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Fiction as Political Theory: Joseph Conrad's ‘heart of Darkness’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Roger D. Spegele
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Extract

Do novelists have something to say about politics? By raising the question in such a starkly rhetorical way it is tempting to respond, ‘Yes, of course, novelists (at least some of them) do have something to say on a wide variety of subjects which traditionally fall under the rubric of political thought’. One could quickly give examples: Tolstoy's devastating critique of military leadership in War and Peace, George Orwell's penetrating analysis of the reality of totalitarianism in 1984 and Jean Paul Sartre's portrait of a whole society in a state of imminent collapse in Le Sursis. With a little time for reflection it would surely not be difficult to expand this list to several hundred titles. But if the novelist is credited with having political thoughts or ideas it is rather odd to find so little systematic analysis and interpretation of those ideas by political scientists.² Why is this the case? For some political scientists perhaps the reason lies in their explicit acceptance of models of explanation which approximate those of the physical sciences. They wish to constrict their range of inquiry into politics in the interest of developing better models for explaining and predicting political phenomena. There is no need to quarrel with this perfectly sound approach, except where it leads its proponents into a dogmatic rejection of other modes of inquiry.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , July 1972 , pp. 319 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

1 For examples of the quantity and range of interest exhibited by ‘political’ novelists see the excellent recent anthology by Green, Philip and Walzer, Michael, eds., The Political Imagination in Literature (New York: The Free Press, 1969)Google Scholar or the somewhat less satisfactory selection in Holland, Henry M. Jr,, ed., Politics Through Literature (Englewood Cliffs N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1968).Google Scholar

2 Some recent exceptions are Willhoite, Fred H.,, Beyond Nihilism: Albert Camus's Contribution to Political Thought (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968)Google Scholar and Wilkinson, David, Malraux: An Essay in Political Criticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 I have speculated on this question in my essay ‘Fiction and Political Theory’, Social Research, 38 (1971), 108–38.Google Scholar

4 Quoted in Hay, Eloise Knapp, The Political Novels of Joseph Conrad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 8.Google Scholar

5 Russell, Bertrand, Portraits From Memory (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956), p. 84.Google Scholar

6 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), p. 51.Google Scholar

7 Paraphrased in Moore, G. E., ‘Wittgenstein's Lectures, 1930–1933’, Philosophical Papers (London: Basil Blackwell, 1959), p. 209.Google Scholar

8 In the Preface to Under Western Eyes Conrad denounced autocracy as ‘complete moral anarchism’ while revolutionary utopianism was ‘no less imbecile’. Even more revealing is this remark from his letters: ‘Everyone must walk in the light of his own heart's gospel. No man's light is good to any of his fellows. That's my creed from beginning to end. That's my view of life—a view that rejects all formulas, dogmas and principles of other people's making. These are only a web of illusions. We are too varied. Another man's truth is only a dismal lie to me’. G.jean-aubry, , Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1927), Vol. I, p. 184Google Scholar. Note also: ‘My misfortune is that I can't swallow any formula and am wearing the aspect of enemy to all mankind’. Letters from Joseph Conrad, 1895–1924, Edward Garnett, ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1928), p. 265.

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10 Jean-aubry, , Conrad: Life and Letters, p. 268.Google Scholar

11 See Conrad, Joseph, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus': A Tale of the Sea (London: J. M. Dent, 1946), Preface.Google Scholar

12 Conrad never accepted the exaggerated opinion of his contemporaries regarding art's value. For example, in one essay, he wrote: ‘It is natural that the novelist should doubt his ability to cope with his task. He imagines it more gigantic than it is. And yet literary creation being only one of the legitimate forms of human activity has no value but on the condition of not excluding the fullest recognition of all the more distinct forms of action. This condition is sometimes forgotten by the man of letters, who often, especially in his youth, is inclined to lay a claim of exclusive superiority for his own amongst all the other tasks of the human mind. The mass of verse and prose may glimmer here and there with the glow of a divine spark, but in the sum of human effort it has no special importance.’ Conrad, , Notes on Life and Letters (London: J. M. Dent, 1946), p. 7.Google Scholar

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26 The irony here is obvious: ‘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’. Matt. 23:27.

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37 ‘What saves us is efficiency — the devotion to efficiency’. Conrad, , Youth, p. 50.Google Scholar

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45 For a fascinating study of the personality trait and several historical examples from the Middle Ages, see Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium (Fairlawn, New Jersey: Essential Books, 1957).Google Scholar

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50 Conrad suggests the decisive importance of the ending in a letter to his publisher: ‘In the light of the final incident, the whole story in all its descriptive detail shall fall into place—acquire its value and significance. The last pages of the ‘Heart of Darkness’ where the interview of the man and the girl locks in—as it were—the whole 30,000 words of narrative description into the one suggestive view of a whole phase of life and makes of that story something quite on another plane than an anecdote of a man who went mad in the centre of Africa.’ Joseph Conrad: Letters to William Blackwood and David S. Meldrum, Blackburn, William, ed. (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1958), p. 154.Google Scholar

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59 ‘Political institutions, whether conceived by the wisdom of the few or the ignorance of the many, are incapable of securing the happiness of mankind.’ Conrad, , Notes on Life and Letters, p. 33.Google Scholar

60 As he put it in one of his letters truth is ‘une ombre sinistre et fuyante dont il est impossible de fixer l'image’.

61 Conrad once declared to a friend: ‘Je ne veux pas aller au fond. Je veux considérer la realité comme une chose rude et rugueuse sur laquelle je promène mes doigts—rien de plus.’ Quoted in Meyer, Bernard C., Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 10.Google Scholar

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63 Conrad, , Youth, p. 100.Google Scholar

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68 I have borrowed this term from Plamenatz, John. See his Man and Society, 2 Vols. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), especially pp. xv–xvi of Vol. I.Google Scholar

69 For a discussion of the difference between causal and motive explanations see Louch, A. R., Explanation and Human Action (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), esp. chap. 6.Google Scholar

70 See, for example, Brodbeck, May, ‘Explanation, Prediction and Imperfect Knowledge’, in Brodbeck, May, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan Co., 1968).Google Scholar