How Heart of Darkness Revealed the Horror of Congo’s Rubber Trade / Maya Jasanoff

Heart of Darkness was published in the literary periodical Blackwood’s Magazine in 1899, and in book form in 1902. It appeared on the face of it to be the quintessential river story, running from here to there: a journey from Europe to Africa, overlaid by metaphorical journeys from present to past, light to dark, civilization to savagery, sanity to madness. Heart of Darkness also looked in some ways like a clear passage from truth into fiction. As a matter of biographical fact, none of Conrad’s other works of fiction could be so closely pegged to contemporary records of his experience. And to its early readers, the book’s portrayal of Congo as a “heart of darkness” that drove white men mad also seemed to tell a true story. For in the years between Conrad’s visit and the publication of Heart of Darkness, the Congo Free State had become a “horror” of imperial exploitation, its idealistic principles in tatters over the most nakedly abusive colonial regime in the world. ... [mehr] http://lithub.com/how-heart-of-darkness-revealed-the-horror-of-congos-rubber-trade/