Heart of darkness

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"Heart of Darkness" in Youth: A Narrative , 1902

Herz der Finsternis (English original title Heart of Darkness ) is a story from 1899 by Joseph Conrad .

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The novella is embedded in a framework story : On the sea ​​yacht Nellie, which is idle at the Thames estuary in Gravesend , the former seaman Marlow tells his four friends, who are united by the sea, an episode from his life.

He describes his longing to get to know the last white spots on the globe and how it led, after some effort, to his becoming a river captain. The reader can easily see that the story of the Congo takes place at the time of the Congo Free State . Marlow, who already knows the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and the Yellow Sea, travels along the coast of an Africa he does not understand to the mouth of the great river and, upstream above the rapids, takes over his river steamer, which has since run aground and leaked.

There, in the main station of the colonial society , which collects the treasures of the individual agents in the jungle and sends them on, he discovers the "most outrageous sloppiness" during the three months he needed to repair the ship. He is also bothered by the fact that the colonialists brutally impose their nonsensical rules on the locals.

He hears from Kurtz, the successful head of the inner station, who “had collected, exchanged, swindled or stolen more ivory than all the other agents put together”, but also made a name for himself in Europe and “was so richly gifted that of all his gifts the predominant one, the one that was continually confirmed, was his speaking talent, his words - the gift of expression, the astonishing, enlightening ... ”. This station manager Kurtz, who has not reported for a year - instead he sent his assistant with the ivory - is the 800 mile journey upstream. The director of the station, a handful of his white assistants, and about twenty blacks whom Marlow calls cannibals , set out on the journey.

On the two-month journey, the little sooty steamboat “crawled upstream like a clumsy beetle”, always threatened by drifting tree trunks, rapids and shallows. The riddles that the land contains become more and more incomprehensible for Marlow, who repeatedly describes the journey as a journey into darkness, into the interior:

“I suddenly felt how big, how incredibly big that thing was that couldn't speak and maybe just as little hear. What was in there? I could see that a little ivory was coming out of there and had heard that Mr. Kurtz was in there. "

At the end of the journey, shortly before reaching the outermost station, the situation escalated. In the abandoned hut of a European you find firewood piled up for the steam boiler and the written request to come to the station as quickly as possible, but to approach carefully.

On the morning of arrival, a few miles below, an indescribable cry, drums resound, screams, the ship pounding upstream is attacked by arrows and tree trunks, the black helmsman dies, hit by a spear, in the control cabin at Marlow's feet. But they can drive away the attackers, whereby the white traveling companions, called by Marlow consistently 'pilgrims', believe in the power of their rifles, Marlow believe in the piercing whistle of his steam whistle.

A little later they tie up on the bank and while the director and his companions go to the hill, where he suspects Kurtz to be sick or dead, a conversation develops between Marlow and a young Russian adventurer who is all alone and on his own had traveled inland and who had also left the written warning on the river. He has an ambivalent relationship with Kurtz, whom he has joined. He admires Kurtz, but, alienated, talks about cult acts with which Kurtz binds the locals to himself and brings them to quasi-religious veneration. He carried out his raids and conquests with them. Now he lies upstairs, terminally ill, in his ward, without medicine for months. Marlow also learns from the Russian that Kurtz initiated the attack on the boat in order to stay in the jungle.

After the director and his companions have brought Kurtz on board on a stretcher, the ship sets off again the next morning. Two thousand eyes watch them. The station manager's mistress stretches her arms to the sky like a figurehead adorned with rich clothes and jewelry. The mighty ivory treasures on board are stacked up to the deck. The dying Kurtz always has her in view from the wheelhouse. Marlow is staying there with him. In anticipation he had said it like this:

"And I heard - him - she - this voice - other voices - they were all so little more than voices and the memory of the time itself surrounds me, incomprehensible, like a dying, monstrous chatter, stupid, cruel, dirty, wild, or just mean, without any sense. "

Marlow witnesses the death of the former station manager. Its ivory facial features alternate in a never-before-seen sequence between pride, power, fear and despair before he breathes his last words: “The horror! The horror! ”After Kurtz's death, who is buried on a river island, Marlow falls into a serious illness on the verge of death and only regains full consciousness in the country of his client - he thinks the city is reminiscent of a white whitewashed grave.

When he visits Kurtz's still grieving bride and brings her letters, he lies: "The last word he uttered was - your name." He can't tell the truth that Marlow cherishes, because how He thinks he has recognized elsewhere about the world of women: "... this world would be too beautiful, and if you really wanted to put it in the room, it would go to pieces before the first sunset."

Form and interpretation

The story gets part of the tension from the contrast between the honest narrator Marlow, who emphasizes his honesty in the context of the story, and the evil and madness he encounters in the jungle of the Congo. In the course of the narrative, the questioning of the type and location of evil, that is, of "darkness", increasingly comes to the fore.

The figure of the ivory dealer Mr. Kurtz, of whom Marlow - the narrator - is tied, is the only named character in the narrative. Mr. Kurtz is portrayed as extremely dark and shady. For Udo Wolter, who views Conrad and his works against the background of the "flight line of exile ", this figure is a symbol of "civilization and its barbaric negation through the horrors of colonialism."

Like other journeys in Conrad's novels and short stories, Marlow's journey leads “always into the abysses and depths of the modern subject”, says Wolter, who interprets this travel motif as a line of flight: “This line of flight also indicates that every refuge in the unambiguity of something exaggerated , abstract self-ideal is in vain ”. The Conrad biographer Renate Wiggershaus describes the narrator's journey as "a psychological journey abroad, as Freud called the unconscious".

Thematization of colonialism

Joseph Conrad's story Heart of Darkness is based on the conditions in what was then the Belgian Congo , which Conrad knew from personal experience. Since the Congo Conference of 1885, the area has been considered the "private property" of the Belgian King Leopold II . The book was written at the height of imperialism , critically examines the practice and effects of colonial policy on those affected and those who carry out colonial power, but it does not remain free of prejudices itself. The complex topic can be experienced in Heart of Darkness . Acting characters and people as a mirror of European colonial practice at the end of the 19th century give the imperial idea a face and have remained immanent in consideration of neo-colonial tendencies far beyond the end of extremist expansionist ideologies at the end of the Second World War.

The English empire emerges on the Thames. Obeying economic impulses, the early English seafaring established the emergence of colonialism. In the following it becomes clear to Marlow that the idea of ​​colonialism was founded on the spread of civilization and that cultural development in general only becomes possible through the forced takeover of an underdeveloped area by progressive powers. The discursive perception of positive aspects in the world of the Roman conquest of Britain serves him as a justification for the acquisition of the British Empire overseas.

From Marlow's point of view, a positive balance results for the colonies through the profit from civilizational measures, participation in development and the overcoming of darkness through their historical marginalization. The privations to tame the wilderness demand unspeakable efforts from the colonialists. For Marlow, however, their driving reason for venturing into the wilderness is also an emotional fascination with the abnormal, raw and primitive, which knows how to defy time here.

According to Marlow, the idea of ​​colonization is not that of submission as with the Romans, but is guided by a higher idea. Pure conquest, on the other hand, is solely aimed at exploitation.

Moral norms do not apply equally to rulers and ruled: the murder of a master by “savages” triggers a punitive action against the inhabitants of an entire village. The native blacks are not only referred to as niggers and negro , but are also classified as underdeveloped. This is particularly evident when Marlow describes the landing in Kurtz's camp and the encounter with his local wife.

The center of Heart of Darkness is the character of Kurtz. As the head of the trading company's outstation, he embodies the perfidious, unscrupulous colonialist. By unrestrained exploitation of the locals, he exceeded his task with pathological ambition, even in the eyes of his superiors. The Darwinian component of racial superiority is expressed in Kurtz's report, which Marlow reads in the Congo, with proposals for the suppression of the primitive customs of the natives .

Marlow shows that Kurtz means the extinction literally when he reaches Kurtz's station and sees the severed heads of the locals through his binoculars. Marlow is disgusted by Kurtz's morbid obsession , but unsure of his own role in the game as he risks falling into the obsession himself.

Film adaptations

Orson Welles had already considered a film version of the material in 1940, but then rejected the plan. The first film adaptation took place in 1958 under the original title within the American series Playhouse 90, which presented the ambitious literary film adaptation for television. It was directed by Ron Winston , who was only 26 years old . a. Roddy McDowall as Marlow, Eartha Kitt as Queenie and Oskar Homolka as Doctor. Kurtz was played by old horror star Boris Karloff .

The 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God by Werner Herzog with Klaus Kinski is largely inspired by Conrad's book.

The best-known implementation of the material is that of Francis Ford Coppola from 1979, who transported the story to the Vietnam War and brought it to the cinemas as an anti-war film with a large cast of stars ( Marlon Brando , Martin Sheen , Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper ) : Apocalypse Now .

The theme of the story was taken up in an episode of Miami Vice : Pact with the Devil (Season 1, Episode 2, English original title: Heart of Darkness). At the center is an under-cover agent of the FBI, who has apparently changed sides and whose methods have become unorthodox and violent. Some points in the dialogue can be seen as borrowing from Apocalypse Now , for example when the FBI agent is confronted and justifies his methods with the words "I have seen things" (31st film minute).

The story was filmed as a television film in 1993 under the title Heart of Darkness by Nicolas Roeg with Tim Roth , John Malkovich and Iman Abdulmajid in the leading roles.

The Colombian adventure film The Shaman and the Snake from 2015 is not a retelling, but has parallels to Heart of Darkness : The river trip into the unknown, the colonialists who have fallen into madness and the exploitation of humans and nature.

Other reception

In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted the novel one of the most important British novels .

Two literary studies offer a broad overview of the literary reception and adaptations of Heart of Darkness (Matthias N. Lorenz: Distant Kinship - Remote Relationship on German-Language Literature; Regelind Farn: Colonial and Postcolonial Rewritings of Heart of Darkness , especially on the English-language and French literature).

In 2015, the Schauspiel Bonn performed a stage adaptation of the story by Jan-Christoph Gockel and David Schliesing .

The novel Trencherman by the South African writer Eben Venter from 2008 is a modern adaptation of the novella. It uses numerous quotes from Conrad's original and slightly modified character names.

Wolfram Lotz wrote the radio play The Ridiculous Darkness as a continuation of Conrad's story. For example, it was broadcast as a radio play on Deutschlandfunk and premiered as a drama on September 6, 2014 at the Vienna Academy Theater.

The computer games Far Cry 2 (2008) and Spec Ops: The Line (2012) were inspired by the narrative. While Far Cry 2 chooses a fictional, civil war-torn African state as the setting, Spec Ops: The Line relocates the events in a Dubai completely destroyed by sandstorms.

Quote

“Man is an evil animal. His wickedness needs to be organized. Crime is a necessary condition of organized existence. Society is essentially criminal, otherwise it would not exist. Egoism saves everything - absolutely everything - that we hate, what we love. And everything stays as it is. That’s why I respect the extreme anarchists. 'I hope for general extermination' - very good. That is fair, and more than that, it is clear. We compromise with words. It doesn't help us either. It's like a forest where nobody knows the way. You are lost while still shouting: 'I am saved!' "

- Joseph Conrad : Letter to Robert Cunninghame Graham , February 2, 1899

Reviews

“Of all that he had written, I admired the most terrible story Herz der Darkness , which fully expresses his view of life: the tolerably moral cultured man on the perilous way over a crust of barely cooled lava, which break through every moment and the careless in hot let flaming abysses sink. "

- Bertrand Russell

“Truthful report, then, experienced and suffered. We are all the more dismayed when reading the story that every detail is charged with a tension that goes far beyond a factual account. "

- Urs Widmer , 1992.

expenditure

English editions: first editions, critical and German glossed editions

  • Heart of Darkness. Edited [and glossed in German] by Bernhard Reitz (= RUB . No. 9161: Fremdsprachentexte ). Reclam, Stuttgart 1984 [u. ö.], ISBN 978-3-15-009161-6 .

German translations

  • The heart of darkness. In: Youth. Three stories. Justified translation from English by Ernst W. Freißler. S. Fischer, Berlin 1926, pp. 49-180.
  • The heart of darkness. Narrative. S. Fischer, Berlin 1933 [first independent book edition in the German translation by Ernst W. Freißler].
  • The heart of darkness. In: Paths without returning home. Novellas. Translated from Polish by Waldemar Krause with the assistance of Bernhard von Rautenberg-Garcynski. Union, Berlin 1958, pp. 5-135.
  • Heart of darkness. In: Youth. Heart of darkness. The end of the song. German by Fritz Lorch. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1968, pp. 59–191.
  • Heart of darkness. Narrative. Translated from English by Elli Berger. In: Stories I: The nigger from the "Narcissus". Youth. (A report). Heart of darkness. Dieterichssche Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1979.
  • Heart of darkness. Translated and edited by Daniel Göske (= RUB . No. 8714). Reclam, Stuttgart 1991.
  • Heart of darkness. Translation and afterword by Reinhold Batberger (= Library Suhrkamp. Vol. 1088). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1992.
  • Heart of darkness. With the “Kongo-Tagebuch” and the “Up-river Book” as well as an afterword in the appendix, newly translated by Urs Widmer . Haffmans, Zurich 1992 [Joseph Conrad's works. “Zurich Edition” in newly translated individual volumes], ISBN 3-251-20123-9 .
  • Heart of darkness. Novel. Afterword by Tobias Döring. New translation from English by Sophie Zeitz. dtv, Munich 2005 (dtv 13338).
  • Heart of darkness. Youth. The end of the song. Stories. Retransmitted from English by Manfred Allie. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007.

Illustrated editions

Audio books and games

literature

  • Chinua Achebe (1977): An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" . In: Massachusetts Review 18/1977.
  • Chinua Achebe: An image of Africa and the trouble with Nigeria , London [u. a.]: Penguin Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0-141-19258-1 .
  • Hans Christoph Buch (2002): The most disgusting foray in history - A literary search for traces of Joseph Conrad's story "Heart of Darkness". In: Literatures, 6/2002.
  • Jan H. Hauptmann (2008): Aspects of the postcolonial Conrad reception . Munich: AVM. ISBN 978-3-89975-861-0 .
  • Matthias N. Lorenz: Distant Kinship - distant relationship. Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" in German literature from Kafka to Kracht , Stuttgart, Weimar: JB Metzler 2017. ISBN 978-3-476-04472-3
  • Udo Wolter 2004: Exile of “material interests”. In: jour fixe initiative berlin (ed.): Fluchtlinien des Exils , ISBN 3-89771-431-0 .
  • Winfried Speitkamp (2011): River cruise into horror. "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad (1902). , in: Dirk van Laak (Ed.): Literature that wrote history. Göttingen, pp. 118-133. ISBN 978-3525300152 .
  • Carole Stone, Fawzia Afzal-Khan: Gender, Race and Narrative Structure: A Reappraisal of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". In: Conradina 29/3 (1997), pp. 221-234.
  • Cedric Watts: (2012): Conrad's Heart of Darkness: A Critical and Contextual Discussion. , Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam / New York, ISBN 978-90-420-3527-0 .

Web links

Wikisource: Heart of Darkness  - original text

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b Cf. Udo Wolter 2004: Exile of "material interests". In: jour fixe initiative berlin (ed.): Fluchtlinien des Exils.
  2. ↑ See Wiggershaus, Renate (2000): Joseph Conrad. Munich.
  3. ↑ Aguirre, the Wrath of God , review by Patrick Wolf on filmzentrale.com, accessed on January 3, 2016
  4. ^ Joseph Conrad, Michael Köhlmeier: Heart of Darkness Review by Martin Reiterer (2008) on the website of the Literaturhaus Wien ; Retrieved January 3, 2016
  5. ^ The Guardian: The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? , accessed on January 2, 2016
  6. ↑ Matthias N. Lorenz: Distant Kinship - distant relatives. Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" in German literature from Kafka to Kracht , Stuttgart, Weimar: JB Metzler 2017, 546 pp. ISBN 978-3-476-04472-3
  7. ↑ Regelind Fern: Colonial and Postcolonial Rewritings of Heart of Darkness. A Century of Dialogue with Joseph Conrad , Boca Raton (Florida): Dissertation.Com 2005. ISBN 978-1581122893
  8. ↑ Quoted from: Urs Widmer: Nachwort [1992]. In: Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness. Narrative. Translated and with an afterword by Urs Widmer. With twenty-one etchings] by Claudia Berg . Book guild Gutenberg , Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 978-3-7632-5733-1 , pp. 203-225, here 203.
  9. ^ Joseph Conrad: Heart of the Dark, Diogenes Verlag, 2005. Blurb
  10. ↑ Urs Widmer: Afterword [1992]. In: Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness. Narrative. Translated and with an afterword by Urs Widmer. With twenty-one drypoint etchings by Claudia Berg . Book guild Gutenberg , Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 978-3-7632-5733-1 , pp. 203-225, here 218.