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Conrad's Heart of Darkness andDante's InfernoTerence N. Bowers aa College of Charleston,Version of record first published: 30 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Terence N. Bowers (2004): Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Dante'sInferno, The Explicator, 62:2, 91-94

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community. When the narrator is served, Mrs. Todd sees to it that she receives an appropriate slice: “Mrs. Todd helped me generously to the whole word Bowden and consumed Reunion herself, save an undecipherable frag- ment” (96). With the ingestion of the Bowden name, the narrator partakes in a communion with Mrs. Todd and her entire family. She receives the name of the family, accepts it willingly, and allows it to nourish her in physical, emo- tional, and spiritual ways. Afterward, the narrator offers, in a voice and syn- tax that come as near to Mrs. Todd’s speech pattern as in any segment of the text: “I came near to feeling like a true Bowden, and parted from certain new friends as if they were old friends; we were rich with the treasure of a new remembrance” (98). Not only has the narrator been accepted into the clan, she has become one of them in word and spirit, and assumes their name.

With her own ingestion of the word, “Reunion,” Mrs. Todd reaffirms her connection to the family and the community at large. By eating that slice of pie, inscribed with precepts, she accepts reunion, renews community, and reaffirms her status as healer. Mrs. Todd ends the evening’s festivities and the whole of the journey home with forays into the shrubbery to secure “some boughs of a rare shrub which she valued for its bark” (99). After the nourish- ment of the family reunion, Mrs. Todd is ever-aware of her calling and is now edified to serve it with renewed vigor.

-LAURA NICOSIA, Clifton, New Jersey

NOTE

1. Sandra Zagarell first uses the term “narrative of community” to identify a subgenre of liter- ature that had yet to be recognized as unique.

WORKS CITED

Jewett, Sarah Ome. The Counrry of rhe Poinred Firs and Other Srories. Ed. Willa Cather. New Yo&: Anchor, 1989.

Zagarell, Sandra. “Narrative of Community: The Identification of a Genre.” Revising rhe Word and the WorM: Essays in Feminist Liremry Criricism. Eds. VeVe A. Clark, Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres, and Madelon Sprengnether. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. 249-78.

Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS and Dante’s INFERNO

I descended the hill. obliquely, towards the trees. [. . .] 1 avoided a vast arti- ficial hole [. . .] the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. [. . .] I discovered that a lot of imported drainage-pipes for the settlement had been tumbled there. There wasn’t one that was not broken. [. . .] At last I

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got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment; but no sooner within it than it seemed to me that I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno.” (Conrad 25-26)

If up to this point readers have not noticed the presence of Dante’s Divine Comedy (especially the Inferno) in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, that presence now becomes clear and unavoidable. We realize that like the pilgrim in the Inferno, Marlow, the primary narrator of Conrad’s novella, is journey- ing through an underworld. Although commentators have fruitfully explored the meanings generated by the intertextual relationship Conrad forges between his text and Dante’s,‘ they have not fully emphasized or explained what is arguably the central aspect of that relationship-the differences between the Inferno Marlow visits and the one Dante describes. These differ- ences clarify the peculiar nature of the Hell formed by European imperialism, its logic of punishment, and its guiding idea.

In alluding to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Conrad activates in the reader’s mind a text that describes an ordered and moral cosmos. Although Dante’s Hell is a terrifying place, we learn that it is part of a just and good universe. In fact, Hell is a realm of justice where the wicked are punished according to the principle of “contrapasso” or counter-penalty (Inferno 38: 142). Each fig- ure in Hell suffers not in an arbitrary fashion, but endures a punishment that is quantitatively and qualitatively tied to the sin committed. Those who have committed the greatest sins are placed deepest in Hell and suffer the most, whereas those who have committed lesser crimes receive lesser punishments. Still others who have not willfully sinned, such as unbaptized babies and vir- tuous pagans born before Christ, inhabit a pleasant, illuminated zone (though not with celestial light) in Hell’s first circle and experience no pain. Thus Hell in Dante’s vision has a finely calibrated moral design, and understanding that design is a crucial lesson that the pilgrim and the reader must learn in their journey through the underworld.

Similarly, Heart of Darkness invites us to contemplate the moral structure of the world created by European imperialism. First, we quickly perceive that world to be a moral sham. European imperialism is supposed to bring tech- nology, the rule of law, enlightened forms of government, and other fruits of Western civilization to Africa, but as the products of Western know-how that Marlow finds in Africa indicate-the “vast artificial hole” that has no purpose, the “broken” drainage-pipes, the overturned railway-truck without a railway, the sunken steamboat-the imperial project has simply created a junkyard while robbing Africa of its riches. As Marlow says in reference to Roman imperialism, but which, we learn, also applies to European imperialism, “it was just robbery [. . .] on a great scale [. . .]” (9).

Yet the world fabricated by European imperialism is revealed as still more sinister when compared to the Hell represented in the Inferno. Whereas in

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Dante’s work, Hell is God’s creation, part of a just cosmos, and governed by the rational principle of contrapasso, in the Hell created by European imperi- alism death and torment are meted out in an arbitrary, irrational fashion. Early in the journey, for example, Marlow’s ship comes across a man-of-war “shelling the bush” for no apparent reason, thus indicating the mindless vio- lence that pervades Europe’s imperial domains (2 l). This idea is immediately confirmed when Marlow encounters a group of men at the Outer Station locked in iron collars and points out the senselessness of their punishment, drawing a connection between their brutal plight and the arbitrary bombing of the coastline: “these men could by no stretch of the imagination be called ene- mies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea” (24). Seeking relief from this sight, Marlow “descended” toward some trees only to find himself in “the gloomy circle of some Inferno” amidst a group of “dying” workers, or “shadows” as he also calls them (the equivalent of the “shades” Dante encounters). Conrad here makes his most explicit reference to Dante to focus attention on the evil structure of this Hell. This Inferno, unlike Dante’s, punishes the innocent, even children (one of the dying souls was “almost a boy” [27]).2 Conrad has Marlow repeat what he said about the chain gang- “They were not enemies, they were not criminals” (26)-to underscore the workers’ innocence. Yet they are treated just as cruelly as those “called crim- inals” and even end up lower down in the Inferno (Marlow “descended’ to them), thus revealing a monstrous inversion of the moral principle governing Dante’s Hell.

The explanation for why this moral principle is systematically violated becomes clear when we compare how Marlow and Dante’s pilgrim are taught to respond to the suffering they witness. In the Inferno the pilgrim is discour- aged from sympathizing with the souls in Hell, for they are, after all, sinners, and such misplaced sympathy ends up clouding his understanding of sin (“pity confused my senses” [5: 721). Marlow is also discouraged from show- ing sympathy-not, however, because those punished do not deserve it or because sympathy confounds his moral sense, but because it gets in the way of robbing Africa and making money. This idea becomes clear in the figure of “the Company’s chief accountant”-that “miracle” upholding the standards of Western civilization in the wilderness with his immaculate grooming (28)- who callously complains of the groans of a dying agent because they make it “difficult to guard against clerical errors” (30).

Such indifference to human suffering is logical when God has been replaced by money, which, Conrad shows, is the guiding idea-indeed, the religion- of imperialism. It is not by accident that those labeled “pilgrims” seek not spir- itual salvation like Dante’s pilgrim, but money in the form of ivory (“The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air. I. . .] You would think they were praying to it” [37]).

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And the presiding angel of this religion is Kurtz, the once idealistic, now satanic being, made evil by the quest for ivory. But also implicated in this evil is Marlow’s audience-both the company officials aboard the Nellie and con- temporary readers, the consumers of Africa’s spoils who are ultimately responsible for the creation of an Inferno that brutalizes the innocent and vio- lates Christianity’s core values. In this last respect, the presence of Dante in Heart of Darkness suggests that the imperial age marks a colossal and pro- found betrayal of the Christian ideals that have guided European civilization.

-TERENCE N. BOWERS, College of Charleston

NOTES

1. Key studies are those of Anspaugh, Cleary, Evans, and Federer. More general, but also rele- vant, is Yarrison’s essay.

2. Anspaugh notes the irony that Dante’s souls are “responsible for their own deaths, whereas the men [. . .] in the grove have been driven to the brink of death by their European masters” ( 139).

WORKS CITED

Anspaugh, Kelly. “Dante on His Head: Heart ofDarkness.” Conradiana 27 (1995): 135-47. Cleary, Thomas R., and Terry G. Sherwood. “Women in Conrad’s Ironical Epic: Virgil, Dante,

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. New York: Bantam, 1981. Dante. Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. The Portaable Dante. Ed. and trans. Mark Musa. New York:

Evans, Roben 0. “Conrad’s Underworld.” Modern Fiction Studies 2 (1956): 5 M 2 . Federer, Lillian. “Marlow’s Descent into Hell.” Ninefeenth-Century Fiction 9 ( 1955): 28Ck92. Yarrison, Betsy C. “The Symbolism of Literary Allusion in Heart uf Darkness.” Conradiana 7

and Heart of Darkness.” Conradiunu 16 ( 1984): 183-94.

Penguin, 1995.

(1975): 155-64.

Chekhov’s ENEMIES

Anne Frydman notes that in his early stories, Anton Chekhov “often pairs two kinds of characters with opposing traits” (104). This is certainly true in his short story “Enemies.” The light and dark imagery used in relationship with the two main characters, Kirilov and Aboguin, emphasizes their oppos- ing lives, lives that forever separate the characters, despite the briefly lived hope that their common suffering could unite them.

When Aboguin, seeking the doctor’s aid, rings the doorbell at Kirilov’s home, the home is described as dark, and appropriatedly so, for Kirilov’s son had died barely five minutes earlier. The entryway is unlighted, as is the lamp in his drawing room, allowing the twilight and the dark September evening to

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