"The horror! The horror!"

Following on from the previous post, I'm including one more quote from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (I hadn't reached this passage when I posted the last entry). Kurtz's death. It's a (the?) seminal moment from the book, and from the film Apocalypse Now. In the book Kurtz dies from an unknown sickness, in the film he is killed by Marlow (the narrator). In both the book and the film Marlow is witness to Kurtz's passing.

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror - of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision - he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath -
The Horror! The Horror!" (page 98)

So, apparently, things were pretty dire with Kurtz and his life. But I wonder if the visage of Kurtz's death, as witnessed by Marlow, was so different from any other death - with the exception of Kurtz's actual words, though I imagine people say some strange things as they're dying. I've never watched someone pass from life to death. I was with my father when he began to die (after life support had been turned off), as his body began to shut down - a process whereby the person can appear to be in distress, especially when the "death rattle" begins - but I wasn't there at the very end. I found the experience a little confronting. If I'd looked closely I might have seen 'desire, temptation, surrender' in his face (as Marlow did with Kurtz). I chose not to look too closely, possibly because I didn't want to know what was there. He and I didn't get along so well and maybe I wanted to continue the distance we'd maintained from each other since I was about 13.

I feel enriched for having read Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad has a beautiful command of language (occasionally he overdoes it) - his prose combines striking visuals with tenebrous psychology (ie 'gloomy' - tenebrous is a word used a number of times in the novel and one (of a few) of which I had to look up the meaning); a kind of word synaesthesia??? However, I'm still somewhat in the dark (very punny!) as to what is the actual heart of darkness. Yes, Kurtz went mad, and had insatiable greed, and was charismatic enough to be deified among at least one group of people, and was, in all likelihood, turning into ivory (check the quote above! - well he would've if this had been a magical realism novel; karmic justice). But who among us hasn't experienced some, if not all, of these states (ie madness, insatiable greed, deification, ivory transformation).

It's also not clear to me exactly what sent Kurtz into broody madness - the broody African jungle, the broody African river (the Congo), the broody Africans - maybe all of the above. And let it be noted that this vision of Africa as a dark (evil?), primeval, claustrophobic, supernatural land is Marlow's vision, and, by extension(?), Joseph Conrad's - in more modern times the book, which was first published in 1902, has had accusations of racism directed at it. I'm guessing there are a number of levels on which this story can be interpreted and maybe some of its exaltedness lies in its ambiguity. It's the kind of book begging to have an essay written about it. And if this blog entry were an essay, it would attempt to discuss all the levels. But since it's not, it's going to finish. NOW. The End.

PS: my apologies for the overuse of question marks in the previous paragraph.