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Note: originally written for the course Critical Writing, Analysis & Interpretation, Anglo-

American University, Humanities and Social Sciences major, Spring 2009

By Ondřej Šmejkal

Heart of Darkness – Contextual Overview and Interpretation

From the center of damnation,

to the outskirts of Hell

Via Negativa, Kovenant, album Seti

Existence, that is, life, is generally very much user-unfriendly. It comes without any

kind of guide or instruction manual; somehow, it absorbs us into itself, totally unprepared,

and says “deal with me”; its course or development cannot be really controlled or

mastered; at times, it seems to be a joke, a bad one for that matter; it forces us to plan and

strategize so that our presence in it can attain meaningfulness, yet at the same time it has a

nasty habit of turning our plans and strategies upside down and of generating unexpected

and unpleasant surprises; it is completely irrational and sometimes downright menacing;

the immediate outcomes of its processes are rarely to one’s benefit, and its terminal

outcome, literally terminal, is its final act of foul play it has installed for us.

Of course, to be fair, it offers some pleasures, at an unwanted price however, that

make our being in it somewhat bearable. Another key prerequisite of us enduring this

possessive entity is the environment familiarity. During the absorption into the existence,

each and every one of us is anchored to a specific environment, given a particular locus

under the heading “home”, which then usually serves as retreat, a safe haven (more less)

where one can seek solace before the existential rampage. It says usually, as the existence

in some cases establishes this one place as a particular whirlwind of nightmares, a personal

torture chamber. Fortunately, the existential principles posit “home” as an environmentally

transferable phenomenon, that is, it can be reestablished as a refuge under different

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settings. Outside this refuge, the existence is largely a freak show of alien sites and

unfamiliar faces. Leaving it then is a risky enterprise; as Bilbo Baggins used to say: “It is a

dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t

keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to” (Tolkien, 95). Yet,

off we go, again and again, for go off we must to lead a meaningful existence. Our

incursions into the outside vary in duration and distance it takes us from the refuge. In

order to carry out these proceedings in the first place, we must blind ourselves to the

hostility of existence. We labor under the illusive premise that the world beyond our

doorstep is not that bad; we can “step onto the road” and no harm will come to us. And

indeed, some of said incursions can be pleasant and even rewarding, some neutral, and yet

others can shatter our illusions like a rock thrown at a sheet of glass and present the

existence in all its agonizing “macabreity”.

In 1890, a Polish adventurer and aspiring novelist Joseph Conrad made an incursion

into the outside that took him far away from the relatively safe grounds into a bizarre world

he did not encounter before. Always wanting since his early childhood to explore the

proverbial white spaces on the maps, Conrad spent about a half of his life on board ships

cruising into distant lands of the globe (Conrad, 242; Joseph Conrad: A Chronology 507).

In said year, sensing an opportunity to go where the maps end, he applied and was granted

a position on board a steamship traveling the inland waters deep within the heart of Africa,

which at that time was given a noble name Congo Free State, a private colony established

by the Belgian king Leopold II. Conrad’s odyssey to and in Congo was a journey that

began in soaring heights of expectations and ended in the deepest chasms of despair and

disillusionment. It was a journey from which Conrad never really recovered, both in terms

of health, as well as in terms of haunting memories of the whole ordeal (Najder, 250). It

was so strong an experience that found its way even into Conrad’s writing, firstly as just an

appetizer in a short story “An Outpost of Progress”, latter with full force in a novel entitled

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“Heart of Darkness” (Moore, 8). The immediate publishing of the latter piece, in a volume

with two other of his stories, caught positive attention. One reviewer, Conrad’s friend and

literary advisor Edward Garnett, went even as far as labeling it “one of the events of the

literary year” (307). Garnett and other reviewers were quick to recognize the unusualness

of Heart of Darkness. The story contained within its pages, a fictional narrative of course,

yet based on Conrad’s real experience, told in no uncertain terms how dreadful the

existence can be, especially when there are those men who gladly contribute to its misery

to advance their own petty interests. Such was in essence the situation in the Congo Free

State that was on the outside presented as a most noble philanthropic and civilizing

enterprise, yet inside was little more than a gulag where the Belgian overseers, pardon,

colonizers, did as they pleased (Armstrong, XI). Heart of Darkness thereby contributed to

this unique eye-opening moment in which the unholy merit of European colonialism and

imperialism was unraveled, and thus was cherished especially among those who led the

crusade against the Congo Free State.

For Conrad himself, this novel was just one project in his career as a novelist.

Equally, for the readers, Heart of Darkness was just one book among other Conrad’s

stories (Moore, 5). As such it therefore received no special attention for quite a long time.

The turning point for Conrad’s literary legacy came 24 after his death. In 1948

F.R. Leavis, the most influential British critic of his generation, argued that Conrad’s best

work belonged to what he called the ‘great tradition’ in English literature. Leavis

considered Heart of Darkness only a ‘minor work’ and complained of its ‘adjectival

insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery’; but The Great Tradition

admitted Conrad to the academic cannon and sanctioned his work as a proper subject for

literary criticism (ibid).

This in memoriam enrollment of Conrad into the elite club of Western novelists

significantly increased his stature, obviously. His works, including Heart of Darkness,

were now classic texts, that being, a new sustenance for academics, literary critics and

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other intellectual figures to be studied and analyzed, critiqued and contextualized,

deconstructed and reconstructed, interpreted and re-interpreted. The range of critical and

interpretative material in the specific case of Heart of Darkness is indeed impressive; it

ranges from formalist analyses, over psychological and historical studies, to gender and

racial critique. These represent the evident standpoints for critique and interpretation;

formalist given the singular writing style of the text, psychological due to the pronounced

recurring narrative motif of the interaction between the outer reality and the inner mind of

man, historical as the text is related to a specific particularly dark moment in the history of

European colonial expansion, gender given the arguably disproportionate treatment of the

sexes by the text, and finally racial due to the presence of two distinct civilizations given

the fact that the story has Africa under European colonization as its stage. Said range of

material does not however exhaust all possibilities for analysis. There is unquestionably

more than sufficient space for a variety of other angles of interpretation. A philosophical

reading of Heart of Darkness is one such option, an option that seems to be overshadowed

by the evident interpretative and critical standpoints, yet it can produce discoveries equally

fascinating. A clear parallelism can be established between the Heart of Darkness and

ontological phenomenology of Martin Heidegger. Though chronologically the former

precedes the latter, Conrad’s text in a remarkable similarity seems to encapsulate key

concepts of the Heideggerian philosophy, specifically his metaphor of the River of Time,

which dichotomize the Being into inauthentic and authentic forms, and deliberates the

existence of the individual human agent, the Dasein, within the inevitable sociality devoid

of finitude of the former, with the possibility of momentary transference into the latter. In

the Heideggerian ontic schema the human agent is bound to the inauthentic existence,

damned, to use the Biblical terminology, yet he is able under certain, usually limit,

conditions, to transgress for a short timeframe to this second register marked by super-

intensely pronounced “being-towards-death”. In this regard, Conrad’s text is then a literary

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enactment of the River of Time metaphor, as its main character travels between two

distinct realities, as well as an account of this transgression into the authentic being. It

however transcends Heidegger in a sense that it also hints upon the nature of the

authenticity and upon the experience of transfer itself as perceived by an individual Dasein,

which are both aspects Heidegger did not discussed at length. In Heart of Darkness, this

other complementary reality emerges as an alien and menacing dimension, and a brief

contact with it is for all Daseins damned to inauthenticity filled largely with “the horror,

the horror”. It is, remember the opening verses, a venture from “the center of damnation to

the outskirts of Hell”.

Philosophical, specifically Heideggerian, reading it is then. Yet before burrowing

into that, it is apt to establish the necessary contextual framework. We shall begin with a

short biographical sketch of Joseph Conrad and then proceed to short publication history of

Heart of Darkness, followed by a story synopsis of the novel so that we are familiar with

its content. Afterwards, the focus will shift to a brief overview of the critical and

interpretative material, with more space devoted to the discussion of two examples of said

material, and then finally arriving at the Heideggerian interpretation of the text.

Background and Context in short

Individual episodes from Conrad’s life were directly reflected in his writings,

therefore his biography is a good reference point to start our discussion. Joseph Conrad

was born December 3rd

1857 in Russian annexed Polish territory, which today belongs to

the state of Ukraine (Joseph Conrad: A Chronology, 507). Polish by descent, his family

name was Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. His family was that of devout Polish

patriots, which under the Russian occupation meant nothing but troubles with the

authorities. In 1862, the Korzeniowski family is sent to exile for anti-Russian activities,

which lasts till 1868 (ibid). During this time of banishment, Conrad’s mother Ewelina died

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of illness. In 1869 Conrad’s father Apollo and his son Józef are finally allowed to leave the

exile and settle in Krakow. In the same year however, Apollo dies and young Józef

becomes an orphan. Fortunately, he still has living relatives and thus he is taken into care

of his uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski, who is then responsible for Józef’s upbringing (ibid).

Uncle Tadeusz played a key role in Conrad’s life. Given his support, Józef was allowed to

travel around Europe and it was on these journeys that he first witnessed the sea and made

the pivotal decision of becoming a seaman. In the decades following 1874, Conrad served

on board various ships traveling to different parts of the world, such as Caribbean,

Australia, Singapore or India. His service at sea also brought him to Great Britain and in

1886 he becomes a British citizen (ibid). This change of nationality was reflected by a

change of name from Józef Korzeniowski to Joseph Conrad. In 1889 Conrad begins his

literary aspirations by starting to write his first novel entitled Almayer’s Folly (ibid, 508).

His positive attitude to literature can be presumably attributed to his late father Apollo,

who was a translator of foreign literature into Polish, such as that of Victor Hugo, Charles

Dickens or William Shakespeare to name a few (Merriman). The following year of 1890 is

of utmost importance in the Heart of Darkness context. In May 1890 Conrad travels to

Africa and from June to December serves in Congo as second in command, and

temporarily also as a captain, of a steamboat Roi des Belges undertaking supply runs in the

upper region of the Congo River around Stanley Falls (Joseph Conrad: A Chronology,

508). Conrad was supposed to spend three years in Congo, but after falling ill, he departs

Africa back to Europe in December 1890 never to return. The disease from Africa

devastated Conrad’s health. In fact he never fully recovered from it, yet he was able to

retain sufficient health to return to sea. In 1894, after a brief service on several other ships,

Conrad’s sea career ends and from that point on he pursued his literary ambitions till his

death in 1924 (ibid).

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In many of his stories, Conrad drew the inspiration from his own life experiences.

Heart of Darkness is no exception, as it is essentially a literary adaptation of Conrad’s

service in Congo in 1890. The novel itself was written in a period of two months, from

mid-December 1898 to early February 1899, for publication in Blackwood’s Edinburgh

Magazine, where it first appeared in three installments in corresponding monthly issues of

Blackwood’s from February to April 1899 (Textual Appendix, 78). Three years latter, the

text was collected and republished with two other Conrad’s stories in a single volume

entitled “Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories.” This collected version of Heart of

Darkness then served as a basis for all following reprints and republications of this text. To

enlarge our perspective a bit, it is worth noting that Youth is yet another story based on

Conrad’s own sea adventures, those preceding the Congo episode, and furthermore it is

related to Heart of Darkness in a sense of both texts having identical main protagonist

acting as the story narrator, that being Charles Marlow, Conrad’s alter ego (Masefield,

313). It is also apt to add that the thematic framework of the clash between the European

and African realities that is fully explored in Heart of Darkness is also hinted earlier in a

short story of Conrad named “An Outpost of Progress”, which is thereby regarded as an

essential introduction into the novel (Moore, 8).

The Story within the Text

What then is Heart of Darkness about? Story-wise, the novel tells the tale of

Charles Marlow, who as a boy dreamed of exploring the white places on the maps and as

an adult decided to make those dreams a reality. At a certain point, Marlow learns that

there is a colonization effort underway in Congo, conducted by a private organization

referred to as the “Company”. Having an adventurous spirit, Marlow applies for a

command of one of the Company steamboats cruising the Congo River, re-supplying the

European trading stations established along the river and collecting there the fruits of

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colonization, primarily ivory. Thanks to his aunt, who apparently is an influential woman,

Marlow is given a command of a steamer. Thus, he leaves Britain and heads to an

unnamed European city to meet his new employers. From there, Marlow continues to

Congo. Upon arrival he proceeds inland with a caravan to a place called the “Central

Station”, where his boat awaits for him to start making the runs in upper region of the

Congo River. However, at the Central Station Marlow is told that his ship had an accident

and sunk, and is then given a task to recover the shipwreck and repair it.

Said storyline, thus far detailing Marlow’s voyage to Congo and the journey to the

Central Station, is sort of an opening part of the novel. Already here is the reader

confronted with what then becomes the prominent mark of the text, that is, absurd and

insane moments. For example, while visiting his new employers in Europe, Marlow is also

obliged to see the Company doctor, who out of sheer personal interest wants to measure

Marlow’s skull, asks him questions about madness in Marlow’s family and finally tells

Marlow in no uncertain terms that he will most certainly never see Marlow again. Or,

when Marlow approaches the seaport in Congo, the French passenger ship on which he

travels encounters a lone battleship near the coast that is firing into the jungle to destroy a

native encampment supposedly located somewhere in there. In addition, the battleship’s

crew is being decimated by a rampant disease and is dying rapidly. On his journey from

the from the coast to the Central Station, Marlow is also acquainted with the reality of the

European presence in Congo, as he witnesses a total mistreatment of the natives by the

Europeans, for instance, when they are literally worked to death constructing a railway

connecting Congo coast with interior.

At the Central Station, while repairing his wrecked steamer, Marlow is told about

his mission by the station’s Manager. His task is to travel up the Congo River to the Inner

Station, collect the ivory accumulated there and bring back the Company agent in charge

there. The head of the Inner Station is an enigmatic individual Mr. Kurtz. In the context of

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the novel, Kurtz is in essence the second main character of the text, though for the most

part of the text, he is presented to the reader only via second-hand information told by

others. His appearance in flesh occurs only towards the end of the novel. As Marlow is

told, Kurtz is regarded as the best agent the Company has. He is efficient, as he is able to

collect more ivory than any other agent, intelligent and eloquent. Kurtz basically embodies

the finest aspects of the European civilization. On the other hand is also rumored to be very

ill, so Marlow is ordered to retrieve him presumably because the Company does not want

to loose such a valuable asset. Yet, there additional, stranger, rumors circulating – gossip

that suggests there is something wrong with Kurtz beside his illness, that is, perhaps he

went insane.

In either case, Marlow is sent up there to find out what is going on at the Inner

Station. He accepts this ordeal gladly as he is curious to meet Kurtz, whom almost

everybody talks about. Gradually, Marlow even develops somewhat affection towards

Kurtz, given that all the various information at Marlow’s disposal portrays Kurtz as a truly

singular individual. Upon completion of the repairs of his boat, Marlow, the Manager of

the Central Station and the crew set sail up the river to the Inner Station. The journey

upstream gets intensely bizarre, marked by stops at isolated European trading posts in

complete disarray, as well as by increasing psychological pressure and alienation caused

by traveling in the midst of almost primordial jungle. In Marlow’s eyes, this voyage is like

a journey back in time to the prehistoric epochs of the Earth. Shortly before reaching its

destination, Marlow’s ship is attacked by natives. The crew manages to defend the steamer,

yet with casualties among them. Finally, the destination is reached. At the Inner Station, all

the rumors are confirmed. Kurtz is indeed ill, practically dying, and he indeed went

strange, he went native, that is, Kurtz gathered around him a native tribe that worships him,

took a native woman as his queen, engaged in native customs and rites, and decorated the

immediate surrounding of his hut with severed human heads impaled on sticks. The gravity

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of the situation is communicated to Marlow by a weird-looking Russian, a companion to

Kurtz, who greets the steamer upon arrival. It is also revealed that the previous attack on

the ship was ordered by Kurtz who does not want to leave, and that his efficiency in

collecting ivory is based on him raiding the region with brute force.

Marlow does not stay long at the Inner Station. He loads the gathered ivory onto the

steamer, along with Kurtz, and departs to a great displeasure of the native tribe that looses

its idol of worship. On way back, Kurtz dies, whispering the words “the horror, the horror”

with his last breath, and leaves Marlow as a caretaker of his legacy, his documents.

Marlow then departs Congo and returns to this unnamed European city where his

employment in the Company began. There he is besieged by all sorts of people wanting to

get their hands on Kurtz’s documents. Finally, Marlow visits Kurtz’s fiancée to give her

some letters that remained after Kurtz and even though she inquires as to the whereabouts

of Kurtz’s death and especially his last words, Marlow finds himself unable to tell her the

truth as to what really happened there at the heart of immense darkness.

Critical Review

As was stated earlier, the elevation of Conrad’s work into the official cannon of

Western literature permitted literary criticism and interpretation to take it as a subject

matter. In the specific case of Hear of Darkness, the academics certainly did their job very

thoroughly, as the accumulated material on this novel is truly vast, plausible to categorize

according to its various focal points. The most evident category, stemming from the nature

of the story and the African setting, is established on racial and ethnic grounds. Legendary

in this category is the piece by Chinua Achebe that in essence ignited the whole debate in

this area. In his essay entitled “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of

Darkness” Achebe put Conrad on trial for being “a bloody racist” having “a problem with

niggers”, and demanded Heart of Darkness to be dropped out of the canon as an “offensive

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and totally deplorable book” (Moore, 6). Such controversy of course led to a heated

discussion as to whether Conrad’s novel is indeed racist and how far does Conrad’s racism

go. Needless to say that in this regard, there are as many responses as there are literary

critics. As an example, coming, same as Achebe, from the side that has most at stake, the

African one, we can name “Heart of Darkness revisited: An African Response” by Rino

Zhuwarara, who explores Conrad’s dependence on stereotypes of his time when it comes

to the portrayal of the native Africans, but he does so in a more subtle and cautious manner

than Achebe.

With racial issues firefight going on in academic circles, the newly established

Gender Studies were quick to join the party and point out the disproportionate treatment of

male and female characters in Conrad’s text. Achebe’s “bloody racist” became additionally

a sexist pig. As an example we can take an essay by Nina Pelikan Straus entitled “The

Exclusion of the Intended from Secret Sharing in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” that can be

found in the Heart of Darkness Casebook. Straus argues that Marlow’s unwillingness to

enlighten Kurtz’s Intended, his fiancé, about the death of her bellowed “is based not on a

heroic or gentlemanly desire to protect her, but on the need to protect himself and preserve

the exclusive masculine order that governs throughout the story” (Moore, 12). In other

words, Conrad’s text perpetuates a world order in which all the pivotal affairs of

consequence are to be dealt with solely by men, with women to be left out in the position

of excluded other. The inequality of women as inconsequential and best left in the dark is

then obvious.

Racial and gender issues represent no doubt the most evident points of criticism.

True, there is no disputing that Marlow’s attitude towards the Africans and the women is

questionable. Yet, I feel compelled to point out that before exasperatedly alerting to the

injustices of Conrad’s text, these critics should remember that Conrad was a man of his

time and as such his mindset was conditioned by the dominant ideology of that time, which

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was a prevailing ethnocentric patriarchy. Being socialized into an environment of disparate

statures between ethnicities and genders, it is then absolutely logical that Conrad

intuitively followed those in his writings. The reason is plain, in Conrad’s England such

inequality was the normal social status quo. I have certainly no intention to patronize or

excuse such oppressive practices, yet in case of cultural artifacts, we must not forget that

social egalitarianism is something very new to the civilization of man, and even today

there is a dichotomy between the concept and the reality. It is thereby easy from our post-

modern standpoint to condemn Conrad and other past novelists on the grounds of

advancing in their works politically incorrect stereotypes. Those are products of a different

culture from a different time, so one cannot really expect these authors to think and write

as we do. It is fine for a critic to point to and discuss the racist and/or sexist overtones of

the past texts, but being outraged over it really serves no purpose. By the way, I cannot

remember anyone demanding banishment of the ancient despotisms such as Ancient Egypt

or Babylonia from the historical canon because of their oppressive systems of government.

Was Conrad racist and sexist? Yes, but not on purpose, for him it was something normal

given the time he lived in. Besides, him exposing the reality of European colonial

imperialism in the text of Heart of Darkness was at that time a step revolutionary enough.

Beside the above mentioned criticism, another area of discussion of the Heart of

Darkness centered upon structuralist and formalist grounds. Those are by nature, analyses,

rather than direct criticisms, of the textual characteristics, narrative devices and techniques.

As a representative of this stream, we shall take and discuss in a close-up a piece by Ian

Watt entitled “Conrad’s Impressionism”, which can be found in the Heart of Darkness

Casebook or in the fourth Norton Critical Edition of this novel. In plain terms, Watt’s main

argument is that Conrad in writing of his fiction, specifically in Heart of Darkness,

employs Impressionist techniques usually envisaged in art. In the first part of his essay,

Watt focuses on the traditional methods of Impressionism, that being a) obscuring of the

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subject or object in question by its environment, and b) the preoccupation with

individualistic perception, and the presence of both in Conrad’s text. In case of the first

device, the obstruction of clear perception, Watt states:

Mist or haze is a very persistent image in Conrad…In Heart of Darkness the fugitive nature

and indefinite contours of haze are given a special significance by the primary narrator; he

warns us that Marlow’s tale will be not centered on, but surrounded by, its meaning; and

this meaning will be only as fitfully and tenuously visible as a hitherto unnoticed presence

of dust particles and water vapor in a space that normally looks dark and void…For Monet,

the fog in painting, like a narrators haze, is not an accidental interference which stands

between the public and a clear view of the artist’s real subject: the conditions under which

the viewing is done are an essential part of what the pictorial – or the literary – artist sees

and tries to convey (Watt, 169-70).

The point at hand is that in Conrad’s text, the matter in question is never presented on its

own, taken out of the contextual framework of reality, but always in interaction with its

environment which then interferes with the interpretability of said matter so that its

meaning is not given right away, ascertainable at a glance, but available only after this

interference is taken into consideration and filtered out. This is nothing but an emulation of

the human biological perceptive process, in which we apprehend our surrounding in a

holistic manner and not as a fragmented dimension of separate objects existing in an

environmental vacuum. As for the second Impressionist trait, the individualistic

perception, Watt postulates:

[Heart of Darkness] accepts, and indeed in its very form asserts, the bounded and

ambiguous nature of individual understanding; and because the understanding sought is of

an inward and experiential kind, we can describe the basis of its narrative method as

subjective moral impressionism. Marlow’s story explores how one individual’s knowledge

of another can mysteriously change the way in which he sees the world as a whole… Heart

of Darkness embodies the posture of uncertainty and doubt; one of Marlow’s functions is to

represent how much a man cannot know; and he assumes that reality is essentially private

and individual (ibid, 174).

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Indeed, the reality in Heart of Darkness is essentially private and individual, for we

perceive the story solely through Marlow’s eyes, thereby when assigning meaning to its

various episodes we as a reader are always limited by the boundaries of Marlow’s

cognitive and perceptive capabilities. In other words, the reality the reader attains from the

text is nothing but Marlow’s version of it. Being in essence entrenched within the head of

the main character, we apprehend the unfolding story only as it appears to Marlow, and in

interpreting it, we have as much or as little context as Marlow does. In Heart of Darkness,

the reader is not given the luxury of knowing more than those who act the tale on page. He

never has the full picture, as Conrad’s narrative sticks with Marlow and never leaves him

even for a single moment. According to Watt, these environmental and individualistic

constrains so characteristic for an aesthetic Impressionism are transposed into the text of

the novel through a narrative device of Conrad’s making that Watt names as “delayed

decoding”. Its function is to “present a sense impression and to withhold naming it or

explaining its meaning until later” (ibid, 175). As Watt further elaborates, delayed

decoding “combines the forward temporal progression of the mind, as it receives messages

from the outside world, with much slower reflexive process of making out their meaning”

(ibid, 176). This device thereby enacts on paper the process of human perception, that is,

the initial reception of the outward stimulus clouded by the exterior environmental factors

as well as by the interior personal factors, and the subsequent interpretation of that

stimulus which happens with greater or lesser delay from the former depending on the

level of distortion of said stimulus. A fitting example is the description of the attack on

Marlow’s steamboat by the natives – first, Marlow notices crew deserting their posts,

which angers him as he sees no reason for such behavior; then he glimpses something

flying through the air, which he initially identifies as some sort of sticks; and only after a

while is he able to process everything into the evident conclusion. “Arrows, by Jove! We

are being shot at” (Conrad, 44)! As Watt concludes, the usage of delayed decoding makes

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the narrative more real. It approximates the reading of the story to a real life situation,

creates as if you were there feeling, for the reader can easily associate him or herself with

Marlow, replace Marlow as the protagonist, given the absence of any other angle of the

story, beside his. The effect is then clear: “while we read, we are, as in life, fully engaged

in trying to decipher a meaning out of random and pell-mell bombardment of sense

impressions (Watt, 180).

Indeed, everyone who read Heart of Darkness can agree with Watt’s assessment of

the text. The novel is truly written in such a manner that it takes more of an effort to figure

out what Marlow is talking about, more so that he intermingles often the description of an

event with a description of his own feelings or thoughts which makes it altogether at times

hard not to lose the stream of the story itself. On paper, the delayed decoding works like a

charm. However, nowadays, Heart of Darkness is presumably mostly perceived through

the prism of its cinematic adaptation “Apocalypse Now” by Francis Ford Coppola. What

Watt’s essay then does not address is how, or if, this specific narrative device can be

transposed into the movie format. Such transfer is in my opinion problematic, as the film,

being obviously a visual medium, is much more immediate. The viewer decodes

afterwards he or she sees the image, thus the filmmaker cannot really control the length

between perception and interpretation, unless of course we are talking about Lynch-like

films that are un-decodable. In a written text, you can stretch it, but in a motion picture you

have to show at least a bit of that something you want to convey, which then starts the

decoding process. Nevertheless, having seen the film, I believe that Apocalypse Now

manages to maintain a certain level of uncertainty in decoding. There is not much

explanation going on. Any larger context is pretty much absent. Furthermore, the action

sequences are presented in a rather chaotic manner, so we cannot immediately figure out

what is going on. So to put it plainly, ambiguity yes, but delayed decoding as it functions

in Heart of Darkness, no.

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The mention of Apocalypse Now brings us to yet another stream of academic

discourse that was introduced with said Coppola’s film. We can name it comparative

criticism. As Moore catalogues, there have been at least ten movie or television adaptations

of Heart of Darkness (11). Of those, Apocalypse Now achieved the highest stature and

became the very visual manifestation of Conrad’s story. Given the proximity bond between

these two artifacts, those critics and academics who perhaps were running dry of angles

through which to dissect Heart of Darkness could have found new breathing room in

comparing and contrasting the book with the film, analyzing the similarities and

differences between the two texts. As a representative, we shall take a closer look on Linda

Costanzo Cahir and her essay entitled “Narratological Parallels in Joseph Conrad’s Heart

of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now”. A lengthy title perhaps, but

clearly indicates what is the piece is about; it catalogues where the film and the novel are

alike. Fairly at the beginning, Cahir makes a distinction as to what exactly is the point of

similarity between these two artifacts. In her words, we need to distinguish between the

“story”, which is the fictive account, in other words the five Ws, and the “narrative”, which

is the text itself, the particular structure, the specific manner in which the story is told

(Cahir, 185). As far as the story is concerned, Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now

differ. The former takes place in Belgian Congo during European Colonialism, the latter is

set in Vietnam during and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The circumstances are

different, the main protagonists are different…all the five Ws are unique for each artifact.

The point of similarity is then according to Cahir the narrative.1 As she postulates, both

artifacts are “frame-stories with mediating narrators. In each the mediating narrator is

simultaneously present and non-present in the text” (ibid, 186). This specific characteristic

of the story narrator is however not related to Marlow/Willard as being the ones who tell

1 Personally, I would add here another point of similarity, the “plot”, which I would define as the motor for

the story, the initial cause that gives rise to the “what” in the story and keeps it going. In my opinion, both

artifacts share the same, I would say almost classic, plot, that is, somewhere distant something happens and

someone is sent to investigate and fix it.

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the tale. In fact, they do not. In Heart of Darkness, the story is actually told by an

anonymous person who is with Marlow on board the yacht Nelie as he tells his Congo tale,

and this person then mediates Marlow’s narration to the reader word by word as he tells it.

Since it is apparent only at the beginning and the end of the novel that there is actually

someone else narrating the whole thing, the reader as Cahir suggests, for most of the book

forgets this and takes Marlow as the direct narrator. Similar thing then happens in the

movie, where there is no anonymous person as the actual narrator, but the camera which

retells Willard’s tale. As Cahir puts it: “Both interpose themselves (near-visibly) between

the teller and the listener; both function as narrators who control what we hear and what we

see; and both are subtle, ongoing structuring presences which somehow fade from our

consciousness” (184). Final general point of Cahir on narration is that both tales are told in

“first person retrospect”.

The focus then shifts to the specifics of the narrative. Be it Heart of Darkness or

Apocalypse Now, in either text the first presentation of the main protagonist is “that of a

man radically altered by a past experience” (ibid, 186). Each tale begins with a “meditative

moment, focalized through the protagonist” and then shifts into an explanation of how the

main character “came to make his river journey.” In both cases this journey is

characterized by three scheduled stops. There are actually more stops along the way to the

destination, but in either case, three are the most important ones and have to be made by

the main protagonist. In Heart of Darkness those stops are the Congo port, the Central

Station and the Inner Station; in Apocalypse Now, we have the rendezvous with captain

Kilgore, the supply station and the river temple in Cambodia. In either text, the first stop

serves to characterize the horrors of imperialism, the European colonial imperialism on one

hand, the American Cold War imperialism on the other (ibid, 189). The subsequent journey

upstream is in both cases getting more and more bizarre and irrational with each stop

made, be it the environment of the Central Station, or the grandiose USO show at the

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supply station in the middle of nowhere. Both journey then act as an initiation into the

crazed world of Kurtz (ibid, 191). The final stop in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse

Now is of course the Kurtz’s hideout. Just prior to reaching this destination, both Marlow’s

and Willard’s ship is attacked by the natives who do not want to lose Kurtz as their idol,

and in both cases the ship’s helmsman is killed. Upon arrival, both parties are greeted by a

weird guide into Kurtz’s lair (ibid, 192). In Heart of Darkness, Marlow is confronted by a

funny looking Russian sailor; in Apocalypse Now, Willard encounters a deranged

American photojournalist played by Denis Hopper. In either text, Kurtz’s compound is

decorated with severed human heads. According to Cahir, at the core of Conrad’s and

Coppola’s work is a horror of a world of hollow men (ibid, 193). Presumably, such entities

are men who strive only for their vain material ambitions, and such empty aspiration then

kills their souls leaving them hollow inside. Kurtz then, as Cahir states, “stands in both

works as the hollow man’s antithesis. Kurtz in his morally terrifying manifestation and his

god-like acousmatic voice, is invested with greatness: he understands existence in all its

antipathy. Terrified and repelled, he forced himself to look into the very heart of darkness,

to participate fully in the dualism, the good and the evil, of Being” (ibid). Finally, as Cahir

points out, the encounter with Kurtz leaves a profound trace on both Marlow and Willard.

Apart from Cahir’s analysis, when it comes to Kurtz, there is on the other hand a

significant difference between the two artifacts – that being, the amount of space Kurtz is

given. In both texts, we gradually introduced to the background of Kurtz by Marlow or

Willard, so there is a lot of talk about him in either story, yet when it comes to his

appearance in flesh, in Heart of Darkness Kurtz is given a merely episodic entrée.

Basically, Marlow arrives at his Inner Station, picks him up and leaves. In Apocalypse

Now however, Willard is detained by Kurtz and spends several days in his lair before

finally killing him. Thus, there is more interaction between Willard and Kurtz, who then

has more space to present both himself and his ideas. Further difference can be found in

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the ending of both texts. In Heart of Darkness there is a whole after-play following Kurtz’s

death in which Marlow travels to see his fiancée, whereas in Apocalypse Now, the death of

Kurtz is the end of tale. There is no indication, not even in the redux version, which is a

lengthier edition of the film, of what happened afterwards. Beside this and the obvious

story-related differences, there is no disputing that both artifacts are closely approximated

and tell almost the same tale.

Through Heidegger’s Eyes

By assessing the above discussed critical review, as well as by sampling through

the collections and interpretations of Conrad’s novel, be it either the Heart of Darkness

Casebook or the Norton Critical Edition of the book, it can be fairly postulated that a

philosophical reading of Heart of Darkness is a marginal or clandestine phenomenon. The

Norton Critical Edition of Heart of Darkness includes only one piece of such focus, “The

Failure of Metaphysics” by Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, the Casebook none. It is rather pity I

would say, as there is in my opinion an interesting parallelism between Conrad’s text and

the post-Kantian philosophical tradition, with one particular correlation, the Heidegger’s

phenomenology, standing out. In plain terms, one mirrors the other. Given such similarity,

there is of course the question of whether Heidegger had any influence upon Conrad so

that his theory of Being was purposely incorporated into the thematic fabric of Heart of

Darkness. The answer is no, he could not have. A simple chronology explains why. Martin

Heidegger was born in 1889, Heart of Darkness was firstly published in 1899, when

Heidegger was ten years old and his philosophical career was well ahead of him. Thus, we

cannot speak of any influential link here from him to Conrad. Yet, strangely enough,

Conrad’s text seems to include what Heidegger latter coined in his theory.

The similarity is mediated through the river. In his phenomenology of Being,

Heidegger gradually arrived at the metaphor of the River of Time. This hypothetical stream

Šmejkal 20

represents the plain of existence, the dimension in which all life is running its course

(Notes: Martin Heidegger). It contains all the distinct individuals, the Daseins as Heidegger

terms them, who are plunged into its waters at their advent into being, and in it they dwell

afloat until their death. The mode of the river is thereby being-towards-death, Sein zum

Tod (ibid). Said mode is most pronounced at the centre of the river, where one encounters

a constant heightened awareness of death as the termination of existence, and least

apparent at the shallow waters near the shore, where the existence can seem endless.

Beside the distinct human agents, the River of Time also contains the collectivity of human

existence, in Heideggerian terms the Mitsein, the society (ibid). The Mitsein establishes

itself in the near-shore region of the river and operates by catching the individual Daseins

and tranquillizing them into forgetfulness about the finitude of their being. This way, the

Mitsein perpetuates itself, its own being. By making the human agent forget his mortality,

assimilating him into its internal systemic processes, the society can then redirect his

efforts and existential stamina, which would otherwise be spent on coping with the

enduring prospect of death incoming, onto itself and use those to reinforce its own duration

(ibid). On part of the Dasein, this tranquillized and assimilated existence of the individual

is termed by Heidegger as the “inauthentic being”. Though it has a negative ring to it, it is

nonetheless regarded as a natural process. Sometimes it gets more interesting however, as

the Dasein can disengage from the Mitsein and drift into the river center where it is

immediately exposed to pure unrefined being-towards-death, and thereby is strongly made

aware of its finite existence. In Heideggerian terms, it enters the “authentic being” (ibid).

In real life, such transfer is induced by certain limit situations, such as, in extreme case,

witnessing someone’s demise; simply those instances where one looses one’s safe ground

beneath one’s feet. This experience in essence serves to realign the Dasein’s perception of

Being with the reality. As beneficial as it may sound, the Dasein however does not stay in

the authenticity for long (ibid). On one hand, it is not fitted to do so, for the constant

Šmejkal 21

shadow of death would lead to its collapse, and on the other hand the Mitsein does not

allow it, as it recaptures the loose Dasein and brings it back towards the shores to be re-

tranquillized and re-assimilated. Since authenticity is important for Heidegger in Being, he

proposes a program of adopting a certain resolute stance after this authentic experience

towards the existence as such. This stance can have multiple forms, yet it all leads to the

re-attainment of a degree of authenticity in Being and partial negation of an altogether

inauthentic existence (ibid). Not attainment, since presumably, the authentic being must be

firstly experienced and then reflected. A pre-“authentisized” Dasein after all has no need

for adopting any program as it is very much comfortable in its inauthenticity. In non-

philosophical terms, the experience and the re-attainment of the authentic being is like a

shock therapy in which one realizes the things in life that truly matter and starts acting

upon such revelation.

The Conradian river is very much akin to the River of Time. It basically flows, in

the eyes of Marlow, the main Dasein of the story, from one mode of existence, which we

can call “normal” being within a civilization or a society, to another, a limit existence

outside the soothing security of societal grounds. Marlow starts as a classic tranquillized

Dasein, an inauthentic entity living by the ideals of the Mitsein. Of course, he has a certain

flare for adventure, yet he still abides by the rules and patterns of the British society. His

encounter with the river however changes all that. The Congo River acts for him as a

gateway into a strange new world. The further upstream Marlow ventures, the more is he

separated from Mitsein’s influence, that is, the societal bonds and restrains, and the more is

he exposed to the super-pronounced fragility and volatility of existence. As Marlow

accounts:

You lost your way on that river as you would in a desert and butted all day long against

shoals trying to find the channel till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from

everything you had known once – somewhere – far away – in another existence perhaps.

There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have

Šmejkal 22

not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream

remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants

and water and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble peace. It was

stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with

vengeful aspect (Conrad, 33-4).

The notion of separation from a previously known form of Being and a contact with

seemingly alien mode of existence that is vile and cruel and menacing is indeed evident in

the passage above. It is in essence an artistic description of an entry into what Peter Berger

termed “marginal situation”, that is, an occurrence in which one’s preconception of order,

one’s nomos, is challenged and possibly even shattered by alien elements of reality that

stand outside the nomic grounds, the chaos (Berger, 23-4). When correlated with the

Heideggerian theory, the marginal situation is precisely the point of transference; the

moment of incursion into the authentic being that momentarily reintroduces being-towards-

death into social existence of human agent. The journey up the river is thereby one big

marginal situation for Marlow. His troubles navigating the waters can be symbolically

interpreted as troubles of Marlow’s nomos attempting to compensate and somehow

apprehend the abundance of chaos. The further he goes, the more chaos he encounters, and

the higher the threat that the nomos will be overrun. This is the bewitchment into a bizarre

domain of lurking constant disturbance that Marlow describes. In fact, there is a perfect

parallel between Berger’s nomos vs. chaos and Heidegger’s inauthentic vs. authentic

being. Both nomos and the inauthentic being secure one’s existence, as they impose a

certain structure and set of principles onto the existence, thus making it bearable. The

chaos or the authentic being on the other hand destabilizes the being of the human agent,

exposing him to pure unmediated forces and drives that are incomprehensible, let alone

controllable by the abilities of man. No wonder that the world of the river seemed vengeful

to Marlow; it was after the inauthentic/nomic prey that dared to intrude into the

chaotic/authentic realm risking that it will be consumed.

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Upon reading the text, it is plausible, I believe, to ascertain that the two existential

modes, the inauthentic and the authentic, actually posses a physical presence within

Conrad’s text. On one side there are the European trading posts, the seeming islands of

civilization and order. On the other side there is the river intertwined with the impenetrable

jungle. Both landscapes stand in a fundamental dichotomy to each other, in a conflict at

which the former domain aspires to subdue the latter, with little success one might add.

Both territories thereby stand for the essential duality of the Heideggerian Being that is

based on the binary typology of two disparate antagonistic registers of existence. The

inauthentic being, the Mitsein, would surely welcome the demise of the authentic domain,

as it would never again had to retract the lose Daseins and re-assimilate them. Without

mortality, the human agents could as well remain tranquillized indefinitely, with the

Mitsein utilizing them to whatever biding it sees fit. Yet, no matter how hard the societal

sphere tries, the final conquest of authenticity is ultimately impossible simply for death,

finitude of the lifespan, is at the very core of existence. On this planet at least, “mors certa”

is a biological constant, thus the temporality of existence can never be entirely forgotten.

Simply put, we are all getting there, which is indeed a rather disturbing prospect most

certainly fueling mankind’s fascination with immortality, from vampires to the Fountain of

Youth. The social existence of course provides a certain degree of omission when it comes

to the literally terminal trait of human existence, yet on the second thought, it allows

enables the exposure to our mortality, as within a collective, especially closed social units,

a death of one agent cannot go unnoticed, at least by affiliate agents. We therefore

encounter death earlier than on our deathbed. It is indeed a deeply troubling encounter, a

marginal situation discussed before, that unravels the dualism between the social world

that is built to last and the biological countdown to expiration. In the perspective of the

text, it is actually very fitting that authentic domain into which Marlow ventures is

embodied by a river and a jungle, both biological environments where the cycle of life and

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death can be seen or sensed firsthand. As Marlow puts it: “The smell of mud, of primeval

mud by Jove, was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my

eyes;…” (Conrad, 26). After all, you do not really feel the omnipresence of mortality in a

city, which is an artificial environment. It is then no wonder that Marlow is more unsettled

the further upstream he travels. He is gradually realizing that there is another world out

there, another reality parallel to the one he knew throughout his life, a realm of, to put it

rather morbidly, of death and decay. On the other hand, Marlow is still part of the Mitsein

striving to banish being-towards-death, therefore, the social domain logically aspires to

prevent an overexposure to the authentic element of being. In fact, we can state that it is

why there are all the outposts on the river; that their purpose is to remind the Daseins, the

Company employess, cruising on the river of their “civilized” existence. The outposts are

the agents of re-assimilation, of tranquillization. Yet, their effect is ultimately a failing one.

Despite all the connections with the “normal” society, Marlow is more and more affected

by this other reality. He is nearing the center of the river and the Mitsein can do very little

about it. At the mouth of the river, where the European presence is more established, it is

easier for the Mitsein to regain the Dasein for the inauthentic being, yet further upstream,

where there are only isolated outposts, it is nearly impossible. Upstream, the intense flux of

authenticity is strongest. Upstream is indeed the very domain of the authentic being and

everyone who ventures there falls prey to it. Consequently, it is then no surprise that this

other reality is becoming the dominant one for Marlow. His gaze shifts the lenses through

which the world is perceived. This can then possibly explain Marlow’s reaction to these

scattered Company posts up the river, for he does not regard them as the oases of

civilization, but instead they seem to him “very strange” (Conrad, 35).

One big however; though traversing through the authentic realm, Marlow does not

succumb to it altogether. Unlike the other main Dasein in the story, Mr. Kurtz, Marlow is

able to resist submerging into authenticity flux and ultimately to withdraw back to the

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inauthentic grounds. He seems to have a connection to the Mitsein that eventually helps

him return, instead of staying and sharing Kurtz’s fate. Said link in my opinion runs

through an object, the boat. Marlow has to navigate and later pilot the steamer, and such

activity prevents him from completely opening up to the intense experience of the other.

As he says himself: “When you have to attend to things of that sort (that is, navigating the

ship), to mere incidents of the surface, the reality – the reality I tell you – fades. The inner

truth is hidden – luckily, luckily” (ibid, 34). The steamboat thereby acts as a conduit

injecting Marlow with just enough inauthenticity, or nomos, or as Deleuze would call it,

the “tonal”, to keep him away from the breaking point, the event horizon. Because of the

steamboat, Marlow simply has no time to go looking for the inner truth, let alone to

apprehend it. Kurtz basically underwent the same transition, with the difference that he

remained exposed to the authenticity for too long and apparently had no fail safe. Unlike

Marlow, who traveled there and back again and had the ship to look after, Kurtz traveled

only there and stayed and presumably had no Mitsein manufactured object that would

require rather extensive care, consequently acting as the inauthenticity conduit. Kurtz is

simply put too far gone. He completely substituted this other reality for the previous. It can

even be said that he already absorbed all there is to from the authentic being, in other

words, he uncovered the true nature of the Kantian phenomena and now he wants to make

the next step, that is, to move beyond the transcendental threshold into the noumena. As

the text implies of several occasions, Kurtz became involved in the native rituals. As

Durkheim would point out, these are the instances of the “collective effervescence”,

moments of communal ecstasy at which one’s essence seemingly detaches itself from the

corporeal substance and enters a completely different domain that is far more grandiose

and significant than the earthly reality (247). Through the collective effervescence, one is

able to touch the “sacred”, to experience, albeit briefly, the forces that are greater than any

man. The ritual is in plaint terms the gateway into the transcendence, like the Kantian

Šmejkal 26

sublime. By participating, Kurtz apparently wanted to peer through the profane constraints

and access the ultimate reality. Whether he succeeded or not, and what transcendental

glimpses he possibly obtained is not mentioned in the text, which is in accordance with the

Heideggerian philosophy where the transcendental threshold is the final frontier of human

comprehension, so Heidegger never really speculated on how to get pass it. There is no

sublime, no inner experience, no effervescence in Heidegger. In any case, Kurtz’s

noumenal experiments are cut short as Marlow removes him from the tribal environment

and takes him back to “civilization”. This venture plays out differently for each character.

Marlow, still in contact with the Mitsein, has enough inauthenticity in him for a successful

return journey. Kurtz on the other hand gave Mitsein goodbye a long time ago and wants to

remain in the jungle. In fact, prior to departure, he tries to escape the ship and reach the

native tribe during a nocturnal ritual. He seems to be drawn out there by the sound of the

native drums. Marlow, who follows him, resists the temptation to explore this strange

event, instead, he stops Kurtz and brings him back aboard the steamer (Conrad, 64-6).

Kurtz obviously resists being re-assimilated, re-tranquillized back into the Mitsein. The

“civilized” society with all its restraints, codes and dictates evidently occurs to him as an

illusion, an artificial reality, a lie not worth living in after gaining the knowledge of what

life really is like at its core. It is then symbolically fitting that Kurtz dies on the way back.

Marlow remains as a voluntary caretaker of Kurtz’s legacy, which is of great

interest to anyone, whom it may concern. In this particular aspect of the story, one can

easily leave the Heideggerian interpretation and take a side trip to Deleuzian grounds,

specifically, the segment of the theory regarding systemic evolution by assimilation of

external inputs, since Heidegger, at least to my knowledge, never really stated as to

whether the Mitsein is in any way interested in the insights obtained by the Dasein during

the momentary stay in the authentic being, and if these are in any way processed by the

Mitsein during the re-tranquillization. In Deleuze however, the system displays such an

Šmejkal 27

interest. Since the Deleuzian theory is indeed vast in its entirety, we will just scratch its

surface here. In simplified terms, the social existence of the human agent occurs within the

boundaries of a vast societal body, entitled “Body without organs” (Deleuze & Guattari)

This entity, representing the collectivity of mankind, the system, the society, is then

comprised of two substances, a) the molar segments, the rigid structures stabilizing and

ordering the BwO, that is, the institutions, and b) molecular multiplicities, individuated

flows of chaotic elements, that is, the individual human agents themselves (ibid). For most

time, these molecular flows fluctuate within the BwO under the observation of the molar

segments that keeps them under normative control. At some point however, it is possible

for a molecular flow to abandon the normative patterns and institutional guidance, and in

essence move beyond the boundaries of the system as such (ibid). Such flow then becomes

the so-called “line of flight” exploring the unknown territories apart the societal grounds.

The longer the flow is out there, the more information about this undiscovered land it is

able to obtain and the more valuable it becomes to the system, as the BwO desires to know

what exists beyond its borders. Therefore, at some other point, it employs its measures to

capture the line of flight and re-integrate it into the systemic supervision with the purpose

of a) preventing the self-annihilation of the loose molecular flow, for if it stays in the

unknown for far too long, it becomes a self-destructive “line of abolition”, since the

molecular flow is not fitted for a prolonged non-normative existence, and b) extracting the

information gained in the uncanny, so that the system, the BwO, can adapt and expand

(ibid). Through this prism, Kurtz than can be interpreted as the line of flight that became

the line of abolition due to the prolonged exposure to the unknown. Marlow then is another

line of flight sent out there however on behalf of the system to act as the “apparatus of

capture”, another Deleuzian term for the systemic measures used to bring the fugitive

molecular flows back into the fold, to bring back Kurtz before he is rendered useless for

the system. This of course happens, that is, him being rendered useless, as Kurtz being a

Šmejkal 28

good line of abolition reaches his black hole and dies. Fortunately for the BwO, he leaves

behind an account of his exposure, which Marlow happens to bring back and the system

then strives to get its hands on this. As Marlow explicates himself:

“I kept the bundle of papers given me by Kurtz not knowing exactly what to do with it. His

mother had died lately, watched over, as I was told, by the Intended. A clean-shaved man

with an official manner and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles called on me one day and made

inquiries, at first circuitous, afterwards suavely pressing, about what he pleased to

denominate certain ‘documents’. I was not surprised as I had had two rows with the Manager

on the subject out there. I had refused to give up the smallest scrap out of that package and I

took the same attitude with the spectacled man…He withdrew upon some threat of legal

proceedings and I saw him no more, but another fellow calling himself Kurtz’s cousin

appeared two days later and was anxious to hear all the details about his dear relative’s last

moments…Ultimately a journalist anxious to know something of the fate of his ‘dear

colleague’ turned up (Conrad, 71-2).”

Evidently, Marlow upon his return is besieged from all sides by the agents of the system

wanting to obtain every precious bit of information there is about Kurtz’s excursion into

and exploration of the uncanny. It is also evident from the text that Marlow is not exactly

forthcoming to comply with the surrender of such information, for the bond that Marlow

feels towards Kurtz has not been breached by his demise and Marlow remains affiliated to

Kurtz even in memoriam. In this aspect, we conclude our Deleuzian side trip and return

back to Heidegger.

Both Marlow and Kurtz were exposed to the authentic existence, the pure

unrestrained being-towards-death. As such, they thereby bonded in a sense that they shared

common experiential grounds. Within the framework of the text, they were the only

members of the “normal” inauthentic society who truly absorbed the experience of the

authenticity – Marlow temporarily, Kurtz ultimately. As was indicated previously, Kurtz’s

saturation with the intensity of the authenticity was too of an obstacle for his reintegration,

the re-tranquillization back into the inauthentic Mitsein, whereas Marlow rather somewhat

Šmejkal 29

scratched merely the surface and managed to retain his link with the Mitsein, thereby being

able to return. Yet, he returns altered nonetheless:

“I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the

streets to filch some little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp

their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon

my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense

because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing which

was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the

assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the

face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I

felt some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces so full of stupid

importance (Conrad, 70-1).”

In fact, it is clear that the Marlow who ventured into the depths of Congo is not the same

Marlow who came back. As the above outlined passage indicates, the life in the “normal”

society is rather repulsive for the returned Marlow. Similarly to Kurtz, the experience of

the authentic being exposed for Marlow the existence with the inauthentic Mitsein as

shallow and illusory. The exact nature of said experience and the exact process it triggered

within Marlow is difficult to debate. We cannot turn to Heidegger here as he did not

deliberate on what this experience is like and how it induces the change in the Dasein. I

suppose discussing this would bring the danger the danger of venturing into the

metaphysical grounds, which is exactly what Heidegger strived to avoid, or perhaps it

cannot be discussed as it may be individual-specific, that is, the experience and the process

of change is unique to each particular Dasein, or even perhaps it cannot be defined, for this

experience comes from a reality that exists complementary to the inauthentic social one

and since the language can be viewed as the product of the Mitsein, it may not have the

apparatus to describe something which is outside the Mitsein. This point could then

approximate the experience of the authentic being to that of the collective effervescence,

the Sublime or the Inner Experience, which all are experiential occurrences that can hardly

Šmejkal 30

be described as our language is not fitted to do so. On the other hand, the Sublime or the

Inner Experience aim at the transcendence, the noumena, whereas the authentic being is a

phenomenon of the phenomena, so it is debatable whether there is any correlation at all as

these are linked with entirely different domains. Plausibly, the safest assumption we can

make is that the experience of the authenticity in being is an interior occurrence induced by

external stimuli, which then alters one’s perception of the social reality. If need be to link it

with any theoretical framework, then I personally would incline towards Peter Berger and

view the authentic experience as a marginal situation in which one’s nomos is challenged

and altered by chaos. Whatever the case, something happens inside Marlow and thus, upon

his return, in accordance with Heidegger’s program, he adopts a stance towards the

existence within the Mitsein. His I would describe as resentment and withdrawal, which

seems to be fitting as the anonymous actual narrator observes him to “resembled an idol”

having “the pose of Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower”

while narrating his story (Conrad, 3 & 6). In both remarks, Marlow maintains an

appearance of someone who is beyond the immediacy of this world, detached from the

social web of the civilization.

The Wrap-Up

Having reached the end of our journey into the Heart of Darkness, it is time to

recapitulate. Upon establishing the background and context about both the author and the

piece in question, we ventured into the first main area, the critical review where we

concentrated mainly on the representatives of the non-evident criticism and interpretation,

that is, the formalist analysis of the Impressionist aspects of Conrad’s text and his

employment of the narrative device of delayed decoding, which works greatly on paper,

but not so on silver screen, and the comparative overview of similarities between the novel

and its cinematic offspring “Apocalypse Now”, which was shown to be very much alike its

Šmejkal 31

textual predecessor in the narrative issues. The second main area rests in the demonstration

that there is, in addition to all the angles of criticism and interpretation, also room for a

philosophical reading of the text. A highly plausible correlation was found in the

Heideggerian phenomenology (with some side trips to Durkheim, Berger and Deleuze

regarding aspects that Heidegger himself did not address), as the text seems to operate

along the lines of the division between two registers of being, the inauthentic social and the

authentic biological one, as well as it takes into account the dynamics of the individual, the

Dasein, prior and post the encounter with the authentic being, towards the Mitsein, the

society. At the end, the lingering question regarding possible influences still lurks around.

We know that Heidegger could not have influenced Conrad, but would it be possible that

Conrad had some influence on Heidegger? Is it possible that Heidegger might have read

Heart of Darkness and some of its elements inspired his philosophical thought? I cannot

answer this positively or negatively as it would require rather extensive biographical

research, yet by simple correlation of dates, it is clear that Heart of Darkness was already

circulating when Heidegger was writing his “Being and Time”. Are we looking at one of

the very influencers of Martin Heidegger, or is it just a coincidence? May be either way. If

it is a coincidence, than it is a rather fascinating one. Then again, life is very much user-

unfriendly, filled with hearts of darkness, oscillating between the center of damnation and

the outskirts of Hell, so it may be that each of these two gentlemen was in his own separate

way keenly aware of it, which then puts them closer together.

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Berger, Peter. “Religion and World-Construction.” Religion as a Social Force course

reader. Anglo-American College. Fall 2008.

“Cahir, Linda Constanzo. Narratological Parallels in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.” Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,

A Casebook. Ed. Gene M. Moore. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Conrad. Joseph. Heart of Darkness, Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Paul B. Armstrong. New

York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.

“Conrad, Joseph. Imagining Africa.” Heart of Darkness, Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Paul

B. Armstrong. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.

“Deleuze & Guattari: Schematic Diagram & Definitions.” 20th

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Course. Anglo-American College. Fall 2008.

Durkheim, Emile. “Elementary Forms of Religious Life.” Religion as a Social Force

course reader. Anglo-American College. Fall 2008.

“Garnett, Edward. Unsigned Review from Academy and Literature.” Heart of Darkness,

Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Paul B. Armstrong. New York: W. W. Norton &

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Armstrong. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.

“Masefield, John. From the Speaker.” Heart of Darkness, Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Paul

B. Armstrong. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.

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<http://www.online-literature.com/conrad/>.

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Gene M. Moore. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

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Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Praha: Argo, 2006.

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