/lit/ - Literature

You have to read The Nigger of the "Narcissus"

>>19592724
Read Youth first.

This book should be about a hundred pages longer than it is

What's worse is that every single analysis or lecture on the book is about muh racism post-colonialism culture studies shit.

>>19592724
I liked this book.

>>19592724
The main point is that the line between civilization and savagery is quite thin

>>19592724
Get out of the house and experience, then you’ll get it

>>19592745
which is fucking hilarious because the main theme of the book is that white people turn into niggers themselves when you strip civilization out of them.

>>19592817
Yeah, civilization is pretty lame, pretentious, hypocritical and fake, but at least you don't decapitate people, put their heads on sticks and dance naked in front of the fire while screaming like a retard.

>>19592870
I really wish you people would read a book or two, just to dress up the inanity a little bit.

>>19592840
And that implies that niggers have no civilization. That's what pisses Achebe off.

>>19592724
The ending is especially good when the hero lies to Kurz's fiancée about his last words.

>>19592724
Watch the movie

>>19592724
Women cant into heart of darkness. Just look at goodreads

The horror

>>19592724
Because it's garbage.

>>19592724
It's just an excuse to play some Doors songs and a Rolling Stones song and put Marlon Brando on film even though he's outlived a life sentence. The "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" part is pretty comfy tho

>>19593293

>It's just an excuse to play some Doors songs and a Rolling Stones song and put Marlon Brando on film even though he's outlived a life sentence. The "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" part is pretty comfy tho

Canadian hands typed this

>>19592840
from my reading of it I've concluded that what Conrad was trying to convey was that Europeans don't belong in Africa not because colonialism is le bad but because the jungle and its inhabitants i.e. the "Heart of Darkness" will overtake and destroy them. And that's a tragedy because Kurtz, the embodiment of European civilization and all of its potential, could've been a multitude of wonderful things but instead became an ivory hunting warlord who died unceremoniously deep in the Belgian Congo.

The rest of Conrad’s bibliography contextualizes. It is his Inferno to what is to come. Marlow reappears in many books and even the ones without him have similar themes. His books are about progressivism supplanting religion.

>>19593703
>His books are about progressivism supplanting religion.

explain how this applies to Lord Jim. Definitely see that theme in the Secret Agent however

>>19593709
I don’t mean modern progressivism, I mean stuff like judicial law outweighing divine law or democracy in general. Conrad probably supported progressivism to a large degree anyway. An obvious example would be Brinsley’s suicide. I think Jim’s trial unmasked all the latent transgressions he committed in life revealing his superficial nature. He couldn’t reconcile this through God, and instead all the implicit guilts and wrong doings that got him to where he was. Without God he’s a beast waiting to be torn apart by other beasts. Darwinism vs. secularism. The oddest aspect of Conrad is he narrative aloofness— nothing seems real, it’s all meaningless. Oddly, Conrad’s books seem very Protestant to me.

>>19592724
In fact, I would not be surprised if some sailor told me this story, even in our age. They are all depressive, crazy liars. One Russian sailor told me the story of his life and travels, which was more pretentious and delusional than the plot of Kojima's games. There have been false flag operations, man-eating sharks and becoming a traditionalist after visiting Brunei. It was real life communication lol.

>>19592724
Why is it always "I dont get it" as though the point of reading lit is only to extract some simple obvious and intuitive lesson.

>>19593746
Conrad so far as I know was nonreligious. And wouldn't Jim having a guilty conscience in the first place be an indicator of Christianity's influences on one's moral even when the character isn't explicitly Christian?

You don't get it?

"Horror, horror... "

>>19592840
I guess the true niggers where the frens we lost along the way...

>>19594175
Yes I said his novels seem Protestant to me. He was raised Catholic but hated the Church and conventions. Academics call him an atheist and I don’t really think that’s accurate. But yes, the residual remnants of Christianity on the modern world is a unique way to view Lord Jim. I was talking about the character Brierly as sort of a parable for modern man replacing God with ambition, his only security was built on himself, but then with Jim’s trial he realized he was weak without God. I know it’s not explicitly stated, but they do in fact come across as implicitly Christian novels, as opposed to someone like Nabokov who is a nihilistic atheist. Someone like Lovecraft is interesting to analyze from the perspective (granted you like his writing which I do) as he almost seems a Pagan.

This book fucking sucked. Change my mind.

>>19594702
that's an interesting take on Brierly's suicide. I wasn't sure how to interpret it when I read it.

>>19593679
London is called the Heart of Darkness at the end. It's not about the jungle, but more about people being inherently evil and life itself being a merciless, senseless horror, and "civilized" people struggling to cope with it and living in pure delusions, such as Kurtz's wife, for example.

Although, I didn't get why the Russian man was praising Kurtz, when he clearly witnessed what has become of him. Everyone else praising him in the book don't really have any idea of what had happened to him there, they have an idea of the perfect man, but that man was lost a long time ago.
Same goes with Marlow, who is unquestionably worshipping him. The book never really tells us what they were talking about, but it did imply that they spent a considerable amount of time talking to one another.
I guess Marlow praised him for uncovering the truth about the horrors of life to him, something he wasn't meant to see. I am just wondering, how come he didn't off himself after coming back to civilization and lying to his wife.

>>19595386
>I am just wondering, how come he didn't off himself after coming back to civilization and lying to his wife.
This is exactly why Conrad is great. He implicitly believes in God and has faith. The thesis is refuted.

>>19595411
How so? Was it refuted by the image of Kurtz's wife? She was described as the only bright spot in the all consuming darkness falling upon them. Marlow wanted to scream, wondering how come she can't see and understand it. And he lied to her, because he could bear to see that flicker of light fade, because otherwise it would be too dark. So the refutation of said thesis is that hope and faith built on lies is better? Did she inspire Marlow to carry on?

>>19595441
He told her some lie so she could compose herself and maintain her life built on lies, yes. She was a relatively artificial character. Marlow meanwhile realizes the emptiness and still continues to live, which to me implies faith.
She didn’t inspire marlow at all iirc he was disgusted by the people in society at the end. He spared her, though.

>>19595441
>>19595468
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50019/the-lie-56d22cb6afd43

Also read this. It’s how I interpreted it.

>>19595470
Interesting, thanks for sharing.

>>19592724
>I don't get it.
Kurtz has every advantage and opportunity afforded to him by his origins and the resources of all of the Europe/British World. He is a great man.
His mission is to get ivory and he does it bloody well. However those who knew him and that he represents the height of European enlightenment/domination absolutely detest that he's such a monster, despite giving him a mission that requires one to be a monster.
Kurtz uses the "primitive" negros and makes them less civilized and less inline with what a high society European would like to see in others.

I think the nut is that everyone, especially those who are great are capable of extreme violence and uncivilised ways and while education and society put layers between civilisation and chaos it's very thin and easily removed if the opportunity affords it.

>>19595386

>And, don’t you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head—though I had a very lively sense of that danger, too—but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke him—himself—his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air. I’ve been telling you what we said—repeating the phrases we pronounced—but what’s the good? They were common everyday words—the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares. Soul! If anybody ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And I wasn’t arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear—concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear;

The point is that Kurtz is the flower of civilization, moved outside of civilization. And it turns out there's nothing in him; he had not internalized any civilized rules or limits.

>But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had—for my sins, I suppose—to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to one’s belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself, too. I saw it—I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.

Kurtz is all the skills, all the knowledge, all the collected education of the West, with "no restraint, no faith, and no fear". He's a metaphor for the Belgian Congo itself.

>>19593679
>>19595529
I thought this book was more about the desire to be worshipped as a god. Kurtz became more than napoleon or ceasar to the niggers

>>19592724
>>19593840
Exactly. Especially this book, which even tells you how to read it.
>the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

neither did Chinua Achebe

>>19592724
Wagecucking literally drives you insane

>>19592724
It's about surfing, fighting and LSD

>>19592913
Which, for the most part, they didn't. Which isn't to say that they didn't have their own culture and traditions, it's just that what we would define as civilisation, laws, material possessions, technology, etc. did not inherently make us any different or superior to the savages living in the jungle.

>>19592745
The foundation of civilization is slavery and genocide. The people who complain so often about racism are the same people who benefit most from the evils of civilization. A rich investor in California sneers at a nigger hating redneck in Alabama while pouring funds into institutions and pushing for practices which see black children in developing countries mutilated by machines, mutated by chemicals, and brutalized by their own countrymen who should be nurturing them. In our civilization it's a crime to say nigger yet a billion dollar industry to kill them. Frankly it's insanity.
>>19595386
I think he praises him for his honesty. Kurtz is the California man who instead of making someone else do his dirty work does his dirty work for himself.

>>19596569
>we train our men to drop fire on civilians but forbid them from writing fuck on their airplanes because it's obscene

>>19595386
I never got the sense that Marlow worshipped Kurtz. I only recall him calling Kurtz "a remarkable man" and being surprised at the strength and power of his voice. He mostly describes him as a highly intelligent man who had lost his soul.