Interpretación psicoanalítica

Heart of Darkness first appeared in 1899 as “The Heart of Dark- ness” in Blackwood’s Magazine in three parts (February, March, and April), after which it was revised for inclusion by Blackwood in 1902 in a separate volume, Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Sto- ries (the third being The End of the Tether). All subsequent publica- tions of Heart of Darkness, whether reprints or newly set editions, stem from this version of the story, rather than from the one in manuscript or the one in Blackwood’s. The next significant appear- ance was in 1917—the story had been reprinted in America in se- rial form and in three Youth volumes—when Conrad wrote an “Author’s Note” for a reprint by Dent in London of the Youth vol- ume of 1902. Then, in 1921, Doubleday brought out the first col- lected works of Conrad in a limited American edition, called the “Sun-Dial.” At the same time, William Heinemann in London was preparing a limited English edition of the collected work. The first general collected editions were brought out simultaneously in 1923 in New York by Doubleday and in London by Dent. Because Con-

† From Robert Kimbrough, “Introduction,” Norton Critical Edition of Joseph Conrad,

Heart of Darkness, ed. Robert Kimbrough, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988),

rad kept publishing, further collected editions were needed after his death in 1924, but an editor of Heart of Darkness cannot con- sider them authoritative because Conrad had no chance to correct, revise, or even approve them.

Conrad’s literary executor, Richard Curle, reported that although much of Conrad’s work is “extant in at least six different states— the manuscript, the corrected typescript, the serial form, the Amer- ican book form, the English book form, and the collected edition book form,” it was “the last alone that Conrad considered his final text” (Richard Curle, The Last Twelve Years of Joseph Conrad, Gar- den City, NY, 1928). Although we know from letters that Conrad took great interest in the 1923 Doubleday and Dent collected edi- tions, Bruce Harkness in Heart of Darkness and the Critics (San Francisco, 1960) has shown (and the present editor has verified) that the Youth volumes in these two collections are printed from the same plates that were made in America for the 1921 “Sun-Dial” Youth volume, a work that is most unreliable both because there is no evidence that Conrad had a chance to oversee the publication and because it is filled with error. Hence, one must move back to the 1921 Heinemann Youth volume as a possible copy-text for Heart of Darkness.

The Heinemann Collected Works is not a reprint, but a separate edition, the type of which was distributed after 780 sets had been printed. Conrad kept abreast of the production and worked closely with the editors on various of the volumes. Departures from the Heart of Darkness of 1902 are few, but do present a clarity of phrase and a consistency of syntax found in no other state of the story. The 1921 edition has been used, then, as the copy-text for the present edition.

Because there are, however, four significant forms of the text be- hind Conrad’s “final” one—the nearly complete manuscript, the partial typescript, the Blackwood’s Magazine version of 1899, and the Blackwood Youth volume of 1902—the present edition carries a selection of variant readings that permits the reader to follow Con- rad as he worked toward establishing the final meaning and art of his text. The manuscript is a “clean” one; it moves steadily forward, having no long insertions, taking no false tacks, showing few sec- ond thoughts, and containing almost no revisions longer than a sentence. Because it is the most explicit of the extant versions, many passages that were later suppressed help one understand the meaning of the final text of Heart of Darkness. The magazine ver- sion is less explicit, omitting words, phrases, and one whole scene, but it has only one totally rewritten passage and only one other fully revised. The 1902 version differs from the magazine mainly in matters of style, in smoothness of phrase and syntax, but Conrad

did tone down noticeably two descriptions of the native woman who appears toward the end of the story. Although no major changes appear in the 1921 edition, it is the most polished and consistent in style of all previous editions and reprints.

Nevertheless, the present text contains fifteen substantive and some two thousand accidental departures from 1921. Substantive changes are usually taken to refer to matters of wording, and acci- dentals, to matters of punctuation and capitalization. As the two words imply, a substantive variant is felt to be one that consciously changes meaning, while an accidental variant is felt to be indiffer- ent with regard to meaning. But such a separation is artificial, for the way a sentence is pointed can change its implied meaning just as forcefully as can a change in its wording. The pointing of Mar- low’s sentences provides a case in point.

When I undertook the first Norton Critical Edition of Heart of Darkness, I was absolutely enchanted by Conrad’s manuscript: its uninhibited flow, its simple directness. My instinct was to edit the manuscript for printing, but I was dissuaded because orthodox tex- tual bibliography conservatively said: Do not rush to change what the author did not change in the last text approved by that author. * * *

Today, orthodoxy has changed: While the “final” text still claims authority, the manuscript and the copy provided to a publisher’s copy editor also have been granted a special kind of authority. Specifically, if a clear rationale of punctuation (and capitalization) within the manuscript and typescript of a work has been ignored by the publishing-house editor who prepared copy for the printer, then the editor of a critical edition of that work is justified in re- claiming the author’s intentions through the reestablishment of the original rationale of punctuation. In the present case, Conrad’s punctuation of the manuscript and typescript of Heart of Darkness is light; Blackwood’s (both in Blackwood’s Magazine and in Youth) is heavy—lots of colons and semicolons and exclamation points and question marks and restrictive commas.

For the complete story and for further justification for the adjust- ment of house-introduced accidentals, see the excellent work of Marion Michael and Wilkes Berry, “The Typescript of ‘The Heart of Darkness,’ ” Conradiana 12 (1980): 147–55. But, in short, Con- rad’s practice was to have his wife, Jessie, type his manuscripts; he would then correct and change the typescript before sending it to the publisher; and when possible he always wanted to read proof before final printing. Once under contract for Heart of Darkness, Conrad wrote feeling the pressure of deadlines, but Jessie fell sick after typing fifty-seven pages (and four lines) of manuscript, which came to thirty-five pages of typescript. Conrad corrected and

changed these pages but sent the rest of the manuscript, pages 58–90, directly to David Meldrum, Blackwood’s London literary agent. Meldrum had this balance of the manuscript typed and re- turned to Conrad, but sent the first thirty-five typed pages on to Edinburgh. Conrad corrected the typed version of manuscript pages 58–90, marked where he thought the first installment could end, and sent the lot to Edinburgh. Most of the manuscript lying behind the thirty-five pages typed by Jessie is lost; on the other hand, we have no further typed copy or corrected proofs for any part of the rest of the manuscript, which survives almost without interruption or loss. But a rationale of punctuation can be estab- lished by studying the hand changes in the typescript and by collat- ing the places where the surviving manuscript and the typescript coincide and by studying the original punctuation in the rest of the manuscript.

By reinstating the simple, direct flow of the manuscript, I have reestablished the speaking voice of Marlow that was originally heard on the Nellie. In so doing, I have also returned to him fifteen original words or phrases that never made it into print and whose absence was never later corrected by Conrad. None of the follow- ing emendations is purely “editorial”; each is fully substantiated by the manuscript (and in some few cases, the typescript). In the fol- lowing list, after the page and line number, the new reading is given, followed by the 1921 printed version:

7.14: on, for in

12.30: appears, for appeared 14.13: drooped, for dropped

15.15: excavations hanging, for excavations, or hanging 15.34: of, for or

18.21: later on, for later

18.28: Caravans. (omitted by first printer, and thereafter) 22.6: Triumphant, for Because triumphant

23.42: later on, for later 31.24: had, for has 37.13: shore, for short

49.42: found time for it., for found time for!

58.41: shadow of the forest, for shadows of the forests 72.15: the faith, for faith

76.12: black, for back