Obscurity, Apophasis, and the Critical Imagination: The Unsayable in Heart of Darkness

Abstract

Early on in Charlie Marlow's account of his voyage into the heart of darkness he describes his experience in the French steamer, bound for theunnamedblankspaceonthemapwhereheistotakeuphisappoint- ment (Heart 60). Observing land in the distance, Marlow's commen- tary on how (w)atching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma is itself rich in enigmatic images of the misty shore and the veiled sea, before he concludes that my isolation amongst all thesemenwithwhomIhadnopointofcontact,theoilyandlanguidsea, the uniform sombreness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion (Heart 61). The passage contains many of the ingredients that make Joseph Conrad's writing distinctive: the piling up of qualities and im- ages, the distances and mists, the visual dimensions of light and color that somehow manage to frustrate clear sight, a stated and sensed isola- tion, and perhaps above all a declared and perceived sense of elusive