Indeholder:
'An Outpost of Progress' 1
'Karain' 35
'Youth' 91
'Heart of Darkness' 133
Explanatory Notes 253
Glossary 279
Har et vist præg af antikolonialisme. Har en god karakteristik af bureaukrater, der også gælder udenfor Belgisk Congo i slutningen af 1890erne. En malende beskrivelse af den overfladiske humanisme man ofte ser/hører.
Lidt tvivlsom. Men forklarer Orang og Bajow folket. Giver en kort information om Aceh, inklusive hollændernes besættelseskrig 1873-1904.
Oplevelser til søs. Lidt Jørn Riel agtig, men langt fra så sjov. Men nok mere realistisk.
Lidt støvet. Jeg læste den kun til ende i en søgen efter antikolonialistiske passager. De er få, men gode.
Der er en sjov tanke, en sammenligning af, hvordan turen op ad Congofloden opleves, med hvordan en ung romer, udsendt til kolonien England, kunne tænkes at have oplevet en tilsvarende tur op ad Thames. Den starter med refleksioner, som noterne siger har deres udspring hos Stanley og William Pitt.
Jeg synes også om forskellen i beskrivelsen af hvide og sorte. Sympatien ligger hvor den skal.
Henviser til et større antal skjulte citater. Blandt andet fra biblen. Og så er der et godt hyklerisk citat fra Kong Leopold.
207 the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs: Conrad probably had in mind the International Association for the Exploration and Civilising of Africa (l'Association Internationale pour l'Exploration et la Civilisation en Afnque), of which King Leopold was the president. 273
Har den bedste ordliste over engelske sømandsudtryk, jeg har set.
Society, not from any tenderness, but because of its strange needs, had taken care of those two men, forbidding them all independent thought, all initiative, all departure from routine; and forbidding it under pain of death. They.could only live on condition of being machines. And now, released from the fostering care of men with pens behind the ears, or of men with gold lace on the sleeves, they were like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedom. They did not know what use to make of their faculties, being both, through want of practice, incapable of independent thought. 8
Kayerts sat on his chair and looked down on the proceedings, understanding nothing. 9-10
"Slavery is an awful thing," stammered out Kayerts in an unsteady voice.
"Frightful - the sufferings," grunted Carlier with conviction.
They believed their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody.knows what suffering or sacrifice mean - except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions. 22-23
69 Bajow people, who have no country: Captain Mundy {NE i, p. 45) says:
The Orang Bajow [Bajow people] resemble the Bugis and Malays. They have no country, live in boats, carry on a trade in tortoise-shell, bêche de mer, &c They say they have ..... a tradition that they originally came from the kingdom of Luwu.
69 Atjeh, where there was war. the Atjehnese (or Achinese) War of 1873-1904 was a colonial campaign in which the Dutch repeatedly strove, with eventual success, to conquer the Muslim state of Atjeh (now Aceh) in northern Sumatra. 258
"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago - the other day; .... Light came out of this river since - you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine - what d'ye call 'em? - trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries - a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too - used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read.* Imagine him here - the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina - and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages, - precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No, Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay. 139
Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga - perhaps too much dice, you know - coming out here in he train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, he utter savagery, had closed round him, - all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. .... "Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower - "Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency - the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what as to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. 140-1
A whited sepulchre: according to St Matthew's gospel (23: 27-8), Jesus said: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
Even so ye also appear outwardly righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Marlow associates Brussels with hypocrisy because that city was the source of much hypocritical rhetoric about the noble mission of civilizing the natives of the Congo. King Leopold had declared in 1876:
To open to civilisation the sole part of the globe which it has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness which envelops the entire population: this, I venture to say, is a crusade worthy of this Century of progress. 266
Black rags were wound round their loins and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. 154
I sweated and shivered over that business considerably, I can tell you. After
all, for a seaman, to scrape the bottom of the thing that's jupposed to float
all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it, but
you never forget the thump - eh? A blow on the very heart. You remember it, you
dream of it, you wake up at night and think of it - years after - and go hot and
cold all over. I don't pretend to say that steamboat floated all the time. More
than once she had to wade for a bit, with
twenty cannibals splashing around
and pushing. We had enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine
fellows - cannibals - in their place. They were men one could work with, and I
am grateful to them. And, after all, they did not eat each other before my face:
they had brought along a provision of hippo-meat which went rotten, and made the
mystery of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. 184
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Orla Jordal, 2007
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