'Heart of Darkness' and late-Victorian fascination with the primitive and the double - novel by Joseph Conrad

In conclusion, Kurtz, no less than other neo-primitives, is an evolutionary throwback, the "man-that-was" (Dracula 231). He is an exemplification of the duality of human nature, of how darkness is a component of light, and when it prevails, brings anarchy and corruption of others as well as self. Appropriately, he ends up ignominiously: "Suddenly the manager's boy |probably burlesquing the manager~ put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt: 'Mistah Kurtz--he dead'" (71). Jung's definition of the "experience that furnishes the material for artistic expression" could well apply to Heart of Darkness and to each of the other novels: "It is something strange that derives its existence from the hinterland of man's mind, as if it had emerged from the abyss of prehuman ages, or from a superhuman world of contrasting light and darkness. It is a primordial experience which surpasses man's understanding and to which in his weakness he may easily succumb" (90).

NOTES

1 See "Works Cited." For a discussion of some of the essays see Ed Block, Jr., "Evolutionist Psychology" and "James Sully."

2 Lord Macaulay adopts this position; he views the English people as "the greatest and most highly civilized people that ever the world saw" (Norton Anthology 2: 632). To him English literature constituted the core of an Indian's apprenticeship to civilization, and he had much confidence in this mode of improvement. Gauri Viswanathan holds that "British administrators discovered an ally in English literature to support them in maintaining control of the natives under the guise of liberal education" (95).

3 The third mention of the word which comes in the conversation that Marlow has with the Intended--"He was a remarkable man: I said unsteadily"--may be considered as carrying some irony. Fraser makes passing mention of the meaning of the phrase (97).

4 Of relevance here is Lenin's perception about the relation between terrorism and intellectualism: he defines terrorism as "the violence of intellectuals." See Rubenstein (43).

5 "Ubi defecisset dies in usm nocturni luminis urerentur" (44).

WORKS CITED

Allen, Grant. The British Barbarians, New York: Arno, 1975.

-----. "Who Was Primitive Man?" Fortnightly Review 38 (1882): 308-22.

Blavatsky, Helene. The Key to Theosophy. London: Theosophical, 1889.

Block, Ed, Jr. "Evolutionist Psychology and Aesthetics: The Cornhill Magazine, 1875-1880." Journal of the History of Ideas 45.3 (July-September 1984): 465-75.

-----. "James Sully, Evolutionist Psychology, and Late Victorian Gothic Fiction." Victorian Studies 25.4 (Summer 1982): 443-67.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria. Ed. J. Shawcross. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1907.

Conrad, Joseph. The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad. Eds. Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.

-----. Heart of Darkness. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York: Norton, 1971.

Corbett, W. J. "Is Insanity Increasing?" Fornightly Review 41 (1883): 482-94.