Modernism 1880s - 1930s skepticism and self-consciousness Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski literary man & rebel 3 identities 16: Marseille 20: suicide 20: the British navy imitation of Flaubert omniscient narrator & irony distanced & unfriendly to characters Congo: 1890 “Everything here is repellent to me, men and things but men above all” “I regret having come here, I regret it bitterly” “beastly, the fault of a man who carried me” what does “h.o.d” stand for? Belgian Congo light of civilisation into Africa darkness at the heart of the light Africa, 1890 1870: 10 % 1914: 90 % skepticism and self-consciousness crisis in storytelling what is it? adventure yarn? anti-colonialist? racist? writers do not believe that their language works in the same way “My task is to make you hear, to make you feel-and above all, to make you see” I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see—you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams. . . . You can’t understand. How could you?—with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, . . . —how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude without a policeman—by the way of silence—utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. how do you make your stories alive to readers? the drama of the telling pathological postponing approaches and retreats HOD: essential text