My AP English class is currently reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. After studying for a quiz, I realized that the reference site kept mentioning Brussels as the site of the “sephulchral city.” When I became curious because I couldn’t remember anything about Brussels in the novel and asked my teacher what the city was, he said that it was London, the site of the original telling of the story on the Thames River.
Since then, however, other web sites have mentioned Brussels, which leads me to believe the credibility of the claim. However, I can’t for the life of me remember reading anything about Belgium or Brussels in the book. Does anyone happen to know which city Conrad is talking about and where it’s referred to in the book (approximately; I’m not asking anyone to go look for page numbers or anything.) I’m genuinely curious now because others in my class have noticed the discrepancy but my teacher maintains that London is indeed the correct city. Does anyone have any information on the matter?
I’ve never read Heart of Darkness, but the Wikipedia article says the company is based in Belgium:
That would make sense- until its independence in 1960, the Belgian Congo was, as the name implies, a Belgian colony (actually, the King of Belgium himself owned the colony until it was given to the Belgian government in 1908).
I read the book last summer, and just perused it briefly, so I’m going on mostly memory, some actual reference. I don’t know if Marlow ever explicitly mentions Belgium, but he does explicitly say in the pertinent passage that he went “crossing the Channel” to reach the city where he found the Company’s offices. This is about 9 pages into my edition (paperback), not long after he starts his story. He also explicitly calls the Company a “Continental concern.”
So your teacher is right that Marlow tells his story on a boat on the Thames, but within his tale Marlow moves from London to (presumably) Brussels to the Congo. You can look up the referenced passages pretty quickly, and set your teacher and class straight.
I scoured the book to search for any direct reference to Brussels but found none. The ‘whited sepulchre’ is not directly named as Brussels, but it is not London either, as Marlow clearly crosses the channel to get to the city that the company is based in. However it’s probably fair to assume that the book is partly based on Conrad’s journey in the Congo, as well as Henry Morton Stanley’s . In 1885 the Congo was ruled over by King Leopold II of Belgium.
Also, the notes in the book I have (Penguin, 2000) state that in November 1889, Conrad ‘went to Brussels to be interviewed by…the Societe Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut-Congo’, which could be seen as the unnamed company in the book. All of this make the ‘sepulchral city’ very likely to be Brussels.
Good luck with the book. I did it for the A levels and many times I wished that Marlow would just jump off the tinpot steamer and drown himself in the Congo.
And if you’re feeling just too goddamned cheerful and you want to read the real story on King Leopold’s colonization of the Congo, you can always skim through this cheery volume.