By Ciara Aaron
Heart of Darkness extract
‘Going up that river was like travelling to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of the sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of the overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands. You lost your way on that river as you would in a desert and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once—somewhere—far away—in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants and water and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force broody over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.’
Parody in the style of Joyce’s John Bunyan
WAS MARLOW on that river named Darkness spirited by vegetation circumambient? No, for the stream Comprehension was thus polluted and could not by Sight be purged. But could he not hear then the whispering majestic on the banks of the first Tree kings? Indeed not, for sluggish Silence had infected the air and plugged his hearing holes. Why, could he not have endeavoured to meet Joy there in that earth illuminated and Offspring (alligators and hippopotamus) hot and holy? No, for Joy was lost to Marlow in the gloom of overshadowed distances. Was Marlow himself lost? Indeed, lost from himself for a certain in a land of earliest Beginnings. And in that land, he saw that he was now far from the shores of Memory wherein youth and promise live. Would he accept this ancient Beginning? Without passage to Memory or moment with himself he could do but else. Fear had warned him of this wrongway but Nerve did biddeth him further. Then wotted he nought of this Darkness which had rung him hither through plants and water to Stillness? Indeed, he thought nothing of Darkness but of Stillness was beguiled. Stillness appeared to him now inscrutable as a devil, one who wore the clothes of Peace but enquired of him with a vengeful aspect.
By Samantha Rajasingham
Heart of Darkness extract
“Near the same tree two more, bundles of acute angles, sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.”
Parody in the style of Joyce’s Charles Lamb
The state of equanimity being desirable, the harmonious organisation of the visual field should be considered a civic virtue. When elements are askew, I yearn for that apogee between myself and the scene before me. Could a good man regard unmoved the prestidigitation of the many dark limbs bent and folded unnaturally in the shade, these fallen andabatae wasted and twisted on the ground, never fated to spring again? Nay! This foul proscenium makes us all Laocoöns!
We must thus unknit these limbs, flatten them on the ground, side by side, ashes and poplars to the back, some maiden angels weeping from the top left corner, their hair flaxen and flat around the crown but neatly coiled at the end — sweet contained grief! I could permit vermillion geraniums on the border to keep their mothers happy. The columns of their legs would line up like figures on a well-kept ledger. Perhaps this aspect would then be pretty enough to embroider in the fine silks I have bought for Mlle T. Her needlework is most delicate and her fine understanding of colour and mathematical proportion would render the scene to its advantage. We had been hoping for another invitation to praise her new damask hangings.
By Catherine Mitchell
Heart of Darkness extract:
“Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sand-banks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once—somewhere—far away—in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare for yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day’s steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality—the reality, I tell you—fades. The inner truth is hidden—luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight-ropes for—what is it? half-a-crown a tumble—”
Parody in the style of Joyce’s Pepys
Thursday sixteenth. Travelled further up river. The trees alongside are grown to intolerable heights, vegetation lies about in all directions, most vexing and unpleasant, as if no man has ever stepped foot on this land. Heavy clouds, thick, overcast and threatening made glum the company. No sunshine, no light to alleviate those spirits which were low. Hippopotami and alligators, both, stretched their bodies out on the banks as we passed, neither noticing our passing nor caring. All felt lost and adrift, as if in a desert instead of the jungle we sailed through, and I believed for a moment I was alone, without another soul to accompany me. A cup of wine would have been most welcome, but none was forthcoming. Instead I was left alone with my thoughts, while the pilgrims (all alike in white shirts and brown britches) ran fore and aft seeking natives between the overgrowth, but seeing, instead, only greenery, animals, and darkness. Thought much of what had been and could not shake the interminable stillness that settled over the whole vessel as we carried on.
Friday seventeenth. More travel. Much to do, less time spent thinking and reflecting. Woke and kept watch for banks, dead wood, stones &c. By and by the stillness became less brooding, though it stayed, in the back of my mind, but this was soon ignored through hard work. Caught – through mere fluke! – a snag that may have, if unseen, torn asunder the old boat and drowned the pilgrims, myself, and all. The land, the feeling, the endless stillness I find myself in fades from me the more I focus upon the day-to-day, and God willing, I may forget the realities of this place, whose eyes, I feel, even now, upon me.