Conrad, Auerbach, Levine

Colonial rule seems, at first, most obviously divided by nationality: France, Germany and Britain each have different 'styles' of colonialism. Marlow, in Heart of Darkness makes a remark to this effect when he considers the map of Africa with its different colours demarcating nationally different - German, French, English - colonialisms.

Levine's article reminds us that even within a particular nationality of colonisers, there are still marked divisions along class boundaries (110), and also significant differences in ideals: for example, moralists saw colonialism as bringing civilisation to the natives , while the pragmatists saw colonialism as a means to eliminate the 'waste' of resources by the non-productive native (104-106).

This is helpful in reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Marlow's ideals seem more pragmatic; Kurtz (and the white women in the novel) seem to have more morally driven ideals. This does not necessarily set them apart: Levine suggests that both stances are united by the perceived lack of civilisation in native society (106). As the narrative progresses towards the physical and psychological 'heart of darkness', these ideals are stripped away: the deeper one investigates the nature of colonialism, one no longer finds moral progress, productivity and civilisation; only an endless and meaningless (absurd?) desire to consume.

Auerbach's essay is a fascinating piece of close reading that explores the techniques in modernist writing. Among other things it suggests that the modernists had "confidence that in any random fragment plucked from the course of a life at any time the totality of its fate is contained and can be portrayed". But the "random-ness" is never fully random, nor the "totality" the sum total of experience: at the very least there is still an artist/author who holds a certain version of truth and who selects and orders the experiences in the narrative.

Heart of Darkness seems to strive towards such a "total" view of the colonial phenomenon: Marlow's and Kurtz, two random figures in the larger colonial epoch, seem to stand in for the differring ideals of "all Europe" which disguise an essential "horror". But even then, as Max points out, the colonial phenomenon is only told through the consciousness of the white man (and is it possible at all to speak of the native experience through the same narrative techniques? Auerbach, by suggesting that there are no longer even exotic peoples [552] implies so).

Actually something interesting I noticed while reading Heart of Darkness and Auerbach: while Auerbach suggests that a kind of "unprejudiced" representation that erases differences between people is possible through examining the random moment, for Conrad, this seems to happen only at a "supreme moment": the claim to kinship between Marlow and his "late helmsman" occurs only at the moment of the latter's death - in my reading, a reminder to Marlow of his own mortality since its possible that the helmsman actually shielded (even if unintentionally) Marlow from the spear.

Thow Xin Wei