Conrad and Masculinity

132 Conrad and Masculinity
him ... include ‘mysterious,’ ‘exceptional,’ ‘peculiar,’ ‘exceptional’
again, ‘obscure,’ ‘phenomenal,’ ‘notable,’ ‘phenomenal’ again,
‘exceptional’ again, ‘secretive’ ... [These are combined with] a parallel
and equally abstract chain of damning ethical designations –
‘the direct reverse of a saint,’ ‘depravity,’ ‘depravity,’ ‘wantonness
of atrocity,’ ‘the mania of an evil nature.’
(EC, 94–5)
This whole description is remarkably relevant to the way in which
Kurtz, and Marlow’s relationship with Kurtz, are defined, or rather left
undefined. Kurtz is described to Marlow as ‘a very remarkable person’
(69), as a man who will ‘go far, very far’ (70) (a richly ironical phrase,
with the benefit of hindsight), as ‘an exceptional man’ (75), ‘a
prodigy’, ‘an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil
knows what else’, ‘a special being’ (79). Marlow comments: ‘I had
heard Mr. Kurtz was in there ... Yet somehow it didn’t bring any image
with it—no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in
there’ (81). Later we find Kurtz referred to as ‘that man’ (89), and, in
Marlow’s conversation with the ‘harlequin’ (122), as one who has
‘enlarged my mind’ (125). The harlequin tells Marlow that he and
Kurtz ‘talked of everything ... Of love, too’, although ‘It isn’t what you
think’ (what does Marlow think?), but ‘It was in general. He made me
see things—things’ (127). The harlequin claims that ‘you can’t judge
Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man’ (128). Marlow himself
describes Kurtz as ‘a remarkable man’ (138) and as ‘very little more
than a voice’ (115), a fate which he shares himself within the narrative
frame as it becomes darker on the Nellie – one aspect of the crucial
rapprochement or doubling between Marlow and Kurtz. As well as
these ‘intensifications’ of the mystery surrounding Kurtz, there are
many ‘damning ethical designations’: Kurtz, we are told, ‘lacked
restraint in the gratification of his various lusts’ (131); ‘there was
something wanting in him’ (131); ‘he was hollow at the core’ (131);
he is ‘an atrocious phantom’ (133), a ‘shadow’ (141), ‘like a vapour
exhaled by the earth’ (142), a ‘wandering and tormented thing’ (143),
marked by ‘exalted and incredible degradation’ (144), and whose soul
‘had gone mad’ (145), possessed by ‘diabolic love and ... unearthly
hate’ (147) and, of course, in his own words, ‘the horror!’ (149).
Faced with this barrage of mystification and condemnation, it is
worth briefly being literal minded as an experiment. What has Kurtz
actually done? He has murdered and brutally exploited African
people, but this he has in common with the others involved in the