A short time after actor David Rintoul and I started recording this audio of Joseph Conrad’s best-known novella, we looked at one another through the studio glass and realized it was creeping both of us out. Conrad’s mastery of tone, pace and atmosphere is so complete that even with all the distractions of the recording environment, we were being sucked into this book like no other. While our immediate surroundings may have been light, airy, convivial and, yes, familiar, there was something in this book putting our minds through the wringer, transporting us into its dark, claustrophobic and just plain weird setting deep in the Belgian Congo.
By the late afternoon, when David had completed the gruelling final 90-minute session, he looked shattered. And no wonder – for “Heart of Darkness” is, quite simply, the scariest book ever written. Stephen King is candy floss by comparison, for this isn’t simply a journey up an uncharted river into a geographical wilderness; rather, it’s a trip deep into our collective subconscious – and what Conrad finds there isn’t very pretty. There’s hardly any blood and gore; the supernatural does not intrude, and there’s no man-eating cars. Conrad doesn’t need these playground props when he’s writing about the most disturbing subject there can be – what happens when so-called “civilized” human beings go off the rails.
Conrad himself had undertaken such a river journey as a ship’s captain back in 1889 when he was in his early 30’s and before he took to writing full time. Back then, the Congo Free State, as this area of Africa was known, was a Belgian colony under the personal control of King Leopold II. Its natural resources, both human and material, were being shamelessly plundered. Atrocities were commonplace, to the point where the international community finally had to sit up and take notice; in a report published in 1904, over 3 million people were said to have died as a direct result of European intervention in the area. It has long been argued whether “Heart of Darkness”, which appeared in 1902, was in any way influential in bringing Leopold’s violent regime to the public’s attention; but whether or no, it remains a searing indictment of human rapacity – and depravity.
Conrad witnessed much of this at first hand, albeit briefly: yet while he in unsparing in his depiction of the evils of colonialism, he also addresses deeper-seated psychological issues – namely, what motivates humans to behave in this way? “Mistah Kurtz”, the outpost manager whom the narrator, Marlow, is sent to track down, is, to all intents and purposes, an educated, civilized man. The locals, his colleagues and even his “Intended”, all bear witness to the fact that he is preternaturally gifted. And yet he can preside over intolerable cruelty and mass murder as if it’s the most normal, justifiable, and even necessary thing in the world.
What sends him mad? Is it Africa? His job? Or, most disturbing of all, is it all self-motivated? If the latter, Conrad seems to be asking, is there a seed of cruelty that lies buried deep within all of us, just waiting for the right conditions in which to flourish?
Francis Ford Coppola came close to re-creating this psychotically claustrophobic atmosphere in “Apocalypse Now” – until Brando appeared on the screen, that is. But for the real thing, download this audio – and judge for yourself which is creepier. I think it’s the best audio David’s ever performed – and he’s done some mighty work in the genre. His understatement, and his refusal to fall into the traps Brando did, hammer the message home that there may well be a devil lurking in all of us.
