1. „Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray—a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate. Consequently Africa is something to be avoided just as the picture has to be hidden away to safeguard the man’s jeopardous integrity. Keep away from Africa, or else! Mr. Kurtz of Heart of Darkness should have heeded that warning and the prowling horror in his heart would have kept its place, chained to its lair. But he foolishly exposed himself to the wild irresistible allure of the jungle and lo! the darkness found him out.” Achebe, 261

2. Joseph Conrad

3. Born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Berdyczów, Poland, under Russian rule
Father imprisoned in Warsaw Citadel for his involvement in resistance to Russian Empire „In the courtyard of this citadel…my childhood memories begin.”
Family moved around to Vologda, Ukraine, Krakow. Both parents died
Brought up by maternal uncle
His uncle intended him for a naval career, sent him to Marseilles in 1874 at the age of 16, travelled on French merchant ships to the Caribbean
1878 signed on an English ship and came to England
Gained master’s certificate in sailing in 1886 and became British citizen
After traumatic experience in Congo in 1890 and voyage to Australia in 1893, settled in London in 1896, married and Englishwoman and began career as a writer
First major success: Almayer’s Folly

4. „It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while looking at a map of Africa at the time and putting my finger on the blank space then representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said to myself with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are no longer in my character now: ‚When I grow up I shall go there’” (A Personal Record, 1912)

5. „At this time the Congo, although nominally an independent state, the Congo Free State…was virtually the personal property of Leopold II, king of Belgium, who made a fortune out of it…from 1885 to 1908 masses of Congolese men were worked to death, women were raped, hands were cut off, villages were looted and burned. What Conrad saw in 1890 shocked him profoundly and shook his view of the moral basis of colonialism…’Before the Congo I was just a mere animal.’” Norton Anthology, 1890

6. • “In the essay Geography and some explorers Conrad describes the imperial exploitation he observed in Africa as ‘the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration.” Norton Anthology, 1886

7. • “In 1876 Leopold called a conference in Brussels to examine the African situation and, as he expressed it, ‘to open to civilization the only part of our globe where Christianity has not penetrated and to pierce the darkness which envelops the entire population.’ “

8. High modernism: personal sense of truth is also universal, therefore relevant

9. Rendering timeless and universal significance to the present moment: applying multiple points of view, using time shifts, flashback, juxtaposition of events, ambiguity

10. • “In modernism the writer enters the consciousness of the characters, and often these characters can hardly be distinguished from the autobiographical self of the writer, difficult to follow who is speaking”–from lecture notes

11. • “Art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to the light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect.” –Conrad

12. „Although Einstein did not advocate calling his theory ‚relativity’ (suggesting instead the name ‚invariance’ theory to reflect the unchanging character of the speed of light, among other things), the meaning of the term is now clear. Einstein’s work showed that concepts such as space and time, which had previously seemed to be separate and absolute, are actually interwoven and relative.” Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe, 51

13. • “…he helped develop modern narrative strategies—frame narration, fragmented perspective, flashbacks and flash-forwards, psychologically laden symbolism—that disrupt chronology, render meaning indeterminate, reveal unconscious drives, blur boundaries between civilization and barbarism, and radically cast in doubt epistemological and ethical certainties” Norton Anthology, 1886

14. • Conrad is concerned with finding the truth (as opposed to beauty) and justice. Conrad wants to reveal universal truths about human nature –from lecture notes

15. Are truth and beauty different?

16. • “Many of his works expose the difficulty of true communion, while also paradoxically exposing how communion is sometimes unexpectedly forced on us, often with someone who may be on the surface our moral opposite, so that we are compelled into a mysterious recognition of our opposite as our true self.” Norton Anthology, 1886

17. • “It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts. It was somber enough too—and pitiful—not extraordinary in any way—not very clear either. No. Not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.” Conrad, Heart of Darkness

18. • “Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. “ Achebe, 257

19. • “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 the very essence of dreams…No it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream—alone.” 30

20. „His was an impenetrable darkness
„His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.”

21. „’You knew him best,’ I repeated. And perhaps she did
„’You knew him best,’ I repeated. And perhaps she did. But with every word spoken the room was growing darker and only her forehead smooth and white remained illumined by the inextinguishable light of belief and love.”

22. „’Yes, I know,’ I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her—from which I could not even defend myself.”