Friday, August 27, 2004
"He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land..."
One of the problems that we Americans have with understanding the spirit of the Enlightenment, that Luciferian angel of light that inspired the French revolution and the subsequent upheavals in Europe is apprehending the vision that it held out to the secular intelligensia. Here Conrad comes to our aid:
The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and -- as he was good enough to say himself -- his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must have been before his -- let us say -- nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which -- as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times -- were offered up to him -- do you understand? -- to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings -- we approach them with the might of a deity,' and so on, and so on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,' etc., etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence -- of words -- of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!'
The French revolution was the template, but the same drama played itself over and over again across the larger stage.
When Man exalts his understanding, God is the one exiled from a counterfeit Eden. Conrad has always struck me as an agnostic. But seafarers have always had a healthy mistrust of human wisdom, those who go down to the sea in ships see His wonders in the deep. Secular humanism, incubated as it always is in an artificial urban social setting, rarely survives contact with reality, whether that is in the form of the might of the sea as in Conrad's case, or the mystery of the jungle, as in Kurtz's.
So "Kurtz's Syndrome", which I expect I'll refer to often, can be distilled to this definition:
Humanists, when confronted with reality, may still pay lip service to their ideals, but in practice, become enablers of barbarism in the name of there cause.
Did Conrad suspect how apt his allegory of Europe would become?
The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and -- as he was good enough to say himself -- his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must have been before his -- let us say -- nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which -- as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times -- were offered up to him -- do you understand? -- to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings -- we approach them with the might of a deity,' and so on, and so on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,' etc., etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence -- of words -- of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!'
The French revolution was the template, but the same drama played itself over and over again across the larger stage.
When Man exalts his understanding, God is the one exiled from a counterfeit Eden. Conrad has always struck me as an agnostic. But seafarers have always had a healthy mistrust of human wisdom, those who go down to the sea in ships see His wonders in the deep. Secular humanism, incubated as it always is in an artificial urban social setting, rarely survives contact with reality, whether that is in the form of the might of the sea as in Conrad's case, or the mystery of the jungle, as in Kurtz's.
So "Kurtz's Syndrome", which I expect I'll refer to often, can be distilled to this definition:
Humanists, when confronted with reality, may still pay lip service to their ideals, but in practice, become enablers of barbarism in the name of there cause.
Did Conrad suspect how apt his allegory of Europe would become?
papijoe 10:26 PM
|