![]() ![]() While not aligning himself specifically with French symbolism, he wrote that “a work of art is very seldom limited to one exclusive meaning and not necessarily tending to a definite conclusion. Rather, its meanings evade the interpreter they are larger than the story itself.Ĭonrad, a Pole who had worked as a sailor and then captain on French and British ships before becoming a naturalized British subject, admired Flaubert and knew French literature well. In the voice of his frame narrator, Conrad provides a crucial image for understanding the symbolism of modern literature when he explains that the stories of Marlow, the narrator of most of the novella, differ from those of other sailors: “The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut… the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze.” Heart of Darkness does not reveal its meaning in digestible morsels, like the kernel of a nut. ![]() ![]() Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness ( 1899) is an early and important example of modernist experimentation in English fiction. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |