Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
Dover
When Joseph Conrad unleashed his most celebrated novella in a three-part serialisation in the Edinburgh literary journal Blackwood's Magazine it was hailed as an instant classic. And with its thrilling narrative, universal themes and central message - there's evil in all of us - it has aged well.
Today, possibly more people know of the work as the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 cinematic epic Apocalypse Now. That film boldly moved the action from the Congo to Indochina during the Vietnam war, but was remarkably faithful to the spirit of the book.
Published in full in 1902, the influence of this journey up the Congo River (based on Conrad's real-life experiences) cannot be overstated. The Polish-born, globetrotting novelist ignited a whole new genre with this powerful work, and many intrepid scribes have contributed to the canon of spiritually bleak, hellish journeys towards perilous destinations, among them Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin and Graham Greene.
In Heart of Darkness, the character Kurtz is the wicked white man gone to seed in the tropics, while the narrator, Englishman Charles Marlow, is the shining light of virtue in the equatorial darkness. Marlow's boat voyage down the river to 'recover' Kurtz is a metaphor for this journey from the light of civilisation into the darkness of the unfathomable.
Marlow is hired by a Belgian trading company as a ferry boat captain in what is obviously (though Conrad never says so) the Congo Free State, a private fiefdom of Belgium's King Leopold II and cruelly misgoverned by some of the most cynical European colonisers Africa has ever known. Marlow is ostensibly tasked to transport ivory down the Congo River. However, his real assignment is to return Kurtz, an ivory trader, to 'civilisation'. What follows is chilling indeed.
Heart of Darkness is cleverly constructed. Marlow recounts his Central African misadventures to a group of enthralled mariners aboard a ship anchored in the Thames River Estuary, from dusk through to late night. The darkening of the sky over the Thames during key points of the story adds to the ominous mood.
Today's readers might find the prose heavy going but there's no disputing that Conrad takes us on a journey to darker parts of the human psyche than most writers of travel fiction have ever dared.
On the cusp of the 20th century it was the Congo Free State. Yesterday it was Liberia. Today it could be Somalia or half a dozen other nightmarish and lawless locales. But evil is evil, wherever it lurks. And the variety that Conrad illuminates most shockingly is European imperialism in distant lands.