Conrad, Heart of Darkness #5: the essentials of this affair lay beyond my power of meddling
Slow Read of Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Week Five
In the fifth episode of the Slow Read of Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, we read the passage from pages 44 to 55, commencing Part II of the novel.
It begins with Marlow overhearing the plots of the colonial agents against European headquarters, follows the crawling steamboat deeper into the impenetrable unearthly earth, and ends with Marlow despairing of the futility of his attempts to control, or even understand, his boat, the European company officials, his African crew or the surrounding “savages”.
The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling.
Conrad, Heart of Darkness, p. 55
As with previous weeks, I am reading Heart of Darkness slowly in conversation with Maya Jasanoff, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. It provides a unique historical reflection on this classic novel of colonialism and and the darkness at the heart of modernity.
If you have missed the earlier episodes you can catch up here
Invitation to read Heart of Darkness with global history (Slow Read intro)
Heart of Darkness #1: This also has been one of the dark places of the earth (pp. 1-14)
Conrad, Heart of Darkness #2: “the merry dance of death and trade” (pp. 14-23)
Conrad, Heart of Darkness #3 the banality of civilisation and the humanity of savagery (pp. 23-35)
Conrad, Heart of Darkness #4: Sordid buccaneers tear treasure out of the bowels of the land (pp. 35-44, end of Part I)
Each episode contains my a segment of my spoken narration or audiobook of Heart of Darkness, commentary on the story and text, historical footnotes informed my Jasanoff, The Dawn Watch, and reflections on the historical themes I discuss on the Burning Archive.
Join the Burning Archive as a paid subscriber for the whole journey of this Slow Read.
