Heart of Darkness: Over the years
I received a text message from a friend last week who had just finished Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The one thing that intrigued him, in this accomplished work, was this line somewhere at the end of the book – “since then, I have felt rather like Kurtz waiting for my Marlowe.” What did that refer to, was the question in the message.
And I was reminded of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its continuing relevance over a century since it was first published. Mohsin Hamid cleverly brings up the reference at the end to round up his view of the bearded narrator, once among the best and the brightest at Princeton, who has turned renegade and his rendezvous at a Lahore caf'© with a possible undercover American assassin out there to settle scores.
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (often featuring at the top of the heap of the greatest books ever list) is narrated by Marlowe to his friends on the Thames. Marlowe recounts his days working for the “Company” in Congo Free State as the captain of a steamer. The Company has asked Marlowe to go up the river Congo to locate a certain Mr. Kurtz deep in the jungle and pick up the ivory that he has stocked with him. Kurtz, according to the Company, was once a great hope for the company, who has now anointed himself as God to the local tribes and turned against the company and almost gone insane. The book explores many themes; central among them is the ease with which man can descend to his baser, darker self. Marlowe is fascinated and sometimes in awe of Kurtz as he hears stories about him, his savageness and his seeming insanity. The brutal exploitation by the colonial powers, the madness of the jungle, the seclusion from civilization – caught in this vortex, Marlowe wonders how much of Kurtz is within him. What would it take for him to tip over to the dark side? As Kurtz nears his end, Marlowe sees in Kurtz’s wide stare “an intense and hopeless despair.” A realization of the evil that resided within him, the darkness that had owned up his soul. He sums it all up and the balance shows him where he stands. And Kurtz cries out twice, “The horror! The horror!”
“The horror! The horror!” is exactly what Marlon Brando playing Col Kurtz deliriously exclaims as he lies dying in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now with “The End” by The Doors playing in the background. Marlowe is replaced here by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), someone seen unfit for civilian life, who is assigned the responsibility of finding and killing Col Kurtz, once a model soldier destined for greater things, who has gone mad and reigns the interior jungles as God dispensing arbitrary justice. As Willard goes up River Nung, he discovers the havoc that the jungle, solitude and an insane war can wreak on the psyche. Coppola neatly uses the new symbols of colonialism (cold war hegemonic designs), the deep jungles of Vietnam/Cambodia and mindless war that no one was winning to create cinematic parallel to Heart of Darkness.
Last year, as I read Siddhartha Deb’s Surface, I found the latest interpretation of Heart of Darkness set in Indian context. Amrit Singh, a bored journalist in a Calcutta daily (run by a certain Mr. Sarkar, so you know which daily this is) is asked to take on an assignment that will take him to the North-East to investigate a picture that likely indicates killing of a porn actress by militants. As he gets deeper into his investigations, he starts getting drawn into the legend of Malik, a saviour of the tribals, who runs the Prosperity Project which has brought order in the jungle. Amrit becomes Marlowe to Malik’s Kurtz. Surface is an interesting novel as it transposes Conrad to the Indian heart of darkness – the North-East – and in the process establishes how little things have changed since the colonial times in Congo. It is rich material for any filmmaker looking for a contemporary Indian story.
It’s interesting that the fundamental premise of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has been applied in 4 different contexts over the last hundred years. Colonialism and the jungles of Congo in the original novella, Cold War and Vietnam, American War of Terror and Pakistan and the Indian state and jungles of North-East. Could there be more? Yes, as I discovered studying the Naxalite insurgency in the ‘Red Corridor’ stretching from border areas adjoining Nepal to the jungles of AP and Karnataka border. Man’s descent into his darkest core, his vulnerability and his regression to savagery will continue to provide fertile grounds for future writers and film-makers. “Mistah Kurtz – he dead” but the theme has stayed alive. I will wrap up with Conrad’s famous paragraph just after Kurtz dies and Marlowe tries to make sense of those last moments.
“Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up — he had judged. ‘The horror!’ He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth — the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best — a vision of greyness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things — even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry — much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory!”
Tags: Conrad, Hear of Darkness
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It’s interesting that the fundamental premise of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has been applied in 4 different contexts over the last hundred years. Colonialism and the jungles of Congo in the original novella, Cold War and Vietnam, American War of Terror and Pakistan and the Indian state and jungles of North-East. Could there be more?
I would like add Uganda and The Last King of Scotland to the list. Elementary (maybe not all of) Conrad was present in the story.
Man’s descent into his darkest core, his vulnerability and his regression to savagery will continue to provide fertile grounds for future writers and film-makers.
World is run by the Man. All the interpretations separated by many hundred years and yet: it’s a Man who descends into the darkest core.
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Surface seems interesting…will give it a read.
More about Surface:
http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2005/05/siddhartha-deb-and-new-heart-of.html
interesting professorsaab. i know someone who used to work with one of those papers and his beat was northeast. first it was just his beat, then people termed his stand “soft” for north east militants. and after few years, they put him in the same bracket. he is know as their spokesman. and some call him pseudo. its almost 10 years now since i last met him. dont know here he stands now.