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Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness

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Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness ENG-02-XI (1) Institute of Distance and Open Learning Gauhati University MA in English Semester 3 Paper XI Fiction III - The Twentieth Century Block 1 Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness Contents: Block Introduction: Unit 1 : Background Unit 2 : Introduction the Novel Unit 3 : Themes and Techniques (1) Contributors: Sanghamitra De : Lecturer in English (Units 1, 2 & 3) IDOL, GU Editorial Team: Dr. Kandarpa Das : Director IDOL, GU Dr. Uttara Debi : Asstt. Professor in English IDOL, GU Prasenjit Das : Asstt. Professor in English KKHSOU, Guwahati Manab Medhi : Guest Faculty in English IDOL, GU Sanghamitra De : Guest Faculty in English IDOL, GU Cover Page Designing: Kaushik Sarma : Graphic Designer CET, IITG April, 2011 © Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission in writing from the Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University. Further information about the Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University courses may be obtained from the University's office at IDOL Building, Gauhati University, Guwahati-14. Published on behalf of the Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University by Dr. Kandarpa Das, Director and printed at J.S. Printer, Silpukhuri, Guwahati, Assam. Copies printed 1000. Acknowledgement The Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University duly acknowledges the financial assistance from the Distance Education Council, IGNOU, New Delhi, for preparation of this material. (2) Block Introduction: In this second block of Paper VIII, we are going to read Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is one of the most enigmatic texts in modern fiction which has elicited multiple critical and often controversial responses from readers and critics. F. R. Leavis’ The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad (1948) ranked Conrad ‘among the very greatest novelists in the language or any language’. The novel is a brilliant fictional account of the rapacity and brutality which characterizes any ‘Civilizing Mission’. The enduring reputation of Heart of Darkness lies in its symbolic connotations and this novel provides ample evidence of the brutal ways in which the supposed emissaries of European civilization engage in plundering and thereby distorting the unique and innate essence of the lands immersed in darkness in the name of progress. Combining the elements of fable, allegory, romance, adventure tale, this novel has been at the centre of critical debate since its publication as the text questions the validity of the received notions of progress on which imperialism thrives and establishes the all-pervasive mechanism of control. Heart of Darkness is replete with paradoxes, duplicities and a sense of profound skepticism characterizes this celebrated novel. Debunking the myth of racial and cultural superiority of the European civilization, the text bears testimony to the horrors of the civilizing enterprise. The novel is significant for various reasons and as readers you should be able to address the complexity and rich intensity of Heart of Darkness. The units in this block are also designed with this aim of addressing and accommodating the multiplicity of critical responses to Conrad’s writing to help you find your own way of reading this text. This block is divided into three units. Unit 1 deals with the background of the novel which aims to provide you a detailed reading of the life-history and the works of the author, Joseph Conrad. Attempt has also been made to situate Heart of Darkness in the specific literary and socio-historical context. Unit 2 concentrates specifically on the text prescribed for study and here, attempts have been made to enable you to gain an overview of the novel by discussing the story in detail so that you find it easier to understand the various significant issues like the arrogance and hypocrisy of Imperialistic venture, racial stereotyping, the ‘philanthropic pretence’ of European civilization etc. Unit 3 builds on the previous units and deals with the various (3) themes and techniques of the novel. We have kept a separate unit on the themes and techniques which will make you aware of the intricacies of the textual production of a novel and will also enable you to discern the common threads in Heart of Darkness. Attempt has been made here to be comprehensive enough to leave room for further observations from your reading as reducing the bewildering complexity of Heart of Darkness remains impossibility. We have added as much necessary information as you need to conceptualize your understanding of Conrad and the text prescribed but the limited space remains a constraint. So, we hope that the list of suggested readings will help you for further reading and you will add on to the ever-growing corpus of critical readings on Joseph Conrad. Contents of Block I– Unit 1: Background Unit 2: Introducing the Novel Unit 3: Themes and Techniques (4) Unit 1 Background Contents: 1.1 Objectives 1.2 Introduction 1.3 Biographical Sketch (1857-1924) 1.3.1 Life at Sea 1.3.2 The Sea and Conrad’s Fiction 1.3.3 A Life of Literary Work 1.4 Placing the Work 1.5 Summing up 1.1 OBJECTIVES This is the first unit of Block II. The aim here is to provide you with a general introduction to Joseph Conrad and his fictional oeuvre. An attempt has also been made here to acquaint you with Heart of Darkness, the novel prescribed for study. After finishing the unit you will be able to • gain a comprehensive knowledge of the novelist’s personal and national identity • relate the novel to Conrad’s personal history • locate the text in its proper context • identify the nature of his literary preoccupations 1.2 INTRODUCTION Joseph Conrad, a Polish-born English novelist, is one of the English writers of fiction. He was a significant forerunner of modernist literature and influenced many writers like Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, William S. Burroughs, John Maxwell Coetzee. The sense of living the life of an exile and a sense of betrayal haunt Conrad’s fiction who was naturalized as a British citizen in 1886. Conrad was a victim of the oppressive (5) Russian rule in Poland as his upbringing shows. His novels and his essays on sea-life and various marine disasters, reflect his innate fascination for marine life. The mutual bonding amongst the sea-going sailors led to Conrad’s tributes to the simple souls of seafarers like the archetypal Old Singleton of The Nigger of the Narcissus. His stories of the sea are also filled with the reflections of his nearness with the sea. In his Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus, Conrad (1961: 27-28) states that his goal as a writer was “to snatch in a moment of courage from remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life . The task approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its color, its form; and through its movement, its form and its color, reveal the substance of its truth—disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment.” Almost all his works were written during the period of British imperialism and Conrad drew upon his experiences in the French and the British Merchant Navy. Conrad’s texts therefore reflect various aspects of the rule of the empire and the outcome and also with the different layers of complexity of the human psyche in a unique prose style rich with ambiguity and multiplicity of viewpoints. Modernism and the novel “In the course of the nineteenth century, the novel established itself as a genre of unparalleled variety, range and depth. By the turn of the century, . it seemed that this sophisticated medium had no more territory left to develop, for it turned upon itself. Among some of its most important practitioners, the novel’s degree of self-analytical presentation markedly increased; its obsessions with its own tactics of structure and design grew; it became markedly more ‘poetic’, in the sense that it became more concerned with precision of texture and form, more disturbed by the looseness of prose as popular written usage. ... The Modernist phenomenon of what might be called ‘narrative introversion’ needs to be carefully distinguished from something familiar in the entire history of fiction and somewhat analogous, the mode of self-conscious narration. The novel has always conducted complicated transactions between its propensity toward realism, empirical detailing, the illusion of facticity, and elements of form and making involved in the realistic illusion..... (6) ................................. In his pursuit of his ‘difficult’ subject, then, Conrad deploys a considerable virtuosity of narration which draws our attention as readers. (p.398 John Fletcher and Malcolm Bradbury) 1.3 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH (1857-1924) Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, better known as Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born in Podolia which is now part of the Soviet Ukraine. His father, Apollo Korzeniowski, was an aristocrat without land, a poet and translator of English and French literature. Conrad’s parents, Apollo Korzeniowski and Evelina Bobrowski, came of the Polish nobility and opposed the Tsarist domination of Poland. As a boy, young Joseph grew up reading Polish and French versions of English novels with his father who encouraged his son to read voraciously in French and Polish. Conrad’s father introduced him to the works of Dickens, Fenimore Cooper, Marryat in Polish and French translation and thereby helped to shape Conrad’s deeper aspirations. When Apollo Korzeniowski became embroiled in political activities, he was sent to exile with his family to Volgoda, northern Russia, in 1861.
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