Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Tibor Tóth: Conrad's 'Secret Garden'

TIBOR TÓTH CONRAD'S SECRET GARDEN' What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. (T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets) Abstract: The corpus serving for this essay on Conrad's place among the most important British writers of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century is Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad's major themes and artistic qualities are approached from two convergent perspectives generated by discourse and authority respectively. The major aim of the essay is to offer a late twentieth century perspective of Conrad's search for truth about myth and faith, the possibility or impossibility of the artistic representation of reality. It was the intention of the author to convince his readers that tradition and modernism, or rather postmodernism and post-colonialism seem to be the key-words when reassessing Conrad's oeuvre. Conrad's interpretation of contrast between light and darkness in Heart of Darkness sums up and revises many of the questions formulated in different ways by the writers and philosophers belonging to the Victorian and modern period. The pattern of perpetual progression - and regression - shaping determines a dual discourse that is reminiscent of that employed by the agnostics. Yet Heart of Darkness famously attempts to interpret the ills of the socalled civilised world through powerful criticism of imperialism, denouncing it as propagator of darkness under the mask of the emissary of light and progress. 153