Revising Heart of Darkness

The following is a typed version of Conrad’s manuscript of Heart of Darkness. Note the revisions Conrad made as he was drafting. Then compare this version to the final draft that appears in published form in the edition we’ve been reading.

I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still [phrase crossed out—unclear] <stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible> cry <, by the cry of> inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. “I knew it—I was sure!” She knew! She was sure. It seemed to me the house would collapse. The heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz justice. He wanted only justice.

Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark too dark It would have been too dark if I had spoken.

Been too dark—too dark altogether.

He was silent <Marlow ceased and sat 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 looked around. The offing was barred by a black cloud bank of clouds and the old waterway tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowing sombre under an overcast sky seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

Ford Madox Ford was a fellow writer who frequently collaborated with Conrad. Before the publication of Heart of Darkness, Conrad asked Ford for his suggestions for possible revisions to the novel’s last paragraph. For example, the first two sentences of the final paragraph originally formed their own brief paragraph. Ford writes,

[W]e tried every possible juxtaposition of those sentences, putting “No one moved for a time” in front of Marlow’s ceasing; running that sentence up to the end of the last paragraph of speech; cutting it out altogether—because the first principle of Conrad and myself at that time was that you should never state a negative. If nobody moves, you do not have to make the statement; just as, if somebody is silent, you just do not record any speech of his, and leave it at that.

However, that negative statement got itself left in at the end, I suppose as a matter of cadence, though I remember suggesting the excision of “for a time”—a suggestion that Conrad turned down because that would have made the statement too abrupt and dramatic. The last paragraph of a story should have the effect of what musicians call a coda—a passage meditative in tone, suited for letting the reader or hearer gently down from the tense drama of the story, in which all his senses have been shut up, into the ordinary workaday world again.

Questions:

  1. What changes does Conrad make in the manuscript? What changes does he make from the manuscript to the final, published form?
  1. What effect(s) do these changes have on how the final paragraph is interpreted?
  1. What kinds of reasons does Ford Madox Ford give for the changes he and Conrad discussed?

(Manuscript and Ford Madox Ford quotations taken from Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. 2nd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1971. 134-9.)