“The Unseen Presence of Victorious Corruption”

Sometimes there are words that make music, without sound or rhythm, just by the truth they present.

Joseph Conrad uses such musical words - “...the unseen presence of victorious corruption...” - in his story, The Heart of Darkness, when the narrator reaches the up-river station in the jungle and meets the dying station master, Mr. Kurtz. He describes his feeling about colonialist dehumanization, soulless science, commercial exploitation, slavery and murder as follows:

    “It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned to Kurtz for relief – positively for relief. ‘Nevertheless, I think Mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man,’ I said with emphasis. He [another corrupt company official] started, dropped on me a heavy glance, said very quickly ‘He WAS,’ and turned his back on me. My hour of favour was over; I found myself lumped along with Kurtz as a partisan of methods for which the time was not right: I was unsound! Ah! But it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.

    “I had turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as good as buried. And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night...”

This whole passage, even the whole book, is a masterpiece awe-inspiring art, but this phrase about the unseen presence of victorious corruption just rang my soul, seemed like it expressed my whole life.

Sven Lindqvist

I had recently finished reading Sven Lindqvist’s “Exterminate All the Brutes”: One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide,” which treats of Conrad, the background at the end of the nineteenth century, and what happened in the next forty-five years. “Exterminate all the brutes,” are Kurtz’s words. Lindqvist had written:

    “And when what had been done in the heart of darkness was repeated in the heart of Europe, no one recognized it. No one wished to admit what everyone knew…

    “Everywhere knowledge is being suppressed, knowledge that, if it were to be made known, would shatter our image of the world and force us to question ourselves – everywhere there, ‘Heart of Darkness’ is being enacted…

    “You already know that: So do I. It is not knowledge that we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions...”

Lindqvist mentions how Conrad, who was friends with H.G. Wells at the time, had just read Wells’ new book, “The Invisible Man,” as he was writing “The Heart of Darkness” and this resonated with the “invisible” aspect of the “vile atmosphere.”

I first read the Conrad story when I was in my twenties, and then again when I was middle-aged, but when I read it now in my old age I am able to see infinitely more meaning and music in it. England and France especially, the atmosphere of Triumphant Progress at the turn of the century, then World War One and World War Two, the U.S. invasions of other countries, and the whole wretched 20^th century are more known to me than before. My earlier readings now seem pathetically bleak.

Just this one phrase, “...the unseen presence of victorious corruption...” - strikes a dominant chord of my experience on this planet from the time I first went away to school right up to my contact this afternoon with the medical and banking industries.

A Monumental Chris Hedges Speech

I had read a few of Chris Hedges’ articles during the

last few years and 

recently read his 2013 book, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy but I confess that they really didn’t excite me very much, although I agreed with what he wrote, definitely. Perhaps I felt that what he was writing in the articles and book was just rather obviously true.

But last night I listened to one of his highly-praised speeches and it simply astounded me. It was mature, thorough, and comprehensive. He covered just about all the ground, particularly the response to the rejection you experience when you do tell the truth, and the first-shall-be-last thing that you really come to understand when you make the sacrifice. As I say, he just rang all bells. Here it is: