The heart of art lies outside itself

Read in relation to each other, the question that arises from both texts appears to be a metaphysical one: is there an essence to art that can be disentangled from its author, its setting, its shameful racist tendencies (or insert authorial vice)? This is paralled, perhaps, by Heart of Darkness’ question of whether there is an essence to man, released from the trappings of society.

Achebe says that because Heart cannot be untangled from its “bloody racist” author, it should not be considered art as such. For Marlowe, while Kurtz was “remarkable” for having “stepped over the edge”, man is perhaps better off trammeled by society.

But another answer to the original question (and one that I am more inclined towards) seems to present itself in the embedded structure of Heart itself. Marlow is both teller and part of the narrative, as is the shadowy “I”, as is Conrad himself. The effacing of authorial voice and the intentional similarities between Marlowe and Conrad just makes it all the more ambiguous to pin the text down to a unitary narrative. Similarly, Heart should be read not just as itself but as part of a body of narratives that grows with time: part of colonial discourse, part of the postcolonial reaction (by Achebe, for instance), part of modernism and so on. Perhaps then a work of art lies not in its essence but in how it can be taken out of itself to generate more fruitful narratives.

This quote from Heart seems particularly relevant: “to [Marlow] the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze…” (18)

283 words

ps. As a point of interest, there’s a slight parallel between Achebe’s criticism of Conrad and the recent decision by Britain’s exam board to ban a poem on knife crime by Carol Ann Duffy from the GCSE syllabus. Duffy’s riposte, in the form of a poem, also brings out a drawback to Achebe’s argument: where does one draw the line, since every author in history can probably be accused of being close-minded (and thus culpable of violence) in some way?