by Peter Watson
Some time before Conrad’s uncle died, Jó zef stopped off in Brussels on the way to Poland, to be interviewed for a post with the Société Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut-Congo–a fateful interview which led to his experiences between June and December 1890 in the Belgian Congo and, ten years on, to Heart of Darkness. In that decade, the Congo lurked in his mind, awaiting a trigger to be formulated in prose. That was provided by the shocking revelations of the ‘Benin massacres’ in 1897, as well as the accounts of Stanley’s expeditions in Africa. Benin: The City of Blood was published in London and New York in 1897, revealing to the Western civilised world a horror story of native African blood rites. After the Berlin Conference of 1884, Britain proclaimed a protectorate over the Niger river region. Following the slaughter of a British mission to Benin (now a city of Nigeria), which arrived during King Duboar’s celebrations of his ancestors with ritual sacrifices, a punitive expedition was dispatched to capture this city, long a centre of slavery. The account of Commander R. H. Bacon, intelligence officer of the expedition, in some of its details parallels events in Heart of Darkness. When Commander Bacon reached Benin he saw what, despite his vivid language, he says lay beyond description: ‘It is useless to continue describing the horrors of the place, everywhere death, barbarity and blood, and smells that it hardly seems right for human beings to smell and yet live.’105 Conrad avoids definition of what constituted ‘The horror. The horror’–the famous last words in the book, spoken by Kurtz, the man Marlow, the hero, has come to save–opting instead for hints such as round balls on posts that Marlow thinks he sees through his field-glasses when approaching Kurtz’s compound. Bacon, for his part, describes ‘crucifixion trees’ surrounded by piles of skulls and bones, blood smeared everywhere, over bronze idols and ivory.
Conrad’s purpose, however, is not to elicit the typical response of the civilised world to reports of barbarism. In his account Commander Bacon had exemplified this attitude: ‘…they [the natives] cannot fail to see that peace and the good rule of the white man mean happiness, contentment and security’. Similar sentiments are expressed in the report which Kurtz composes for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. Marlow describes this ‘beautiful piece of writing’, ‘vibrating with eloquence’. And yet, scrawled ‘at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: “Exterminate all the brutes!”.’106
This savagery at the heart of civilised humans is also revealed in the behaviour of the white traders–‘pilgrims’ as Marlow calls them. White travellers’ tales, like those of H. M. Stanley in ‘darkest Africa’, written from an unquestioned sense of the superiority of the European over the native, were available to Conrad. Heart of Darkness thrives upon the ironic reversals of civilisation and barbarity, of light and darkness. Here is a characteristic Stanley episode, recorded in his diary. Needing food, he told a group of natives that ‘I must have it or we would die. They must sell it for beads, red, blue or green, copper or brass wire or shells, or…I drew significant signs across the throat. It was enough, they understood at once.’107 In Heart of Darkness, by contrast, Marlow is impressed by the extraordinary restraint of the starving cannibals accompanying the expedition, who have been paid in bits of brass wire, but have no food, their rotting hippo flesh–too nauseating a smell for European endurance–having been thrown overboard. He wonders why ‘they didn’t go for us–they were thirty to five–and have a good tuck-in for once’.108 Kurtzisa symbolic figure, of course (‘All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz’), and the thrust of Conrad’s fierce satire emerges clearly through Marlow’s narrative. The imperial civilising mission amounts to a savage predation: ‘the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of the human conscience’, as Conrad elsewhere described it.109
At the time Heart of Darkness appeared there was–and there continues to be–a distaste for Conrad on the part of some readers. It is that very reaction which underlines his significance. This is perhaps best explained by Richard Curle, author of the first full-length study of Conrad, published in 1914.110 Curle could see that for many people there is a tenacious need to believe that the world, horrible as it might be, can be put right by human effort and the appropriate brand of liberal philosophy. Unlike the novels of his contemporaries, Wells and Galsworthy, Conrad derides this point of view as an illusion at best, and the pathway to desperate destruction at its worst.111 Evidence shows that Conrad was sickened by his experience in Africa, both physically and psychologically, and was deeply alienated from the imperialist, racist exploiters of Africa and Africans at that time. Heart of Darkness played a part in ending Leopold’s tyrannical misrule in what was then the Belgian Congo.
Born in Poland, and despite the fact that Heart of Darkness is set in the Belgian Congo, Joseph Conrad wrote in English. A final achievement of Empire, which began in earnest with the American colonies but culminated in India and the ‘scramble’ for Africa, was the spread of the English language. Today, there are as many English-speakers in India as there are in England, and five times that number in North America. Across the world, one and a half billion people speak English. Yet for many years–for centuries–English was a minority tongue, which hung on only with great difficulty. Its subsequent triumph, as the world’s most useful language, is, as Melvyn Bragg has said, a remarkable adventure.
The first inkling we have of English was when it arrived in the fifth century AD, spoken by Germanic warriors, who were invited to Britain as mercenaries to shore up the ruins of the recently-departed Roman empire.112 The original inhabitants of the British Isles were Celts, who spoke Celtish, no doubt laced with a little Latin, thanks to the Romans. But the Germanic tribes–Saxons, Angles and Jutes–spoke a variety of dialects, mutually intelligible, and it was some time before the Angles won out. The present-day language of Friesland, by the North Sea in Holland, is judged to have the closest language to early English, where such words as trije (three), froast (frost), blau (blue), brea (bread) and sliepe (sleep) are still in use.113
Early English took on a few words from Latin/Celtic, such as ‘win’ (wine), ‘cetel’ (cattle) and ‘streat’ (street), but the great majority of English words today come from Old English–you, man, son, daughter, friend, house and so on. Also the northern words ‘owt’ (anything) and ‘nowt’, (nothing), from ‘awiht’ and ‘nawiht’.114 The ending ‘-ing’ in place names means ‘the people of…’–Reading, Dorking, Hastings; the ending ‘-ham’ means farm, as in Birmingham, Fulham, Nottingham; ‘-ton’ means enclosure or village, as in Taunton, Luton, Wilton. The Germanic tribes brought with them the runic alphabet, known as the futhorc after the first letters of that alphabet. Runes were made up mainly of straight lines, so they could more easily be cut into stone or wood. The language had twenty-four letters, lacking j, q, v, x and z but including æ, Þ,
‘Englisc’, as it was originally called, did not begin to grow until the Viking invasions, when endings such as ‘-by’ were added to places, to indicate farm or town: Corby, Derby, Rugby. The Danes made personal names by adding ‘-son’ to the name of the father: Johnson, Hudson, Watson. Other Old Norse words taken into Englisc at this time included ‘birth’, ‘cake,’ ‘leg’, ‘sister’, ‘smile’, ‘thrift’ and ‘trust’.116
The language came under most threat in the three hundred years following the battle of Hastings in 1066. When William the Conqueror was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day that year the service was carried out in English and Latin but he himself spoke French throughout. French became the language of the court, and of the courts, and of Parliament. But, while English survived, words from French were transferred. Mainly, they described the new social order: army (armée), throne (trone), duke (duc), govern (governer), but also cooking: pork (porc), sausages (saussiches), biscuit (bescoit), fry (frire) and vinegar (vyn egre).117 Old English didn’t simply die out: often
it adapted. For example, the Old English ‘æppel’ was used to mean any kind of fruit, but after the French word fruit came in, the Old English retreated, to mean just one kind of fruit, the apple.118 Other French words that entered English at this time included chimney, chess, art, dance, music, boot, buckle, dozen, person, country, debt, cruel, calm and honest. The word ‘checkmate’ comes from the French eschec mat, which in turn comes from the Arabic Shhmt, meaning ‘the king is dead’.119 These were the words that became Middle English.120
Middle English began to replace French in England only at the end of the fourteenth century. England had been changed, as everywhere had been changed, by the Black Death, which had carried off many churchmen, Latin- and French-speakers. The Peasants’ Revolt also had a great deal to do with the resurgence of English, as the language of the protestors. When Richard II addressed Wat Tyler and his troops at Smithfield, Bragg says, he spoke in English. And Richard is the first recorded monarch using only English since the Conquest. In 1399, when Henry, Duke of Lancaster, crowned himself, after deposing Richard II, he too spoke in what the official history calls his ‘mother tongue’, English.121 ‘In the name of Fadir, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster challenge this reyme of Yngland and the corone with all the members and the appurtenances, als I that am disendit be right lyne of the blode comying fro the gude lorde Kyng Henry Therde…’122 About a quarter of the words used by Chaucer are from the French, though often they have meanings now lost (‘lycour’ = moisture, ‘straunge’ = foreign, distant), but he used English with a confidence that showed a corner had been turned.123
This confidence was reflected in the desire to translate the Bible into English. Although John Wycliffe is remembered as the man who first attempted this, Bragg says it was Nicholas Hereford, of Queen’s College, Oxford, who did most of the work. His scriptoria, organised in secrecy at Oxford, produced many manuscripts–at least 175 survive.124
In the bigynnyng God made of nouyt heuene and erthe
Forsothe the erthe was idel and voide, and derknessis weren on the face of depthe; and the Spiryt of the Lord was borun on the watris.
And God seide, Liyt be maad, and liyt was maad.
Spelling was still haphazard. Church could be cherche, chirche, charge, cirche, while people could be pepull, pepille, poepul, or pupill. Order was first put in to this by the Master of Chancellery, shortened to Chancery. This entity was a cross between the Law Courts, the Tax Office and Whitehall, in effect an office that ran the country, and ‘Chancery English’ came to be regarded as the ‘official’, authorised version. Ich was replaced by I, sych and sich by suche, righte became right. Spelling became even more fixed after the invention of printing, which was also accompanied by the Great Vowel Shift, when a systematic change was made in the pronunciation of English. No one quite knows why this shift took place but the example Bragg gives shows that the sentence ‘I name my boat Pete’ would have been pronounced ‘Ee nahm mee bought Peht.’125
All these were signs of increasing confidence, as was the great innovation of 1611, the King James version of the Bible, based on William Tyndale’s translation. Here we see modern English in the process of formation, its poetry as well as its form:
Blessed are the povre in sprete: for theirs is the kyngdome off heven.
Blessed are they that morne: for they shalbe comforted.
Blessed are the meke: for they shall inherit the erth.
Blessed are they which honger and thurst for rightewesnes: for they shalbe filled.
In the Renaissance and the age of discovery, English began to burst with new words: bamboo (Malay), coffee and kiosk (Turkish), alcohol (Arabic), curry (Tamil). The rise of humanism, and an interest in the classics resurrected many Greek and Latin words (skeleton, glottis, larynx, thermometer, parasite, pneumonia). Their usage led to the so-called Inkhorn Controversy. An inkhorn was a horn pot which held ink for a quill and came to symbolise those who liked to coin new words, to show off their erudition in the classics. This blew itself out, but though we still use the words mentioned above, not all neologisms remained–for example, ‘fatigate’ (to make tired), ‘nidulate’ (to build a nest) and ‘expede’ (the opposite of impede).126 Shakespeare was part of this renaissance and he was the first to use many words and phrases, whether he invented them or not. Whole books have been written on Shakespeare’s English but among the words and phrases we find fresh in his plays and poems may be included: obscene, barefaced, lacklustre, salad-days, in my mind’s eye, more in sorrow than in anger. However, he too used words that didn’t fly: cadent, tortive, perisive, even honorificabilitudinatibus.127
In America the new landscape and the new people inspired many fresh words or innovative coinages, from foothill, to bluff, to watershed, to moose, to stoop. Then there were squatter, raccoon (rahaugcum at one point), and skunk (segankw). Familiar words were put together to describe new things and experiences: bull-frog, rattlesnake, warpath. Traditional meanings changed in the New World: lumber meant rubbish in London but became cut timber in the United States. Noah Webster, a schoolteacher who wrote the best-selling American Spelling Book, which sold more copies than any other book in the New World save for the Bible, sparked that country’s obsession with pronunciation: today, whereas the British say cemet’ry and laborat’ry, Americans pronounce the whole word, cemetery and laboratory.128 It was Webster who dropped the ‘u’ from colour and labour, the second ‘l’ from traveller. They were, he said, unnecessary. He changed theatre and centre to theater and center–that was clearer, as was check for cheque. Music and physic lost their final ‘k’.129 The opening up of the frontier introduced more Indian words–maize, pecan, persimmon, toboggan, though tamarack and pemmican didn’t catch on so well. The poor travelled west on rafts which were steered with oars known as riffs–hence ‘riff-raff’. ‘Pass the buck’ and ‘the buck stops here’ came from card games played out west. The ‘buck’ was originally a knife with a buck-horn handle, which was passed to show who had the authority, who was dealing.130 OK, or okay, allegedly the most-used word in the English language, has many alleged etymologies. The Choctaw Indians had a word Okeh, meaning ‘it is so’. In Boston it was said to be short for Orl Korrekt, and some Cockneys claim they too used Orl Korrec. Labourers working in Louisiana used to scrawl Au quai on bales of cotton that were ready to be transported downriver to the sea. But these derivations just scratch the surface and the issue is far from settled.131 ‘Jeans’ owe their existence to Mr Levi Strauss, who used a cloth called geane fustian, which had originally been manufactured in Genoa.
The Enlightenment and the industrial revolution naturally introduced yet more new words–reservoir, condenser, sodium (1807), Centigrade (1812), biology (1819), kleptomania (1830), palaeontology (1838), gynaecology and bacterium (both 1847), claustrophobia (1879). It has been estimated that between 1750 and 1900 half the world’s scientific papers were published in English.132 In India, at the height of the British empire, it was arguable as to which people had the linguistic power. For a start, the deep and distant background of much English, as an Indo-European language, was Sanskrit. But new words taken into English from Indian languages included bungalow, cheroot, thug, chintz, polo, jungle, lilac, pariah, khaki (which means ‘dust-coloured’) and pyjamas.133 The English renamed Kolkata as Calcutta, though it has recently returned to the original.
But as English spread in the nineteenth century, with the British empire, to Australia, the West Indies, to Africa and many areas of the Middle East, it became what Arabic, Latin and French had once been, the common currency of international communication, a position it has held ever since. Gandhi felt enslaved by English, or said that he did, but the excellence and popularity of Indian novelists writing in English belies this sentiment. The triumph of English across the world may reflect earlier notions of nationalism and imperialism but it has gone well beyond them. English is the language not only of empire, but of science, capitalism, democracy–and the Internet.
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To Chapter 34 Notes and References
The high point of empire in the Old World coincided more or less with the American Civil War. In a way, therefore, each continent faced a similar predicament–how different peoples, different races, should live together. The Civil War was a watershed in all ways for America. Although not many people realised it at the time, her dilemma over slavery had kept the country back and the war at last allowed the full forces of capitalism and industrialism to flex their muscles. Only after the war was the country fully free to fulfil its early promise.
The population in 1865 was upwards of 31 million, and therefore, relatively speaking, still small compared with the major European states. Intellectual life was–like everything else–still in the process of formation and expansion.1 After the triumphs of 1776, and the glories of the Constitution, which many Europeans had found so stimulating, Americans did not want for lack of confidence. But there was, even so, much uncertainty: the frontier was continuing to open up (raising questions about how to deal with the Plains Indians), and the pattern of immigration was changing. Louisiana was purchased from the French in 1803. On all sides, therefore, questions of race, tribe, nationality, religious affiliation and ethnic identity were ever-present. In this context, America had to fashion itself, devising new ideas where they were needed, and using ideas from the Old World where they were available and relevant.2