepusheda little (and only very little) beyond the actualfactsof the case."2
Yet, there is equally a highly important sense in which the Congo of Heartof
Darknessis not the Congo of any history book. That is to say, the apparently
innocent activity of source-huntingmasks a number of seriousmethodological
problems. Perhapsthe most important of these can be broachedby invoking
Conrad'scontemporary,Nietzsche, for whom "thereis no set of maxims more
important for the historianthan this: that the actualcausesof a thing's origins
and its eventual uses are worlds apart."3 Put in anotherway, between the text
and its historicalorigins, between Heartof Darknessand the events in the Congo,
there lies an areaof ideological shadow. So as to confront this shadow, I will
explore Conrad'stroubledrepresentationof landscapeas one aspect of the ideological terrainof Heartof Darkness. If, as Octavio Paz would have it, "a landscapeis not the more or less accuratedescriptionof what our eyes see . . . [but]
alwayspoints to something else, to something beyond itself ... [as] . . . a metaphysic, a religion, an idea of man and the cosmos," then, at the simplest level,
I will be exploring what idea of the cosmos Conrad'slandscapesecretlyfigures.4
More specifically,I will argue that Conrad draws on a numberof differentrepresentationsto image the Congo and that these appear,on scrutiny, to be curiously contradictory. They alternatelyfigure the universe as penetrable,as impenetrable,as absurd,as anthropomorphic,as malign, and as primitive. A historicalaccountof the ideologicalcontradictionsthat these representationsbetray
may restorethe book more productivelyto its historicalmoment.
Near the beginning of Heartof Darkness,when Marlowe voices his uneasy
suspicionthat he is about to set off for "the centre of the earth," he is invoking
38 Conrad'sHeart of Darkness
one of the most cherishedand enduring notions of western thought: that of the
cosmos as interiority.5 There is an ancient tradition of mysticism behind this
notion, whereby the soul finds redemption in its approachto a sacredcenter.
Plotinus was the first to capture the mystical emblem of the circle in his notion of "epistrophe,"the return to the creative source. Purely by virtue of its
distance from the center, matter contains the possibility of evil. Redemption
enacts the reverse: flowing back to the center, the soul approachesabsolute
unity in the One. This idea of salvation as a return to the center was to hold
the fascinatedimaginationof following thinkersfor centuries.6 Yet, if the image
of the circle could figure-with the greatest elegance and power-some of the
fundamentalrelations between soul and cosmos, the nature of its metaphysics
sufferedcontinual and subtle shifts as centuries of thinkers drew it into their
cosmologies.7 Thus, for example, God assuredDante: "I am the center of the
circle to which all points of the circumferenceare equidistant;you are not."8
When he spoke again three centurieslater to Pic de la Mirandole,it was, however, to say, "I have placed thee at the center of the world so that thou shalt
more conveniently consider everything that is in the world."9 In this way,
with the Renaissancea significanttransformationhad taken place in the image
of the circle, whereby the center was no longer the emblem of God as a separate
and externalpoint, but rather, coincided now with the soul itself. Now: "The
whole universe surroundsman as the circle surroundsthe point."10 From here
on, the journey would be not only a quest for the redeemingcenter but also a
penetrationinto the innermost secretsof the human soul.1
Unchanged throughout, however, remains the privileged and all-powerful
implication of the idea of the universe as interiority. According to this belief,
the universe encloses a secret center, the penetration of which yields a new
order of knowledge (which in fact was there all along, timeless and absolute).
The circle contains in its circumferencethe attributesof immeasurabletime and
space, and, at its center, the fixed point, the arrestedmoment. Geometrically,
then, it implies the redemption of all contradiction. It is the place where ambiguities are resolved;it implies a unity. The journey into the interior, by rehearsingperpetuallythe hope of reachingthe center, thus rehearsesthe hope of
unity, the recovery of a single, transcendentmeaning by which all may be
reconciled. In Heartof Darkness,one finds Conrad deeply troubledin his efforts
to wrest a sign and message for his time from this idea of the cosmos as interiority. Yet, at the same time, there is another level at which the narrative
itself resiststhis effort. If the narrativecontains tracesof a deep nostalgiafor the
center, it is arguablethat the traumawhich the book suffersin its efforts to retain interiority may be seen to prefigurethe imminent collapse of the idea in
western thought.12
On the third page of Heartof Darkness,the journey to the center is invoked
only to be at once transvalued. The dark interlopersof colonial trade go out
AnneMcClintock 39
"into the mystery of an unknown earth"(p. 7), not in quest for spiritualtruths,
but as "huntersfor gold or pursuersof fame" (p. 7). From the outset, the organic movement of penetrationand return is bound to the rhythm of trade:"a
stream of manufacturedgoods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire sent
into the depthsof darkness,and in returncamea precioustrickleof ivory"(p. 26).
The sparkfrom the sacredfireborneout by the knightsof tradereturnsas a trickle
of white bones, the light of redemptionas a reifiedtoken of economicexchange.
The mysticaljourney is figured in this way as darklyinfused by colonial trade,
as corrupted, and thereby secularized. At the same time Marlowe offers the
first hint that, if the labyrinthof nature encloses a secret heart, the penetration
of which has always promiseda single, transcendentmeaning, then it may now
harborin its depths nothing but dangerand ambiguity. More than this, it may
be dead, or, at the very least, deadly:"I was going into the yellow. Dead in the
center. And the riverwas there-fascinating-deadly-like a snake"(p. 15).
This darkeningof the center representsin part the moment of a betrayal. In
Last Essays,Conrad writes that, in the idealism of childhood, he had once put
"his finger on a spot in the very middle of the then white heart of Africa"and
"declaredthat some day I would go there."13 When he did, it was to discover
himself as the victim of an enormous betrayal. The Congo had been stainedby
"the vilest scramblefor loot that ever disfiguredthe historyof human conscience
and geographicalexploration"(LE, p. 17). Marlowe talks equallyof a childhood
passionfor maps, in particularfor the blankspacesof "delightfulmystery"(p. 12),
which were the remaining areasof uncolonized Africa. The blank space on a
colonial map representsnothing other than a lure for penetrationand, with it,
the promise that such penetrationwould yield the glories of exploration. The
blank spaceis the purest representationof interiority, the center par excellence.
With the discoverythat this representationis a fiction, nothing other than the
invitation for rape which imperialismuses to draw out its explorers, the heart
which was once "big and white" (LE, p. 14) becomes a "place of darkness"
(p. 12). In other words, the failure of the myth of the redemptive center is
closely associatedwith the corruption of an ideal, the failure of empire to sustain its promise.
At the outset at least, associatingthe darkmetamorphosisof the sacredquest
with colonial penetrationby trade appearsto initiate a critique of imperialism:
an exposure of the powerful Europeansentiment, current at the time, that colonizers were the harbingersof light. Leopold II of Belgium had invoked it in
1876, as well as the idea of interiority, in order to encouragethe final penetration of Central Africa: "To open to civilization the only area of our globe to
which it has not yet penetrated, to pierce the gloom which hangs over entire
races,constitutes, if I may dareto put it this way, a crusadeworthy of this century of progress."14As Marlowe himself says, "therehad been a lot of such rot
let loose in print and talk just about that time . . ." (p. 18). Nevertheless, if
40 Conrad'sHeart of Darkness
its
Conradrefusesthe sacredcenterin thisway, he doesso onlyby transvaluing
terms. The centeris still there,only evermoredarklyambiguous.Againand
againthroughoutthe narrative,not to mentionin the title itself,interiorityis
invoked: "The wildernesswithout a soundtook him into its bosom again"
(p. 34); "Whatwas in there?"(p. 38); "thelurkingdeath,to the hiddenevil,
to the profounddarknessof its heart"(p. 47). A few examplessuffice. Nevertheless,if the narrativepresentsa deeperand deeperjourneyinto an interior,
therearecertaindecisivemomentswhenthe veryrepresentation
of interiorityis
itselfradicallythreatened.Indeed,sucha momentoccurson the firstoccasion
thatMarloweattemptsto representthe coastof Africa.
The firstsightingof the Africancoastis foreshadowed
by Marlowe'ssuggestion thathis will be a venturenot only to the centerof a continentbut alsoto
the "centerof the earth"(p. 18). Yet, at the veryedgeof the unknownworld,
at the momentof penetration,Marlowediscoversthatthe limitsof the familiar
landscapearelikewisethe limitsof languageandprivilegedperception.More
thananythingelse, Africapresentsitselffromthe outsetas an epistemological
problem. Marlowe'srelationto the landscapeis reducedto that of a spectator
to the remotespectacle:"I watchedthe coast"(p. 19). As he gazes,however,
the coastresistshis questingeye as an enigmaresistsknowledge. Penetration
by the eye is defeatedby the strangenessand densityof the landscape. The
coastis evoked,not asa tangible,realworld,with boomingsurfanda full array
of colorsandimpressions,
but rather,asa worldof extremedeprivation
andunIn
the
is
that
there
a
that
follow,
reality.
descriptions
struggle
goesbeyondthe
of
and
involves
the
stuff
If Marlowe's
of
itself.
question perception
very
language
is
and
the
failure
of
and,simultaneously,
gaze impoverished deprived,
perception,
of penetration,is revealedto be the triumphof the inexpressible.Africais both
proteanand"featureless"
(p. 19)becauseit haswithdrawnbeyondthe horizon
of knownlanguage.
If the coastlineconjuresup a stringof epithets("smiling,frowning,inviting,
grand,mean,inspired,savage"[p. 19]), they are merelyopposites,canceling
eachotheras they arise,andso leavingthe landscapeas enigmaticandmonotonousasbefore.It is a coastwithoutqualities:"featureless,"
"formless,""uniIf
the
can
"monotonous"
be
said
to
have
form,"
color,it is "so
(p. 19).
jungle
darkgreenas to be almostblack"(p. 19), thatis, almostvoidedof color. The
white surfis merelyits irreducible
opposite. If the seais blue,its glitter(always
a sinisterwordforConrad)is threatened
with imminentdissolution
in a "creeping
mist"(p. 19). No boundarywithin which the landcanbe containedanddois allowedto be final. Thereis an utterfailureto obtain"aparticularmesticated
izedimpression"
(p. 21).
The largernarrativeeventsare equallyhedgedaboutby qualifications
and
modals:"perhaps,""presumably,"
"as
"seemed"
"almost," though,"
(p. 19).
The use of "seemed"threetimesin the paragraph
insiststhat whatjudgments
AnneMcClintock 41
there are in fact remain tenuous and provisional and implies in turn that the
qualities and events describedoriginate in subjectiveperception, and thus that
they cannot claim status as objective featuresof the externalworld. Marlowe's
comment that, "Every day the coast looked the same, as though we had not
moved" (p. 19), conjuresthe dreadfulpossibility implicit in the entire description: that appearancesradicallymay belie the true state of affairsand that an unbridgeablegap exists between the perception of a thing and its innermost essence.
In this way, the coast offersthe first intimation of that "density"of the world
which Camus describesas the climate of the absurd.15 If the landscapeis impermeableboth to language and to understanding, this very impenetrability
strikes at the heart of the mythology of interiority. The subjectis condemned
to a sense of the resistanceof the world and of the utter deprivationof truth.
As Marlowe despairinglynotes, "the malign sombernessof the coast, seemedto
keep me away from the truth of things" (p. 19). Nevertheless, the sequence
ends, and Marlowe enters Africa proper with a return to interiority: "At last
we opened up a reach"(p. 20). One has here the beginnings of a contradiction
which is to become more intractableas the narrativeprogresses. Almost as if
the threat of impenetrabilitythat the landscapeposes to Marlowe is too great,
he transfersit back to the landscapeitself. By a subtle defensivemeasure,moreover, he interpretsit as the inherent hostility of the wildernessitself: "all along
the formlesscoast was borderedby dangeroussurf, as if Nature herselfhad tried
to ward off intruders"(p. 20). In other words, the failure to describeis projected as a quality in nature itself, while, in the meantime, nature has become
anthropomorphizedand invested with malign intention, a calculatedhostility.
The banks themselvesbecome imbued with Marlowe's transferredimpotence,
writhing "in the extremityof an impotent despair"(p. 21). This will be revealed
later as one of Marlowe'smost frequent strategiesin his fraught confrontation
with the landscape. At the same time, it marks the crossing over from one
representationof landscapeas featureless,indifferent, and impenetrable,to another that contradictsit, where the landscapeis anthropomorphized,animate,
and harborswithin the recessesof its being a hostile intention.
In this descriptionof the African coast Marlowe is reenacting what has become a recurrent,almost ritualistic, moment in the colonial narrative:the moment of verbal and visual crisis as the colonial intruder stands dumb-founded
before an inexpressiblelandscape. This moment initiateswhat Wayne Franklin
has called "the discoveredplot of colonial life." This is "not the grand plot of
idealized experience, the easy passage through a strange place, but rather the
steady attrition of all such formulas, the slow accumulationof a knowledge
won at great expense."16The effort to give voice to a landscapethat is unspeakable because it inhabits a different history creates a deep confusion, a kind of
panic which can be warded off only by adopting the most extreme of defensive
measures.
42 Conrad'sHeart of Darkness
It is in this sense, and at such moments, that the colonial writer can be
calleda true precursorof the modern. What one witnessesin Marlowe'sfraught
descriptionof the African coastline is what Barthes has called "the tragic element"in moder writing. That is to say, "historyputs into [the modernwriter's
hands] a decorativeand compromising instrument, a writing inherited from a
previous and differenthistory, for which he is not responsibleand yet which is
the only one he can use."17Having traveledtoo far and too suddenlybeyond the
limits of tradition, the colonial writer discovers a landscapethat is still unbaptized. It is drainedof meaning becausethere is no inheritedlanguagewhich can
rightfully give it tongue. It withdraws to a distance. It does not conjure from
within the writer any familiarallusions, topoi, or habitsof speaking,becauseits
history is incommensuratewith the colonial'shistory. Henceforth, the colonial
"hasto live in the midst of the incomprehensible,which is also detestable"(p. 9).
Every attempt to describe the landscape,to draw it near, revealsonly the failure of language to find out its essence, to penetrateits innermost heart. The
writer thus discoversthat the inherited language is attended by "ancestraland
all-powerfulsigns which, from the depths of a past foreign to him, impose Literatureon him like a ritual, not like a reconciliation"(Barthes,p. 86). Having
made this discovery, the writer can never tackle a landscapewithout at certain
moments being "referredback, by a sort of tragic reversal,to the sources, that
is to say, the instrumentsof creation"(Barthes, p. xvi). This moment may be
repressed,but the markof repressionwill be conspicuous.
This intimate relation between the encounter with a strange continent and
the tragic reversalto the sources of creation is illustratedvery early in Heartof
Darkness.The anonymousnarratorsuggests that Marlowe'sdifferencefrom the
ordinaryseamenlies in the fact that he "did not representhis class"(p. 8). Marlowe himself cautions the Company doctor from too confidently taking his
measure, by warning him that he "was not in the least typical" (p. 17). He
therebyidentifieshimself as one of those exiles and emigres whose liminal position in society throws up more starklythe verbalconsequencesof historicaldislocation. The narratordescribesMarlowe as refusing the center as a metaphor
both for the penetrationof a tale and for that of a continent, which the ordinary
seamen are said to endorse. To Marlowe, the meaning of an episode does not
lie within the tale like a kernal"within the shellof a crackednut" (p. 8). Rather,
it "envelopsthe tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in
the likeness of one of those misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the
spectralillumination of moonlight" (p. 8). Yet it is telling here that the center
has not been resistedfully; it merely has been invertedand obscured.
The tragic referralto the problem of language afflictsMarlowe at a number
of criticalmoments in his telling. At these moments, a turbulenceoccurs in the
narrativeas his distraught voices surfaceto confess his literal loss for words,
"How shall I define it?" (p. 92); or the impossiblity that his words can cover
AnneMcClintock 43
the distancein experiencewhich separateshim from his listeners, "No use telling you much about that" (p. 28); or, quite simply, to convey the intractable
difficultyof what he knows, "it was impossible to tell" (p. 31). This last quotation, "it was impossible to tell," itself carriesa burden of ambiguity which
implies both a failure of understandingand a failure of language. A double
failure of this kind, of both comprehensionand words, occasions what comes
to be the most severerupturein the narrative. Finding himself incapable,at one
and the same time, of interpreting the mute face of the jungle and of conveying the realitybehind Kurtz's name, Marlowe glimpsesbeyond this a separation
of thing and name, a hiatus between word and world: "I do not see the man in
the name any more than you do" (p. 39). Such separationradicallythreatensto
underminethe very foundationsof human solidarity:
Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you seeanything?It seemsto me
thatI am tryingto tell you a dream-makinga vainattempt,becauseno relation
of a dreamcanconveythe dream-sensation,
thatcomminglingof absurdity,surprise,andbewildermentin a tremorof strugglingrevolt, that notion of being
capturedby the incrediblewhich is of the very essence of dreams. . . . No, it is
impossible;it is impossibleto conveythe life-sensationof any given epochof
one'sexistence-thatwhichmakesits truth,its meaning-itssubtleandpenetrating
essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone. ...
(p. 39)
Almost as if the unease inspiredby this outburst were too insurgent, its truth
too calamitous,the anonymousnarratorintervenesat this point to relieve Marlowe of the burdenof speaking.
Marlowe's verbal crisis has its origins in his incomprehension before the
jungle. Strickenby his inability to tell whether "the stillnesson the face of the
immensity looking at us were meant as an appealor as a menace"(p. 38), he
finds himself standing in a world of utter strangeness, closely akin to what
Camus called "that ravagedworld in which the impossibility of knowledge is
established"(Camus, p. 29). For Camus, we can live with the gap between
what we know and what we imagine that we know "so long as the mind keeps
silent in the motionless world of its hopes . . ." (Camus, p. 24). But the mo-
ment it speaks,the moment it attempts to captureits condition in words, "this
world cracksand tumbles:an infinitenumberof shimmeringfragments"(Camus,
p. 24). In other words, the absurdbegins at that moment when the rational
word attempts to grasp and to contain a world which is suddenlydiscoveredto
be but a "vastirrational"(Camus, p. 31). More severely,if before "thought had
discovered in the shining mirrors of phenomena eternal relations capable of
summing them up and summing themselvesup in a single principle"(Camus,
p. 23), the vanishing of these mirrors, the collapseof mimesis, provokes a crisis
which goes beyond the problem of expressibility and threatens the essential
44 Conrad'sHeart of Darkness
the factthatanidentityof the subjectitself. It becomespossibleto contemplate
otherbeingmayremainforeverunknown,andthatthereis "inhim something
irreduciblethat escapesus" (Camus,p. 17). Morethan this, one becomesa
strangerto oneself.
Similarly,if Marloweis strickenby his inabilityto interpretthe landscape,
this failureoccasionsthe infinitelymoreseverecrisisof not knowingwho he
andhis companions
werethemselves:
"Whatwerewe who hadstrayedin here?"
the absurdmaybe postponedby the ilFor
Camus
this
tumble
before
(p. 39).
lusionthatone mayknow otherpeoplethroughtheirwork, theirbehavior,by
"I candefinethempractically,apthe totalityof theirdeeds,thatis, practically:
."
.
them
preciate
practically (Camus,p. 18). Equally,if Marlowehasno natural
inclinationfor work, what he doeslike is "whatis in the work-the chanceto
findyourself. Yourown reality-for yourself,not for others-what no other
mancaneverknow"(p. 41). Work cantemporarily
rivetthe gapbetweenapthe
hole"
and
can
"stop
pearance knowledge,
(p. 40). Nevertheless,he surrendersto the admissionthat otherscan only see the "dumbshow, and never
tell what it reallymeans"(p. 41). For as Camus,in turn, puts it: "all true
canbe enumerated"
knowledgeis impossible.Solelyappearances
(Camus,p. 18).
one
can
return
at
Franklin's
this
to
"discovered
Again
point
plot"of colonial
life. What is inexpressible
for Marloweis now not only the physicalsurfaceof
the Congo, but, increasingly
fromthispoint, the depthsof his own being. As
Franklinobserves:"Thequestionno longerconcernswhatthe new landsare,it
centersinsteadon who the voyageris, on how his experiencehas alteredhis
essentialnature. His locationthus mattersonly as a sign of his identity. And
his language,difficultand even eccentric,mirrorsthe extremityof his actual
fate"(Franklin,
the subtlerelationbetweenthe colonial
p. 6). Hereone discovers
and
that
the
absurd.
of
predicament
In TheMythof Sisyphus,
Camusgiveseloquentexpressionto a travailin the
modernmind quite similarin its essentialsto this crisisin the colonialnarrative. If, asJonathanCrewehas suggested,in this way "thecolonialwriteris
in the modern
merelya specialcaseof the Europeanwriter,andhis predicament
is
in
an
some
and
a
writer's
age
waysonly exaggeration
portentof the European
then an inquiryinto this sharedpredicament
predicament,"
mayperhapsmost
profitablybeginby placingConradmoreexplicitlyalongsideCamus,whom he
by fortyyears.18
anticipated
TheabsurdbeginsforCamuswhentheworldevadesfora momentthe attempt
to reduceit to the human. All thoughtis inherentlyanthropomorphic.
Understandingthe worldis nothingotherthan"reducingit to the human,stamping
it with his seal"(Camus,p. 20). When for a momentthe world escapesthe
illusorymeaningwith whichit hasbeenclothed,it becomesitselfagain,primitive andutterlystrange.Thisis the intellectualmaladycalledthe absurd,when
somethinginhumanis discoveredto lie at the heartof all reality. At such a
Anne McClintock 45
moment, "the primitivehostilityof the world risesup to face us acrossmillennia.
For a second we cease to understandit, because for centuries we have understood in it solely the imagesand designsthat we had attributedto it beforehand"
(Camus, p. 20). Camus would have it that such moments "run through all
literatureand all philosophies"(Camus, p. 22). If this is so, and it is arguable,
it almost certainlywould seem that one has here not so much a psychological
universalas a recurrentideological trauma,historicallyoccasioned,when a particular tradition of thought is brought face to face with conditions now discovered by historicalchange to be utterly unaccountable. In this regard, it is
not surprisingthat the colonial landscape,facing the historicalinterloperin all
its strangenessand inexpressibility,comes at certainmoments to reveal,in flashes
and intimations, that primitivehostility which is the preliminaryto the absurd.
Marlowe's dream-likepenetrationof the Congo is presentedas a regression
to the beginning of time, to a time beyond the recall of memory. If the narrativebegins with the "augustlight of abiding memories"(p. 6) lying upon the
venerableThames "crowdedwith memoriesof men and ships" (p. 7), then the
journey into the interior is a discovery in part of the darknessof cultural amnesia, the exploration of a profound cultural loss: "We could not understand
because we were too far and could not remember,because we were traveling
in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign and
no memories"(p. 51). As Dan Jacobsonhas written, "a colonial culture is one
which has no memory."19 This collapse of memory, however, is, more properly speaking, a collapse of mimesis. Cut off from everything he had once
known, Marlowe can find no consoling image in the aspectof the landscape. It
becomes a landscapewithout signs. Yet, in describing the landscapeas "prehistoric"(p. 51), as "primeval"(p. 49), as "the night of first ages" (p. 51), Marlowe consequentlyhas effecteda curious displacementthat projectshis own culturalloss outwardson to the landscapeas an attributeof Africaitself: primitive,
infantile, and incomplete.
This is Marlowe'splight, the impossibilityof representinga landscapewhich
has completely escapedall known ways of representingit. The degree to which
it becomes "impossibleto tell" now encompasseseverything before him: "The
earth seemedunearthly"(p. 51). This is much less a descriptionof an attribute
of the landscapethan it is the expression of a failure to describe, of an acute
verbalimpasse,coupled as it is with Marlowe'srecognition that he must speak,
whatever the cost. In "unearthly,"as elsewhere in Conrad, the negative affix
itself comes to carry a thematic value of its own, signaling that the world can
be known and describedonly in terms of what it is not. The negative affix is a
grammaticalsign of the inscrutabilityof the universe and of a consequent failure of mimesis. The attribute "unearthly"is nothing more than a dialectical
negation of its object "earth,"and both are held together uneasilyby the suggestion that even this may be mere appearance:"seemed." More suggestively,
46 Conrad'sHeart of Darkness
because the world has escapedlanguage, it takes on an inimical and hostile appearance:"thereyou look at a thing monstrousand free"(p. 51). This is the discoveryof the absurd,the discoveryof to what degreethe world is "so impenetrable
to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness"(p. 79). Yet at this point, I
suggest, one finds in Marlowe a resistanceto the full implicationsof the absurd,
one which initiates an alternativerepresentationof the landscapeand an attempt
to returnonce more to interiority.
At the moment of the absurd, "strangenesscreeps in: perceiving that the
world is 'dense,' sensing to what degree a stone is foreign and irreducibleto us,
with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us" (Camus, p. 20).
There are two notions implicit in this statement. At such a moment, the fiction of interiority collapses. The world no longer encloses a secret meaning,
but becomesimpenetrableto human thought and, therefore,meaningless. More
than this, the trauma provoked by this collapse of the ancient center is projected back onto the landscapeitself, becoming invested in it as a "primitive
hostility," a malignity capableof negating the human who faces it. Here one
has the return to anthropomorphism. Such a moment was prefiguredin Marlowe's first confrontation with the African coast. A considerablymore severe
collision with the "density" of the world is enacted when Marlowe is barely
eight miles from Kurtz, paradoxically,that is, at the very moment of penetrating
the Inner Station. Dusk falls, preventing further passage, and Marlowe pulls
into the center of the stream. What follows is so striking that it may be quoted
in full:
Thereachwasnarrow,straight,with high sideslikea railwaycutting. The dusk
cameglidinginto it long beforethe sun had set. The currentransmoothand
swift, but a darkimmobilitysat upon the banks. The living trees,lashedtogetherby the creepersand everyliving bush of the undergrowth,might have
beenchangedinto stone,evento the slenderesttwig, to the lightestleaf. It was
not sleep-it seemedunnatural,like a stateof trance. Not the faintestsoundof
anykindcouldbe heard. You lookedon amazed,andbeganto suspectyourself
of beingdeaf-then the nightcamesuddenly,andstruckyou blindaswell. About
threein the morningsomelargefishleapt,andthe loud splashmademejump as
thougha gun hadbeenfired. When the sun rose, therewas a white fog, very
warmandclammy,andmoreblindingthanthe night. It did not shiftor drive;
it was just there, standingall aroundyou like somethingsolid. At eight or
nineperhaps,it liftedas a shutterlifts. We hada glimpseof a toweringmultitude of trees,of the immensemattedjungle, with the blazinglittle ball of the
sun hangingover it-all perfectlystill-and then the white shuttercamedown
(p. 56)
again,smoothly,asif slidingin greasedgrooves....
Dark, silent, and unnaturally still, the very magnitude and profusion of the
forest becomes an emblem of the limits of understanding. The reach, set so
closely with trees, is the physical equivalent of Camus's "absurdwalls," denying the assaultsof reason and the appetite for conquest" (Camus, p. 25). The
AnneMcClintock 47
landscapehas become utterly dense, changed to stone; the white fog is itself
"like something solid." The landscapebecomes in this way the tangible expressionof the resistancethat the world throws up beforeits invasionby reason.
Marlowe characteristicallyfigures the dread this inspires in him in terms of
stasis and silence and, once again, with qualifications:"might have," "as if,"
"seemed,"mirrora perceptualindecisiveness,an inability to passclearjudgment
on the world. As is often the case in Conrad, impenetrabilityis closely associated with darkness, with the absence of vision in both its senses. At once
Camus's"strangeness"creeps in: "You look on amazed,"and the psychic toll
that this rite of passageinto an irrationalworld exacts is again projectedonto
the landscapeas an active power to negate the human; it literally strikes Marlowe deaf and blind.
As is the case in almost all of the extended, and in many of the brief, descriptions of the landscapein Heartof Darkness,what appallsMarlowe most of all is
the refusalof the landscapeto speak. With ritualisticinsistence,Conraddescribes
the landscapefor most of the book as silent, refusingto yield up its "unspeakable
secrets"(p. 89). This is repeatedwith such frequencythat silence graduallybecomes the definitive attribute of the landscape. Why should the landscapebe
figuredin this way, by an attributewhich is the sign of an absence? In the following passage the jungle is representedalmost exclusively by negative attributes, by silenceand its associate,immobility:
The smellof mud, of primevalmud, by Jove!was in my nostrils,the highstillnessof primevalforestwas beforemy eyes . . . over the greatriverI could see
througha sombregap, glittering,glittering,as it flowedbroadlyby withouta
murmur.All thiswas great,expectant,mute,while the manjabberedabouthimon theface of this immensitylookingat us
self. I wonderedwhetherthe stillness
two weremeantas anappealor as a menace.Whatwerewe who hadstrayedin
here? Couldwe handlethatdumbthing, or wouldit handleus? I felt how big,
how confoundedly
talk,andperhapswas deafas
big, was thatthing thatcouldn't
well. Whatwasin there?
(p. 38, my emphases)
What one findsin Marlowe'srepresentationof the landscapeas mute is, I suspect, both the imminent recognition of an absurdworld and a traumaticresistance to such a recognition. It reflectsan unwillingness to surrenderinteriority
("What was in there?"),which takes the form of accounting for the absenceof
meaningas a calculatedwithholding of meaningby a malign but living presence:
"The woods . . looked with the air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachablesilence" (p. 81). There are frequent examples of this,
but the most revealingoccurs as the steamboatpenetratesdeeperand deeperupriver on its approachto the Inner Station. Despite its deceptive profusion, the
jungle is portrayedas a place of extreme deprivation,describedagain by what it
lacks:"An empty stream,a great silence,an impenetrableforest"(p. 48). "There
was no joy" in the sunshine, only a sense of great loss, a loss of memories, bear-
48 Conrad'sHeart of Darkness
ings, and senses. This is to say that the plenitude of jungle life only conceals a
formlessnessdeeply hazardous to the explorers. And overshadowing it all is
the silence and the realization that this silence "did not in the least resemble a
peace. It was the stillness of an implacableforce brooding over an inscrutable
intention. It looked at you with a vengefulaspect.... The innertruthis hiddenluckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same;I felt its mysteriousstillnesswatching
me . .." (p. 49).
The colonial intruderwho cannot find words to fit the landscapestands in a
world gone suddenlyquiet. The silence of the Congo jungle embodies in this
way both Marlowe's own sense of the inexpressibleand his resulting panic at
having been deprivedof truth and meaning. As Camus expressesit, the absurd
is born in this confrontationbetween the human urge toward unity and reason
and "the unreasonablesilence of the world" (p. 32). The absence that silence
signifies is the absenceof meaning, and the absenceof meaning for Marlowe is
so calamitousthat it is seen at moments as capableof threateningthe mind with
extinction:
We stopped,andthe silencedrivenawayby the stoppingof our feetflowedback
againfromthe recessesof the land. The greatwall of vegetation,an exuberant
massof trunks,branches,leaves,boughs,festoons,motionlessin the moonlight,
was like a riotinginvasionof soundlesslife, a rollingwave of plants,piledup,
crested,readyto toppleoverthe creek,to sweepeverylittle manof us out of his
littleexistence.Andit movednot.
(p. 43)
Again the superficialprofusionof jungle forms concealsonly an implosivechaos.
Insteadof being penetrable,the landscaperevealsits power to invade and to engulf the mind; it embodies an annihilatingpotential which is arrestedhere, but
barely. Unable to rest with the fact of an utterly meaninglessworld, Marlowe
resists the implicationsof this confrontation, and, by a curious transformation,
anthropomorphizesthe landscape, whereupon it becomes a living presence.
Meaning is thus upheld, though it may horrify.
If the silence reflects the fact that "the inner truth is hidden," then it is revealing that, at the very moment in which Marlowe penetratesto the InnerStation, the landscapebegins literally to howl: "A complaining clamour, modulated in savagediscords, filled our ears. ... It seemed as though the mist itself
had screamed"(p. 57). Later, "the bush began to howl" (p. 65). If the landscapehas at last begun to revealits "unspeakablesecrets,"these are most clearly
embodied in the Africans themselves. In this last representation,the fraught
and dangerouscontradictionsin the depictionof the landscapeare fully embodied.
At the very moment that the Congo jungle verges on the absurd, its native
inhabitantsbecome fully visible for the first time. Yet this does not constitute
a return to rationality, a reconciliationwith the real world momentarilylost in
the inexpressiblewilderness. Rather, the Africansbecome a tangible expression
of something intolerablethat Marlowe has glimpsed beyond the absurd. In his
AnneMcClintock 49
descriptionof the Africans, there are no signs of orderlyvillage life, no hints of
routine, domestic communality. Marlowe presents us instead with a glimpse
into a deliriouschaos, a frenzieddisorder,a "blackand incomprehensiblefrenzy"
(p. 51). The evocationis so powerfulthat one has to remindoneselfhow remote
it is from what would have been the "actualfacts of the case" in the Congo of
the time, even if one takes into account the ravages of Belgian rule. Congo
Africans were in no sense "Prehistoricman" (p. 51). They were not still belonging "to the beginnings of time," with "no inherited experience to teach
them as it were" (p. 58), and were not "rudimentarysouls" (p. 72). More
properly, these attributescome to be seen as projectionsoutward of Marlowe's
own discoveryof historicalabandonment.
Marlowe's Africans are persistently dehumanized and derealized. They
"howled and leapedand spun and made horridfaces"(p. 51). There is no unified
perspective;their bodies are virtually dismembered. One is offered glimpses of
"a whirl of black limbs" (p. 51), stamping feet, clapping hands, a riot of indistinct forms which do not walk or run, but ratherleap, glide, flit, and howl.
In other words, they betray all the signs of an uninterruptedDionysiac frenzy.
The banks of the Congo present so fantastica spectaclethat Marlowe can only
describeit as "an enthusiasticoutbreakin a madhouse"(p. 51). At certain moments, the Africans literally merge with the landscape("The bush began to
howl" [p. 65]), taking on in the process attributes of primeval formlessness
that previouslyhave been ascribedto the jungle itself. More suggestively, they
become the tangible embodiment of the mysterious presenceMarlowe has felt
watching him. If the jungle silence has signifieda concealedtruth, the Africans
present the spectacle of this truth made visible: "Still, I had also judged the
jungle of both banks quite impenetrable-yet eyes were in it, eyes that had seen
us" (p. 61). It is as ritualistica moment as when Schiller'syouth lifted the veil
at Sais, and the revelationis as catastrophic:". .. as though a veil had been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts,
arms, legs, glaring eyes-the bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening, of bronze colour" (p. 64).
The merging of jungle and Africanis given fullest expressionin the depiction
of Kurtz's lover, as Marlowe repeats an almost incantatoryformula by which
they are equated. Earlierthe wilderness was evoked as "an implacableforce
brooding over an inscrutable intention" (p. 48). Now, in almost identical
terms,Kurtz'sconsorthas an "airof broodingover an inscrutablepurpose"(p. 87).
In mating with her, Kurtz has literally mated with those "forgotten and brutal
instincts" (p. 94) that Africa is now seen to embody. Africais itself the purest
expressionof those "primitiveemotions"(p. 98) that lie dormantwithin rational
man as the psychic residueof a primitive past now dangerouslyawakenedfrom
its slumber. Again one witnesses a displacement. The recognition of remote
kinship that the African frenzy inspires in Marlowe is projected back to the
50 Conrad'sHeart of Darkness
landscape:"theimmensewilderness,the colossalbody of the fecundandmysteriouslife seemedto look at her, pensive,as thoughit hadbeenlookingat the
imageof its own tenebrousandpassionatesoul"(p. 87). It is muchmorethe
case,however,that rationalmanis beingfullychallengedhereto peerinto his
own "creepythoughts"(p. 53).
What Marlowepresentsus in this glimpseinto psychicuproaris muchless
anattributeof anyapproximate
Africanculturethana projectiononto the Africanof a conditionof extremetraumathatis, moreproperlyspeaking,a feature
of the colonialmind. ThroughoutHeartof Darkness,
the shapeof the colonial
and
seems
from
the
to
now much more catasitself,
jungle
experience
erupt
from
the
inhuman"
Africans
who embodyits inner
"not
trophically
(p. 51)
truth. Africais revealedto be dangerousbecausethe colonialis theredelivered
to a worldwhereanythingcanhappen.It is, asthe managersays,"Anythinganythingcanbe donein this country"(p. 46). At thispointone profitablycan
recallCamusone finaltime. The absurd"allstartedout fromthatindescribable
universewherecontradiction,antinomy,anguishor impotencereins"(Camus,
p. 28). In otherwords,it beginswith the collapseof mimesis,wherethe failure
of representation
deliversthe mind to an unintelligibleand limiteduniverse.
In this universe,"man'sfate henceforthassumesits meanings. A hordeof irrationalshas sprungup and surroundshim until his ultimateend" (Camus,
p. 26). That is to say, the questionof the absurdbeginswith the collapseof
mimesisand ends with the full irruptionof the irrationalinto the conscious
mind.
The undoubtedlyracistdepictionof the Africansin Heartof Darknessas
canin this sensebe seento be
primitive,irrational,andhistoricallyabandoned
the overdetermined
of historicalcoincidence:that of the emerrepresentation
genceof the ideaof the irrationalin Westernthoughtandthe crisisof representationmademost acuteby the colonialpredicament.By escapingrepresentation,Africaliterallypresentsthe colonialmindwith "a hordeof irrationals"
with which it must contend;at the sametime, it presentsit with a fictional
arenain whichit candramatizefor itselfa crisiswhichis specifically
Western.
To a largeextent, therefore,when Marlowestruggleswith the "unfathomable
boatmendo not throwthemselvesupon
enigma"(p. 60) of why the "cannibal"
him ("Whyin the nameof all the gnawingdevilsof hungerdidn'tthey go for
us?"[p. 59]), he is not surrendering
simplyto a popularracistmisconception,
but, muchmoreimportantly,he is askingthat"fatefulquestion"Freudwas to
asksoonafter:
The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to
what extent their culturaldevelopment will succeedin mastering the disburbance
of theircommunallife by the human instinctof aggressionand self-destruction....
Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with
their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last
man.20
AnneMcClintock 51
In other words, what inner restraint may prevent the Western mind from
going ashore"for a howl and a dance"(p. 52)? It is in this sense that Marlowe
findsthe psychological"uproar"of Africaugly: "Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough"
(p. 51). It is the simultaneouslyfascinatedand revulsedrecognition with which
his fictional contemporary, Dr. Jekyll, was to greet his image in the mirror:
"When I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too was myself."21 Both Marlowe
andJekyll representthat moment when, for a number of historicalreasons, the
irrationalcan no longerbe held underground.As Dr. Jekyll sums it up: ". .. the
lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chaineddown, began to growl
for licence"(Stevenson,p. 446).
In conclusion, I would argue that the darkly ambiguous landscapeof Heart
Darkness
bearsthe tracesof a profoundideological dilemma. It would appear
of
that Conraddenouncesthe atrocityinflictedon the Congo Africanas a specifically
historicalatrocity inflicted on a morally innocent people. In order to do so, he
exposesthe fiction of colonizersas the harbingersof light by invertingthe sacred
quest. In effecting this representation, however, he commits himself to an
ideology of interioritywhich is itself attendedby certainideologicalconsequences.
These consequencesare graduallyrevealedto be in fraught contradictionwith
the emergent landscapeof the absurdthrown up both by the colonial experience and by the failure of mimesis. The full implicationsof the absurdare in
turn resistedby a return to interiority and the projectionof the irrationalonto
the Africans. In the process, as FrancisB. Singh has noted, "the darknessfirst
associatedwith the west gets reassociatedwith Africa."22This appearsto be in
part an inescapableconsequenceof ideological conflict between the idea of interiority and the absurd,a fraught defensivemeasureagainst an intractableimpasse. Indeed, as Conrad was himself to admit, "It will be a long time before
we have learnedthat in the great darknessbefore us, there is nothing that we
need fear."23 It is in this sense, then, that the Congo of Heartof Darknessis a
country of the mind, a dream-worldcolonized for western literaturewhere the
late nineteenth-century,waking from its dreamof the Crystal Palace,could begin to contend with the horde of irrationalsspringing up around it. Finally,
then, if one is to restoreHeartof Darknessto its historicalmoment, less attention
should be paid to the "reflection"of certain local historical and biographical
facts in the book than to the necessarilymuch more difficult task of accounting
historicallyfor the ideologicaltraumathat scarsHeartof Darkness.
ColumbiaUniversity
Notes
1. The most notable of recent times is Hunt Hawkins, "Conrad's Critique of Imperialism in
Heartof Darkness,"
PMLA, 94 (1979), 286-99.
52 Conrad'sHeart of Darkness
2. Joseph Conrad, "Author's Note" to Youth(New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1959), p. 29.
3. FriedrichNietzsche, The Genealogyof Morals(New York: Doubleday& Co., Inc., 1956), p. 209.
4. Octavio Paz, AlternatingCurrent(New York: The Viking Press, 1973), p. 15.
5. Joseph Conrad, Heartof Darkness(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 18. All further
referencesto this text will be cited parenthetically.
6. M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1971),
pp. 146-50.
7. See Georges Poulet, The Metamorphoses
of the Circle (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Univ. Press,
1966).
8. Dante, VitaNova, XII, quoted in Poulet, xii.
9. Pic de la Mirandole, De Hominis Dignitate, Opera (Bale, 1601), I, p. 208, quoted in Poulet,
xxvi.
10. Paracelsus,ExplicitatioTotiusAstronomiae,Opera(Geneve, 1658), II, p. 649, quoted in Poulet,
xxvi.
11. This generalization, while valid, obscures many of the subtleties of the process. Again I
would refer to Poulet for a detailedanalysis.
12. This collapse provoked a deep intellectual panic still reverberating. One witness is the current critical obsession with the "gap." This notion of a de-centereduniverse requiresitself to be
historicallysituated.
13. Joseph Conrad, LastEssays(New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1926), p. 16.
14. Neal Ascherson, TheKing Incorporated:
LeopoldII in theAge of Trusts(London, 1963), p. 94.
15. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 18. All
furtherreferencesto this text will be cited parenthetically.
16. Wayne Franklin,Discoverers,
Explorers,Settlers(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 6.
17. Roland Barthes, WritingDegreeZero (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1961), p. 86.
18. Jonathan Crewe, in A Collectionof CriticalArticleson SouthAfricanLiterature,eds. D. MacLennanand S. Christie (Cape Town: David Phillip, 1975), p. 64.
19. Dan Jacobson,"Olive Schreiner:A South AfricanWriter,"in MacLennanandChristie,p. 117.
20. Sigmund Freud, Civilizationand Its Discontents(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.,
1961), p. 92.
21. R. L. Stevenson, StrangeCaseofDr. Jekyll andMr. Hyde (London: Heinemann, 1922), p. 434.
22. FrancisB. Singh, "The ColonialistBias of Heartof Darkness,"
Conradiana
X, I (1978), pp. 42-53.
23. Joseph Conrad, Notes On Life andLetters(London: Dent, 1921), p. 145.
Anne McClintock 53