without my edition of the book (it's green; has a balding, bearded guy and some jungle on the cover; and starts with the secret sharer) these comments may not make much sense. oh, well.
65
“sea and the sky were welded together without a joint…”
name of where they are: Gravesend
Captain is like a god
66
“Marlowe sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzenmast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms outwards, resembled an idol”
Bhudda plus three crosses…JC
“serenity became less brilliant but more profound”
“Reach Rested unRuffled…”
glorification of the past (ed: is it really glorification? Probably quite the opposite in retrospect)
67
“the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs o empires.”
All light, except the town…
“and this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
This?
Marlowe not like this (ed: the narrator claims that Marlowe not the typical seamen but is instead a wanderer…)
Sea=sameness=simplicity
68
first storyteller vs. marlowe
“a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing”
how marlowe believes you find TRUTH (ed: Marlowe believes that something’s meaning isn’t inherent but found from outside) how to interpret it, it’s a murky process
TIME
Eng was like the Congo
69
Q: is Marlowe talking about English history or his own experience?
“darkness”
“and in some inland post feel the SAVAGERY, the utter SAVAGERY, had closed around him—all that MYSTERIOUS life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of WILD men”
“fascination of the abomination…the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.”
Another Buddha pose
“men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness.”
Marlowe: conquering (the darkness?) is also a black deed.
70
“one of Marlowe’s inconclusive experences.”
LIGHT
“it seemed somehow to throw a kind of LIGHT on everything about me…no, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of LIGHT”
71
hee hee: “well, we won’t talk about that.”
“…but could not shake the idea. The snake had charmed me.” Mystery/charm vs. darkness
“I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul.” Nate asks, “a cheerleader?”
72
senseless death and terror
73
“…a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones…” compare to dead captain.
Danger=fascinating “I was going into the yellow. DEAD in the centre. And the river was there—fascinating—deadly—like a snake.”
74
“a white-haired secretary…beckoned me into the SANCTUARY.”
“and there was something OMINOUS in the atmosphere…I don’t know—something NOT QUITE RIGHT;”
“The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me.”
(ed: compare these europeans at the beginning to something later in the text…)
-big section marked
75
“..though the house was as still as a house in A CITY OF DEAD…”
foreboding
Dr.’s theory of insanity
76
Stay CALM
“Something like an EMISSARY OF LIGHT, something like a lower sort of APOSTLE.”
Sexist?
77
“Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thing about an enigma. There it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, ‘Come and find out.’”
78
ABSURD! (ed: referring to the shelling of blank countryside)
79
sounds fun! (ed: referring to “the general sense of vague and oppresive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary PILGRIMAGE amongst hints for nightmares)
something gets in yer’ head (ed: referring to a suicide)
80
“The thing looked as DEAD as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of DECAYING machinery…”
“They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, DEATHLIKE indifference of unhappy savages.” I can’t believe I’m reading this for fun—must need my daily dose of death and decay.
81
“After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.” Presence=participation.
“…sort of life I had blundered into. I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! These were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you.” (ed: racist or actually condemning westerners…or both?)
okay, this is a sane and moral man’s reaction (ed: uh-oh, that was from my initial reading…perhaps I missed the racist tones on the first reading…uh-oh)
hee hee: “I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn’t a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been conneted with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do. I don’t know.” (ed: he’s sarcastic, right? So racist?)
“Inferno” = opposite
82
DEATH = disease, freedom…
“…a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which DIED OUT SLOWLY.” Parallel to true death (ed: should I be interested in the WHITE flicker…?)
“…he kept up his appearance. That’s backbone.”
84
“Mr. Kurtz…he is a very remarkable person.”
86
“I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.”
87
“Everybody had behaved splendidly! Splendidly!”
!
something faintly mysterious (re: manager)
88
“He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man.”
Hmmmmmmm….(re: “he sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as thought it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.”)
89
“I flung out of his hut…”
“They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of FAITHLESS PILGRIMS BEWITCHED inside a rotten fence.”
“…waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.” Could be either…
what are staves?
90
it is both powerful, profound, and ALIVE…as opposed to the dead man.
91
he he: “anyway, it could not be found there and as it was not liely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was WAITING for.”
Mixed up: “but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me.”
92
a Kurtz wanna’ be
93
thus 2 candles go dark “he blew the candle out suddenly”
“…this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe”
95
“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams….”
Wow! The narrative breaks!
Narrator talks: “I listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clue to the FAINT UNEASINESS inspired by this narrative that seemed to SHAPE ITSELF WITHOUT HUMAN LIPS in the heavy night-air of the river.”
96
rivets. STEVE!
97
the meaning in work
98
ooh, someone’s having fun!: “I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck.”
END OF PART I
PART II
100
even language grows absurd: “ ‘Make rain and fine weather—one man—the council—by the nose’—bits of absurd sentences that got the better of my drowsiness…”
plotting, talk of kurtz
101
“Anything—anything can be done in this country…The danger is in Europe…” but
“Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.” –someone else talking. The role to be ‘good’
102
at news of donkey deaths: “They, no doubt, like the rest of US, found what they deserved.”
“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest....
103
inner reality vs. exterior reality
“I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at MY MONKEY TRICKS, just as it watches you fellows…”
104
good cannibals eat hippo meat
“Phoo! I can sniff it now…”
“Sometimes we came upon a station close by the bank…and the white men rushing out…with great gestures of joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very strange—had the appearance of being HELD THERE CAPTIVE BY A SPELL. The word ivory would ring in the air for a while—and on we went again into the silence…”
105
“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.”
“We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings…”
“…this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their HUMANITY—like yours—the THOUGHT OF YOUR REMOTE KINSHIP WITH THIS WILD AND PASSIONATE UPROAR. UGLY.”
Racist?! Yes, but grappling with it?
106
be TRUE. At least the natives are TRUE.
“The mind of man is capable of anything…”
107
uh-oh
108
“the simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases made me forget the junge and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably REAL.”
Cipher? (even the boat is dieing.)
109
“What did it matter what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this ffair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling.”
110
scary
“The rest of the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were concerned. Just nowhere.”
111
how unfair to the cannibals!
Steve
112
“One can’t live with one’s finger everlastingly on one’s pulse.”
113
all this in a seemingly frightening ordeal (re: the attack)
RESTRAINT
114
the boat brings grief
115
crazy creative descriptions—[?]
116
! the quiet attacks !
117
“ ‘Keep quiet!’ I said in a fury.”
119
“…his ability to talk, his WORDS—the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of LIGHT, or the deceitful flow from the HEART OF AN IMPENETRABLE DARKNESS.” (ed: yet we only hear kurtz speak less than twenty words or so in total)
120
“I couldn’t have felt more of lonely desolation”
shoe comment
its like a disembodied voice of the wilderness
121
first reference to the girl.
“The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of DARKNESS CLAIMED HIM FOR THEIR OWN.”
A dark, intoxicating affinity with it all
122
you’re either stupid, heavenly, or prey to the darkness….hmmmm don’t even know you’re tangling with darkness. How do you “breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated?”
123
‘whites like gods to savages’ K becomes suject of rites, who’s transforming who? Irony.
“ ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’ ” yikes
124
“Whatever he was, HE WAS NOT COMMON.”
“He had NO RESTRAINT, NO RESTRAINT—just like Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind.
125
“I had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes alone should have him.” (ed: Marlowe not so racist?)
126
“It’s all right,’ yelled back the other, as CHEERFUL as you please. ‘…I am glad.’ ”
127
“He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of SILENCE…(re: Kurtz) you don’t talk with that man—you listen to him.”
128
Hey, maybe this is a novel about being alone; maybe its travel essay!
Something becomes clear…maybe its NOT all absurd: “ ‘this man has enlarged my mind.’ ”
END OF PART II
PART III
129
“The glamour of youth enveloped his parti-coloured rags, his destitution, his loneliness, the essential DESOLATION of his futile wanderings. For months…his life hadn’t been worth a day’s purchase; and there he was GALLANTLY<>
See 69. This (desolation) which marlowe is fascinated by.
“…as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes…” funny image
“If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this bepatched youth.” Pure adventure. (ed: and problems!). At first you think, ‘I like this guy.’ (ed: But) Kurtz = dangerous: “I must say that to me it (ed: his devotion to Kurtz) appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had come upon so far.”
(ed: notice its not nature, its not the natives, its Kurtz that marlowe paints as dangerous.)
130
rapturous conversation
“…never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so HOPELESS and so DARK, so IMPENETRABLE to human thought…”
they penetrate physically but not mentally—(ed: remind me,) who’re the brutes?
“ ‘Ah, it was worth waiting for!—sometimes.’ ” dude, tell me the ‘nottimes.’
“ ‘To speak plainly, he RAIDED the country,’ I said.” (ed: notice how close raid is to aid…so close yet sooo different.)
131
“they had never seen anything like it—and VERY TERRIBLE. He could be VERY TERRIBLE.”
Kurtz addicted; he can’t leave.
“desolate”
132
Yikes! (re: heads on posts)
133
“the manager said afterwards that mr. Kurtz’s methods had RUINED THE DISTRICT.” Thinking in terms of money or life or labor…?
“…had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic INVASION.”
“It echoed loudly within him because he was HOLLOW at the core…” (ed: an actual ellipse!)
tells of Kurtz being fascinated by his own darkness.
134
?he’s pulled by two forces: logic and conscience as he once knew it…and the blackness that has become kurtz.
CRAWLING into excuses.
“his voice lost itself in the CALM of the EVENING.” Vs. the westerner(s)
135
“I resented bitterly the ABSURD danger of our situation, as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been a dishonoring necessity."
(absurd?) You said it. He does a good job putting words together that don’t normally belong together (ie, dishonoring necessity)
“…I saw the thin arm extended commandlingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that appartition shining darkly far in its bony head that nodded with grotesque jerks.”
Random thought: I just saw a picture of the statue of N. Korea’s dead king. This reminds me of it.
“It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd…” You become what you crave.
Conrad connects metaphors: the forest breathes, Conrad breathes…they’re connected.
136
kurtz “I am glad.”
Then leave, return, woman.
137
“passionate soul” woman has power.
138
Kurtz rambles. Who’s he talking to. GREED.
“ ‘No method at all,’ ”
Ahhhh…(marlowe saying “nevertheless I think mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man….Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of NIGHTMARES.” Tell me, please, exactly what nightmare you chose.
139
“And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.” So tell the story and be resurrected? Oh. The secret sharer (wink)
“Mr. Kurtz’s REPUTATION.”
WOWZERS! : “Mr k’s reputation is safe with me.’ I did not know how truly I spoke.” (ed: and we don’t know how truly you spoke until the very END. Hmmmm…)
140
on the way to becoming another danny. Marlowe has more shoes.
he’s affected by kurtz but NOT the wilderness?
That dude (the clownish character) is cooler than kurtz (but just as misdirected)
I’m about to go see the 2 Towers at the cinerama. Is it fair to compare morodor with marlowe’s view of the congo?
141
he uses adjectives a lot…I wonder what dr. reinsma would think…
“the moral shock I received” ESCAPE?
Imminent onslaught = comfort? : “…the possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind…was positively welcome and composing. It pacified me…”
“it was WRITTEN I should be loyal to the NIGHTMARE OF MY CHOICE….the peculiar BLACKNESS of that experience.
“ ‘he can’t walk—he is crawling on all-fours—I’ve got him.’ ” Kurtz becomes an animal. Now who’s crawling?
142
“in that profound tone”
143
LOST
“he could not have been more IRRETRIEVABLY lost than he was….the ofundations of our intimacy were being laid—to endure—to endure—even to the end—and beyond.” Lasting
RACISM
“I tried to break the spell”
“He had kicked himself loose of the earth.”
He escaped—is this bad?
Kurtz’s dislodged self from reality YET marlowe describes reality as absurd too.
144
why such intensity to do anything?
A. being alone forces you to look soulward B. what’d he find? Nothing.
“But his soul was mad.”
Tension, tension, deadpan conclusion.
The boat: “splashing, thumping, fierce river-DEMON beating the water with its terrible tail and BREATHING black smoke…” who’s the demon?
“,,,strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language…” except that’s what they were.
145
“…as if the words had been torn out of him by a supernatural power.” ?
“only the BARBAROUS an dsuperb woman…” racist
“and then that IMBECILE crowd…started their little fun, and I could see nothing more for smoke.” Evil!
A break in the text…why?
“the brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness…” Kurtz=river?
146
I don’t think I quite understand the depths of what’s happening.
“…it had penetrated fourght for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.” Love and hate.
To marlowe, the role of the west: “this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings.”
Kurtz is battling with the wild: “ ‘oh, but I will wring your heart yet!’ he cried at the invisible wilderness.”
147
kurtz: “live rightly, die, die…” (author’s ellipse). Did he/does he think he did this?
“his was an impenetrable darkness.” M spends time with him but doesn’t know what he sees. You can penetrate the congo, but not kurtz.
“I saw on that IVORY face…sombre pride, of ruthless power, of crave terror—of an intense and hopeless despair.” Is this experienceing life’s emotions to the fullest and greatest extreme? You scrape all the pretense of humanity away and only horror remains?
“The horror! The horror!”
an epiphany BUT epiphanies are associated with light, NOT darkness.
148
“I blew the candle out…” DEATH. End of epiphany. And then k’s dead.
“the most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets.” Point of life=to gain knowledge of yourself. To realize your regrets.but marlowe says he got near death and had no epipanies. Thus k’s greatness (to m)
149
see the big pic.
“piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness…”
“I remember mistily”
now, snap, he’s back in europe. “…to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thougts. The were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretene, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew.” Because he’s set a part now.
150
“…from laughing in their faces so full of stupid importantce.” Again, the europeans.
“it was my imagination that wanted osothing.
151
“he was a universal genuis…”
“…he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything—anything.”
“…and took himself off with this PLUNDER.” Europe even raids the coffers of their own dead.
152
“…no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of TRUTHFULNESS upon those features.”
HAUNTING
153
“he wanted no more than justice—no more than justice.”
“…she seemed as htough she would remember and mourn FOREVER.”
“…fair hair…an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me.”
154
“her tone of despairing regret, the summing up whisper of his eternal condemnation.”
“Intimacy grows quickly out there…I knew him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.”
“He was a remarkable man…”
155
“she talked as thirty men drink.”
Her “he drew men towards him by what was best in them.” I don’t know about that.
“…the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness.”
Faith is illusion is dark.
156
her “men looked up to him—his GOODNESS shone in every act…” !!!
maybe I’ll get this the third time around
157
she would have been just like the natives
“ ‘ the last word he pronounced was—your name.’ ” !!!!
see 66
“the heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered k that justice which was his due…but I couldn’t I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether.” The narrator forsakes darkness; the truth can be a weapon of the darkness (ed: really? Hmmm…)
158
“…and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth…seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”
THE END
Initial ideas:
Travel novel?
Kurtz
Rag dude.
1 comment:
I just came across this blog and found it very interesting indeed.Thanks for sharing.
http://www.designerstudiosd.com/
Post a Comment