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콘래드, 조지프/어둠의 심연

Garrett Stewart. Lying as Dying in Heart of Darkness. [N3]. 1980

by 길철현 2018. 5. 23.

[스튜어트의 이 논문은 이 작품에 만연한 죽음을 거짓말과 연결시켜서 이야기하고 있다. 아프리카가 당면한 현실, 그 속에 드러난 커츠의 행적 등을 게라드처럼 정신분석적인 해석을 하는 부분도 있지만, 결론적으로는 말로가  커츠의 약혼녀에게 '인간적인 동정심' 때문에 진실을 이야기하지 않고 거짓말을 한 것은 자신이 목격한 비극적 현실에 대한 책임을 회피하고 거짓에서 위안을 찾으려는 의도가 있다는 것이다. (What dying and lying have in common is that they both induce decay, the psychic moribundity and physical decomposition visible everywhere on that colonized landscape we traverse on our way to the death of Kurtz. The novel's largest lie is the one that premises its experience; the ultimately self-revenging hubris of imperial impulse. The question is what degree of collusion in this untruth Marlow, long its implicit critic, ultimately allows himself to take comfort in.)


말로의 거짓말과 관련해서는 말로의 정신적인 성숙이나, 문명의 성립을 위한 필수적 과정이라는 등의 긍정적인 해석도 많기 때문에 비교해서 살펴볼 필요가 있다. (N2) 


(358) the lies of Western idealism mislead us to death

(359) 형용사의 남발 - dark, deadly, tenebrous, moribund - moral asperity: an attach on death-dealing imperialist motives and the truths they obscure.

(360) Kurtz 죽음의 이미지(해골)

the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arms waving.

(361) Marlow realizes the double nature of language, its power to illuminate and ennoble but also to corrupt, and he imagines Kurtz as a disembodied annunciation of this very duality.

(364) Kurtz라는 이름이 콘래드의 성 Korzeniowski를 연상시킨다는 것.

(366) Kurtz - the buried anguish and guilt of Marlow's own soul.

(369) What dying and lying have in common is that they both induce decay, the psychic moribundity and physical decomposition visible everywhere on that colonized landscape we traverse on our way to the death of Kurtz. The novel's largest lie is the one that premises its experience; the ultimately self-revenging hubris of imperial impulse. The question is what degree of collusion in this untruth Marlow, long its implicit critic, ultimately allows himself to take comfort in.

- political self-deception of Marlow

(374) Marlow cannot separate the black of Kurtz's end from that of his fiancee's mourning, because he uses her suffering as an excuse to deflect the full import of the former tragedy, reducing it to futile pathos.