The "trip" in Heart of Darkness

by Simone and Florian

HEART OF DARKNESS: THE TALE OF A TRIP (Simone)

Teodor Josef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, famous with the name of Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is considered one of the greatest exponents of the English literature since the end of the19th century.  At seventeen years it was enlisted in the French merchant marine, and in 1878 he obtained the boarding in English boats, on which he covered waters of south eastern Asia between Singapore and Borneo. In 1890 he sailed on  the Congo river - experience that will be the source of inspiration for his best work, Heart of Darkness.  In 1896 he abandoned the navy and retired to Ashford, in Kent.  From this short description of the life of Conrad we can understand how his greatest work has been influenced. "Heart of Darkness" is also a book about the discovery of new places, about the trip in an unknown land.

On boat, in the safe port of London, Marlow, a seaman under the sky, tells his three friends of  his worst experience. It happened when Marlow saw for the first time a map of a land, that had not been explored yet. This land was an empty, charming, and mysterious space for Marlow, who felt like a child full of dreams. He was fascinated by this land mainly because it contained a river, the largest river that appeared on the map, that was like an immense snake with the head in the sea, while the body formed a wide curve on a wide region, and the tail got lost in the depth of the earth. 

The most meaningful  point of the description of the travel is, perhaps, when Marlow tells of  the sight of Kurtz’s village:

 "Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest...”

 “Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling...”

 “The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy...”

 “The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides like a railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep -- it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance...”

  “We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves”....

 In Africa there are not any frontiers between life and death. From the description of "Heart of Darkness", we notice that the river and the country are not changed in comparison with the description made by Conrad. 

“The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely

across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness”

 "Heart of Darkness" teaches how to travel, it is like to dream of  a trip in the pages of a book.The trip is a space in continuous movement, where only your inside time seems to stop. You obverve what it happens around you, you are involved, you are astonished while you watch outside of you. The trip is also a way of living, because you can see and feel, like an artist, a painter, or a musician opened to the sound, to the voice and the rhythm. The trip transforms you into a free person. Travelling is also a way to create, because you hold back what you see and feel, in your mind, to try to interpret it afterwards just like if you are an artist, a painter in front of the colours and the forms.  

 A COMPARISON BETWEEN CONRAD’S AND MARLOW’S TRIP (Florian)

Everything started with a small boy looking on a world map, seeing a big black undiscovered area. “I want to get there and discover these parts of the world.” The boy dream of many young future sailors was also the one of Conrad. As a boy he dreamed of foreign countries and continents, as a man he got there. Conrad was not only a sailor but also a writer. And nothing seems clearer to him as to write about his adventures. In his stories he is not there personally, but a person that is just like him. In case of “ Heart of Darkness” it’s Marlow.

Marlow’s and also Conrad’s trip started in England and took them to Brussels, Belgium, because the one part of Africa, the Congo, was personal property of King Leopold II¹ of Belgium. That’s the reason why the River Steamboat Company also was there. So he got to get there. Both had an aunt1 who brought them to a better society, so they could get a position in the Steamboat Company. The one part of the book, when he got to the office, is very specific described. The knitting women, the doctor, and the secretary are actually also there in Conrad’s diary1.

There Conrad signed a contract, obligating him to serve on a river steamboat in the Congo for three years.

Also other persons are there in both works. Like the chief of the Inner Station, Georges- Antoine Klein, in the year Conrad was in the Congo. A person, Conrad was very impressed of, so he took the whole person and used it for the character of Kurtz.

The next stop of his trip, the First (Outer) Station Boma², he reached with a big steamer, afterwards he took a smaller steamer, that took him to Matadi. After two weeks in Matadi, Conrad and a caravan of thirty-two men, including a person called Harou, began their journey to Kinchasa. Harou is a person that is also mentioned in “ The Heart of Darkness”, he is the one big men, who was too weak and afterwards too ill to continue the trip on his own legs. Six men had to carry him in a hammock. They passed some places Conrad also describes in the book.  After some days, the extra weight of Harou got seemingly too much for the carriers. Just like in the book they did some bad things about him, dropped him, beat him up and run away…. After this Conrad called all of them, held a speech, where he told them to behave good, but none of them understood him.

After thirty-five days of travelling, he had finally reached Kinchassa. There he was informed, that his assigned steamer, the “Florida” had sunk a few days earlier and was still being repaired. He did not want to wait for “ his” ship to be repaired, so he went up the river as second in command, with an other steamer, the “ Roi des Belges”. Conrad learned everything about “ freshwater navigating and dangers” from Captain Koch. Koch got ill after some time, and so Conrad was asked to act as commander of the steamer until Koch recovers from his illness. He went up and down the river for months, until Koch was healthy again. Now it was time to get his own steamer, but the people in Brussels felt that, because of Conrad’s already developing health conditions, he should not be given command of a steamer. When Conrad heard that, he did not want to stay in Africa any longer, so he got to Boma, where he waited for a steamer to take him back home to Europe. In Europe he had to stay a couple of weeks in hospital to recover again. Recover from what he called:“ a long, long illness, and a very sad convalescence”. He had continuous health problems all his life².

To summarize all of this, we can say that most of the really important persons of the book, were also there as part of Conrad’s trip. The main stations on the Congo are also a part of Conrad’s experience. Also the whole landscape Conrad describes in the book, he probably saw on his own. But the most important thing is that the trip to the Congo changed the lives of both of them. It changed Conrad from the sailor to the writer and Marlow from the young powerful man into the old weak sailor man.