Directions for Literary Impressionism assignment
(due Tuesday)
Do NOT simply copy a famous impressionist painting.
The invention of photography removed any obligation to reality that artists might have felt. Photography
supposedly told the truth in the most detailed way. (Think about Civil War photographs.) Impressionism inspired a
way of seeing different kinds of reality and different kinds of truth based on the contrast of light and dark and the
effect of shadows. (Think about the different colors of Monet’s waterlillies in different kinds of light at different
times of the day.) It all depends on the point of view. Atmospheric interference and changes in light alter human
perception. Literary impressionism implies a field of vision which is controlled by the conditions surrounding the
observer because our minds are usually busy by distractions. Intepretations of what we perceive are distorted by
habitual expectations.
For example, a British gentleman sitting in his leather club chair by a warm fire with a nice cup of tea brought to
him by a waiter in his private London club saw Africa differently than a native African. When the British gentleman
looked at Africa, it appeared primitive, dark, unknown, exotic with unnamed rivers and forests, a place of
exploration and exploitation. He did not consider that the secrets of Africa and the names of the rivers and forests
already belonged to the Africans. The gentleman could see the world only by the light of imperialism and
ethnocentricism. His misperceptions caused a tragic lack of vision that misinterpreted reality.
Joseph Conrad wrote, “Half of the book belongs to the author. The other half belongs to the reader.”
What to do:
1.Select one paragraph from anywhere in the first ten pages of Heart of Darkness. Choose one that has a
dominant color, image, or action.
2.Sketch an impression of the dominant color, image, or action from the selected paragraph. Use plain
white paper, not notebook paper. Crayons, pastels, colored pencils, markers, or watercolors are
acceptable.
3.Artistic skill is not required. Close reading of the paragraph is required. What is the chief impression?
4.Blurred images and colors, incomplete faces, and shadow/light variations will help your sketch.
5. Consult other images of impressionism online, including the pre-impressionism work of Constable and
Turner (especially their sea and storm paintings). Sometimes the artist paints a concept, not an object.
6.Write the first sentence of the paragraph (or the whole paragraph) on the back of your sketch. Write a
brief analysis of the dominant impression of color, shape, and mood of your selected paragraph. How
does the color or image affect the tone of the paragraph?
7.Sketches will be displayed in class.
For some of you this assignment may be the first time since elementary school that you have attempted an art
project. However, this art project is a reading project. Try to represent the impression that you have of the
selected paragraph, not the precise reality of the description. Very few of Conrad’s paragraphs attempt pictorial
precision. How observant are you? What kind of reality do you think the paragraph conveys? Hypothosize why.
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" Poor blind idiots. They want to see everything clearly through the fog."
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Monet about the critics who mocked his paintings.
Impressionism
The term Impressionism was derived from Monet’s painting “ Impression: Sunrise”(1873). The word was
used by the hostile art critic Louis Leroy as an insult to describe the first artists who exhibited this
technique, suggesting that the paintings were unfinished, lacking details and the meticulous,laborious
work that traditional artists had done. The artists, however, accepted the name with pride. More
sympathetic critics took up the term as an alternative legitimate category to describe visual experience
that was transitory and rapid: the Impression stamped on the senses rather than an attempt at strict
realism. The invention of photography made reality accessible in new ways that no longer needed an
artist’s efforts at exactness of replication.
In Heart of Darkness, the most obvious and immediate image of Impressionism is the mist or haze. The
novel begins with the description of the Thames having an "opaline haze." The haze warns the reader that
Marlow's tale will not be centered on but surrounded by its meaning. Conrad's meaning is only visible in
the unnoticed "dust particles and water vapor in a space that normally looks dark and void." This phrase
reminds the reader that one characteristic of Impressionist paintings is that the artist's subject is colored
by his representation of the atmospheric conditions through which it is observed. Monet's said to the
critics who mocked about his paintings, " Poor blind idiots. They want to see everything clearly through
the fog."
Heart of Darkness is mainly impressionist because of its acceptance to the limited and ambiguous nature
of individual understanding. In Heart of Darkness, the most apparent image of Impressionism is the haze.
The book is mainly Impressionist because of its acceptance to the ambiguous nature of individual
understanding. Marlow's journey through the Congo explores how "one individual's knowledge of another
can mysteriously change the way in which he sees the world." Marlow embodies uncertainty and doubt
and represents how much a man cannot know. Work gives an individual "the chance to find yourself.
Your own reality--for yourself, not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the
mere show, and never can tell what it really means." Conrad's visual description in Heart of Darkness is
another distinct aspect of impressionism.
TECHNIQUES of Literary Impressionism
1. Delay Decoding
Conrad is famous for withholding any sort of evidence a person can use to dissect the meaning of the
story. He presents a sense of impression but does not give or explain its meaning until later after the
narrator (or reader) has collected more evidence to try to make sense of it. The reader experiences some
of the same confusion that the character has because the pattern of clues does not immediately make
sense.
Atmospheric interference and changes in light alter human perception. Literary impressionism implies a
field of vision which is controlled by the conditions surrounding the observer because our minds are
usually busy by distractions. Intepretations of what we perceive are distorted by habitual expectations.
Marlow, for example, mistakes the unfamiliar short arrows for what is familiar to him (sticks). The
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helmsman’s death is vivid, but Marlow’s action of throwing overboard his perfectly good pair of shoes
and socks because they are soaked in the helmsman’s blood is surreal and unfamiliar.
2. Symbolism
Before Romanticism, symbolism was not common. Things were what they were with no deeper meanings
to inanimate objects. Symbolism involves giving aparticular object or event some larger, non-literal
meaning that reinforces or connects to a theme.
3. Allusion
1. Marlow's journey can be seen as his descent into hell. (Dante's Inferno allusions)
2.
- the two knitting women are "guarding the door of Darkness."
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- the two youths are "being piloted over"
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- company station in Brussels = Limbo
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- central station = the abode of fraudulent (Central Station Manager) and of hoarder (Brickmaker)
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-Kurtz = "traitor of kindred and country” = Lucifer
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Even though there is a strong parallel structure between the two stories, Heart of Darkness’s
allusions to the Inferno exist primarily to reinforce the novel’simagery of hell, specific sins
committed by the Europeans in Africa, and Marlow’s journey to the geographic and symbolic
heart of darkness where he finds the ninth circle and chief sinner, Lucifer. The use of the Inferno
allusions leaves no doubt about Conrad’s condemnation of Kurtz’s actions. The allusions are
symbolic of the hell created by the Europeans in Africa and the sins committed to do so.
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3. Light-Dark imagery
(And the reversal of traditional symbolism for light/dark to represent the reversal of expectations
or habit)
Marlow finds no moral darkness in the black inhabitants of Africa, thus undermining the
European, ethnocentric expectation that blackness suggests evil or inferiority. Instead, he links
many of the traditional negative connotations of darkness with the color white.
Examples:
the white invaders portray blindness, selfishness, and cruelty (epitomized by the Eldorado
Exploring Expedition)
Marlow’s reference to Brussels, headquarters of the ivory trading company, as a “whited
sepulcher” - a whitewashed tomb whose gleaming exterior contains a decomposing body. The
beautiful and prosperous city of Brussels, home to the ambitious King Leopold, is full of moral
rot on the inside.
the painting of the blindfolded white woman carrying a torch into the darkness
London’s bright city lights compared to a “place of darkness” when the Romans first arrived
The Chief Accountant’s surprising perfect, white suit in the middle of the jungle
The Intended’s pale white face emerging out of the darkness of her mausoleum-like house in
comparison to her all black clothing
In Brussels and the inner station, Marlow finds that light has lost its power to combat darkness.
Light degrades at times to cold, artificial brightness
the white strip of worsted (a tightly woven wool) around a native’s neck
4.Motif – color and pattern repetition
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Heart of Darkness
(1899 serialized; 1902 hardcover publication)
Literary impressionism, modernism, and the modern novel
1. Some tenets of impressionism: questioning "objectivity," static reality.
a. Late 19th-century French art movement - assuming that color is not inherent in a thing,
but changes according to light.
b. "Light" suggests point of view - "can you shed some light on my problem?"
c. Philosophical problem: in total darkness, or if we can't see things, do things exist?
"Thanks for pointing that out - I didn't see that."
d. Artist responsible for seeing what's actually there, not simply looking to find a
preconception of what should be there.
e. Perspective related to light: the shapes of things change according to the angle from
which they are viewed.
f. Visual technique of impressionism rejected by the prevailing Academy experts of the day
as insufficiently rigorous, classical, "proper."
2. French impressionists' enlistment of unusual techniques for "seeing" made them "see"
things that were considered inappropriate or obscene.
Example: Manet's "Olympe," a reworking of conventional Titian "Venus of Urbino." But
Manet, instead of painting Venus, shows her as being frankly a prostitute - all mythical wishfulfillment is stripped away and Manet sees her for what she is. Implicitly he indicts Titian as
a pornographer and a hypocrite. You can imagine how well this went over at the Academy.
3. Conrad’s contemporary literary impressionists - James, Woolf, Ford - and their
theories – break free of Victorian literary conventions.
a. Theory relatively new to the novel - changing from commercial format of Dickens
and Trollope.
b. Impressionism represents life through a single consciousness (What Maisie Knew
exemplifies the limited consciousness).
c. Perception itself - not action - is the novel's subject. "The novel. . .is a personal, direct
impression of life."
4. Little or unusual ordering of perceptions makes things messy but more realistic.
(Read section of Ford Madox Ford's "A Personal Remembrance" ) Time distorts.
5.
Sense impressions guide consciousness. We don't think abstractly - we tend to be
stimulated by things. Conrad called these "controlling images." Example: Heart of
Darkness and the rivets.
6. Moralizing - and the intrusion of an omniscient narrator - is forbidden as it
clouds the reader's judgment.
Virginia Woolf (in Modern Fiction) describing fiction in terms of light :
Life is not a series of lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the
end.
How does the reader apply the principles and techniques of impressionism to literary
impressionism?
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