Lemmer: Heart of Darkness

The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, ‘followed the sea’ with reverence and affection, that to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled—the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the GOLDEN HIND returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be visit-ed by the Queen’s Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the EREBUS and TERROR, bound on other conquests— and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith— the adventurers and the settlers; kings’ ships and the ships of men on ‘Change; captains, admirals, the dark ‘interlopers’ of the Eastern trade, and the com-missioned ‘generals’ of East India fleets. Hunters for gold,  pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! ... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

...

‘And this also,’ said Marlow suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth.’

...

‘I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day.... Light came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine—what d’ye call ‘em?—trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries—a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too—used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke,  kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina— and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages,—precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay—cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death—death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes—he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful cli-mate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga—perhaps too much dice, you know—coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him—all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.’He paused.

‘Mind,’ he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower—‘Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force— nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. ...’He broke off.

Just as the tragic hero is nothing more than a projection of
the audience’s hopes and fears onto the stage, so Kurtz can be
said to be the embodiment of other people’s psychological
needs in Heart of Darkness. Accordingly, Marlow would like
to see in Kurtz the victory of Apollo over Dionysus, but that
victory belongs to the spectator of tragedy who has to mentally
follow the tragic hero into the Dionysian element without
losing his hold on the Apollonian principles that sustain his
civilized existence and sense of self. This is the symbolism of
Marlow’s tracking Kurtz down into the jungle, and returning
him back to the steamer without having to throttle him or
smash his head. However, to rescue the physical Kurtz from
the darkness is not enough; in order for Marlow to sustain his
Apollonian illusions, he must also salvage the myth of Kurtz
by interpreting his final verdict back on the steamer in such a
way as would make its import safe for civilization. Kurtz’ last
words themselves – “The horror! The horror!” (HD 111) – are
poised between light and darkness and are as ambiguous as
everything else about the man who utters them. They are said
to embody a “strange commingling of desire and hate” (HD
113) and, while Kurtz is uttering them, he seems to be
“embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe” (HD 117).
Yet Marlow, wishing to stress their redemptive quality,
interprets them as a “judgement” passed by Kurtz “on the
adventures of his soul on this earth” HD (112). The captain
also claims that Kurtz was a “remarkable man” because his last
words represent “the expression of some sort of belief” (HD
113). But Marlow is merely revealing in this way his own
desperate need to believe in a climate of extreme moral doubt

Rather than constituting a moral reflection on his
abominations, Kurtz’ last words may simply be the expression
of regret at the approach of death and the impossibility of
indulging any longer in “the gratification of his various lusts”
(HD 97). As Nietzsche pointed out,

It is not unworthy of the greatest heroes to yearn to live on
[...] so impetuously does the will in its Apollonian form
desire to live on that even lament becomes its hymn of
praise (BT 28).

This interpretation of Kurtz’ verdict is lent credence by the
manuscript of Heart of Darkness where Conrad originally
painted the picture of a totally unrepentant Kurtz: “I have lived
supremely”, says he, “I have been dead – and damned. Let me
go – I want more of it... More blood, more heads-on-stakes,
more adoration, rapine and murder.” Just as Kurtz’ author
deleted these dark words from the manuscript of the novel,
Marlow offers his listeners an optimistic rendering of Kurtz’
final verdict, as well as a civilized version of his report with the
savage postscript torn off, thereby reflecting the Conrad who
felt it the artist’s duty to sustain the illusions of civilization at a
time when they were being undermined by the discoveries of
science. This was Nietzsche’s position too: “We must plunge
right into the middle of those struggles which [...] are being
waged in the highest spheres of our contemporary world
between knowledge with its insatiable optimism and the tragic
need for art” (BT 85).140

What Marlow’s life-affirming misrepresentation of Kurtz’
verdict highlights is the way Hellenic serenity is no natural,
pre-lapsarian condition in man, but an Apollonian state of
innocence deliberately and laboriously affirmed in the face of
the Dionysian horrors of life. 101 Thus, regarding Kurtz’ famous
last words, Marlow claims that,
It was an affirmation a moral victory paid for by
innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by
abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why
I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even
beyond. (HD 113)

This Apollonian transformation of failure into victory reveals
its artificiality linguistically, as the single noun at the end of the
passage (“victory”) is unable to sustain the portentous
adjectival phrases that go before it (“innumerable defeats”,
“abominable terrors”, “abominable satisfactions”). For,
Marlow knows in his heart that the darkness is as “triumphant”
as it is “eternal” (HD 119), and that he cannot ultimately
defend himself against it. The same holds for Marlow cliché
phrase “and even beyond” which represents an attempt to offer
metaphysical consolation in a world deprived of God by
positing the existence of a spiritual realm and the survival of
the soul after death. Thus, through Apollo’s artistic
intervention, Silenus’ wisdom in Kurtz’ verdict is momentarily
stood on its head and life becomes desirable once more.
Nietzsche claimed that the triumph of the Apollonian over the
Dionysian is embodied most clearly in the epic poetry of
101
As Conrad wrote in “The Return” regarding the vital need to
fictionalize away unpleasant realities, “there is a moment of dumb
dismay, and the wanderings must begin again; the painful exploring
away of facts the feverish raking up of illusions, the cultivation of a
fresh crop of lies in the sweat of one’s brow, to sustain life, to make it
supportable, to make it fair” (Tales of Hearsay, 134).

141
Homer which affirms that “the very worst of all would be to
meet an early death, the second worst is to die at all” (BT 28)
and there is an echo of the spirit of epic in Marlow’s tale of the
“remarkable man” whose final verdict on life is said to have
had “candour”, “conviction”, and “a vibrating note of revolt in
its whisper” (HD 113). 102

The Apollonian yearning for beauty, order, and decorum
is therefore viewed as a life-affirming response to the
Dionysian knowledge of the agony, dissonance, and strife at
the heart of existence, so that tragedy is conceived as the
balance between Apollo and Dionysus, or “the concrete
Apollonian representation of Dionysian insights and effects”

(BT 51). Finally, Nietzsche’s whole theory of tragedy is
summed up in what he called “tragedy’s doctrine of the
mysteries” which comprises of “the fundamental knowledge of
the unity of all that exists, the consideration of individuation as
the original cause of evil, art as the presentiment of a restored
unity” (BT 60).