postcard from the edges

Sorry to have been so long away from the blog. Here now is a postcard (or posting) from the edge (either Nether Edge, where I live in Sheffield, or whichever of the Peak District's gritstone edges you care to choose). From the edge rather than the Heart, anyway.

Heart of Darkness is an interesting book ... surprisingly short! I had the idea that it was published in 1901, but looking into it it was 1902. Nonetheless it is one of the first books of the 20th century (the narrator talks of the turning of the tide - the tide of history?).

Looking at what else was going on, the excellent reference guide 'What Happened What Year' http://www.kordy.dircon.co.uk/misc/what.html lists the following significant events in 1902 -the teddy bear is created by a Russian immigrant to the USA, after seeing a newspaper cartoon depicting President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt. Automatic vending machine invented. Willis Carrier invents the air conditioner (a strange collection of artefacts), whereas 1901 would have had - Christmas tree lights are introduced by Edison General Electric Co. The first facelift is performed by Eugene Hollander in Berlin on a Polish aristocrat. First time getaway car is used by 3 bank robbers in Paris (more acts than artefacts).

I find the narrator disconcerting in Heart of Darkness, as the whole thing is his quoting of the story told by Marlow to his shipmates on a quay on the Thames - and the format is that of the elongated shaggy dog story told round the campfire (yes, I was a boy scout). The ending reads like this, 'Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. "We have lost the first of the ebb," said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky - seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.'

This is of the Thames, of course, not the Congo. Interestingly, the town of Marlow is about 20 miles up the Thames from London - in the Heart of Darkness? See http://www.marlowtown.co.uk/index.html.

In Susan Hiller's (ed.) book, The Myth of Primitivism, found here on Amazon (sadly there isn't an online bookseller called Congo) http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415014816/qid=1141741379/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/026-1476849-8451615 there is a discussion in one of the essays of the known history of Europeans in the Amazon, and it seems that the first European discovery of the Congo River was by the Portuguese in 1482, that the area had been extensively mapped, and that there were established trade links between most of the Imperialist European countries and the inhabitants. So the 'primitivising' of Africa as the Heart of Darkness requires a great deal of forgetting.

I had a look at the Amazon entry for Heart of Darkness, and in a reader review there someone makes the outrageous assertion that the book wouldn't have been half so popular if FF Copolla hadn't made the film 'Apocalypse Now' - 'you've seen the film, now read the book ...' Happily, other readers disagree with him.

Susan Hiller is, of course, also responsible for From the Freud Museum -http://www.susanhiller.org/Info/artworks/artworks-FM.html - this is a quote from her website, 'The common denominator in all her works is their starting point in a cultural artefact from our own society. Her work is an excavation of the overlooked, ignored, or rejected aspects of our shared cultural production, and her varied projects collectively have been described as investigations into the 'unconscious' of culture.' Isn't this what you are doing in your respective residencies?

Anyway, I'll leave it there for today, but I will be back! Very happy to meet up if at all possible.