March 5, 2010
Not Inhuman
Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
A cheery little number
March 5, 2010
The book that I’m currently reading, and haven’t quite finished yet actually is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. In a word: incredible. The sense of tension and “heaviness”, for lack of a better word, is written in almost every line. It feels like there’s too much air in the room, and the temperature is just 5 degrees above comfortable.
And unlike most current stories and books, the monster is ourselves. Not in some cheesy schizophrenic way, or in some stupid “we’re destroying the planet and ourselves” greedy way, but in the way that most of us have to fight every day to prevent from erupting out.
To quote Conrad:
“The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend.”
Also, if you’re not aware of the music of Astor Piazzolla, I highly recommend that you rectify that situation immediately.
