Kurtz's Voice: The Intended as "The Horror:"

105 KURTZ'S VOICE: THE INTENDED AS "THE HORROR!" By James Ellis (University of North Carolina, Greensboro) There must by now be some general agreement as to the meaning of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Marlow makes a geographical voyage into the center of the Congo and at the same time a night journey into his own heart. Alone of the men in the Congo he comes to understand what has happened to Kurtz and judges him "a remarkable man."l The result of Marlow's experience is his own moral growth, which is realized fully when he accepts the burden of lying to the Intended. What saves Marlow from the fate of Kurtz? Among the earliest of many critics to address this point Stewart Wilcox has drawn attention to Marlow's concern with the practical affairs of his seamanship. At the Central Station Marlow describes his going to work on his steamboat as the only way he could keep hold "on the redeeming facts of life" (p. 23). Later as the boat makes its way up the river to Kurtz Marlow comments on the howling savages and the attraction of darkness which they represent, saying, "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" (p. 37)· When the question is raised as to why he didn't respond to this "terrible frankness," Marlow explains that it was not fine sentiments that held him back. He says, "Fine sentiments be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with whitelead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes - I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man" (p. 37). Kurtz, on the other hand, falls into barbarism because his unballasted idealism leaves him vulnerable to the wilderness. Marlow speculates on Kurtz's experiences alone in the heart of darkness» "I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistably fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core." (p. 59, italics'mine). Marlow's statement that Kurtz was hollow at the core requires emphasis, since this hollowness functions as a metaphor for Kurtz's idealism and the metaphorical basis for his powerful voice. In responding to the heart of darkness - represented in part by the drums of the Congo, drums that suggest to Marlow "as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country" (p. 20) - Kurtz's heart metaphorically picks up and amplifies within his own drum-like hollowness the beat of the drums of darkness. The result is that Kurtz, so long as he is faithful to darkness, draws sustenance from it and speaks resonantly for it. 106 Conrad's concern with sound and resonance continues to be informative throughout Heart of Darkness, Marlow repeatedly emphasizing Kurtz's voice. A journalist colleague of Kurtz tells Marlow that Kurtz "really couldn't write a bit - 'but Heavens! how that man could talk! He electrified large meetings. He had faith don 't you see? - he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything - anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party'"(p. 74). Again, after the attack by the natives on the steamer, Marlow realizes that Kurtz may be dead, and he muses that it was not the seeing of Kurtz or the shaking of his hand that he had looked forward to, but the hearing of him. He says» "The man presented himself as a voice," and "of all his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words" (p. 48). Finally, when Kurtz is brought on board the steamer, Marlow is struck by the strength of his voice...